A captivating memoir from Canada’s foremost hockey historian and a beloved NHL commentatorIt’s been 85 years since Brian McFarlane first laced a pair of skates and tested the black ice on a tiny pond. And then he discovered the joy of hockey. Ultimately, there would be grade school hockey, high school hockey, junior hockey, college hockey, and, miraculously, two decades with the NHL Oldtimers anchoring his life. He was the rank amateur playing on a line with the Bi...

A heartfelt addition to McFarlane’s epic canon of hockey writingFrom its moving introductory homage to the late Jean Béliveau, to its subtle, remarkable considerations of how the sport was shaped by legends like Newsy Lalonde, Gordie Howe, Dick Irvin Sr., Ted Kennedy, and Hobey Baker, to its poignant lament for the untimely death of American hockey hero “Badger” Bob Johnson, Golden Oldies is the product of a lifetime love of hockey and a career in the game...

101 fascinating stories about hockey that will enlighten and delight fans.Have you heard about the referee who was dragged back to the rink by an angry mob demanding he change the result? Or the playoff goal that was scored with half a puck? Or the fourteen-year-old who played in a professional game?In 101 Fascinating Hockey Facts, NHL elder-statesman Brian McFarlane tells these and 98 other tales from the rink. Hockey fans will love flipping throu...

This book offers the first serious critical study of Roger Michell’s career as a filmmaker. Best known for Notting Hill, Michell brought a distinctive sensitivity to his work in both the UK and the US, across genres ranging from romantic comedy to historical drama.While Michell had success in theatre and television, the focus here is on his twenty-year career in film and the particular qualities he brought to adaptation and character-driven storytelling. The book explores ...

Focusing on the incidence of the ‘Westerns’ film genre in the 120-odd years of Australian cinema history, exploring how the American genre has been adapted to the changing Australian social, political and cultural contexts of their production, including the shifting emphases in the representation of the Indigenous population.The idea for the book came to the author while he was writing two recent articles. One was an essay for Screen Education on the western in Australian ...

Fred Schepisi is one of the crucial names associated with the revival of the Australian film industry in the 1970s. The Films of Fred Schepisi traces the lead-up to his critical successes in feature filmmaking, via his earlier award-winning success as a producer in advertising commercials in the 1960s and the setting up of his own company. Unlike some directors, he derived from this experience a sure sense of the commercial aspects of filmmaking, as well as its aesthetic considera...

For more than forty years, readers of Melbourne newspapers and journals and radio listeners have learned about the latest films through the interpretations and judgments of Brian McFarlane. Over that time, McFarlane's reviews of and articles on film have featured in The Age, Australian Book Review, Cinema Papers, Inside Story, Meanjin, Metro, Screening the Past, Senses of Cinema, Sight & Sound, and many other ...

A captivating memoir from Canada’s foremost hockey historian and a beloved NHL commentatorIt’s been 85 years since Brian McFarlane first laced a pair of skates and tested the black ice on a tiny pond. And then he discovered the joy of hockey. Ultimately, there would be grade school hockey, high school hockey, junior hockey, college hockey, and, miraculously, two decades with the NHL Oldtimers anchoring his life. He was the rank amateur playing on a line with the Bi...

This is the first book to provide a thorough examination of the British 'B' movie, from the war years to the 1960s. The authors draw on archival research, contemporary trade papers and interviews with key 'B' filmmakers to map the 'B' movie phenomenon both as artefact and as industry product, and as a reflection on their times.

This is a book for all those who have been absorbed and moved by Brief Encounter in the seventy or so years since its first appearance. It explores the central relationship of the film, where two people who fall unexpectedly in love come to realise that there is more to life than self-gratification. Mores have undoubtedly changed, for better or worse, but that essential moral choice has never lost its power. While acknowledging this, the book goes further in an effort to account f...

In Peter Puck and the Stolen Stanley Cup, Peter is caught up in the rivalry between two teams vying for the Stanley Cup. The night before the final game, someone sets a fire set to distract the guard and steals the Stanley Cup. Rescued from the flames in the nick of time, Peter sets off in pursuit of the thief. Will his powers of observation and sleuthing skills help him to unmask the thief? And will the Cup be recovered in time for the game?

The ‘Gainsborough melodramas’ were a mainstay of 1940s British cinema, and helped make the careers of such stars as Margaret Lockwood, James Mason and Stewart Granger. But what was unique about these films? And who were the directors behind them? This book presents four key filmmakers, each with his own talents and specialities. It traces their professional lives through the highs of the 1940s, when the popularity of Gainsborough films was at its peak, to the tougher decades that followed ...