Pearl Jam Twenty


Pearl Jam - 2011
    Pearl Jam Twenty is an intimate and lavishly illustrated portrait of one of the world’s most influential and successful bands—by the band itself.

Hollywood Monster: A Walk Down Elm Street with the Man of Your Dreams


Robert Englund - 2009
    The sadistic killer with the flame-charred face. The knife-blade claws. The razor-sharp wit. Freddy...But you've never seen him like this. Unflinching. Uncensored. Unmasked.Meet Robert Englund, the award-winning actor best known for his role as Freddy Krueger -- the legendary horror icon featured on the American Film Institute's "100 Greatest Heroes and Villains" roster -- a character as unforgettable and enduring as Bela Lugosi's Dracula and Boris Karloff's Frankenstein. Now, for the first time, the man behind the latex mask tells his story in this captivating new memoir, published to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first A Nightmare on Elm Street film.You see, Robert Englund is no monster at all, but a deeply funny, charming Hollywood veteran. Packed with Robert's hilarious stories, playful self-deprecation, and a generous helping of never-before-revealed A Nightmare on Elm Street trivia, Hollywood Monster offers an unparalleled look at the beloved film icon. With insider savvy and gallows humor, Robert recounts his audition for Wes Craven, the inspiration for Freddy's character, the grueling makeup sessions, his soon-to-be-famous costars, the often disastrous on-set blunders, and the wave of popularity that propelled this humble California surfer kid all the way to the top.Of course, fame and fortune as Freddy came years after the young actor shared a trailer with screen legend Henry Fonda, was punched in the face by Richard Gere, took down Burt Reynolds, and muscled his way between Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sally Field, and Jeff Bridges.But soon after his high-profile stint in the groundbreaking TV miniseries V, Robert Englund took on the most celebrated role of his career -- the macabre and wisecracking killer who quickly became a household name. From the moment Freddy Krueger dragged his claws across a rusty pipe in the opening dream sequence, a legend had been unleashed -- and a star was born. This is his story.

The Jaws Log


Carl Gottlieb - 1975
    Long out of print, a new, expanded paperback edition was published in 2000 to mark the movie's 25th Anniversary, featuring a 22-page behind-the-scenes photo album, a new afterword by Gottlieb updating readers on the fates of thefilmmakers, and an introduction by Peter Benchley.Now, on the occasion of the movie's 30th Anniversary, The Jaws Log is available for the first time in an affordably-priced hardcover edition with a new foreword by the author.

Written by Salim-Javed: The Story of Hindi Cinema's Greatest Screenwriters


Diptakirti Chaudhuri - 2015
    From Zanjeer to Deewaar and Sholay to Shakti, their creative output changed the destinies of several actors and filmmakers and even made a cultural phenomenon of the Angry Young Man. Even after they decided to part ways, success continued to court them-a testament not only to their impeccable talent and professional ethos, but also their enterprising showmanship and business acumen. Fizzing with energy and brimming over with enough trivia to delight a cinephile's heart, Written by Salim-Javed tells the story of a dynamic partnership that transformed Hindi cinema forever.

Burt Lancaster: An American Life


Kate Buford - 2000
    Burt Lancaster is known to audiences around the world as the electrifying performer of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, From Here to Eternity, and Birdman of Alcatraz, among many others. Kate Buford brings to life his vivid, memorable on-screen presence as well as the off-screen life he kept intensely private. The first writer to win cooperation from Lancaster's widow and close friends, Buford has written the intimate story of one of the last great unexamined Hollywood lives, capturing both the golden boy and the husband, philanderer, and sometime bisexual. Buford's portrait is compelling, comprehensive, intelligent—and definitive.

Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy


Thommy Hutson - 2016
    Hutson takes fans deeper into the movie’s boiler room than they’ve ever dared go, from exploring what spurred mastermind Craven to craft his watershed film to the beginnings of Robert Shaye’s revolutionary New Line Cinema. Never Sleep Again features dozens of exclusive cast and crew interviews, in addition to thoughts from those who worked with Craven and Shaye prior to their Nightmare. This extensively researched, comprehensive look back is the definitive account of the film that began what many have called the best, most frightening and imaginative horror franchise in motion picture history. Includes 100s of photos.

Spirited Away


Andrew Osmond - 2008
    Spirited Away, directed by the veteran anime film-maker Hayao Miyazaki, is Japan’s most successful film, and one of the top-grossing ‘foreign language’ films ever released.  Set in modern Japan, the film is a wildly imaginative fantasy, at once personal and universal.  It tells the story of a listless little girl who stumbles into a magical world where gods relax in a palatial bathhouse; where there are giant babies and hard-working soot sprites, and where a train runs across the sea. Andrew Osmond’s insightful study describes how Miyazaki wrote, storyboarded and directed Spirited Away with a degree of creative control undreamt of in most popular cinema, using the film’s delightful, freewheeling visual ideas to explore issues ranging from personal agency and responsibility to what Miyazaki sees as the lamentable state of modern Japan.  Osmond unpacks the film’s visual language, which many Western (and some Japanese) audiences find both beautiful and sometimes bewildering.  He traces connections between Spirited Away and Miyazaki’s prior body of work, and provides an account of the film’s production and the creative differences between Miyazaki and his collaborators, arguing that Spirited Away uses the cartoon medium to create a compellingly immersive drawn world.

With Nails: The Film Diaries of Richard E. Grant


Richard E. Grant - 1996
    He knows he's an insider when Carrie Fisher reminds him, "You're no longer a tourist, you’re one of the attractions." This heady mixture of eating spaghetti with the Coppolas, window-shopping with Sharon Stone, and working with and learning from the best actors and directors in Tinseltown will be irresistible to anyone who loves movies or aspires to be a Hollywood player.

Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story


Thad Komorowski - 2013
    Through vigorous draftsmanship, charismatic voices, irreverent sight gags, crass humor, and stellar character acting, animation's most talented and disturbed artists created an entity for the Nickelodeon cable network that pulled the art form out of a 25-year rut. The world has never been quite the same since - and we're eternally grateful!Now you too can join the rollercoaster ride that is the fascinating, insane real-life story of art, money, and ego that gave birth to Ren Hoek and Stimpson J. Cat. History Eraser Buttons need not apply. No stone has been unturned, no magic nose goblins unpicked, in this extensively detailed history of the show that defined a generation and changed an entire medium.It's everything you wanted to know about Ren & Stimpy - but were afraid to ask!

Robert Altman: The Oral Biography


Mitchell Zuckoff - 2009
    After an all-American boyhood in Kansas City, a stint flying bombers in World War II, and jobs ranging from dog tattoo entrepreneur to television director, Robert Altman burst onto the scene in 1970 with M*A*S*H. He reinvented American filmmaking, and went on to produce such masterpieces as McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Nashville, The Player, Short Cuts, and Gosford Park. In Robert Altman, Mitchell Zuckoff has woven together Altman's final interviews; an incredible cast of voices including Meryl Streep, Warren Beatty, Paul Newman, among scores of others; and contemporary reviews and news accounts into a riveting tale of an extraordinary life.

Bruce Lee: A Life


Matthew Polly - 2018
    It’s also one of the only accounts; incredibly, there has never been an authoritative biography of Lee. Following a decade of research that included conducting more than one hundred interviews with Lee’s family, friends, business associates, and even the actress in whose bed Lee died, Polly has constructed a complex, humane portrait of the icon. Polly explores Lee’s early years as a child star in Hong Kong cinema; his actor father’s struggles with opium addiction and how that turned Bruce into a troublemaking teenager who was kicked out of high school and eventually sent to America to shape up; his beginnings as a martial arts teacher, eventually becoming personal instructor to movie stars like James Coburn and Steve McQueen; his struggles as an Asian-American actor in Hollywood and frustration seeing role after role he auditioned for go to a white actors in eye makeup; his eventual triumph as a leading man; his challenges juggling a sky-rocketing career with his duties as a father and husband; and his shocking end that to this day is still shrouded in mystery. Polly breaks down the myths surrounding Bruce Lee and argues that, contrary to popular belief, he was an ambitious actor who was obsessed with the martial arts—not a kung-fu guru who just so happened to make a couple of movies. This is an honest, revealing look at an impressive yet imperfect man whose personal story was even more entertaining and inspiring than any fictional role he played onscreen.

A.R. Rahman: The Spirit Of Music (Free Music Cd)


Nasreen Munni Kabir - 2011
    Rahman's first film Roja was released in 1992, his astonishing music with its other-worldly melodies, tonal texture, pulsating rhythms made an instant impact in India. His abundantly flowing talent has given life to the score of over a hundred films, including Dil Se, Bombay, Lagaan, Warriors of Heaven and Earth, 127 Hours and Jodhaa Akbar. According to a recent estimate by the BBC, 150 million Copies of his albums have sold worldwide. A.R. Rahman has won a host of awards, together with a Golden Globe, a Bafta, two Oscars and two Grammys for his score in Slumdog Millionaire. In 2010, he received the Padma Bhusan, the third civilian honour, awarded by the Government of India. Despite all his great success, Rahman remains a deeply private person, shying away from the glitz and glamour of show business. A.R. Rahman, The Spirit of Music is in the form of biographical conversations between the composer and Nasreen Munni Kabir in which we hear of Rahman's amazing journey from modest beginning to an assured place in world music history.

The Star Machine


Jeanine Basinger - 2007
    Jeanine Basinger gives us an immensely entertaining look into the “star machine,” examining how, at the height of the studio system, from the 1930s to the 1950s, the studios worked to manufacture star actors and actresses. With revelatory insights and delightful asides, she shows us how the machine worked when it worked, how it failed when it didn’t, and how irrelevant it could sometimes be. She gives us the “human factor,” case studies focusing on big stars groomed into the system: the “awesomely beautiful” (and disillusioned) Tyrone Power; the seductive, disobedient Lana Turner; and a dazzling cast of others—Loretta Young, Errol Flynn, Irene Dunne, Deanna Durbin. She anatomizes their careers, showing how their fame happened, and what happened to them as a result. (Both Lana Turner and Errol Flynn, for instance, were involved in notorious court cases.) In her trenchantly observed conclusion, she explains what has become of the star machine and why the studios’ practice of “making” stars is no longer relevant. Deeply engrossing, full of energy, wit, and wisdom, The Star Machine is destined to become an invaluable part of the film canon.

Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema


Jamie Russell - 2005
    Covering hundreds of movies from America, Europe and Asia, this history chronicles the zombie's on-screen evolution from Caribbean bogeyman to flesh-eating corpse.

City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s


Otto Friedrich - 1986
    Its cast includes actors, writers, musicians and composers, producers and directors, racketeers and labor leaders, journalists and politicians in the turbulent decade from World War II to Korea.