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Hey, there's a new Rick Moody book!

Speak of books, here are some free ones, on the topics of

Movies:
Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock. Conversations with Alfred.
Mike Figgis, Projections 10: Hollywood Film-Makers on Film-Making. Excellent collection of interviews with directors, executives, actors, etc. Bruckheimer, Sheedy, Stallone (his favorite movie is The Lion in Winter), P.T. Anderson, ....
Reference books: Konigsberg, The Complete Film Dictionary. Katz, The Film Encyclopedia. Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (the most entertaining of the lot).
Michael Tolkin, The Player. The novel, very good, much more interior than the film.
Howard Koch et al., Casablanca: Script and Legend. Screenplay and commentaries.
The Citizen Kane Book. Shooting script, transcript of the completed film, and a long essay by Pauline Kael.
Julie Salamon, The Devil's Candy. Behind-the-scenes, all-access account of the disaster that was The Bonfire of the Vanities.
Lillian Ross, Picture. Ditto, for The Red Badge of Courage.
Creative Screenwriting, Vol. 4, No. 3. Special issue on Robert Altman. Also an interview with Brian Helgeland.
James Agee, Agee on Film, Volume 1. Essays and reviews from the 1940s.
Roger Ebert's Book of Film. Big collection of film writing (by other people).
Nicholas Ray, I Was Interrupted. Various writings, and transcripts from the classes he taught. Very good on acting.John Kobal, The Art of the Great Hollywood Portrait Photographers. Mostly photos from the 1920s and 1930s.

Los Angeles:
Donald Rawley, The View from Babylon. For a long time I was on a quest for a book that might be described as a "delirious love letter to L.A.," the way people are always writing books that are delirious love letters to New York. This book isn't all delirious, and it isn't all about Los Angeles, but somehow it satisfied the quest anyway.

California:
Thurston Clarke, California Fault. Entertaining account of a trip down the San Andreas, and people who live on it.
Robert Dawson and Gray Brechin, Farewell, Promised Land. California destroys its environment. Lots of photos.
Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert. History of water in the American West.

Here's another Friday Random Ten:
  • The Postal Service, "Sleeping In"
  • Swåp, "Congress"
  • Men at Work, "Overkill"
  • American Mars, "Over the Gun"
  • Soul Coughing, "City of Motors"
  • Arab Strap, "Hello Daylight"
  • Sarah Woolever, "Maybe We"
  • Talking Heads, "Totally Nude"
  • M. Ward, "So Much Water"
  • Sixpence None the Richer, "Easy to Ignore"

Notes: Swåp is a folk quartet (accordion, guitar, two fiddles) from England and Sweden, a very nice mix. No City Fun by American Mars is #2 on my list of alt-country albums that should be better known. Sarah Woolever is a singer-songwriter I met at open mikes in Minneapolis. Somehow, after the Christian-rock background, the overplayed single, and the subsequent career of unnecessary cover songs, I still really like this Sixpence None the Richer album.



Oh, and happy anniversary to the 19th amendment.

September 2015

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