Screening Room


Book Description

A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • Alan Lightman’s grandfather M.A. was the family’s undisputed patriarch. It was his movie theater empire that catapulted the Lightmans, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant family, to prominence in the South; his triumphs that would both galvanize and paralyze his descendants. In this evocative personal history, the author chronicles his return to Memphis and the stifling home he had been so eager to flee forty years earlier. As aging uncles and aunts retell old stories, Alan finds himself reconsidering long-held beliefs about his larger-than-life grandfather and his quiet, inscrutable father. The result is an unforgettable family saga set against the pulsing backdrop of Memphis—its country clubs and juke joints, its rhythm and blues, its segregated movie theaters, its barbecue and pecan pie—including encounters with Elvis, Martin Luther King Jr., and E. H. “Boss” Crump. Both intensely personal and quintessentially American, Screening Room finely explores the tricks of light that can make—and unmake—a man and his myth. (With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)




Screening Room


Book Description

A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR Alan Lightman’s grandfather M.A. was the family’s undisputed patriarch. It was his movie theater empire that catapulted the Lightmans, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant family, to prominence in the South; his triumphs that would both galvanize and paralyze his descendants. In this evocative personal history, the author chronicles his return to Memphis and the stifling home he had been so eager to flee forty years earlier. As aging uncles and aunts retell old stories, Alan finds himself reconsidering long-held beliefs about his larger-than-life grandfather and his quiet, inscrutable father. The result is an unforgettable family saga set against the pulsing backdrop of Memphis—its country clubs and juke joints, its rhythm and blues, its segregated movie theaters, its barbecue and pecan pie—including encounters with Elvis, Martin Luther King Jr., and E. H. “Boss” Crump. Both intensely personal and quintessentially American, Screening Room finely explores the tricks of light that can make—and unmake—a man and his myth. (With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)




The Field Guide to Sponsored Films


Book Description

An effort to review and assess the thousands of industrial and institutional films sponsored by American businesses, charities, educational institutions, and advocacy groups over the last century.




The Projection Room


Book Description

When fledgling artist Georges Bosque has a near-death experience on the battlefield during World War I, he believes he sees two men harvesting the souls of the dead and dying. Haunted by his macabre vision, Georges is determined to capture them in his sketchbook and, in his last days, on two large canvases. But despite Georges pleas to destroy both paintings after his death, his family ignores his request, leaving the paintings with his aging widow. Years later, his widow sells both paintings to a Milwaukee museum that is testing a new technology that projects images and allows patrons to experience art three dimensionally. But as the technologys inventor, Bruce Mallory, art director Geoffrey Cavanaugh, and his protg Noelle Walker are realizing the benefits of the technology, two othersRyan Barbieri, rebellious museum employee, and his friend, Michael Groutdecide to test the technology on Bosques paintings. Unfortunately, just as the two young men discern that Georges did indeed capture something on the other side of the grave, their discovery causes dire consequences for anyone who enters the Projection Room. In this gripping tale, two paintings hidden from the world for years unleash their powers onto an unsuspecting museum and a group of people completely unprepared for what awaits them.




The Cutting Room Floor


Book Description

Features scenes which never appeared from such diverse movies as Dressed to Kill, Scarface, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Death Becomes Her, and many others. Also includes the storyboards designed for the most daring erotic sequence of Basic Instinct--a scene so daring it had to be cut. Photos throughout.




Paramount


Book Description

Paramount: City of Dreams brings to life the operations of the world’s grandest movie lot as never before by opening its famous gates and revealing – for the first time – the wonderful myriad of soundstages and outdoor sets where, for one hundred years, Paramount has produced the world’s most famous films. With hundreds and hundreds of rare and unpublished photographs in color and black & white, readers are launched aboard a fun and entertaining “virtual tour” of Hollywood’s first, most famous and most mysterious motion picture studio. Paramount is a self-contained city. But unlike any community in the real world, this city’s streets and lawns, its bungalows and backlots, will be familiar even to those who have never been there. Now, for the first time, these much-filmed, much-haunted acres will be explored and the mysteries and myths peeled away – bringing into focus the greatest of all of Hollywood’s legendary dream factories.




Sharing a House with the Never-Ending Man


Book Description

A unique behind-the-scenes look at Japanese business and how the animated films of Hayao Miyazaki were introduced to the world. This highly entertaining business memoir describes what it was like to work for Japan’s premiere animation studio, Studio Ghibli, and its reigning genius Hayao Miyazaki. Steve Alpert, a Japanese-speaking American, was the “resident foreigner” in the offices of Ghibli and its parent Tokuma Shoten and played a central role when Miyazaki’s films were starting to take off in international markets. Alpert describes hauling heavy film canisters of Princess Mononoke to Russia and California, experiencing a screaming Harvey Weinstein, dealing with Disney marketers, and then triumphantly attending glittering galas celebrating the Oscar-winning Spirited Away. His one-of-a-kind portraits of Miyazaki and long-time producer Toshio Suzuki, and of sly, gruff, and brilliant businessman Yasuyoshi Tokuma, capture the hard work and artistry that have made Ghibli films synonymous with cinematic excellence. And as the lone gaijin in a demanding company run by some of the most famous and influential people in modern Japan, Steve Alpert tackles his own challenges of language and culture. No one else could have written this book.







Content-Based Image and Video Retrieval


Book Description

Content-Based Image And Video Retrieval addresses the basic concepts and techniques for designing content-based image and video retrieval systems. It also discusses a variety of design choices for the key components of these systems. This book gives a comprehensive survey of the content-based image retrieval systems, including several content-based video retrieval systems. The survey includes both research and commercial content-based retrieval systems. Content-Based Image And Video Retrieval includes pointers to two hundred representative bibliographic references on this field, ranging from survey papers to descriptions of recent work in the area, entire books and more than seventy websites. Finally, the book presents a detailed case study of designing MUSE–a content-based image retrieval system developed at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida.




Sex and the Supremacy of Christ


Book Description

The Bible has a way of shocking us. If Americans could still blush, we might blush at the words, "Rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love" (Proverbs 5:18-19). But, of course, sin always tries to trash God's gifts. So we can't just celebrate sex for what God made it to be; we have to fight what sin turned it into. The contributors to this unique volume encourage you to do both: celebrate and struggle. This book has something for all-men and women, married and single-from contributors like John Piper, C. J. and Carolyn Mahaney, Mark Dever, Al Mohler, Carolyn McCulley, and others.