THAT'S AMORE: ITALIANS LOVE MARILYN MONROE.

Byline: Tom Nolan & Dick Lochte Special to the Daily News

Publishers - and, presumably, their customers - apparently have not yet tired of books devoted to Marilyn Monroe. And ``Marilyn Monroe'' (Rizzoli; $60), edited by Giovanbattista Brambilla, a 5-pound coffee-table album based on a recent Italian exhibition, is one of the most lavish yet.

Included in the color-rich portfolio are some 400 Monroe photographs, American and European magazine covers, movie stills, postage stamps and other memorabilia, as well as reproductions of a number of fine-art pieces incorporating Marilyn's image.

It's an impressive array of the famous, the notorious and the obscure: snapshots of a youthful Norma Jean, several frames from the nude calendar session, well-known Life and Look spreads and melancholy final-years exposures.

Thirteen writers (including two photographers who worked with MM, and a Bolognese professor of semiotics) contribute essays, which are printed in between and around the pictures in a squeezed and unattractive typeface difficult to decipher. But you probably won't be buying this handsome, hefty volume for the essays.

Another coffee-table volume, this one a bit more predictable, is devoted to ``The Art of `The Hunchback of Notre Dame' '' (Hyperion; $50). As everyone in the free world must know by now, Quasimodo is under contract to Disney. And if this lovely, lovingly produced art book is any indication, his premiere appearance for that studio should be a visually spectacular one.

If, like us, you've been wondering why Disney selected Victor Hugo's huge, brooding tale, populated by thieves, an evil cleric, a misshapen bell-ringer, a sexy Gypsy and assorted brutish townies, drunks and degenerates, for its next family film, the text by Stephen Rebello, a contributing editor to Movieline and the author of ``The Art of `Pocahontas,' '' provides the answer. The idea came from the studio's Creative Affairs Vice President David Stainton, who'd been introduced to the story as a child by the Classics Illustrated comic-book version.

As this book more than suggests, the animated film is much closer in tone to the novel than the comic book. The shadowy cathedral, the narrow, winding Paris streets, the sinister, obsessed priest (whose song ``Hellfire'' is one that may have the tykes scratching their heads), rowdy crowd scenes inspired by the paintings of Pieter Brueghel and the voluptuous Gypsy dancing girl are all remarkably true to Hugo's vision. So big deal if the gargoyles move around and tell jokes.

Hyperion is also offering a cloth-bound collector's edition of the novel illustrated by art used in the preparation of the film ($17.50).

Definitely not for children are the motion pictures discussed by Stephen Hunter in ``Violent Screen'' (Bancroft Press, 308 pages; $19.95). Hunter, who reviews films for the Baltimore Sun (while pursuing an additional career as the author of popular hard-boiled novels such as the current ``Black Light'') has a very clear vision of cinematic crime. And his opinionated reviews provide refreshing appraisals of a wide assortment movies from Scorsese's ``The King of Comedy'' to Tarantino's ``Pulp Fiction.''

The latter prompted this critique. ``Now we're in an era of ironic violence, in which young film school or video market geniuses offer us hip, knowing takes on mayhem, with ample nods to other movies and a wink that communicates the information that it's only a movie. Alas, far too few people are hip or ironic enough themselves to get the joke.''

The humor is more universally accessible in ``Hollywood Hi-Fi: Over 100 of the Most Outrageous Celebrity Recordings Ever'' (St. Martin's Griffin; $14.95), by George Gimarc and Pat Reeder. The resurrection of its title's promised number of oddball near-musical recordings by movie and TV stars - from Mae West to Orson Welles, Cybill Shepherd to Bruce Willis, Walter Matthau to Jack Lemmon - was apparently a task so daunting it took two people to do it (let alone review it).

Entries range from the dimly remembered (Burgess Meredith's ``Songs From How the West Was Won,'' Robert Mitchum's calypso collection) to the never-heard-of (Tippi Hedren's ``If You Were a Carpenter'') to the downright bizarre (a protest ballad by a pre-thespian Sissy Spacek, as folk-singer ``Rainbo,'' chiding John Lennon for his nude album cover with Yoko Ono).

Sometimes the authors' commentary seems a tad mean-spirited, but generally their mockery is amusing and apparently warranted by the bizarre ``treasures'' under scrutiny. (Of Walter Matthau's vocalizing on a song called ``Bring Her Back to Me'': ``His bellowing is breathtakingly ghastly, yet wonderfully unselfconscious ...''). Like the records it revives, this paperback screams out for a sequel. (Remember that George Maharis LP?)

Available once more, in large-format trade paperback, is Frank Driggs' and Harris Lewine's legendary ``Black Beauty, White Heat: A Pictorial History of Classic Jazz'' (Da Capo; $29.95), - an astonishing scrapbook of about 1,500 archival photographs (posed, candid, commercial, amateur, movie stills) of jazz players, from post-ragtime to beyond be-bop.

The photos are supplemented by record and concert ads, handbills, cartoons, posters and newspaper clippings. New Orleans, Chicago, New York, Kansas City, the West Coast and Europe receive special attention in a work that vividly documents the music's vital history. A forward by John Hammond and a nostalgic memoir of record-collecting by Paul Bacon add even a bit more appeal to this indispensable and extraordinary labor of love and scholarship.

``Projection 5'' (Faber and Faber; $14.95), edited by John Boormam and Walter Donohue, is the latest in a British-based annual journal of essays and interviews on film and filmmakers. Animators Ray Harryhausen, Nick Park and Henry Selick are spotlighted in one trio of pieces. Another section focusing on Hollywood directors and actors offers a Quentin Tarantino-Brian de Palma dialogue, visits with Fred Zimmermann and James Stewart, a chapter of William Wellman memoir and a revealing conversation between Tony Curtis and daughter Jamie Lee. A generous assortment of stills and storyboard drawings illustrate this engrossing and stimulating trade paperback.

The recent hoopla over the ``Mission: Impossible'' movie has renewed interest in the fondly recalled TV series, which, in turn, has prompted the reissue of Patrick J. White's 1991 trade paperback, ``The Complete Mission: Impossible Dossier'' (Avon; $15). A remarkably detailed survey of the long-running (168 episodes) series, ``Dossier'' is chock full of odd bits of information. (For an episode titled ``The Town,'' in which he spends a good deal of time paralyzed, Peter Graves kept falling asleep. A salary dispute kept Barbara Bain out of ``The Diplomat.'') But it lacks an index. So, if you're following the newly rebroadcast series on the FX cable channel for example, locating a specific show in the book can be, yes, a mission impossible.

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Photo: A 5-pound coffee-table tome, ``Marilyn Monroe,'' chr onicles the screen siren's Hollywood career - and the memorabilia that followed.