We continue to celebrate elephants. The truth is: We believe poachers should have their dicks cut off . . . and left to die.
We love the new film An Elephant’s Journey. It has been released on DVD and Digital by Lionsgate; it arrives On Demand October 23 .
This adventure is family fun. When Phoenix Wilder (portrayed by Sam Ashe Arnold), a 13-year-old orphan, moves in with his Aunt Sarah (Elizabeth Hurley) – his only surviving relative, living in Africa with her husband, Uncle Jack–Phoenix quickly falls in love with his surroundings. However, while on safari with his uncle, Phoenix gets separated from the rest of the group. As the search for Phoenix continues, the boy becomes fast friends with a giant bull elephant he was able to free from a trap. Phoenix names the elephant Indlovu, and, as they begin to bond, he decides to try to stop a band of poachers who prey on African elephants
Something tasty is always cooking on DVDs from PBS Distribution.
On September 11, they serve up The Great British Cooking Show: Season 5. The delectable baking competition that has grown into a beloved international phenomenon returns for a fifth season. The program features the original cast of Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood, Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc, in a season never before seen in the U.S.
Once again, viewers will meet twelve of Britain’s best amateur bakers who will don their aprons, enter the iconic tent and tackle culinary trials that increase in difficulty as the competition unfolds. Vying to be crowned star baker, challengers prepare three creations in each episode: a signature bake, which tests their creative flair and baking ability; the devilishly difficult technical challenge, in which contestants have to bake creations using only ingredient lists and minimal instruction; and finally, the showstopper, designed to fully showcase each baker’s skill and creativity.
Contestants face the demanding but endearing judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood, two icons of British baking who are now household names in America. Comedy duo Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc are the series hosts, providing the bakers with much-needed emotional support and comic relief. Offering viewers the perfect sweet summer escape, this program features unforgettable contestants attempting some of the series most difficult challenges, from bagels to strudel, treacle tarts to choux gateaus.
Running Press has two interesting books, published in conjunction with Turner Classic Movies.
Spanning nine decades and showcasing the most memorable songs, dazzling dancing, and brightest stars ever to grace the silver screen, TCM’s Must-See Musicals: 50 Show-Stopping Movies We Can’t Forget by Richard Barrios ($24.99) is aguide to the greatest musicals of all time.
Movie musicals have been a part of pop culture since films began to talk, nine decades ago. From the premiere of The Jazz Singer in 1927 to La La Land in 2016, musicals have sung and danced over a vast amount of territory, thrilling audiences the world over.
In their uniquely entertaining way, they transport us to marvelous places: a Technicolor land over the rainbow in The Wizard of Oz, a ballroom in Top Hat with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing cheek to cheek, a day in the life with The Fab Four in A Hard Day’s Night; and Berlin’s seedy Kit Kat Club on the eve of the Nazi takeover in Cabaret.
Spanning nine decades and branded by the most trusted authority on film, Turner Classic Movies: Must-See Sci-Fi : by Sloan De Forest () showcases 50 of the most shocking, weird, wonderful, and mind-bending movies ever made.
Science fiction films have been around since the dawn of cinema, but never before have they been more respected or widespread than now, in the 21st century, with blockbusters released on a regular basis. Unlike other genres, sci-fi has never gone out of style and has been well-represented across all eras of filmmaking. With that in mind, Must-See Sci-Fi: 50 Movies That Are Out of This World ($24.99), profiles 50 unforgettable films, including beloved favorites like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Fantastic Voyage (1966), groundbreaking shockers like Planet of the Apes (1968) and Alien (1979), and lesser-known landmarks like Things to Come (1936) and Solaris (1972).
Illustrated by astounding color and black-and-white images, the book presents the best of the genre, detailing through insightful commentary and behind-the-scenes stories why each film remains essential viewing.
Two are always more interesting than pne.
No?
In classic literature it is often the foil or “other” who reveals something crucial about the hero. So it goes in the case of Chang and Eng Bunker, the original Siamese twins, whose career of posing as an “other” on stages across the country would come to reveal much about the American psyche. In Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History (Liveright, $28.95), Yunte Huang recounts the peculiar, and often ironic, rise of Chang and Eng from sideshow curiosity to Southern gentry—an unlikely story that exposes the foibles of a young republic eager to tyrannize and delight in the abnormal.
First “discovered” by the enterprising Scotsman Robert Hunter in Siam, the twins left their family behind on April 1, 1829 to set sail for Boston. The whirlwind tour—through Boston, London, New York, Philadelphia and New York—was only supposed to last five years. But the land they wandered into was one newly taken with such curiosities “imported” from exotic lands, a nation reveling in the pages of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame; a home, in other words, obsessed with “monsters.”
Famous for their quick wit (they once refunded a one-eyed man half his ticket because he “couldn’t see as much as the others”), Chang and Eng became a nationwide sensation, heralded as living symbols of the humbugged freak. Their unrivaled success quickened the birth of mass entertainment in America, leading to the minstrel show and the rise of showmen like P.T. Barnum. Breaking off from their manager in 1832 to strike out on their own, they eventually earned enough to leave show business altogether and settle in Wilkesboro, North Carolina.
And it is here that we encounter a twist. Miraculously, despite the 1790 Naturalization Act which limited citizenship to “free white persons” (until 1952), Chang and Eng became American citizens under the Superior Court of North Carolina. They then went on to marry two white sisters—Sarah and Adelaide Yates—and father 23 children despite the interracial marriage ban (in place until 1967). They owned 18 slaves and became staunch advocates for the Confederacy, so much so that their sons fought for the South during the Civil War.
Bringing an Asian-American perspective to the lives of the Bunker twins for the very first time, Huang reveals that it was perhaps their very “otherness” that worked for them: they were neither one individual, or quite two. As Chinese immigrants before the rise of anti-Asian sentiment in the states, they were neither white or non-white; in US Census Bureau documents, they were deemed “honorary whites.” Thus they joined the ranks of the Southern gentry.
Animating a history we have never seen clearly before, the book is not only a sensational biography, but a profound investigation into our enduring penchant for finding feast in the abnormal—a tradition, Huang reveals, as American as apple pie. One that, in perhaps the greatest “act” of their career, Chang and Eng were able to manipulate and subvert.
It’s a shame many still don’t know his name. Or his genius.
Nikola Tesla invented the radio, the induction motor, the neon lamp, and the remote control. His scientific discoveries made possible X-ray technology, wireless communications, and radar, and he predicted the Internet and even the smart watch. Today, he is hailed as a visionary by the likes of Elon Musk (whose electronic cars bear his name) and Larry Page, the founder of Google. His image appears on stamps, the Encyclopedia Brittanica ranks him as one of the ten most interesting historical figures, and Life magazine lists him as one of the one hundred most famous people of the last millennium. And yet, his contemporaries and fellow inventors Thomas Edison and Guglielmo Marconi achieved far greater commercial success and popular recognition.
InTesla: Inventor of the Modern (W. W. Norton & Company, $26.95), Richard Munson asks whether Tesla’s eccentricities eclipsed his genius. Ultimately, he delivers an enthralling biography that illuminates every facet of Tesla’s life while justifying his stature as the most original inventor of the late nineteenth century.
Born at midnight during a lightning storm, between “today and tomorrow,” as Munson writes, Tesla’s unusual entry into the world foreshadowed a life in flux. He was raised a Serb in what is now Croatia by a religious father and a mother who encouraged his early scientific investigations. Though he never married and often craved isolation, he could be a master showman, entertaining crowds by exposing himself to thousands of volts of electricity. He enjoyed lavish living—he dressed impeccably and lived for years at the Waldorf Astoria—but died penniless after letting a series of promising business opportunities slip away. His alternating-current system formed the basis of the electric grid and long-distance electrical transmission, and yet he spent his later years feeding the pigeons in Bryant Park, speculating about communication with other planets, and maintaining an unusual exercise regimen (including toe-wiggling exercises) that he claimed sustained his health. He was alternately praised as a “man ahead of his time” and labeled an eccentric unable to draw practical application from his prophecies.
In this authoritative and highly readable biography, Munson explores the paradoxes that defined this underappreciated genius, as well as the relationships that altered the course of his life. Drawing on colorful accounts of his lectures and demonstrations, Munson brings to vivid life the “War of the Currents,” during which Tesla and Edison publicly debated the merits of direct and alternating currents. Compelling excerpts from Tesla’s correspondence with George Westinghouse reveal the complexities of this partnership—Westinghouse brought Tesla’s polyphase system to the world, but the company’s struggle to survive a culture of robber barons and monopolies led Tesla to sacrifice lucrative royalty payments. An examination of Tesla’s friendship with Robert and Katharine Johnson reveals the inventor’s human side, as does an account of his acquaintance with Mark Twain.
In these and other relationships both personal and professional, Tesla alternately amazed and infuriated his admirers, often letting ego and stubbornness get in the way of business deals that might have converted his visions into reality and commercial success. But, as Munson argues, even his failures in business and public relations can’t obscure the fact that he “made at least five outstanding scientific discoveries . . . that others ‘rediscovered’ up to forty years later and for which they then won Nobel Prizes.” He was a “poet and visionary,” from whom we can still learn today, an out-of-the-box thinker whose regard for innovation over money speaks to our current need for clean energy solutions.
While others, most notably Edison, produced more recognizable products, Tesla’s discoveries power our modern economy, even if those of us benefiting from them understand little of his contribution. In Tesla, Richard Munson grants the inventor the recognition he deserves for both his practical achievements and prophetic visions, skillfully placing him within the context of his time while acknowledging the many ways in which he lived outside of time, ultimately ushering in a future that others could not yet see.
No wonder we love Frontline. Such great shows, now on DVD from PBS Distribution. Frontline: Trump’s Takeover President Frump’s first year in office has been marked by ongoing turmoil—including in his own Republican party, where presidential tweet storms, inflammatory rhetoric and high-profile dissent have fueled open conflict.
Gripping and revealing, this program tells the story of Frump’s takeover of the Republican Party—from the perspective of Republican lawmakers and insiders themselves. Trump’s Takeover examines the president’s unorthodox governing style, showing how after taking office, he displayed a lack of interest in the ins and outs of legislation and policy, and instead took to Twitter, attacking opponents. The film goes behind closed doors in the negotiations to repeal and replace Obamacare—Trump’s first major legislative test—revealing through accounts of people who were there how little Trump seemed to understand or care about the details of the bill.
Frontline: McCain The program follows the story of the Republican Party’s evolution and an exploration of Senator John McCain (R., Ariz.)’s complicated relationship with President Trump and the Republican Party, as well as his life and politics.
Drawing on both new interviews and Frontline’s deep rchive of reporting, McCaintraces the conservative standard-bearer’s motivations and his political history, from his experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, to speaking out against torture during the Bush administration, to his dramatic vote against the GOP’s health care bill last year.
Frontline: Blackout in Puerto Rico More than seven months after Hurricane Maria devastated the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, more than 100,000 Americans are still without power, as part of the worst blackout in U.S. history.
This program investigates how the federal response in Puerto Rico left millions of Americans in the dark for months—and the storm before the storm: how Wall Street, Puerto Rico’s government, and Washington fueled a debt crisis that left the island’s economy in ruins and its infrastructure crippled even before Maria hit. The investigative team uncovered a trove of insider documents that show a government relief effort in chaos, struggling with key contracts, basic supplies, and its own workforce.
Produced with the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the program uncovers a series of shortcomings after Maria, including how half of FEMA’s staff on the island were trainees or unqualified, how contractors FEMA turned to failed to deliver hundreds of thousands of tarps, and how the Army Corps’ temporary roof repair program was glaringly slow compared to other storms—putting up just 439 roofs in the first 30 days after the storm compared to more than 4,500 in the first month after Irma in Florida.
Gripping and riveting, this program is a must-watch look inside the ongoing recovery effort in Puerto Rico—and the economic crisis that devastated the island long before Maria.
Frontline: Trafficked in America This program investigates how teenagers from Central America were smuggled into the U.S. by traffickers who promised them jobs and a better life—only to force them to live and work in virtual slavery to pay off their debt.
This documentary shines new light on a labor trafficking case in which Guatemalan teens were forced by a third-party contractor to work against their will at Trillium Farms in Ohio, a major egg producer. The investigative team exposes a criminal network that exploited undocumented minors, the companies who profited from their forced labor, and how U.S. government policies and practices helped to deliver some teens directly to their traffickers.
Gripping and revealing, this program presents viewers a rare look inside the hidden reality of labor trafficking in the United States.
Frontline: Myanmar’s Killing Fields With secret footage filmed by a network of citizen activists, and firsthand accounts from victims and their families, this program is U.S. television’s most comprehensive investigation of the Myanmar military’s violent crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim minority—an effort that has been described by the UN as having the “hallmarks of genocide.”
The Myanmar military insists that its campaign was simply a counter-insurgency “clearance operation” targeted against a militant Islamist Rohingya group, ARSA, that had attacked and killed security forces at police and army bases. But with shocking footage filmed by citizen activists, the documentary depicts an orchestrated campaign to target civilians, state-sanctioned violence, and mass murder—and uncovers new accounts of atrocities against the Rohingya people, from mass rape of women and children, to babies and children thrown into fires.
https://youtu.be/27g8EYNkXwE
The program also investigates the role of Aung San Suu Kyi, State Counsellor of Myanmar in the crisis. The Nobel Laureate was once seen as Myanmar’s hope and a beacon for democracy—including by President Barack Obama, who lifted all sanctions on the country in 2016. But Suu Kyi, who has continued to defend her country from international criticism, has now been accused of standing by as her country’s military led an operation that killed thousands of civilians.
NOVA: Wonders is a fresh, lively series that makes complicated concepts accessible while taking a deep dive into the scientific process. Each episode poses a big scientific question and takes viewers along on a journey to explore how far we’ve come in our quest for answers, and how we’ve managed to get here. Among the intriguing topics pondered are the secret language of animals, what’s hidden in the human body, the artificial intelligence technologies that could rival and surpass the abilities of the human mind, the controversial power to engineer life in a lab, and the mysteries of the universe.
The program travels to some unexpected places to look for answers—including deep underwater, where humpback whales are essentially playing a game of “telephone” across the world, with pods teaching each other new songs; deep beneath our skin, where trillions of microbes are living in our bodies; deep below the earth, in mines where researchers are trying to detect elusive dark matter particles; deep into space, where astrophysicists are hunting for signs of extra-terrestrial life, and more.
Three young scientists serve as enthusiastic guides and science communicators. Talithia Williams is a mathematician and statistician who also applies data models to the human body and the environment. She is joined by co-hosts Rana el Kaliouby, a computer scientist developing emotion recognition technology used in artificial intelligence, and André Fenton, a neuroscientist studying the biology of memory. All three set-up the inquiry, demonstrate key aspects of the challenges facing scientists, and ask provocative questions about research carried out on the winding paths of uncertainty and the unknown.
We have been bosom buddies and breast friends with Miss Dolly since 1986. One of 12 children raised in a cabin in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, Dolly grew to become an international superstar as famous for her distinctive voice and enduring songs as her curvy figure (40DD-17-36), big hair and bubbly personality.
She is the epitome of the American Dream, a whip-smart woman who lives according to her own rules, a successful businessperson and philanthropist, and a role model for the ages.
How did she do it?
There is much to be learned from her big heart and spirit, grit and strong work ethic. What Would Dolly Do? (Grand Central Publishing, $22)–part biography, part words of wisdom and life lessons–highlights the very best of the her highly quotable Dollyisms, unrelenting positivity and her belief in everyone’s ability to overcome adversity, with some beauty tips and recipes thrown in.
Just in time for the 150th anniversary this September of the publication of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved novel comes Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters (W. W. Norton & Company, $27.95 hardcover). This delightful and illuminating book tells the story of the novel that has captured the imaginations of generations of young readers and adults alike, and explores its phenomenal staying power.
Author Anne Boyd Rioux, who first read Little Women in her twenties and fell in love with it, tells us the unlikely story of the novel’s creation, beginning with the moment in September of 1867 that Louisa May Alcott was asked to write a book for girls. Alcott, who had always wished she were a boy, wrote in her journal that she “never liked girls or knew any” other than her sisters. Despite her initial reservations to write a book specifically for girls, she accepted the assignment for the same reason she had written so many other stories for publication: she needed the money to support her family.
A year later, on September 30, 1868, the first part of Little Women was published to great acclaim. The first printing sold out in a matter months. Fans clamored for a sequel, desperate to know the futures of the March sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. Alcott finished the novel’s second part by the end of 1868, completing a story that would shape children’s books, influence American literature, and inspire generations up until today.
In Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, Rioux tells the story of the Alcott family and how they inspired the novel. Bronson Alcott, Louisa’s transcendentalist father, championed his daughters in their creative pursuits but was ultimately unable to provide for his family. Abigail May Alcott, the Marmee of the Alcott girls, while a steadying force, had times of depression and confessed to feeling angry nearly every day of her life. Rioux details how the lives of each of Louisa’s sisters—Anna, Lizzie, and May—paralleled those of their fictional counterparts, and how Louisa came to be thought of by readers, who would make unannounced visits to her house, as nearly interchangeable with Jo.
Rioux also traces the novel’s influence through the 150 years since its publication and its appearances on Broadway, radio, television, and three times, so far, on the silver screen. She also describes the character of Jo’s notable influence on diverse women writers as a model to which they could aspire and explains how characters, including Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series and Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games series, can be seen as her descendants.
The book is ultimately a tribute to the novel that has played a vital role in the way decades of girls understood family, sisterhood, love, and their own capabilities. Rioux rightfully places the importance of both Louisa May Alcott and her great work in the fabric of American literature.
For more than two decades, Chuck Palahniuk has been holding up a dark mirror so that we might view ourselves—all too often leading us to wonder, is the darkness within the mirror or within our own psyches? Palahniuk’s works have been hailed as “astonishing,” “diabolical,” “powerful,” “important.” His reality-bending tales have sparked debate and stirred controversy.
Now, Palahniuk has returned home to the publisher that launched his career 22 years ago with Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Co. has released Adjustment Day ($26.95), a book that does for the current apocalyptic zeitgeist what Fight Club did for ’90scorporate unease. Indeed, Palahniuk has said: “Adjustment Day is to Fight Club what Atlas Shrugged is to The Fountainhead—a bigger package of bold characters and norm-bashing ideas.”
In this devastating and comic novel of rebellion, he looks at the heart of America and finds it frightening. Palahniuk has never pulled his punches. Here is a book designed to challenge, to provoke, to enrage—everyone. Adjustment Day tells the story of a United States on the brink of chaos—a simmering cauldron, ready to boil over.
The book calls to mind a politicized Hieronymus Bosch panel, wherein the disaffected citizens of a lost world prepare to take control—or blow everything up trying. And the directives for these widespread acts of malice and assassination all seem to be coming from a single source: a mysterious blue-black book with a gold-embossed cover. A book that brands the carrier as a hero. A volume found in no library, and which can be purchased in no bookshop. A book that men carry “every day, everywhere, as they’d carry a flag into battle.”
In Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, Rioux tells the story of the Alcott family and how they inspired the novel. Bronson Alcott, Louisa’s transcendentalist father, championed his daughters in their creative pursuits but was ultimately unable to provide for his family. Abigail May Alcott, the Marmee of the Alcott girls, while a steadying force, had times of depression and confessed to feeling angry nearly every day of her life. Rioux details how the lives of each of Louisa’s sisters—Anna, Lizzie, and May—paralleled those of their fictional counterparts, and how Louisa came to be thought of by readers, who would make unannounced visits to her house, as nearly interchangeable with Jo.