Other books that might interest you

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  Spotify Algorithms: Learn How To...

  Andrew Southworth, Genera Studios

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  Spotify’s algorithm is kind of a black box. Your song releases, you do some marketing and then it gets thrown onto some algorithmic playlists, sometimes. To most artists it may as well be completely random, but behind the scenes there is of course some very particular code executing purposefully written algorithms. Unfortunately we have no idea what this algorithm actually is. 
  This book represents my entire understanding of how the Spotify algorithm works and how i've been able to get almost every song i've released in the past 3 years onto Discovery Weekly. Since I don't have any insider knowledge this understanding is based on experience, trial and error, research and a little bit of science. 
  Andrew Southworth is a music artist with over 10 million streams on his own music. Through his YouTube channel and company Genera Studios he has helped other artists generate over 100 million streams on their music.

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  Words into Action - Finding the...

  William Gaskill

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  Packed with insights from a lifetime of directing theatre, Words into Action is a fascinating read and a vital masterclass for actors and directors.
  Renowned theatre director William Gaskill was one of the founders of the Royal Court, whose ethos, as Christopher Hampton says in his Foreword, 'this book goes a long way towards defining'.
  Gaskill's acclaimed work as a director always began with the words of the playwright, and here, starting with a chapter on 'Trusting the Writer', he takes the actor through the vital steps needed to find the life of the play and then to articulate it on stage.
  Drawing instances from his own work in the theatre and from teaching at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he looks at action and intention, stillness and movement, sentences and rhetoric, punctuation and pauses. He pays detailed attention to staging Shakespeare's plays, and there are also chapters on masks, on language as character, and on verse and prose. Gaskill was, says Maggie Smith, 'the best teacher in the world.'
  'If you want to know what a director - a good theatre director, that is - actually does, read William Gaskill's marvellous new book, Words into Action... Gaskill is a great director, and a great teacher... Essential stuff' - Whatsonstage.com
  'relays profound wisdom and very specific, useful tips from a career of directing... the book provides unique and thorough insight into many specifics of Gaskill's career' - 'Theatre Artists Writing About Practice: A Review Essay', 2011
  'a fount of wisdom that should prove invaluable to any reader' - British Theatre Guide
  'a fastidiously lucid and frank set of essays packed with practical advice, useful observations, and acute close readings' - TLS, 'Books of the Year'

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  How to Keep from Losing Your Mind

  Deal W. Hudson

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  Liberal education is nothing other then the aquistion of a free mind. 
  Unfortunately, too many of us have a mind shackled by ideologies and moved by outside forces. We’re pulled and pushed by trends and the prevailing culture. Higher education has become ridiculously expensive and is producing graduates whose minds are anything but free, filled as they are with the prejudices of their teachers. 
  Only when we break these shackles and habitually exercise a free mind can we call ourselves liberally educated. 
  In How to Keep from Losing Your Mind, Deal Hudson will show you how to avoid the false open-mindedness and groupthink of the modern “-isms” promoted by the PC arbiters of our cultural milieu. Instead you’ll learn to: Form the habit of reconsideration, the key to a truly open mindEntertain doubts about your own immediate opinionsArgue coherently from first principles, instead of repeating ideological talking pointsRecognize prejudice and propagandaAvoid sloganeering and engage in real thought 
  This book will enable every person to rise above the shouting, the name-calling, and the brutal incivility of public discourse and rediscover the pleasure and benefit of contemplating the meaning and noble aims of human life.

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  The Billy Bob Tapes - A Cave...

  Billy Bob Thornton, Kinky Friedman

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  “One of the more readable, insightful and entertaining celebrity autobiographies in recent memory—a tragicomedy that could be turned into its own movie.” —Chicago Sun-Times 
   
  There is—and could only ever be—one Billy Bob Thornton: actor, musician, Academy Award-winning screenwriter, and accidental Hollywood badass. In The Billy Bob Tapes, he leads us into his Cave Full of Ghosts, spinning colorful tales of his modest (to say the least) Southern upbringing, his bizarre phobias (komodo dragons?), his life, his loves (including his marriage to fellow Oscar winner Angelina Jolie), and, of course, his movie career. Best of all, he’s feeding these truly incredible stories and righteous philosophical rants through his close friend, Kinky Friedman—legendary country music star, bestselling author, would-be politician, and all-around bon vivant. Put these two iconoclasts together and you get a star’s story that’s actually an insightful pop culture manifesto—a hybrid offspring of Born Standing Up with Sh*t My Dad Says. 
   
  “Mr. Thornton, who grew up in Arkansas, is a gifted storyteller, with an eye for the telling detail and a moving way of blending comedy with tragedy. ”—The New York Times 
   
  “Rife with Southern gothicisms, delightfully weird digressions, and the sort of 3 a.m. philosophizing that Flannery O’Connor had to make up.” —Austin Chronicle

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  Cosmopolitan Film Cultures in...

  Rielle Navitski, Nicolas Poppe

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  Cosmopolitan Film Cultures in Latin America examines how cinema forged cultural connections between Latin American publics and film-exporting nations in the first half of the twentieth century. Predating today's transnational media industries by several decades, these connections were defined by active economic and cultural exchanges, as well as longstanding inequalities in political power and cultural capital. The essays explore the arrival and expansion of cinema throughout the region, from the first screenings of the Lumière Cinématographe in 1896 to the emergence of new forms of cinephilia and cult spectatorship in the 1940s and beyond. Examining these transnational exchanges through the lens of the cosmopolitan, which emphasizes the ethical and political dimensions of cultural consumption, illuminates the role played by moving images in negotiating between the local, national, and global, and between the popular and the elite in twentieth-century Latin America. In addition, primary historical documents provide vivid accounts of Latin American film critics, movie audiences, and film industry workers' experiences with moving images produced elsewhere, encounters that were deeply rooted in the local context, yet also opened out onto global horizons.

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  Local Hero - Making a Scottish...

  Jonathan Melville

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  It's not a high concept movie, there's actually no story there really. It’s what happens in between the story that’s important' – Bill Forsyth  The story of an American businessman sent to buy the Scottish village of Ferness with the aim of turning it into an oil refinery, Local Hero is one of Scotland’s most beloved, and most misunderstood, films.  When Bill Forsyth’s incredible success with the low-budget That Sinking Feeling and Gregory’s Girl found him collaborating with Britain’s best-known film producer, David Puttnam, he soon found his independent ethos clashing with Hollywood’s desire for superstar actors and a happy ending.  Jonathan Melville checks into the MacAskill Arms and looks back at Bill Forsyth’s career with the help of new and archive interviews, before spending time with the cast and crew, including stars Peter Riegert and Denis Lawson, who made Local Hero on location in Houston and Scotland in 1982.  With access to early drafts of the Local Hero script (including hand-written notes) that reveal more about Mac and mermaids, excerpts from a previously unpublished interview in which Bill Forsyth explains why he refuses to call his film 'feel-good', and a look at long-lost deleted scenes with exclusive commentary from those involved, this is the definitive history of the Scottish classic.  ‘Genuine fairy tales are rare; so is film-making that is thoroughly original in an unobtrusive way. Bill Forsyth's quirky disarming Local Hero is both . . . it demonstrates Mr. Forsyth's uncanny ability for making an audience sense that something magical is going on, even if that something isn't easily explained’ – Janet Maslin, The New York Times  'Local Hero is kind of transcendent. It's poetic in a way that most films can't hope to be' – Frank Cottrell-Boyce  'Local Hero is one my favourite films of all time . . .  A timeless masterpiece' – Mark Kermode

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