In her first book, The $11 Billion Year, intrepid film journalist Anne Thompson takes the reader through the annual life cycle that awaits Hollywood studios’ products and scrappy indies: a circus of festivals and awards in which a movie’s success is far from a sure thing. No matter a film’s fate, its story is never dull, and the book serves as a time capsule of those projects vying for supremacy — critically and culturally, but above all else, financially — in 2012.

In its structure, her book reminded me of Peter Bart’s The Gross of 2000, which chronicled the hits and flops in the summer slate of 1998 with a juice-packed insider’s view. The difference is Thompson’s scope is IMAX-sized compared to Bart’s.

It’s also more than just a tale constricted to a finite timeline. The author utilizes the gaps of months between such chapters on Sundance and SXSW to insert essays on other factors driving the way Tinseltown works today. Thus, we get essays that delve into the game-changing rise of digital streaming, the kowtowing to rabid fanboys at Comic-Con, and the ever-increasing importance of the almighty franchise, focusing on what went right with The Hunger Games and what went wrong with Disney’s $200 million write-off known as John Carter.

She also uses the release and subsequent controversy of Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty to examine the extra challenges awaiting women directors who dare play the Hollywood game, where the clubhouse door still all but sports a “boys only” sign.

Regardless of the film being discussed — from Silver Linings Playbook to Safety Not Guaranteed — Thompson’s account of each reads like a mini making-of article, taking the reader from conception to, ultimately, fortune or failure. You can appreciate The $11 Billion Year by individual pieces or as a whole — either way, its 320 pages prove deliciously addicting.

My only quibble with it is that appears to have gone through a rushed editorial process. I can forgive the rare occasional misspelling of a name (whether Nicolas Cage or Paul Feig can, I do not know), but other errors are far more egregious, from referring to the animated Mars Needs Moms as Mars Loves Moms, to this statement: “Films that have nabbed both Best Actress and Foreign Language nominations belong to an elite club indeed: Life Is Beautiful, Z, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” Not a single one of those pics earned a Best Actress nomination. —Rod Lott

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Yes, the subtitle of Dave Itzkoff’s Mad as Hell promises a behind-the-scenes chronicle of Sidney Lumet’s Network. Yes, the reader gets that, but the author delves deeper than that, to the point of telling not just the making of the 1976 film, but its conception, release, impact, blowback, legacy and continuing influence.

Part of that is because the book is as much as story about Network‘s celebrated screenwriter, Paddy Chayefsky, as it is about the Oscar-winning movie. A magnificent writer of television, stage and screen, Chayefsky was also an incredible control freak who ironically had no control over his family life; he clearly cared more about the written word than his flesh and blood.

Always waiting for the other shoe to drop, Chayefsky could not ever truly enjoy his incredible success — Network would bring him his third Academy Award for screenwriting — and harboring a near-extreme paranoia couldn’t help matters; he believed a second Holocaust was imminent. Nevertheless, he was able to function to do his job, starting with his much-abhorred boob tube. But it was film we forever will associate him with, especially the one with which Itzkoff’s book is concerned.

Network, we know now, was prescient — and continues to be more so as the years tick by — and even in scenes that never made it past the page, which Itzkoff details. One such case I found astounding is when the UBS execs dream up programming that is supposed to be considered wild: a show adapted from The Exorcist and a soap about homosexuals. We already have the latter; the former is being developed.

That’s one of many juicy bits the Mad as Hell reader will learn, thanks to Itzkoff’s judicious digging. Others include the revelation that Peter Finch could not complete two takes of “the” speech, that Lumet considered firing Faye Dunaway well after filming had begun, the pronunciation error that the to-the-letter Chayefsky failed to catch, and how Ned Beatty lied his way into a role. (I’d include how Dunaway did her damnedest to alienate most everyone, but everyone already knows that.)

If you haven’t seen Network — first off, shame on you — do not read this book until you do. Those who have may not want Mad as Hell to end, particularly knowing the fate of a reinvigorated Finch before the film could be fêted as that year’s Oscars. Only in a coda examining how Finch’s Howard Beale character has given rise to the likes of Glenn Beck does Itzkoff — turning from storyteller to social critic — produce a paragraph that’s not intensely readable. —Rod Lott

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Only in a book like Robert Hofler’s Sexplosion could a line like “Blowjobs continued to present sizable problems for filmmakers” not be played for laughs.

Having last chronicled the flamboyant flame-out of producer Allan Carr in 2010’s Party Animals, New York City-based journalist Hofler continues in a libidinous vein with Sexplosion, the first great book of 2014. The subtitle says it all — in part, How a Generation of Pop Rebels Broke All the Taboos.

Concentrating on the half-decade between 1968 and 1973, Hofler crafts a remarkably cohesive narrative of change and controversy, despite such disparate creative elements at work. Then again, it was not one piece of popular culture that changed the morality grip — no matter how many of them were connected to Andy Warhol and his Factory hangers-on — but the cumulative effect of all of them.

Sexplosion delves into the major players, finding most of its pages spent at the movies, from Myra Breckinridge to Straw Dogs, but also looking long and hard at theater (like Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band) and literature (such as John Updike’s Couples). Merely touched upon is the boob tube; the most conservative medium of them all nonetheless made waves and headlines with shows both factual An American Family and fictional All in the Family.

Along the way, readers get not only accounts of their making — often made against all odds — but wonderful stories most authors might find too crude to include. This book, however, is Sexplosion, which is way we learn how some of Hair‘s initial female cast members were so comfortable appearing nude onstage, they didn’t mind their tampon strings flopping around in the audience’s line of sight, or how concerned Marlon Brando was about his penis size while shooting the sex scenes of Last Tango in Paris.

On the lighter side, you’ll learn that studio execs were so vexed by Midnight Cowboy that they wanted to turn it into a musical for Elvis Presley, and that the Rolling Stones sought to star as A Clockwork Orange‘s gang of Droogs.

No matter the spice level of the words on the page, Hofler’s Sexplosion is that most rare of histories: as fun as it is fascinating. —Rod Lott

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While certainly well-intentioned, the idea behind Hidden Horror: A Celebration of 101 Underrated and Overlooked Fright Flicks is hardly new. For example, I immediately was reminded of a book that’s now 10 years old: Fangoria’s 101 Best Horror Movies You’ve Never Seen: A Celebration of the World’s Most Unheralded Fright Flicks. Hell, the titles are almost the same!

Yet that’s not a complaint. At least not when so little overlap exists, when so many more movies have yet to get their due, and when the results are as finely polished as editor Aaron Christensen’s trade paperback is. Pay no mind to it being print-on-demand; this book exudes professionalism on all levels without sacrificing its pure indie spirit.

It’s also a good sign that I didn’t care that I have seen more than half of the 101 featured films and heard of all but two. No matter how deep your knowledge of the genre goes, Hidden Horror is a fun read above all else. While I suspect it will be used by burgeoning film buffs looking to expand their horizons in the years to come, it serves dual purpose as simply a fine collection of criticism and an opportunity to reconnect with titles that may have escaped your memory.

Following a foreword by no less an icon than Maniac director William Lustig, Christensen admits in his introduction that the movies covered in Hidden Horror may not truly be hidden at all. Degrees to which a film is “underrated” and/or “overlooked” is arguably as subjective as whether it is scary.

That’s why something like 1978’s notorious (or noxious, depending on your POV) as I Spit on Your Grave is included. Yes, the rape-revenge shocker has plenty of fans and caused plenty more furor in its time, but no, you’re not likely to have read about it quite like you will here, as BJ Coleangelo — a rape victim herself — defends the oft-maligned exploitation thriller as empowering cinema. Now that’s a refreshing take to read.

And so it goes with 100 other essays from writers, journalists and bloggers, each taking roughly three pages apiece to share and spill their love over a particular work, from the low-bar schlock of Horror of Party Beach to the high-minded artistry of Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession.

Only the spaghetti Western Django Kill … If You Live, Shoot! — no matter how surreal — strikes me as suspect for this lineup. Still, the piece on it is well-written; all of them are, which is more than a little surprising, given the sheer number of cooks in the kitchen.

Also worthy of a shout-out is John Pata for his terrific design work. What so DIY indie authors and publishers fail to recognize is that how a book looks is just as important as how it reads — and maybe even more so, since it creates that first impression upon flip-through. Bad design — or simply nonexistent design — can do harm to good work. Just look at Christensen’s previous collection, 2007’s Horror 101, the guts of which are as drab as to repel the eyeballs connected to interested minds.

Hidden Horror has no such problems; I’m not sure it has any problems, other than that soon after 300 pages, it comes to an end. —Rod Lott

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Pop quiz, hotshot: One guess as to which movies form the core of Randy Rasmussen’s Psycho, The Birds and Halloween: The Intimacy of Terror in Three Classic Films.

Wait, how’d you guess?

Okay, next question. This one’s harder, but not by much: Is the book as simplistic as that initial question?

Answer: Yeah, pretty much.

It’s not that everything to be said about those Alfred Hitchcock and John Carpenter classics already has been said — it just depends on what’s being said and who’s doing the saying. If there can be a 336-page critical study devoted to a four-minute scene from Psycho alone — and there is and the Hitch faithful among us should read it — there can be a worthy volume on the entirety of these three horror greats. I’m afraid it’s just not this one.

A university library associate by trade, Rasmussen — whose previous books for McFarland & Company analyzed Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick and horror archetypes — focuses on the relationship triangles in each film, but separately and going scene by scene, seemingly making comment on every line of stage direction.

The problem in that approach is Rasmussen finds hidden meaning in everything, like a first-semester film student patting himself on the back for a newfound ability to Think Deep. It’s like the infamous case of critics reading 1968’s Night of the Living Dead as a statement of America’s race relations at the time, whereas its director claims no such thesis was implied or intended.

For example, take this excerpt of the author on Psycho‘s first scene:

“All right,” he concedes, spreading his arms in a gesture of defeat. He is not indifferent to her feelings. Marion turns to face him again. Background music returns. The same lethargic, slightly melancholy music heard during the scene’s opening pan shot. Neither lover is completely satisfied with their new understanding. Sam gets up from his chair and puts on his shirt. Looking more “respectable” now, he approaches Marion and tells her, with evident sincerity, that he wants to continue seeing her under any circumstances. Marion, amused but deep down not entirely so, turns away from him to resume straightening her clothes in front of the mirror, “You make respectability sound — disrespectful,” she observes with a touch of sardonic humor. Yes, he does. Because for him respectability is little more than “hard work.” … This dialog occurs with the two characters shown in profile, against the confining backdrop of drawn blinds (more horizontal lines, like the ones in the credits). Contradicting his new commitment to Marion, if only indirectly, Sam turns away from her now and complains bitterly of two other burdens of respectability that have obviously soured him on the whole concept. He is “tired” (like the music) of “sweating for people who aren’t there” …

One more example, in which Rasmussen breaks down the scene of Norman Bates complaining about his mother to new motel guest Marion Crane:

Suddenly we see Norman from a new camera angle — a low angle profile in which the predatory stuffed owl and rape painting are visible behind him. … Visually, in two-dimension, his head overlaps with the swooping owl. Is he defying the mother that owl represents to him? Or has he merged with the owl? Become one with it? The paintings depicting rape are mounted below the predatory owl. …

And so it goes, through the whole of Psycho, then the same for The Birds and finally, mercifully, Halloween. The pages are occasionally supplemented with a welcome still, but more often rife with incomplete sentences on purpose. The effect is numbing, like watching a DVD with someone who not only voices everything onscreen, but shares his unsolicited opinion as well. I wouldn’t even accept an A-to-Z plot summary-cum-supposition from an Andrew Sarris. —Rod Lott

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