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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Individual actors & performers
Thanks to his performance as lovelorn werewolf Jacob Black in "The
Twilight Saga" and his years of acting in movies and television,
Taylor Lautner is an upcoming international star with an already
established global fanbase. "The Taylor Lautner Album" recounts his
life and career to date, from his formative years in Michigan and
early martial arts achievements to his first television roles, his
lucky break in "The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D, " his
devotion to his fans, his experiences auditioning for and making
"Twilight, " and how he had to fight to be recast as Jacob Black in
the sequels by embarking upon a punishing gym regime. It also
explores life on the "New Moon" set, Lautner's relationships with
his costars, and his plans for the next films in "The Twilight
Saga." Illustrated throughout with stunning, full-color
photographs, this book is a worthy and beautifully crafted addition
to any fan's collection.
Carol Burnett spent most of her childhood in a Depression-scarred Hollywood neighborhood, where she lived in a single-room apartment with her endearingly batty grandmother, Nanny, a hypochondriacal Christian Scientist with a buried past. The child of two alcoholic parents, Burnett presents a sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking coming-of-age: from her sadly hopeful mother, who was hooked on Tinseltown fantasy, to the first signs of her own comic gift; from happy weekends spent with her father, to their last tragic meeting in a public sanatorium.
Featuring a new Afterword by the author, about teaming up with her daughter to bring this story to Broadway, One More Time is an intimate, touching, and astonishing narrative of a financially desperate but emotionally rich childhood on the wrong side of Hollywood’s tracks.
Christian Petzold (b. 1960) is the best-known filmmaker associated
with the "Berlin School" of postunification German cinema.
Identifying as an intellectual, Petzold self-consciously approaches
his work for both the big and the small screen by weaving critical
reflection on the very conditions of contemporary filmmaking into
his approach. Archeologically reconstructing genre filmmaking in a
national film production context that makes the production of genre
cinema virtually impossible, he repeatedly draws on plots from
classic films, including Alfred Hitchcock’s, in order to provide
his viewers with the distinct pleasures only cinema can instill
without, however, allowing his audience the comforts the "cinema of
identification" affords them. Including thirty-five interviews,
Christian Petzold: Interviews is the first book in any language to
document how one of Germany’s best-known directors thinking about
his work has evolved over the course of a quarter of a century,
spanning his days as a flailing student filmmaker in the early
1990s in postunified Germany to 2020, when his reputation as one of
world cinema’s most respected auteurs has been firmly enshrined.
The interviews collected here—thirty of which are published in
English for the first time—highlight Petzold’s career-long
commitment to foregrounding how economic operations affect
individual lives. The volume makes for a rich resource for readers
interested in Petzold’s work or contemporary German cinema but
also those looking for theoretically challenging and sophisticated
commentary offered by one of global art cinema’s leading figures.
Paul McDonald's study of the actor-filmmaker George Clooney traces
the star's career, from his role in the hit television medical
drama ER to his dual screen persona, allowing him to move
seamlessly from commercial hits such as Out of Sight (1998) and
Ocean's Eleven (2001) to more offbeat roles in such films as Oh
Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). McDonald also considers Clooney's
political activism and his roles in such explicity political films
as Three Kings (1999) and Syriana (2005), as well as his work as a
producer of films including Argo (2012) and as director of
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002); Good Night, and Good Luck
(2005) and Suburbicon (2017) among others. McDonald places Clooney
in the context of the Hollywood star system, considering the
argument that Clooney's star persona has many similarities with
that of classical Hollywood movie stars such as Cary Grant, but
also addresses Clooney as a very 21st century transmedia celebrity.
Stephen Fry invites readers to take a glimpse at his life story in
the unputdownable More Fool Me. 'Oh dear I am an arse. I expect
there'll be what I believe is called an "intervention" soon. I keep
picturing it. All my friends bearing down on me and me denying
everything until my pockets are emptied. Oh the shame' In his early
thirties, Stephen Fry - writer, comedian, star of stage and screen
- had, as they say, 'made it'. Much loved in A Bit of Fry and
Laurie, Blackadder and Jeeves and Wooster, author of a critically
acclaimed and bestselling first novel, The Liar, with a glamorous
and glittering cast of friends, he had more work than was perhaps
good for him. What could possibly go wrong? Then, as the 80s drew
to a close, he discovered a most enjoyable way to burn the candle
at both ends, and took to excess like a duck to breadcrumbs.
Writing and recording by day, and haunting a never ending series of
celebrity parties, drinking dens, and poker games by night, in a
ludicrous and impressive act of bravado, he fooled all those except
the very closest to him, some of whom were most enjoyably engaged
in the same dance. He was - to all intents and purposes - a high
functioning addict. Blazing brightly and partying wildly as the 80s
turned to the 90s, AIDS became an epidemic and politics turned
really nasty, he was so busy, so distracted by the high life, that
he could hardly see the inevitable, headlong tumble that must
surely follow . . . Containing raw, electric extracts from his
diaries of the time, More Fool Me is a brilliant, eloquent account
by a man driven to create and to entertain - revealing a side to
him he has long kept hidden.
Whether as a curiosity or a beloved idol, Gene Kelly (1912-1996)
lives on in our cultural memory as a fantastic dancer in MGM
musicals, especially Singin' in the Rain. But dancing, however
extraordinary, was only one of his many gifts. This book, for the
first time, offers a full picture of Gene Kelly as the Renaissance
man he actually was - dancer, yes, but also choreographer, actor,
clown, singer, director, teacher, and mentor. Kelly was star of
radio and television as well as film, avant-garde as artist and
auteur but also ahead of the curve in opening the world of dance to
different races, ethnicities, and genders. Gene Kelly: The Making
of a Creative Legend takes us from Kelly's youth in Depression-era
Pittsburgh through his years on Broadway and ascendance to stardom
in Hollywood. Authors Hess and Dabholkar pay particular attention
to his work with the US Navy, solo directing, and lesser-known but
considerable accomplishments in television, radio, and on the stage
in later years. The book gives us a rare inside look at Kelly's
relationships with dancing partners and peers from Leslie Caron,
Vera-Ellen, and Cyd Charisse to Fred Astaire, and at his
directorial collaboration with Stanley Donen and Vincent Minnelli.
The authors show us significant but little-examined facets of
Kelly's character and career, such as the political convictions
that got him graylisted in Hollywood; his passion for creating
cine-dance and serving as an ambassador of dance in America; and
his forging of links between dance, civil rights, and the 'common
man.' Steeped in research and replete with photographs, this career
biography uniquely encompasses all phases of Gene Kelly's life and
work - and finally gives us a full portrait of this central figure
in the history of the film musical during Hollywood's Golden Age.
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