2024: A Year in Music
26 Thursday Dec 2024
Posted in Books, Lana Del Rey, Music, Non-Fiction
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Category Archives: Non-Fiction
Darryl F. Zanuck: The Gentleman Preferred Blondes
18 Thursday Jan 2024
Posted in Books, Film, Marilyn Monroe, Music, Non-Fiction
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42nd Street, A Ticket to Tomahawk, Alice Faye, Bernard F. Dick, Betty Grable, Broadway, Carousel, Darryl F. Zanuck, Down Boy, Fred Karger, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, George Cukor, How to Be Very Very Popular, How to Marry a Millionaire, Howard Hawks, Irving Berlin, Jane Russell, Jayne Mansfield, June Haver, Ladies of the Chorus, Let's Make Love, Marilyn Monroe, Mitzi Gaynor, Musicals, Orson Welles, Richard Zanuck, River of No Return, Sheree North, Shirley Temple, Something's Got To Give, Sonja Henie, The Girl Can't Help It, The Jazz Singer, There's No Business Like Show Business, Twentieth Century Fox, Vivian Blaine, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter
Bernard F. Dick, a professor of English and communication at Fairleigh-Dickson University in New Jersey, has published many titles on the classical era of Hollywood film-making, covering a wide range of figures like producers Harry Cohn and Hal B. Wallis; directors Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Billy Wilder; actresses Claudette Colbert and Rosalind Russell; and the blacklisted Hollywood Ten. In his 2018 book, That Was Entertainment, Dick hailed the MGM musical as the genre’s ‘Gold Standard,’ reeling off a list of the studio’s all-time greats from The Wizard of Oz to Singin’ in the Rain. Continue reading
2023: A Year in Film
02 Tuesday Jan 2024
Posted in Art and Photography, Documentaries, Film, Non-Fiction, Updates
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A Year in Films and TV, Aftersun, Aki Kaurismäki, Alcarràs, Babak Jalali, Broker, Buck and the Preacher, Carla Simón, Catalonia, Charlotte Wells, China, David Leland, Davy Chou, Elisa Jordan, Fallen Leaves, Finland, Fremont, Fyzal Boulifa, Gina Gammell, Hirokazu Koreeda, Humphrey Bogart, Iran, Jim Jarmusch, Killers of the Flower Moon, Korea, Lauren Bacall, Léonor Seraille, Li Ruijun, Marilyn Monroe, Martin Scorsese, Morocco, Mother and Son, Paul Sng, Return to Dust, Return to Seoul, Richard Barrios, Riley Keough, Shirley Anne Field, Sidney Poitier, Spain, The Damned Don't Cry, The Last Stage, The Old Oak, Tish Murtha, Wanda Jakubowska, War Pony, William J. Mann, Wish You Were Here
Adapted from David Grann’s history of the Osage murders, Killers of the Flower Moon was – for me at least – the cinematic event of 2023. With authoritative performances from Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and a luminous Lily Gladstone, plus the painterly cinematography of Jack Fisk and a subtly insistent final score from the late Robbie Robertson, Killers channels the spirit of the first revisionist Westerns. While perhaps lacking the flash of this year’s Oscar rivals (Oppenheimer, Poor Things), this is a masterclass in neo-classical filmmaking from Martin Scorsese – and a tough-minded reckoning with America’s brutal origins. Continue reading
2023: A Year in Books
31 Sunday Dec 2023
Posted in Books, Fiction, History, Non-Fiction
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A Northern Wind, A Year in Books, Alba de Céspedes, Andy Warhol, Brigitte Reimann, Call and Response, Cold Nights of Childhood, David Kynaston, Emma Cline, Forbidden Notebook, George Orwell, Germany, Gothataone Moeng, Italy, Jean Stafford, Joaquina Ballard Howles, Julia, Kate Grenville, Last House Before the Mountain, Lauren Groff, Leïla Slimani, Megan Nolan, Monika Helfer, Nicole Flattery, No More Giants, Nothing Special, Ordinary Human Failings, Poland, Restless Dolly Maunder, Sandra Newman, Seventy Times Seven, Short Stories, Siblings, Susanna Moore, Tezer Özlü, The Fraud, The Guest, The Lost Wife, The Mountain Lion, The Peasants, The Vaster Wilds, True Crime, Turkey, Watch Us Dance, William Harrison Ainsworth, Władysław Reymont, Zadie Smith
Set in her beloved West London, Zadie Smith’s The Fraud focuses on two forgotten figures: William Harrison Ainsworth, once a bestselling author – and a doorway into literary celebrity, Victorian-style; and Andrew Bogle, a formerly enslaved Jamaican and chief witness in the trial of the Tichborne Claimant. Caught in the whirl of notoriety, their fates are tracked by a free-thinking widow whose acidic commentary tests the bounds of white liberalism. Continue reading
‘Public, Private, Secret’: From Jackie to Marilyn – and Back Again
23 Sunday Jul 2023
Posted in Books, History, Marilyn Monroe, Non-Fiction, Politics
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Arthur M. Schlesinger, Barbara Leaming, Bert Stern, C. David Heymann, David Stenn, Diana Vreeland, Donald McGovern, Dr. Marianne Kris, Ethel Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, George Smathers, Happy Birthday Mr. President, J. Randy Taraborrelli, Jacqueline Kennedy, Jamie Auchincloss, Jean Harlow, John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Jr., Judith Campbell Exner, Kitty Kelley, Madonna, Marilyn Monroe, Norman Mailer, Patricia Kennedy Lawford, Peter Lawford, Ralph Roberts, Robert F. Kennedy, Sam Giancana, Scott Fortner, William Kuhn
J. Randy Taraborrelli is a prolific celebrity biographer whose many bestsellers include The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe (2009), later dramatised in a TV mini-series of the same name (see here.) And although she never met America’s First Lady, speculation about Marilyn’s association with the Kennedy brothers has recently generated headlines in media coverage of his latest book, Jackie: Private, Public, Secret. Continue reading
Tara Hanks 
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