Bogart and Bacall. Tracy and Hepburn. These on-screen (and sometimes off-screen) couples defined romantic chemistry and the art of falling in love. From Turner Classic Movies, Leading Couples features the most unforgettable screen pairings of the studio era, including actors and actresses with many film courtships and those who made their indelible mark in a single, memorable movie. Engaging and thoroughly researched, each profile includes trivia, behind-the-scenes stories, biographical overviews, and memorable quotes, illustrated by rare stills and poster art.

    With advice that is direct, prescriptive, and detailed, it takes the guesswork out of travel by unambiguously rating and ranking everything from hotels, restaurants, and attractions to rental car companies. With an Unofficial Guide in hand, and authors Bob Sehlinger and Len Testa as guides, find out what’s available in every category, from best to worst, and use step-by-step detailed plans to help make the most of your time at Walt Disney World.

    Born into an eccentric Ohio clan of modern hunter-gatherers, he grew up hearing voices in his head. Over a dizzying two decades, he was many things—teenage faith healer, world traveler, smuggler, liberation theologian, ladder-maker, squatter, halibut hanger, grifter, environmental warrior, and circus manager—all the while wrestling with schizophrenia and self-medication. From Baby Doc’s Haiti to the Czech Velvet Revolution, and from sex, drugs, and a stabbing to public humiliation by the leader of the free world, Monroe-Kane burns through his twenties and several bridges of youthful idealism before finally saying: enough. In a memoir that blends engaging charm with unflinching frankness, Monroe-Kane gives his testimony of mental illness, drug abuse, faith, and love. By the end of Lithium Jesus there may be a voice in your head, too, saying “Do more, be more, live more. And fear less.”

    Here is an account of a filmmaker who looks straight into the eye of the Hollywood blockbuster storm and dares not to blink.In "A Killer Life," Christine Vachon follows up her independent producing handbook, "Shooting to Kill," with a behind-the-scenes memoir of the battle between creativity and commerce -- and a renegade's rise to being one of the most powerful female producers in independent film today."A Killer Life" traces the early years Vachon spent producing such controversial and critically acclaimed movies as "Poison, Happiness," and "Kids," films that paved the way for Academy Award-winning triumphs like "Boys Don't Cry." She recounts the birth and rise of independent film and the evolution of her company, Killer Films, revealing the stories behind star castings and firings and films that never got made; how sexuality factors into the films she produces; and how the often lethal combination of finance and creativity affects what we see on the big screen.Intelligent and tough as nails, but endearingly self-effacing, Vachon's account of her filmmaking experiences, and the successes and failures that have made Killer Films one of the few truly independent film companies in New York, is a thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking read for filmmakers and fans alike.

    Trekking boldly through haunts and horrors from The Frankenstein Monster, The Wolf Man, Count Dracula, and The Invisible Man, to The Mummy, Paula the Ape Woman, The Creeper, and The Inner Sanctum, the authors offer a definitive study of the 86 films produced during this era and present a general overview of the period. Coverage of the films includes complete cast lists, credits, storyline, behind-the-scenes information, production history, critical analysis, and commentary from the cast and crew (much of it drawn from interviews by Tom Weaver, whom USA Today calls ?the king of the monster hunters?). Unique to this edition are a new selection of photographs and poster reproductions and an appendix listing additional films of interest.

    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.

    "Christmas films" come in many shapes and sizes and exist across many genres. Some, like It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story, are perennials, while others, such as Die Hard, have only gradually become yuletide favorites. But they all have one thing in common: they use themes evoked by the holiday period - nostalgia, joy, togetherness, dysfunction, commercialism, or cynicism - as a force in their storytelling.Turner Classic Movies: Christmas in the Movies showcases the very best among this uniquely spirited strain of cinema. Each film is profiled on what makes it a "Christmas movie," along with behind-the-scenes stories of its production, reception, and legacy. Complemented by a trove of color and black-and-white photos, Turner Classic Movies: Christmas in the Movies is a glorious salute to a collection of the most treasured films of all time.Among the 30 films included: The Shop Around the Corner, Holiday Inn, Meet Me in St. Louis, It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, White Christmas, A Christmas Story, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Home Alone, Little Women,and The Nightmare Before Christmas.

    Never before had a medium possessed such power to influence. Yet Hollywood’s glittering ascendency was threatened by a string of headline-grabbing tragedies—including the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, a legendary crime that has remained unsolved until now.In a fiendishly involving narrative, bestselling Hollywood chronicler William J. Mann draws on a rich host of sources, including recently released FBI files, to unpack the story of the enigmatic Taylor and the diverse cast that surrounded him—including three beautiful, ambitious actresses; a grasping stage mother; a devoted valet; and a gang of two-bit thugs, any of whom might have fired the fatal bullet. And overseeing this entire landscape of intrigue was Adolph Zukor, the brilliant and ruthless founder of Paramount, locked in a struggle for control of the industry and desperate to conceal the truth about the crime. Along the way, Mann brings to life Los Angeles in the Roaring Twenties: a sparkling yet schizophrenic town filled with party girls, drug dealers, religious zealots, newly-minted legends and starlets already past their prime—a dangerous place where the powerful could still run afoul of the desperate.A true story recreated with the suspense of a novel, Tinseltown is the work of a storyteller at the peak of his powers—and the solution to a crime that has stumped detectives and historians for nearly a century.

    You’re a bonafide Brat Pack devotee—and you’re not alone.The films of the Brat Pack—from Sixteen Candles to Say Anything—are some of the most watched, bestselling DVDs of all time. The landscape that the Brat Packmemorialized—where outcasts and prom queens fall in love, preppies and burn-outs become buds, and frosted lip gloss, skinny ties, and exuberant optimism made us feel invincible—is rich with cultural themes and significance, and has influenced an entire generation who still believe that life always turns out the way it is supposed to.You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried takes us back to that era, interviewing key players, such as Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Andrew McCarthy, and John Cusack, and mines all the material from the movies to the music to the way the films were made to show how they helped shape our visions for romance, friendship, society, and success.

    Yet the man who could be accessible and charming on screen retreated to a deeply private world he created behind closed doors.    Glenn Ford: A Life chronicles the volatile life, relationships, and career of the renowned actor, beginning with his move from Canada to California and his initial discovery of theater. It follows Ford’s career in diverse media—from film to television to radio—and shows how Ford shifted effortlessly between genres, playing major roles in dramas, noir, westerns, and romances.     This biography by Glenn Ford’s son, Peter Ford, offers an intimate view of a star’s private and public life. Included are exclusive interviews with family, friends, and professional associates, and snippets from the Ford family collection of diaries, letters, audiotapes, unpublished interviews, and rare candid photos. This biography tells a cautionary tale of Glenn Ford’s relentless infidelities and long, slow fade-out, but it also embraces his talent-driven career. The result is an authentic Hollywood story that isn’t afraid to reveal the truth.Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Reviewers

    And the stars of yesteryear? They weren’t always the saints that we make them out to be. BuzzFeed’s Anne Helen Petersen, author of Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, is here to set the record straight. Pulling little-known gems from the archives of film history, Petersen reveals eyebrow-raising information, including:*The smear campaign against the original It Girl, Clara Bow, started by her best friend *The heartbreaking story of Montgomery Clift’s rapid rise to fame, the car accident that destroyed his face, and the “long suicide” that followed *Fatty Arbuckle’s descent from Hollywood royalty, fueled by allegations of a boozy orgy turned violent assault *Why Mae West was arrested and jailed for “indecency charges” *And much more Part biography, part cultural history, these stories cover the stuff that films are made of: love, sex, drugs, illegitimate children, illicit affairs, and botched cover-ups. But it’s not all just tawdry gossip in the pages of this book. The stories are all contextualized within the boundaries of film, cultural, political, and gender history, making for a read that will inform as it entertains. Based on Petersen’s beloved column on the Hairpin, but featuring 100% new content, Scandals of Classic Hollywood is sensationalism made smart.

    These moments are crystallised in images that leap from the page revealing joy, anger, despairsand triumph. An insightful text by photography historian Nick Yapp supports these images, which are accompanied by journals, excerpts and 'on-site' notes that offer the backstory of the image and how it was captured.Major events that have shaped our erascaptured in the book include, from the Getty historic archive, the 1848-9 revolution and riots in Europe; President Lincoln's assassination in 1865; the construction of the Eiffel Tower in 1889; the Potemkin Mutiny (1905) that launched the Russians Revolution; the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916; the Wall Street crash of 1929; Kristallnacht in Germany in 1938; the Bristish leaving India in 1947; through to the dawn of the new millennium in 2000.The National Geographic archives are used to illustratescultural geography, the changes in landscape, contemporary conflicts, Native America, and the civil rights movement among others, including the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Scott and Amundsen reaching the South Pole in 1911; the Lascaux cave paintings discovered in 1940; the first heart transplant in 1967; the Chernobyl disaster of 1986; the cloning of sheep in 1997; the Twin Towers attack of 2001; and the global warming debate of 2007. The wonder of this book is in illustrating how an entire event or age can be captured in a single image - whether it be of a peasant's tears, two heads of state sharing a secret, or the triumph of an Olympic champion. Politics, war, crime, exploration, fashion and fads all make up these one hundred days: From the California Gold Rush of 1849 to the finished structure of the Three Gorges Dam in 2006.

    J. T. Mitchell, we need to reckon with images not just as inert objects that convey meaning but as animated beings with desires, needs, appetites, demands, and drives of their own. What Do Pictures Want? explores this idea and highlights Mitchell's innovative and profoundly influential thinking on picture theory and the lives and loves of images. Ranging across the visual arts, literature, and mass media, Mitchell applies characteristically brilliant and wry analyses to Byzantine icons and cyberpunk films, racial stereotypes and public monuments, ancient idols and modern clones, offensive images and found objects, American photography and aboriginal painting. Opening new vistas in iconology and the emergent field of visual culture, he also considers the importance of Dolly the Sheep—who, as a clone, fulfills the ancient dream of creating a living image—and the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11, which, among other things, signifies a new and virulent form of iconoclasm.What Do Pictures Want? offers an immensely rich and suggestive account of the interplay between the visible and the readable. A work by one of our leading theorists of visual representation, it will be a touchstone for art historians, literary critics, anthropologists, and philosophers alike.   “A treasury of episodes—generally overlooked by art history and visual studies—that turn on images that ‘walk by themselves’ and exert their own power over the living.”—Norman Bryson, Artforum

    Impossible, you say? Not according to advertisers who flood the web with stock photos of perfect parents and children. They’d have you believe that parenting is a piece of cake, and every significant moment of family life takes place on a spotless white couch. So when Sara Given, a real mother of a real toddler, saw a picture of a radiant new mother in a cute little sundress breastfeeding her newborn in the middle of a golf course, she finally had enough. She launched a Tumblr, which is now visited by tens of thousands of new parents looking for a daily pick-me-up. Because what better way is there to deal with the stress and strain of being a new parent than laughter? The perfect gift of cheer and solidarity, Parenting Is Easy exploits the disconnect between these preposterous photos and what happens in real life, and makes every reader laugh out loud—and feel better, too, because we’re in on the joke.

    He shows how broad Tarantino's points of reference are, and analyzes the narrative accomplishment and complexity. In addition, Polan argues that macho attitudes celebrated in film are much more complex than they seem.