Hundreds of Hollywood-on-Hollywood movies can be found throughout the history of American cinema, from the days of silents to the present. They include films from genres as far ranging as musical, film noir, melodrama, comedy, and action-adventure. Such movies seduce us with the promise of revealing the reality behind the camera. But, as part of the very industry they supposedly critique, they cannot take us behind the scenes in any true sense.Through close analysis of fifteen crit...

This thought-provoking collection explores significant new facets of an American author of lasting international stature.“Edited by three eminent Fitzgerald scholars, this fine book comprises nineteen incisive and provocative essays (most written for this collection) by . . . well-known Fitzgerald critics. The content is as varied as the international origins of its authors.” —ChoiceAs the author of some of the most compelling short stories ever wr...

Christopher Ames was born in Portland, Indiana. Where he has lived most of his forty-eight years. He is quiet and reserved in personality somebody who is willing to lend a hand when able. Chris has two wonderful children and three amazing grandchildren. Whom have inspired this story. The Lions Butterfly is his first attempt to write an imaginative story where a life lesson may be implied. Mr. Ames has no awards in writing or any formal college degree. In Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-five Ch...

This issue of the Neurosurgery Clinics, Guest Edited by Drs. Jian, Ames, and Shaffrey, presents updates and state-of-the-art approaches to spinal deformity surgery. Spine surgery is a timely topics amongst neurosurgeons, and one that is continually evolving. Articles in this issue include Radiographic and Clinical Evaluation of Adult Spinal Deformity; Use of Surgimap in Osteotomy Planning, Correction Calculation, and Reciprocal Changes; Adolescent Scoliosis Classification and Treatment; Os...

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 ...

From the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and playwright: an exhilaratingly subversive inside look at Hollywood from a filmmaker who’s always played by his own rules.Who really reads the scripts at the film studios? How is a screenplay like a personals ad? Why are there so many producers listed in movie credits? And what on earth do those producers do anyway? Refreshingly unafraid to offend, Mamet provides hilarious, surprising, and refreshingly forthright answers to these and ...

A veteran film critic offers a lively, opinionated guide to thinking and talking about movies -- from Casablanca to CluelessWhether we are trying to impress a date after an art house film screening or discussing Oscar nominations among friends, we all need ways to look at and talk about movies. But with so much variety between an Alfred Hitchcock thriller and a Nora Ephron romantic comedy, how can everyday viewers determine what makes a good movie...

Truman Capote and the Legacy ofIn Cold Blood is the anatomy of the origins of an American literary landmark and its legacy.Ralph F. Vosswas a high school junior in Plainville, Kansas in mid-November of 1959 when four members of the Herbert Clutter family were murdered in Holcomb, Kansas, by “four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives,” an unimaginable horror in a quiet farm community during the Eisenhower years. No one in Kansas or elsewhere could then have ...

From one of our leading film historians and interpreters: a brilliantly researched, irresistibly witty, delightfully illustrated examination of “the marriage movie”; what it is (or isn’t) and what it has to tell us about the movies—and ourselves.As long as there have been feature movies there have been marriage movies, and yet Hollywood has always been cautious about how to label them—perhaps because, unlike any other genre of film, the marriage movie resonates directly with the ex...

With the advent of the Second World War a new mood was discernible in film drama - an atmosphere of disillusion and a sense of foreboding, a dark quality that derived as much from the characters depicted as from the cinematographer's art. These films, among them such classics as Double Indemnity, The Woman in the Window, Touch of Evil and sunset Boulevard, emerged retrospectively as a genre in themselves when a French film critic referred to them collectively as film noir.Bruce Cro...

A brilliantly insightful and witty examination of beloved and little-known films, directors, and stars by one of America’s most esteemed critics.In his illuminating new work, Gary Giddins explores the evolution of film, from the first moving pictures and peepshows to the digital era of DVDs and online video-streaming. New technologies have changed our experience of cinema forever; we have peeled away from the crowded theater to be home alone with classic cinema. Re...

Thanks to iconic roles in films such as The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart was and is known as a tough guy. Yet the more complicated truth about him has, until now, remained out of focus. We have gone thundering past the intersection where personal history and screen character meet and mutually inform each other, argues legendary, award-winning film critic Richard Shickel. In this book, he lingers at that crossroads and contemplates the evidence about who and what Bogie rea...