Let me confess: the films of Todd Haynes were always off-putting to me. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story struck me as mocking the fallen pop singer; Safe just seemed sterile (but that’s the point!); and his generally acknowledged masterpiece, the fractured Dylan biography I’m Not There, somehow seemed brilliantly wrong. Well, I was probably wrong on all counts—or just ...

 Although not widely recognized today, Alec Wilder’s songs were sung by Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra and performed by Keith Jarrett and Kenny Burrell. His compositions for the concert hall combined jazz with classical

 Genuine local folk culture, including folk music, was more common in pre-World War II America before television and the accelerating pace of communication leveled distinctions. Associates of the Library of Congress, especially the

Movies were once magical, especially in the early days before the marvelous became commonplace. In Disappearing Tricks: Silent Film, Houdini, and the New Magic of the Twentieth Century (University of Illinois Press), Matthew Solomon reminds us that movies were sometimes shown as part of magic shows in the 1890s and early 1900s, and images created by trick photography mirrored the conjuring of ...

Afghanistan has seldom been out of the news or out of the movies since 911. In the years that followed the American counterattack, films ranging from Iron Man to The Kite Runner have depicted the mountainous country and its people for Western audiences. In Afghanistan in the Cinema (University of Illinois Press), Mark Graham subjects those and earlier movies about that land to a close reading. M...

When making a movie on historical evens, is the filmmaker obligated to act as a historian, weighing each fact as if it were gold dust, or is he licensed to make it all up in the interest of spinning a good yarn? As Robert Brent Toplin argues in the new edition of History by Hollywood (published by University of Illinois Press), the answer is �that depends.� Of course, many of the pundits...

Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller were the 20th century�s real-life odd couple. Hollywood married Manhattan when they hooked up, big breasts coupled with big brains, the effervescent sex kitten went arm in arm with the scowling intellectual. Rather than merely add another book to the Monroe shelf, biographer Jeffrey Meyers decided to focus on her relationship with the great playwright in ...