Best of
Film

1995

The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film


Emma Thompson - 1995
    This engaging and beautiful book includes the complete Academy Award-winning script and Thompson's own diaries detailing the production of the film, reviewed by Stanley Kauffmann in The New Republic as "vivid, funny, and gamy"

Making Movies


Sidney Lumet - 1995
    Drawing on 40 years of experience on movies ranging from Long Day's Journey Into Night to The Verdict, Lumet explains the painstaking labor that results in two hours of screen magic.

In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing


Walter Murch - 1995
    

Rebel Without a Crew, or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker with $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player


Robert Rodríguez - 1995
    This is both one man's remarkable story and an essential guide for anyone who has a celluloid story to tell and the dreams and determination to see it through.  Part production diary, part how-to manual, Rodriguez unveils how he was able to make his influential first film on only a $7,000 budget.  Also included is the appendix, 'The Ten Minute Film Course,” a tell-all on how to save thousands of dollars on film school and teach yourself the ropes of film production, directing, and screenwriting.

Burton on Burton


Tim Burton - 1995
    With the Batman films, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, and, most recently, Sleepy Hollow, he has continually broken new ground both visually and thematically, exploring the dark anguish--as well as the dark humor--that animates many of his characters while also creating a densely textured, sometimes bizarre look specific to each film. In Burton on Burton, Burton talks to Mark Salisbury about his training as an animator at Disney, the importance of design in his films, and the recurring themes present in his work. In this revised edition, he also discusses the influence of 1950s sci-fi and 1970s disaster films on Mars Attacks! as well as how he conceived his highly stylized approach to the content and setting of Sleepy Hollow, his acclaimed retelling of the Washington Irving story that stars Johnny Depp, perhaps the actor most identified with Burton's work. Enhanced by stills from the films, storyboards, and illustrations of set designs for all his major films, Burton on Burton provides insights and information about the man and his work, throwing light on both his unique artistic vision and on the extraordinary films that have been the result.

True Romance


Quentin Tarantino - 1995
    They are going to Los Angeles to start a new life -- with a suitcase full of cocaine accidentally stolen from Alabama's defunct ex-pimp. Guided by the spirit of Elvis, Clarence attempts to sell the coke to a top Hollywood director, putting the young lovers in the middle of a standoff between the narcs and the Sicilian gangsters who rightfully own the cocaine. This publication of Tarantino's first screenplay, written when he was still a video-store clerk, contains the original ending and Tarantino's "answers first, questions later" structure, both of which were altered by Scott.

Orson Welles, Volume 1: The Road to Xanadu


Simon Callow - 1995
    Here is Welles’s prodigious childhood; his youth in New York, with its fraught partnership with John Houseman and the groundbreaking triumph of his all-black Macbeth; the pioneering radio work that culminated in the notorious 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds; and finally, his work in Hollywood, including an authoritative account of the making of Citizen Kane. Rich in detail and insight, this is far and away the definitive look at Orson Welles—a figure even more extraordinary than the myths that have surrounded him.

The Overlook Film Encyclopedia: Horror


Phil Hardy - 1995
    In The Gangster Film, series editor Phil Hardy has created yet again a landmark in film reference.Included in this lavish volume are critical entries on more than 1,500 gangster films, complete with plot synapses and credits, and 650 black and white photographs to capture the look of this exciting genre. Arranged chronologically, The Gangster Film offers deliciously opinionated and detailed descriptions, statistical information, credits and trivia from early classics such as Public Enemy, Key Largo, Dragnet, and On the Waterfront to contemporary blockbusters such as The Grifters, Chinatown, The Godfather, and Pulp Fiction. Essential, authoritative, and entertaining, The Gangster Film is the guide for serious students of film, film buffs, and home viewers.

Deathtripping: The Cinema of Transgression


Jack Sargeant - 1995
    Including: -- Interviews with key transgressive film-makers, including Richard Kern, Nick Zedd, Casandra Stark, Beth B, Tommy Turner, Tessa Hughes-Freeland, plus collaborators Lydia Lunch, Joe Coleman and David Wojnarowicz-- Studies of more recent film-makers including Jeri Cain Rossie, Richard Baylor, Todd Phillips.-- A brief history of underground/trash cinema: Any Warhol, Jack Smith, George & Mike Kuchar, John Waters.-- Notes and essays on the philosophy and aesthetics of transgression; extensive film analysis; index and bibliography.Heavily illustrated with rare and often disturbing photographs, Deathtripping is a unique document, the definitive guide to the roots, philosophy and development of a style of film-making whose influence and impact can no longer be ignored.

Barcelona and Metropolitan: Tales of Two Cities (2 Screenplays)


Whit Stillman - 1995
    The canvas is richer; the mood darker.

Film Posters of the Russian Avant-Garde


Susan Pack - 1995
    This book represents a survey of these works.

Videohound's Cult Flicks and Trash Pics


Carol A. Schwartz - 1995
    Cult diva and connoisseur of mongrel video Carol Schwartz and her stellar cast of notable critics and scribbling outpatients, deliver 1,300 irreverent reviews of masterpieces and misfits, many of them rewritten and expanded. More than 250 are new to this edition, like 'Cannibal Holocaust', 'Switchblade Sisters' and Ed Wood's 'I Woke Up Early The Day I Died'. Carol adds anime, underground and Hong Kong flicks to the weird, wild and wonderful mix. This much fun ought to be illegal. Cult fans will appreciate the increased number of cinematographers, writers and cast members in the entries; DVD availability; a Cult Connections resource guide to help further fanatic pursuits; and more, yes more movie taglines and quotes.

Naked and Other Screenplays


Mike Leigh - 1995
    Naked presents a bleak picture of urban society, Life is Sweet is a gentle comedy in which the pain of everyday life is borne with a wry smile, and High Hopes is a comedy of class-ridden life in contemporary Britain.

Painting With Light


John Alton - 1995
    Best known for his highly stylized film noir classics T-Men, He Walked by Night, and The Big Combo, Alton earned a reputation during the 1940s and 1950s as one of Hollywood's consummate craftsmen through his visual signature of crisp shadows and sculpted beams of light. No less renowned for his virtuoso color cinematography and deft appropriation of widescreen and Technicolor, he earned an Academy Award in 1951 for his work on the musical An American in Paris. First published in 1949, and long out of print since then, Painting With Light remains one of the few truly canonical statements on the art of motion picture photography, an unrivalled historical document on the workings of the postwar, American cinema. In simple, non-technical language, Alton explains the job of the cinematographer and explores how lighting, camera techniques, and choice of locations determine the visual mood of film. Todd McCarthy's introduction, written especially for this edition, provides an overview of Alton's biography and career and explores the influence of his work on contemporary cinematography.

The Phantom Empire: Movies in the Mind of the Twentieth Century


Geoffrey O'Brien - 1995
    The Phantom Empire is a brilliant, daring, and utterly original book that analyzes (even as it exemplifies) the effect that the image saturation of a hundred years of moving pictures have had on human culture and consciousness.In his intense and mysterious evocation of (seemingly) every kind of movie ever made, Geoffrey O'Brien erases the distinction between spectator and commentator and virtually reinvents film writing in our time.

Poetics of Cinema


Raúl Ruiz - 1995
    In Poetics of Cinema, Ruiz takes a fresh approach to the major themes haunting our audio-visual civilization: the filmic unconscious, questions of utopia, the inter-contamination of images, the art of the copy, the relations between artistic practices and institutions. Based on a series of lectures given recently at Duke University in North Carolina, Poetics of Cinema develops an acerbically witty critique of the reigning codes of cinematographic narration, principally derived from the dramatic theories set forth by Aristotle's Poetics and characterized by Ruiz as the -central-conflict theory.- Ruiz's impressive knowledge of theology, philosophy, literature and the visual arts never outstrips his powerful imagination. Poetics of Cinema not only offers a singularly pertinent analysis of the seventh art, but also shows us an entirely new way of writing and thinking about images.

On the Real Side: A History of African American Comedy


Mel Watkins - 1995
    Blackface minstrelsy, Stepin Fetchit, and the Amos ’n’ Andy show presented a distorted picture of African Americans; this book contrasts this image with the authentic underground humor of African Americans found in folktales, race records, and all-black shows and films. After generations of stereotypes, the underground humor finally emerged before the American public with Richard Pryor in the 1970s. But Pryor was not the first popular comic to present authentically black humor. Watkins offers surprising reassessments of such seminal figures as Fetchit, Bert Williams, Moms Mabley, and Redd Foxx, looking at how they paved the way for contemporary comics such as Whoopi Goldberg, Eddie Murphy, and Bill Cosby.

A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film


Richard Barrios - 1995
    In a stunningly brief time, as the Jazz Age roared to a close, the art of the silent film became extinct, thrown over in favor of the unknown, virtually untested medium of talking pictures. Leading the way was a brand new American art form: the movie musical. Taking off like a shot from day one, this new genre instantly became the a quintessential form of American entertainment. Here for the first time is the story of this fabulous, forgotten age when the movies learned to sing and dance. Chronicling the early musical film years from 1926 to 1934, A Song in the Dark offers a fascinating look at these innovative films, the product of much of the major experimentation that went on during the development of sound technology. Illuminating the entire evolution of this new sound medium, Richard Barrios shows how Hollywood, seeking to outdo Broadway and vaudeville, recruited both the famous and the unknown, the newest stars and the has-beens, the geniuses and the hustlers. The results were unlike anything the world had seen or heard: backstage yarns, all-star revues, grandiose operettas, outlandish hybrids--some wonderful, many innovative, a few ghastly. He recalls, for example, such monumental films as the 1927 hit The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson, the first feature film to include both talk and song. Corney, hokey, and repellently manipulative, it was by most accounts, even by 1927 standards, a poor film. Yet, showcasing the spectacular and extremely popular Jolson, it created a new dimension of intensity that silent films could not duplicate, playing to over one million people per week across the country only three weeks after its release. He discusses such memorable releases as The Broadway Melody (winner of the Academy Award for best film in 1929), the first true musical film that established movie musicals as potent and viable entertainment. Barrios goes on the offer in-depth discussions of innovative films such as The Desert Song, and On With the Show!, the first all-color talkie, as well as the more mature musicals of the 1930s including the Warner Brothers' backstage musicals of 1933-34 that started with 42nd Street and the Gold Diggers films. And, of course, he talks about the famed Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire collaborations, such as Flying Down to Rio, which, with their sophisticated style and technique, established them as the premier film musical team. Throughout, Barrios highlights the careers of the original great musical stars like Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Busby Berkeley, and Maurice Chevalier, and presents the films of newcomers such as Jeanette MacDonald, Bing Crosby, and Ruby Keeler. The fickle public rushed to see these stars--talking and singing and dancing across the screen--then suddenly turned away. It took the Depression to bring back musicals, bigger and brassier than ever. The triumphs, disasters, and offscreen intrigue are all here in a fascinating story told with a blend of scholarly research, engaging writing, and cogent criticism. With more than fifty photos, extensive annotations, and a discography, A Song in the Dark memorably recovers this vital and unique film heritage.

Chronicle of the Cinema


Robyn Karney - 1995
    --Entertainment Weekly

Dark Carnival: The Secret World of Tod Browning, Hollywood's Master of the Macabre


David J. Skal - 1995
    A complicated, troubled, and fiercely private man, he confoundedwould-be biographers hoping to penetrate his secret, obsessive world -- bothduring his lifetime and afterward.Now, film historians David J. Skal and Elias Savada, using newly discoveredfamily documents and revealing published interviews with friends andcolleagues, join forces for the first full-length biography of the man whoearned a reputation as "the Edgar Allan Poe of the cinema." The authorschronicle Browning's turn-of-the-century flight from an eccentric Louisvillefamily into the world of carnival sideshows (where he began his careerliterally buried alive) and vaudeville, his disastrous first marriage, hisrapid climb to riches in the burgeoning silent film industry, and thealcoholism that would plague him throughout his life. Browning's legendarycollaborations with Lon Chaney, Sr., and Bela "Dracula" Lugosi are explored indepth, along with the studio politics that ended his career after the bizarrecircus drama "Freaks" -- a cult classic today -- proved to be one of thebiggest box-office disasters of the early thirties.Illustrated throughout with rare photographs, "Dark Carnival" is both anartful, often shocking portrait of a singular film pioneer and an illuminatingstudy of the evolution of horror, essential to an understanding of ourcontinuing fascination with the macabre.

The Movie Collection: Disclosure / Rising Sun / Jurassic Park


Michael Crichton - 1995
    

Cinema Year by Year 1894-2006


David Thompson - 1995
    Tracing the development of cinema from the first experiments of Edison to all the winners of the 2006 Academy Awards, this bestselling annual is the definitive chronology of the movies.

The Resistance: Ten Years of Pop Culture That Shook the World


Armond White - 1995
    

Mallrats


Kevin Smith - 1995
    Before Jason Lee could say "My Name is Earl" ...Before Ben Affleck could strap on red leather tights as "Daredevil" ...Before Kevin Smith put a shotgun in his mouth after the critical drubbing he took for "Jersey Girl", these three gentlemen could be found hanging out at the mall!Aged like a decade old bottle of $1.79 wine, "Mallrats" has stood the test of time to emerge as a cult classic! Second in the series of five interconnected movies known as the Jersey Trilogy, this epic tale of comic-book fanboys in love captured few hearts in its original theatrical release, but built a legion of hardcore "Snootchie Bootchie"-sayers thanks to home video, and damned the world to more movies featuring the irrascible Jay and Silent Bob!Featuring the complete movie script by Kevin Smith blended together with a sh*tload of newly designed visual content that includes pictures, drawing, storyboards and behind the scenes stuff, the "Mallrats" Companion is a 96 page must-own bible for the little movie that was as sweet as chocolate-covered pretzel yet unwelcomed as a stink-palm!

Hammer Films: An Exhaustive Filmography


Tom Johnson - 1995
    The British studio was famous for its exciting stories and expert action--all on very small budgets and short shooting schedules. From The Public Life of Henry the Ninth (1935) to The Lady Vanishes (1978), this is the definitive work on Hammers 165 films. Complete filmographic data are provided for each film, including release dates in both the United Kingdom and the United States, running time, length, distributor, complete cast and production credits, and alternate titles. These data are followed by an extensive plot synopsis, including contemporary critical commentary and behind-the-scenes information from many of the players and crew members.

Placing Movies: The Practice of Film Criticism


Jonathan Rosenbaum - 1995
    Placing Movies, the first collection of his work, gathers together thirty of his most distinctive and illuminating pieces. Written over a span of twenty-one years, these essays cover an extraordinarily broad range of films—from Hollywood blockbusters to foreign art movies to experimental cinema. They include not just reviews but perceptive commentary on directors, actors, and trends; and thoughtful analysis of the practice of film criticism.It is this last element—Rosenbaum's reflections on the art of film criticism—that sets this collection apart from other volumes of film writing. Both in the essays themselves and in the section introductions, Rosenbaum provides a rare insider's view of his profession: the backstage politics, the formulation of critical judgments, the function of film commentary. Taken together, these pieces serve as a guided tour of the profession of film criticism.They also serve as representative samples of Rosenbaum's unique brand of film writing. Among the highlights are memoirs of director Jacques Tati and maverick critic Manny Farber, celebrations of classics such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Manchurian Candidate, and considered reevaluations of Orson Welles and Woody Allen.

The Threshold of the Visible World


Kaja Silverman - 1995
    In The Threshold of the Visible World she creates an aesthetic model capable of assisting us in the seemingly impossible task of loving bodies which are both different from our own, and culturally despised. At the heart of this model is a provocative rethinking of idealizaiton and the culturally transformative uses to which it might be put. Linking Benjamin's notion of the aura with Brecht's notion of alienation, she articulates an entirely new set of formal parameters for political representation.The Threshold of the Visible World also provides a psychoanalytic examination of the field of vision. While offering extended discussions of the gaze, the look, and the image, Silverman is concerned above all else with establishing what it means to see. She shows that our look is always impinged upon by our desires and our anxieties, and mediated in complex ways by the representations which surround us. These psychic and social constraints lead us to commit involuntary acts of visual violence against others. Silverman explores the conscious and unconscious circumstances under which such acts of violence might be undone, and the look induced to see and affirm what is abject, and alien to itself.In The Threshold of the Visible World Kaja Silverman advances a revolutionary new political aesthetic, exploring the possibilities for looking beyond the restrictive mandates of the self, and the normative aspects of the cultural image-repertoire. She provides a detailed account of the social and psychic forces which constrain us to look and identify in normative ways, and the violence which that normativity implies.

Million Dollar Movie


Michael Powell - 1995
    This is the story of a great artist whose life began with the birth of the movies. Photos throughout.

The Star Wars Archives: Props, Costumes, Models And Artwork From Star Wars


Mark Cotta Vaz - 1995
    

Fearing the Dark: The Val Lewton Career


Edmund G. Bansak - 1995
    His stylish B thrillers were imitated by a generation of filmmakers such as Richard Wallace, William Castle, and even Walt Disney in his animated Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). Through interviews with many of Lewton's associates (including his wife and son) and extensive research, his life and output are thoroughly examined.

Flickers: An Illustrated Celebration of One Hundred Years of Cinema


Gilbert Adair - 1995
    His aim has been to encompass the many facets of film without reducing the book to an academic inventory of highlights.

Amateur


Hal Hartley - 1995
    She believes she is intended to intervene in the destiny of a young and troubled porn star and the handsome amnesiac she's met in the street is somehow involved.

Hollywood Movie Stills


Joel W. Finler - 1995
    It is through the eye of the stills camera that we experience and recall some of the cinema's most memorable events and faces. Still images are so powerful that they can easily pass for actual scenes for the movies they represent - rather than separately posed, lighted and photographed shots that may not even find their way into the finished film.  This book is the most detailed and perceptive survey ever devoted to this neglected aspect of film-making. It traces the origin of stills photography during the silent era and the early development of the star system, through to the rise of the giant studios in the 1930s and their eventual decline. Finler focuses on the photographers, on the stars they photographed, and on many key films and film-makers.Hollywood Movie Stills is illustrated with hundreds of rare and unusual stills from the author's own collection, including not only portraits and scene stills but production shots, behind-the-scenes photos, poster art, calendar art, photo collages and trick shots. There are also photos showing the stars' private lives and special events in Hollywood. This lavishly presented new edition of Finler's classic work includes many new stills and much new insight and information into this fascinating aspect of the great film studios in their heyday.

Nixon: An Oliver Stone Film


Oliver Stone - 1995
    The Nixon Presidency, with its achievements and failures culminating with the Watergate scandal, will linger at the forefront of our political conscience. With hindsight, Richard Nixon appears to be a tragic figure of Shakespearean proportions, a man whose story is at once compelling and infuriating - and worthy of further examination. In this companion to the film, which includes the complete screenplay with full annotation, footnotes, documentation, a comprehensive bibliography, and an interview with Oliver Stone, Nixon emerges as a political leader governed by personal demons. In the tradition of the tragic hero, Nixon has left us a complicated legacy. This compilation, which includes essays by prominent figures associated with Nixon and Watergate, previously classified memos and documents from the Nixon White House, and transcripts of Nixon's taped conversations in the Oval Office, sheds new light on Nixon, the man behind the powerful figure, and the political machine that catapulted him to the top.

Antonioni: The Poet of Images


William Arrowsmith - 1995
    Let me be clear about what I think, Arrowsmith told an audience assembled at New York's Museum ofModern Art in 1977. Antonioni is one of the greatest living artists, and as a director of film, his only living peer is Kurosawa; and he is unmistakably the peer of the other great masters in all the arts. As an innovator and manipulator of images, he is the peer of Joyce in the novel; in creatinga genuine cinematic poetry, he stands on a level with Vale(accent)ry and Eliot in poetry proper; and that his artistic vision, while perhaps no greater than that of Fitzgerald or Eliot or Montale or Pavese, is at least as great and compelling.What was there about Antonioni's films that ignited such a response in Arrowsmith, and that continues to move, inspire, entrance and occasionally enrage film lovers today? In Antonioni: Poet of Images, Arrowsmith's friend and colleague Ted Perry has brought together and edited eight remarkableessays, all but two never before published, in which the late critic confronts the Antonioni oeuvre through a film-by-film examination of his best known work, from 1956's Il grido, to L'avventura, La notte, Eclipse, Red Desert, Blow-Up, and Zabriskie Point, concluding with 1975's The Passenger, starring Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider. Originally presented as lectures, these seminal essays brilliantly illuminate what these films mean to us, and why. A renowned literary critic and classicist, Arrowsmith traces with matchless clarity the intellectual roots of Antonioni's uncompromisingvision. But Arrowsmith also illuminates the more technical and cinematic aspects of Antonioni's work, how the movement of the camera or the use of space enhanced the director's ability to find and create memorable images. In his analysis of a scene in La notte, for instance, Arrowsmith proposes howthe composition of shots expresses the meaning. Noting how the actress portraying a nymphomaniac is framed next to expanses of wall, Arrowsmith writes, What the nymphomaniac wants to shut out is any knowledge of the blank immensity...that we see exteriorized as she stands against the absolutelyclinical white blankness of the wall, her own emptiness projected as the emptiness around her, threatening her.When an artist like Antonioni is examined by a critic like Arrowsmith, Ted Perry writes in his memorable introduction, We see again how art is connected to life, life to death, and both art and life to meaning. Enhanced by an appendix providing a brief synopsis of each of the eight films, andfrequent translations of key bits of dialogue crucial to film-goers' understanding, Antonioni: Poet of Images captures the insight, sensitivity, and intelligence of one of our most distinguished critics, and celebrates the work of one of the world's most innovative film makers. It is essentialreading for lovers of cinema and all admirers of Arrowsmith.

Dark Alchemy: The Films of Jan Švankmajer


Peter Hames - 1995
    As a leading member of the Prague Surrealist Group, his work is linked to a rich avant-garde tradition and an uncompromising moral stance that brought frequent tensions with the authorities in the normalization years following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Svankmajer's formative influences have been the pre-war surrealists, the Prague of Rudolf II, experimental theatre, folk puppetry and, above all, the political traumas of the past 50 years. Like his contemporaries--including playwright president Vaclav Havel, and, in exile, novelist Milan Kundera and filmmaker Milos Forman--Svankmajer's dominant life experiences have been the realities of the Stalinist system, both the explicit state terror of the 1950s and the Brezhnevist neo-Stalinism of the 1970s and the 1980s.After training in puppetry and working in the Prague theatre, he made his first film in 1964. He directed a number of important films in the 1960s, including the live-action and Kafkaesque "Byt" ("The Flat," 1968) and "Zahrada" ("The Garden," 1968) and consolidated his international reputation with "Moznosti dialogu" ("Dimensions of Dialogue") in 1982. Since then, he has continued his highly visual and poetic approach in two feature-length films, "Neco z Alenky" ("Alice," 1987) and "Lekce Faust" ("Faust," 1994). As a filmmaker, Svankmajer is constantly exploring and analyzing his concern with power, fear and anxiety, confrontation and destruction, magic, the irrational and the absurd, and displays a bleak outlook on the possibilities for dialogue. In challenging accepted narrative, the bourgeoisie of realism (nezval), and the thematic and formal conventions of the mainstream media, Svankmajer's work is startlingly dynamic, subversive, and confrontational.

The Player, The Rapture, The New Age: Three Screenplays


Michael Tolkin - 1995
    But whether his subject is Hollywood, Christian fundamentalism or the malaise of the married swinger, Tolkin's world is always brutally comic, laced with stinging irony and wild satire. The Player, which was directed by Robert Altman, is the most famous of these three, but the other two films, which Tolkin directed himself, are worth checking out. All of them work at such a high level of wit and erudition that the screenplays make just as good reading as the films do viewing.

Chinese Coffee - Acting Edition


Ira Lewis - 1995
    Book annotation not available for this title.

Errol Flynn: The Movie Posters


Lawrence Bassoff - 1995
    These colour reproductions of movie posters illustrate Flynn's verve, charm and swordmanship. Originally displayed in cinemas, the posters also document the Warner Brothers movie poster style from 1935 to 1953, and the heyday of the Hollywood swashbuckler from 1920 to 1959.

The Avant-Garde Finds Andy Hardy


Robert B. Ray - 1995
    In 1939, 1940, and 1941, the most popular performer in the American cinema was Mickey Rooney, who owed his success primarily to a low-budget MGM series that concentrated on his character, Andy Hardy.

Billie Whitelaw...Who He?


Billie Whitelaw - 1995
    With candor, humor, and generous detail, she reveals what it was like to work with the most accomplished and up-and-coming directors, playwrights, and fellow actors of her time. She gives us an intimate view of the day-to-day workings of the mind of Beckett as he devised his unique, intense theatrical style in plays like Footfalls, Play, and Happy Days.

Bela Lugosi


Gary J. Svehla - 1995
    This book covers Lugosi's films from the pre-Dracula early sound ear, details his Universal and 1930s' classics, investigates his stint on poverty row at Monogram and PRC in the 1940s, and explores the downward spiral and his much discussed film work for Edward D. Wood, Jr. in the 1950s. Some of today's foremost horror film writers contributed to this exploration of Bela Lugosi's work.

Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema


Ashish Rajadhyaksha - 1995
    Covering the full range of Indian cinema, from Hindi musicals to the impressive diversity of regional Indian Art Cinemas, this edition of the reference text includes expanded coverage of mainstream productions from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Screen Writings: Texts and Scripts from Independent Films


Scott MacDonald - 1995
    Supply scissors."—Yoko Ono, Tokyo, June 1964A dazzling range of unconventional film scripts and texts, many published for the first time, make up Scott MacDonald's newest collection. Illustrated with nearly 100 film stills, this fascinating book is at once a reference work of film history and an unparalleled sampling of experimental "language art." It contributes to the very dissipation of boundaries between cinematic, literary, and artistic expression thematized in the films themselves. Each text and script is introduced and contextualized by MacDonald; a filmography and a bibliography round out the volume.This is a readable—often quite funny—literature that investigates differences between seeing and reading. Represented are avant-garde classics such as Hollis Frampton's Poetic Justice and Zorns Lemma and Morgan Fisher's Standard Gauge, and William Greaves's recently rediscovered Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One. Michael Snow turns film loose on language in So Is This; Peter Rose turns language loose on theory in Pressures of the Text.Some of the most influential feminist filmscripts of recent decades—Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen's Riddles of the Sphinx, Su Friedrich's Gently Down the Stream, Trinh T. Minh-ha's Reassemblage, Yvonne Rainer's Privilege—confirm this book's importance for readers in gender and cultural studies as well as for filmmakers and admirers of experimental writing, independent cinema, and the visual arts in general.

Best American Screenplays 3: Complete Screenplays (Best American Screenplays)


Sam Thomas - 1995
    Sam Thomas has written a major introduction and provided background information on each of the eight screenplays and their screenwriters.

Film, Horror, and the Body Fantastic


Linda Badley - 1995
    Applying the term horror broadly, this work includes discussions of black comedy, thrillers, science fiction, and slasher films. Central to this book is the view of horror as a modern iconography and discourse of the body. Badley's thought-provoking analysis of films by directors Tim Burton, Tobe Hooper, George Romero, Ridley Scott, Brian De Palma, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, Jonathan Demme, and Clive Barker, will be of interest to both scholars and students.

Projecting Illusion: Film Spectatorship and the Impression of Reality


Richard Allen - 1995
    Film affords an especially compelling aesthetic experience that can be considered as a form of illusion akin to the experience of daydream and dream. Examining the concept of illusion and its relationship to fantasy in the experience of visual representation, Richard Allen situates his explanation within the context of an analytical criticism of contemporary film theory.

Academy Award Winners' Movie Posters (The Illustrated History Of Movies Through Posters Series; Vol. 3))


Bruce Hershenson - 1995
    

Movie Time: A Chronology of Hollywood and the Movie Industry


Gene Brown - 1995
    Beginning with 1910, each year is introduced in a one-page snapshot and then broken down into four main categories: movies; personlities; births, marriages and divorces; and business and society.

Woody Allen at Work


Charles Champlin - 1995
    The two hundred photographs collected here (drawn from almost a hundred thousand) document that entire period and distill a legendary career in the cinema. We see Allen in his element - on location, on set, behind and in front of the camera, and collaborating with crew, including master cinematographers Gordon Willis, Carlo Di Palma, and Sven Nykvist. Over the years, Allen has been able to gather some extraordinary ensemble casts, and in his photos Hamill has captured dozens of these star performers. What sets this book apart is that it consists almost entirely of pictures. Many film books give a verbal account of the life and art of a director; until now, none has given so purely visual a portrait of a filmmaker at work. These images portray a side of Woody Allen that filmgoers and readers have scarcely glimpsed before. In addition, Charles Champlin's essay gives us an up-to-the-minute appreciation of Allen's work, and Derrick Tseng's commentary on the photos is informative and enjoyable. In all, this unique volume offers a detailed portrait of one of the most influential directors in the history of filmmaking.

James Whale A Biography or the Would-Be Gentleman


Mark Gatiss - 1995
    Original and entertaining biography of Hollywood's first gay auteur (director of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man).

Chronicle Of The Cinema


Catherine LeGrand - 1995
    

Beyond the Stars: The Memoirs


Sergei Eisenstein - 1995
    This is the first ever complete edition in English of Eisenstein's memoirs, superbly translated from the newly established definitive Russian text by William Powell and annotated by Richard Taylor, the worlds leading authority on Soviet Cinema.

Mickey's Day at the Circus


Vincent Jefferds - 1995
    

Wake Me When It's Funny: How to Break into Show Business and Stay


Garry Marshall - 1995
    40 b/w photos.Garry ("Allergic to Everything but Success") Marshall has written hundreds of TV scripts, produced and created 14 prime-time series, including The Odd Couple and Happy Days, and has written a number of stage plays. This entertaining portrait of Marshall's life takes readers on a tumultuous, behind-the-scenes journey, from his early days to the peak of sitcom success to his work in movies today. 32 pages of photos.

Wild Strawberries


Philip French - 1995
    This study is written by Philip French, film critic of The Observer. It features a brief production history and detailed filmography.

In a Door, Into a Fight, Out a Door, Into a Chase: Moviemaking Remembered by the Guy at the Door


William Witney - 1995
    George, Utah, for the filming of Republic's The Painted Stallion. Rain and cast problems put the production hopelessly behind schedule. The studio summarily fired the director and replaced him with the film editor. Thus was born the career of one of Hollywood's most famous serial directors, Bill Witney. Witney went on to direct or codirect 23 Republic serials, working with such stars as William Benedict, Hoot Gibson, Bela Lugosi, and Noah Beery, Sr. Witney's output included some of the most famous cliffhangers of the era, such as Adventures of Red Ryder, Spy Smasher, Drums of Fu Manchu, The Lone Ranger, and The Lone Ranger Rides Again. Though he enjoyed a long career as a feature film and television director, it is the Republic serials for which he is best remembered. This engaging story is a behind-the-scenes look at the heyday of the Hollywood cliffhanger, the making of the movies, and the people involved in them.

Human Monsters: The Bizarre Psychology Of Movie Villains


George E. Turner - 1995
    

Agatha Christie's Poirot: A Celebration of the Great Detective


Peter Haining - 1995
    Agathat Christie - Hercule Poirot....David Suchet as Hercule Poirot!! Tied to the fifth London Weekend Television series featuring the Agatha Christie detective, Hercule Poirot, this book examines the author's literary success and how she created Poirot. It also describes how the television series is made, including details of locations, props and period. The actor David Suchet talks about his role as Poirot, and there are interviews with and profiles of his co-stars. A chronology of all episodes of the LWT series is included, with synopses of the plots, and lists of the cast and crew, and there is a review of the nine actors who have previously portrayed Poirot in films and on television.

Main Street Amusements: Movies and Commercial Entertainment in a Southern City, 1896-1930


Gregory A. Waller - 1995
    Providing both the black and white civic and church responses to these developments, he demonstrates how the emergence of movies fostered the rise of Lexington's contradictory self-image as both a cosmopolitan center and a guardian of traditional southern values. Greeted at times with suspicion and contempt, movies gradually won the hearts of Lexingtonians because movie-hall owners convinced the public that the movies' promise of pleasure rested safely within the bounds of middle-class propriety. Covering movies exhibited from before World War I through the 1920s, Main Street Amusements provides a unique perspective on the rise of popular culture below the Mason Dixon Line.

Faster and Furiouser: The Revised and Fattened Fable of American International Pictures


Mark Thomas McGee - 1995
    This new work includes the most comprehensive AIP filmography ever assembled, as well as many new photographs not included in the earlier work.

Federico Fellini


Lietta Tornabuoni - 1995
    Collected here, in addition to a biography and filmography, is a wealth of previously unpublished material allowing a detailed and often personal view of the master of cinema. Published for the first time in these pages are the texts for four films Fellini never made, complete with sketches and notes; and the director's correspondence with other filmmakers, artists, and famous writers. Fellini's descriptions of his dreams, accompanied by splendid drawings, allow a glimpse of the subconscious world that contributed so much to the creation of his films. His comic strips of unmade films provide an intriguing account of his activity in the last years of his life. The filmography is illustrated with posters, sketches, and stills from all of Fellini's masterpieces - including his best-loved La Strada, 8 1/2, The Clowns, La Dolce Vita, Roma, Amarcord, and La Voce Della Luna.

Hitchcock on Hitchcock: Selected Writings and Interviews


Alfred Hitchcock - 1995
    In this ample selection of largely unknown and formerly inaccessible interviews and essays, Hitchcock provides an enlivening commentary on a career that spanned decades and transformed the history of the cinema. Bringing the same exuberance and originality to his writing as he did to his films, he ranges from accounts of his own life and experiences to techniques of filmmaking and ideas about cinema in general. Wry, thoughtful, witty, and humorous—as well as brilliantly informative—this selection reveals another side of the most renowned filmmaker of our time.Sidney Gottlieb not only presents some of Hitchcock's most important pieces, but also places them in their historical context and in the context of Hitchcock's development as a director. He reflects on Hitchcock's complicated, often troubled, and continually evolving relationship toward women, both on and off the set. Some of the topics Hitchcock touches upon are the differences between English and American attitudes toward murder, the importance of comedy in film, and the uses and techniques of lighting. There are also many anecdotes of life among the stars, reminiscences from the sets of some of the most successful and innovative films of this century, and incisive insights into working method, film history, and the role of film in society.Unlike some of the complex critical commentary that has emerged on his life and work, the director's own writing style is refreshingly straightforward and accessible. Throughout the collection, Hitchcock reveals a delight and curiosity about his medium that bring all his subjects to life.

Film Genre Reader II


Barry Keith Grant - 1995
    Now Barry Grant has revised and updated the book to reflect the most recent developments in genre study. This second edition contains eight new essays for a total of twenty-nine essays by some of film's most distinguished critics and scholars, including John G. Cawelti, Thomas Elsaesser, Paul Schrader, Thomas Schatz, Robin Wood, Steve Neale, and Linda Williams. The anthology covers the full range of theoretical issues and critical approaches to film genre. The first section concentrates on genre theory, covering such topics as generic definition, genre and ideology, genre and sexuality, and the generic experience. The second section analyzes a wide variety of particular genres, including westerns, science fiction, film noir, melodrama, romantic comedy, musicals, horror, gangster, disaster, war, and epic films. The extensive bibliography has also been updated and expanded.

The Passion of Pier Paolo Pasolini


Sam Rohdie - 1995
    a keen and brilliant critical account of Pasolini's films and writings..." --Italica"Rohdie's personal, idiosyncratic critical style is backed up by serious scholarly research, as the rich bibliography attests. This is one of the most original recent additions to the ever-growing literature on Pasolini." --Choice..". refreshingly personal and full of unpredictable tangents." --Film QuarterlySam Rohdie has written a personal, wonderfully lucid account of Pier Paolo Pasolini's cinema and literature.

Principles of Three-Dimensional Computer Animation: Modeling, Rendering, and Animating With 3D Computer Graphics


Michael O'Rourke - 1995
    It is intended to be of interest to students of animation, traditional animators who need to update their skills, multimedia artists and designers, producers of animation for advertising and film, and industrial designers, engineers or architects who want to learn how to create simulated movement in space to improve the presentation and sale of their designs.

Jodie Foster: The Most Powerful Woman In Hollywood


Philippa Kennedy - 1995
    An intimate examination of Jodie Foster's private and public lives addresses her entry into the Hollywood eye during her toddler years, early successes with Disney, prickly family life, attendance at Yale, and Academy Award-winning performances.

Starlog's Science Fiction Heroes & Heroines


David McDonnell - 1995
    Lose yourself in page after page of the best characters in the science fiction universe. They're all here, from the classic heroine of King Kong, the woman of the Forbidden Planet, the people who were Lost in Space, to the more recent legendary characters of Star Wars, Star Trek, and yes, even Bettlejuice.