Luckily for Elder and his readers, there’s plenty more. A companion of sorts to Elder’s 2011 book The Film That Changed My Life, the Chicago Review Press paperback operates on several levels, from learning tool to reference guide to Netflix queue-filler. As with the earlier work, the author leans on 35 directors to build its […]
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Nice Guys Don’t Work in Hollywood: The Adventures of an Aesthete in the Movie Business — Curtis Harrington
Unlike so many Tinseltown true tales, Nice Guys Don’t Work in Hollywood doesn’t begin with a tumultuous childhood. Although the only child grew up in the throes of the Great Depression, Harrington’s upbringing was happy. He found escape (and influence) in the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, the pages of Esquire magazine and the flicker […]
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The Lowbrow Reader Reader
Thirteen years later, my zine became the victim of its own success: The process simply ceased to be fun for me, so after 37 issues — or was it 38? — an exhausted one-man publisher called it quits. I only tell you this because as I was wrapping up, a New York-based zine called The Lowbrow […]
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Every Night the Trees Disappear: Werner Herzog and the Making of Heart of Glass
As the subtitle suggests, Greenberg offers a fly-on-the-wall account of celebrated director Werner Herzog shooting his 1976 feature, Heart of Glass. While hardly among the greatest entries on the German filmmaker’s résumé, it’s notable for being the one where he hypnotized most of the cast before shooting every scene. For Herzog, it was merely an […]
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Archie Meets KISS
But who should follow these beasts from another dimension? Why, Gene Simmons and his bandmates, who proclaim, “We’re gonna rock those monsters back where they came from!!” (Double exclamation points theirs.) Therefore, the excellent title of Archie Meets KISS is fulfilled — certainly the greatest team-up in comics history since 1994’s Archie Meets the Punisher. […]
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Screenwriter Lou Berney aims to make a name in crime fiction with debut novel, ‘Gutshot Straight’
What’s that saying? When life gives you a Writers Guild of America strike, make lemonade? Or something like that. Lou Berney’s batch of lemonade hit shelves yesterday in the form of his debut novel, “Gutshot Straight.” The Oklahoma City resident earns his living as a Hollywood screenwriter. Although none of his works have been produced […]