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The Great Movies II
Roger Ebert - 2005
Neither a snob nor a shill, Ebert manages in these essays to combine a truly populist appreciation for today's most important form of popular art with a scholar's erudition and depth of knowledge and a sure aesthetic sense. Once again wonderfully enhanced by stills selected by Mary Corliss, former film curator at the Museum of Modern Art, The Great Movies II is a treasure trove for film lovers of all persuasions, an unrivaled guide for viewers, and a book to return to again and again.Films featured in The Great Movies II12 Angry Men · The Adventures of Robin Hood · Alien · Amadeus · Amarcord · Annie Hall · Au Hasard, Balthazar · The Bank Dick · Beat the Devil · Being There · The Big Heat · The Birth of a Nation · The Blue Kite · Bob le Flambeur · Breathless · The Bridge on the River Kwai · Bring Me the Head of Alfredo García · Buster Keaton · Children of Paradise · A Christmas Story · The Color Purple · The Conversation · Cries and Whispers · The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie · Don’t Look Now · The Earrings of Madame de . . . · The Fall of the House of Usher · The Firemen’s Ball · Five Easy Pieces · Goldfinger · The Good, the Bad and the Ugly · Goodfellas · The Gospel According to Matthew · The Grapes of Wrath · Grave of the Fireflies · Great Expectations · House of Games · The Hustler · In Cold Blood · Jaws · Jules and Jim · Kieslowski’s Three Colors Trilogy · Kind Hearts and Coronets · King Kong · The Last Laugh · Laura · Leaving Las Vegas · Le Boucher · The Leopard · The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp · The Manchurian Candidate · The Man Who Laughs · Mean Streets · Mon Oncle · Moonstruck · The Music Room · My Dinner with Andre · My Neighbor Totoro · Nights of Cabiria · One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest · Orpheus · Paris, Texas · Patton · Picnic at Hanging Rock · Planes, Trains and Automobiles · The Producers · Raiders of the Lost Ark · Raise the Red Lantern · Ran · Rashomon · Rear Window · Rififi · The Right Stuff · Romeo and Juliet · The Rules of the Game · Saturday Night Fever · Say Anything · Scarface · The Searchers · Shane · Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs · Solaris · Strangers on a Train · Stroszek · A Sunday in the Country · Sunrise · A Tale of Winter · The Thin Man · This Is Spinal Tap ·Tokyo Story · Touchez Pas au Grisbi · Touch of Evil · The Treasure of the Sierra Madre · Ugetsu · Umberto D · Unforgiven · Victim · Walkabout · West Side Story · Yankee Doodle Dandy
Mindgame
Anthony Horowitz - 2001
A thriller that actually manages to thrill, and a very dark comedy that twists and spirals towards a completely unexpected ending. This is one play where seeing isn't quite believing and reading the text is the only way to uncover all the clues.
Torn
David Massey - 2012
In the heat and dust, young British army medic Elinor Nielson watches an Afghan girl walk into a hail of bullets. But when she runs to help, Ellie finds her gone. Who is she? And what's happened to her? What Ellie discovers makes her question everything she believes in, even her feelings for the American lieutenant who takes her side.
Chinatown
Robert Towne - 1998
Jake Gittes is a successful 'bedroom dick': a private eye specialising in cases of marital infidelity. Paradoxically he might also be the last truly ethical man in a corrupt town. Lured into an investigation of the death-by-drowning of City Water Commissioner Hollis Mulwray, Gittes gets more than usually entwined with his new client, Mulwray's enigmatic widow Evelyn. He then finds himself crossing swords with Evelyn's redoubtable father, the aging business magnate Noah Cross, who has professional and personal reasons of his own for wanting both Hollis and Evelyn silenced.Academy Award-winner for Best Original Screenplay of 1974, Robert Towne's Chinatown is widely regarded as the finest American movie script of the post-war years. Complex in narrative design, infused with the sordid real-life history of Los Angeles' economic growth and unmistakably adult in its updating of the trademark violence and sexual intrigue of film noir, on the page Chinatown still shines - and cuts - like a blade.
The Donnie Darko Book
Richard Kelly - 2003
. . Film of the year.' Sleazenation'Magnificently bizarre . . . Wonderful.' Empire'Unlike anything you'll have seen before . . . Honestly mind-blowing.' BBC Radio 1'Stunning . . . Totally original.' Time Out'Dazzling . . . Demands a second viewing.' Total FilmThe critical and audience response made Donnie Darko the cult film of the year - one whose dark ambiguities caused audiences to go back to the film again and again trying to fathom its mysteries.This book brings its readers further into the world of Donnie Darko and its creator Richard Kelly. Contained within these pages are an in-depth interview with Richard Kelly who recounts the gestation of the film; the screenplay; photos and drawings from the film and artwork inspired by it.Donnie Darko will never surrender up all its mysteries, but this book will be an indispensable guide into its intriguing world.
Hot Toddy: The True Story of Hollywood's Most Sensational Murder
Andy Edmonds - 1989
Set against the Hollywood industry where Toddy worked and played--an industry infiltrated by the Mob. 21 photos.
Ring of Secrets
Roseanna M. White - 2013
White combines fascinating cloak-and-dagger secrets with a tale of love and intrigue during the Revolutionary War.Winter Reeves is an aristocratic Patriot forced to hide her heart amid the Loyalists of the City of New York. She has learned to keep her ears open so she can pass information on British movements to Robbie Townsend, her childhood friend, and his spy ring. If she's caught, if she's hung for espionage...well, she won't be. Robbie has taught her the tools of the trade: the wonders of invisible ink, drop locations and, most importantly, a good cover.Bennet Lane returns to New York from his Yale professorship with one goal: to find General Washington's spy hidden among the ranks of the elite. Searching for a wife was supposed to be nothing more than a convenient cover story for his mission, but when he meets Winter, with her too-intelligent eyes in her too-blank face, he finds a mystery that can't be ignored.Both believers...and both committed to a separate cause. Will their faith in God lead them to a shared destiny or lives lived apart?
Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3
Robert Matzen - 2014
on January 16, 1942, actress Carole Lombard, Hollywood's "Queen of Screwball" and the wife of the king of the movies, Clark Gable, stepped onto a Transcontinental & Western Airlines DC-3, designated as Flight 3 in Indianapolis, Indiana with her mother, Elizabeth Peters, and MGM publicity man Otto Winkler. Lombard had just completed the first sale of war bonds and stamps in the nation following its entry into World War II. Exhausted from five days on the road, Carole intended to return to her husband and Encino, California home and by the fastest means possible. Fourteen hours later, Flight 3 lay a flaming pile of debris strewn across the side of Potosi Mountain, Nevada.Fireball provides a fresh look at Carole Lombard's life, with plenty of focus on her list of lovers that included Howard Hughes and Clark Gable, and presents a first-ever examination of the events that led to that final flight and her death. The book also provides a day-by-day look at the struggles of Clark Gable and Lombard's family, friends, and fans, to cope with the tragedy. Lombard became the first Hollywood star to sacrifice her life in World War II. The War Department offered Gable a funeral service with full military honors but he refused it knowing that his wife would not approve of such spectacle.But Fireball goes much further and explores the lives of the 21 others on the plane, including 15 members of the U.S. Army Air Corps, and addresses one of the most enduring mysteries of World War II: On a clear night full of stars, with TWA's most experienced pilot at the controls of a 10-month-old aircraft under the power of two fully functioning engines, why did Flight 3 crash into that Nevada mountainside?Author Robert Matzen digs deep into never-before-explored corners of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences Library to offer fresh new perspectives on Carole Lombard, “the Queen of Screwball.” He also explored 2,000 pages of federal government and TWA records on the crash and spoke to friends of Carole Lombard and Clark Gable as well as crash experts and family members of the passengers on Flight 3 to tell not one but 22 heartbreaking stories, one for each of the souls aboard the doomed airliner.The gripping page-turner Fireball presents the story of the people on the plane, the friends and families left behind, and the heroic first responders who struggled up a mountain hoping to perform a miracle rescue. From the first page to the last, Fireball tells a story of accomplishment, bravery, sacrifice, and loss.
The Great Train Robbery
Michael Crichton - 1975
Rich, handsome, and ingenious, he charms the city's most prominent citizens even as he plots the crime of his century, the daring theft of a fortune in gold. But even Pierce could not predict the consequences of an extraordinary robbery that targets the pride of England's industrial era: the mighty steam locomotive. Based on remarkable fact, and alive with the gripping suspense, surprise, and authenticity that are his trademarks, Michael Crichton's classic adventure is a breathtaking thrill-ride that races along tracks of steel at breakneck speed.
The Bridge Over the River Kwai
Pierre Boulle - 1952
In a prison camp, British POWs are forced into labor. The bridge they build will become a symbol of service and survival to one prisoner, Colonel Nicholson, a proud perfectionist. Pitted against the warden, Colonel Saito, Nicholson will nevertheless, out of a distorted sense of duty, aid his enemy. While on the outside, as the Allies race to destroy the bridge, Nicholson must decide which will be the first casualty: his patriotism or his pride.
The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed
Sara Gay Forden - 2000
In 1998, his ex-wife Patrizia Reggiani Martinelli--nicknamed "The Black Widow" by the press--was sentenced to 29 years in prison, for arranging his murder. Did Patrizia murder her ex-husband because his spending was wildly out of control? Did she do it because her glamorous ex was preparing to marry his mistress, Paola Franchi? Or is there a possibility she didn't do it at all?The Gucci story is one of glitz, glamour, intrigue, the rise, near fall and subsequent resurgence of a fashion dynasty. Beautifully written, impeccably researched, and widely acclaimed, The House of Gucci will captivate readers with its page-turning account of high fashion, high finance, and heart-rending personal tragedy.
The Woman in Black: A Ghost Play
Stephen Mallatratt - 1989
There he caught sight of the woman in black, the mere mention of whom terrifies the locals, for she is a specter who haunts the neighborhood where her illegitimate child was accidentally killed. Anyone who sees her dies! The lawyer has invited some friends to watch as he and the actor recreate the events of that dark and stormy night. A classic of the genre.
Tigers in Red Weather
Liza Klaussmann - 2012
In the days following the end of the Second World War, the world seems to offer itself up, and the two women are on the cusp of their 'real lives': Helena is off to Hollywood and a new marriage, while Nick is heading for a reunion with her own young husband, Hughes, about to return from the war. Soon the gilt begins to crack. Helena's husband is not the man he seemed to be, and Hughes has returned from the war distant, his inner light curtained over. On the brink of the 1960s, back at Tiger House, Nick and Helena—with their children, Daisy and Ed—try to recapture that sense of possibility. But when Daisy and Ed discover the victim of a brutal murder, the intrusion of violence causes everything to unravel. The members of the family spin out of their prescribed orbits, secrets come to light, and nothing about their lives will ever be the same.Brilliantly told from five points of view, with a magical elegance and suspenseful dark longing, Tigers in Red Weather is an unforgettable debut novel from a writer of extraordinary insight and accomplishment.
Night of the Fox
Jack Higgins - 1986
Wounded and adrift for days, he washes ashore on the German-occupied island of Jersey. The news spreads panic through the Allied high command: Kelso knows the time and place of the invasion. He must be rescued -- or silenced. A British professor turned Nazi impersonator and a young Jersey girl posing as his mistress set off to find Kelso in the fiercely guarded island fortress. The pair join a deadly game of wits that they must win....or perish in the darkness of the "Night of the Fox"