Activist & Political · Books · Horror
By the mid-2000s, following social unrest and political upheaval in France, and culminating with the emergence of the “torture-porn” horror subgenre in the United States with titles such as Saw[…]
The box office and critical reaction to many of these film noirs varied wildly and widely, especially with viewers in the middle of the country. “The picture is too long[…]
Cycles, Sequels, Spin-offs, Remakes, and Reboots: Multiplicities in Film and Television, Edited by Amanda Ann Klein and R. Barton Palmer (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016, 367pp, $29.95 from the[…]
Books · Drama · DVD & Blu-ray
What’s remarkable, in both book and film, is how the metafictional elements do not detract from our emotional investment in the straightforward fiction. Where Fowles’ interjected commentary and authorial intrusions form[…]
Actors & Personalities · Books
She was never classically beautiful, at least by Hollywood’s exaggerated standards: a few too many sharp angles on her face, a few too many vertical inches on her frame. But[…]
Books · Directors · Interviews · Writers & Critics
I could begin to see how the movie was art imitating life and then morphed into life imitating art, with such a palpable sense of the greatest director who ever lived[…]
Allan Dwan and the Rise and Decline of the Hollywood Studios, by Frederic Lombardi (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013, 370pp, $49.95 from the publisher’s website) Allan Dwan (1885-1981) was one of[…]
Birds of Paradise: Costume as Cinematic Spectacle, ed. Marketa Uhlirova. London: Koenig Books, 2013. 341 pp. I first became intrigued by London’s Fashion in Film at an unusual series of[…]
Dr. Steve Jones has written a book on a subject few people have examined in depth, though the press and critics have vilified it to no end. It’s a subject[…]
Books · Exploitation & Erotica
Sexplosion: From Andy Warhol to A Clockwork Orange – How a Generation of Pop Rebels Broke All the Taboos, by Robert Hofler. New York: HarperCollins, 2014. Hardcover, $27.99 When Michael[…]
Books · LGBT & Queer · Producers & Studios
“He won’t be gay when I get through with him!” Revisiting legendary gay agent Henry Willson via Robert Hafler’s biography Henry Willson, The Man Who Invented Hollywood * * *[…]
My Lunches with Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles, Edited by Peter Biskind. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2013. Hardcover, $28.00. 306pp. ISBNL 978-0-8050-9725252800 The reader in search of[…]
The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father’s Twentieth Century, by Margaret Talbot. New York: Riverhead/Penguin Group, paperback, 2013, 432pp, $18.00. Margaret Talbot must have known a straight-ahead biography or “a[…]
The Worldwide Film Noir Tradition: The Complete Reference to Classic Dark Cinema from America, Britain, France and Other Countries Across the Globe by Spencer Selby. Ames, Iowa: Sink Press, 2013. […]
The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend, by Glenn Frankel. New York: Bloomsbury, USA. 416pp. Hardcover. $28.00. The scene is a rough wooden fort on an East Texas homestead.[…]
Actors & Personalities · Books
Lee Marvin: Point Blank, by Dwayne Epstein. Tucson, AZ: Schaffner Press, 2013. 303pp. Hardcover. $27.95. With his many iconic films, his record of combat action in the Pacific during WW2,[…]
Hollywood Cinema and the Real Los Angeles, by Mark Shiel. London: Reaktion, 2012. Hardback: $39.00. 336pp. ISBN: 978-1-86189-902-6 We all think we know Los Angeles. We think we know it because[…]
Mae Murray: The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips, by Michael Ankerich. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012. Hardcover. $40.00. Not too many remember Mae Murray. Not a one of her[…]
Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study, by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland, 2011. Paperback. $45.00 Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study opens with Jean-Luc Godard’s well-traveled maxim that “all you need[…]
Col. William N. Selig: The Man Who Invented Hollywood by Andrew A. Erish. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012. Cloth, $60.00, 303pp, illustrated. ISBN: 978-0-292-72870-7. Anyone writing about a pioneer of[…]
