'Fascinating, harrowing, courageous, and deeply felt, these explorations of "dangerous stories", harmful past events and trials of the soul speak to all who've encountered dark waters and have had to navigate them.' Margaret Atwood Sarah Polley's work as an actor, screenwriter and director is celebrated for its honesty, complexity and deep humanity. She brings all those qualities, along with her exquisite storytelling skills, to these six essays. Each one captures a piece of Polley's life as she remembers it, while at the same time examining the fallibility of memory and the embodied reactions of children and women adapting and surviving. The guiding light is the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as the person she is now but was not then. In this extraordinary book, Polley explores what it is to live in one's body, in a constant state of becoming, learning and changing. As she was advised after a catastrophic head injury - if we relinquish our protective crouch and run towards the danger, then life can be reset, reshaped and lived afresh. '[Polley is] a stunningly sophisticated observer of the world and an imperfect witness to the truth.' New York Times

Collection of seven films from Canadian writer/director Atom Egoyan. In 'Exotica' (1994), pet shop owner Thomas (Don McKellar) arrives in town with a secret cache of rare bird eggs. Sharing a cab from the airport he ends up in Exotica, a local strip club. Fascinated by star stripper Christina (Mia Kirshner), he becomes drawn into her sordid lifestyle, along with the club DJ (Elias Koteas) and a disturbed tax auditor (Bruce Greenwood). As the multiple narratives and chronological twists unfold, the characters find their lives becoming inexorably intertwined as they head towards a shocking conclusion. In 'The Adjuster' (1991), Koteas plays Noah Render, an insurance adjuster whose attempts to help others mask a deeper malaise in his own life. His wife Hera (Arsinée Khanjian) is a disillusioned film censor who obsessively copies the most explicit scenes in the films she is supposed to review. After Noah helps a rich young woman whose house has burned down, Hera invites a young film-maker into their home to shoot a movie, and as their elaborate sexual fantasies are acted out on video, they begin to explore a world where voyeurism and exhibitionism are all-consuming. In 'Family Viewing' (1987), Van (Aidan Tierney) finds himself in a difficult situation when he realises that his father Stan (David Hemblen) is recording over the family's home movies with home-made pornography. Not only is Stan's lover Sandra (Gabrielle Rose) completely at the mercy of his dark fantasies, but she also expresses a sexual interest in Van. Dividing his time between the family home and a nearby nursing residence caring for his aging grandmother Armen (Selma Keklikian), Van meets Aline (Khanjian), who works as a phone-sex operator, and the two concoct a plan to escape his emotionally cold father. In 'The Sweet Hereafter' (1997), powerful lawyer Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm) arrives in a small town in British Columbia after 14 children die in a school bus crash. Announcing that he will win compensation for the townsfolk, Stephens investigates the mysterious circumstances surrounding the accident, discovering various dark secrets lurking beneath the surface. In 'Calendar' (1993), a photographer (Egoyan) and his wife (Khanjian) travel to Armenia to photograph churches for use in a calendar, employing a native speaking driver (Ashot Adamyan) to escort them around the country. On their travels a relationship develops between the photographer's wife and the Armenian guide. Looking back on this time from his apartment in Toronto, the newly separated photographer contacts women through an escort agency and invites them to dinner, all while his estranged wife tries reconcile with him. In 'Next of Kin' (1984), Peter (Patrick Tierney) is a young man from an Anglo-Saxon family who is constantly under pressure to do something meaningful with his life. The family visit a therapist in the hopes of getting to the bottom of the tension between themselves and Peter's apparent laziness. When Peter visits the clinic before the next session hoping to view the video recording of their last meeting he is given the wrong tape and instead is shown the recording of an immigrant family who had given up their first son for adoption upon entering the country. What Peter then suggests to his family and therapist is that he take a break in order to find himself, but what he actually does is assume the identity of this other family's long lost son. Finally, in 'Speaking Parts' (1989), struggling actor Lance (Michael McManus) works in housekeeping at a local hotel while waiting for his first speaking role. Meanwhile, his co-worker Lisa (Khanjian) is obsessed with him and seeks out all the movies he appears in as a means of satisfying her voyeuristic tendencies. When Lance learns a scriptwriter, Clara (Rose), is staying at the hotel he chooses to leave his résumé in her room in the hope that she'll give him a part in her next film about her late brother. Before long the two become romantically involved and Lance finds himself with his first lead role but Clara becomes increasingly distressed when a series of changes are made to her story by the movie's producer.

'Fascinating, harrowing, courageous, and deeply felt, these explorations of "dangerous stories", harmful past events and trials of the soul speak to all who've encountered dark waters and have had to navigate them.' Margaret Atwood Sarah Polley's work as an actor, screenwriter and director is celebrated for its honesty, complexity and deep humanity. She brings all those qualities, along with her exquisite storytelling skills, to these six essays. Each one captures a piece of Polley's life as she remembers it, while at the same time examining the fallibility of memory and the embodied reactions of children and women adapting and surviving. The guiding light is the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as the person she is now but was not then. In this extraordinary book, Polley explores what it is to live in one's body, in a constant state of becoming, learning and changing. As she was advised after a catastrophic head injury - if we relinquish our protective crouch and run towards the danger, then life can be reset, reshaped and lived afresh. '[Polley is] a stunningly sophisticated observer of the world and an imperfect witness to the truth.' New York Times

Life is what you make it.

And for 23 year old Ann, as much as she can make of the last few months of her life will be all that encapsulates her in the memories of a husband, two daughters, a lover, a mother and a best friend.

Compiling a list of all she has ever wanted to do with her life but has been too afraid or unwilling to do, a shock diagnosis unburdens Ann's spirit, letting her create the perfect "life without me" for those dear to her. She also feels free to indulge her heart and head's desires before the chance to do so disappears forever.

Featuring a dazzling cast and a justly acclaimed and Goya-nominated lead performance from Sarah Polley, Isabel Coixet's acclaimed film is a ravishing yet sincerely unsentimental portrait of the acceptance of fate and the difference one life can make, no matter how inconsequential that life may seem, or how brief that time is.

Stars, Fan Magazines and Audiences focuses on movie magazines, publications first produced in 1911 for movie fans in the United States, but soon reaching movie fans on a global scale. Bringing together scholars from different disciplinary and international contexts, this collection considers fan magazines as objects of material and visual history. The designer's toolkit aided movie magazines in seducing their readers, with visual elements, such as fonts, photographs, and illustrations, plied across both editorial content and advertisements. In this way, each issue was subtly designed to stir desire in readers and moviegoers alike. By focusing on the visual aspects of fan magazines, a key pleasure for readers, this collection provides detailed examples of how visual elements engendered aspiration and longing, thus putting the visual contents of the fan magazines at the heart of every chapter.

A fun, informative guide to hosting the perfect party every time. "Every dinner party experience I’ve had in the last ten years at Corey’s has been incredible. But practice really does make perfect and I can now honestly say there is nowhere I’d rather be in the world than at his table … I can’t begin to express the relief I felt in reading this book and realizing there was a method to his success." - Sarah Polley, from the introduction We’ve all been there: twenty minutes before guests arrive, and you’re unsure if you’ve got enough wine, or enough chairs, or whether your friend is a vegetarian or a vegan. Hosting a dinner party is hard, but Corey Mintz can help. For his popular Toronto Star column, "Fed," he has presided over 115 dinner parties, every week opening his home to strangers and friends alike in an effort to perfect the craft of hosting. And in How to Host a Dinner Party, he shares everything he’s learned in a hilarious handbook that will appeal to everyone — from those throwing their first dinner party to seasoned entertainers looking to enhance their skills. This book guides readers through everything they need to know about hosting, starting with the golden rule — that the goal of a dinner party is to have fun with our friends, not to show off our cooking skills. It will explain why we like to gather for dinner, when we should host, who we should invite, what we should cook, and how we should cook it. Featuring recipes, anecdotes, expert analysis, and an endless bounty of how-to tips, it is the essential guide to perfecting the art of welcoming people into your home.

California 1860 and prospector Daniel Dillon (Peter Mullan) has made a fortune in gold and is now running Kingdom Come, a small town built in the heart of the Sierra mountains. He wants to turn the town into a thriving city and to this end he asks Dalglish (Wes Bentley), an engineer plotting the course of the Pacific Railroad Expedition, to survey the surrounding area. But then Dillon's wife (Nastassja Kinski) and twenty-year-old daughter (Sarah Polley), both of whom he had traded for his goldmine years before, arrive in town asking for help. Dillon is overcome with guilt, and leaves his mistress Lucia (Milla Jovovich) in order to seek his wife's forgiveness. Lucia herself then takes up with Dalglish, who tells Dillon that the railroad will not be passing through his town, thereby causing the increasingly-unhinged prospector to reach for his rifle....