Download or read book David Lean an Intimate Portrait written by Sandra Lean and published by Andr Deutsch. This book was released on 2008-07 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps the best known and most revered film director in the history of British cinema, a recent poll placed five Lean films in the 10 best films of all time. This book gives an illustrate insight into the life of the filmmaker, David Lean.
Download or read book Beyond the Epic written by Gene Phillips and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2006-11-24 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two-time Academy Award winner Sir David Lean (1908–1991) was one of the most prominent directors of the twentieth century, responsible for the classics The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Doctor Zhivago (1965). British-born Lean asserted himself in Hollywood as a major filmmaker with his epic storytelling and panoramic visions of history, but he started out as a talented film editor and director in Great Britain. As a result, he brought an art-house mentality to blockbuster films. Combining elements of biography and film criticism, Beyond the Epic: The Life and Films of David Lean uses screenplays and production histories to assess Lean’s body of work. Author Gene D. Phillips interviews actors who worked with Lean and directors who knew him, and their comments reveal new details about the director’s life and career. Phillips also explores Lean’s lesser-studied films, such as The Passionate Friends (1949), Hobson’s Choice (1954), and Summertime (1955). The result is an in-depth examination of the director in cultural, historical, and cinematic contexts. Lean’s approach to filmmaking was far different than that of many of his contemporaries. He chose his films carefully and, as a result, directed only sixteen films in a period of more than forty years. Those films, however, have become some of the landmarks of motion-picture history. Lean is best known for his epics, but Phillips also focuses on Lean’s successful adaptations of famous works of literature, including retellings of plays such as Brief Encounter (1945) and novels such as Great Expectations (1946), Oliver Twist (1948), and A Passage to India (1984). From expansive studies of war and strife to some of literature’s greatest high comedies and domestic dramas, Lean imbued all of his films with his unique creative vision. Few directors can match Lean’s ability to combine narrative sweep and psychological detail, and Phillips goes beyond Lean’s epics to reveal this unifying characteristic in the director’s body of work. Beyond the Epic is a vital assessment of a great director’s artistic process and his place in the film industry.
Download or read book The Epic Films of David Lean written by Constantine Santas and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, David Lean's now undervalued epics--The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, Ryan's Daughter, and A Passage to India--are restored to the elevated esteem they once held.
Download or read book David Lean written by Melanie Williams and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-16 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘A rule of mine is this’, said William Goldman in 1983, ‘there are always three hot directors and one of them is always David Lean.’ One of the best known and most admired of British film makers, David Lean had a directorial career that spanned five decades and encompassed everything from the intimate black-and-white romance of Brief Encounter (1945) to the spectacular Technicolor epic of Lawrence of Arabia (1962). This book offers comprehensive coverage of every feature film directed by Lean, yielding new insights on the established classics of his career as well as its lesser-known treasures. Its analysis prioritises questions of gender and emphasises the often-overlooked but highly significant recurrence of female-centred narratives throughout Lean’s career. Drawing extensively on archival historical materials while also presenting nuanced close readings of individual films, David Lean offers a fascinating and original account of the work of a remarkable British film maker.
Download or read book Losing Our Way written by Bob Herbert and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From longtime New York Times columnist Bob Herbert comes a wrenching portrayal of ordinary Americans struggling for survival in a nation that has lost its way In his eighteen years as an opinion columnist for The New York Times, Herbert championed the working poor and the middle class. After filing his last column in 2011, he set off on a journey across the country to report on Americans who were being left behind in an economy that has never fully recovered from the Great Recession. The portraits of those he encountered fuel his new book, Losing Our Way. Herbert’s combination of heartrending reporting and keen political analysis is the purest expression since the Occupy movement of the plight of the 99 percent. The individuals and families who are paying the price of America’s bad choices in recent decades form the book’s emotional center: an exhausted high school student in Brooklyn who works the overnight shift in a factory at minimum wage to help pay her family’s rent; a twenty-four-year-old soldier from Peachtree City, Georgia, who loses both legs in a misguided, mismanaged, seemingly endless war; a young woman, only recently engaged, who suffers devastating injuries in a tragic bridge collapse in Minneapolis; and a group of parents in Pittsburgh who courageously fight back against the politicians who decimated funding for their children’s schools. Herbert reminds us of a time in America when unemployment was low, wages and profits were high, and the nation’s wealth, by current standards, was distributed much more equitably. Today, the gap between the wealthy and everyone else has widened dramatically, the nation’s physical plant is crumbling, and the inability to find decent work is a plague on a generation. Herbert traces where we went wrong and spotlights the drastic and dangerous shift of political power from ordinary Americans to the corporate and financial elite. Hope for America, he argues, lies in a concerted push to redress that political imbalance. Searing and unforgettable, Losing Our Way ultimately inspires with its faith in ordinary citizens to take back their true political power and reclaim the American dream.
Download or read book David Susskind written by Stephen Battaglio and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2010-10-12 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rich biography of one of the most important cultural figures of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s—maverick television producer and talk show host David Susskind A flamboyant impresario who began his career as an agent, David Susskind helped define a fledgling television industry. He was a provocateur who fought to bring high-toned literary works to TV. His series East Side/West Side and N.Y.P.D. broke the color barrier in casting and brought gritty, urban realism to prime time. He indulged his passion for issues and ideas with his long running discussion program, first called Open End and then The David Susskind Show, where guests could come from The White House one week and a whore house the next. The groundbreaking program made news year in and year out. His legendary live interview with Nikita Khrushchev at the height of the Cold War inflamed both the political and media establishments. Susskind was an enfant terrible whose life—both on and off the screen—makes fascinating reading. His rough edges, appetite for women, and scorn for the business side of his profession often left his own career hanging by a thread. Through extensive original reporting and deep access to David Susskind's personal papers, family members and former associates, Stephen Battaglio creates a vivid portrait of a go-go era in American media. David Susskind is as much a biography of an expansive and glamorous time in the television business as it is the life of one of its most colorful and important players.
Download or read book India Calling written by Anand Giridharadas and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2011-02-28 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reversing his parents immigrant path, a young writer returns to India and discovers an old country making itself new. Anand Giridharadas sensed something was afoot as his plane prepared to land in Bombay. An elderly passenger looked at him and said, Were all trying to go that way, pointing to the rear. You, youre going this way. Giridharadas was...
Download or read book David Lean written by David Lean and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2009 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interviews with the director of Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, A Passage to India, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and many other epic films
Download or read book David Lean written by Kevin Brownlow and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 1996-08-15 with total page 1253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The life and its biographer provide a landmark work on the cinema. Emerging from a childhood of nearly Dickensian darkness, David Lean found his great success as a director of the appropriately titled Great Expectations. There followed his legendary black-and-white films of the 1940s and his four-film movie collaboration with Noel Coward. Lean's 1955 film Summertime took him from England to the world of international moviemaking and the stunning series of spectacular color epics that would gain for his work twenty-seven Academy Awards and fifty-six Academy Award nominations. All are classics, including The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and A Passage to India. Kevin Brownlow, a film editor in his own right and author of the seminal silent film trilogy initiated with The Parade's Gone By. . ., brings to Lean's biography an exhaustive knowledge of the art and the industry. One learns about the making of movies as realized by a master, but also of the highly personal costs of genius. The troubled Quaker family from which Lean came influenced his relationship with his son, his brother, and his six wives. Yet he showed in his work a deep understanding of humanity. The vastness of this scholarly and entertaining enterprise is augmented by sixteen pages of scenes from Lean's color films, thirty-two pages from his black-and-white movies, and throughout the text a vast number of photographs from his life and location work.
Download or read book My Life as I See It written by Dionne Warwick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-11-22 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time, music legend and humanitarian activist Dionne Warwick reflects on 50 years in showbusiness and the lessons she has learned from being an artist, a mother and a global icon. From her rise to superstardom to raising millions of dollars for AIDS research, she gives readers a glimpse into her dazzling, inspiring life. 'If you think you can do it, you can do it' was the advice she got from her grandfather as a young girl - words she has never forgotten. Like her music and humanitarian work, her story is guaranteed to give hope and inspiration to people across the world.
Download or read book No Smoke written by Sandra Lean and published by CheckPoint Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innocent people are being locked up in our prisons, convicted of the most horrific crimes, on a regular basis. These are not one-off, tragic mistakes, but rather a routine, everyday occurrence. For every high-profile miscarriage of justice that we hear about, there are dozens more that never make the news. No Smoke examines just some of these cases, highlighting the very human tragedy of wrongful conviction, and pointing out the unthinkable: this could happen to any one of us! Sandra Lean's NO SMOKE offers a vitally-important contribution to British social awareness. Already the subject of much debate within the judicial system, this book reviews seven specific real-life cases and in doing so exposes some truly shocking practices within the UK justice system. The cases are exhaustively researched and documented in an easy-to-read contemporary style, and the conclusions presented in an articulate and professional format. Review copies have been highly praised, and the book has already been recommended by sitting judiciary as an insightful (if rather disturbing) guide to the inner workings of British justice. The author is currently a PhD candidate in criminal justice at Edinburgh University.
Download or read book Alexandra David Neel written by Ruth Middleton and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 1989-07-01 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique biography explores the inner journey of a woman whose outer life was a thrilling story of passion and adventure. Alexandra David-Neel (1868–1969), born in Paris to a socially prominent family, once boasted, "I learned to run before I could walk!" In the course of a lifetime of more than one hundred years, she was an acclaimed operatic soprano, a political anarchist, a religious reformer, an intrepid explorer who traveled in Tibet for fourteen years, a scholar of Buddhism, and the author of more than forty books. But perhaps the most intriguing of all her adventures was the spiritual search that led her from a youthful interest in socialism and Freemasonry to the teachings of the great sages of India and culminated in her initiation into the secret tantric practices of Tibetan Buddhism. This book reveals the penetrating insight and courage of a woman who surmounted physical, intellectual, and social barriers to pursue her spiritual quest.
Download or read book Truffaut written by Antoine De Baecque and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2022-02-23 with total page 681 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most celebrated filmmakers of all time, Francois Truffaut was an intensely private individual who cultivated the public image of a man completely consumed by his craft. But his personal story—from which he drew extensively to create the characters and plots of his films—is itself an extraordinary human drama. Now, with captivating immediacy, Antoine de Baecque and Serge Toubiana give us the definitive story of this beloved artist. They begin with the unwanted, mischievous child who learned to love movies and books as an escape from sadness and confusion: as a boy, Francois came to identify with screen characters and to worship actresses. Following his early adult years as a journalist, during which he gained fame as France's most iconoclastic film critic, the obsessive prodigy began to make films of his own, and before he was thirty, notched the two masterpieces The 400 Blows and Jules and Jim. As Truffaut's dazzling body of work evolves, in the shadow of the politics of his day, including the student uprisings of 1968, we watch him learning the lessons of his masters Fellini and Hitchcock. And we witness the progress of his often tempestuous personal relationships, including his violent falling-out with Jean-Luc Godard (who owed Truffaut the idea for Breathless) and his rapturous love affairs with the many glamorous actresses he directed, among them Jacqueline Bisset and Jeanne Moreau. With Fanny Ardant, Truffaut had a child only thirteen months before dying of a brain tumor at the age of fifty-two. Here is a life of astonishing emotional range, from the anguish of severe depression to the exaltation of Oscar victory. Based on unprecedented access to Truffaut's papers, including notes toward an unwritten autobiography, de Baecque and Toubiana's richly detailed work is an incomparably authoritative revelation of a singular genius.
Download or read book There and Back Again written by Sean Astin and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fascinating memoir of a Hollywood life and an inside look at a life-changing role and the groundbreaking Lord of the Rings films that captured the imagination of movie fans everywhere. The Lord of the Rings is one of the most successful film franchises in cinematic history. Winner of a record eleven Academy Awards--a clean sweep--and breaking box office records worldwide, the trilogy is a breathtaking cinematic achievement and beloved by fans everywhere. For Sean Astin, a Hollywood child (his mother is Patty Duke and stepfather is John Astin) who made his feature film debut at 13 in the 1980s classic The Goonies and played the title role in Rudy, the call from his agent about the role of Samwise Gamgee couldn't have come at a better time. His career was at a low point and choice roles were hard to come by. But his 18-month experience in New Zealand with director Peter Jackson and the cast and crew od The Lord of the Rings films would be more than simply a dream-come-true--it would prove to be the challenge of a lifetime. There and Back Again: An Actor's Tale is the complete memoir of Sean Astin, from his early days in Hollywood to the role that changed his life. Though much has been written about the making of the films, including the techniques and artistry employed to bring Tolkien's vision of life and the various relationships between castmembers, the real story of what took place on the set, the harrowing ordeals of the actors and the unspoken controversy and backstage dealings have never been told. Sean's experience and candid account of his time filming in New Zealand is unparalleled. More than a companion guide to the Ring films, There and Back Again filled with stories from the set and of the actors involved that have never been revealed before and is an eye-opening look from a Hollywood veteran at the blood, sweat and tears that went into the making of one of the most ambitious films of all time.
Download or read book Still Life written by Noel Coward and published by Samuel French, Inc.. This book was released on 1965 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Characters: 6 male, 5 female Interior Set One of the Tonight at 8:30 series, a success in London and New York. The movie Brief Encounter was based on this play. In a suburban rail station, Dr. Harvey removes a cinder from Laura's eye and they fall in love. Subsequent weekly meetings over tea, scenes debating respectability or love, and some sentimental moments transpire before they decide they must part forever. He is accepting a faraway post and she must return to a circumspect
Download or read book David Lean written by Kevin Brownlow and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1996-08-15 with total page 835 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Lean was one of a handful of movie-makers of international renown and, arguably, the most famous and successful of all British film directors. Emerging from a childhood of nearly Dickensian darkness, Lean found success as the director of the such classic films as The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and Doctor Zhivago.Learn about the making of movies a s realized by a master, but also of the highly personal costs of genius. in color.
Download or read book Rudolph Valentino s Men written by David Bret and published by . This book was released on 2020-05-09 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rudolph Valentino was less ashamed of his sexuality than he was afraid of being trapped by the image of his public persona. In 1920s America, men who preferred the company of other men were stereotyped as feeble, effeminate degenerates. None of these terms applied to Valentino-a powerfully-built man who excelled at most sports, boxing in particular. Yet it was Valentino's persistent and unnecessary need to prove his "manhood" which may have contributed to his early death. His is a remarkable story. But, who were these men, and what were their roles and significance in his life? Claude Rambeau, the chansonnier he met during his first visit to Paris, when he was 18. Alexander Salm (1890-1918), an Austrian tennis ace, a leading exponent of the Argentine tango, and a hero of World War One who died fighting for the Allies. Jules Raucourt, the Belgian actor. Norman Kerry, the matinee idol who appeared in such film classics as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Phantom of the Opera. Emmett J Flynn, a director who, though thrice-married, had a penchant for sporting types and whose career was blighted by alcoholism brought about by trying to hide his sexuality. Douglas Gerrard, the Dublin-born actor-director, a big name in Hollywood when he took Valentino under his wing, but sadly forgotten today. Paul Ivano, a young French cameraman, sent to America by his family to recuperate after being gassed while fighting at the Front, and who went on to much greater things. Frank Mennillo, an Italian businessman and aficionado of "button boys", and who would be the last of his friends to see him alive. Thomas Meighan, the matinee idol, a friend who always there for Valentino to lean upon in times of trouble and stress. Robert Florey, a French publicist who came to America to work on one film, fell for Valentino, and stayed another 50 years to become one of the country's most eminent producers. Valentino's letters to him and Florey's responses, which form a large and significant part of his story, are in turn touching and humorous. Jacques Hébertot, the French showman who acted as Valentino's guide during his second visit to Paris, in the summer of 1923. André Daven, the French actor-manager who went on to launch and manage some of the biggest names in French show business, and who was unquestionably the great love of Valentino's life. Luther Mahoney, the former New York cop turned handyman, who provided Valentino with a friendly shoulder to cry on and became his confidant. Mario Carillo, a burly, former Italian cavalry officer who achieved moderate success in Hollywood. Valentino's partner at the time of his death, he was the only one of his men to live with him, though to the outside world he was perceived as his personal trainer. Barclay Warburton, the Philadelphia-born millionaire at whose home Rudy fell ill, in August 1926. Then there were the women... Coco, the Parisian demimondaine who mocked him in the bedroom, making him wary of women for the rest of his life. The lesbian wives, Jean Acker and Natacha Rambova, "baritone babe" members of Hollywood's most notorious sewing circle. The former slammed the door of the bridal-suite in his face, but returned to support him at end of his life, becoming a valued friend. The latter, rapacious and domineering, very quickly became Valentino's-and the studios'-very worst nightmare. Alla Nazimova, the Crimean born actress who mocked and ridiculed Valentino when they first met, and who subsequently became one of his most cherished allies. Sheila Chisholm, aka Lady Loughborough, the nymphomaniac Australian socialite who foisted herself on Valentino during the last year of his life. Pola Negri, the quintessential teller of tall-tales, who nevertheless cared very much for him. And finally, June Mathis, the most important woman in Valentino's life who became his surrogate mother and keeper of his soul.
