The Rough Guide to Horror Movies 1


Alan Jones - 2005
    The guide includes all the icons, from Boris Karloff to Wes Craven and Frankenstein to Freddie Kruger, including classics from Argentina, Pakistan, South Africa and the recent chillers from East Asia. The canon of fifty essential horror movies features The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and Switchblade Romance, via Psycho and The Exorcist. Everything you need to know is covered from festivals, adaptations, magazines and merchandise. The guide tells the stories behind the movies that have scared us throughout the twentieth century.

Behind the Curtain: An Insider's View of Jay Leno's Tonight Show


Dave Berg - 2014
    Jay and his long-time producer Dave Berg would welcome me to the Green Room, and these moments before the show gave us a chance to laugh. Jay and Dave brought a great spirit and a lot of dignity to late-night television."-Mrs. Laura Bush, former First Lady of the United StatesExperience the wacky antics and ground-breaking appearances of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno from a backstage perspective. Gain an insider's view of how Leno changed the face of late-night, inviting not just actors but also journalists and politicos to the show. What happens behind the scenes is sometimes even more revealing than what happens in front of the camera. Serious and shocking, author Dave Berg proves that these memorable moments can still surprise and entertain.Called "the best booker in the business" by Bill O'Reilly, Berg delivered a vast array of high-profile guests, including Barack Obama as the first sitting president to ever appear on a late-night program. Berg tells what really happened during the show's most legendary moments-Hugh Grant's mea culpa, the live Boston show with an inebriated Cheers cast, Jerry Seinfeld's appearance with John F. Kennedy Jr., and Arnold Schwarzenegger's surprise political announcement.

The DV Rebel's Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap


Stu Maschwitz - 2006
    The Orphanage was created by three twenty-something visual effects veterans who wanted to make their own feature films and discovered they could do this by utilizing home computers, off the shelf software, and approaching things artistically. This guide details exactly how to do this: from planning and selecting the necessary cameras, software, and equipment, to creating specific special effects (including gunfire, Kung Fu fighting, car chases, dismemberment, and more) to editing and mixing sound and music. Its mantra is that the best, low-budget action moviemakers must visualize the end product first in order to reverse-engineer the least expensive way to get there. Readers will learn how to integrate visual effects into every aspect of filmmaking--before filming, during filming and with "in camera" shots, and with computers in postproduction. Throughout the book, the author makes specific references to and uses popular action movies (both low and big-budget) as detailed examples--including El Mariachi, La Femme Nikita, Die Hard, and Terminator 2. Note from the Publisher: If you have the 3rd printing of The DV Rebel’s Guide, your disc may be missing the data files that accompany the book. If this is the case, please send an email to Peachpit in order to obtain the files at ask@peachpit.com

Eruption: Conversations with Eddie Van Halen


Brad Tolinski - 2021
    Since his band Van Halen burst onto the scene with their self-titled debut album in 1978, Eddie had been hailed as an icon not only to fans of rock music and heavy metal, but to performers across all genres and around the world. Van Halen’s debut sounded unlike anything that listeners had heard before and remains a quintessential rock album of the era. Over the course of more than four decades, Eddie gained renown for his innovative guitar playing, and particularly for popularizing the tapping guitar solo technique. Unfortunately for Eddie and his legions of fans, he died before he was ever able to put his life down to paper in his own words, and much of his compelling backstory has remained elusive—until now. In Eruption, music journalists Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill share with fans, new and old alike, a candid, compulsively readable, and definitive oral history of the most influential rock guitarist since Jimi Hendrix. It is based on more than 50+ hours of unreleased interviews they recorded with Eddie Van Halen over the years, most of them conducted at the legendary 5150 studios at  Ed’s home in Los Angeles. The heart of Eruption is drawn from these intimate and wide-ranging talks, as well as conversations with family, friends, and colleagues. In addition to discussing his greatest triumphs as a groundbreaking musician, including an unprecedented dive into Van Halen’s masterpiece 1984, the book also takes an unflinching look at Edward’s early struggles as young Dutch immigrant unable to speak the English language, which resulted in lifelong issues with social anxiety and substance abuse. Eruption: Conversations with Eddie Van Halen also examines his brilliance as an inventor who changed the face of guitar manufacturing.As entertaining as it is revealing, Eruption is the closest readers will ever get to hearing Eddie’s side of the story when it comes to his extraordinary life.

I Just Remembered


Carl Reiner - 2014
    At least that’s how it works when you’re dealing with the legendary mind of Carl Reiner. In his 2013 memoir, “I Remember Me,” Carl treated us to ninety years of professional and personal anecdotes, ranging from witty, weird and heartwarming to insightful, informative, and always funny – usually a combination of at least two, sometimes three or four, of the aforementioned. Carl had taken us on a nostalgic trip through every corner, every nook and cranny, of his life. Or so we thought. But over the next two years, new “old memories” kept coming… and coming… and coming… until, before too long, another book was born. In addition to the above adjectives, “I Just Remembered” adds a whole new batch: the mysterious saga of the gold money clip and the rubber bands; the beautiful and bizarre Joyce Kuntz; the shocking story of Jack Parr and Fidel Castro; never before heard revelations about William Shakespeare; whimsical journeys down the information superhighway via Twitter, Google and YouTube; and for good measure, truly useful health tips for a long and happy life. “I Just Remembered” is the perfect companion to “I Remember Me,” and it will have you asking, over and over, “How could he have forgotten that?!” He didn’t. He just remembered.

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.

John Ford


Peter Bogdanovich - 1978
    The fifty-year career of John Ford (1895-1973) included six Academy Awards, four New York Film Critics' Awards, and some of our most memorable films, among them The Informer (1934), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), The Quiet Man (1952), The Long Gray Line (1955), and The Wings of Eagles (1957). In addition, the name John Ford was practically synonymous with the great Westerns that came out of Hollywood for many years-- Stagecoach (1939), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Rio Grande (1950), The Searchers (1956), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), for example. After his death a European newspaper mourned ford as "the creator of the Western," although many of his finest films were far removed from that genre. Combining interviews with John Ford with his own reflections, director Peter Bogdanovich captures both the artist and the man in a highly readable, compact book that will please film lovers and Ford admirers alike. Over a hundred stills are included, along wit hthe most completed filmography yet compiled for John Ford.

Considering Doris Day


Tom Santopietro - 2007
    America's favorite girl next door may have projected a wholesome image that led Oscar Levant to quip "I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin," but in Considering Doris Day Tom Santopietro reveals Day's underappreciated and effortless acting and singing range that ran the gamut from musicals to comedy to drama and made Day nothing short of a worldwide icon.             Covering the early Warner Brothers years through Day's triumphs working with artists as varied as Alfred Hitchcock and Bob Fosse, Santopietro's smart and funny book deconstructs the myth of Day as America's perennial virgin, and reveals why her work continues to resonate today, both onscreen as pioneering independent career woman role model, and off, as a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor. Praised by James Cagney as "my idea of a great actor" and by James Garner as "the Fred Astaire of comedy," Doris Day became not just America's favorite girl, but the number one film star in the world. Yet after two weekly television series, including a triumphant five year run on CBS, she turned her back on show business forever.             Examining why Day's worldwide success in movies overshadowed the brilliant series of concept recordings she made for Columbia Records in the  '50s and '60s, Tom Santopietro uncovers the unexpected facets of Day's surprisingly sexy acting and singing style that led no less an observer than John Updike to state "She just glowed for me." Placing Day's work within the social context of America in the second half of the twentieth century, Considering Doris Day is the first book that grants Doris Day her rightful place as a singular American artist.

Hawks on Hawks


Joseph McBride - 1982
    The distinguished director, Howard Hawks, discusses his techniques of filmmaking, analyzes the artistry of his movies, and portrays his experiences working in Hollywood.

Keepers: The Greatest Films--and Personal Favorites--of a Moviegoing Lifetime


Richard Schickel - 2015
    He has been a reviewer since 1965 (long for Time magazine), has written almost forty books on the subject, and has produced and directed thirty documentaries. He has counted as personal friends many of the leading filmmakers of the twentieth century. Call it “obsession,” “lunacy,” or a “grand passion” (Schickel grants all three), but there’s simply no one who knows film better. Now Schickel gives us the ultimate summing up: a history of film as he’s seen—and lived—it, a tour of his favorites, a master class in what makes a film soar or flop. Schickel’s no-holds-barred, often raucously irreverent opinions can range from panning classics, to spotlighting forgotten treasures, to defending the art of “popular” genres such as horror, westerns, screwball comedy, and noir. Beyond his picks and pans, Schickel offers a wealth of behind-the-scenes anecdotes (a love note from Marlene Dietrich, Frank Capra’s unlikely path to success, Annie Hall’s original title), career studies of our greatest performers and auteurs, and candidly intimate glimpses of his own life in pictures (an evening with Greta Garbo, John Ford’s advice on directing, a “dust-up” in defense of Monty Python). Above all, Schickel gives us a collection of the true gems, the immortal moments that have stuck with him over a lifetime of movie watching—the transcendent scenes, characters, lines, shots, scores, even lighting cues that offer, each in their way, pure “movie magic.” Buster Keaton, His Girl Friday, Ingrid Bergman, Taxi Driver, Star Wars, Stanley Kubrick, Pulp Fiction—Schickel reveals all the films and the forces behind them that have kept him coming back for more. An essential addition to any cinephile’s library, Keepers is the curation of a brilliant connoisseur and critic, but more than that, it’s a love letter to film from one of its most dedicated devotees.

The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies: An A–Z Guide to More Than 60 Years of Blood and Guts


Peter Normanton - 2012
    From classic Hollywood masterpieces like M (1931) to the recent “torture porn” craze with flicks like the Saw franchise, this collection gives a master’s overview of the genre.

CARDIO SUCKS! 15 Excellent Ways to Burn Fat Fast and Get in Shape (The Lean Muscle Series)


Michael Matthews - 2012
    And it's a fast read--no fluff here.Here are some of the secrets you'll learn inside:The 4 biggest weight loss myths and mistakes that keep people fat and stuck in a rut. If you've fallen victim to any of these (and most people have), you NEED to have this information.The 3 simple laws of healthy fat loss. All workable weight-loss methods rely on the three simple rules to achieve results, and once you know them, you don't need to chase fads.Why long-distance jogging is an incredibly inefficient way to lose weight and what you should do instead to have a lean, sexy body that you're proud of. (The good news is it's easy and takes no more than 20 minutes per day!)A fat-incinerating method of cardio that you can literally do during the 2-3 minute commercial breaks of your favorite TV shows. 4 killer circuit training workouts that not only melt fat but give you hard, rippling muscles that will make people green with envy.And more... This book is for people that hate doing cardio and want to squeeze every ounce of fat loss possible out of their workouts.Forget pounding the pavement for hours and hours every week just to lose a little fat and muscle. Follow the methods taught in this book and you can torch fat in a fraction of the time and get tight, toned muscles (and you might actually have some fun too!).SPECIAL BONUS FOR READERS!With this book you'll also get a free 23-page bonus report from the author called "12 Health & Fitness Mistakes You Don't Know You're Making."In this free bonus report, you're going to learn the truth behind 12 of the most common health & fitness myths out there that ruin people's efforts to get fit. If you've ever wondered about things like if your genetics are holding you back, if you should stretch before lifting weights, if certain exercises shape your muscles better than others, and if you should shoot for a "target" heart rate zone to burn fat, then you need to read this report.

By Some Miracle I Made It Out of There: A Memoir


Tom Sizemore - 2013
    Brilliant. Brutal. Fiercely talented. Angry. Drug addicted. In reality, he’s all of them. He’s a survivor of the Detroit ghetto, the fifty-year-old father of twin boys, and a veteran of dozens of movies. He’s also now sober, after his addiction took his life just about as far down as any human being could go.Through screen-stealing performances in the 1990s movies True Romance, Heat, and Natural Born Killers, Sizemore was so in demand that even when it was widely known that he had a drug problem, directors like Steven Spielberg were offering him roles and begging him to stay sober for them. Robert De Niro personally recruited him for the role of MichaelCheritto in Heat after asking him to dinner and expressing his admiration. Jack Nicholson, Robert Downey, Jr., and Johnny Depp each went out of their way to befriend him. But this same man went from romancing Elizabeth Hurley and Juliette Lewis to being accused of domestic violence by the world’s most famous madam, and moved from a Beverly Hills mansion to a solitary-confinement cell at Chino State Prison and later a desolate, abandoned cabin in a town best known for being where Charles Manson hid Rosemary LaBianca’s wallet.For years, Sizemore’s days were filled with overdoses, suicide attempts, and homelessness. The simple fact is that people don’t come back from where Tom Sizemore landed—yet miraculously, he did. By Some Miracle I Made It Out of There is a harrowing journey into the heart of addiction, told in riveting and often shocking detail—a terrifying cautionary tale for anyone who’s peered over the abyss of drug abuse. By turns gritty and heartbreaking, it is also one man’s look at a particular moment in entertainment history—a window into the drug-fueled spotlight that sent Robert Downey, Jr., to jail and killed River Phoenix, Heath Ledger, and Chris Farley and many others far before their time.

Essential Bond, The: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007


Lee Pfeiffer - 1992
    There's no one else like him around. There have been nearly twenty films about him, there are more than sixty Web sites dedicated to him, and it's estimated that more than a quarter of the planet has seen at least one Bond film.Now, fans can enter the world of 007 like never before, with this meticulously researched guide examining all the top secret details of the cinematic Bond missions. Officially endorsed by the Bond film producers, it features fascinating facts and behind-the-scenes stories, as well as more than 250 rare production photos, cinema posters, and product advertisements.It's all here: the missions, the gadgets, the vehicles, the legendary villains, the exotic locals, and the even more exotic Bond women. You can meet the directors, writers, stunt men, and technicians who have contributed to the success of the series and have stories of their own to tell. Additionally, there is a unique chapter devoted to the legacy of James Bond, with an overview of the thrillers and spoofs inspired by 007 over the years, as well as a fitting tribute to Mr. Bond's literary father, Ian Fleming.

In Search of River Phoenix: The Truth Behind The Myth


Barry C. Lawrence - 2004
    The complete book about the life of Academy Award nominee River Phoenix, from his parents beginning, his birth, member of a cult religion, to his TV acting, activism, veganism and movie career.