The sheer number of false rumors and downright lies disseminated about the man and his films is truly astonishing. Yet Herzog's body of work is one of the most important in postwar European cinema. His international breakthrough came in 1973 with Aguirre, The Wrath of God, in which Klaus Kinski played a crazed Conquistador. For The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Herzog cast in the lead a man who had spent most of his life institutionalized, and two years later he hypnotized his entire cast to make Heart of Glass. He rushed to an explosive volcanic Caribbean island to film La Soufrière, paid homage to F. W. Murnau in a terrifying remake of Nosferatu, and in 1982 dragged a boat over a mountain in the Amazon jungle for Fitzcarraldo. More recently, Herzog has made extraordinary "documentary" films such as Little Dieter Needs to Fly. His place in cinema history is assured, and Paul Cronin's volume of dialogues provides a forum for Herzog's fascinating views on the things, ideas, and people that have preoccupied him for so many years.

    The book also explores the near-religious fervour that the film inspires in a huge number of devoted fans.

    Now Andy Serkis tells his own story about how a three-week commission to provide a voiceover for Gollum grew into a five-year commitment to breathe life and soul into The Lord of the Rings' most challenging creation.- Did the voice of Gollum really start with a cat being sick?- What was it like acting in a bodysuit covered in dots?- How much was Gollum modeled to look like Andy?- What surprises does The Return of the King hold in store?Fully illustrated with more than one hundred exclusive behind-the-scenes photos and drawings, and with contributions from the many designers and animators who brought Gollum to life, this book examines the transition to the big screen of one of literature's most unforgettable creatures. As the filming takes him from London to Wellington, and from the MIsty Mountains to Mount Doom, Andy Serkis explains the methods - and the madness - behind the most amazing five years in this actor's life.

    Out of desperation, he contacts the inventor of the process, Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson), to have Clementine removed from his own memory. But as Joel's memories progressively disappear, he begins to rediscover their earlier passion. From deep within the recesses of his brain, Joel attempts to escape the procedure.As Dr. Mierzwiak and his crew chase him through the maze of his memories, it's clear that Joel just can't get her out of his head.The movie stars Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst,Tom Wilkinson, Elijah Wood, and Mark Ruffalo.In the acclaimed Newmarket Shooting Script® format, the book includes an introduction by director Michel Gondry (Human Nature), a facsimile of the script, a Q&A with Kaufman, a selection of black-and-white movie stills with commentary, and the complete cast and crew credits.

    . . Film of the year.' Sleazenation'Magnificently bizarre . . . Wonderful.' Empire'Unlike anything you'll have seen before . . . Honestly mind-blowing.' BBC Radio 1'Stunning . . . Totally original.' Time Out'Dazzling . . . Demands a second viewing.' Total FilmThe critical and audience response made Donnie Darko the cult film of the year - one whose dark ambiguities caused audiences to go back to the film again and again trying to fathom its mysteries.This book brings its readers further into the world of Donnie Darko and its creator Richard Kelly. Contained within these pages are an in-depth interview with Richard Kelly who recounts the gestation of the film; the screenplay; photos and drawings from the film and artwork inspired by it.Donnie Darko will never surrender up all its mysteries, but this book will be an indispensable guide into its intriguing world.

    Cinema Studies. Second, Revised Edition. Offered here in Spring 2005, this new edition has new text added based on the new availability of Yasujiro Ozu's extand works. "I felt inspired to improve the description of The Only Son and deepen my thoughts about Ozu in general," write Nathaniel Dorsky in the new preface. He has been making and exhibiting films within the avant-garde tradition since 1964.For film to have a devotional quality both absolute and relative time must be active and present not only present but functioning simultaneously and invigorating one another. Transformative film rests in the present and respects the delicate details of its own unfolding."

    The notes gathered over a long career and polished to a sharp edge documented the teachings and directions that Hauser shared privately with a host of theatrical and cinematic figures, including Sir Alec Guinness, Richard Burton, Sir Ian McKellen, Dame Judi Dench, Kevin Spacey, and many others who called Hauser their director, mentor, teacher, or boss.Now, the former student has expanded and enhanced his mentor's private notes into a book-length format suitable for anyone searching for the timeless gems of the director s craft. Drawing on years of training, decades of experience, and the distilled wisdom of leading practitioners, Notes on Directing is filled with enduring good advice expressed in assertive, no-nonsense language. More than a how-to, this is a tool for directors looking to better translate the page to the stage or to the screen. With one hundred and thirty directives supported with explanatory commentary, helpful examples, and rare quotes, this deceptively slim volume has the impact of a privileged apprenticeship to a great master.Whether you are a student or a professional, a playgoer, moviegoer, or enthusiast, Notes on Directing provides a thrilling glimpse into the hidden process of creating a live, shared experience.

    In How to Stop Acting, Guskin reveals the insights and techniques that have worked wonders for beginners as well as stars. Instead of yet another "method," Guskin offers a strategy based on a radically simple and refreshing idea: that the actor's work is not to "create a character" but rather to be continually, personally responsive to the text, wherever his impulse takes him, from first read-through to final performance. From this credo derives an entirely new perspective on auditioning and the challenge of developing a role and keeping it fresh, even over hundreds of performances. Drawing on examples from his clients' work and his own, Guskin presents acting as a constantly evolving exploration rather than as a progression toward a fixed goal. He also offers sound and original advice on adapting to the particular demands of television and film, playing difficult emotional scenes, tackling the Shakespearean and other great roles, and more. His book will find an eager and appreciative audience among novices and established actors alike.

    It begins with an overview of film production, moves on to a consideration of the formal elements and techniques, covers film criticism and concludes with a brief section highlighting the key moments in film history. Illustrated with over 500 frame enlargements, many in colour, "Film Art" has been updated to include analysis of some of the most interesting films of recent years including "Raging Bull" and "Desperately Seeking Susan".

    In 25 years, Kaufman, along with partner Michael Herz, has built Troma Studios up from a company struggling to find its voice in a field crowded with competitors to its current--and legendary--status as a lone survivor, a bastion of true cinematic independence, and the world's greatest collection of camp on film.As entertaining and funny as it is informative and insightful, Make Your Own Damn Movie! places Kaufman's radically low-budget, independent-studio style of filmaking directly in the reader's hands. Thus we learn how to: develop and write a knock-out screenplay; raise funding; find locations and cast actors; hire a crew; obtain equipment, permits, and music rights (all for little or no money); make incredible special effects for $0.79 each; charm, schmooze, and network while on the film-festival circuit; and, finally, make a bad actor act so bad it's actually good.From scriptwriting and directing to financing and marketing, this book is brimming with utterly off-the-wall, decidedly maverick, yet consistently proven advice on how to fully develop one's idea for an independent film.

    New in this edition are entries to describe such film hits as "Lord of the Rings", "Mystic River", "Fahrenheit 9/11", and "Million Dollar Baby". But in fact, this volume's team of critics goes back to 1902, describing such films as "The Great Train Robbery", and progressing chronologically across the decades to cover the best cinematic dramas, comedies, westerns, musicals, suspense and horror films, gangster classics, "films noirs", sci-fi epics, documentaries, and adaptations of novels and stage plays made by filmmakers around the world. Movie fans will find descriptions of great musicals like "Singing in the Rain", westerns like "High Noon", science-fiction classics like "Star Wars", dramas like "Chinatown" and "Schindler's List", and international classics from master directors who include Fellini, Antonioni, Resnais, Truffaut, Eisenstein, Kurosawa, and many others.Each entry includes a full list of cast and credits, awards won by the film, an essay summarizing the story line and screen-history, and still shots of the film's memorable scenes. At the back of the book, both an alphabetical index and a genre index will help readers find any film they're looking for. The book is illustrated with hundreds of movie still shots in color and black and white.

    It's the story of The Bride, a world-class assassin and a retired member of the elite, all-female Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (DiVAS), who's ready to settle down to a quiet life of marriage and family.

    This is the latest biography of William Claude Dukinfield who can be seen in The Bank Dick and My Little Chickadee.

    Acclaimed director Judith Weston offers a deeply creative exploration on how to access and stimulate the filmmaker's most precious assets: instincts, imagination, and intuition.

    His insights into the world of dreams have contributed to his many famous cinematic creations, including La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, and La Strada. A unique combination of memory, fantasy, and desire, this illustrated volume is a personal diary of Fellini’s private visions and nighttime fantasies. Fellini, winner of four Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, kept notebooks filled with unique sketches and notes from his dreams from the 1960s onward. This collection delves into his cinematic genius as it is captured in widely detailed caricatures and personal writings. This dream diary exhibits Fellini’s deeply personal taste for the bizarre and the irrational. His sketches focus on the profound struggle of the soul and are tinged with humor, empathy, and insight. Fellini’s Book of Dreams is an intriguing source of never-before-published writings and drawings, which reveal the master filmmaker’s personal vision and his infinite imagination.

    . . ugly and obscene . . . a degrading, senseless misuse of film and time." –The Los Angeles Times"People are right to be shocked." –The New YorkerFrom the murky depths can come the most extraordinary things. . . . Profoundly Disturbing examines the underground cult movies that have–unexpectedly and unintentionally–revolutionized the way that all movies would be made. Called "exploitation films" because they often exploit our most primal fears and desires, these overlooked movies pioneered new cinematographic techniques, subversive narrative structuring, and guerrilla marketing strategies that would eventually trickle up into mainstream cinema. In this book Joe Bob Briggs uncovers the most seminal cult movies of the twentieth century and reveals the fascinating untold stories behind their making. Briggs is best known as the cowboy-hat wearing, Texas-drawling host of Joe Bob's Drive-in Theater and Monstervision, which ran for fourteen years on cable TV. His goofy, disarming take offers a refreshingly different perspective on movies and film making. He will make you laugh out loud but then surprise you with some truly insightful analysis. And, with more than three decades of immersion in the cult movie business, Briggs has a wealth of behind-the-scenes knowledge about the people who starred in, and made these movies. There is no one better qualified or more engaging to write about this subject.All the subgenres in cult cinema are covered, with essays centering around twenty movies including Triumph of the Will (1938), Mudhoney (1965), Night of the Living Dead (1967), Deep Throat (1973), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Drunken Master (1978), and Crash (1996). Accompanying the text are dozens of capsule reviews providing ideas for related films to discover, as well as kitschy and fun archival film stills. An essential reference and guide to this overlooked side of cinema, Profoundly Disturbing should be in the home of every movie fan, especially those who think they've seen everything.

    From his early days as a taxi dancer in New York City to his near apotheosis as the ultimate Hollywood heartthrob, Rudolph Valentino (often to his distress) occupied a space squarely at the center of controversy. In this thoughtful retelling of Valentino' s short and tragic life–the first fully documented biography of the star–Emily W. Leider looks at the Great Lover' s life and legacy, and explores the events and issues that made him emblematic of the Jazz Age. Valentino's androgynous sexuality was a lightning rod for fiery and contradictory impulses that ran the gamut from swooning adoration to lashing resentment. He was reviled in the press for being too feminine for a man; yet he also brought to the screen the alluring, savage lover who embodied women's darker, forbidden sexual fantasies.In tandem, Leider explores notions of the outsider in American culture as represented by Valentino's experience as an immigrant who became a celebrity. As the silver screen's first dark-skinned romantic hero, Valentino helped to redefine and broaden American masculine ideals, ultimately coming to represent a graceful masculinity that trumped the deeply ingrained status quo of how a man could look and act.

    Archives.

    Drawing on research and interviews with those who knew Chaplin, Jeffrey Vance presents an illustrated account which captures Chaplin's fascinating life as well as his creative process. Vance describes in detail the atmosphere on Chaplin's film sets and his relationships with the cast and crew, his first attempts at comedy sequences that later became famous, and the main themes and ideas that persist through the major Chaplin films. stage of which is documented in photographs: his poverty-stricken childhood in late Victorian London, his unparalleled success in Hollywood, his numerous romances and four marriages, his political persecution during the anti-communist witch-hunts, and his happy years of quiet exile in Switzerland.

    Includes a copy of the book and a silver-gelatin photograph, signed and numbered by the artist, in a cloth clamshell box.

    The second half explores the intersection of auditory and visual realms. With restless inventiveness, Chion develops a rhetoric that describes the effects of audio-visual combinations, forcing us to rethink sound film. He claims, for example, that the silent era (which he terms "deaf cinema") did not end with the advent of sound technology but continues to function underneath and within later films. Expanding our appreciation of cinematic experiences ranging from Dolby multitrack in action films and the eerie tricycle of Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" to the way actors from different nations use their voices and words, "Film, A Sound Art" showcases the vast knowledge and innovative thinking of a major theorist.

    As war raged on in Vietnam and the cold war continued to escalate, Hollywood began to heat up, recovering from its commercial crisis with box-office successes such as Star Wars, Jaws, The Exorcist, and The Godfather. Thanks to directors like Spielberg and Lucas, American cinema gave birth to a new phenomenon: the blockbuster. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, while the Nouvelle Vague died out in France, its influence extended to Germany, where the New German Cinema of Fassbinder, Wenders, and Herzog had its heyday. The sexual revolution made its way to the silver screen (cautiously in the US, more freely in Europe) most notably in Bertolucci's steamy, scandalous Last Tango in Paris. Amidst all this came a wave of nostalgic films (The Sting, American Graffiti) and Vietnam pictures (Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter), the rise of the anti-hero (Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman), and the prestigious short-lived genre, blaxploitation.140 A-Z film entries include:- Synopsis- Film stills and production photos- Cast/crew listings- Box office figures- Trivia- Useful information on technical stuff- Actor and director biosPlus: a complete Academy Awards list for the decade

    Sheeta is a young girl who wears a mysterious blue stone that gives her the power to defy gravity. When she floats down into the life of Pazu, a young orphan boy, they soon find themselves back in the clouds, where the enchanting city of Laputa, built by a lost civilization, awaits. Inspired by Gulliver's Travels and set in the 19th century, Castle in the Sky pits young Sheeta, whose magic stone gives her the power of flight, and her friend Pazu against a horde of wicked pirates and spies as all vie to learn the secret of Laputa, the mysterious floating castle. This collectible boxed set contains all four volumes in the popular series in an exclusive display case featuring five collectible Castle in the Sky postcards. The full-color pages are illustrated with movie stills, and the English language dialogue comes from Studio Ghibli's official movie subtitles.

    The text is organized in the chronological order in which legal issues are normally encountered when making a film and bringing it to the screen.

    . . "The Cat has arrived, and he's got a hat full of fun to save Conrad and Sally from a boring rainy afternoon. Written in buoyant easy-to-read prose (with more than a few hilarious asides from the pesky Fish), this official movie storybook is packed with full-color photos from the first-ever live-action film of the Dr. Seuss classic, starring Mike Meyers!

    Vieira calls the escape valve of the American psyche, is imprinted on popular culture. Hollywood Horror captures all the mystery, power, dark humour and chilling beauty of the genre from its roots in the silent film era to 1968, which, according to Vieira, marks the end of the classic scary movie. aspect of cinematic horror, from seminal icons such as James Whale's Frankenstein and Tod Browning's Dracula to the steamy pre-Code jungle sorcery of The Island of the Lost Souls.

    This volume is a study of the classic western film Rio Bravo, which, according to the author, remains "beyond politics, as an argument as to why we should all want to go on living."

    Five hundred movie stills and photographs highlight this comprehensive overview of European cinematographic art, which offers incisive analyses of one hundred seminal films---from Battleship Potemkin to The Elephant Man--along with a technical and creative history of the cameraperson's craft.

    Acclaimed biographer Patrick McGilligan re-examines his life and extraordinary work, challenging perceptions of Hitchcock as the “macabre Englishman” and sexual obsessive, and reveals instead the ingenious craftsman, trickster, provocateur, and romantic.With insights into his relationships with Hollywood legends – such as Cary Grant, James Stewart, Ingrid Bergman, and Grace Kelly – as well as his 54-year marriage to Alma Reville and his inspirations in the thriller genre, the book is full of the same dark humor, cliffhanger suspense, and revelations that are synonymous with one of the most famous and misunderstood figures in cinema.

    Ozu and cowriter Kogo Noda viewed the script as literature; once completed, it was little changed during filming. Here is a translation of the Japanese screenplay to Tokyo Story, with critical observations by Donald Richie on Ozu’s filmmaking, a filmography, and twenty stills. Students of screenwriting will learn much from Ozu’s lean approach, while film lovers will treasure this unique keepsake of a great cinematic achievement.Yasujiro Ozu (1903–1963) was one of Japan’s greatest film directors.Kogo Noda (1893–1968), an influential screenwriter, was a frequent Ozu -collaborator.Donald Richie is the preeminent Western authority on Japanese film.

    The scripts are illustrated with 62 stills, and Debord’s own annotations help elucidate the subtleties of these astonishing works, unparalleled in cinematic history.

    There are currently two editions available: Volume 1 and Volume 2 DVD DELIRIUM is the definitive - Region Free - guide to hundreds of DVD video releases from all over the globe. More than 1000 incredible films are reviewed in each issue of DVD Delirium - the world's first A-to-Z DVD guide series specially designed for collectors of cult, horror, science-fiction and fantasy movies. DVD is the ultimate home entertainment format, but it's a minefield for the serious collector. If fans want to know whether they should buy a particular film, these 640 page books will become their first points of reference. If these books save them from buying even one second-rate DVD, they will have paid for themselves right away! Plus, readers can discover masses of brilliant films they did not even know had been released! The world's most fascinating DVDs reviewed in depth by a team lead by a dedicated genre fan who is also an industry insider! Fully cross-referenced to compare DVD releases from all over the world, so it is of just as much value to customers in each DVD ""Region""; especially targetted at the North American market! These unique, stand-alone volumes in the DVD Delirium series are classics of 'weird' film criticism! They include major contributions from world-renowned film journalist Kim Newman and FAB Press regular Tim Greaves. Hundreds and hundreds of fantastic, delirious movies reviewed in depth!

    

    Published in small circulation literary and arts journals, they were gathered later into such books as Metaphors on Vision and Film at Wit's End. Beginning in 1989, and for a decade thereafter, Brakhage wrote the essays in Telling Time as an occasional column for Musicworks, a Toronto quarterly. Ostensibly about the relation of film to music, they soon enlarged to explore primary concerns beyond film, including Brakhage's aesthetic theories based on the phenomenology of human cognition. In these essays he is as brilliant discussing Gertrude Stein or romantic love as he is on child psychology, astronomy, and physiology, all the while teasing out vital correspondences between the arts, and upending conventional ideas of how we perceive. His investigations of other artists are models of sympathetic intuition and generosity. Above all, he shares his theories, discoveries and understandings in the spirit of establishing a groundwork for many varieties of human liberation. His prose is filled with flashes of insight, elaborated metaphors, playful elisions, shorthand puns and neologisms, personal digressions, surprising epiphanies, leaps of faith, affronts to authority. He appeals to the imagination, and invites us to a more profound and personal experience of art.

    This is a comprehensive examination of Blade Runner's highly influential special effects which contains numerous images, and in-depth interviews witth Ridley Scott and the designer Syd Mead.

    Three decades later in the British Film Institute’s millennial poll, the film was voted one of the 20 best British films of all time. Steve Chibnall’s enjoyable and fresh account relates the film to others in its genre like Point Blank and Dirty Harry, profiles the people involved in its making and presents a fascinating analysis of the film text itself. He completes the story-so-far, looking at the critical reception, and cultural context and the two remakes: the 1972 blaxploitation film Hit Man and the new Stephen T. Kay movie, set in the US.

    Compilation of notable films from the 60s

    Ginette Vincendeau discusses the artistic value of his films in their proper context and comments on Jean-Pierre Melville's love of American culture and his controversial critical and political standing in this English language study.

    In such acclaimed works as Jaguar, The Lion Hunters, and Cocorico, Monsieur Poulet, Rouch has explored racism, colonialism, African modernity, religious ritual, and music. He pioneered numerous film techniques and technologies, and in the process inspired generations of filmmakers, from New Wave directors, who emulated his cinema verité style, to today’s documentarians.Ciné-Ethnography is a long-overdue English-language resource that collects Rouch's key writings, interviews, and other materials that distill his thinking on filmmaking, ethnography, and his own career. Editor Steven Feld opens with a concise overview of Rouch’s career, highlighting the themes found throughout his work. In the four essays that follow, Rouch discusses the ethnographic film as a genre, the history of African cinema, his experiences of filmmaking among the Songhay, and the intertwined histories of French colonialism, anthropology, and cinema. And in four interviews, Rouch thoughtfully reflects on each of his films, as well as his artistic, intellectual, and political concerns. Ciné-Ethnography also contains an annotated transcript of Chronicle of a Summer—one of Rouch's most important works—along with commentary by the filmmakers, and concludes with a complete, annotated filmography and a bibliography.The most thorough resource on Rouch available in any language, Ciné-Ethnography makes clear this remarkable and still vital filmmaker's major role in the history of documentary cinema.Jean Rouch was born in Paris in 1917. He studied civil engineering before turning to film and anthropology in response to his experiences in West Africa during World War II. Rouch is the recipient of numerous awards, including the International Critics Award at Cannes for the film Chronicle of a Summer in 1961. Steven Feld is professor of music and anthropology at Columbia University.

    This book explains in precise, easy to understand language everything the novice director needs to know before taking on his or her first professional assignment.

    From 1896 to 1920 she directed 400 films (including over 100 synchronized sound films), produced hundreds more, and was the first--and so far the only--woman to own and run her own studio plant (The Solax Studio in Fort Lee, NJ, 1910-1914). However, her role in film history was completely forgotten until her own memoirs were published in 1976. This new book tells her life story and fills in many gaps left by the memoirs. Guy BlachT's life and career mirrored momentous changes in the film industry, and the long time-span and sheer volume of her output makes her films a fertile territory for the application of new theories of cinema history, the development of film narrative, and feminist film theory. The book provides a close analysis of the one hundred Guy BlachT films that survive, and in the process rewrites early cinema history.

    These films, such as The Maltese Falcon, Murder, My Sweet, This Gun for Hire and The Big Sleep, fascinated French moviegoers with their new breed of criminals - love-starved husbands and wives, local business owners, writers, gamblers, small-time hoods, private eyes, mental patients, war veterans, rebellious teenagers and corrupt lawyers, politicians, judges and cops.

    This visual approach to the filmmaking process ensures that new (and established!) filmmakers get an instant overview of each and every discipline. Backing up the diagrams are copious notes - humorous in tone, yet broad and deep in content. Wherever possible, the text is broken apart into box outs, hot tips and sub-diagrams. This book is entertaining, irreverent, and never less than painfully practical. The Guerilla Film Makers Movie Blueprint will have its own dedicated website where readers can download the tools, forms, software, and artwork detailed in the book. Jones's latest endeavor is packed with over a decade's worth of experience, know-how, and insider tips. A must-read for every budding filmmaker.

    A former painter, Bava extended his eye for beauty in composition to forge breathtaking symphonies of colour and light in a series of masterful horror classics. His influence extends beyond such acknowledged cinematic disciples as Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, to a new generation of admirers including the likes of Tim Burton, Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese.

    

    Brain Thomas, the sensai of Asian cinema, pens the worthy successor to last year's VideoHound's Cult Flicks & Trash Pics. With 900 pages and more than 125 photos, VideoHound's Dragon exhaustively explores the hottest film genre that has had loyal fans drooling for years--and, lately, has Hollywood (John) Woo-Hooing! Asian film buffs and average American Joes (who like sock-y in their cinema) will, treasure VideoHound's latest tribute to a film genre lesser publishers ignore. From blockbusters like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, to cult faves like Mothra to classics like the Seven Samurai, readers will be treated to insights and highlights of the movies, casts, directors, and influences. VideoHound's Dragon reviews three types of films: Asian Films (duh!); Anime (cartoons to those of you going, "Huh?"); and American films with Asian stars (thank Buddha!). Sidebars entertain and inform on the stars and legends that give Asian films their kick. Magnificent indexes and resource lists, including fan Web sites, magazines, and clubs and lots and lots of photos (minus the lipsynching) round out this VideoHound tome. The foreword is by Cynthia Rothrock, the undisputed "Queen of Martial Arts Films," and one of the greatest martial arts/action film stars in the world.

    Featuring scores of full–color reproductions, this is a book that will thrill movie buffs and poster collectors alike.The 1930s was the cinema’s age of innocence, a time when the emphasis was on escapism and entertainment. Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn were Bringing Up Baby, Busby Berkely’s precision–drilled chorus girls were Flying Down to Rio, Fred Astaire was donning his Top Hat, and John Wayne was climbing on the Stagecoach to stardom. As this stunning collection of poster art reveals, it was also the decade of the illustrator, with Al Hirschfeld, Hap Hadley, and Alberto Vargas setting new standards in graphic design. Color may have only just begun to appear on cinema screens, but on the hoardings outside, the hues were bold and dazzling as never before. Tony Nourmand is co–owner of the Reel Poster Gallery in London and a poster consultant for Christie’s; Graham Marsh is a designer and art director. Together, they have also produced Film Posters of the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s.

    It is illustrated with over 140 black and white photos from the Institute's incomparable film archive, many of which are published here for the first time.

    Detailing the way Japanese directors, scriptwriters, company officials, and bureaucrats colluded to produce films that supported the war effort, The Imperial Screen is a highly-readable account of the realities of cultural life in wartime Japan. Widely hailed as "epoch-making" by the Japanese press, it presents the most comprehensive survey yet published of "national policy" films, relating their montage and dramatic structures to the cultural currents, government policies, and propaganda goals of the era. Peter B. High’s treatment of the Japanese film world as a microcosm of the entire sphere of Japanese wartime culture demonstrates what happens when conscientious artists and intellectuals become enmeshed in a totalitarian regime.

    We are proud to announce that it is the first release in our new Soft Skull Screen Print series, the goal of which is, in the first instance, to publish screenplays as literature, and, in the second instance, to give the reader insight into the process whereby text becomes image. "Secretary is the darkly comic tale of a young woman who finds love in a satisfying sadomasochistic relationship with her boss. Simultaneously sweet and subversive, the success of the film is due to Erin Cressida Wilson's masterful adaptation of Mary Gaitskill's 1989 short story. Some may be tempted by squeamishness when Maggie Gyllenhaal's character is bent over and methodically spanked in the office--punishment for her typos--but the twist is in her surprised joy and redemption from her own psychic distress. This un-PC version of romantic comedy is provocative in its ability to transcend stereotypes. "Secretary combines a close-up look at the adaptation and screenwriting process with a behind-the-scenes view of film from the perspective of its creators. In addition to the screenplay, the book also includes Erin Cressida Wilson's provocative introductory essay about how she came to write the film (and in which she confesses her own penchant for spanking), an interview with director Steven Shainberg by David Breskin, drawings and blocking notes from Shinberg's director's note-books, and previously unpublished photos from the set. Bonus materials include a foreword by Molly Haskell, author of "From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, as well as an excerpt from the original short story "Secretary"by Mary Gaitskill. "Secretary is an essential and fascinating study of independent movie making at its best.

    In a sense, Garfield never left the Bronx, but he began his acting career not far away, on Broadway as a member of the Group Theater in the mid-thirties. But soon, seduced by the myth of Hollywood and the reality of Warner Brothers, he made his movie debut, in 1938, in Four Daughters and immediately established himself as an earthy, rebellious and electrifying presence on the screen in retrospect the James Dean of the Depression era. Frequenty cast as a lawbreaker, in such films as They Made Me a Criminal, Dust Be My Destiny, Castle on the Hudson and, late in his career, the cult favorite Force of Evil, Garfield went on to roles in classics like The Postman Always Rings Twice (with Lana Turner), Body and Soul and Gentleman's Agreement .

    This updated second edition -- still the only full-length study of his work--features contributions from scholars and colleagues within the Czech Surrealist movement, as well as a new chapter on Svankmajer's feature films and an extended interview with Svankmajer himself. This volume is required reading for all budding animators and disciples of surrealism.

    Although remembered as a charming boy, he was diagnosed as epileptic and suffering from learning difficulties similar to autism and shut away at the age of twelve at the in Wood Farm near Sandringham to prevent the family from public embarrassment. He died there when he was just thirteen. Dramatising the historical facts, Poliakoff portrays with extraordinary sensitivity, a child's experience of the Royal Family in the late Edwardian period and during the First World War. Set against a backdrop of unprecedented upheaval in Britain, The Lost Prince tells the very human story of a unique family and an extraordinary boy. Published to tie in with the BBC's production, broadcast in two feature-length instalments in January 2003, The Lost Prince stars Michael Gambon, Miranda Richardson, Gina McKee, Tom Hollander, John Sessions, Billy Nighy and Bibi Andersson.

    Superlative. Stellar. In Writing Movies you'll find everything you need to know to reach this level. And, like the very best teachers, Writing Movies is always practical, accessible, and entertaining. The book provides a comprehensive look at screenwriting, covering all the fundamentals (plot, character, scenes, dialogue, etc.) and such crucial-but seldom discussed-topics as description, voice, tone, and theme. These concepts are illustrated through analysis of five brilliant screenplays-Die Hard, Thelma & Louise, Tootsie, Sideways, and The Shawshank Redemption. Also included are writing assignments and step-by-step tasks that take writers from rough idea to polished screenplay. Written by Gotham Writers' Workshop expert instructors, Writing Movies offers the same winning style and clarity of presentation that have made a success of Gotham's previous book Writing Fiction, which is now in its 7th printing. Named the "best class for screenwriters" in New York City by MovieMaker Magazine, Gotham Writers' Workshop is America's leading private creative writing school, offering classes in Manhattan and on the Web at www.WritingClasses.com. The school's interactive online classes, selected as "Best of the Web" by Forbes, have attracted thousands of aspiring writers from across the United States and more than sixty countries.

    This title looks into the turbulent personalities that formed the complex style of this film to unravel the fusion of cynicism, contempt, sparkling wit and philosophical curiosity.

    The work of French cinephiles in the 1950s restored Jean Renoir’s work to glory. It had been a disaster at its premiere in 1939, just weeks before the outbreak of war. Its failure, Renoir wrote, ‘depressed me so much that I made up my mind either to forsake cinema or to leave France.’ Before and after its rejection at the box office, panic cutting savaged the available prints. In the years after the war, Renoir’s film was to become a legendary lost masterpiece, but Renoir had to wait twenty years for his vindication. In 1959, a reconstructed print triumphed in its first screening at the Venice Film Festival. Since then it has claimed its place among the cinema’s most profound and fascinating achievements. François Truffaut was just one of a host of directors inspired by La Règle du jeu: ‘the credo of film lovers, the film of films, the most despised on its release and the most valued afterward.’V.F. Perkins traces the movie’s fortunes from the time of its production. He offers a nuanced account that explores its shifting moods, the depth of its themes and the uniqueness of its style. La Règle du jeu is renowned for its construction as an ensemble piece with a large cast of principal characters. Perkins follows this cue and frames his analysis as a discussion of four key actors and their roles in the film – Roland Toutain (André), Marcel Dalio (Robert), Nora Gregor (Christine) and Renoir himself as Octave. Exploring characterisation becomes a means to shed light on the subtlety of Renoir’s direction. Casting, composition, décor and cutting are seen to work with the complex organisation of shots in deep focus to develop a challenging perspective on the bourgeoisie of 1939, in Renoir’s words, ‘dancing on a volcano’.This special edition is published to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the BFI Film Classics series.

    The book uses powerful analytical models to uncover the wild uncertainty that shapes the industry. The centerpiece of the analysis is the unpredictable and often chaotic dynamic behaviour of motion picture audiences.This unique and important book will be of interest to students and researchers involved in the economics of movies, industrial economics and business studies. The book will also be a real eye-opener for film writers, movie executives, finance and risk management professionals as well as more general movie fans.

    It includes over 10,000 entries on the best of film and video that a real film lover might actually want to see. Unlike some of the other mass market guides that tend to be clogged with unelightening entries on even more unelightening films, TLA focuses on independant, foreign as well as the best of Hollywood to bring the cineaste an opinionated guide that is both fun to read and easy to use. The guide includes:* Reviews of more than 10,000 entries* Four detailed indexes--by star, director, country of origin, and theme.* More than 300 photos throughout* A listing of all the major film awards of the past quarter century, as well as TLA Bests and recommended films*A comprehensive selection of cinema from over 50 countries.From one of the finest names in video retailing and a growing rental chain comes the latest edition of one of the most respected film, video, and DVD guides. The TLA Film, Video and DVD Guide is perfect for anyone with an eclectic taste in cinema.

    Describes and rates more than twenty thousand videos, and provides indexes by theme, awards, actors, actresses, and directors.

    Every day more than 14 million people go to the cinema across India to watch films produced by this massive and powerful industry. In India, movies are not just a form of entertainment but practically a religion. Streets in major Indian cities are lined with colourful posters of Indian movies and their stars. Movie stars are treated like demi-gods, no match even for American standards of celebrity obsession. More than any other cultural or political institution of the twentieth century, the cinema has captured the hearts and minds of India's growing population of almost one billion, even against the stark backdrop of the vast country's struggle with poverty and hunger and often tense Muslim-Hindu relations. The experience of actually going to the movies in India is as much a part of the Bollywood phenomenon as are the stars themselves and Bollywood Dreams documents this important aspect of understanding the important role Bollywood plays in contemporary Indian culture. "Going to the cinema" Torgovnik says, "is about going to see the actors larger-than-life. It is about living the glamorous life for a few hours and leaving your daily hardships behind." Once inside the movie theatres, the audience can expect at least three hours of entertainment, including several song and dance numbers, love scenes, action sequences and most surely a happy ending. Each film includes the necessary ingredients for success: action, violence, music, dance, romance and morals. The themes of the movies are often social issues such as communalism, ethnicity, religion and caste, and the movie theatres themselves are often full of lively interaction between viewer and star. Cheers and boos pervade the atmosphere: the audience becomes a part of the film and, likewise, the film becomes a part of them. Bollywood Dreams begins with a vignette of the touring caravans that bring Bollywood on the big screen to India's villages in portable tents. We then follow the Indian film from its creation on the movie set, to the larger-than-life stars, directors and character actors, to the editing chamber, to the city streets where ubiquitous promotional posters abound and, finally, to the multitude of movie theatres that abound in India.

    Arguing that Blow Job epitomizes the highly complex position of gay invisibility and visibility, the text uses the film to explore the mechanisms that constructed pre-Stonewall white gay male identity in popular culture, high art, science, and ethnography. It draws on discourses of art history, film theory, queer studies, and cultural studies to situate Warhol's work at the nexus of Pop art, portrait painting, avante-garde film, and mainstream cinema. Rarely produced Warhol art and previously unpublished Ed Wallowitch photographs along with now iconic publicity shots of James Dean are presented, establishing Blow Job as a consummate example of Warhol's highly insightful engagement with a broad range of representational codes of gender and sexuality.

    Best known for the now-classic 1934 novel Appointment in Samarra and such blockbuster bestsellers as Ten North Frederick and Butterfield 8, in a career spanning four decades John O'Hara also published numerous story collections. Among his finest work, they highlight qualities that sold more than 15 million copies of his books in the course of his career: the snappy dialogue, the telling detail, the ironic narrative twist. Like the novels, and like the much-praised collection of John O'Hara's Gibbsville stories, also edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, the selections in John O'Hara's Hollywood, many originally appearing in the New Yorker or the Saturday Evening Post, explore the materialist aspirations and sexual exploits of flawed, prodigally human characters for whom arrangements consitute a deal and compromises pass for love.

    Stipetic in Munich on September 5, 1942. He grew up in a remote mountain village in Bavaria and never saw any films, television or telephones as a child. He started traveling on foot from the age of 14. He made his first phone call at the age of 17. During high school he worked the night shift as a welder in a steel factory to produce his first films and made his first one in 1961 at the age of 19. Since then he has produced, written, and directed more than 40 films--including Fitzcarraldo, Nosferatu, Cobra Verde, Even Dwarves Started Small, My Best Fiend and Aguirre, the Wrath of God--published more than a dozen books of prose, and directed as many operas. This publication presents Herzog through essays by friends and colleagues like actress Claudia Cardinale, who starred in Fitzcarraldo, and German director Volker Schl�ndorff, as well as through photographs by cinematographer Beat Presser, many of which have never before been published.

    In addition to a synopsis of each film, other details included are cast, writer, director, genre, year of release, running time and even distributor contact details. All films are listed in an easy-to-read A-Z format, but each film is also indexed by country, director and genre. "The Bent Lens: 2nd Edition "also includes essays from experts Judith Halberstam, Barbara Hammer, Helen Hok-Sze Leung and Daniel Mudie Cunningham exploring gay and lesbian film traditions and how gay identity is viewed in Western and non-Western cultures. And finally, this remarkable guide includes a complete listing of gay and lesbian film festivals around the world, making "The Bent Lens" a must for all film and video aficionados.Features more than 200 black-and-white photographs.Lisa Daniel is director and Claire Jackson is president of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival.

    Actors (including Mike Connors, Brett Halsey, Natalie Trundy and Richard Kiel), writers, producers and directors recall legendary genre figures Lugosi, Chaney, Jr., Tod Browning and James Whale; films ranging in quality from The Thing to Macumba Love and Eegah; behind-the-scenes tales of cult TV series (Twilight Zone, Batman, Lost in Space, more) and serials; and, of course, the usual barrage of outlandish movie menaces, this time including the Fly, Flesh Eaters, Monolith Monsters, ape men, voodoo women and spider babies! And all in the candid, no-holds-barred style that has made Weaver ?king of the interviewers? (Classic Images)!

    A collection of 43 interviews from horror and science fiction movie writers, producers, directors, and the men and women who saved the planet from aliens, behemoths, monsters, zombies, and other bloated, stumbling threats - in the movies, at least.

    The Flintstones spawned dozens of imitations, just as, two decades later, The Simpsons sparked a renaissance of primetime animation. This fascinating book explores the landscape of television animation, from Bedrock to Springfield, and beyond.The contributors critically examine the key issues and questions, including: How do we explain the animation explosion of the 1960s? Why did it take nearly twenty years following the cancellation of The Flintstones for animation to find its feet again as primetime fare? In addressing these questions, as well as many others, essays examine the relation between earlier, made-for-cinema animated production (such as the Warner Looney Toons shorts) and television-based animation; the role of animation in the economies of broadcast and cable television; and the links between animation production and brand image. Contributors also examine specific programmes like The Powerpuff Girls, Daria, Ren and Stimpy and South Park from the perspective of fans, exploring fan cybercommunities, investigating how ideas of 'class' and 'taste' apply to recent TV animation, and addressing themes such as irony, alienation, and representations of the family.

    These include film attention, the emotional address of the moving image, film and racism, the nature and epistemology of documentary film, the moral status of television, the concept of film style, the foundations of film evaluation, the film theory of Siegfried Kracauer, the ideology of the professional western, and films by Sergei Eisenstein and Yvonne Rainer. Carroll also assesses the state of contemporary film theory and speculates on its prospects. The book continues many of the themes of Carroll’s earlier work Theorizing the Moving Image and develops them in new directions. A general introduction by George Wilson situates Carroll’s essays in relation to his view of moving-image studies.

    Then as now, his celebrated films embrace the spirit of the era: challenging authority, questioning accepted morality, and examining the thin line between civilization and savagery. In Adventures of a Suburban Boy, Boorman delves deeply into these themes, applying his subversive sensibility to his life story as well as to some of the most important political and cultural events of the twentieth century. The result is a heady fusion of personal memoir and cinematic study, as a child of the London Blitz becomes the influential director known for films such as Point Blank, Excalibur, Hope and Glory, Deliverance, and The General--discussing the cultural role of the motion picture and the art of filmmaking along the way. With a vividly depicted supporting cast that includes Sean Connery, Richard Burton, Burt Reynolds, and Cher, among others, this entertaining and witty tour through the life, times, and works of one of the cinema's great practitioners is not only essential for anyone seeking a fuller understanding of Boorman's incredible body of work, but is also indispensable resource for anyone who is fascinated by film's impact on our lives.

    Since the 1960s, African Americans have increasingly joined their ranks, bringing fresh insights to movie characterizations, plots, and themes and depicting areas of African American culture that were previously absent from mainstream films. Today, black directors are making films in all popular genres, while inventing new ones to speak directly from and to the black experience. This book offers a first comprehensive look at the work of black directors in Hollywood, from pioneers such as Gordon Parks, Melvin Van Peebles, and Ossie Davis to current talents including Spike Lee, John Singleton, Kasi Lemmons, and Carl Franklin. Discussing 67 individuals and over 135 films, Melvin Donalson thoroughly explores how black directors’ storytelling skills and film techniques have widened both the thematic focus and visual style of American cinema. Assessing the meanings and messages in their films, he convincingly demonstrates that black directors are balancing Hollywood’s demand for box office success with artistic achievement and responsibility to ethnic, cultural, and gender issues.

    Collected for the first time in this amazing tribute to Stern’s long-standing legacy, Phil Stern: A Life’s Work features never-before-seen photographs of the greatest figures and times of the American twentieth century. Stern, who enlisted in the army on December 7, 1941, joined the ranks of “Darby’s Rangers,” a much-heralded fighting unit, as combat photographer. In North Africa documenting the harsh and brutal battles against General Rommel’s forces, Stern was wounded. Awarded a Purple Heart for bravery, he was then reassigned to cover the invasion of Sicily for Stars and Stripes. Covering the homecoming of Darby’s Rangers for Life, the assignments Stern shot for the magazine brought him into another intrinsically American experience: Hollywood. At the same time, Stern worked intermittently for jazz label legend Norman Granz, photographing album covers for the Verve, Pablo, and Reprise record labels. A golden-era industry insider par excellence, Stern was tapped by Frank Sinatra to be the official photographer for the JFK Inaugural Gala. His friendships with and access to the greatest legends of the time allowed him to create indelible portraits—most seen here for the first time—of James Dean, Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Joan Crawford, Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, Sammy Davis, Jr., Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, and Lester Young, among many others. Stern’s oeuvre is studded with classic figures of entertainment at its best; and in Phil Stern: A Life’s Work they come together to form a brilliant constellation around this truly star photographer.

    I didn't really have any help, and I wouldn't take any help. I had to do it on my own. Once I made my first film I considered myself a film-maker. I lost all interest in the theater and never went back--Monte Hellman In 1970, an LA Times headline described Monte Hellman as Hollywood's best kept secret. More than thirty years later, Hellman and his work are still secrets, his genius recognized only by a small but passionate group of admirers. This book is both a biography of Hellman and a critical study of his films, which include The Shooting, Two-Lane Blacktop and Ride in the Whirlwind. It also covers films to which Hellman has contributed as an editor, actor and producer, as well as those on which he has worked, in various capacities, without onscreen credit, such as Shatter and Robocop. Attention is focused on the hallmarks of Hellman's work, including his dominant themes and obsessive characters, and all the films are subjected to close stylistic analysis.

    The task of the new regime, and of the media that served it, was to reshape the old world in revolutionary form, to transform the vast, "ungraspable" space of the Russian Empire into the mapped territory of the Soviet Union. This book shows how Soviet cinema encouraged popular support for state initiatives in the years between the revolution and the Second World War, helping to create a new Russian identity and territory—an "imaginary geography" of Sovietness. Drawing on a vast range of little-known texts, Emma Widdis offers a unique cultural history of the early Soviet period. In particular, she shows how films projected the new Soviet map onto the great shared screen of the popular imagination.

    L. Doctorow is one of America's most accomplished and acclaimed living writers. Winner of the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award (twice), the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the National Humanities Medal, he is the author of nine novels that have explored the drama of American life from the late nineteenth century to the present. Doctorow has also played an active role in transforming his novels into films, writing screenplay adaptations of three of his works -- The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, and Loon Lake. Published here for the first time, his scripts reveal a new aspect of this writer's remarkable talents and offer film students and other cineastes unique insight into the complex relationship of literature and motion pictures.Each of these screenplays has undergone a different fate. Doctorow's script for Daniel was made into a feature film by director Sidney Lumet in 1983. The monumental Ragtime screenplay he wrote for director Robert Altman was to have been filmed as either a six-hour feature film or a ten-hour television series. When Altman was replaced on the project by Milos Forman, a shorter, more conventional script was commissioned from another writer. In 1981, Doctorow adapted Loon Lake, but this challenging work has yet to be filmed.For this book, Doctorow has revised his dazzling Ragtime screenplay, making clear how different the film might have been, and has written a preface about the art of screenwriting. In addition, editor Paul Levine provides a general introduction to Doctorow's fiction and specific introductions to each screenplay; interviews Lumet about making Daniel; and talks with Doctorow about his abiding interest in the art and craft of cinema.

    From the backroads of Texas to the boardrooms of Hollywood, Craig Chester is unabashedly honest about the pain and the unique rewards of remaining an outsider in an insider’s world.While his family prepares to watch the apocalypse from their rooftop with a bucket of KFC, Craig is trying to climb the social ladder at school by saving his neighbors from their sinful ways and speaking in tongues (with not-so-successful results). Along the way Craig experiences gender confusion at grade-school summer camp and has massive reconstructive surgery to correct his deformed teenage face, only to emerge and realize that Hollywood success isn’t always measured in externals, but also in the machinations of the heart and how much you don’t show. All along he expertly captures the feeling of what it’s like to not always fit in—and have that be okay—with a comic timing that’s tuned in to the heart and soul of trying to get by day to day.His tales of life, from growing up in the Bible Belt to starring in nine films, prove that the average American life is anything but normal.

    It was the home of the stars and the famous Hollywood sign beckoned through the smog, drawing in hopeful wannabes. Hollywood Then and Now teams photos from this Golden Age of Hollywood with modern day images of the area including shots of the Hollywood sign, the Hollywood Studios, and the fantastic film theaters.

    With more than 1,000 entries and illustrations, this comprehensive guide includes details on video releases, film discoveries, and rare artwork.

    Fellini, who directed a host of legendary films, including La Strada and La Dolce Vita, was an exuberant storyteller with a wild imagination, and the interviews capture his energy and passion. Through the course of the interviews Fellini candidly discusses seemingly every aspect of his work, from his early life to his relationship with Italian history and culture, to the inspiration behind his films, revealing his motivations, desires and passions. Subjects include women (the unknown planet), neurosis (fabulous treasure buried at the bottom of the sea), cinema (not about delivering messages but about raising questions), actors (puppets), Marcello Mastroianni, memory, marriage and more. worked to assemble, restore and conserve a large body of rare and forgotten photographs of Fellini. A selection of these never-before-published images illustrates this text.

    60 of the very best horror movie posters ever made.

    This unique collection of previously unpublished film treatments, short stories, and one-act plays spans fifty years of her creative writing and showcases the breadth and depth of her talent. Beginning in 1912 with the stories she submitted from her San Diego home (some made into films by D. W. Griffith), through her collaboration with Colette on the play Gigi, Anita Loos wrote almost every day for the screen, stage, books, or magazines. Her film scripts include San Francisco, The Women, and Red-Headed Woman. The list of stars for whom she created unforgettable roles includes Mary Pickford, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Audrey Hepburn, and Carol Channing. This collection has been selected by Anita's niece and close friend, the best-selling author Mary Anita Loos, together with the acclaimed film historian Cari Beauchamp. Their essays are laced throughout the volume, introducing each section and giving previously untold insights and behind-the-scenes stories about Anita--her life, her friendships, and her times.

    Chandler and the other writers and directors, including James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, Jane Greer, Ken Annakin, Rouben Mamoulian and Mike Mazurki, who were primarily responsible for the creation of the film noir genre and its common plots and themes, are the main focus of this work. It correlates the rise of film noir with the new appetites of the American public after World War II and explains how it was developed by smaller studios and filmmakers as a result of the emphasis on quality within a deliberately restricted element of cities at night. The author also discusses how RKO capitalized on films such as Murder, My Sweet and Out of the Past--two of film noir's most famous titles--and film noir's connection to British noir and the great international triumph of Sir Carol Reed in The Third Man.

    Why We Make Movies also addresses the business of Hollywood and its turning tide, in a nation where African Americans comprise a sizable portion of the film-going public and go to the movies more frequently than whites. In addition, Alexander’s cast of directors and producers considers the lead roles they now play in everything from documentaries and films for television to broad-based blockbusters (in fact, the highest-grossing film in Miramax history was Scary Movie, directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans). For film buffs and aspiring filmmakers alike, Why We Make Movies puts a long-overdue spotlight on one of the most exciting and cutting-edge segments of today’s silver screen. INTERVIEWS INCLUDE: MELVIN VAN PEEBLES • MICHAEL SCHULTZ • CHARLES BURNETT • SPIKE LEE • ROBERT TOWNSEND • FRED WILLIAMSON • ERNEST DICKERSON • KEENEN IVORY WAYANS • ANTOINE FUQUA • BILL DUKE • FORREST WHITAKER • JULIE DASH • KASI LEMMONS • GINA PRINC-BLYTHEWOOD • JOHN SINGLETON • GEORGE TILLMAN Jr. • REGINALD HUDLIN • WARRINGTON HUDLIN • MALCOLM LEE • EUZHAN PALCY • DOUG McHENRY • DEBRA MARTIN CHASE • St. CLAIR BOURNE • STANLEY NELSON • WILLIAM GREAVES • KATHE SANDLER • CAMILLE BILLOPS • HAILE GERIMA • GORDON PARKSFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

    Drawing authors from both East and West, the books in this series combine the best of scholarship with a style of writing that is accessible to a broad readership, whether that readership's primary interest lies in cinema or in Russian and Soviet political history. Savage Junctures provides fresh insights into Eisenstein's films and writings. It examines the multiple contexts within which his films evolved and Eisenstein's appropriation of all of world culture as his source.  Like Eisenstein himself, Anne Nesbet is particularly interested in the possibilities of visual image making and each chapter addresses the problem of his image-based thinking from a different perspective.  Each chapter also offers a fundamentally new interpretation of the films and writings that make up his oeuvre. This is a major new contribution to studies in Soviet cinema and culture and to the field of film studies, now available in paperback for the first time.

    Author Scott Aaron Stine is back again, this time with an exhaustive study of splatter films of the 1980s. Following a brief overview of the genre, the main part of the book is a filmography. Each entry includes extensive technical information; cast and production credits; release date; running time; alternate and foreign release titles; comments on the availability of the film on videocassette and DVD; a plot synopsis; commentary from the author; and reviews. Extensive cross-referencing is also included. Heavily illustrated.

    With meticulous scholarship and engaging insights, prizewinning filmmaker and author Nick Deocampo investigates the origin and formation of cinema as it became the Filipinos' preeminent entertainment and cultural form.

    Readers will delight in reacquainting themselves with the movies that first made audiences laugh.

    In Cinemas of the World, James Chapman examines the relationship between film and society in the modern world: film as entertainment medium, film as a reflection of national cultures and preoccupations, film as an instrument of propaganda. He also explores two interrelated issues that have recurred throughout the history of cinema: the economic and cultural hegemony of Hollywood on the one hand, and, on the other, the attempts of film-makers elsewhere to establish indigenous national cinemas drawing on their own cultures and societies.Chapman examines the rise to dominance of Hollywood cinema in the silent and early sound periods. He discusses the characteristic themes of American movies from the Depression to the end of the Cold War especially those found in the western and film noir – genres that are often used as vehicles for exploring issues central to us society and politics. He looks at national cinemas in various European countries in the period between the end of the First World War and the end of the Second, which all exhibit the formal and aesthetic properties of modernism. The emergence of the so-called "new cinemas" of Europe and the wider world since 1960 are also explored."Chapman is a tough-thinking, original writer . . . an engaging, excellent piece of work."—David Lancaster, Film and History

    Josephine Woll’s beautifully written account of this film reviews its presentation of war, its redefinition of Soviet ideas of heroism, its enigmatic central protagonist, Veronika and her paradoxical decision to marry one man while never ceasing to love another. Woll also details its reception in the Soviet Union and the West, where it was widely distributed and acclaimed.

    With the death of Lon Chaney in 1930, America's foremost apostle of the weird and morbid in cinema was gone. In Germany, financial collapse and frightening political upheavals drove filmmakers to abandon the supernatural for the grim realities of modern life. But the silent era had introduced most of the major themes of the horror film that would be revisited and explored for the remainder of the century. Manmade monsters, vampires, soulless robots, Satanists, witches, sex killers, deformed maniacs, mad scientists, giant dinosaurs, ghosts and the Devil himself had all been subjects in the medium's first two decades. The genre had even produced enduring masterpieces such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Golem, Barrymore's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Haxan, Nosferatu, The Phantom of the Opera, Metropolis, Galeen's remake of The Student of Prague, The Unknown and West of Zanzibar. Steve Haberman, with Silent Screams, the first book in his horror tome Chronicles of Terror, offers a loving tribute to silent horror films, works which would form a strong foundation for the filmic terrors yet to come.