A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader.Set in a place beyond good and evil---literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul---it remains more than three decades after its original publicat...

From one of the most admired critics of our time, brilliant insights into the act of watching movies and an enlightening discussion about how to derive more from any film experience.Since first publishing his landmark Biographical Dictionary of Film in 1975 (recently released in its sixth edition), David Thomson has been one of our most provocative authorities on all things cinema. Now he offers his most inventive exploration of the medium yet: guiding us through each elem...

Alfred Hayes is one of the secret masters of the twentieth century novel, a journalist and scriptwriter and poet who possessed an immaculate ear and who wrote with razorsharp intelligence about passion and its payback.My Face for the World to See is set in Hollywood, where the tonic for anonymity is fame and you’re only as real as your image. At a party, the narrator, a screenwriter, rescues a young woman who staggers with drunken determination into the Pacific. He is livi...

From one of the most admired critics of our time, brilliant insights into the act of watching movies and an enlightening discussion about how to derive more from any film experience.Since first publishing his landmark Biographical Dictionary of Film in 1975 (now in its sixth edition), David Thomson has been one of the most trusted authorities on all things cinema. Now, he offers his most inventive exploration of the medium yet: guiding us through each element of the viewin...

"An engaging primer on film history" examining the rise of movies, their influence, and the technology that conveys them ( New York Times Book Review).The Big Screen tells the enthralling story of the movies and their signal role in modern life: their rise and spread, their remarkable influence over us, and the technology that made the screen—smaller now, but ever more ubiquitous—as important as the images it carries.At first, film was a wak...

This is possibly the most entertaining, surprising and enjoyable film book ever written. Thomson set himself the near-foolhardy task of writing one page each on 1000 of the films that he has particularly liked – or in some cases, abhorred. Some half-million words of funny, vigorous, wayward prose later, we are all the happy beneficiaries of his deranged labour.Always unexpected, never repetitive, ‘Have You Seen…?’ can be read consecutively – from Abbott and Costello Me...

David Thomson, one of our most celebrated film writers, gives us a haunting, fascinating memoir about growing up as an only child in wartime England. He was born in London in the aftermath of the war, where he was raised by his mother, grandmother, and upstairs tenant, Miss Davis. He remembers how his grandmother brought him to a street corner to see Churchill and how the bombed-out houses that still smelled of smoke became his playground. We see Thomson attempt to overcome his profound sa...

From the brilliant film historian and critic David Thomson, a book that reinvents the star biography in a singularly illuminating portrait of Nicole Kidman—and what it means to be a top actress today. At once life story, love letter, and critical analysis, this is not merely a book about who Kidman is but about what she is—in our culture and in our minds, on- and offscreen.Tall, Australian, one of the striking beauties of the world, Nicole Kidman is that rare modern phenomenon—an a...

Widely regarded as one of America's most important contemporary thinkers, Susan Sontag had a particular gift for reflecting on the meaning and influence of the visual, and On Photography became a seminal work for all those concerned with the interplay of images with the world.Now, more than thirty years after On Photography was first published*,* comes Sontag on Film: a collection of her writings and musings on films and cinema, gathered together here for...

In this triumphant work David Thomson, one of film's greatest living experts and author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, tells the enthralling story of the movies and how they have shaped us.Sunday Times, New Statesman, The Times, Guardian, Observer and Independent BOOKS OF THE YEARTaking us around the globe, through time and across multiple media, Thomson tracks the ways in which we ...

Does acting matter? David Thomson, one of our most respected and insightful writers on movies and theater, answers this question with intelligence and wit. In this fresh and thought-provoking essay, Thomson tackles this most elusive of subjects, examining the allure of the performing arts for both the artist and the audience member while addressing the paradoxes inherent in acting itself. He reflects on the casting process, on stage versus film acting, and on the cult of celebrity. The art...

“Japanese fairy tale series (Volume 1)” is a collection of numerous Japanese traditional tales and folklore retold in English: no.1. – Momotaro, no.2. – Tongue cut sparrow (Shitakiri suzume), no.3. – Battle of the monkey and the crab (Sarukani kassen), no.4. – Old man who made the dead trees blossom, no.5. – Kachi-Kachi mountain (Kachikachi-yama), no.6. – Mouse’s wedding (Nezumi no yomeiri), no.7. – Old man & the devils (Kobutori), no.9. – Serpent with eight heads (Yamata no orochi), no.10...