Vincente Minnelli, Hollywood's Dark Dreamer is the first full-length biography of Vincente Minnelli, one of the most legendary and influential directors in the twentieth century, encompassing his life, his art, and his artistry. Minnelli started out as a set and costume designer in New York, where he first notably applied his aesthetic principles to the Broadway stage design of Scheherazade. He became the first director of New York's Radio City Music Hall, as well as some ...

A deep dive into the emergence and success of independent filmmaking in AmericaA Los Angeles Times BestsellerThe most important development in American culture of the last two decades is the emergence of independent cinema as a viable alternative to Hollywood. Indeed, while Hollywood's studios devote much of their time and energy to churning out big-budget, star-studded event movies, a renegade independent cinema that challenges mainstream ...

Through intimate encounters with the life and work of five contemporary gay male directors, this book develops a framework for interpreting what it means to make a gay film or adopt a gay point of view. For most of the twentieth century, gay characters and gay themes were both underrepresented and misrepresented in mainstream cinema. Since the 1970s, however, a new generation of openly gay directors has turned the closet inside out, bringing a poignant immediacy to modern cinema and popula...

Over the decades, gay cinema has reflected the community's journey from persecution to emancipation to acceptance. Politicized dramas like Victim in the 1960s, The Naked Civil Servant in the 1970s, and the AIDS cinema of the 1980s have given way in recent years to films which celebrate a vast array of gay lifestyles. Gay films have undergone a major shift from the fringe to the mainstream—2005's Academy Awards were dubbed "the gay Oscars" with statues going to Brokeba...

This intimate and critical biography of the pioneering director explores his life, work, and creative process—with contributions by fellow filmmakers.For decades, Robert Altman fascinated audiences with films such as McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville, Gosford Park, and many others. He won critical acclaim by combining technical innovation with subversive, satirical humor and impassioned political engagement. His ability to explore so many...

Drawing on his unprecedented access to Grace Kelly, bestselling biographer Donald Spoto at last offers an intimate, honest, and authoritative portrait of one of Hollywood’s legendary actresses.In just seven years–from 1950 through 1956–Grace Kelly embarked on a whirlwind career that included roles in eleven movies. From the principled Amy Fowler Kane in High Noon to the thrill-seeking Frances Stevens of To Catch a Thief, Grace established herself as one of Hollywo...

Is The Wire better than Breaking Bad? Is Cheers better than Seinfeld? What's the best high school show ever made? Why did Moonlighting really fall apart? Was the Arrested Development Netflix season brilliant or terrible?For twenty years-since they shared a TV column at Tony Soprano's hometown newspaper-critics Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz have been debating these questions and many more, but it all ultimately boils down ...

“Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.”—Cary GrantHe is Hollywood’s most fascinating and timeless star. Although he came to personify the debonair American, Cary Grant was born Archibald Leach on January 18, 1904, in the seaport village of Bristol, England. Combining the captivating beauty of silent-screen legend Rudolph Valentino with the masculine irresistibility of Clark Gable, Grant emerged as Hollywood’s quintessential leading man. Today, “the ...

A master film critic is at her witty, exhilarating, and opinionated best in this career-spanning collection featuring pieces on Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather, and other modern movie classics“Film criticism is exciting just because there is no formula to apply,” Pauline Kael once observed, “just because you must use everything you are and everything you know.” Between 1968 and 1991, as regular film reviewer for The New Yorker, Kael used ...

With a new epilogue updated from its hardcover edition titled Creepy Crawling: Charles Manson and the Many Lives of America's Most Infamous Family"Creepy crawling" was the Manson Family's practice of secretly entering someone's home, and without harming anyone, leaving only a trace of evidence that they had been there, some reminder that the sanctity of the private home had been breached. Now, author Jeffrey Melnick reveals just how much the Family creepy ...

Joan Crawford was one of the most incandescent film stars of all time, yet she was also one of the most misunderstood. In this brilliantlyresearched, thoughtful, and intimate biography, bestselling author Donald Spoto goes beyond the popular caricature—the abusive, unstable mother portrayed in her adopted daughter Christina Crawford's memoir, Mommie Dearest—to give us a three-dimensional portrait of a very human woman, her dazzling career, and her extraordinarily dramatic life and...

Pick your next movie to watch with this collection of four decades of 4-star reviews from the Pulitzer Prize–winning film critic.Spanning the length of Roger Ebert's career as the leading American movie critic, this book contains all of his four-star reviews written during that time from About Last Night . . . to You Can Count on Me. A great guide for movie watching.