Film Entertainment

In 1969, Illeana Douglas' parents saw the film Easy Rider and were transformed. Taking Dennis Hopper's words - "That's what it's all about, man" - to heart, they abandoned their comfortable upper-middle-class life and gave Illeana a childhood filled with hippies, goats, free spirits, and free love. Illeana writes, "Since it was all out of my control, I began to think of my life as a movie, with a Dennis Hopper-like father at the center of it." I Blame Dennis Hopper is a rollicking, funny, at times tender exploration of the way movies can change our lives.

Drawing on interviews with over 150 people who were called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee - including Elia Kazan, Ring Lardner Jr., and Arthur Miller award-winning author Victor S. Navasky reveals how and why the blacklists were so effective and delves into the tragic and far-reaching consequences of Joseph McCarthy's witch hunts.

Movies matter—that is the message of Reel to Real, bell hooks' classic collection of essays on film. They matter on a personal level, providing us with unforgettable moments, even life-changing experiences, and they can confront us, too, with the most profound social issues of race, sex and class. Here bell hooks—one of America's most celebrated and thrilling cultural critics—talks back to films that have moved and provoked her, from Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction to the work of Spike Lee.

With unparalleled freedom in the Golden Age of Hollywood, movies produced during the “pre-Code” era between 1930 and 1934 dealt with a wide range of social issues, including sexual freedom, incarceration, organized crime, race, and class. Films of the period include beloved classics like King Kong (1933) but also lesser-known penetrating cinema like I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) and Wild Boys of the Road (1933). These films, produced at the height of the Great Depression, boast work by women directors, featured diverse leads, and pushed the limits of contemporary social norms.

Even by the standards of the 1970s, even compared to Jar-Jar Binks, the legendary 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special is a peerlessly cringeworthy pop-culture artifact.

Over the course of her sixty-five-year career, the longest of any female filmmaker, Agnes Varda (1928-2019) wrote and directed some of the most acclaimed films of her era. She helped to define the French New Wave, inspired an entire generation of filmmakers, and was recognized with major awards at the Cannes, Berlin, and Venice Film Festivals, as well as an honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards. In this lively biography, Carrie Rickey explores the "complicated passions" that informed Varda's charmed life and indelible work.

The history of the franchise starting with the various Stargate books in the '60s to Stargate, the movie; the three TV series Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, and Stargate Universe; the Stargate Infinity animated show; and now the latest prequel from Stargate's very own streaming service, StargateCommand.co, titled Stargate Origins. And what's to come for a new Stargate series now that Amazon Studios has purchased the franchise.

Movies (And Other Things) is a book about, quite frankly, movies (and other things). One of the chapters, for example, answers which race Kevin Costner was able to white savior the best, because did you know that he white saviors Mexicans in McFarland, USA, and white saviors Native Americans in Dances with Wolves, and white saviors Black people in Black or White, and white saviors the Cleveland Browns in Draft Day? Another of the chapters creates a special version of the Academy Awards specifically for rom-coms, the most underrated movie genre of all.

Since its publication in 1966, Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls has reigned as one of the most influential pieces of commercial fiction. Dolls! Dolls! Dolls! digs deep into the creation of that hugely successful film - a journey nearly as cut-throat, sexually charged, tragic, and revelatory as Susann's novel itself - and uncovers how the movie has become a cherished, widely imitated camp classic, thanks to its over-the-top performances, endlessly quotable absurd dialogue, outre costumes and hairdos, despite the high aspirations, money, and talent lavished on it.

Award-winning journalist Richard Cohen, wrote this about his "third-person memoir": "I call this book a third-person memoir. It is about my closest friend, Nora Ephron, and the lives we lived together and how her life got to be bigger until, finally, she wrote her last work, the play, Lucky Guy, about a newspaper columnist dying of cancer while she herself was dying of cancer. I have interviewed many of her other friends - Mike Nichols, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep, Arianna Huffington.

The following recording is a 1977 interview with Steve McQueen (March 24, 1930 - November 7, 1980) was an American actor whose antihero personae, emphasized during the height of the counterculture of the 1960s, made him a top box-office draw for his films of the 1960s and 70s.

Audrey Hepburn is an icon like no other, yet the image many of us have of Audrey - dainty, immaculate - is anything but true to life. Here, for the first time, Sam Wasson presents the woman behind the little black dress that rocked the nation in 1961. The first complete account of the making of Breakfast at Tiffany's, Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M. reveals little-known facts about the cinema classic: Truman Capote desperately wanted Marilyn Monroe for the leading role; director Blake Edwards filmed multiple endings....

The YouTube money craze is on. Because of this wonderful innovation, ordinary individuals can now upload their own videos and monetize that through the number of viewers. But as more people join in the money tree, the competition has become very stiff. The explosion of videos taken by ordinary individuals has taken the world by storm and the formula for what would make the next YouTube viral video is on.

So, you want to make a movie and you’ve never done it before. Well the Independent Filmmaking: The Ultimate Guide is a book that can get you started on the right path and learn what to expect going on the journey of independent filmmaking. You will learn the basics of script writing, pre-production, finding cast and crew, production, camera, lighting, sound, editing, and distribution, just to name a few. Learn from me, a filmmaker who has learned and found success in making independent films while seeing and going through all the pitfalls.

Short Film Structure Secrets - Short Films - There's no secret that structuring a short film can be a difficult process because of how condensed short films can be in relation to a feature film. Author Chike Camara has done it again. This book demystifies the process and gives you a breakdown of some of the most common short film types, how their structures work, why their structures work and how to take your own short film idea to the next level. In a way, it teaches you how to create a short film as well.

What happened after the queen married her handsome prince? Did they live happily ever after, or did their marriage, like so many royal marriages past and present, fizzle into a loveless round of duty? This all-new companion audiobook by Daisy Goodwin and Sara Sheridan transports listeners to the private world of Victoria and Albert. Though first cousins, they could not have been more different: Victoria was impulsive, emotional, and capricious, Albert cautious, self-controlled, and logical. But together they forged a bond with each other.

Cuando El chavo del ocho se estrenó en los años 70, el programa ofrecía un retrato poco común de la vida de la clase trabajadora que resonó en la gente de toda América Latina. En el pico de su popularidad, 350 millones de personas lo sintonizaban cada semana. Y durante casi 50 años, el legado de “el chavo” se mantuvo vivo a través de una creciente base de fans multigeneracional y sus retransmisiones diarias. Hasta 2020, cuando El Chavo dejó de emitirse repentinamente.

To continue doing business in Germany, Hollywood studios agreed not to make films attacking Nazis or condemning persecution of Jews. Ben Urwand reveals this collaboration and the cast of characters it drew in, ranging from Goebbels to Louis B. Mayer. At the center was Hitler himself - obsessed with movies and their power to shape public opinion.

In The Time of My Life, celebrated music journalist Andrea Warner excavates the layers of Dirty Dancing, from its anachronistic, chart-topping soundtrack, to Baby and Johnny’s chemistry, to Bergstein’s political intentions, to the abortion subplot that is more relevant today than ever. The film’s remarkable longevity would never have been possible if it was just a throwaway summer fling story. It is precisely because of its themes—deeply feminist, sensitively written—that we, over 30 years later, are still holding our breath during that last, exhilarating lift.

An in-depth celebration of the romantic comedy’s modern golden era and its role in our culture, tracking the genre from its heyday in the ’80s and the ’90s, its unfortunate decline in the 2000s, and its explosive reemergence in the age of streaming, featuring exclusive interviews with the directors, writers, and stars of the iconic films that defined the genre.