You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
A biography of Lew Ayres, an accomplished actor, pacifist, and conscientious objector of World War II.
In One Shot Hitchcock, some of the best writers and thinkers in film studies have taken up the challenge of writing about a single shot from an Alfred Hitchcock film. Fifteen of Hitchcock's most engaging, horrifying, beautiful, sexual, and bizarre shots are interrogated and loved. Single shots are looked at from multiple angles, considering its importance for the film in question, and for other ways we can think about the cinema. This book is not only for people who enjoy watching and discussing Hitchcock's films, but for those who wish to discover new ways of writing about the films they love.
The director of classic films such as Sylvia Scarlett, The Philadelphia Story, Gaslight, Adam’s Rib, A Star Is Born, and My Fair Lady, George Cukor is widely admired but often misunderstood. Reductively stereotyped in his time as a “woman’s director”—a thinly veiled, disparaging code for “gay”—he brilliantly directed a wide range of iconic actors and actresses, including Cary Grant, Greta Garbo, Spencer Tracy, Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe, and Maggie Smith. As Katharine Hepburn, the star of ten Cukor films, told the director, “All the people in your pictures are as goddamned good as they can possibly be, and that’s your stamp.” In this groundbreaking, lavishly illustra...
David O. Selznick (1902–1965) was one of the most prominent film producers of the Hollywood studio era, responsible for such artistic and commercial triumphs as King Kong, David Copperfield, Anna Karenina, A Star Is Born, Gone with the Wind, Rebecca, Spellbound, and The Third Man. However, film production was not his only domain. Starting in the late 1930s, he built an impressive stable of stars within his own independent company, including Ingrid Bergman, Vivien Leigh, Joan Fontaine, Jennifer Jones, and Gregory Peck. In Starmaker: David O. Selznick and the Production of Stars in the Hollywood Studio System, author Milan Hain reveals the mechanisms by which Selznick and his collaborators d...
"The Oxford Handbook of Peace History uniquely explores the distinctive dynamics of peacemaking across time and place, and analyzing how past and present societies have created diverse cultures of peace and applied strategies for peaceful change. The analysis draws upon the expertise of many well-respected and distinguished scholars from disciplines such as anthropology, economics, history, international relations, journalism, peace studies, sociology, and theology. This work is divided into six parts. The first three sections address the chronological sweep of peace history from the Ancient Egyptians to the present while the last three cover biographical profiles of peace advocates, key iss...
During the Second World War hundreds of Hollywood filmmakers under the command of the legendary director John Ford enlisted in the OSS to produce training, reconnaissance and propaganda films. This wartime bond continued into the post-war period, when a number of studios produced films advocating the creation of a permanent peacetime successor to the OSS: what became the Central Intelligence Agency. By the 1960s however, Hollywood's increasingly irreverent attitude towards the CIA reflected a growing public anxiety about excessive US government secrecy. In Secrecy's Shadow provides the first comprehensive history of the birth and development of Hollywood's relationship with American intellig...
After over a century of existence, the cinema still has its mysteries. Why, for example, is the job we call movie stardom unlike any other in the world? How do films provide so much unconcealed information that we fail to notice? What makes it hard to define what counts as “acting”? How do movies like Casablanca and Breathless store the film and world histories of their generations? How can we reconcile auteurism’s celebration of the movie director’s authority with the camera’s automatism? Why have the last four decades of film criticism so often neglected such questions? After beginning with an overview of film studies, this book proposes a shift from predictable theoretical approaches to models that acknowledge the perplexities and mysteries of the movies. Deriving methods from cinephilia, Wittgenstein, Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Eleanor Duckworth, V. F. Perkins, and James Naremore, Robert B. Ray offers close readings that call attention to what we have missed in such classic films as La Règle du Jeu, It Happened One Night, It’s a Wonderful Life, Vertigo, Holiday, The Philadelphia Story, Casablanca, Breathless, and Tickets.
G. Kurt Piehler underscores the significant institutional and cultural shift in the place of religion in the armed forces during World War II.
In War & Homecoming: Veteran Identity and the Post-9/11 Generation, Travis L. Martin explores how a new generation of veterans is redefining what it means to come home. More than 2.7 million veterans served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their homecomings didn't include parades or national celebrations. Instead, when the last US troops left Afghanistan, American veterans raised millions of dollars for the evacuation of Afghan refugees, especially those who'd served alongside them. This brand of selflessness is one reason civilians regard veterans with reverence and pride. The phrase "thank you for your service" is ubiquitous. Yet, one in ten post-9/11 veterans struggles with substance abuse. Fifte...
The most memorable Hollywood musicals of 1930s showcased the talents of stars like Fred Astaire, Jeanette MacDonald, Bing Crosby and Alice Faye. The less memorable ones didn't. This book takes a look at the unsung songfests of the '30s--secondary or forgotten features with short-lived or unlikely stars from major studios and Poverty Row. Through analysis of films such as Lord Byron of Broadway (1930), Shoot the Works (1934), Bottoms Up (1934), Moonlight and Pretzels (1933) and The Music Goes 'Round (1936), the author profiles such performers as Dorothy Dell, Lee Dixon, Peggy Fears, Lawrence Gray, Joe Morrison and the mother-daughter team of Myrt and Marge. Behind-the-scenes figures are discussed, like the infamously profligate producer Lou Brock, whose flops Down to Their Last Yacht (1934) and Top of the Town (1937) cost him his career. Filmographies and production information are included, with background on key participants.