Best of
Film

1993

Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas: The Film, the Art, the Vision


Frank T. Thompson - 1993
    He seems so real, so alive, that we believe both he and his fantastical worl must somehow exist.But in reality it is not Jack who is the star of the show; it is the over 140 artists and technicians who spent more than two years bringing Jack and all his cohorts to life on the sceen. Every gesture Jack makes was created by a human hand, by an animator who moved the puppet in tiny increments from fram to frame. Every character, every set, every prop - even the candy dances - had to be designed and then actually fabricated by someone. This book tells the true story of the film, highlighting the art and the vision that make the movie so memorable.

Kieslowski on Kieslowski


Krzysztof Kieślowski - 1993
    Kieslowski was notoriously reticent, and even dismissive of his work and talent, but these frank and detailed discussions show a passion for film-making and a career which was often threatened by political and economic change within Poland. In the book he talks at length about his life: his childhood, disrupted by Hitler and Stalin; his four attempts to get into film school; and what Poland and its future meant to him at the time of writing, before his death in 1996.

La Jetée: ciné-roman


Chris Marker - 1993
    Chris Marker, the undisputed master of the filmic essay, composed the film almost entirely of still photographs.It traces a desperate experiment by the few remaining survivors of World War III to recover and change the past, and gain access to the future, through the action of memory. A man is chosen for his unique quality of having retained a single clear image from prewar days: no more than an ambiguous memory fragment from childhood -- a visit to the jetty at Orly airport, the troubling glance of an unknown woman, the crumpling body of a dying man.These elements become crucial hinge-points in the ensuing narrative, thickening and accumulating nuance with each successful expedition into the historical past. The image of the woman, increasingly suffused now with the time- and eros-bestowing capacities of a deep but impossible love, provides the kernel for the recovery of the dimension through which humankind and history will be saved, as well as the tragic abyss into which both the hero and the narrative inexorably fall. The story Marker tells -- a stunning parable of our modern fate -- is about the death of the world, about loss, memory, hope, and the indomitable power of love. This edition reproduces the original film's images along with its accompanying text in both English and French.

Hurrell's Hollywood Portraits


Mark A. Vieira - 1993
    The book traces his immense impact on the portrayal of the leading stars year by year, from his arrival in California in 1925 until his departure in 1943. During that time he photographed all of the greatest personalities, at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Brothers, and Columbia as well as independently. The prints come from the Chapman Collection, one of the most extensive archives of original Hurrell photographs in the world, and they include a number of rarities and surprises. Although some photos by Hurrell are familiar and frequently reproduced, most of the images in this book will come as a revelation, since they have not been published in over half a century. The genesis of the pictures is examined in a remarkable text by Mark A. Vieira, himself a highly regarded portrait photographer, who came to know Hurrell well during the photographer's later years. Vieira explains in detail Hurrell's technical feats of lighting and retouching. And drawing on firsthand accounts, he vividly re-creates the lively interplay between the photographer and his subjects at the shooting sessions in which these portraits were taken.

The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror


David J. Skal - 1993
    Skal chronicles one of our most popular and pervasive modes of cultural expression. He explores the disguised form in which Hollywood's classic horror movies played out the traumas of two world wars and the Depression; the nightmare visions of invasion and mind control catalyzed by the Cold War; the preoccupation with demon children that took hold as thalidomide, birth control, and abortion changed the reproductive landscape; the vogue in visceral, transformative special effects that paralleled the development of the plastic surgery industry; the link between the AIDS epidemic and the current fascination with vampires; and much more. Now with a new Afterword by the author that looks at horror's popular renaissance in the last decade, The Monster Show is a compulsively readable, thought-provoking inquiry into America's obsession with the macabre.

The Making of Jurassic Park


Don Shay - 1993
    Now you can go behind the scenes for a rare, inside look at the making of the movie. Learn the story behind the story--the road from novel to screenplay; Watch as the finest f/x team in movie history pooled their talents to create the lifelike dinosaurs; Read exclusive interviews with Steven Spielberg, Michael Crichton, and the key actors, and so much more!

Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen


Michel Chion - 1993
    Expanding on arguments made in his influential books The "Voice in Cinema" and "Sound in Cinema," Chion provides lapidary insight into the functions and aesthetics of sound in film and television. He considers the effects of such evolving technologies as widescreen, multitrack, and Dolby; the influences of sound on the perception of space and time; and the impact of such contemporary forms of audio-vision as music videos, video art, and commercial television. Chion concludes with an original and useful model for the audiovisual analysis of film.

Turnaround: A Memoir


Miloš Forman - 1993
    20,000 first printing. Tour.

Bombshell: The Life and Death of Jean Harlow


David Stenn - 1993
    She was M-G-M's most bankable asset, a blonde bombshell whose bleached hair, voluptuous body, and bawdy humor inspired a fervent cult following that remains to this day. Despite Harlow's blinding fame, the events of her life have been obscured by a fifty-year haze of secrets, lies, and silence. Until the publication of this book. After years of research, critically acclaimed biographer David Stenn unearthed the truth behind the improbable rise of this tow-headed tomboy from Kansas City, her huge success, and her tragic fall. After fifty-six years, David Stenn persuaded Harlow's family, friends, colleagues, and employers to break their silence and provide previously sealed legal, financial, and medical records, which solved the mystery of her death. His account is confirmed by scores of exclusive interviews with eyewitness sources, including Harlow's nurses during the last days of her life. Exhaustively researched and compulsively readable, Bombshell stands as the definitive Harlow biography. This edition contains a new UNSEEN SCENES section of never-before-seen photos of deleted scenes from Harlow's biggest hits. This book is a must-have not only for every Harlow fan, but anyone interested in a truly riveting story.

The Complete Film Production Handbook


Eve Light Honthaner - 1993
    If you're a line producer, production manager, production supervisor, assistant director or production coordinator--the book has everything you'll need (including all the forms, contracts, releases and checklists) to set up and run a production--from finding a production office to turning over delivery elements. Even if you know what you're doing, you will be thrilled to find everything you need in one place. If you're not already working in film production, but think you'd like to be, read the book -- and then decide. If you choose to pursue this career path, you'll know what to expect, you'll be prepared, and you'll be ten steps ahead of everyone else just starting out.New topics and information in the fourth edition include: * Low-budget independent films, including documentaries and shorts* Information specific to television production and commercials* The industry's commitment to go green and how to do it* Coverage of new travel and shipping regulations* Updated information on scheduling, budgeting, deal memos, music clearances, communications, digital production, and new forms throughout*Supplementary material and sample forms available at www.focalpress.com/9780240811505

The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis


Barbara Creed - 1993
    In The Monstrous-Feminine Barbara Creed challenges this patriarchal view by arguing that the prototype of all definitions of the monstrous is the female reproductive body.With close reference to a number of classic horror films including the Alien trilogy, The Exorcist and Psycho, Creed analyses the seven `faces' of the monstrous-feminine: archaic mother, monstrous womb, vampire, witch, possessed body, monstrous mother and castrator. Her argument that man fears woman as castrator, rather than as castrated, questions not only Freudian theories of sexual difference but existing theories of spectatorship and fetishism, providing a provocative re-reading of classical and contemporary film and theoretical texts.

Salome: A Filipino Filmscript by Ricardo Lee


Ricky Lee - 1993
    Salome, one of the finest films from the new Filipino cinema, is presented in both English and Tagalog with more than twenty stills from the original movie.Distributed for the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison

My Own Private Idaho


Gus Van Sant - 1993
    One of a hand-picked selection of some of the most popular and cult-worthy titles on Faber and Faber's extensive list of film scripts.

Alternate Oscars


Danny Peary - 1993
    Photos.

A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960


Jeanine Basinger - 1993
    Films widely disparate in subject, sentiment, and technique, they nonetheless shared one dual purpose: to provide the audience (of women, primarily) with temporary liberation into a screen dream - of romance, sexuality, luxury, suffering, or even wickedness - and then send it home reminded of, reassured by, and resigned to the fact that no matter what else she might do, a woman's most important job was...to be a woman. Now, with boundless knowledge and infectious enthusiasm, Jeanine Basinger illuminates the various surprising and subversive ways in which women's films delivered their message. Basinger examines dozens of films, exploring the seemingly intractable contradictions at the convoluted heart of the woman's genre - among them, the dilemma of the strong and glamorous woman who cedes her power when she feels it threatening her personal happiness, and the self-abnegating woman whose selflessness is not always as "noble" as it appears. Basinger looks at the stars who played these women (Kay Francis, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Rosalind Russell, Susan Hayward, Myrna Loy, and a host of others) and helps us understand the qualities - the right off-screen personae, the right on-screen attitudes, the right faces, the right figures for carrying the right clothes - that made them personify the woman's film and equipped them to make believable drama or comedy out of the crackpot plots, the conflicting ideas, and the exaggerations of real behavior that characterize these movies. In each of the films the author discus

A Siegel Film an Autobiography


Don Siegel - 1993
    The book incorporates a series of reminiscences whose cast of characters includes Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Bogart and Bacall, and others from Hollywood's golden age.

Sounds and Scores : A Practical Guide to Professional Orchestration


Henry Mancini - 1993
    Included in the book are sections on the woodwinds, brass, the rhythm section and the string section. A recording is included to follow along with the printed scores.

The Magnificent Ambersons: A Reconstruction


Robert L. Carringer - 1993
    He said, "They destroyed Ambersons and it destroyed me." In 1942, while Welles was away, RKO Studios drastically recut the completed film. None of that deleted footage is known to survive.Now film scholar Robert Carringer has reconstructed Welles's own version of Ambersons, using all available surviving evidence including rare studio documents and the recollections of Welles himself and other original participants in the film.Carringer reaches startling conclusions about where the responsibility for the film's undoing ultimately lies. His spellbinding—and no doubt controversial—book will be eagerly welcomed by film historians and enthusiasts.

Japanese Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films: A Critical Analysis of 103 Features Released in the United States, 1950-1992


Stuart Galbraith IV - 1993
    Each entry provides a plot synopsis, critique, background on the production, contemporary review quotes, and a comparison between the U.S. and Japanese versions. The filmography is arranged by studio and includes American and Japanese titles, release dates and releasing studios; comprehensive production and cast credits; running time; U.S. rating (when appropriate); and alternate titles.

Five for Five: The Films of Spike Lee


Spike Lee - 1993
    Essays by African-American writers - Terry McMillan, Toni Cade Bambara, Nelson George, Charles Johnson, Henry Louis Gates, Jr and Melvin Van Peebles - accompany production stills taken by David Lee.

A Right Royal Bastard: The Autobiography of Sarah Miles


Sarah Miles - 1993
    

I Was Interrupted: Nicholas Ray on Making Movies


Nicholas Ray - 1993
    Best known for his direction of James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), he is also well regarded for his cult western Johnny Guitar (1954), and such prestigious noir classics as On Dangerous Ground (1951). I Was Interrupted offers a provocative selection of the filmmaker's writings, lectures, interviews, and more.

David O'Selznick's Gone with the Wind


Ronald Haver - 1993
    Illustrated throughout in color and black-and-white.

James Dean: Photographs


Axel Arens - 1993
    These photographs document the enduring charisma of the young actor whose phenomenal popularity is based on only three movies: East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause, and Giant. 51 plates.

Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes


Matthew Kennedy - 1993
    Born the child of vaudevillians, she was on stage by age three. With her casual sex appeal, distinctive cello voice, megawatt smile, luminous saucer eyes, and flawless timing, she came into widespread fame in Warner Bros. musicals and comedies of the 1930s, including Blonde Crazy, Gold Diggers of 1933, and Footlight Parade.Frequent co-star to James Cagney, Clark Gable, Edward G. Robinson, and Humphrey Bogart, friend to Judy Garland, Barbara Stanwyck, and Bette Davis, and wife of Dick Powell and Mike Todd, Joan Blondell was a true Hollywood insider. By the time of her death, she had made nearly 100 films in a career that spanned over fifty years.Privately, she was unerringly loving and generous, while her life was touched by financial, medical, and emotional upheavals. Joan Blondell: A Life between Takes is meticulously researched, expertly weaving the public and private, and features numerous interviews with family, friends, and colleagues.

Film: An International History of the Medium


Robert Sklar - 1993
    Includes bibliography, filmography, glossary, notes, index, and 6 timelines.

Shoot the Piano Player


François Truffaut - 1993
    Its sudden shifts of tone and mood, its willful play with genre stereotypes, and its hilarious in-jokes clearly signaled that Jean-Luc Godard's equally innovative Breathless was not a fluke. The two films heralded the arrival of the so-called New Wave, sharing with other New Wave films an insistence on low-budget, location shooting and, above all, on cinema as the personal statement of an author. These films had a tremendous impact on all filmmaking. Peter Brunette's introduction to this book gives us new insight into the film, based in part on revisualizing it in terms of recent postmodern and poststructuralist thinking. He argues, in effect, that Truffaut was one of the directors who paved the way for a postmodern aesthetic. The volume also contains a complete and accurate continuity script of the film (based on the authoritative, wide-screen version), a series of interviews with Truffaut (including one by Hélène Laroche Davis, previously unpublished), a large number of reviews and essays, a filmography, and selected bibliography.

The Complete Films of Buster Keaton


Jim Kline - 1993
    

The Matter of Images: Essays on Representations


Richard Dyer - 1993
    Richard Dyer's analyses consider representations of 'out' groups and traditionally dominant groups alike, and encompass the eclectic texts of contemporary culture, from queers to straights, political correctness, representations of Empire and films including Gilda, Papillon and The Night of the Living Dead. Essays new to the second edition discuss Lillian Gish as the ultimate white movie star, the representation of whiteness in the South in Birth of a Nation, and society's fascination with serial killers.The Matter of Images is distinctive in its commitment to writing politically about contemporary culture, while insisting on the importance of understanding the formal qualities and complexity of the images it investigates.

Vampires: An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film


Jalal Toufic - 1993
    Drawing on various altered states of consciousness he underwent, films and novels on the undead, psychiatric case studies and mystical reports, the author tackles many of the certainly dubious but also dubiously certain characteristics of the undeath state, for example: over-turns that undo the dead's turn to answer an interpellation; doubles; frequent unworldly freezings still, ones that reveal the occasional worldly immobilization of the living as merely motion-less-ness, i.e. a variety of movement; the implicit indefinite fall of/in the cadaver; the turning of the metaphorical into the literal; and an unreality that sometimes behaves in a filmic manner (e.g., the lapses in hypnosis, schizophrenia, and undeath permit editing in reality), inducing the undead to wonder: "Am I in a film?" While the author's first book, Distracted, was written for the living, (Vampires) was written about and for those who are "mortals to death" (the title of a special issue the author edited for the journal Discourse). It thus belongs—somewhat edgily as the author qualifies the validity of guidebooks for the dead—on the same shelf as the Bardo Thödol and the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Obsession: The Films of Jess Franco


Lucas Balbo - 1993
    One of the two essential books on the cult erotic/horror/sleaze director Jess Franco.

Hollywood at Your Feet: The Story of the World-Famous Chinese Theater


Stacey Endres - 1993
    The Chinese Theatre's Forecourt of the Stars attracts more than two million visitors annually. Throughout its history and up to the present day, the theatre has served as a magnet to thousands of fans and tourists who flock to the site daily to view the flamboyant architecture and the historic cement squares in the theatre's forecourt. The footprints, handprints, and signatures of 176 of Hollywood's most famous celebrities have been placed here, plus those of three comedy teams, one group of quintuplets, two robots and a villainous sci-fi character, on ventriloqist's dummy, a radio character, and the world's best known duck.

L'Atalante


Marina Warner - 1993
    Though the erotic bond between the couple is strong, relations prove difficult. Eventually Juliette runs away. Jean searches for her, they are reunited. From this simple, almost banal story Jean Vigo fashioned what Marina Warner calls "one of the most tender and convincing love stories on film."L'Atalante was the last film in Vigo's tragically short career; he died of tuberculosis in 1934 soon after its completion. Though indifferently received at first, in the past sixty years L'Atalante has achieved almost legendary status. The release of the restored version in 1990 was a triumph. In this book, a model of how to write about cinema, Marina Warner shows that the greatness of the film is not in the story but in the manner of its telling. Vigo's extraordinary style--as fresh, original and beautiful today as in 1934--owes something to surrealism, but is uniquely his.

The Cinema of Eisenstein


David Bordwell - 1993
    The director of such classics as Potemkin, Ivan the Terrible, October, Strike, and Alexander Nevsky, Eisenstein theorized montage, presented Soviet realism to the world, and mastered the concept of film epic. Comprehensive, authoritative, and illustrated throughout, this classic work deserves to be on the shelf of every serious student of cinema.

The Graham Greene Film Reader


David Parkinson - 1993
    s/t: Reviews, Essays, Interviews & Film StoriesAn anthology of reviews, essays, interviews and film stories by this legendary writer.

The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles


Hamid Naficy - 1993
    Using Iranian television as a case study, The Making of Exile Cultures explores the seemingly contradictory way in which immigrant media and cultural productions serve as the source both of resistance and opposition to domination by host and home country's social values while simultaneously acting as vehicles for personal and cultural transformation and the assimilation of those values.

Goal Dust: The Autobiography of Woody Strode


Woody Strode - 1993
    In 1939 Woody, Jackie Robinson and Kenny Washington led UCLA to its first undefeated football season. After World War II Woody and Kenny Washington became the first blacks to play in the NFL. In 1950 Woody became pro wrestling's first black star, After that it was a small step to Hollywood where he appeared in such films as The Ten Commandments, Spartacus, and The Cotton Club. Sam Young and Woody Strode met while working on a televisions production. Their relationship grew until after three years, countless hours of conversations and interviews, Goal Dust was completed.

Classics Of The Horror Film


William Everson - 1993
    

Sixty Voices: Celebrities Recall the Golden Age of British Cinema


Brian McFarlane - 1993
    

The Films of Joseph Losey


James Palmer - 1993
    When his leftist politics made him a target of the House Committee on Unamerican Activities in 1951, the blacklisted Losey left America and continued his film career in England. Concerned mainly with the use and abuse of power inherent in intimate relationships, Losey also examined these issues as manifested in institutions and social classes. His finest films attack the injustices and hypocrisy rooted in the privileges of the English class system and frequently depict the moral failure of characters who betray their best instincts. The Films of Joseph Losey also examines Losey's close working relationships with playwright/screenwriter Harold Pinter and actor Dirk Bogarde, his experimental form of storytelling, the psychological complexity of characters acting as narrator of their own stories, and the intricate handling of time in the structure of his films. Close studies of King and Country, The Servant, Accident, The Go-Between, and The Romantic Englishwoman confirm Losey's stature as a director of powerful and compelling films of both moral importance and great formal complexity.

Yesterday's Tomorrows: The Golden Age of Science Fiction Movie Posters, 1950-1964


Bruce Lanier Wright - 1993
    

Ernst Lubitsch: Laughter in Paradise


Scott Eyman - 1993
    In this first ever full-length biography of Ernst Lubitsch, Scott Eyman takes readers behind the scenes of such classic films as Trouble in Paradise (1932), The Merry Widow (1934), Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938), Ninotchka (1939), The Shop around the Corner (1940), To Be or Not to Be (1942), and Heaven Can Wait (1943), which together constitute one of the most important and influential bodies of work in Hollywood. Eyman examines both the films Lubitsch crafted and the life he lived—his great successes and his overwhelming anxieties—to create an indelible portrait of Hollywood's Golden Age and one of its most respected artists.

Brief Encounter


Richard Dyer - 1993
    In this personal account of the film, Richard Dyer traces its significance to post-war movie-goers, and the power of its enduring appeal. Each volume in the "BFI Film Classics" series contains a brief production history and a detailed filmography.

Ousmane Sembene: Dialogues with Critics and Writers


Thomas Cassirer - 1993
    Some interview and discussion material is presented in both English and French.

Ugetsu


Kenji Mizoguchi - 1993
    The potter Genjuro intends to sell his wares for vast profits in the local city, while his brother-in-law Tobei wishes to become a samurai. Their village is sacked by the marauding armies, but Genjuro's kiln miraculously survives, and they and their wives head for the city. However, Genjuro soon sends his wife Miyagi back home, promising to return to her soon, and Tobei, in his keenness to follow the samurai, abandons his wife Ohama. Meanwhile, a wealthy noblewoman, the Lady Wakasa, shows an interest in Genjuro's pots, and invites him to her mansion.

Rosa


Peter Greenaway - 1993
    A bizarre murder mystery by filmmaker Greenaway in which he investigates the death of a Brazilian composer who wrote music for 1950s Hollywood Westerns.

Arizona Dream


Emir Kusturica - 1993
    This is the only Kusturica film about America.

The Professional Cameraman's Handbook


Sylvia E. Carlson - 1993
    Significant new topics include time code and time code slates, video assist, and the Steadicam film stabilizing system. Among a few of the new camera systems are the Aaton 16mm; Arriflex 535, 35-3, 35-BL3 and -BL4, and 16BL; Fries 35R3; and the all new Panavision Panaflex 35mm and 16mm. The book teaches basic film camera procedures and troubleshooting techniques. It also looks at all the components, accessories (including lenses), and support systems.

The Complete Films Of Alfred Hitchcock


Robert A. Harris - 1993
    Photos throughout.

Blood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Identity in Spain


Marsha Kinder - 1993
    Her questioning and internationalizing of the "national cinema" concept and her application of contemporary critical theory—especially insights from feminism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, and discourse theory—distinguish Blood Cinema from previous film histories. The author also makes use of a variety of sources within Spain such as the commentaries on Spanish character and culture by Unamunov and others, the contemporary debate over the restructuring of Spanish television.Kinder's book moves Spanish cinema into the mainstream of film studies by demonstrating that a knowledge of its history alters and enriches our understanding of world cinema.The interactive CD-ROM is available from CINE-DISCS, 2021 Holly Hill Terrace, Los Angeles, CA 90068, (213) 876-7678.

The Wizard of Oz: Continuity Script


Blanche Sewall - 1993
    It's Blanche Sewall's "cutting continuity" script. There are scenes that were not in the final film version.

Avant-Garde Film: Motion Studies


Scott MacDonald - 1993
    Avant-Garde Film examines fifteen of the most suggestive and useful films from this film tradition. The films discussed include No. 4 (Bottoms) by Yoko Ono, Wavelength by Michael Snow, Serene Velocity by Ernie Gehr, Print Generation by J. J. Murphy, Standard Gauge by Morgan Fisher, Zorns Lemma by Hollis Frampton, The Ties that Bind by Su Friedrich, From the Pole to the Equator by Yervant Gianikian and The Carriage Trade by Warren Sonbert. Through in-depth readings of these works, Scott MacDonald takes viewers on a critical circumnavigation of the conventions of movie going as seen by filmmakers who have rebelled against the conventions. MacDonald's discussions do not merely analyse the films; they provide a useful, accessible, jargon-free critical apparatus for viewing avant-garde film and communicate the author's pleasure in exploring 'impenetrable' works.

Seduction Of The Gullible: The Truth Behind The Video Nasty Scandal


John Martin - 1993
    From 'Absurd!' to 'Zombie Creeping Flesh', John Martin takes the reader on a tour of one of the biggest media scares of the 1980s, travelling back to a time of under-the-counter shocks and tabloid outrage, to revisit the video nasties.

A Certain Realism: Making Use of Pasolini's Film Theory and Practice


Maurizio Viano - 1993
    His films—Accattone, The Canterbury Tales, Medea, Saló—continue to challenge and entertain new generations of moviegoers. A leftist, a homosexual, and a distinguished writer of fiction, poetry, and criticism, Pasolini once claimed that "a certain realism" informed his filmmaking.Masterfully combining analyses of Pasolini's literary and theoretical writings and of all his films, Maurizio Viano offers the first thorough study of Pasolini's cinematic realism, in theory and in practice. He finds that Pasolini's cinematic career exemplifies an "expressionistic realism" that acknowledges its subjective foundation instead of striving for an impossible objectivity.Focusing on the personal and expressionistic dimensions of Pasolini's cinema, Viano also argues that homosexuality is present in the films in ways that critics have thus far failed to acknowledge. Sure to generate controversy among film scholars, Italianists, and fans of the director's work, this accessible film-by-film treatment is an ideal companion for anyone watching Pasolini's films on video.

The Portfolios of George Hurrell


Gene Thornton - 1993
    

The Ben Hecht Show: Impolitic Observations from the Freest Thinker of 1950s Television


Ben Hecht - 1993
    Wallace and his producer, Ted Yates, agreed that Hechts personality was provocative enough to be the basis of a television show. The Ben Hecht Show was born. For 22 weeks, Ben Hecht held forth on a variety of subjects, enraging some, engaging many. Here is a sample of Hechts stories and essays from his short-lived television show. Entertaining, defiant, realistic, and iconoclastic, these are the impolitic thoughts of a man who tried to awaken the public from the "optical opiate" of 1950s television.

Bad Movies We Love


Edward Margulies - 1993
    And for anyone who insights that Hollywood never actually sets out to make an awful film, please rent The Sandpiper immediately. Just when you thought you 'd have to yawn your way through another gushing coffee-table tome on Hollywood comes this hip, irreverent, devastingly witty tour through more than 200 of the most hyped, highly touted, and wonderfully bad movies of all time. Compiled by the caustic authors of Movieline magazine's popular feature "Bad Movies We Love," this outrageous book leaves no stone (including Sharon) unturned as it skewers some of Hollywood's biggest big-budget film fiasco ever, and the stars who made it all happen - frrom Airport to Cocktail, from Bette Davis and Laurence Olivier to Julia Roberts and Kevin Costner.Hear eye-rolling dialogue! Gasp at scenery chewing performance! Marvel at gloriously absurd plot lines! Packed with provocative behind-the-scenes information and 216 pages of hilarriously captioned stills, this high-camp homage -to-garbage is side splitting proof that sometimes movie-making means having to say you're sorry - very sorry!

42nd Street


J. Hoberman - 1993
    Roosevelt in 1932, Warner Bros completed shooting on a new-style musical. Hard-bitten, fast moving, full of gritty realism about the Depression and frank about sex, 42nd Street was in the vanguard of Warners's 'New Deal in Entertainment'.Its plot is sheer cliché: a backstage story in which, just before opening night, the star breaks an ankle, the young understudy goes on and becomes an overnight sensation. What keeps the movie fresh sixty years later is the snappy dialogue, terrific performances from Ruby Keeler, Ginger Rogers and a host of Warners contract players, and above all the delirious dance routines of the incomparable Busby Berkeley. J.Hoberman's description of the film catches its mixture of New Deal optimism and showbiz brashness, and places them expertly in the context of Hollywood's attempt to come to terms with hard times.

The Official Gone with the Wind Companion: The Authorized Collection of Quizzes, Trivia, Photos--And More


Stephen J. Spignesi - 1993
    Basic facts, mind-boggling minutiae, and everything in between--all in a book that's both a carefully researched text and an official collectible.

My Night at Maud's


Éric Rohmer - 1993
    The film violated almost all the rules of popular filmmaking. It had no crime, no explicit sex, no violence, and no action. As English Showalter points out in his excellent introduction to the volume, half the film was spent on one scene in which three characters seem to talk endlessly about subjects of little interest to a general audience––religion (Catholicism in particular), philosophy, Pascal, morality, even mathematics. The film explores the unexpectedly complex relationships between two men and two women, and seems to end with the affirmation of traditional values such as chastity, piety, and the family. All this at the end of the sixties, when other popular French films by directors such as Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, and Varda were attempting to comment on and were succeeding in reflecting turbulent times and ideas in their work.Showalter discusses the film in the context of Rohmer's conservative film theory and explains its relationship to the other films in the director's series of Six Moral Tales. He shows how Rohmer's sense of place and his techniques of film narration develop the theme of moral choice in a story about love and chance encounters with a delightfully ironic conclusion. The volume also contains a selection of background and critical materials, including interviews with Rohmer and pertinent statements by him, reviews of the film from several countries, and important criticism of the film from the past twenty years. A brief biography, filmography, and selected bibliography are also included. This volume will be indispensable for anyone studying this important film, and will delight those who just want to enjoy it.

The Thing Happens: Ten Years of Writing about the Movies


Terrence Rafferty - 1993
    Now, for the first time, some of his most important and provocative essays have been compiled into one extraordinary collection. "In pictures, if you do it right, the thing happens, right there on the screen," according to John Huston. The film critic's mission is to discover just what that "thing" is and just what makes it "right." After a special introduction, Rafferty begins this collection with his pivotal essay, "The Essence of the Landscape," in which he explores the rules of the game, the principles and practices behind filmmaking, its possibilities as an art form, and the role movies play in our cultural and social lives. He then proceeds to analyze the styles and techniques of directors Brian De Palma, Bill Forsyth, John Huston, Philip Kaufman, Stanley Kubrick, Mike Leigh, Chris Marker, Timothy and Stephen Quay, Satyajit Ray, Martin Scorsese, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, and Francois Truffaut. Next come the movie reviews themselves, and what they tell us about the shape and direction of cinema in America. Drawn from The Nation, Sight and Sound, The Atlantic, Film Quarterly, and, of course, The New Yorker and written over a period of ten years, they provide a unique opportunity both to sample the full range of his work and to trace the development of one of the most original and perceptive minds on movies and the people who make them.