The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe


Tara Bennett - 2020
    Year-by-year, project-by-project, the studio’s founding and meteoric growth are described through detailed personal stories, anecdotes, and remembrances of noteworthy challenges, breakthrough milestones, and history-making successes. Together, these stories reveal how each of the films evolved into one ongoing cinematic narrative, as coauthors Tara Bennett and Paul Terry (The Official Making of Big Trouble in Little China, 2017) chart the complete production history of The Infinity Saga’s 23 movies (from 2008’s Iron Man all the way up to, and including, 2019’s Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home).Bennett and Terry were granted unprecedented access to Marvel Studios, which led to this years-in-the-making tome containing personal stories from more than 200 interviews, including every Marvel Studios producer; MCU writers and directors; the stars of The Infinity Saga; concept artists, costume designers, composers, and the talents behind the MCU’s dazzling visual effects; and more. Featuring previously unpublished behind-the-scenes photography and archival production material, as well as personal photos and memorabilia from cast and crew, The Story of Marvel Studios is the essential, collectible chronicle of how the Marvel Cinematic Universe was brought to life.• 512 pages chart the entire history-making story of Marvel Studios—from its inception, through Phases One, Two, and Three, and to the dawn of Phase Four• Featuring more than 200 interviews with the studio’s staff, cast, and crew for all 23 movies in The Infinity Saga• Includes more than 500 production photos, plus never-before-seen filmmakers’ archival materials and personal memorabilia from the cast and crew• Deluxe two-volume, foil-stamped cloth hardcover set, featuring exclusive cover art by Ryan Meinerding (Marvel Studios Head of Visual Development)• Metallized reinforced slipcase with exclusive wrap-around MCU concept art montage, featuring art by Adi Granov, Ryan Meinerding, Andy Park, and Charlie Wen• Foreword by Kevin Feige (President of Marvel Studios and Chief Creative Officer of Marvel)• Afterword by Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man)

Incredibly Strange Music, Volume II


V. Vale - 1994
    French of Family Affair) "singing" songs by Bob Dylan, and tons more

Margaret Rutherford: Dreadnought with Good Manners


Andy Merriman - 2009
    But behind the kindly, serene front Rutherford presented to the world lay a life of trauma and repeated nervous breakdown - the legacy of the legacy of family tragedy that saw her father murder her grandfather during a bout of mental illness and her depressive mother later kill herself. Andy Merriman's acclaimed biography intrigued and shocked readers with these revelations when it was published in hardback. Now out in paperback, it is also a portrait of one of our most individual actresses. Rutherford appeared in such thoroughly English classics as Blithe Spirit, The importance of Being Earnest, Passport to Pimlico and I'm All Right, Jack! But above all she was Miss Marple, in four films - and entirely created for the screen the role of Agatha Christie's elderly and fearless private detective that subsequent actresses like Joan Hickson and Geraldine McEwan have continued. Rutherford first played Miss Marple at the age of 70, and insisted on wearing her own clothes to feel right in the part. Above all, this was a vulnerable woman whom no-one failed to like and respect, notable again and again for quiet acts of kindness, whose life story has great appeal to everyone who appreciates both classic English comedy and simple human decency.

Screening History


Gore Vidal - 1992
    Never before has the renowned author revealed so much about his own life or written with such immediacy about the forces shaping America. 26 halftones.

The Light’s On At Signpost


George MacDonald Fraser - 2002
    Now he shares his recollections of those encounters, providing a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes.Far from starry-eyed where Tony Blair Co are concerned, he looks back also to the Britain of his youth and castigates those responsible for its decline to "a Third World country … misruled by a typical Third World government, corrupt, incompetent and undemocratic".Controversial, witty and revealing – or "curmudgeonly", "reactionary", "undiluted spleen", according to the critics – The Light's on at Signpost has struck a chord with a great section of the public. Perhaps, as one reader suggests, it should be "hidden beneath the floorboards, before the Politically-Correct Thought Police come hammering at the door, demanding to confiscate any copies".

Beyond Portraiture: Creative People Photography


Bryan Peterson - 2006
    They reveal one of the millions of intimate human moments that make up a life. In Beyond Portraiture, renowned photographer Bryan Peterson shows how to spot those “ah-ha!” moments and capture them forever. A teary child...old people laughing together...a smiling girl with big, big hair. Everyone remember pictures like these, usually taken by a mother, a father, a friend holding a camera, forever preserving small yet revealing vignettes of our personal histories. But we always relied on pure luck and chance to catch those moments. Peterson’s approach explains what makes a photo memorable, how to spot the universal themes that everyone can identify with, and how to use lighting, setting, and exposure to reveal the wonder and the joy of everyday moments. Beyond Portraiture makes it easy to create indelible memories with light and shadow.

Masters of Cinema: Tim Burton


Aurélien Ferenczi - 2008
    1958) is the youngest of Hollywood's most successful directors. He has the knack of making films with a very broad appeal, taking the silliness out of the representation of children, while remaining in touch with the child within himself and his audiences. Burton emerged as a director and storyteller after working as an animator for Disney. His meeting with Johnny Depp enabled him to give physical form to the heroes of his imaginary worlds, where fear is mixed with laughter, strange is normal and those who are not normal, such as "Edward Scissorhands" (1990), must be preserved. After "Beetlejuice" (1988) and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (2005), the resolutely boyish Burton, now in his fifties, presents his version of "Alice in Wonderland" (2010).

History of Film


David Parkinson - 1995
    It traces the development of film from its scientific origins through to cinema today, covering the key elements and players that have contributed to its artistic and technical development.

Now I'm Catching On: My Life On and Off the Air


Bob Cole - 2016
    The infectious excitement in his voice, his boyish love of the game, and his uncanny ability to anticipate the play have earned him the affection of generations of fans, induction into the Hall of Fame, and the unofficial title of best hockey broadcaster ever.Now, for the first time, readers will see Cole at the centre of the story rather than watching it from the broadcast booth. We meet the young man growing up in Newfoundland in the years before it joins Canada. We see him talk his way into Foster Hewitt's office and into his first job. And of course we see some of the most cherished players in the game backstage: on the plane back from Russia in 1972, rubbing elbows with Bobby Orr; in the hallway on the old Montreal Forum, running into Jean Beliveau; meeting young players like Steve Stamkos, who grew up listening to him on Hockey Night in Canada.Written with the expert help of massively bestselling author and respected broadcaster Stephen Brunt, these stories come to life with the charm and detail of a conversation with Cole. They sound like Cole.No one has been closer to the game over the years than Cole, and no one is more closely associated with all we love about the game than the man whose eyes we've seen it though. Now we will see so much more through those same eyes and in that unforgettable voice.

Hitchcock


François Truffaut - 1966
    Here is a rare opportunity to eavesdrop on two cinematic masters from very different backgrounds as they cover each of Hitch's films in succession. Though this book was initially published in 1967 when Hitchcock was still active, Truffaut later prepared a revised edition that covered the final stages of his career. It's difficult to think of a more informative or entertaining introduction to Hitchcock's art, interests, and peculiar sense of humor. The book is a storehouse of insight and witticism, including the master's impressions of a classic like Rear Window ("I was feeling very creative at the time, the batteries were well charged"), his technical insight into Psycho's shower scene ("the knife never touched the body; it was all done in the [editing]"), and his ruminations on flops such as Under Capricorn ("If I were to make another picture in Australia today, I'd have a policeman hop into the pocket of a kangaroo and yell 'Follow that car!'"). This is one of the most delightful film books in print. --Raphael Shargel

Trier on Von Trier


Stig Björkman - 2000
    His own brilliant directing career has been marked by similarly grand ambitions, and he is unique in having premiered all of his features - from the highly styled The Element of Crime to the digital-video-originated The Idiots - at the Cannes Film Festival. Trier is a rare item in contemporary cinema, a restless innovator and polemicist, as his participation in the back-to-basics Dogme95 movement attests; and these conversations with Stig Bjorkman, author of Bergman on Bergman and Woody Allen on Woody Allen, trace the evolution of his career and thought in a manner that is both astonishingly detailed and engagingly humorous.

Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw


Hanadi Falki - 2017
    The first Indian Army officer to be promoted to the five-star rank of Field Marshal, Sam Bahadur continues to be the most admired of our Army Chiefs.

Hitter: The Life and Turmoils of Ted Williams


Ed Linn - 1993
    But the tag that really fits is Hitter. “A riveting retrospective” (Baseball americanca). Index; career statistics; photographs.

Marilyn Monroe: The Biography


Donald Spoto - 1993
    The book reveals new details of every aspect of her life, from her guarded childhood, and her relationships with men and marriages, to her mysterious death. Spoto comments on previous books about Marilyn, and puts to rest questions regarding Monroe's connection with the Kennedys.

Wicked Messenger: Bob Dylan and the 1960s; Chimes of Freedom, revised and expanded


Mike Marqusee - 2003
    In Wicked Messenger, acclaimed cultural-political commentator Mike Marqusee advances the new thesis that Dylan did not drop politics from his songs but changed the manner of his critique to address the changing political and cultural climate and, more importantly, his own evolving aesthetic. Wicked Messenger is also a riveting political history of the United States in the 1960s. Tracing the development of the decade’s political and cultural dissent movements, Marqusee shows how their twists and turns were anticipated in the poetic aesthetic—anarchic, unaccountable, contradictory, punk— of Dylan's mid-sixties albums, as well as in his recent artistic ventures in Chronicles, Vol. I and Masked and Anonymous.Dylan’s anguished, self-obsessed, prickly artistic evolution, Marqusee asserts, was a deeply creative response to a deeply disturbing situation. "He can no longer tell the story straight," Marqusee concludes, "because any story told straight is a false one."