The Sounds of Star Wars


J.W. Rinzler - 2010
    But how many of them would be able to identify the lion's roar used in the sound of the Millenium Falcon's engine? In this aurally astonishing and visually engaging book, New York Times best-selling author J. W. Rinzler reveals the illuminating history of the sounds that make the Star Wars universe so believable, as recounted by their creator, legendary sound designer Ben Burtt. An attached sound module with an exterior speaker and headphone jack lets readers listen to more than 250 unique sound effects, and more than 300 photographs illustrate the epic's many memorable scenes. From the first films to the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars series, The Sounds of Star Wars is Star Wars as you've never heard it before.

A Star Is Born: Judy Garland and the Film that Got Away


Lorna Luft - 2018
    This is a vivid account of a film classic's production, loss, and reclamation.A Star Is Born -- the classic Hollywood tale about a young talent rising to superstardom, and the downfall of her mentor/lover along the way -- has never gone out of style. It has seen five film adaptations, but none compares to the 1954 version starring Judy Garland in her greatest role. But while it was the crowning performance of the legendary entertainer's career, the production turned into one of the most talked about in movie history.The story, which depicts the dark side of fame, addiction, loss, and suicide, paralleled Garland's own tumultuous life in many ways. While hitting alarmingly close to home for the fragile star, it ultimately led to a superlative performance -- one that was nominated for an Academy Award, but lost in one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history. Running far too long for the studio's tastes, Warner Bros. notoriously slashed extensive amounts of footage from the finished print, leaving A Star is Born in tatters and breaking the heart of both the film's star and director George Cukor.Today, with a director's cut reconstructed from previously lost scenes and audio, the 1954 A Star is Born has taken its deserved place among the most critically acclaimed movies of all time, and continues to inspire each new generation that discovers it. Now, Lorna Luft, daughter of Judy Garland and the film's producer, Sid Luft, tells the story of the production, and of her mother's fight to save her career, as only she could. Teaming with film historian Jeffrey Vance, A Star Is Born is a vivid and refreshingly candid account of the crafting, loss, and restoration of a movie classic, complemented by a trove of images from the family collection taken both on and off the set. The book also includes essays on the other screen adaptations of A Star Is Born, to round out a complete history of a story that has remained a Hollywood favorite for close to a century.

Walt Disney: An American Original


Bob Thomas - 1960
    After years of research, with the full cooperation of the Disney family and access to private papers and letters, Bob Thomas produced the definitive biography of the man behind the legend--the unschooled cartoonist from Kansas City who went bankrupt on his first movie venture but became the genius who produced unmatched works of animation. Complete with a rare collection of photographs, Bob Thomas' biography is a fascinating and inspirational work that captures the spirit of Walt Disney.

The Big Three and Me


Billy Casper - 2012
    And yet, when golf historians write about the legends of the game, with special attention paid to the above-listed "Big Three," his name is often left out of the discussion, or is at best an afterthought. In this fascinating autobiography, Casper tells his life story, shining candid insight into the man who quietly collected fifty-one PGA Tour victories, the seventh highest total in history.

Little House in the Hollywood Hills: A Bad Girl's Guide to Becoming Miss Beadle, Mary X, and Me


Charlotte Stewart - 2016
    Here for the first time an adult cast member writes about the experience of making the show-the challenges, the joys, and the sometimes-turbulent behind-the-scenes relationships. Charlotte, with Andy Demsky, reveal a no-holds-barred, heart-breaking, and ultimately joyful account of fifty years in film and television offers a backstage pass to Hollywood's cocaine-fueled glory years in the 1970s, and includes Charlotte's celebrated work as Mary X in David Lynch's cult classic film, Eraserhead, as well as her later work as Betty Briggs in the highly-rated television series, Twin Peaks. Charlotte recalls working with leading men, from Jimmy Stewart, Elvis Presley, Kevin Bacon, and Kyle MacLachlan. She also details off-stage friendships with Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, as well as with relationships and flings with some of TV, film, and music's biggest names, including Jon Voight, Richard Dreyfuss, Victor French, Tim Considine, Bill Murray, and Jim Morrison. Ultimately, Charlotte's story is that of a survivor. Six years after her career-making role on Little House on the Prairie, she lost everything and was living on vodka and hotdogs. Yet through the darkest periods of her life-divorce, drug-use, cancer, financial ruin, the death of a spouse, and alcoholism-she never lost her humanity or sense of humor. David Lynch writes, "Charlotte Stewart is my kind of girl-a talented, courageous actress-a loyal friend and one who brings happiness to work." Charlotte's story is far from over. She is set to reprise her role of Betty Briggs in the new Twin Peaks series to be seen on Showtime in 2017. Throughout the year, she is a featured celebrity in fan events and festivals for Little House on the Prairie and Twin Peaks both in the U.S. and abroad. Co-author Andy Demsky is a writer and journalist, whose work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times magazine and Better Homes & Gardens, and he co-wrote Doug Shafer's critically acclaimed memoir, A Vineyard in Napa.

Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci


Stephen Thrower - 1999
    From horror masterpieces like The Beyond and Zombie Flesh-Eaters to erotic thrillers like One On Top of the Other and A Lizard in a Woman's Skin; from his earliest days as director of manic Italian comedies to his notoriety as purveyor of extreme violence in the terrifying slasher epic The New York Ripper, his whole career is explored. Supernatural themes and weird logic collide with flesh-ripping gore to breathtaking effect. Bleak horrors are transformed into bloody poetry - Fulci's loving camera technique, and the decayed splendour of his art design, make the films more than just a gross endurance test. Lucio Fulci built up a fanatical following, who at last will have the chance to own this book - five years in the making - which is the ultimate testament to 'The Godfather of Gore'. Featuring a foreword by Fulci's devoted daughter Antonella, and produced with her blessing and full co-operation. This book is quite simply the last word on Fulci. His whole career is studied in obsessive depth. Huge supplementary appendices make this volume essential for all serious students of the Italian horror movie scene. Featuring COMPLETE FILMOGRAPHIES for ALL the major actors and actresses ever to appear in Fulci films, the appendices alone are a unique, breathtakingly detailed reference source in their own right. Without doubt, by far and away the largest collection of Fulci posters, stills, press-books and lobby cards ever seen together in print. We have scoured the Earth to find the most stunning, rare and eye-catching Fulci images. Everything worth seeing is here. This is a truly beautiful book.

The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan


Jimmy McDonough - 2001
    But fo

Jaws


Antonia Quirke - 2002
    Under extreme pressure on a catastrophic location shoot, Universal's 27 year-old prodigy crafted a thriller so effective that for many years Jaws was the highest-grossing film of all time. It was also instrumental in establishing the concepts of the event movie and the summer blockbuster. Jaws exerts an extraordinary power over audiences. Apparently simplistic and manipulative, it is a film that has divided critics into two broad camps: those who dismiss it as infantile and sensational - and those who see the shark as freighted with complex political and psychosexual meaning. Antonia Quirke, in an impressionistic response, argues that both interpretations obscure the film's success simply as a work of art. In Jaws Spielberg's ability to blend genres combined with his precocious technical skill to create a genuine masterpiece, which is underrated by many, including its director. Indeed, Quirke claims, this may be Spielberg's finest work.

A Rose for Mrs. Miniver: The Life of Greer Garson


Michael Troyan - 1998
    The true origins of her birth, her fairy-tale discovery in Hollywood, and her career struggles at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer are revealed for the first time. Garson combined an everywoman quality with grace, charm, and refinement. She won the Academy Award in 1941 for her role in Mrs. Miniver, and for the next decade she reigned as the queen of MGM. Co-star Christopher Plummer remem

Sahir Ludhianvi - The peoples poet


Akshay Manwani - 2013
    So great was his stature as an Urdu poet that he never had to mould his poetry to suit the demands of film songwriting; instead, producers and composers adapted their requirements to his poetry. His songs in films like Pyaasa, Naya Daur and Phir Subah Hogi have attained the status of classics. This exhaustive biography traces the poet’s rich life, from his troubled childhood and his equally troubled love relationships, to his rise as one of the pre-eminent personalities of the Progressive Writers Movement and his journey as lyricist through the golden era of Hindi film music, the 1950s and 1960s.

The Book of Eleven


Amy Krouse Rosenthal - 1998
    Forget about Letterman's Top Ten, Amy Krouse Rosenthal's random ponderings on quirky topics are refreshingly clever and zany. Her humor is of the great everyday observational type that everyone can relate to.

A Portrait of Joan


Joan Crawford - 1962
    It is full of glamorous moments, heart-warming episodes, and exciting personalities.

Backwoods Genius


Julia Scully - 2012
    After his death, the contents of his studio, including thousands of glass negatives, were sold off for five dollars. For years the fragile negatives sat forgotten and deteriorating in cardboard boxes in an open carport. How did it happen, then, that the most implausible of events took place? That Disfarmer’s haunting portraits were retrieved from oblivion, that today they sell for upwards of $12,000 each at posh New York art galleries; his photographs proclaimed works of art by prestigious critics and journals and exhibited around the world? The story of Disfarmer’s rise to fame is a colorful, improbable, and ultimately fascinating one that involves an unlikely assortment of individuals. Would any of this have happened if a young New York photographer hadn't been so in love with a pretty model that he was willing to give up his career for her; if a preacher’s son from Arkansas hadn't spent 30 years in the Army Corps of Engineers mapping the U.S. from an airplane; if a magazine editor hadn't felt a strange and powerful connection to the work? The cast of characters includes these, plus a restless and wealthy young Chicago aristocrat and even a grandson of FDR. It’s a compelling story which reveals how these diverse people were part of a chain of events whose far-reaching consequences none of them could have foreseen, least of all the strange and reclusive genius of Heber Springs. Until now, the whole story has not been told.

Stanwyck


Axel Madsen - 1994
    He examines her Dickensian childhood, her violent first marriage, her painful estrangement from her son, and the troubled sexual dynamics of her marriage to Robert Taylor.

House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films


Kier-la Janisse - 2012
    Cinema is full of neurotic personalities, but few things are more transfixing than a woman losing her mind onscreen. Horror as a genre provides the most welcoming platform for these histrionics: crippling paranoia, desperate loneliness, masochistic death-wishes, dangerous obsessiveness, apocalyptic hysteria. Unlike her male counterpart - 'the eccentric' - the female neurotic lives a shamed existence, making these films those rare places where her destructive emotions get to play. Named after the U.S.-retitling of Carlos Aured's The Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll, House of Psychotic Women is an examination of these characters through a daringly personal autobiographical lens. Anecdotes and memories interweave with film history, criticism, trivia and confrontational imagery to create a reflective personal history and an examination of female madness, both onscreen and off. This sharply-designed book with a 32-page full-colour section is packed with rare stills, posters, pressbooks and artwork that combine with family photos and artifacts to form a titillating sensory overload, with a filmography that traverses the acclaimed and the obscure in equal measure. Films covered include The Entity, The Corruption of Chris Miller, Singapore Sling, 3 Women, Toys Are Not for Children, Repulsion, Let's Scare Jessica to Death, The Haunting of Julia, Secret Ceremony, Cutting Moments, Out of the Blue, Mademoiselle, The Piano Teacher, Possession, Antichrist and hundreds more!