Cinema: The Whole Story
Philip Kemp - 2011
It places the burgeoning world of cinema in the context of social and cultural developments that have taken place since its beginnings. Organized chronologically, the book traces the evolution of cinematic development, from the earliest days of film projection to the multiscreen cinemas and super-technology of today. Illustrated, in-depth text charts every genre of cinema, from the first silent films to epic blockbusters, CGI graphics and groundbreaking effects of the 21st century. Cinema: The Whole Story is an indispensable book for all those who love watching and reading about films and who want to understand more about the world of cinema.
Great British Bake Off - Perfect Cakes & Bakes To Make At Home (Official tie-in to the 2016 series)
Linda Collister - 2016
This essential baking book of recipes from the Great British Bake Off team is appropriate for any level of expertise. Each chapter includes favourite classics with a twist, recipes with simple ingredients to create something adventurous, and showstoppers that will guarantee you're crowned Star Baker in your own home.This cookbook is the perfect excuse to start baking like The Great British Bake Off - at home.Includes:* Recipes from the Bakers of 2016, including the finalists* Technical challenges from the show* Easy to follow, step by step baking instructions* Written to help you develop skills and bring out your creativity* Beautiful photography to help you visualize your bake* Clear advice on equipment, ingredients and quantities* Recipes highlighted for 'free-from' diets and special ingredients
From a Polish Country House Kitchen: 90 Recipes for the Ultimate Comfort Food
Anne Applebaum - 2012
Pulitzer Prize-winner Anne Applebaum has lived in Poland since before the fall of communism, and this cookbook—nourished by her engagement with the culture and food of her adopted country—offers a tantalizing look into the turbulent history of this beautiful region. In a Polish Country House Kitchen celebrates long-distance friendships with a love of food at the core, bringing the good, sustaining foods of Anne's Polish country home into kitchens the world over.
The Japanese Mind: Understanding Contemporary Japanese Culture
Roger J. Davies - 2002
Readers of this book will gain a clear understanding of what really makes the Japanese, and their society, tick. Among the topics explored: aimai (ambiguity), amae (dependence upon others' benevolence), amakudari (the nation's descent from heaven), chinmoku (silence in communication), gambari (perseverence), giri (social obligation), haragei (literally, "belly art"; implicit, unspoken communication), kenkyo (the appearance of modesty), sempai-kohai (seniority), wabi-sabi (simplicity and elegance), and zoto (gift giving), as well as discussions of childrearing, personal space, and the roles of women in Japanese society. Includes discussion topics and questions after each chapter.
Donabe: Classic and Modern Japanese Clay Pot Cooking
Naoko Takei Moore - 2015
Japanese clay pot (donabe) cooking has been refined over centuries into a versatile and simple method for preparing both dramatic and comforting one-pot meals. In Donabe, Tokyo native and cooking school instructor Naoko Takei Moore and chef Kyle Connaughton offer inspiring Japanese home-style recipes such as Sizzling Tofu and Mushrooms in Miso Sauce and Dashi-Rich Shabu-Shabu, as well as California-inspired dishes including Steam-Fried Black Cod with Crisp Potatoes, Leeks, and Walnut-Nori Pesto or Smoked Duck Breast with Creamy Wasabi–Green Onion Dipping Sauce. All are rich in flavor, simple to prepare, and perfect for a communal dining experience with family and friends. Donabe also features recipes from luminary chefs such as David Kinch, Namae Shinobu, and Cortney Burns and Nick Balla, all of whom use donabe in their own kitchens. Collectible, beautiful, and functional, donabe can easily be an essential part of your cooking repetory.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - Chronicles I: Art & Design
Daniel Falconer - 2012
It is packed with more than 1,000 images of concept artwork, photographs and development paintings by the artists working behind the scenes to bring Middle-earth to life, who each provide detailed and entertaining commentary that reveals the story behind the vision. Compiled by Weta Workshop senior concept designer Daniel Falconer, this is the first in a series of lavish hardback books written and designed by the award-winning team at Weta, who are working closely with the production team to guarantee that these books will be bursting with insider information and stunning visual imagery.
Chinatown
Michael Eaton - 1997
This study analyzes Chinatown in the context of the figure of the detective in literature and film from Sophocles to Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock.
The Man Who Made the Movies: The Meteoric Rise and Tragic Fall of William Fox
Vanda Krefft - 2017
This landmark biography brings into focus a fascinating brilliant entrepreneur—like Steve Jobs or Walt Disney, a true American visionary—who risked everything to realize his bold dream of a Hollywood empire.
Although a major Hollywood studio still bears William Fox’s name, the man himself has mostly been forgotten by history, even written off as a failure. Now, in this fascinating biography, Vanda Krefft corrects the record, explaining why Fox’s legacy is central to the history of Hollywood.At the heart of William Fox’s life was the myth of the American Dream. His story intertwines the fate of the nineteenth-century immigrants who flooded into New York, the city’s vibrant and ruthless gilded age history, and the birth of America’s movie industry amid the dawn of the modern era. Drawing on a decade of original research, The Man Who Made the Movies offers a rich, compelling look at a complex man emblematic of his time, one of the most fascinating and formative eras in American history.Growing up in Lower East Side tenements, the eldest son of impoverished Hungarian immigrants, Fox began selling candy on the street. That entrepreneurial ambition eventually grew one small Brooklyn theater into a $300 million empire of deluxe studios and theaters that rivaled those of Adolph Zukor, Marcus Loew, and the Warner brothers, and launched stars such as Theda Bara. Amid the euphoric roaring twenties, the early movie moguls waged a fierce battle for control of their industry. A fearless risk-taker, Fox won and was hailed as a genius—until a confluence of circumstances, culminating with the 1929 stock market crash, led to his ruin.
The 101 Habits Of Highly Successful Screenwriters: Insider's Secrets from Hollywood's Top Writers
Karl Iglesias - 2001
An inspiration to all would-be screenwriters, this book is about living the screenwriter's life -- the habits, writing environments, creative processes, daily passions, and obsessions.In The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters, author Karl Iglesias has interviewed 14 top contemporary Hollywood screenwriters who offer their experience, insight, and advice to aspiring screenwriters everywhere.
Seagalogy: a Study of the Ass-Kicking Films of Steven Seagal
Vern - 2007
a national treasure!”Now, finally, Vern is ready to unleash his magnum opus: an in-depth study of the world's only aikido instructor turned movie star/director/writer/blues guitarist/energy drink inventor — the ass-kicking auteur Steven Seagal. From Above the Law to his Mountain Dew commercials, his entire career is covered in Vern’s inimitable style.As Vern himself puts it, Seagalogy is “a book that will shake the very foundations of film criticism, break their wrists and then throw them through a window."
George Cukor: A Double Life
Patrick McGilligan - 1991
Relates the life of the secretly gay Hollywood director who guided to stardom such legendary actresses as Garbo, Bergman, Garland, and Hepburn.
The Impossible David Lynch
Todd McGowan - 2007
He studies Lynch's talent for blending the bizarre and the normal to emphasize the odd nature of normality itself. Hollywood is often criticized for distorting reality and providing escapist fantasies, but in Lynch's movies, fantasy becomes a means through which the viewer is encouraged to build a revolutionary relationship with the world.Considering the filmmaker's entire career, McGowan examines Lynch's play with fantasy and traces the political, cultural, and existential impact of his unique style. Each chapter discusses the idea of impossibility in one of Lynch's films, including the critically acclaimed Blue Velvet and The Elephant Man; the densely plotted Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive; the cult favorite Eraserhead; and the commercially unsuccessful Dune. McGowan engages with theorists from the "golden age" of film studies (Christian Metz, Laura Mulvey, and Jean-Louis Baudry) and with the thought of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Hegel. By using Lynch's weirdness as a point of departure, McGowan adds a new dimension to the field of auteur studies and reveals Lynch to be the source of a new and radical conception of fantasy.
The Devil's Candy: The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco
Julie Salamon - 1991
How could it lose? But instead Salamon got a front-row seat at the Hollywood disaster of the decade. She shadowed the film from its early stages through the last of the eviscerating reviews, and met everyone from the actors to the technicians to the studio executives. They'd all signed on for a blockbuster, but there was a sense of impending doom from the start--heart-of-gold characters replaced Wolfe's satiric creations; affable Tom Hanks was cast as the patrician heel; Melanie Griffith appeared mid-shoot with new, bigger breasts. With a keen eye and ear, Salamon shows us how the best of intentions turned into a legendary Hollywood debacle.The Devil's Candy joins John Gregory Dunne's The Studio, Steven Bach's Final Cut, and William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade as a classic for anyone interested in the workings of Hollywood. With a new afterword profiling De Palma ten years after the movie's devastating flop (and this book's best-selling publication), Julie Salamon has created a riveting insider's portrait of an industry where art, talent, ego, and money combine and clash on a monumental scale.
Apropos of Nothing
Woody Allen - 2020
In this candid and often hilarious memoir, the celebrated director, comedian, writer, and actor offers a comprehensive, personal look at his tumultuous life. Beginning with his Brooklyn childhood and his stint as a writer for the Sid Caesar variety show in the early days of television, working alongside comedy greats, Allen tells of his difficult early days doing standup before he achieved recognition and success. With his unique storytelling pizzazz, he recounts his departure into moviemaking, with such slapstick comedies as Take the Money and Run, and revisits his entire, sixty-year-long, and enormously productive career as a writer and director, from his classics Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Annie and Her Sisters to his most recent films, including Midnight in Paris. Along the way, he discusses his marriages, his romances and famous friendships, his jazz playing, and his books and plays. We learn about his demons, his mistakes, his successes, and those he loved, worked with, and learned from in equal measure. This is a hugely entertaining, deeply honest, rich and brilliant self-portrait of a celebrated artist who is ranked among the greatest filmmakers of our time.
Giant: Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Edna Ferber, and the Making of a Legendary American Film
Don Graham - 2018
Isolating his star cast in the wilds of West Texas, director George Stevens brought together a volatile mix of egos, insecurities, sexual proclivities, and talent. Stevens knew he was overwhelmed with Hudson’s promiscuity, Taylor’s high diva-dom, and Dean’s egotistical eccentricity. Yet he coaxed performances out of them that made cinematic history, winning Stevens the Academy Award for Best Director and garnering nine other nominations, including a nomination for Best Actor for James Dean, who died before the film was finished. In this compelling and impeccably researched narrative history of the making of the film, Don Graham chronicles the stories of Stevens, whose trauma in World War II intensified his ambition to make films that would tell the story of America; Edna Ferber, a considerable literary celebrity, who meets her match in the imposing Robert Kleberg, proprietor of the vast King Ranch; and Glenn McCarthy, an American oil tycoon; and Errol Flynn lookalike with a taste for Hollywood. Drawing on archival sources Graham’s Giant is a comprehensive depiction of the film’s production showing readers how reality became fiction and fiction became cinema.