Today's moviegoers and critics generally consider some Hollywood products--even some blockbusters--to be legitimate works of art. But during the first half century of motion pictures very few Americans would have thought to call an American movie "art." Up through the 1950s, American movies were regarded as a form of popular, even lower-class, entertainment. By the 1960s and 1970s, however, viewers were regularly judging Hollywood films by artistic criteria previously applied only to high art forms. In Hollywood Highbrow, Shyon Baumann for the first time tells how social and cultural forces radically changed the public's perceptions of American movies just as those forces were radically changing the movies themselves. The development in the United States of an appreciation of film as an art was, Baumann shows, the product of large changes in Hollywood and American society as a whole. With the postwar rise of television, American movie audiences shrank dramatically and Hollywood responded by appealing to richer and more educated viewers. Around the same time, European ideas about the director as artist, an easing of censorship, and the development of art-house cinemas, film festivals, and the academic field of film studies encouraged the idea that some American movies--and not just European ones--deserved to be considered art.

In December 2003 the painter Jack Vettriano, a coalminer’s son, met his parents off the train from Scotland on his way to collect an OBE. Over the last few years Vettriano has had a meteoric rise to fame – emerging from the unlikely background of the Scottish coalfields, unknown and untutored, he has become Scotland’s most successful and controversial contemporary artist. Appearing on posters and cards, mugs and umbrellas, prints of his work outsell Van Gogh, Dali and Monet and his paintings have been acquired by celebrities around the world. 'The Singing Butler', Britain's most reproduced painting, fetched a record £744,800 at auction in April 2004. Vettriano’s images have an often mysterious narrative and are a gateway to an alluring yet sinister world. Daylight scenes of heady optimism, painted against backdrops of beaches and racetracks, are counterbalanced by more disquieting canvases of complex night-time liaisons in bars and clubs, bedrooms and ballrooms. Both sexes are clearly styled – the men hard-edged and mysterious, the women seductive and enigmatic. Yet beneath the confident posturing, Vettriano recognizes our inherent human frailty, that there is no victor in the struggle between duplicity and desire. Men and women are ultimately trapped by the machinations of intense love and passion with little control over their destiny. 'Jack Vettriano' presents about thirty new images, as well as some recently surfaced works, plus the best of the paintings previously published in 'Lovers and Other Strangers' and 'Fallen Angels', also by Pavilion. In March 2004 Melvin Bragg’s The South Bank Show broadcast a programme dedicated to Jack entitled Jack Vettriano: The People’s Painter. Reissued in smaller user-friendly format.

‘KUMBA AFRICA’, is a compilation of African Short Stories written as fiction by Sampson Ejike Odum, nostalgically taking our memory back several thousands of years ago in Africa, reminding us about our past heritage. It digs deep into the traditional life style of the Africans of old, their beliefs, their leadership, their courage, their culture, their wars, their defeat and their victories long before the emergence of the white man on the soil of Africa. As a talented writer of rich resource and superior creativity, armed with in-depth knowledge of different cultures and traditions in Africa, the Author throws light on the rich cultural heritage of the people of Africa when civilization was yet unknown to the people. The book reminds the readers that the Africans of old kept their pride and still enjoyed their own lives. They celebrated victories when wars were won, enjoyed their New yam festivals and villages engaged themselves in seasonal wrestling contest etc; Early morning during harmattan season, they gathered firewood and made fire inside their small huts to hit up their bodies from the chilling cold of the harmattan. That was the Africa of old we will always remember. In Africa today, the story have changed. The people now enjoy civilized cultures made possible by the influence of the white man through his scientific and technological process. Yet there are some uncivilized places in Africa whose people haven’t tested or felt the impact of civilization. These people still maintain their ancient traditions and culture. In everything, we believe that days when people paraded barefooted in Africa to the swarmp to tap palm wine and fetch firewood from there farms are almost fading away. The huts are now gradually been replaced with houses built of blocks and beautiful roofs. Thanks to modern civilization. Donkeys and camels are no longer used for carrying heavy loads for merchants. They are now been replaced by heavy trucks and lorries. African traditional methods of healing are now been substituted by hospitals. In all these, I will always love and remember Africa, the home of my birth and must respect her cultures and traditions as an AFRICAN AUTHOR.

'Not tonight, darling, I've got a headache...' An estimated one in three couples suffer from problems associated with one partner having a higher libido than the other. Marriage therapist Michele Weiner Davis has written THE SEX-STARVED MARRIAGE to help couples come to terms with this problem. Weiner Davis shows you how to address pyschological factors like depression, poor body image and communication problems that affect sexual desire. With separate chapters for the spouse that's ready for action and the spouse that's ready for sleep, THE SEX-STARVED MARRIAGE will help you re-spark your passion and stop you fighting about sex. Weiner Davis is renowned for her straight-talking style and here she puts it to great use to let you know you're not alone in having marital sex problems. Bitterness or complacency about ho-hum sex can ruin a marriage, breaking the emotional tie of good sex.

An exhibition of drawings by the Italian late-Renaissance and Mannerist artist.