Film Life

Academy Award-winning actress and New York Times bestselling author Shirley MacLaine shares a dazzling memoir in photographs, chronicling her extraordinary life with 150+ images from her personal archive With more than seventy years on the silver screen, Shirley MacLaine has, as she says, seen...

Rollyson fully explores Brennan's work with Hollywood's greatest directors, such as Howard Hawks, John Ford, and Fritz Lang. As a father and grandfather, Brennan instilled generations of his family with an outlook on the American Dream that remains a sustaining feature of their lives today. His conservative politics, which grew out of his New England upbringing and his devout Catholicism, receive meticulous attention and a balanced assessment in A Real American Character.

A New York Times bestselling author dives into a horror movie classic to examine his favorite film’s importance to our history, culture, and psychology, creating a perfect blend of research and memoir in the vein of Quentin Tarantino’s Cinema Speculation. Daniel Kraus first saw George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead when he was five years old. Through watching it approximately three hundred times since, Kraus discovered the many ways the film is tied to his childhood trauma and how its influence has carried into his adulthood.

In The Time of My Life, celebrated music journalist Andrea Warner excavates the layers of Dirty Dancing, from its anachronistic, chart-topping soundtrack, to Baby and Johnny’s chemistry, to Bergstein’s political intentions, to the abortion subplot that is more relevant today than ever. The film’s remarkable longevity would never have been possible if it was just a throwaway summer fling story. It is precisely because of its themes—deeply feminist, sensitively written—that we, over 30 years later, are still holding our breath during that last, exhilarating lift.

The incomparable Simone Signoret (1921 - 1985), one of the grand actresses of the twentieth century and one of France's most notable stars, considered herself the "oldest discovery" in Hollywood. After years of blacklisting during the McCarthy era, she was 38 years old when she entered Hollywood through the back door in the 1959 British blockbuster Room at the Top. Her portrayal of the endearing Alice Aisgill earned her the Academy Award in 1960, the first French actor to win a coveted Oscar.

One of the most influential and respected entertainers of Hollywood's golden age, Gene Kelly revolutionized film musicals with his innovative and timeless choreography. A would-be baseball player and one-time law student, Kelly captured the nation's imagination in films such as Anchors Aweigh (1945), On the Town (1949), An American in Paris (1951), and Singin' in the Rain (1952). In the first comprehensive biography written since the legendary star's death, authors Cynthia Brideson and Sara Brideson disclose new details of Kelly's complex life.

Back in print after two decades, the story of Hollywood’s most exclusive hotel and its star-studded guest list Raymond Sarlot bought the Chateau Marmont in 1975, but what was originally a business purchase became a love affair as he delved into the hotel’s incredible history. From its perch...

In The Mysterious Abductions, animals are disappearing without a trace. With the help of a gentle wombat, a jittery jerboa, a band of coyotes, and some kooky bats, the brigade journeys to the depths of the earth where they find themselves in a wacky, high-stakes game that will determine all of their survival!

Today, the name Clint Eastwood conjures up many different and unforgettable images. While many will always associate him as the quintessential Western hero in classics like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, new generations know him as a critically acclaimed director and even an outspoken conservative firebrand.

As author Ethan Mordden looks back at Chicago's various moving parts - including the original 1926 play that started it all, a sexy silent film directed by Cecil B. DeMille, a talkie remake with Ginger Rogers, the musical itself, and at last the movie of the musical - we learn how the American theater serves as a kind of alternative news medium, a town crier warning the public about the racy, devious interior contradictions of American society. Opinionated, witty, and rich in backstage anecdotes, All That Jazz brings the American musical to life in all its artistry and excitement.

In the early 20th century, Germany's most renowned film directors were pioneering the genre known as "expressionism", and within it, Fritz Lang was known as the "Master of Darkness". Together with his eventual wife Thea von Harbou, Lang wrote a number of acclaimed movies. Some of his well-known films include Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922), Die Nibelungen (1924), Metropolis (1927), and Woman in the Moon (1929).

With his dark good looks, muscular physique, heavy-lidded bedroom eyes, and easy smile, amateur boxer and Wall Street business man Jacob Krantz left Wall Street to cut a dashing figure on the silver screen for over five decades. Few knew that he was a Jewish man, when Paramount Pictures signed him in 1922, changed his name from Jacob Krantz to Ricardo Cortez, and widely publicized him as a “Latin lover” in the style of Rudolph Valentino, Antonio Moreno, and Ramon Navarro. Relive his dramatic story, from his poverty-stricken childhood to Wall Street and on through Hollywood.

How Does It Feel? follows a lifetime of musical misadventures which have seen Mark striking rock star poses in the Sixth Form Common Room, striding around a string of TV shows dressed from head to foot in black leather, getting heckled off stage by a bunch of angry septuagenarians on a boat on the Mersey, showing Timmy Mallet how to build a tea-chest bass - and winning the International Street Entertainers of the Year award as part of a new wave of skiffle. Really.

Jeff Corey (1914-2002) made a name for himself in the 1940s as a character actor in films like The Killers (1946). Everything changed in 1951, when he was summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Corey refused to name names and was promptly blacklisted, which forced him to walk away from a vibrant livelihood as an actor and embark on a career as one of the industry's most revered acting instructors. In Improvising Out Loud: My Life Teaching Hollywood How to Act, Corey recounts his extraordinary story.

Young, cocksure, handsome and absurdly talented, Australian actor Heath Ledger shot to prominence with his first Hollywood film "10 Things I Hate About You": and a star was born. With huge charisma and smouldering looks lighting up the screen in a series of subsequent films, Heath was soon established as Hollywood A-list, dating a series of beauties such as Heather Graham and Naomi Watts, and living every young man's dream.

" Qu'est-ce que c'est au juste qu'un dragon? " demande le jeune Dong-Dong à son grand-père. Celui-ci lui explique que le dragon est un animal fabuleux, qui était assez mal vu en Occident au Moyen Âge, mais qu'on a toujours vénéré en Orient. En Chine, on a même une raison très précise de lui être reconnaissant et de le célébrer chaque année. " Voici laquelle... " Heureusement, il y aura toujours (en Chine et ailleurs) des grands-pères qui prendront plaisir à raconter de belles légendes à leurs petits-fils.

A Huffington Post “2017 Hottest Reads of The Summer” Pick “Taylor Larsen creates a powerful and moving story about the fracturing of a family and its descent into chaos. A brilliant debut of self-delusion, and a perfectly flawed male character spiraling downward.” —Huffington Post An...

Andy Warhol's work and personality changed American visual culture forever, making him an international superstar. His rise to global fame, his entanglement with the seedy New York sexual underground, and the shocking assassination attempt that almost ended his life are chronicled in Stephen Koch's indispensible classic, Stargazer.

Unplugged is more than a memoir. It is a book that recounts a life and untold stories from a musical career that involves the world of record production and film composing, spanning over fifty years and counting. Told with humility and humor, Fred Mollin's journey among so many legends and fascinating people and projects, gives the reader a chance to see behind closed doors

Noel Cronin’s autobiography, founder of Talking Pictures TV, is a must-listen for those interested in British film history. He takes us from his schooldays in north London to a job as a post-boy at Rank, then as a film editor in Soho in the Swinging Sixties and Seventies, starting a film distribution company, to the ground-breaking Talking Pictures TV. It shows the grit and determination necessary to make a living in the film business, and the leaps of faith one should take if you’ve got a good idea.