An eminent film writer looks behind the curtain of the California dream It hardly needs to be argued: nothing has contributed more to the mythology of California than the movies. Fed by the film industry, the California dream is instantly recognizable to people everywhere yet remains evasive for nearly everyone, including Californians themselves. That paradox is the subject of longtime San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle's first book in nine years. The opposite of a dry historical primer, California in the Movies is a freewheeling journey through several dozen big-screen visions of the Golden State, with LaSalle's unmistakable contrarian humor as the guide. His writing, unerringly perceptive and resistant to cliche, brings clarity to the haze of Hollywood reverie. He leaps effortlessly between genres and generations, moving with ease from Double Indemnity to the first two versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Boyz N the Hood to Booksmart. There are natural disasters, heinous crimes, dubious utopias, dangerous romances, and unforgettable nights. Equally entertaining and unsettling, this book is a bold dissection of the California dream and its hypnotizing effect on the modern world.

Even as actresses become increasingly marginalized by Hollywood, French cinema is witnessing an explosion of female talent--a Golden Age unlike anything the world has seen since the days of Stanwyck, Hepburn, Davis, and Garbo. In France, the joy of acting is alive and well. Scores of French actresses are doing the best work of their lives in movies tailored to their star images and unique personalities. Yet virtually no one this side of the Atlantic even knows about them. Viewers who feel shortchanged by Hollywood will be thrilled to discover "The Beauty of the Real."
This book showcases a range of contemporary French actresses to an audience that will know how to appreciate them--an American public hungry for the exact qualities that these women represent. To spend time with them, to admire their flashing intelligence and fearless willingness to depict life as it is lived, gives us what we're looking for in movies but so rarely find: insights into womanhood, meditations on the dark and light aspect's of life's journey, revelations and explorations that move viewers to reflect on their own lives. The stories they bring to the screen leave us feeling renewed and excited about movies again.
Based on one-on-one interviews and the viewing of numerous films, Mick LaSalle has put together a fascinating profile of recent generations of French film stars and an overview of their best work. These women's insights and words illuminate his book, which will answer once and for all the two questions Americans most often have about women and the movies: Where did all the great actresses go? And how can I see their movies?
Please click here to see a video discussing "The Beauty of the Real" at the Roxie Film Festival.

Also includes lists of stage, radio and television appearances.

In the pre-Code Hollywood era, between 1929 and 1934, women in American cinema took lovers, had babies out of wedlock, got rid of cheating husbands, enjoyed their sexuality, led unapologetic careers, and, in general, acted the way many think women only acted after 1968.

Before then, women on screen had come in two varieties-sweet ingenue or vamp. Then two stars came along: Greta Garbo, who turned the femme fatale into a woman whose capacity for love and sacrifice made all other human emotions seem pale; and Norma Shearer, who succeeded in taking the ingenue to a place she'd never been: the bedroom. In their wake came a deluge of other complicated women-Marlene Dietrich, Jean Harlow, and Mae West, to name a few. Then, in July 1934, the draconian Production Code became the law in Hollywood and these modern women of the screen were banished, not to be seen again until the code was repealed three decades later.

A thorough survey and a tribute to these films, Complicated Women reveals how this was the true Golden Age of women's films.