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Cancer Schmancer (Biography Ser.)
by Fran DrescherPart inspirational cancer-survival story, part memoir-as-a-laugh-riot, CANCER SCHMANCER picks up where Fran's last book, Enter Whining, left off. After the publication of that book, Fran's life launched into a downward spiral. She separated from a long and complicated relationship, her TV series started to slip in the ratings, and the health of her beloved dog Chester was failing fast. Then came the mysterious symptoms no doctor could explain. With her trademark sense of humor, Fran tells of her long search for answers and the cancer diagnosis that she ultimately beat. But not before a gold mine of insights were revealed to her about the importance of taking charge of your own health and recognizing what's most important in life.
Career Movies: American Business and the Success Mystique
by Jack BoozerAnalyzing numerous well-known films from the entire period, he defines the genre as one in which a protagonist strives for career success that often proves to be either elusive despite hard work, or unfulfilling despite material rewards and status. Boozer also explores several distinct subgenres of the career movie—the corporate executive films of the 1950s; the career struggles of (single, married, and/or parenting) women; the entrepreneurial film as it is also embodied in texts about immigrants and racial and ethnic minorities and business-oriented femmes fatales; the explosion of promotionalism and the corporatization of employment; and, finally, the blurring of work and private life in the brave new world of the televirtuality film.
Castaways of the Image Planet: Movies, Show Business, Public Spectacle
by Geoffrey O'BrienOne of our best cultural critics here collects sixteen years' worth of essays on film and popular culture. Topics range from the invention of cinema to contemporary F-X aesthetics, from Shakespeare on film to Seinfeld, and we include essays on 30's screwball comedies, Hong Kong Martial Arts movies, to the roots of spy movies and the televising of Clinton's grand jury testimony.O'Brien emphasizes the unpredictable interactions between film as a medium apt for expressing the most private dreams and film as the mass literature of the modern world. Several of the pieces are profiles of individual actors or directors-Orson Welles, Michael Powell, Ed Wood, Marlon Brando, Alfred Hitchcock, Dana Andrews, The Marx Brothers, Bing Crosby-whose careers are probed to look for the point where obsession meets public myth-making.
Celluloid China: Cinematic Encounters with Culture and Society
by Harry H. KuoshuCelluloid China: Cinematic Encounters with Culture and Society by Harry H. Kuoshu is a lucid introduction to the cinema of mainland China from the early 1930s to the early 1990s. <P><P> Emphasizing both film contexts and film texts, this study invites film scholars and students to a broad cinematic analysis that includes investigations of cultural, cross-cultural, intellectual, social, ethnic, and political issues. Such a holistic evaluation allows for a better understanding of both the genesis of a special kind of film art from the People’s Republic of China and the culture exemplified in those films. <P> The fifteen films include: Two Stage Sisters; Hibiscus Town; Farewell My Concubine; Street Angel; Three Women; Human, Woman, Demon; Judou; Girl from Hunan; Sacrificed Youth; Horse Thief; Yellow Earth; Old Well; Red Sorghum; Black Cannon Incident; and Good Morning, Beijing. <P> Discussions of each film have an introduction, passages from the director’s own notes whenever available, and a scholarly article. Discussion questions are found in an appendix. Within its complete bibliography, the book also features a suggested reading list for Chinese film classes.
Charles Dickens (LIVES #4)
by Jane SmileySuperb, highly accessible biography of one of the giants of English literature by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A THOUSAND ACRES'Engaging and stimulating' Simon Callow'Jane Smiley, in her admirable contribution to Weidenfeld's series of short biographies, deals briskly with Dickens's career and works, and treats with sympathy and sense his relations with the women in his life' LITERARY REVIEWFrom a bitter and poverty-stricken childhood to a career as the most acclaimed and best loved writer in the English-speaking world, Charles Dickens had a life as full of incident as any of those he created in his novels of life in Victorian England. The enormous quantity of work, his public readings and his difficult relationships has made him a figure of enduring fascination. In this biography Jane Smiley reveals Charles Dickens as his contemporaries would have done, getting to know him more intimately than ever before. At the same time Smiley offers interpretations of almost all of Dickens' major works, showing how 'his novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels'.
Choreographic Politics: State Folk Dance Companies, Representation and Power
by Anthony ShayOver the past fifty years national dance companies from Turkey, Egypt, Mexico, Greece, the former USSR and Croatia have dominated concert stages throughout the world. Anthony Shay makes coherent sense of these national programs, which have previously received scant academic attention. Specifically, he looks at the ways through which these companies spread political, ethnic and cultural messages by accruing symbolic and cultural capital for their respective nation-states. In his analysis, Shay draws on cultural studies, political science and anthropology to create a work that cuts across disciplines. As the first book to address the topic of state-sponsored folk dance ensembles and their structures, Choreographic Politics examines the repertoires, performances and choreographic strategies of these companies within the political, social, gendered and ethnic contexts in which each company was created. In addition, Shay's study includes a look at music, costumes, and various artistic directors and choreographers.
Clark Gable: A Biography
by Warren G. HarrisClark Gable arrived in Hollywood after a rough-and-tumble youth, and his breezy, big-boned, everyman persona quickly made him the town's king. He was a gambler among gamblers, a heavy drinker in the days when everyone drank seemingly all the time, and a lover to legions of the most attractive women in the most glamorous business in the world, including the great love of his life, Carole Lombard.In this well-researched and revealing biography, Warren G. Harris gives an exceptionally acute portrait of one of the most memorable actors in the history of motion pictures--whose intimates included such legends as Marilyn Monroe, Joan Crawford, Loretta Young, David O. Selznick, Jean Harlow, Judy Garland, Lana Turner, Spencer Tracy, and Grace Kelly--as well as a vivid sense of the glamour and excess of mid-century Hollywood.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Close-up on Sunset Boulevard: Billy Wilder, Norma Desmond, and the Dark Hollywood Dream
by Sam StaggsBilly Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, a classic film noir and also a damning dissection of the Hollywood dream factory, evokes the glamour and ruin of the stars who subsist on that dream. It's also one long in-joke about the movie industry and those who made it great-and who were, in turn, destroyed by it. One of the most critically admired films of the twentieth century, Sunset Boulevard is also famous as silent star Gloria Swanson's comeback picture.Sam Staggs's Close-Up On Sunset Boulevard tells the story of this extravagant work, from the writing, casting and filming to the disastrous previews that made Paramount consider shelving it. It's about the writing team of Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett-sardonically called "the happiest couple in Hollywood"-and their raucous professional relationship. It's about the art direction and the sets, the costumes, the props, the lights and the cameras, and the personalities who used those tools to create a cinematic work of art.Staggs goes behind the scenes to reveal: William Holden, endlessly attacked by his bitter wife and already drinking too much; Nancy Olson, the cheerful ingenue who had never heard of the great Gloria Swanson; the dark genius Erich von Stroheim; the once famous but long-forgotten "Waxworks"; and of course Swanson herself, who-just like Norma Desmond-had once been "the greatest star of them all."But the story of Sunset Boulevard doesn't end with the movie's success and acclaim at its release in 1950. There's much more, and Staggs layers this stylish book with fascinating detail, following the actors and Wilder into their post-Sunset careers and revealing Gloria Swanson's never-ending struggle to free herself from the clutches of Norma Desmond.Close-Up On Sunset Boulevard also chronicles the making of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical production of Sunset Boulevard and the explosive diva controversies that dogged it. The book ends with a shocking example of Hollywood life imitating Hollywood art. By the last page of this rich narrative, readers will conclude: We are those "wonderful people out there in the dark."
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind: An Unauthorized Autobiography
by Chuck BarrisAutobiography of creator of game shows including The Dating Game and The Gong Show.
Content Rights for Creative Professionals: Copyrights & Trademarks in a Digital Age
by Arnold P. LutzkerContent Rights for Creative Professionals is for professionals and students working in all areas of media (film/video, photography, multimedia, web, graphics, and broadcast) who need to know what the law requires and how they should properly utilize copyrights and trademarks. This book outlines critical concepts and applies them with explanations in real-life applications, including many cases from the author's own practice as well as those of various media professionals. This 256 page text is a practical guide designed to provide its reader with a firm understanding of the principles underlying the ownership and use of content, so that when questions arise, they will be able to make correct, well-informed decisions-whether concerning their personal works, or works of others that a company wishes to copyright or trademark. In addition, the reader will be more capable of exercising sound judgment in structuring employment and contract relationships and of acquiring and/or licensing works, which are at the core of the business of communicating.
Court TV: You Be The Judge
by Patrick J. SauerReaders examine the evidence in 100 real court cases, act as judge, and render a verdict. After sufficient debate, alone or with friends, the official outcome is revealed with a turn of the page. Readers can judge the essence of the case and provide their own interpretations of how law and order should have been handed down and, because the cases are real, see if their decisions match those of the American justice system.
Creative Careers in Hollywood
by Laurie ScheerReaders will discover real-life, yet upbeat portraits of the "shredder" jobs of the industry, such as assistant or d-girl, and how they can lead to the "keeper" jobs of actor, agent, or studio executive. Each career overview features a clever analysis of the classic film characters who memorably played these jobs on screen; an insightful rewards-risks assessment of the job; and a brief look at such essential job qualities as durability, length of stay, "food chain value" and desirability factor. Part how-to guide, part historical document, and part social commentary, this book will delight career seekers, Hollywood insiders, and film aficionados alike!
Crying at the Movies: A Film Memoir
by Madelon Sprengnether"For years, I cried, not over my own losses, but at the movies. When bad things happened to me in real life, I didn't react. I seemed cool or indifferent. Yet in the dark and relative safety of the movie theater, I would weep over fictional tragedies, over someone else's tragedy."At age nine, Madelon Sprengnether watched her father drown in the Mississippi River. Her mother swallowed the family's grief whole and no one spoke of the tragedy thereafter. Only years later did Sprengnether react, and in a most unlikely place: in the theater watching the film Pather Panchali, by Satyajit Ray.In the fascinating memoir Crying at the Movies, Sprengnether looks at the sublime connections between happenings in the present, troubling events from the past, and the imagined world of movies. By examining the films she had intense emotional reactions to throughout her adult life--House of Cards, Solaris, Fearless, The Cement Garden, Shadowlands, and Blue--Sprengnether finds a way to work through her own losses, mistakes, and pain.
Deep in a dream: La larga noche de Chet Baker
by James GavinLa gran biografía de Chet Baker, el legendario trompetista y cantante de jazz. Desde 1950, cuando un atractivo joven de Oklahoma apareció en la Costa Oeste como nuevo príncipe del cool jazz, hasta su violenta muerte en Amsterdam relacionada con las drogas, la vida de Chet Baker lo convirtió en un mito. En esta biografía, que incluye cientos de entrevistas y fuentes inéditas, James Gavin hace un recorrido por la vida del trompetista. La historia de Chet Baker es desmenuzada desde su atormentada y traumática infancia: Gavin explora el nacimiento de esa melancólica forma de tocar la trompeta, su voz frágil, y el aura que lo llevó a la fama. Sexy, angelical, rebelde y querido, Chet Baker se convirtió en el James Dean del jazz. Su misteriosa figura volvió locos a mujeres y hombres. Sin embargo, su verdadero amor, además de la música, fue la droga. La crítica ha dicho...«Arrebatadora y fascinante. Trae de regreso la persona de Baker entre los vivos. El corazón de este libro late muchísimo más fuerte que la inmensa mayoría de las biografías de músicos.»The Boston Globe «Una biografía extraordinaria y monumental.»La Stampa «Una formidable muestra de arte biográfico. No hay una sola página en este libro que no sea adictiva, que no esté viva, que no le exija al lector una reacción, ya sea de horror o admiración.»Greil Marcus, Salon «Un retrato casi insoportablemente realista. James Gavin nos ha puesto al personaje tan cerca como la vida misma.»David Hajdu, New York Times Book Review «Una biografía divulgativa imprescindible.»Tony Gieske, Hollywood Reporter «El retrato más redondo y lúcido del trompetista que ha sido escrito jamás. Esta es la biografía definitiva de Baker.»Christopher Porter, JazzTimes «Completísima, una biografía de lectura compulsiva.»Jack Batten, Toronto Star «Un relato espeluznante. Debería atraer a toda persona interesada en una historia perfectamente narrada.»Greg Delaney, Independent «Una comedia negra repleta de desenfreno, escrita con un ritmo y visión a los que ni siquiera el purista del jazz más esencialista le encontraría un defecto.»Kenneth Wright, Sunday Herald «Un libro nacido del amor artístico y la honestidad intelectual, escrito con la fluidez y el dramatismo de una novela.»Paolo Russo, La Repubblica «Una brillante y oscura biografía de la leyenda blanca del jazz. Baker es un misterio al que James Gavin se asomó atento a las contradicciones.»Diego Fischerman, Página/12
Disintegrating the Musical: Black Performance and American Musical Film
by Arthur KnightThis study tracks and analyzes the history of musical representations of African Americans in american film's classic sound era.
Do You Mr Jones?: Bob Dylan with the Poets and Professors
by Neil CorcoranIn 2016, Bob Dylan received the Nobel Prize in Literature ‘for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition’. This collection of essays by leading poets and critics – with a new foreword by Will Self – examines Dylan’s poetic genius, as well as his astounding cultural influence over the decades.‘From Orpheus to Faiz, song and poetry have been closely linked. Dylan is the brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition’ Salman Rushdie‘The most significant Western popular artist in any form or medium of the past sixty years’ Will Self‘For fifty and some years he has bent, coaxed, teased and persuaded words into lyric and narrative shapes that are at once extraordinary and inevitable’ Andrew Motion‘His haunting music and lyrics have always seemed, in the deepest sense, literary’ Joyce Carol Oates‘There is something inevitable about Bob Dylan… A storyteller pulling out all the stops – metaphor, allegory, repetition, precise detail… His virtue is in his style, his attitude, his disposition to the world’ Simon Armitage
Dolly: The Biography
by Alanna NashThis comprehensive look at the life of country music superstar Dolly Parton covers her poor but loving upbringing through her recent induction into the Country Music Association Hall of Fame. Based on extensive interviews with a host of Nashville's biggest stars such as BARBARA MANDRELL, MARTY ROBBINS, and EDDIE RABBITT, as well as with the Parton family and Dolly herself, this intimate biography charts the legendary singer's life from the backwoods of Tennessee to the footlights of the Grand Ole Opry and beyond. This updated edition looks at the country singer's endeavors from the 1980s through today, a period in which Parton opened her own theme park, Dollywood; flirted with pop music; and returned to her rural mountain roots with the release of three critically acclaimed bluegrass albums--Hungry Again in 1997, The Grass Is Blue in 1999, and Little Sparrow in 2001. Nash also takes readers into the studio for the release of Dolly's most recent record, the much-lauded Halos & Horns.
Double Feature: Discovering Our Hidden Fantasies in Film
by Herbert H. Steina) What recent smash hit movie secretly depicted fear of the female breast? b) Name some recent films that were preoccupied with castration anxiety? c) Would you be surprised to know that reliving our childhood Oedipal fixations helps us to better understand adult-themed films? You'll find the answers to these and many similarly intriguing questions in DOUBLE FEATURE: DISCOVERING OUR HIDDEN FANTASIES IN FILM by Herbert Stein, M.D. Dr. Stein, a highly-respected Freudian psychiatrist and passionate moviegoer, literally puts our favorite films on the couch and shares his confidential findings with us. In a book that could become a cult classic, he lays bare the truth about unconscious and subconscious themes running through popular culture with fresh, jolting, and often moving insights into some of the most popular films ever made, including JURASSIC PARK, FIELD OF DREAMS, FORRST GUMP, THE SIXTH SENSE, and THE USUAL SUSPECTS. However perceptive we may think ourselves, this book reveals how we unconsciously respond to deeply-embedded archetypal themes in movies and enables us to re-experience films we love in a completely fresh way. Indeed, DOUBLE FEATURE makes our favorite films even more resonant and enables us to articulate even more deeply what it is we love about them.
Driving Visions
by David Laderman"This is a superbly conceived, thoughtfully organized, and well-written study of a subject--the 'road movie'--that has lacked anything close to a coherent, book-length overview. . . . It will make an ideal course text and should also have a wide appeal to non-academic readers. "-- Scott Simmon, author of The Films of D. W. Griffith and King Vidor, AmericanFrom the visionary rebellion of Easy Rider to the reinvention of home in The Straight Story, the road movie has emerged as a significant film genre since the late 1960s, able to cut across a wide variety of film styles and contexts. Yet, within the variety, a certain generic core remains constant: the journey as cultural critique, as exploration beyond society and within oneself. This book traces the generic evolution of the road movie with respect to its diverse presentations, emphasizing it as an "independent genre" that attempts to incorporate marginality and subversion on many levels. David Laderman begins by identifying the road movie's defining features and by establishing the literary, classical Hollywood, and 1950s highway culture antecedents that formatively influenced it. He then traces the historical and aesthetic evolution of the road movie decade by decade through detailed and lively discussions of key films. Laderman concludes with a look at the European road movie, from the late 1950s auteurs through Godard and Wenders, and at compelling feminist road movies of the 1980s and 1990s.
En América
by Susan SontagMaryna Zalezowska, la más célebre de las actrices polacas, decide partir hacia América junto con su marido, su hijo, un joven escritor que la idolatra y varios amigos más, impulsados por la idea de construir una comunidad utópica. Pero allí descubrirán que la felicidad americana se construye de un modo distinto al esperado. Susan Sontag ha escrito esta atrevida novela por medio de unos personajes tan singulares -un conde, un escritor enamorado, una actriz famosa- como sus propios destinos. A través de sus ojos y de sus pasiones el lector se embarca en un intenso viaje desde el corazón de Europa hasta la tierra casi virgen de California. «La prosa de Sontag es ágil, lúdica... Como siempre, aparecen ideas estimulantes en cada rincón.» THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW "Una novela valiente y hermosa." THE WASHINGTON POST
Encounters with Tadeusz Kantor (Routledge Harwood Polish And East European Theatre Archive Ser.)
by Krzysztof MiklaszewskiAn invaluable collection of documents and discussions of the work of one of the most significant theatre practitioners of the last fifty years.This unique set of reminiscences, written by one of the actors who worked closely with Kantor over a long period of time, ranges from the anecdotal to the theoretical. Kantor's work offers some of the most disconcerting allegories of Modernism and a quintessential expression of the unconscious during a bitter period of human history. Kantor's stern but affectionate guardianship of his troupe of travelling players comes off Miklaszewski's pages with warmth, humanity and humour.
Enfant Terrible!: Jerry Lewis in American Film
by Jerry LewisThe one thing everybody knows about Jerry Lewis is that he is beloved by the French, those incomprehensible hedonistic strangers across the sea. The French understand him, while in the U.S. he is at best a riddle, not one of us. Lewis is someone we take profound pleasure in excluding, if not ridiculing. Enfant Terrible! Jerry Lewis in American Film is the first comprehensive collection devoted to one of the most controversial and accomplished figures in twentieth-century American cinema. A veteran of virtually every form of show business, Lewis's performances onscreen and the motion pictures he has directed reveal significant filmmaking talents, and show him to be what he has called himself, a "total filmmaker." Yet his work has been frequently derided by American critics. This book challenges that easy reading by taking a more careful look at Lewis's considerable body of work onscreen in 16 diverse and penetrating essays. Turning to such films asThe Nutty Professor, The Ladies Man, The King of Comedy, The Delicate Delinquent, Living It Up, The Errand Boy, The Disorderly Orderly, Arizona Dream, and The Geisha Boy, the contributors address topics ranging from Lewis's on- and offscreen performances, the representations of disability in his films, and the European obsession with Lewis, to his relationship with Dean Martin and Lewis's masculinity. Far from an out of control hysteric, Enfant Terrible! instead reveals Jerry Lewis to be a meticulous master of performance with a keen sense of American culture and the contemporary world. Contributors include: Mikita Brottman, Scott Bukatman, David Desser, Leslie A. Fiedler, Craig Fischer, Lucy Fischer, Krin Gabbard, Barry Keith Grant, Andrew Horton, Susan Hunt, Frank Krutnik, Marcia Landy, Peter Lehman, Shawn Levy, Dana Polan, Murray Pomerance, and J. P. Telotte.
Essays on Music
by Theodor W. Adorno Richard D. Leppert Susan H. GillespieThis unique volume includes twenty-seven essays on music by Theodor W. Adorno, nearly half of which are translated into English for the first time, together with an expansive introduction, commentary, and notes by musicologist Richard Leppert.
Faith in Time: The Life of Jimmy Scott
by David RitzBorn in Cleveland in 1925, "Little" Jimmy Scott lost his mother at age thirteen, the same year he was diagnosed with Kallman's syndrome. The disease stunted his growth and earned him his nickname, but it also left him with a haunting voice, a mesmerizing voice. He soon built a following as a singer touring with Lionel Hampton's great orchestra in the '40s, then performed with many of the stars of the '50s, from Lester Young to Charlie Parker to Dinah Washington, and was signed by Savoy Records. He thought he had his big break when, in 1962, Ray Charles produced what was by all accounts Jimmy's best work, Falling in Love Is Wonderful. But when it was forced off the shelves by contract disputes, Scott worked as an orderly and clerk in Cleveland for almost two decades. Fans thought he was dead-until songwriter Doc Pomus's funeral in March of 1991.<P><P> As Pomus had instructed in his will, Jimmy sang over his friend's coffin. High-pitched and androgynous, his voice seemed to come out of thin air, transcending gender and age, evoking pure heartbreak. No one knew who he was-heads turned, celebrities conferred, record executives were reduced to tears-until finally Lou Reed turned around and whispered, "He's Jimmy Scott, the greatest jazz singer in the world." And so he was. By the next morning, he had a record deal with Sire that relaunched his career with the masterpiece All the Way, and he has been performing to packed clubs ever since. With full cooperation from Jimmy, his siblings, spouses, and colleagues from Ray Charles to Ruth Brown, Faith in Time is at once an intimate biography, an invaluable history of a life that spanned big band to bebop to pop, and the poignant story of a man whose voice will live forever.
Federico Fellini: His Life and Work
by Tullio KezichA lively and authoritative journey into the world of a cinema masterWith the revolutionary 8 1/2, Federico Fellini put his deepest desires and anxieties before the lens in 1963, permanently impacting the art of cinema in the process. Now, more than forty years later, film critic and Fellini confidant Tullio Kezich has written the work by which all other biographies of the filmmaker are sure to be measured. In this moving and intimately revealing account of a lifetime spent in pictures, Kezich uses his friendship with Fellini as a means to step outside the frame of myth and anecdote that surrounds him—much, it turns out, of the director's own making.A great lover of women and a meticulous observer of dreams, Fellini, perhaps more than any other director of the twentieth century, created films that embodied a thoroughly modern sensibility, eschewing traditional narrative along with religious and moral precepts. His is an art of delicate pathos, of episodic films that directly address the intersection of reality, fantasy, and desire that exists as a product of mid-century Italy—a country reeling from a Fascist regime as it struggled with an outmoded Catholic national identity. As Kezich reveals, the dilemmas Fellini presents in his movies reflect not only his personal battles but those of Italian society. The result is a book that explores both the machinations of cinema and the man who most grandly embraced the full spectrum of its possibilities, leaving his indelible mark on it forever.