Directors Books

time,names,and places very well done. where was gerald geller during this time?

I am fairly new to the Wenders world, his school of life and wings. The movie and the book are beautiful. Cinematoraphy/photography tightened into the form of a man's luminescent imagination.

Reviewed by Cathy Yanda for Reader Views (4/06)

"Heart's Home" opens with Scotty Tockterman proposing to Tracey Gordon, the director of the Gold Rush Museum. Even though they have known each other only two months, she says yes. A few minutes later, Scotty jumps in the water to aid a woman with two children whose car plunges off the levee. Although the three accident victims survive, Scotty isn't seen again. Two weeks later, when a Coast Guard pilot shows up at her door, Tracey discovers Scotty isn't the person she knew; he isn't even Scotty.

Tracey Gordon has two mysteries to solve; who was the man she was going to marry and why did he want to marry her? She also needs to find out if the man claiming to be Steve Tockterman is who he says he is. All of this is complicated by her attraction to the real Steve Tockterman who insists on helping her find out who has been impersonating him and why. The impersonator knew too much about him to be a total stranger...he had known his nickname "Scotty" from high school even though his real name was Steven Clay Tockterman. He knew that the Tockterman family had a great deal of money and much more. Slowly, the two of them are able to put the pieces together and along the way, fall in love.

The author, Eloise Barton, weaves a tale of money, friends, intrigue, deceit, and love which you will have fun following. She is very adept at creating characters who are real and whom you will want to get to know better. "Heart's Home" is a well-written story by an obviously talented writer. You are guaranteed to laugh with Tracey and Steve as they solve the mystery of Scotty and more.

I am a true fan of the original Helmsman series. My only issue with the original series was way it ended. It seemed incomplete and left me wanting more. I was truly overjoyed when I found out that the author was going to reissue the series with some modifications and complete the series with new book. I eagerly signed up for all the new issues. I was not disapointed.

Great book. was bought for a present and they loved it so much. Thank you. i highly recommend.

Brill's contention is fascinating: Hitchcock was NOT a macabre misfit interested only in the sick and scary. Rather, says Brill, H's films on the whole are hopeful, affirming, generating conventional suspense and working toward a happily-ever-after ending. Works like Psycho and Vertigo, Brill contends, are exceptions to more typical works like North by Northwest and The 39 Steps, which are quite upbeat and happy. According to Brill, Hitch is really an ironist whose occasional subversions of his generally hopeful outlook have received more critical attention; but that doesn't mean his whole ouevre is one of despair or pessimism. Brill argues magnificently in many well-informed essays; though his citation of Trouble with Harry as the quintessential Hitchcock film is a bit hard to swallow. Highly recommended for Hitchcock fans!

With the sheer amount of Hitchcock scholarship out there, one would hardly think there was anything more left to say. Allen's impressive and comprehensive book proves otherwise. Allen draws on all of this previous scholarship (he is an editor of Hitchcock Annual and two anthologies on the director) by arguing that all of the conflicting interpretations of HItchcock's singular films is symptomatic of the director's specifically cultivated aesthetic of romantic irony. Romantic irony, a term borrowed from literature, is when the writer or filmmaker presents competing and opposed perspectives, yet refuses to privilege one over the other, allowing both conflicting interpretations to remain true. It turns out that romantic irony provides a rather useful lens with which to focus the vast output of Hitchcock's films (53 features total, most of which Allen discusses in detail). The book's first section mounts a defense of the use of romantic irony, as well as a classification of the narrative forms found through Hitchcock's body of films, including an extended discussion of the director's well-known use of suspense. The book's best chapters, though, come in its second half where Allen devotes his attention to a detailed consideration of the filmmaker's visual style, including the influence of German expressionism and the director's elaborate use of color. Film studies in general rarely attends to the formal and stylistic features of a director's work in this kind of detail, and while Allen's own admiration for Hitchcock is on evidence, he lets the filmmaker's greatness speaks for itself.

Garson Kanin has a lot of funny and sometimes sad stories to tell. He presents a whole different view of some of our favorite movie moguls and stars. Excellent book that is fun to read.

Coleman's autobiography provides an excellent look at the evolution of Hollywood from someone who worked their way up from a driver to a Producer/Director/Writer. Coleman vividly describes the first film he ever saw as a child, projected on a sheet in a field in West Virginia. At that young age, he decided that he wanted to work in the film industry. He began as a driver and gradually worked his way up to script supervisor, assistant director, and producer. He spent many years with Hitchcock and the stories of working on films such as Rear Window, Vertigo, and To Catch a Thief are priceless. His stories regarding his work with people like Gary Cooper, Alan Ladd, William Wyler, Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant and others, as well as his 30 year plus association with Paramount Pictures is a story any lover of film will want to read.

Hollywood In Wide Angle: How Directors View Filmmaking is a fascinating, insightful, and at times very blunt view of the ins and outs of the film trade specifically from the view of more than thirty directors, all interviewed by social scientist Jack Rothman with the guarantee their responses would remain anonymous. The result is a bitingly canded of everything wrong in the American film industry today, and perhaps the occasional acknowledgement of the few things that have not completely soured yet. From regret over award-winning foreign films that are shown in barely 2 theaters in the U.S., to reactions to studio's emphasis on the bottom line that puts increasing pressure and control, forcing directors to shoot in other nations or to modify the film according to audience testing, to the practice of replacing seasoned or visionary directors with "shooters" - young kids straight out of film school who will work for less and be easier to control - Hollywood In Wide Angle dishes out the dirt and offers a hard, realistic look at the industry. Fascinating for the lay reader, and an absolute must-read for anyone interested in getting into the director trade - there is no better place to learn about the hard knocks of directing short of interviewing 30 directors personally.