Author: Roy Blount Jr.
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062009761
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 181
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Book Description
Nearly eighty years after its release, the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup remains one of the most influential pieces of political satire in history. In Hail, Hail, Euphoria!, bestselling author Roy Blount Jr. tells the history and making of Duck Soup, examining the comedic genius of the Marx Brothers in their finest hour and nine minutes. In Duck Soup, a slim, agile, quick-witted, self-assured young man is summoned to save a nation from financial ruin. As the nation's new president, he brings together a team of rivals, a band of brothers. Those brothers are Pinky, Chicolini, and Lt. Bob Roland. Their leader? None other than Rufus T. Firefly. The humor and idiosyncratic wit of Duck Soup are saluted by the author's own in this gem of a book, offering a behind-the-scenes tale of show business and brotherhood that only a true Marx Brothers aficionado could tell.
Author: Roy Blount
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062009761
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 166
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Book Description
Nearly eighty years after its release, the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup remains one of the most influential pieces of political satire in history. In Hail, Hail, Euphoria!, bestselling author Roy Blount Jr. tells the history and making of Duck Soup, examining the comedic genius of the Marx Brothers in their finest hour and nine minutes. In Duck Soup, a slim, agile, quick-witted, self-assured young man is summoned to save a nation from financial ruin. As the nation's new president, he brings together a team of rivals, a band of brothers. Those brothers are Pinky, Chicolini, and Lt. Bob Roland. Their leader? None other than Rufus T. Firefly. The humor and idiosyncratic wit of Duck Soup are saluted by the author's own in this gem of a book, offering a behind-the-scenes tale of show business and brotherhood that only a true Marx Brothers aficionado could tell.
Author: Roy Blount
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429922788
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
Fresh-squeezed Lexicology, with Twists No man of letters savors the ABC's, or serves them up, like language-loving humorist Roy Blount Jr. His glossary, from adhominy to zizz, is hearty, full bodied, and out to please discriminating palates coarse and fine. In 2008, he celebrated the gists, tangs, and energies of letters and their combinations in Alphabet Juice, to wide acclaim. Now, Alphabetter Juice. Which is better. This book is for anyone—novice wordsmith, sensuous reader, or career grammarian—who loves to get physical with words. What is the universal sign of disgust, ew, doing in beautiful and cutie? Why is toadless, but not frogless, in the Oxford English Dictionary? How can the U. S. Supreme Court find relevance in gollywoddles? Might there be scientific evidence for the sonicky value of hunch? And why would someone not bother to spell correctly the very word he is trying to define on Urbandictionary.com? Digging into how locutions evolve, and work, or fail, Blount draws upon everything from The Tempest to The Wire. He takes us to Iceland, for salmon-watching with a "girl gillie," and to Georgian England, where a distinguished etymologist bites off more of a "giantess" than he can chew. Jimmy Stewart appears, in connection with kludge and the bombing of Switzerland. Litigation over supercalifragilisticexpialidocious leads to a vintage werewolf movie; news of possum-tossing, to metanarrative. As Michael Dirda wrote in The Washington Post Book World, "The immensely likeable Blount clearly possesses what was called in the Italian Renaissance ‘sprezzatura,' that rare and enviable ability to do even the most difficult things without breaking a sweat." Alphabetter Juice is brimming with sprezzatura. Have a taste.
Author: Roy Blount, Jr.
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374175209
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
"The author of Alphabet Juice presents a wry exploration of the complicated consequences of food choices in today's world, sharing meditative poems, limericks and satirical articles on subjects ranging from bacon froth and kobe beef to the global climate and personal health., "--NoveList.
Author: Cathleen Schine
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547548362
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
A “gem of a novel” that sends up marriage, academia, and literary stardom, by the New York Times–bestselling author of They May Not Mean To, But They Do (Publishers Weekly). In this delightful novel from an author who “has been favored in so many ways by the muse of comedy,” we meet Margaret Nathan, the brilliant but forgetful author of an unlikely bestseller (The New York Review of Books). Happily married to a benevolently egotistical, slightly dull but sexy professor, Margaret seems blessed—until she finds herself seduced by an eighteenth-century novel she discovers in the library. Wrapped in its lascivious world, Margaret begins to imitate its protagonist, embarking on a hilarious jaunt around Manhattan in search of renewed passion. Will she find fulfillment through her escapades or settle for her husband? Part romantic comedy, part intellectual parody, Rameau’s Niece is wise, affecting, and thoroughly entertaining.
Author: Pierce Brown
Publisher: Del Rey
ISBN: 0345539796
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 414
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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pierce Brown’s relentlessly entertaining debut channels the excitement of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. “Red Rising ascends above a crowded dystopian field.”—USA Today ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, Shelf Awareness “I live for the dream that my children will be born free,” she says. “That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.” “I live for you,” I say sadly. Eo kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.” Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. Yet he toils willingly, trusting that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children. But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and lush wilds spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class. Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity’s overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society’s ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies . . . even if it means he has to become one of them to do so. Praise for Red Rising “[A] spectacular adventure . . . one heart-pounding ride . . . Pierce Brown’s dizzyingly good debut novel evokes The Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies, and Ender’s Game. . . . [Red Rising] has everything it needs to become meteoric.”—Entertainment Weekly “Ender, Katniss, and now Darrow.”—Scott Sigler “Red Rising is a sophisticated vision. . . . Brown will find a devoted audience.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch Don’t miss any of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga: RED RISING • GOLDEN SON • MORNING STAR • IRON GOLD • DARK AGE • LIGHT BRINGER
Author: Charlene Fix
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476601496
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
The author invites readers to spend time in the pleasure of Harpo's cinematic company while comparing him to tricksters from folklore, myth and legend. The book demonstrates how Harpo, the sweetest, wildest, most magical Marx brother, accomplishes the archetypal trickster's work. Thirteen chapters examine Harpo's trickster persona closely in each of the Marx Brothers' films: The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, Room Service, At the Circus, Go West, The Big Store, A Night in Casablanca and Love Happy. Harpo as trickster embodies luck, foolishness, cleverness, mania, hunger, lust, stealing, shape-shifting, gender-bending, alliance with underdogs, attacks on the powerful, musicality, sympathy for animals, magic and mischief. His trickster behaviors in all the films are woven into a composite impression that "with a little luck, will resonate beyond the covers of this book and leak out into the world, making it a more just, flexible, resilient, amusing and magical place."
Author: Roy Blount, Jr., Jr.
Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books
ISBN: 0374712883
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
Our best-laid plans will yield to fate. And we will say, “We lived. We ate.” Roy Blount Jr. is one of America’s most cherished comic writers. He’s been compared to Mark Twain and James Thurber, and his books have been called everything from “a work of art” (Robert W. Creamer, The New York Times Book Review) to “a book to read till it falls apart” (Newsweek). Now, in Save Room for Pie, he applies his much-praised wit and charm to a rich and fundamental topic: food. As a lifelong eater, Blount always got along easy with food—he didn’t have to think, he just ate. But food doesn’t exist in a vacuum; there’s the global climate and the global economy to consider, not to mention Blount’s chronic sinusitis, which constricts his sense of smell, and consequently his taste buds. So while he’s always frowned on eating with an ulterior motive, times have changed. Save Room for Pie grapples with these and other food-related questions in Blount’s signature style. Here you’ll find lively meditations on everything from bacon froth to grapefruit, Kobe beef to biscuits. You’ll also find defenses of gizzards, mullet, okra, cane syrup, watermelon, and boiled peanuts; an imagined dialogue between Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; input from Louis Armstrong, Frederick Douglass, and Blaze Starr; and of course some shampooed possums and carjacking turkeys. In poems and songs, limericks and fake (or sometimes true) news stories, Blount talks about food in surprising and innovative ways, with all the wit and verve that prompted Garrison Keillor, in The Paris Review, to say: “Blount is the best. He can be literate, uncouth, and soulful all in one sentence.”
Author: Jeremy Arnold
Publisher: Running Press Adult
ISBN: 0762459476
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
Showcasing 52 Essential films from the silent era through the 1980s, Turner Classic Movies invites you into a world filled with stirring performances, dazzling musical numbers, and bold directorial visions that mark the greatest moments in film history. Since its inception on Turner Classic Movies in 2001, The Essentials has become the ultimate series for movie lovers to expand their knowledge of must-see cinema and discover or revisit landmark films that have had a lasting impact on audiences everywhere. Based on the TCM series, The Essentials book showcases fifty-two must-see movies from the silent era through the early 1980s. Readers can enjoy one film per week, for a year of stellar viewing, or indulge in their own classic movie festival. Some long-championed classics appear within these pages; other selections may surprise you. Each film is profiled with insightful notes on why it's an Essential, a guide to must-see moments, and running commentary from TCM's Robert Osborne and Essentials guest hosts past and present, including Sally Field, Drew Barrymore, Alec Baldwin, Rose McGowan, Carrie Fisher, Molly Haskell, Peter Bogdanovich, Sydney Pollack, and Rob Reiner. Featuring full-color and black-and-white photography of the greatest stars in movie history, The Essentials is your curated guide to fifty-two films that define the meaning of the word "classic."
Author: J. Hoberman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1839022264
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 105
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Book Description
The Marx Brothers are universally considered to be classic Hollywood's preeminent comedy team and Duck Soup is generally regarded as their quintessential film. A topical satire of dictatorship and government in general, the movie was a critical failure and box-office let-down on its initial release in 1933. J. Hoberman's study of the film traces its reputation history, from the initial disappointment of its release, to its rise to cult status in the 1960s when the Marx's anarchic, anti-establishment humor seemed again timely. Hoberman places Duck Soup, alongside analogous comedies-Dr. Strangelove (1964), the Beatles films, Morgan! (1966), The President's Analyst (1967) and The Producers (1968). It attained canonical stature as a touchstone for Woody Allen and would be recognized by the Library of Congress in the 1990s. Hoberman's analysis provides a historical and political context as well as an in-depth production history, drawing on primary sources and emphasizing director McCarey's prior work along with the Marx Brothers as well as the situation at Paramount, a substantial synopsis, and an account of the movie's initial reception, concluding with its subsequent elevation to comic masterpiece.
