Fact Fictions And The Forbidden Predictions Of The Amazing Criswell

“We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives, whether we want to or not!” Jeron Charles Criswell King, better known simply as Criswell, can rightfully be described as one of the first pop celebrity psychics. His bizarre predications — 87 per cent of which came true, he claimed — appeared from the 1950s through the 1970s in newspapers and magazines, while the flamboyant showman hosted his own Los Angeles television show, guested on national TV and in Ed Wood movies, including Plan 9 from Outer Space, alongside Vampira, Tor Johnson and Bela Lugosi. Unsuccessful attempts to find fame on Broadway and Tin Pan Alley did not prevent him from co-authoring three books on how to succeed in these fields. A member of the hidden Hollywood gay community, the story of Criswell, his triumphs and defeats, is one of fame and hope. Fact, Fictions, and the Forbidden Predictions of the Amazing Criswell is the first full-length biography of Criswell. It is the result of 20 years of research by number one fan, Edwin Canfield, and includes interviews, new information, and many startling predictions. “The world as we know it will cease to exist on August 18, 1999!”

May 1968. Paris is awash with violence and public unrest. In a small cinema, where a surreal film is showing, another riot is taking place. Here, the enraged audience smashes up the auditorium, tear out the seats, and chase the film’s director onto the street. This is the premiere of Jean Rollin’s feature debut, The Rape of the Vampire. An outsider of French cinema, Rollin’s films are unique and dreamlike. They offer tales of mystery and nostalgia, obsolescence and seductive female vampires with a thirst for blood and sex. It is a cinema at once strange, evocative and deeply personal. Funding his own projects, Rollin defiantly made the films he wanted to make and in so doing created a fantastique genre unlike any other. The Nude Vampire, The Living Dead Girl and The Grapes of Death are among those films now celebrated as the work of an auteur, one who confounds preconceived notions of ‘Eurotrash’ cinema. This book is devoted to the director and all his work, across all genres, including a nascent French hardcore pornographic film industry. Written with full co-operation from Jean Rollin, shortly before his death in 2010, it contains exclusive interviews and archive material.

The leading journal devoted to all aspects of popular culture and cult media, "Headpress 25 "turns its attention to the Dream, or Flicker, machine. On this subject, it features interviews with William Burroughs-following a chance meeting at a bus stop by writers Johnny Strike and Gregory Daurer-and Paul Bowles. The cover is a striking oil painting of Burroughs in Tangiers. "Headpress 25 "also includes a detailed look at the neglected life and career of the late Luis de Jesus, a "star" of diminutive stature whose film appearances range from sadistic sidekick in the cult 1976 feature, "Blood Sucking Freaks," to numerous hardcore porn features, of which the most notorious is "The Anal Dwarf,"

A talented artist with a thirst for music and literature, Tom Crites self-published zines and contributed to the small press for over two decades. He designed album covers and t-shirts, but also created art simply because he loved to do it, often leaving his work in public places for others to find. Throughout all of this, Tom struggled with mental health issues. In August 2013, at the age of forty-five, he committed suicide. The artworks collected here were produced by Tom over many years and are representative of his unique and largely unsung talent. Some pieces were drawn at home in his apartment, watching films he would later review for zines or online; others he sketched whilst in hospital. All are suitable for framing. Be forewarned: There are no 'mindfulness mandalas' here, no kitsch exotic flowers to relieve the stresses of your desk job. Here is a darker beauty: macabre mysticism, human-animal hybrids, hallucinatory patterns, a melding of the sublime and the horrific. The works contained in this book are evidence of a symbolic anthropology and they embody the creative spirit that carried Tom through much of his life. Do not colour them lightly.

CULT PEOPLE features a selection of interviews, conducted by Nicanor Loreti, with many of the world’s most fascinating and renowned stars of crossover and cult cinema, including amazing first-hand accounts of the making of ALIENS, SUSPIRIA, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET & countless other classic pictures. Exclusive interviews with the leading lights of cult cinema; 30 stars and directors; the coolest of the cool. Loreti’s knowledge and enthusiasm opens up his subjects on the unbelievable world of the alternative Hollywood as never before. As well as being a great source of cinema history, CULT PEOPLE is also enormously entertaining, with tales of mass zombie auditions, crews and casts stranded in distant lands without funding, and perilous attempts to make a low budget movie in the North Pole. INTERVIEWS WITH THE FOLLOWING CULT DIRECTORS/ACTORS/ SCREENWRITERS DAVID CARRADINE (Kill Bill, Kung Fu), WES CRAVEN (Last House on the Left, Scream), MICHAEL ROOKER (Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer, JFK), LANCE HENRIKSON (Aliens), MICHAEL IRONSIDE (Starship Troopers), ALBERT PYUN (Dollman), ANTHONY TAYLOR (Incubus), BILL MCKINNEY (Deliverance) BILLY DRAGO (The Untouchables), BRUCE DAVISON (X Men), DAN O’BANNON (Alien, Return Of The Living Dead), IRVIN KIRSHNER (The Empire Stikes Back), MICHAEL IRONSIDE (V, Total Recall), WILLIAM SANDERSON (Bladerunner).

Technology and increasing levels of education have exposed people to more information than ever before. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism. Tom Nichols' The Death of Expertise shows how this rejection of experts has occurred: the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher education, and the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine, among other reasons. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. When ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy or, in the worst case, a combination of both. An update to the 2017breakout hit, the paperback edition of The Death of Expertise provides a new foreword to cover the alarming exacerbation of these trends in the aftermath of Donald Trump's election. Judging from events on the ground since it first published, The Death of Expertise issues a warning about the stability and survival of modern democracy in the Information Age that is even more important today.

“The most exciting intellectual adventure I've been on since reading Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” —Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times Gary Zukav’s timeless, humorous, New York Times bestselling masterpiece, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, is arguably the most widely acclaimed introduction to quantum physics ever written. Scientific American raves: “Zukav is such a skilled expositor, with such an amiable style, that it is hard to imagine a layman who would not find his book enjoyable and informative.” Accessible, edifying, and endlessly entertaining, The Dancing Wu Li Masters is back in a beautiful new edition—and the doors to the fascinating, dazzling, remarkable world of quantum physics are opened to all once again, no previous mathematical or technical expertise required.

Will we ever get tired of Clueless? Ugh, as if! Acclaimed pop culture journalist Jen Chaney celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the classic film’s release in the first book of its kind, weaving together original interviews with writer and director Amy Heckerling; key cast members, including Alicia Silverstone (Cher), Paul Rudd (Josh), Stacey Dash (Dionne), Donald Faison (Murray), Elisa Donovan (Amber), Wallace Shawn (Mr. Hall), Twink Caplan (Ms. Geist and associate producer); and other crucial Clueless players like costume designer Mona May, casting director Marcia Ross, director of photography Bill Pope, former Paramount chairwoman Sherry Lansing, and many more. Cast and crew also pay heartfelt tribute to the late Brittany Murphy, who lit up the screen as Cher’s protégée, Tai. Chaney explores the influence of Jane Austen’s Emma as the unlikely framework for Heckerling’s script, the rigorous casting process (including the future stars who didn’t make the cut), the functional yet fashion-forward wardrobe, the unique slang that drew from the past and coined new phrases for the future, the sun-drenched soundtrack that set the tone, and—above all—the massive amount of work, creativity, and craft that went into making Clueless look so effortlessly bright and glossy. As If! illuminates why plaid skirts and knee socks will never go out of style, and why Clueless remains one of the most beloved comedies of all time.