Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn and How to Form a Judgment of Musical Performance
"Alain Bonnard, the owner of a small art cinema in Paris, is a dyed-in-the-wool nostalgic. In his Cinema Paradis there are no buckets of popcorn, no XXL coca-colas, no Hollywood blockbusters. Not a good business plan if you want to survive, but Alain holds firm to his principles of quality. He wants to show films that create dreams, and he likes most of the people that come to his cinema. Particularly the enchanting, shy woman in the red coat who turns up every Wednesday in row 17. What could he...
Leslie Shepherd, a music critic nearing the end of his life, reflects on the shocking murder-suicide that rocked London society years before. The unlikely killer: Charles Jessold, composer, prodigy, and Shepherd's collaborator on the opera that was set to open the following night. The victims: Jessold's wife and her vocal coach, found poisoned in her marriage-bed. At the centre of the scandal is the opera itself, now postponed indefinitely - the tale of a betrayed husband who murders his wife an...
From the award-winning author of the acclaimed bestseller The Last Painting of Sara de Vos comes a radiant new novel tracing the intertwined fates of a silent film director and his muse.The Electric Hotel winds through the nascent days of cinema in Paris and Fort Lee, New Jersey - America's first movie town - and the battlefields of Belgium during World War I. A sweeping work of historical fiction, it shimmers between past and present as it tells the story of the rise and fall of a prodigious fi...
Two very different lives… It is 2019 and Lily Jones is living her dream in LA. Sort of. It hasn’t quite turned out as she planned and instead of working as a movie producer, she is cleaning at the prestigious Beverly Hills Hotel. At least she gets to work in the renowned Paul Williams suite, site of the brutal murder of Honey Black 70 years ago, shrouded in rumour and dark glamour. It is 1949 and Honey Black is about to hit the big time. She may have started out a country girl from Hicksville...
The complete television soundtracks of all 12 episodes of the legendary BBC sitcomGround-breaking, satirical and anarchic, The Young Ones introduced alternative comedy to mainstream TV, and made household names of its writers and performers. It ran for two series on BBC Two between 1982 and 1984, winning a host of devoted fans and a BAFTA Award for its second series.A world away from the cosy suburban sitcoms that preceded it, the show centred around four degenerate students sharing a squalid No...
The Social, Psychological and Cultural Significance of Westerns
by Arthur Asa Berger
This book is about cowboy Western books and two important Western films, Shane and High Noon. Its focus is on the psychological, social, and cultural significance of Westerns, a narrative genre of major importance in American popular culture. What you will find, as you read this book, is that while the stories may have relatively simple plot lines, compared to classic novels, and are based on certain formulas, their psychological significance and cultural importance is a very complicated matter....
1920s script girl Jessie Beckett investigates the murder of a movie projectionist in this absorbing historical mystery. "Joe Petrovitch was gunned down on a sunny Saturday afternoon in early October, during the ninth reel of Charlie Chaplin's Gold Rush." Employed by Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, Jessie Beckett has a busy time as Script Girl for Pickford-Fairbanks studios. Yet she also has a reputation as a skilled amateur sleuth. So when a projectionist is shot dead and his grieving widow...
One Extra Corpse (A Silver Screen historical mystery)
by Barbara Hambly
Hollywood intrigue, glamor . . . and murder: Enter the roaring twenties in this thrilling Silver Screen historical mystery, starring two very different female sleuths.May, 1924. It's been seven months since young British widow Emma Blackstone arrived in Hollywood to serve as companion to Kitty Flint: her beautiful, silent-movie star sister-in-law. Kitty is generous, kind-hearted . . . and a truly terrible actress. Not that Emma minds; she's too busy making her academic parents turn in their grav...
'I loved the creativity, the unpredictability, its dazzling coverage of so many ideas' Rob Cowan'Superb . . . An original character and an original book' David Quantick, Record CollectorCan John Nightly be brought back to life again?John Nightly (b. 1948) finds his dimension in pop music, the art form of his time. His solo album becomes one of 1970's bestselling records – but success turns out to have side effects.Supermaxed in LA after a dazzling career, John renounces his gift, denying music a...
The dark and suffocating tragedy of Roman Volf's life will trap his descendants for years to come.Phineas Fox is researching the life of a scandalous musician from the past. Roman Volf was a Russian violinist, whose glittering talent was undermined by his crime - assassinating a Tsar. Investigating Volf's life and execution leads Phin to Ireland and into a series of intriguing, interlocking mysteries that reach back from Volf's time into the present day.Little does Phin know that his research ma...
Rehearsals in a new West End play are disrupted by sudden, violent death in the intriguing new Charles Paris mystery.Having landed a small part in a new West End play, The Habit of Faith, Charles Paris is dismayed to discover that his good fortune has been orchestrated by his bête noire, the now-famous screen actor Justin Grover. But why has Grover become involved in this relatively obscure production - and why has he roped in Charles to star?From the outset the production is fraught with diffic...
Reality TV stars . . . Theatre lovies . . . Murder most horrid . . . It's another cozy case for actor-sleuth Charles Paris!After a long period of resting, life is looking up for Charles Paris, who has been cast as the Ghost of Hamlet's Father and First Gravedigger in a new production of Hamlet. But rehearsals are fraught. Ophelia is played by Katrina Selsey, who won the role through a television talent show. Hamlet himself is also played by a reality TV contestant, Jared Root and the two young s...
One More Secret (Story 6) (Broadchurch)
by Chris Chibnall and Erin Kelly
'Great fun - Loretta is glorious!' Lucy Diamond'Sparkles with fun and wit' Libby Page'A fun, gossipy glimpse into Golden Era Hollywood' Julie Cohen-----You’re Loretta Darling now, welcome to your brand-new flipping life.Dreams don’t come true for girls like Loretta but she won’t let that stop her. With her sights set on becoming a make-up artist to the stars, Loretta wangles her way from Lancashire to the bright lights of Golden Age Hollywood.Only it turns out that Sunset Boulevard is less about...