(FAQ). Film Noir FAQ celebrates and reappraises some 200 noir thrillers representing 20 years of Hollywood's Golden Age. Noir pulls us close to brutal cops and scheming dames, desperate heist men and hardboiled private eyes, and the unlucky innocent citizens that get in their way. These are exciting movies with tough guys in trench coats and hot tomatoes in form-fitting gowns. The moon is a streetlamp and the narrow streets are prowled by squad cars and long black limousines. Lives are often small but people's plans are big sometimes too big. Robbery, murder, gambling; the gun and the fist; the grift and the con game; the hard kiss and the brutal brush-off. Film Noir FAQ brings lively attention to story, mood, themes, and technical detail, plus behind-the-scenes stories of the production of individual films. Featuring numerous stills and posters many never before published in book form highlighting key moments of great noir movies. Film Noir FAQ serves up insights into many of the most popular and revered names in Hollywood history, including noir's greatest stars, supporting players, directors, writers, and cinematographers. Pour a Scotch, light up a smoke, and lean back with your private guide to film noir.

More than 700 films from the classic period of film noir (1940 to 1959) are presented in this exhaustive reference book--such films as The Accused, Among the Living, The Asphalt Jungle, Baby Face Nelson, Bait, The Beat Generation, Crossfire, Dark Passage, I Walk Alone, The Las Vegas Story, The Naked City, Strangers on a Train, White Heat, and The Window. For each film, the following information is provided: the title, release date, main performers, screenwriter(s), director(s), type of noir, thematic content, a rating based on the five-star system, and a plot synopsis that does not reveal the ending.

Featuring rumpled PIs, shyster lawyers, corrupt politicians, double-crossers, femmes fatales, and, of course, losers who find themselves down on their luck yet again, film noir is a perennially popular cinematic genre. This extensive encyclopedia describes movies from noir's earliest days – and even before, looking at some of noir's ancestors in US and European cinema – as well as noir's more recent offshoots, from neonoirs to erotic thrillers. Entries are arranged alphabetically, covering movies from all over the world – from every continent save Antarctica – with briefer details provided for several hundred additional movies within those entries. A copious appendix contains filmographies of prominent directors, actors, and writers. With coverage of blockbusters and program fillers from Going Straight (US 1916) to Broken City (US 2013) via Nora Inu (Japan 1949), O Anthropos tou Trainou (Greece 1958), El Less Wal Kilab (Egypt 1962), Reportaje a la Muerte (Peru 1993), Zift (Bulgaria 2008), and thousands more, A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir is an engrossing and essential reference work that should be on the shelves of every cinephile.

From Double Indemnity to La Femme Nikita, this comprehensive video renter's guide covers films both classic and modern, foreign and domestic. Each entry includes a concise plot summary and complete screen credits.

(FAQ Pop Culture). Sport? Entertainment? Art form? Perhaps a bit of all three, with a certain intangible extra something thrown in for good measure, making professional wrestling a truly unique entity unto itself. From its origins in carnivals and sideshow attractions of the 19th century, right up to the multimillion-dollar, multimedia industry of the present day, and all the bizarre, wild, and woolly points in between, Pro Wrestling FAQ delves into the entire history and broad scope of one of popular culture's most enduring yet ever-changing spectacles. With chapters devoted to the many fascinating eras in the history of the business, as well as capsule biographies of some its most memorable and important figures, this book will serve as the ultimate one-volume reference guide for both long-time wrestling nuts and initiates to the grappling phenomenon. Revisit the legendary 1911 "Match of the Century" pitting World Champion Frank Gotch against archrival George Hackenschmidt, "the Russian Lion"; experience wrestling's TV golden age in the 1950s, a time of such colorful personages as Gorgeous George and Antonino Rocca; relive the glory days of Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant, when WWF impresario Vince McMahon took the business mainstream; and get the lowdown on recent favorites, such as John Cena, CM Punk, and others who have taken the business boldly into the 21st century.

This revised and expanded edition of Eddie Muller's Dark City is a film noir lover's bible, taking readers on a tour of the urban landscape of the grim and gritty genre in a definitive, highly illustrated volume. Dark Cityexpands with new chapters and a fresh collection of restored photos that illustrate the mythic landscape of the imagination. It's a place where the men and women who created film noir often find themselves dangling from the same sinister heights as the silver-screen avatars to whom they gave life. Eddie Muller, host of Turner Classic Movies' Noir Alley, takes readers on a spellbinding trip through treacherous terrain: Hollywood in the post-World War II years, where art, politics, scandal, style -- and brilliant craftsmanship -- produced a new approach to moviemaking, and a new type of cultural mythology.

(FAQ). The Twilight Zone is among the most beloved shows in American television history, a pioneering fantasy behemoth that bridged the cultural gap between the 1950s and 1960s with thought-provoking mystery, mind-boggling theorems, and occasionally outright horror. The Twilight Zone FAQ takes the reader back to that halcyon era, looking back on the show and its impact as a force for societal change, via reflections on the manifold topics and controversies that the show took on from the space race to the Red Menace, from paranoia to madness and beyond. Dave Thompson traces the history of the show from its earliest flowering in the mind of then-unknown Rod Serling through its slow birth, shaky beginning, and breathless five-season run and he shows how it became the blueprint for so much of the fantasy television that has followed. Chapters deal with the comic books, novels, and many other spin-offs, including the movie, the TV revamps, and even the amusement park ride. In addition, this FAQ offers a full guide to every episode, providing details on the cast and music and pinpointing both the best and the worst of the series, all adding up to a brightly opinionated time machine that catapults the reader back to the true golden age of American television.

(FAQ). If the Beatles wrote the soundtrack of the swinging '60s, then the Eagles did the same for the cynical '70s. The story of the Eagles is also the story of most artists of their time the drugs, the music, the excesses, and the piles of cash. But the Eagles took it to the limit. And in Don Henley and Glenn Frey they had two songwriters who intuitively understood and accurately portrayed the changing America they lived in. They perfected the California sound, shifted power from record company to artist, and pioneered album-oriented rock. Eagles songs of the period are as memorable as any ever written, and their most popular album, Hotel California , became a timeless record of '70s decadence. In The Eagles FAQ , music critic Andrew Vaughan brings an insider's view into the various chapters of the group's fascinating history. He shows how they blended the best folk, rock, and country sounds of the '60s into a worldwide soundtrack of the '70s while challenging the industry status quo with a new business model. The story of their rise, fall, and rebirth is all here their mega-selling smashes, their tensions and breakups, the band members' solo work, and their triumphant reunion and continued place at the top of the rock-and-roll tree.

(FAQ). The Beat Generation FAQ is an informative and entertaining look at the enigmatic authors and cutting-edge works that shaped this fascinating cultural and literary movement. Disillusioned with the repression and conformity encompassing post-World War II life in the United States, the Beat writers sought creative alternatives to the mind-numbing banality of modern culture. Beat Generation writers were no strangers to controversy: Both Allen Ginsberg's prophetic, William Blakean-style poem "Howl" (1956) and William S. Burroughs' groundbreaking novel Naked Lunch (1959) led to obscenity trials, while Jack Kerouac's highly influential novel On the Road (1957) was blamed by the establishment for corrupting the nation's youth and continues to this day to serve as a beacon of hipster culture and the bohemian lifestyle. The Beat writers shared a vision for a new type of literature, one that escaped the boundaries of academia and employed an organic use of language, inspired by the spontaneity and improvisational nature of jazz music and abstract expressionism (Kerouac coined this writing style "spontaneous prose"). In search of deeper meaning, Beat Generation writers experimented not only with language but also with spirituality, art, drugs, sexuality, and unconventional lifestyles. Although the movement as a whole flamed out quickly in the early 1960s, replaced by the onset of the hippie counterculture, the Beats made an indelible mark on the nation's consciousness and left a long-lasting influence on its art and culture. This book details the movement its works, creative forces, and its legacy.

(FAQ). The X-Files FAQ explores Chris Carter's popular 1990s science-fiction TV series, which aired on Fox for nine seasons and inspired spin-offs, including feature films, TV shows, toys, novels, and comic books. The book explores the series in terms of its historical context and analyzes how many of the episodes tackle the events of their time: the Clinton era. The X-Files FAQ also tallies the episodes that are based on true stories, selects touchstone moments from the almost decade-long run, and organizes the series by its fantastic subject matter from serial killers to aliens, from prehistoric menaces to ethnic and religious-based horrors. In addition, the book recalls the TV antecedents ( Kolchak: The Night Stalker ) and descendants ( Fringe ) of The X-Files , examines the two feature films, and investigates Chris Carter's other creations, including Millennium , The Lone Gunmen , Harsh Realm , and The After . Featuring numerous stills and the show's most prominent writers and directors, The X-Files FAQ allows readers to relive the "Mytharc" conspiracy and the unforgettable monsters of the week from the Fluke Man to the Peacocks.