Movie History

The 1930s was a magical age in Hollywood, with Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney, Bette Davis, and Clark Gable lighting up the silver screen. But Deanna Durbin’s fame surpassed them all. Born in Canada, Deanna was “discovered” by star-maker Eddie Cantor, producer Joe Pasternak, and director Henry Koster, and she quickly became the world’s most celebrated star. She saved Universal Studios from ruin, she was a favorite of Winston Churchill and Anne Frank, and she became the highest-paid woman in America.

It’s been nearly twenty years since Ron Burgundy burst into movie fans’ lives, reminding San Diego to “stay classy” while lampooning a time gone by—although maybe not as far gone as we might think? In Kind of a Big Deal, comedy historian Saul Austerlitz tells the history of how Anchorman was developed, written, and cast, and how it launched the careers of future superstars like Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, and Paul Rudd, also setting the stage for a whole decade of comedy to come and influencing films like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Talladega Nights, Knocked Up, Superbad, and so many more.

1974 was a busy year for Mel Brooks. Although still recovering after a series of failed projects threatened his career, he pulled off a one-two punch that saw the release of two of the most beloved American comedies ever made: Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. Although both films are well-known, the stories beyond the making of each movie are less so. How did they come to be, and how did the era's culture and politics not only permit them to be made, but help them to become enduring comedy classics?

What did President Ronald Reagan think of Rocky IV? How did the Matthew Broderick film WarGames inform America's missile defense system? What Michael J. Fox movie made such an impression on President Reagan that he felt compelled to mention it in a speech to the Joint Session of Congress? Over the course of eight years, Mark Weinberg travelled to Camp David each weekend with Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

Now middle-aged, Meadows seeks out his former captors in their civilian lives to help him bury his son, a Marine killed in Iraq, in Arlington National Cemetery. When he learns that the authorities have told him a lie about the circumstances of his son's death, he decides, with the help of the two others, to transport him home to Portsmouth. And so begins the journey, centered around a solemn mission, but, as in the first book, a protest against injustice and celebration of life, too, at once irreverent, funny, profane, and deeply moving.

Fifteen-year-old Lina is a Lithuanian girl living an ordinary life - until Soviet officers invade her home and tear her family apart. Separated from her father and forced onto a crowded train, Lina, her mother, and her young brother make their way to a Siberian work camp, where they are forced to fight for their lives. Lina finds solace in her art, documenting these events by drawing. Risking everything, she embeds clues in her drawings of their location and secretly passes them along, hoping her drawings will make their way to her father's prison camp.

A must-listen for movie buffs, The Trouble with Love in the Movies is a painfully honest account of labouring in the fields of film production, of loving and losing, living and learning. Through six movies, across three continents, in clashes on and off the set: It's a romance.

The future has amazing technology. Our alien allies have magic. Together, we are building a training system to teach the best of humanity to go to the stars. But the training is monumentally expensive. Stephanie Morgana is a genius, she just doesn't know it. The Artificial Intelligence which runs the Virtual World is charged with testing Stephanie, a task it has never performed before. The Earth and their allies may never be the same again.

Now a major motion film! At the same time Adolf Hitler was attempting to take over the western world, his armies were methodically seeking and hoarding the finest art treasures in Europe. The Fuehrer had begun cataloguing the art he planned to collect as well as the art he would destroy...

With remembrances from J. K. Rowling's editors, agents, publicists, fans, and Rowling herself, Melissa Anelli takes us on a personal journey through every aspect of the Harry Potter phenomenon - from his very first spell to his lasting impact on the way we live and dream.

Will we ever get tired of watching Cher navigate Beverly Hills High School and discover true love in the movie Clueless? As if! Written by Amy Heckerling and starring Alicia Silverstone, Clueless is an enduring comedy classic that remains one of the most streamed movies on Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes even 20 years after its release. In the first book of its kind, Jen Chaney has compiled an oral history of the making of this iconic film using recollections and insights collected from key cast and crew members.

Pronto una gran película de Christopher Nolan. La épica historia de Dunkirk, mayo de 1940: cuando más de 300.000 tropas aliadas atrapadas fueron dramáticamente rescatadas de la destrucción a manos de la Alemania Nazi por una extraordinaria evacuación vía marítima. La historia real de los...

When a major Hollywood studio released Five Fingers of Death to thrill-seeking Times Square moviegoers on March 21, 1973, only a handful of Black and Asian American audience members knew the difference between an Iron Fist and an Eagle's Claw. That changed overnight as kung fu movies kicked off a craze that would earn millions at the box office, send TV ratings soaring, sell hundreds of thousands of video tapes, influence the birth of hip hop, reshape the style of action we see in movies today, and introduce America to some of the biggest non-White stars.

Now available in Spanish language for the first time! Featuring new material including excerpts from Desi Arnaz’s unpublished second memoir and a revealing epilogue by daughter Lucie Arnaz, here is the revised edition of the New York Times bestselling memoir of Cuban American entertainment...

For seven decades Katharine Hepburn played a leading role in the popular culture of the 20th century, reigning as an admired actress, a beloved movie star, and a treasured icon of the modern American woman. She also remained one of the most private of all the public figures of her time.

The study of classic and contemporary films can provide a powerful avenue to understand the experience of mental illness. In Madness at the Movies, James Charney, MD, a practicing psychiatrist and long-time cinephile, examines films that delve deeply into characters’ inner worlds, and he analyzes moments that help define their particular mental illness.

Journalist Rick Bowers has contributed to Time, The Washington Post, and USA Today, and his fascinating Spies of Mississippi—about the spy network that tried to take down the Civil Rights Movement—earned a starred review from Booklist. Here, Bowers examines how, in the late 1940s, The Adventures of Superman radio show struck a powerful blow to the Ku Klux Klan when Superman aired episodes pitting the hero against the Klan in an effort to teach young listeners to stand up to bigotry.

Based on characters created by Archie Comics, Josie and the Pussycats was a box office disappointment for MGM and Universal who produced and distributed the movie but has gone on to become a cult classic in the years since. Best Movie Ever is the product of dozens of hours of interviews with members of the movie’s cast and crew, as well as industry analysts, comic book creators, and the fans who helped keep the movie alive after the filmmakers had been told it was “dead on arrival".

The well-meaning protagonists of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara are caught—to both disastrous and hilarious effect—in the maelstrom of political and social upheaval surrounding them. Ben Fountain's prize-winning debut speaks to the intimate connection between the foreign, the familiar...

In his first memoir, Ander Monson guides listeners through a scene-by-scene exploration of the 1987 film Predator, which he has watched 146 times. Some fighters might not have time to bleed, but Monson has the patience to consider their adventure, one frame at a time. He turns his obsession into a lens through which he poignantly examines his own life, formed by mainstream white male American culture.