Evelyn Venable to “Death Takes a Holiday”

New issue of Classic  Images February, 2012 $4.00. Cover story on the actress Evelyn Venable.  Remember her in Death Takes a Holiday?  Also profiles of Paul Petersen ( The Donna Reed  Show) and Susan Gordon ( The Five Pennies). Taking a cruise with Tippi Hedren and Ernest Borgnine.  Then visit with actress Claire Bloom at the Film Forum.

20 Best Films of 2011 — Critics’ Poll

New in at Cinema Books: Film Comment Jan/Feb., 2012 Vol. 48 #1 $5.95.  Poll of critics on 20 best films of 2011. Reader entry forms. Make your list. Analysis of new films Miss Bala, A Separation, Tintin. “Girls Gone Wild” in Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Haywire,  and A Dangerous Mind. Kent Jones on the random and ephemeral in film.

Promoting the Crunch

New in at Cinema Books: The Great American Cereal Book How Breakfast Got Its Crunch by Marty Gitlin & Topher Ellis, $19.95 cloth.  Three hundred and sixty eight pages profiling  400 breakfast cereals from 1863 through 2010.  Sports stars, tv stars and cartoon characters all got into the act of promoting breakfast cereals.  Great for anyone who ever grabbed a box and started to munch.

Biographies of Oscar Pioneers

New in paperback: Bringing Up Oscar The Story of the Men and Women Who Founded the Academy by Debra Ann Pawlak, $15.95 paper.  Part history part biographical tale Pawlak describes the founders of the Motion Picture Academy.  Hollywood pioneers Ceil B. DeMille, Mary Pickford, Harry Warner, Joseph Schneck and many other forgotten participants got together in 1927 to promote their industry.  And boy did it work.

Fry, Laurie & Thompson

New in at Cinema Books: The Fry Chronicles An Autobiogrphy by Stephen Fry, $ 29.95 cloth.  Thirteen years after the first volume of Fry’s autobiography Moab Is My Washpot,  the second volume is now available. Fry is acccepted at Cambridge University.  He teams up with actor Hugh Laurie and actress Emma Thompson and we follow  the early career of Stephen Fry in such series as Blackadder.

Dante Spinotti Lifetime Achievemnt Award

American Cinematographer magazine February, 2012, $5.95 .  This year the ASC honors Italian cinematogrpaher Dante Spinotti with their ASC Lifetime Achievement Award. The new issue of the magazine reviews his wonderful career. Spinotti shot Last of the Mohicans, Heat, LA Confidential. Other articles include the making of the new film Big Miracle about saving the whales in Alaska and the new HBO film about horseracing Michael Mann’s Luck.

All Those le Carre Movies

Cinema Scope #49 Winter, 2012 $5.95. Cover story on Ben Wheatley’s Kill List. Also interview with William Friedkin on Killer Joe.  Survey of the John le Carre novels made into movies. First published edition of Eric Rentschler’s 1986 speech ” Journeys Through Berlin, 1986 Urban Miniatures”.  Jonathan Rosenbaum reviews the global dvd releases.

Birthday at Tiffany’s

New in at Cinema Books: Breakfast at Tiffany’s The Official 50th Anniversary Companion by Sarah Gristwood, $29.95 cloth.  Celebrate a birthday in style with this pictorial tribute to the iconic Audrey Hepburn film Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  Full of candid pictures of the cast and crew.  Profiles of actors Hepburn, George Peppard, Patricia Neal and of course Mickey Rooney.  Other participants are not neglected: writer Truman Capote, costumer Hubert de Givenchy, composer Henry Mancini, director Blake Edwards.

Big Idea Screenwriting

New in at Cinema Books: The Inner Game of Screenwriting 20 Winning Story Forms by Sandy Frank, $18.95 paper. This is a big idea book on screenwriting.  Not tactics but rather strategy.   The contents of the inner game begin with morth archetypes, using the enneagram to construct morph inner games and the myth archetypes.  Added help on adaptations, television writing. and then twisting the paradigm and subverting this model.  Frank wrote for David Letterman, In Living Color, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,  and The Jamie Foxx Show.

South Park Does Broadway Musical

New in at Cinema Books: The Book of Mormon The Complete Book and Lyrics of The Broadway Musical by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez & Matt Stone, $19.95 paper. The creators of South Park and co-creator of Avenue Q collaborated on the Tony Award winning best musical of 2011 The Book of Mormon. Includes new preface by the authors and color illustrations throughout the book.