With a wealth of biographies out there it’s often difficult to differentiate yourself from the herd by finding someone new to say. A figure like Alfred Hitchcock, outside of being analyzed from a filmic standpoint, is an open book – pun intended – when it comes to research and information. None of this is meant…
Part of the reason I read film books is to have an outsider entice me to check out a movie. Where some of you come here to have me tell you whether a certain film is worth your time or not – and if you value my opinion, I thank you – I defer to…
Whether you’ve watched it once or countless times there’s no getting Casablanca out of your blood. “As Time Goes By,” the La Marseillaise sequence, Bogie and Bergman, Casablanca is the film that cemented the Hollywood style, creating a wealth of imitators for decades to come. So with Casablanca’s familiarity, it’s safe to assume there’s nothing new…
Tippi Hedren says in the introduction to her autobiography that so much has been written about her that it’s high time she set the record straight. Tippi is as succinct a title and encapsulation of the writer behind it as the name implies, for good and ill. It’s unclear whether Hedren keeps things close to…
When I started reading Stephen Michael Shearer’s biography, Beautiful, on actress Hedy Lamarr I had no idea a documentary about the raven-haired starlet was being produced. Bombshell: The Life of Hedy Lamarr recently premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival to great reviews and I can’t wait to learn even more about the woman oft-considered the most…
Today’s book is not a biography as the author would claim. Writer Margaret Talbot‘s biography/Hollywood history book The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father’s Twentieth Century is a fantastic blend of biography and Hollywood history with an eye towards illustrating the changing mores of publicity, and the Hollywood studio system. Talbot openly states in the…
So far this feature has focused on books devoted to classic film but I just couldn’t pass up an opportunity to read and review Twitch Upon a Star: The Bewitched Life and Career of Elizabeth Montgomery. Bewitched is up next to I Love Lucy as being one of my favorite shows and I always found…
