Every Night the Trees Disappear

Every Night the Trees Disappear
Author: Alan Greenberg
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2012-05-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1613743521

"You know from seeing it that Herzog was up to something strange in filming Heart of Glass. Now the mystery is clarified. Alan Greenberg peers into the heart of darkness of the great artist." —Roger Ebert&“Mesmerizing . . . as poetic and mysterious as the film itself.&”—Jim JarmuschThis intimate chronicle of the visionary filmmaker Werner Herzog directing a masterwork is interwoven with Herzog's original screenplay to create a unique vision of its own. Alan Greenberg was, according to the director, the first &“outsider&” to seek him out and recognize his greatness. At the end of their first evening together Herzog urged Greenberg to work with him on his new film--and everything thereafter. In this film, Heart of Glass, Herzog exercised control over his actors by hypnotizing them before shooting their scenes. The result was one of the most haunting movies ever made. Not since Lillian Ross's classic 1950 book Picture has an American writer given such a close, first-hand, book-length account of how a director makes a movie. But this is not a conventional, journalistic account. Instead it presents a unique vision with the feel of a novel--intimate, penetrating, and filled with mystery. Alan Greenberg is a writer, film director, film producer, and photographer. He is also the author of Love in Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson. Werner Herzog is considered one of the world's greatest filmmakers. His books include Conquest of the Useless and Of Walking in Ice.

Disappearing Earth

Disappearing Earth
Author: Julia Phillips
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2019-05-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0525520422

One of The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year National Book Award Finalist Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize Finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award National Best Seller "Splendidly imagined . . . Thrilling" --Simon Winchester "A genuine masterpiece" --Gary Shteyngart Spellbinding, moving--evoking a fascinating region on the other side of the world--this suspenseful and haunting story announces the debut of a profoundly gifted writer. One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two girls--sisters, eight and eleven--go missing. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women. Taking us through a year in Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth enters with astonishing emotional acuity the worlds of a cast of richly drawn characters, all connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother. We are transported to vistas of rugged beauty--densely wooded forests, open expanses of tundra, soaring volcanoes, and the glassy seas that border Japan and Alaska--and into a region as complex as it is alluring, where social and ethnic tensions have long simmered, and where outsiders are often the first to be accused. In a story as propulsive as it is emotionally engaging, and through a young writer's virtuosic feat of empathy and imagination, this powerful novel brings us to a new understanding of the intricate bonds of family and community, in a Russia unlike any we have seen before.

Watch Me Disappear

Watch Me Disappear
Author: Janelle Brown
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2017-07-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0812989473

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The disappearance of a beautiful, charismatic mother leaves her family to piece together her secrets in this propulsive novel for fans of Big Little Lies—from the bestselling author of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything and the upcoming Pretty Things. “Watch Me Disappear is just as riveting as Gone Girl.”—San Francisco Chronicle Who you want people to be makes you blind to who they really are. It’s been a year since Billie Flanagan—a Berkeley mom with an enviable life—went on a solo hike in Desolation Wilderness and vanished from the trail. Her body was never found, just a shattered cellphone and a solitary hiking boot. Her husband and teenage daughter have been coping with Billie’s death the best they can: Jonathan drinks as he works on a loving memoir about his marriage; Olive grows remote, from both her father and her friends at the all-girls school she attends. But then Olive starts having strange visions of her mother, still alive. Jonathan worries about Olive’s emotional stability, until he starts unearthing secrets from Billie’s past that bring into question everything he thought he understood about his wife. Who was the woman he knew as Billie Flanagan? Together, Olive and Jonathan embark on a quest for the truth—about Billie, but also about themselves, learning, in the process, about all the ways that love can distort what we choose to see. Janelle Brown’s insights into the dynamics of intimate relationships will make you question the stories you tell yourself about the people you love, while her nervy storytelling will keep you guessing until the very last page. Praise for Watch Me Disappear “Watch Me Disappear is a surprising and compelling read. Like the best novels, it takes the reader somewhere she wouldn’t otherwise allow herself to go. . . . It’s strongest in the places that matter most: in the believability of its characters and the irresistibility of its plot.”—Chicago Tribune “Janelle Brown’s third family drama delivers an incisive and emotional view of how grief and recovery from loss can seep into each aspect of a person’s life. . . . Brown imbues realism in each character, whose complicated emotions fuel the suspenseful story.”—Associated Press “When a Berkeley mother vanishes and is declared dead, her daughter is convinced she’s alive in Janelle Brown’s thriller, calling to mind Big Little Lies and Gone Girl.”—Variety

The Making of The Wizard of Oz

The Making of The Wizard of Oz
Author: Aljean Harmetz
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2013-10-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1613748329

“Fantastic.” Gore Vidal, New York Review of Books “Grand.” Ray Bradbury, Los Angeles Times “Definitive.” Salmon Rushdie, The New Yorker “A fluent, incisive and fair history of life in Hollywood during the golden age of films. The author seems to have talked to everyone with knowledge of what went on at MGM in its heyday. . . . Marvelous.” Publishers Weekly From the ten scriptwriters at work to the scandal headlines of Munchkin orgies at the Culver City Hotel to the Witch's (accidental) burning, here is the real story of the making of The Wizard of Oz. This richly detailed re-creation brings alive a major Hollywood studio and reveals, through hundreds of interviews (with cameramen, screenwriters, costume designers, directors, producers, light technicians, and actors), how the factory-like Hollywood system of moviemaking miraculously produced one of the most enduring and best-loved films ever made. We watch it happen--the bright, idiosyncratic, wildly devoted MGM-ers inventing the lines, the songs; flying hordes of monkeys through the sky; growing a poppy field; building the Emerald City (and 60 other sets); designing and sewing the nearly 1,000 costumes; enduring the pressures from the front office; choosing the actors. Here is Oz, a marvelous, unprecedented experience of studio life as it was lived day by day, detail by detail, department by department, at the most powerful and flamboyant studio Hollywood has ever known--at its moment of greatest power. Aljean Harmetz is the author of The Making of Casablanca, On the Road to Tara: The Making of Gone with the Wind, and other books.

The Night She Disappeared

The Night She Disappeared
Author: Lisa Jewell
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2022-05-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1982137371

"On a beautiful summer night in a charming English suburb, a young woman and her boyfriend disappear after partying at the massive country estate of a new college friend. One year later, a writer moves into a cottage on the edge of the woods that border the same estate. Known locally as the Dark Place, the dense forest is the writer's favorite area for long walks and it's on one such walk that she stumbles upon a mysterious note that simply reads, 'DIG HERE.' Could this be a clue towards what has happened to the missing young couple? And what exactly is buried in this haunted ground?"--

Three Ways to Disappear

Three Ways to Disappear
Author: Katy Yocom
Publisher: Ashland Creek Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2019-07-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1618220845

Leaving behind a nomadic and dangerous career as a journalist, Sarah DeVaughan returns to India, the country of her childhood and a place of unspeakable family tragedy, to help preserve the endangered Bengal tigers. Meanwhile, at home in Kentucky, her sister, Quinn-also deeply scarred by the past and herself a keeper of secrets-tries to support her sister, even as she fears that India will be Sarah's undoing. As Sarah faces challenges in her new job-made complicated by complex local politics and a forbidden love-Quinn copes with their mother's refusal to talk about the past, her son's life-threatening illness, and her own increasingly troubled marriage. When Sarah asks Quinn to join her in India, Quinn realizes that the only way to overcome the past is to return to it, and it is in this place of stunning natural beauty and hidden danger that the sisters can finally understand the ways in which their family has disappeared-from their shared history, from one another-and recognize that they may need to risk everything to find themselves again. With dramatic urgency, a powerful sense of place, and a beautifully rendered cast of characters revealing a deep understanding of human nature in all its flawed glory, Katy Yocom has created an unforgettable novel about saving all that is precious, from endangered species to the indelible bonds among family.

The Philosophy of Werner Herzog

The Philosophy of Werner Herzog
Author: M. Blake Wilson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2020-11-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1793600430

Legendary director, actor, author, and provocateur Werner Herzog has incalculably influenced contemporary cinema for decades. Until now there has been no sustained effort to gather and present a variety of diverse philosophical approaches to his films and to the thinking behind their creation. The Philosophy of Werner Herzog, edited by M. Blake Wilson and Christopher Turner,collects fourteen essays by professional philosophers and film theorists from around the globe, who explore the famed German auteur’s notions of “ecstatic truth” as opposed to “accountants’ truth,” his conception of nature and its penchant for “overwhelming and collective murder,” his controversial film production techniques, his debts to his philosophical and aesthetic forebears, and finally, his pointed objections to his would-be critics––including, among others, the contributors to this book themselves. By probing how Herzog’s thinking behind the camera is revealed in the action he captures in front of it, The Philosophy of Werner Herzog shines new light upon the images and dialog we see and hear on the screen by enriching our appreciation of a prolific––yet enigmatic––film artist.

Werner Herzog – A Guide for the Perplexed

Werner Herzog – A Guide for the Perplexed
Author: Paul Cronin
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 592
Release: 2014-08-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0571259782

This edition of Herzog on Herzog presents a completely new set of interviews in which Werner Herzog discusses his career from its very beginnings to his most recent productions. Herzog was once hailed by Francois Truffaut as the most important director alive. Famous for his frequent collaborations with mercurial actor Klaus Kinski - including the epics, Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, and the terrifying Nosferatu - and more recently with documentaries such as Grizzly Man, Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Into the Abyss, Herzog has built a body of work that is one of the most vital in post-war German cinema.

Over the Ocean

Over the Ocean
Author: Erica Fischer
Publisher: Hesperus Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2014-10-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1780943083

From the author of Aimée and Jaguar comes the extraordinary true love story of a couple who were separated during a shameful and fascinating chapter of British history Erica Fischer tells her own parents' astonishing story and at the same time sheds light on a little-known, little-discussed chapter in British history. Fischer's parents met in Austria in the early 1930s. Her mother, Irka, was a Polish Jew and her father, Erich, was a Viennese lapsed Catholic. In 1938, Irka fled to the United Kingdom, to be followed the year after by her husband. By no means a rarity as refugees, they found work in southern England. However at the outbreak of war, Erich was arrested as an "enemy alien," which was then common practice in time of war. After being interned, he was transported to Australia in July 1940, along with 2,500 other deportees. The conditions were appalling on board the Dunera: the men were locked up below decks with overflowing latrines and only seawater to clean themselves. Faced with unimaginable hardships, the deportees banded together in solidarity to face their new life. Erich and Irka struggled to maintain a correspondence to try to ensure that they would be able to find each other when the war came to an end. Amazingly crafted, this biography reads like fiction and vividly evokes a chapter in history with which few people are familiar.

Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog
Author: Eric Ames
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2014-04-17
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 162674114X

Over the course of his career, legendary director Werner Herzog (b. 1942) has made almost sixty films and given more than eight hundred interviews. This collection features the best of these, focusing on all the major films, from Signs of Life and Aguirre, the Wrath of God to Grizzly Man and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. When did Herzog decide to become a filmmaker? Who are his key influences? Where does he find his peculiar themes and characters? What role does music play in his films? How does he see himself in relation to the German past and in relation to film history? And how did he ever survive the wrath of Klaus Kinski? Herzog answers these and many other questions in twenty-five interviews ranging from the 1960s to the present. Critics and fans recognized Herzog's importance as a young German filmmaker early on, but his films have attained international significance over the decades. Most of the interviews collected in this volume—some of them from Herzog's production archive and previously unpublished—appear in English for the very first time. Together, they offer an unprecedented look at Herzog's work, his career, and his public persona as it has developed and changed over time.