The January Competition [closed]
January’s competition offers three Bookhugger readers celluloid biography, historical intrigue and American adolescence…
This month, for three lucky winners we have sets of:
- Palo Alto, by James Franco (Faber)
- Danny Boyle In His own Words, by Amy Raphael (Faber)
- The Bridge of Spies, by Giles Whittell (Simon and Schuster)
plus a Bookhugger mug each of course!
|
||||||||
Palo Alto, by James Franco
Set in a northern California university town, Palo Alto traces the lives of an extended group of teenagers as they experiment with vices of all kinds, struggle with their families and one another, and succumb to self-destructive, often heartless nihilism. James Franco presents his characters in all their raw humanity, while at the same time providing insight into the teenage mind.
In the classic American tradition of story-cycles such as Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, James Franco draws a stark, vivid, disturbing but, above all, compassionate portrait of lives on the rough fringes of youth.
‘Franco’s talent is unmistakable, his ambition profound. He has taken the twin subjects of suburban Palo Alto and American adolescence and made them as scary and true as they must be. This is a book to be inhaled more than once, with delight and admiration, with unease and pure enjoyment. As a writer, he’s here to stay.’ Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan
|
||||||||
Danny Boyle In His own Words, by Amy Raphael
Danny Boyle’s journey to Oscar night began in a Catholic working-class family in Lancashire in 1956. After a career in the theatre – working for such esteemed companies as Joint Stock and the Royal Court – Boyle talked himself into a job at the BBC. Here he produced Alan Clarke’s Elephant and directed the critically acclaimed mini-series Mr Wroe’s Virgins.
In the mid-90s, Boyle woke British film up from a post-Thatcher stupor with Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. A breathtaking visual stylist who believes British cinema can be populist and should be visceral; Boyle’s best work is often the result of a tight budget and near impossible working conditions. A great believer in the film-making process as a collaborative experience, the director is equally defined by his relentless energy and enthusiasm – whether on the set of the heroin-soaked Trainspotting or in the back streets of Mumbai in Slumdog Millionaire.
Boyle is unafraid to experiment with genres: so the twisted romcom of A Life Less Ordinary was followed by the Utopian nightmare of The Beach and the apocalyptic horror flick 28 Days Later by the gentle kids’ drama Millions. Yet no one was more surprised than Boyle by the unstoppable Slumdog Millionaire. It won eight Oscars, four Golden Globes and seven Baftas yet almost didn’t secure an international release. The leading director of his generation, Boyle has confounded expectation again with 127 Hours, the true story of an American mountaineer forced to amputate his arm with a blunt knife.
Within these pages Boyle proves himself to be not only inspirational and passionate, but also frank and funny. He talks about dressing up as David Bowie and his love of The Clash, reflects upon nearly becoming a priest and how making films is his life.
|
||||||||
The Bridge of Spies, by Giles Whittell
Who were the three men the Soviet and American superpowers exchanged on Berlin’s Glienicke Bridge on February 10, 1962, in the first and most legendary prisoner exchange between East and West? Bridge of Spies vividly traces the journeys of these men, whose fate defines the complex conflicts that characterized the most dangerous years of the Cold War.
Bridge of Spies is a true story of three men – Rudolf Abel, a Soviet Spy who was a master of disguise; Gary Powers, an American who was captured when his spy plane was shot down by the Russians; and Frederic Pryor, a young American doctor mistakenly identified as a spy and captured by the Soviets. The men in this three-way political swap had been drawn into the nadir of the Cold War by duty and curiosity, and the same tragicomedy of errors that induced Khrushchev to send missiles to Castro. Two of them – the spy and the pilot – were the original seekers of weapons of mass destruction. The third was an intellectual, in over his head. They were rescued against daunting odds by fate and by their families, and then all but forgotten. Even the U2 spy-plane pilot Powers is remembered now chiefly for the way he was vilified in the U.S. on his return. Yet the fates of those men exemplified the pathological mistrust that fueled the arms race for the next 30 years. This is their story.
The Question
To win, answer one not-so-simple question:
- Question 1:Watching which film for the first time made Danny Boyle fall in love with cinema?
Terms and conditions
- Closing date for entries: 7th February 2011.
- Open to residents of the United Kingdom only.
- Entry to the competition is by completion of the above form only. Anyone submitting multiple entries will be disqualified.
- The winners will be selected at random from those correct entries received before the closing date.
- Only the winning entrants will be contacted by Bookhugger. Our decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
- The winner’s name(s) may be published on the Bookhugger website after the closing date of the competition.
- The competition is not open to Bookhugger employees and their families, or to employees of Bookhugger publishers and their families.
January 31st, 2011 at 11:47 am
Loks like 3 lucky peop;e are in for a treat with January’s prize selection.
January 31st, 2011 at 1:07 pm
Thank god danny boyle did’nt become a priest!