Film History

Broadsword Calling Danny Boy is Geoff Dyer's hilarious tribute to a film he has loved since childhood: It's a scene-by-scene analysis - or should that be send-up? - taking us from it's snowy, Teutonic opening credits to its vertigo-inducing climax.

Sex scandals have rocked Hollywood since the industry began, but Once More With Feeling: You'll Never Make Love in This Town Again, Again is a brand new collection of stories that this town will never recover from - again.

"Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?" These famous lines from The Graduate (1967) would forever link Anne Bancroft (1931-2005) to the groundbreaking film and confirm her status as a movie icon. Along with her portrayal of Annie Sullivan in the stage and film drama The Miracle Worker, this role was a highlight of a career that spanned a half-century and brought Bancroft an Oscar, two Tonys, and two Emmy awards. In the first biography to cover the entire scope of Bancroft's life and career, Douglass K. Daniel reveals how, from a young age, Bancroft was committed to challenging herself and strengthening her craft.

Celebrate the greatest saga ever told: All of us who are deeply influenced by the epic saga of Star Wars have our favorite moments. Each time the screen goes black and you see those words - "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away" - the music blasts through you, and you're a kid again. Ken Napzok, expert appreciator of Star Wars, counts down each one of those special moments that makes this series not just the best movies of all time, but the greatest saga ever told.

The one and only Zadie Smith, prize-winning, best-selling author of White Teeth, is back with a second unmissable collection of essays. No subject is too fringe or too mainstream for the unstoppable Zadie Smith. From social media to the environment, from Jay-Z to Karl Ove Knausgaard, she has boundless curiosity and the boundless wit to match. In Feel Free, pop culture, high culture, social change and political debate all get the Zadie Smith treatment, dissected with razor-sharp intellect.

The Rainbow Age of Television explores why queer people are so invested in—and conflicted by—the kinds of storytelling that TV has to offer. Above all, it's a celebration of the LGBTQIA+ shows, their characters, and their creators that define this new age in television.

One hundred and thirty years ago Eadweard Muybridge invented stop-motion photography, anticipating and making possible motion pictures. He was the first to capture time and play it back for an audience, giving birth to visual media and screen entertainments of all kinds. Yet the artist and inventor Muybridge was also a murderer who killed coolly and meticulously, and his trial is one of the early instances of a media sensation.

Every so often, an inspiring book comes along that helps the reader reform their approach to art and life, and A TREASURY OF ART (Part 3)--UNDISCOVERED WORKS 1966-2022 is one of those. The author, Rick Schmidt, was graced by ACTOR VIN DIESEL reading and utilizing his earlier "Feature filmmaking at Used-Car Prices" Viking Penguin how-to, so the superstar could kick-start his career. WRITER/DIRECTOR KEVIN SMITH also made his breakthrough feature, CLERKS, with Schmidt's book. So, somehow, the contents of Schmidt's tomes seem to generate positive energy to the reader, to help them get busy on ...

Operation Chastise was one of the most extraordinary episodes of the Second World War, yet it has also become one of the most misunderstood. Max Hastings tells the gripping story of the Dambusters raid, from the invention of the bouncing bomb to the moonlit cockpits of young pilots flying at treetop height through lethal enemy fire. But Hastings also challenges what we think we know about the Dambusters, bringing to light the difficult truths that have often been left out of the legend.

A presence in Third Reich cinema, Adolf Hitler also personally financed, ordered, and censored films and newsreels and engaged in complex relationships with their stars and directors. Here, Bill Niven offers a powerful argument for reconsidering Hitler's fascination with film as a means to further the Nazi agenda. In this first English-language work to fully explore Hitler's influence on and relationship with film in Nazi Germany, the author calls on a broad array of archival sources. Niven also explores Hitler's representation in Third Reich cinema, personally and through films focusing on historical figures with whom he was associated

The CIA in Hollywood offers the first full-scale investigation of the relationship between the Agency and the film and television industries. Tricia Jenkins draws on numerous interviews with the CIA's public affairs staff, operations officers, and historians, as well as with Hollywood technical consultants, producers, and screenwriters who have worked with the Agency, to uncover the nature of the CIA's role in Hollywood.

This is a collection of twenty-three original interviews with stars of the silent screen, with biographical information and a filmography included for each. Interviewed are Lew Ayres, William Bakewell, Lina Basquette, Madge Bellamy, Eleanor Boardman, Ethlyne Clair, Junior Coghlan, Joyce Compton, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Dorothy Gulliver, Maxine Elliott Hicks, Dorothy Janis, George Lewis, Marion Mack, Patsy Ruth Miller, Lois Moran, Baby Marie Osborne, Muriel Ostriche, Eddie Quillan, Esther Ralston, Dorothy Revier, David Rollins, and Gladys Walton.

In Your Favorite Scary Movie, entertainment journalist Ashley Cullins examines the making and impact of the Scream films with behind-the-scenes insight from cast, creators, and crew, as well as sharp analysis on how the movies’ special blend of gruesome violence and humorous self-awareness rewrote the horror playbook.

A Thousand Cuts is a candid exploration of one of America's strangest and most quickly vanishing subcultures. It is about the death of physical film in the digital era and about a paranoid, secretive, eccentric, and sometimes obsessive group of film-mad collectors who made movies and their projection a private religion in the time before DVDs and Blu-rays.

Behold the history of a film so scandalous, so outrageous, so explosive it disappeared from print for more than a quarter century! A film so dangerous half its cast and crew met their demise bringing it, eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes’ final cinematic vision, to life! Starring all-American legend John Wayne in full Fu Manchu makeup as Mongol madman Genghis Khan and sultry seductress Susan Hayward as his lover, The Conqueror is possibly the worst movie ever made.

In this concise, crisply written guide, Patricia Aufderheide takes listeners along the diverse paths of documentary history and charts the lively, often fierce debates among filmmakers and scholars about the best ways to represent reality and to tell the truths worth telling.

Here are the very personal diaries of Richard E. Grant's debut behind the camera, as writer and director of his autobiographical movie of the same name.

It is both a fascinating insight into the intrigues and agonies he encounters along the way, and also a deeply moving portrait of his childhood and his love affair with Swaziland, where he was born and brought up during the last throes of the British Empire.

With the success of the Wonder Woman movies and the results following the outcry of the #MeToo movement, now is the time to highlight the female influences in film history previously left unheard!

Meryl Streep, Marlon Brando, Anthony Hopkins, Carey Mulligan. When we watch these remarkable actors in a performance, we see only Sophie, Stanley Kowalski, Hannibal Lecter, or Cassie from Promising Young Woman. How are they able to transform our world in this way? How and why do they do what they do? In Acting Naturally, David Thomson sheds light on the actors who have shaped the film industry. He shrewdly analyzes these stars, revealing how a sly smile, an extra-long pause, even a small gesture of the hand can draw in an audience.

Melanin in Movies examines how Hollywood shapes the perception of Black Americans. This book challenges the idea that Hollywood is just about entertainment, exploring how the film industry actively influences society's view of Black people. By analyzing key examples and trends in Black representation, Melanin in Movies reveals how film can be both a tool for liberation and a means of oppression.