Film Entertainment

At a time when the studio is making a stunning comeback, film historian Thomas Schatz provides an indispensable account of Hollywood's traditional blend of business and art. Working from industry documents, Schatz traces the development of house styles, the rise and fall of careers, and the making - and unmaking - of movies, from Frankenstein to Spellbound to Grand Hotel. The Genius of the System gives the definitive view of the workings of the Old Hollywood and the foundations of the New.

A fascinating and hilarious deep dive into 30 Rock, Tina Fey's beloved modern classic comedy. In this combination of narrative and oral history, culture writer and editor Mike Roe brings to life the history of the gloriously goofy show through interviews with the creators, stars, writers, and bit players.

Filled with revelations about the origins and making of American Graffiti, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Return of the Jedi, this only full-length biography of filmmaker and cinematic visionary George Lucas has been updated with a substantial new chapter that discusses the revamped Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition, the Star Wars prequels, the filming of the first installment, and the controversial ways in which Lucas's approach and success continue to alter the landscape of the film industry.

What's the greatest TV show ever? That debate reaches an epic conclusion in TV (the Book). Sepinwall and Seitz have identified and ranked the 100 greatest scripted shows in American TV history. Using a complex, obsessively all-encompassing scoring system, they've created a pantheon of top TV shows, each accompanied by essays delving into what made these shows great.

As author Ethan Mordden looks back at Chicago's various moving parts - including the original 1926 play that started it all, a sexy silent film directed by Cecil B. DeMille, a talkie remake with Ginger Rogers, the musical itself, and at last the movie of the musical - we learn how the American theater serves as a kind of alternative news medium, a town crier warning the public about the racy, devious interior contradictions of American society. Opinionated, witty, and rich in backstage anecdotes, All That Jazz brings the American musical to life in all its artistry and excitement.

By 1920, the movies had suddenly become America's new favorite pastime and one of the nation's largest industries. Never before had a medium possessed such power to influence; yet Hollywood's glittering ascendancy was threatened by a string of headline-grabbing tragedies - including the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, a legendary crime that has remained unsolved until now.

In 1994, the producers at MicroProse UK aspired to design a tactical game that matched or exceeded the success of their American counterparts. Nearby, a bespectacled teenage boy toiled away on his home computer, dreaming of the day his programming aptitude would catch up to the epic campaigns unfolding across his imagination. From his early experiments in board games to digital battlefields that lit up best seller charts, Monsters in the Dark charts the career of legendary designer Julian Gollop through the creation of 1994's X-COM.

Hollywood’s Dream Factory is now a nightmare of woke restrictions, identity politics run amok, and freedom-snuffing rules and regulations. The Oscars are unwatchable, as are many films and television shows thanks to the woke revolution. Virtue Bombs breaks down where Hollywood went so wrong, illustrates the slow-motion disaster infiltrating the industry, and offers a glimmer of hope for a woke-free tomorrow. Award-winning film critic Christian Toto has all the receipts, showcasing Hollywood’s virtue-signaling follies and how it could get much worse before it gets better.

In a new edition of this popular guidebook, filmmakers Alan Rosenthal and Ned Eckhardt show listeners how to utilize the latest innovations in equipment, technologies, and production techniques for success in the digital, web-based world of documentary film.

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.

In 1937, it seemed as if Cary Grant had it all: the fame and fortune of being a leading man for one of Hollywood’s biggest studios, with a life of luxury that was a world away from the hardship and misery he knew growing up in Bristol, England. But all that glitters is not gold. Grant felt that he had no say in the development of his own career, and he was seeing signs that the studio was losing interest in him…other than to just be a handsome face. He yearned for better roles to prove himself as an actor. And so, he did the inconceivable.

In this fully updated second edition, award-winning film director and Slamdance Film Festival cofounder Dan Mirvish gives you soup-to-nuts, cradle-to-grave advice on every aspect of the filmmaking lifestyle and craft. He drops advice on playing the Hollywood and indie-film games, and shows you how to finance, cast, shoot and show your indie feature, documentary, episodic series, short film, student film, web video or big-budget blockbuster. Includes extensive tips on film festivals, distribution and continuing and sustaining your career.

For the first time, learn what really happened inside the walls of Hotel des Mille Collines. In Inside the Hotel Rwanda, survivor Edouard Kayihura tells his own personal story of what life was really like during those harrowing days within the walls of that infamous hotel and offers the testimonies of others who survived there, from Hutu and Tutsi to UN peacekeepers. Kayihura writes of a divided society and his journey to the place he believed would be safe from slaughter.

Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990) rose from the ranks of chorus girl to become one of Hollywood's most talented leading women-and America's highest paid woman in the mid-1940s. Shuttled among foster homes as a child, she took a number of low-wage jobs while she determinedly made the connections that landed her in successful Broadway productions. Stanwyck then acted in a stream of high-quality films from the 1930s through the 1950s. Directors such as Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang, and Frank Capra treasured her particular magic

Part autobiography, part master class, Living the Braveheart Life invites us to explore five major archetypes in Braveheart that resonate not only in Randall's life but in the modern-day lives of both men and women: the father, teacher, warrior, sage, and outlaw. Join blockbuster film director Randall Wallace on the journey of his creative and personal life.

New York Times best-selling author, comedian, and actor Patton Oswalt shares his entertaining memoir about coming of age as a performer and writer in the late '90s while obsessively watching classic films at the legendary New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. Between 1995 and 1999, Patton Oswalt lived with an unshakeable addiction. It wasn't drugs, alcohol, or sex. It was film.

Oscar-winning director Hayao Miyazaki is the genius behind such animated classics as Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds. His bountiful imagination and compassion have earned him accolades the world over. Until the early 1990s, Miyazaki’s work was largely unfamiliar to American audiences. But that would soon change, and now fans of all ages eagerly await new material from the master.

At last, everything you ever wanted to know about "Gilligan's Island" from the Professor himself, Russell Johnson. Sit right back and take a nostalgic, first-hand look into the world of Gilligan's Island. Directly from the ship's log, Russell Johnson takes you the day when Sherwood Schwartz shipwrecked seven strangers on a tiny desert isle—and America hasn't been the same since.

Hosts Mike Kalinowski and Brad Gilmore team up in this comprehensive breakdown of the longest running film series in the history of cinema. In Bond, James Bond, they explore the cinematic history of the James Bond collection to celebrate everything it got right and reflect on everything it got wrong.

There are over 1,094 books on Amazon that show you "how to write a screenplay," but next-to-nothing on how to break into Hollywood, sell your script, and build a successful writing career. Until now.