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[…]
Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento by Maitland McDonagh. University of Minnesota Press, 2010 (revised with new material from 1994 edition). Trade paperback, $22.95, 296pp, illustrated. ISBN 0-816-65607-X..[…]
A Companion to Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Ed. Brigitte Peucker. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, 656pp, £110/$199.95. When Fassbinder first burst onto the scene, his German contemporaries were horrified by his lifestyle, and[…]
Brutal Intimacy: Analyzing Contemporary French Cinema, Tim Palmer. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2011. Paperback, $28.00. 304pp. ISBN: 978-0819568267 Endemic to any reading of a new work lionizing French cinema is[…]
Béla Balázs: Early Film Theory — Visible Man and The Spirit of Film. Edited by Erica Carter. Translated by Rodney Livingstone. New York: Berghahn Books, 2010. Béla Balázs: Early Film[…]
“Black hair is set off by bright colour, and these women often resembled blocks of pure pigment. They look ravishing but only half-alive . . . even the tough-talking Gardner looks like an image painted onto the screen.”
Death Wish by Christopher Sorrentino. New York: Soft Skull Press, 2010. Paperback. $13.95. 98 pp. Among the movies I consider guilty pleasures, Death Wish has an appeal that has survived its inherent deficiencies[…]
The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael, ed. by Sanford Schwartz. New York: Library of America, 2011. Hardcover, 750pp, $40.00.. As perhaps the most well-known name in film criticism,[…]
The Celluloid Closet, by Vito Russo. New York: Harper & Row, 1981, rev. ed. 1987, 1995. 386pp. Editor’s note: On the 30th anniversary of publication of Vito Russo’s Celluloid Closet, Mark[…]
Nightmare Movies: Horror on Screen Since the 1960s, by Kim Newman. Bloomsbury Publishing, 1988, 2011. Trade paperback, 633pp. $45.00. The first film writing I ever came in contact with was one[…]
Shock Value: How A Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, And Invented Modern Horror, by Jason Zinoman. New York: Penguin, 2011. Hardcover. $25.95. 274 pp. ISBN 978-1-59420-302-2 By[…]
They Live by Jonathan Lethem. New York: Soft Skull Press, 2010. Paperback. $13.95. 163 pp. Any author who devotes an essay to Donald Sutherland’s buttocks has already won me over, so[…]
Swedish Sensationsfilms, by Daniel Ekeroth. Brooklyn: Bazillion Points Press, 2011. Trade paperback. $19.99. Thanks to the lurid popularity of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Sweden has perhaps become in the popular American[…]
Lost Horizons Beneath the Hollywood Sign, by David Del Valle. Albany, GA: BearManor Media, 2010. Paperback. $27.95. 458 pp. David Del Valle collects. Among other things, he collects movie people. Lost Horizons[…]
Male Bisexuality in Current Cinema: Images of Growth, Rebellion and Survival, by Justin Vicari. Jefferson and London: McFarland, 2011. Paperback. $45.00 In analyzing the 1970s cinematic Eurodecadence, the Italian-originated school[…]
Back to the Future, by Andrew Shail and Robin Stoate. London: BFI Film Classics, Palgrave Macmillan. 2010. Paperback, $15.00 In his State of the Union address of February 4, 1986, Ronald[…]
