Film History

In the midst of the devastating Hundred Years’ War between France and England, Jean de Carrouges, a Norman knight, fresh from combat in Scotland finds his wife, Marguerite, accusing squire Jacques Le Gris of brutally raping her. A deadlocked court decrees a “trial by combat” that also leaves Marguerite’s fate in the balance. For if her husband loses the duel, she will be put to death as a false accuser. While enemy troops pillage the land, and rebellion and plague threaten the lives of all, Carrouges and Le Gris meet in full armor on a walled field in Paris.

Here is a gripping, behind-the-scenes look inside the classic suspense shocker Psycho - and the creative genius who revolutionized filmmaking. First released in 1960, Psycho altered the landscape of horror films forever. But just as compelling as the movie itself is the story behind it. Stephen Rebello brings to life the creation of one of Hollywood’s most iconic films, from the story of Wisconsin murderer Ed Gein, the real-life inspiration for the character of Norman Bates, to Hitchcock’s groundbreaking achievements in cinematography, sound, editing, and promotion.

Silver Shamrock. Thorn. White Horses. It’s all in here. Join authors Dustin McNeill and Travis Mullins for a deep dive into the evolution of Halloween’s vast mythology. Extensively researched, Taking Shape is the ultimate guide to the first 40 years of Haddonfield history. Featuring exclusive interviews with filmmakers from every installment, prepare to gain new insight into Halloween’s iconic boogeyman. Oh, you don’t believe in the boogeyman? You should.

Saturday Night is the intimate, original history of Saturday Night Live, from its beginnings as an outlaw program produced by an unruly band of renegades from the comedy underground to a TV institution that made stars of John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris, Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy. This is the book that revealed to the world what really happened behind the scenes during the first ten years of this groundbreaking program, from the battles SNL fought with NBC to the battles fought within the show itself.

Orlando would eventually set up his own gallery and watch as Inigo quickly immersed himself in a world of private jets and multimillion-dollar deals for major clients. Inigo seemed brilliant, but underneath the extravagant façade, his complicated financial schemes were unraveling. With debt, lawsuits, and court summonses piling up, Inigo went into a tailspin of lies and subterfuge. At around the same time, Orlando would himself experience a nervous breakdown and leave the art world for good.

Here is the epic human drama behind the making of the five movies nominated for Best Picture in 1967 - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Doctor Dolittle, and Bonnie and Clyde - and through them, the larger story of the cultural revolution that transformed Hollywood and America forever.

On a cold Saturday afternoon in 1975, two men (who had known each other for eight years before they’d ever exchanged a word) met for lunch in a Chicago pub. Gene Siskel was the film critic for the Chicago Tribune. Roger Ebert had recently won the Pulitzer Prize—the first ever awarded to a film critic—for his work at the Chicago Sun-Times. To say they despised each other was an understatement.

In this revised and expanded edition of his essential volume Dark City Dames, Eddie Muller—Turner Classic Movies host and author of Dark Cityand Noir Bar—offers a uniquely intimate look at the women who defined film noir, now featuring updated text and 10 new star profiles. Film noir was...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A Most Anticipated Book of 2025: Town & Country Harper’s Bazaar W Magazine Bustle LitHub Women’s Wear Daily The first comprehensive biography of Jane Birkin—actress, singer, and legendary style icon—and her profound cultural impact, from the...

In the 1950s, Confidential magazine, America's first celebrity scandal magazine, revealed Hollywood stars' secrets, misdeeds, and transgressions in gritty, unvarnished detail. Deploying a vast network of tipsters to root out stars' sexual affairs, drug use, and sexuality, publisher Robert Harrison destroyed celebrities' carefully constructed images and built a media empire. Confidential became the best-selling magazine on American newsstands in the 1950s, surpassing Time, Life, and the Saturday Evening Post. Confidential's spectacular rise was followed by an equally spectacular fall.

Torture porn, shock-for-shock’s sake, violence that doesn’t serve the plot, and characters you hate — what was going on in the 2000s in horror cinema? And why were audiences hungry for it? Millennial Nasties takes a critical but appreciative look at an oft-ignored subset of horror. This book dissects the English-language horror films of the 2000s and the cultural events they were responding to.

Jean Renoir's career almost spans the history years of cinema - from the early silent movies, to the naturalism of the talkies, committed cinema, film noir, Hollywood studio productions, the Technicolor-period comedies and fast television techniques. His film The Grand Illusion remains one of the greatest movies about the effects of war.

The choice is yours, and you'll have to live with the consequences for at least the rest of your life. Will you take the blue pill - skip this audiobook and go on thinking of The Matrix as just a movie? Or will you take the red pill - listen to this book, and find out just how far down the rabbit-hole goes?

There is a common belief that we live in unprecedented times, that people are too sensitive today, that nobody objected to the actions of actors, comedians, and filmmakers in the past. Modern pundits would have us believe that Americans of a previous generation had tougher skin and seldom complained. But does this argument hold up to scrutiny? In Outrageous, celebrated cultural historian Kliph Nesteroff demonstrates that Americans have been objecting to entertainment for nearly two hundred years, sometimes rationally, often irrationally.

In this elegant and compelling biography, best-selling writer Shawn Levy writes of these many De Niros - the characters and the man - seeking to understand the evolution of an actor who once dove deeply into his roles as if to hide his inner nature, and who now seemingly avoids acting challenges, taking roles which make few apparent demands on his overwhelming talent.

In this compelling study, Joshua Clover undertakes the task of decoding the film. Examining The Matrix's digital effects and how they were achieved, he shows how the film represents a melding of cinema and video games (the greatest commercial threat to have faced Hollywood since the advent of television) and achieves a hybrid kind of immersive entertainment. He also unpacks the movie's references to philosophy, showing how The Matrix ultimately expresses the crisis American culture faced at the end of the 1990s.

Guillermo del Toro's cult masterpiece, Pan's Labyrinth (2006), won a total of 76 awards and is one of the most commercially successful Spanish-language films ever made. Blending the world of monstrous fairytales with the actual horrors of post-Civil War Spain, the film's commingling of real and fantasy worlds speaks profoundly to our times. This study of Guillermo del Toro's cult masterpiece places 'Pan's Labyrinth' in its cultural and historical contexts, and provide an illuminating analysis of the film's techniques, themes and meanings.

In this intensive, intimate, and anything-but-glamorous behind-the-scenes account, film insider and cinephile Paul M. Sammon explores how Ridley Scott used his creative genius to transform the work of science fiction's most uncompromising author into a critical sensation, a commercial success, and a cult classic that would reinvent the genre.

From New York Times bestselling author Scott Eyman, this is the story one of the most influential studios in film history, from its glory days under the leadership of legendary movie mogul Darryl F. Zanuck up to its 2019 buyout by Disney. March 20, 2019 marked the end of an era -- Disney took...

Is the Dude a bowling-loving stoner or a philosophical genius living the good life? Naturally, it's the latter, and The Big Lebowski and Philosophy explains why. Enlisting the help of great thinkers like Plato and Nietzsche, the book explores the movie's hidden philosophical layers, cultural reflection, and political commentary.