Step by step, Inside Story: The Power of the Transformational Arc guides you through an extraordinary new process that helps identify your thematic intention-what your story is really about-and teaches you how to turn that intention into the driving force behind all your creative choices. The result is a profound relationship between the movement of the plot and the internal development of character, which is the foundation for the transformational arc. The transformational arc is the deeper line of structure found inside the story. Knowing how to work with the arc enhances your ability to: ? Express your unique point of view ? Give meaning and urgency to the line of action ? Infuse your characters with richness, subtlety, and surprise ? Develop a powerful emotional undercurrent ? Make your stories stand out and get attention A strong transformational arc is the single most important element that makes the difference between a good screenplay and a great one. Inside Story delivers what the name implies: it's the real inside scoop on how to write a great screenplay with depth, dimension, and substance. It is a must-have for any serious screenwriter, playwright, or novelist.

    He leads, people follow. He takes new paths -- praised if he`s successful, derided if he fails. But then somebody has to do the job. Somebody has to invent for the others to reinvent. Somebody has to stand up for our fifty six year old philosophy -- for the people, by the people, to the people. Shah Rukh Khan did just that. He invades areas where no actor has ever been. A clear brand philosophy and a brilliant understanding of mass psyche has been the strength of the SRK product. He is probably the best brand ever churned out by Indian industry...

    And during those four decades, his wide knowledge, keen judgment, prodigious energy, and sharp sense of humor have made him America’s most celebrated film critic. He was the first such critic to win a Pulitzer Prize—one of just three film critics ever to receive that honor—and the only one to have a star dedicated to him on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His groundbreaking hit TV show, At the Movies, meanwhile, has made “two thumbs up” one of the most coveted hallmarks in the entire industry. No critic alive has reviewed more movies than Roger Ebert, and yet his essential writings have never been collected in a single volume—until now. With Awake in the Dark, both fans and film buffs can finally bask in the best of Ebert’s work. The reviews, interviews, and essays collected here present a picture of this indispensable critic’s numerous contributions to the cinema and cinephilia. From The Godfather to GoodFellas, from Cries and Whispers to Crash, the reviews in Awake in the Dark span some of the most exceptional periods in film history, from the dramatic rise of rebel Hollywood and the heyday of the auteur, to the triumph of blockbuster films such as Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, to the indie revolution that is still with us today. The extraordinary interviews gathered in Awake in the Dark capture Ebert engaging not only some of the most influential directors of our time—Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Werner Herzog, and Ingmar Bergman—but also some of the silver screen’s most respected and dynamic personalities, including actors as diverse as Robert Mitchum, James Stewart, Warren Beatty, and Meryl Streep. Ebert’s remarkable essays play a significant part in Awake in the Dark as well. The book contains some of Ebert’s most admired pieces, among them a moving appreciation of John Cassavetes and a loving tribute to the virtues of black-and-white films. If Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris were godmother and godfather to the movie generation, then Ebert is its voice from within—a writer whose exceptional intelligence and daily bursts of insight and enthusiasm have shaped the way we think about the movies. Awake in the Dark, therefore, will be a treasure trove not just for fans of this seminal critic, but for anyone desiring a fascinating and compulsively readable chronicle of film since the late 1960s.

    Whether spectacular or subtle, elaborate or barely there, a movie costume must be more than merely a perfect fit. Each costume speaks a language all its own, communicating mood, personality, and setting, and propelling the action of the movie as much as a scripted line or synthetic clap of thunder. More than a few acting careers have been launched on the basis of an unforgettable costume, and many an era defined by the intuition of a costume designer—think curvy Mae West in I'm No Angel (Travis Banton, costume designer), Judy Garland in A Star is Born (Jean Louis and Irene Sharaff, costume designers), Diane Keaton in Annie Hall (Ruth Morley, costume designer), or Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark (Deborah Nadoolman Landis, costume designer).In Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design, Academy Award-nominated costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis showcases one hundred years of Hollywood's most tantalizing costumes and the characters they helped bring to life. Drawing on years of extraordinary research, Landis has uncovered both a treasure trove of costume sketches and photographs—many of them previously unpublished—and a dazzling array of first-person anecdotes that inform and enhance the images. Along the way she also provides and eye-opening, behind-the-scenes look at the evolution of the costume designer's art, from its emergence as a key element of cinematic collaboration to its limitless future in the era of CGI.A lavish tribute that mingles words and images of equal luster, Dressed is one book no film and fashion lover should be without.

    Produced by Turner Classic Movies, this playful and definitive guide to fifty unforgettable actresses mirrors the focus of a month-long film festival on the channel. The life and accomplishments of each actress is celebrated in an insightful career overview, accompanied by an annotated list of essential films, filmographies, behind the scenes facts and style notes, Academy Award wins and nominations. Full of delightful trivia, film stills, posters, and glamorous photos, Leading Ladies pays tribute to the most charismatic, enduring, and elegant actresses of the silver screen.

    Revered by such filmmaking giants as Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa, Tarkovsky is famous for his use of long takes, languid pacing, dreamlike metaphorical imagery, and meditations on spirituality and the human soul. His "Andrei Roublev," "Solaris," and "The Mirror" are considered landmarks of postwar Russian cinema."Andrei Tarkovsky: Interviews" is the first English-language collection of interviews with and profiles of the filmmaker. It includes conversations originally published in French, Italian, Russian, and British periodicals. With pieces from 1962 through 1986, the collection spans the breadth of Tarkovsky's career.In the volume, Tarkovsky candidly and articulately discusses the difficulties of making films under the censors of the Soviet Union. He explores his aesthetic ideology, filmmakers he admires, and his eventual self-exile from Russia. He talks about recurring images in his movies--water, horses, fire, snow--but adamantly refuses to divulge what they mean, as he feels that would impose his own meaning onto the audience. At times cagey and resistant to interviewers, Tarkovsky nevertheless reveals his vision and his rigorous devotion to his art.John Gianvito is an assistant professor of visual and media arts at Emerson College as well as a filmmaker and film critic. His feature films include "The Flower of Pain," "Address Unknown," and "The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein." In 2001 Gianvito was made a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture.

    Now, at last, he's opening up the Stan Winston Studio to collaborate on the first-ever book to reveal all the behind-the-scenes secrets of his groundbreaking and hugely influential artistry and effects work. Featuring an extensive array of sketches, production art, and photographs straight from the studio archives, this is the book his fans have been waiting for!

    In each of these cases, and literally hundreds more, the model-making wizards of Industrial Light & Magic were instrumental in creating a universe full of glorious, heart-pounding illusions.In Sculpting a Galaxy: Inside the Star Wars Model Shop, Lorne Peterson, one of the founding members of ILM, takes the reader on a journey through thirty years of incredible adventures, telling never-before-published stories, explaining how classic scenes were created, and how beloved models were - often from the most unexpected of parts and ingredients. Paint buckets, model car parts, and walnut shells play important roles, alongside high-tech lasers and computer graphics, in creating the familiar yet fantastic components of a galaxy far, far away.Lavishly illustrated with more than 300 full-color photographs from the Lucasfilm Archives, this book provides an unparalleled look behind the scenes of a place that really has created magic. Lorne Peterson's warm, evocative voice and dedication to his craft inform every page, making this not just a stunning visual piece, but an epic history in its own right.

    Created by some of Japan's most talented and up-and-coming special effects make-up artists, this is the first Japanese language Special Effects Make-Up "how-to" guide! From easy "scar" make-ups to basic techniques to masks and full-scale prosthetics, each process is covered in a fully illustrated, step-by-step process.

    The Orphanage was created by three twenty-something visual effects veterans who wanted to make their own feature films and discovered they could do this by utilizing home computers, off the shelf software, and approaching things artistically. This guide details exactly how to do this: from planning and selecting the necessary cameras, software, and equipment, to creating specific special effects (including gunfire, Kung Fu fighting, car chases, dismemberment, and more) to editing and mixing sound and music. Its mantra is that the best, low-budget action moviemakers must visualize the end product first in order to reverse-engineer the least expensive way to get there. Readers will learn how to integrate visual effects into every aspect of filmmaking--before filming, during filming and with "in camera" shots, and with computers in postproduction. Throughout the book, the author makes specific references to and uses popular action movies (both low and big-budget) as detailed examples--including El Mariachi, La Femme Nikita, Die Hard, and Terminator 2. Note from the Publisher: If you have the 3rd printing of The DV Rebel’s Guide, your disc may be missing the data files that accompany the book. If this is the case, please send an email to Peachpit in order to obtain the files at ask@peachpit.com

    Produced by Turner Classic Movies, this stylish and definitive guide as the inside scoop and off-the-record reveals of fifty unforgettable actors and is also the focus of an on-air film festival on the channel. The lives and accomplishments of each actor are celebrated in an insightful career overview, accompanied by an annotated list of essential films, filmographies, behind the scenes facts, Academy Award wins and nominations. Full of surprising trivia, film stills, posters, and stunning photos, Leading Men pays tribute to the most charismatic, enduring, and elegant actors of the silver screen: an essential resource for movie buffs and pop-culture enthusiasts alike.

    In three different lives in three vastly different time periods, one man, Thomas, Tommy, Tom, is desperate to beat death and to prolong the life of the woman he loves.

    Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away were critically acclaimed upon U.S. release, and the earlier My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service have found popularity with Americans on DVD. This critical study of Miyazaki's work begins with an analysis of the visual conventions of manga, Japanese comic books, and anime; an overview of Japanese animated films; and a consideration of the techniques deployed by both traditional cel and computer animation. This section also details Miyazaki's early forays into comic books and animation, and his output prior to his founding of Studio Ghibli. Part Two concentrates on the Studio Ghibli era, outlining the company's development and analyzing the director's productions between 1984 and 2004, including Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro and his newest film, Howl's Moving Castle. The second section also discusses other productions involving Studio Ghibli, including Grave of the Fireflies and The Cat Returns. Appendices supply additional information about Studio Ghibli's merchandise production, Miyazaki's global fan base, and the output of other Ghibli directors.

    The book is edited—with commentaries—by George Stevens, Jr., founder of the American Film Institute and the AFI Center for Advanced Film Studies’ Harold Lloyd Master Seminar series.Here talking about their work, their art—picture making in general—are directors from King Vidor, Howard Hawks and Fritz Lang (“I learned only from bad films”) to William Wyler, George Stevens and David Lean.Here, too, is Hal Wallis, one of Hollywood’s great motion picture producers; legendary cinematographers Stanley Cortez, who shot, among other pictures, The Magnificent Ambersons, Since You Went Away and Shock Corridor and George Folsey, who was the cameraman on more than 150 pictures, from Animal Crackers and Marie Antoinette to Meet Me in St. Louis and Adam’s Rib; and the equally celebrated James Wong Howe.Here is the screenwriter Ray Bradbury, who wrote the script for John Huston’s Moby Dick, Fahrenheit 451 and The Illustrated Man, and the admired Ernest Lehman, who wrote the screenplays for Sabrina, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and North by Northwest (“One day Hitchcock said, ‘I’ve always wanted to do a chase across the face of Mount Rushmore.’”).And here, too, are Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini (“Making a movie is a mathematical operation. It’s absolutely impossible to improvise”).These conversations gathered together—and published for the first time—are full of wisdom, movie history and ideas about picture making, about working with actors, about how to tell a story in words and movement. A sample of what the moviemakers have to teach us: Elia Kazan, on translating a play to the screen: “With A Streetcar Named Desire we worked hard to open it up and then went back to the play because we’d lost all the compression. In the play, these people were trapped in a room with each other. As the story progressed I took out little flats, and the set got smaller and smaller.”Ingmar Bergman on writing: “For half a year I had a picture inside my head of three women walking around in a red room with white clothes. I couldn’t understand why these damned women were there. I tried to throw it away . . . find out what they said to each other because they whispered. It came out that they were watching another woman dying. Then the screenplay started—but it took about a year. The script always starts with a picture . . . ”Jean Renoir on actors: “The truth is, if you discourage an actor you may never find him again. An actor is an animal, extremely fragile. You get a little expression, it is not exactly what you wanted, but it’s alive. It’s something human.”And Hitchcock—on Hitchcock: “Give [the audience] pleasure, the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.”

    Starring WillFerrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Latifah,and Emma Thompson, Stranger Than Fiction is a heartfelt film,perhaps a comedy, perhaps a tragedy, about love and literatureand death and taxes.

    Caligari" to Richard Shickel on the cult of Greta Garbo.

    Pale

    In concrete terms it explains how you can create your own success and, in the process, entertain, delight, challenge, and uplift this generation and the ones to come.

    With rare and never-before-published photographs, personal letters, and documents, this groundbreaking book reveals the style secrets that helped make Grant a fashion icon.

    Now, he is the newest member of Hollywood's elite fellowship, with his name on the most successful movie trilogy of all time. Written with Jackson's full participation, this extensive biography, illustrated with never-before-seen photos from Jackson's personal collection, tells the inside story of how a New Zealander became Hollywood's hottest property—from the early cult classics, through Academy Award-winning success with Kate Winslet's Heavenly Creatures, the abandoned King Kong remake, and the filming of The Lord of the Rings—a project which was abandoned two years into pre-production, rejected by most of the other studios, and then picked up by New Line Cinema in the biggest gamble in film history. Drawing upon interviews with 50 of Peter Jackson's colleagues and contemporaries, author Brian Sibley paints a portrait of a true auteur, a man gifted with single-minded determination and an artist's vision. Jackson himself is both revealing and insightful about his entire filmmaking life, from his first childhood steps filming in Super 8 to the grand realisation of his life's dream: King Kong. Together, these joint narratives provide a truly unique and compelling insight into one of the finest cinematic minds at work today.

    V for Vendetta: From Script to Film will contain production ephemera including: storyboard art, character sketches, original script, still photos, and art from the original graphic novel. V for Vendetta: From Script to Film will also contain observations by reclusive producers the Wachowski brothers, cast members including Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, John Hurt, and Stephen Rea, and various other film crew. V for Vendetta: From Script to Film is sure to appeal to new comic book fans and diehard collectors alike.

    Developed by Hawaiian islanders over five centuries ago, surfing began to peak on the mainland in the 1950s, taking America?and the world?by storm. Surfing became not just a sport, but a way of life, and the culture that surrounded it was admired and exported across the globe. One of the key image-makers from that period is LeRoy Grannis, a surfer since 1931, who began photographing the scene in California and Hawaii in the longboard Gidget era of the early 1960s. This collection, drawn from Grannis's personal archives, showcases an impressive selection of surf photographs?from the bliss of catching the perfect wave at San Onofre to dramatic wipeouts at Oahu's famed North Shore. An innovator in the field, Grannis suction-cupped a waterproof box to his board, enabling him to change film in the water and stay closer to the action than other photographers of the time. Equally notable is his work covering an emerging surf lifestyle, from ?surfer stomps? and hoards of fans at surf contests to board-laden woody station wagons along the Pacific Coast Highway. It is in these iconic images that a sport still in its adolescence embodied the free-spirited nature of an era?a time before shortboards and celebrity endorsements, when surfing was at its bronzed best. This unlimited popular edition is for readers on a budget or who were unable to get their hands on the original limited Collector's Edition (it sold out in record time and copies were being resold for up to double of the retail price!) The photographer: LeRoy Grannis's initial foray into surfing began at age14 with a six-foot slab of pine, but it wasn't until the age of 42 that he picked up a camera and made a career out of it. Under doctor's orders to take up a hobby, Grannis built a darkroom in his garage and began shooting surfers at Hermosa Beach, selling prints for a buck apiece. His photos soon started appearing in many of the burgeoning surf magazines, and ""Photo: Grannis"" quickly became a hallmark of the California surf scene of the 1960s. Grannis is considered one of the most important documentarians of the sport, and was inducted into the Surfing Hall of Fame in 1966. The editor: Jim Heimann is Executive Editor for TASCHEN America in Los Angeles and the author of numerous books on architecture, popular culture, and Hollywood history. The author: Over the past decade working as Surfer magazine's globe-roaming editor at large, photojournalist Steve Barilotti has made it his business to document the sport, art, and lore of surfing. A lifelong surfer and fourth-generation Californian, Barilotti's passion for West Coast beach culture runs deep. His writing has also appeared in The Perfect Day and the books of renowned surf photographers Art Brewer and Ted Grambeau. Between trips, Steve lives in San Diego, California.

    

    Movies shattered Hollywood's tranquillity, and brought wealth, fame and glamorous movie stars. The giants of the movie industry invented klieg-lighted movie premieres and the Academy Awards in Hollywood. Go beyond the star-studded surface to the district's days of union busting, gangsters, and scandal, foreshadowing Hollywood's seedy decline. The book concludes with Hollywood's redevelopment that continues today. The book features the famous faces and places that made the town legendary, offering a unique perspective on celebrity nightlife and the behind-the-scenes stories of day-to-day life. Lavishly illustrated with over 800 vintage images from the author's private collection, "The Story of Hollywood" brings new insights to readers with a passion for Hollywood and its place in the history of film, radio, and television.

    These changes can be seen in every field of life. For instance, the way of supplying basic needs or the way how to make own life better, but also certain norms and values are quite different today. Instead of visiting a theatre in order to be entertained, people can watch TV or use the internet. If a man and a woman live together unmarried, hardly anybody will be shocked about that fact. But often certain attitudes are anchored in society and can hardly be changed. One example is the determination which individual role men and women are likely to play as members of a society and how their image appears in every culture. It is especially interesting to see how the media represent women, the so called -weaker sex-. The following pages respond with the representation of women through the years. Additionally, they deal with problems and consequences coming up because of the difference between men and women.

    "Different movies give different brightnesses. If it's an optimistic story, I usually end up with a bright screen; if it's a sad story, it's a dark screen. Occult movie? Very dark."

    Kay felt that being of some service to others was far more important than focusing totally on promoting herself and a film career. Readers will be surprised to learn about the "real" Kay Francis in retirement. Her godsons paint a portrait of a woman who lived in the moment, and generated a great deal of loving warmth. Many rare, unpublished photos from Kay's youth and retirement years are featured in her biography. Interviews from co-workers, friends and children of her "ex's" complete the picture of one of Hollywood's most glamorous and intriguing stars.

    Each entry in this remarkable book, which represents a lifetime of teaching film, has already inspired and educated several generations of Hollywood's greatest filmmakers and writers. This book examines the patterns and principles that make films popular and memorable, and will be useful both for those who want to create films and for those who just want to understand them better. Advance Review Quotes: "Howard Suber's understanding of film storytelling fills the pages of this wise, liberating book. Much of it is surprisingly contrary to what 'everyone knows.' A remarkable work." Francis Ford Coppola

    

    This important book contains essays on a wide range of films and filmmakers and considers questions of the nature of film criticism and the critic. Wood, the proud "unreconstructed humanist," offers in this collection persuasive arguments for the importance of art, creativity, and personal response and also demonstrates these values in his analyses. Personal Views is the only book on cinema by Wood never to have been published in the United States. It contains essays on popular Hollywood directors such as Howard Hawks, Vincente Minnelli, and Leo McCarey; as well as pieces on recognized auteurs like Max Ophuls, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, and Josef von Sternberg; and essays on art-film icons Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Kenji Mizoguchi. The writings that make up Personal Views appeared duing a pivotal time in both film studies-during its academic institutionalization-and in the author s life. Throughout this period of change, Wood remained a stalwart anchor of the critical discipline, using theory without being used by it and always staying attentive to textual detail. Wood s overall critical project is to combine aesthetics and ideology in understanding films for the ultimate goal of enriching our lives individually and together. This is a major work to be read and reread not just by film scholars and students of film but by anyone with an interest in twentieth-century culture.

    Show) hilarious Derek and Simon series, unforgettable scenes of after-school Dada in the Japanese film "Funky Forest," documentation of the trap-jaw ant's record-breaking predatory strike, newfound talent abroad in France and Sweden, a Yemeni documentary following the bravest thirteen-year-old girl in the world as she refuses to wear the veil, and more.Issue No. 3 also includes Part II: "The Phantom Victory" of Adam Curtis'riveting documentary, The Power of Nightmares.

    Cited as an influence by such envelope-pushing directors as Spike Jonze and P. T. Anderson, Altman has created a genre all his own, notable for its improvised, overlapping dialogue and creative cinematography. One of the key moviemakers of the 1970s--commonly considered the heyday of American film--Altman's irrepressible combination of unorthodox vision and style is most clearly evidenced in the fourteen movies he released across that decade. By fine-tuning his talent in a diverse array of genres, including westerns, thrillers, and loopy, absurdist comedies--all subtly altered to fit his signature métier--he cemented his place as one of our most esteemed directors.In these conversations with David Thompson, Altman reflects on his start in industrial filmmaking, as well as his tenure in television directing Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Bonanza, and his big break in feature films as the director of the enormously popular M*A*S*H, a project for which he was the last possible resort behind fourteen other directors. The resulting portrait reveals a quixotic man whose films continue to delight and challenge audiences, both in the United States and beyond.

    Artists adopted traditional union models to protect their jobs and working conditions, and a unique set of unions was born. Drawing the Line is the first labor history of an industry whose principle figures-Walt Disney, Chuck Jones, and Max Fleischer-helped define American entertainment. Author Tom Sito, Disney animator and former president of the Hollywood Animation Guild, draws on oral histories, archival information, and firsthand knowledge of the animation process to create an insider's history of a colorful set of labor unions. Sito describes the history and fiery personalities behind the formation of the Screen Cartoonists Union, the strikes and walk-outs, the effects of Hollywood blacklisting, and the battles at the bargaining tables. He closes with a look at the changing nature of animation and the way in which current giants Disney and Dreamworks are again reshaping the relationship between studios and animators. Well illustrated with never-before-seen images from the backstage of classic Hollywood, Drawing the Line will change basic assumptions about animation history and its place in the story of American labor.

    Now she draws on her lifelong fascination with cinema to give us a series of scenes from classic films - all with cats playing the leading roles.

    After a hit TV series, a smash album and sell-out tours, the hilarious, hard rockin' duo have now got their very own movie: Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny This, the only tie-in book to the film, is the fully illustrated guide to the D', as told by the band themselves. How did they get together? How did they learn to ROCK so very hard? What is the strange history of the guitar pick that came from Hell itself... and where does Sasquatch fit in? Packed with photos, script extracts and bonus features, this book will rock your very soul. Warning: Explicit Content

    Winner of the Best Director prize at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, the film is the third in the director's trilogy started by Amores Perros and 21 Grams. Shot in Morocco, Tijuana, and Tokyo, and involving a multilingual cast lead by Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael Garc?a Bernal, and Koji Yakusho, as well non-professional actors from the three countries portrayed, Babel continues the director's quest to explore the effects of loss and grief, and seeks to relate the modern implications of ancient myth on the origins of human inability to successfully communicate. This book is a visual recollection of the parallel stories and real-life characters that revolved around the making of Babel, and the unexpected ways in which fiction and reality collide. Photographs both from the set and the surrounding disparate landscapes are paired with the director's personal commentary on the larger-than-life film shoot. Introduced with essays by novelist and poet Eliseo Alberto and Gonzalez I??rritu, as well as an interview with the director by Rodrigo Garc?a, the result is an engaging book that both complements Babel's powerful statement on the barrier of language, and reveals the fascinating reality of the people and places that inspired the film. The director: Born in Mexico City in1963, Alejandro Gonz?lez I??rritu studied filmmaking and theater and composed music for Mexican features before directing and producing his debut feature film, Amores Perros (2000), which was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Foreign Language Film and received over 53 awards from all over the world, including BAFTAs, the Golden Globes, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Edinburgh, San Sebastian, and Toronto. I??rritu's follow-up film, 21 Grams (2003), which he directed, co-wrote, and produced, starred Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, and Naomi Watts. Both Del Toro and Watts received Oscar nominations for their roles in the film and Penn won the Jury Prize for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival. Babel, which will be released worldwide in November 2006, garnered the Best Director Prize at the 59th Cannes Film Festival. I??rritu lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. The photographers: One of Mexico's most significant contemporary photographers, Graciela Iturbide's images reveal her love for her native country and for its people; and, more recently, include other cultures. Whether at home or in foreign lands, her work explores cultural identity and the ways people adapt to modernization. American documentary photographer Mary Ellen Mark has achieved worldwide visibility through her numerous books, exhibitions, and editorial magazine work. For almost three decades, she has traveled extensively to make pictures that reflect a high degree of humanism. Miguel Rio Branco, a Magnum photographer since 1978, was born into a family of diplomats and grew up in Portugal, Brazil, Switzerland and the United States. A ceaseless experimenter in expressive and lyrical color photography, he has beenawarded several prizes for his work and has published numerous photography books. Patrick Bard is a journalist and a professional photographer who has written articles for the French and international presses about the Mexico-United States border. Bard is also the author of several novels, some of which have been adapted for the theatre. The writers: Eliseo Alberto is an award-winning author, journalist, and filmmaker. He has written three books of poems; and his publications include the novels Caracol Beach and La eternidad por fin comienza un lunes. Born and raised in Cuba, he now lives in Mexico City. Mexican writer/director Rodrigo Garc?a's credits include Things you can tell just by looking at her (Fondation Gan Award, Cannes 2000) and Nine Lives (Winner Locarno Film Festival, 2005). The editor: Maria Eladia Hagerman was born and raised in Mexico City, where she received her degree in graphic design. She has designed and collaborated on several book projects.

    However, full evidence of their roles has until nowremained scant and dispersed, eclipsed in historical opinion formed through thetexts of men.In magisterial scale Red Velvet Seat restores this film culture tovisibility, using women’s written accounts from the beginnings up to 1950 tounderstand the significance of cinema for them. Sources include fashion andparenting magazines, newspapers and literary journals, memoirs and etiquetteguides, while contributors range from novelists such as Virginia Woolf, Coletteand Rebecca West to psychoanalysts, poets, social reformers, labor organizers,film editors, screen beauties, and race activists. For each section, AntoniaLant and Ingrid Periz provide an introduction, explaining the historicalcontext and linking their themes to the major social and political movements oftheir time, as well as to more traditionally feminine concerns. Compendious and absorbing, Red Velvet Seat is an invaluablecontribution to the history of cinema.

    In doing so, it outlines and investigates important issues in the production, consumption, and cultural interpretation of the genre. An ideal text for perennially popular courses on the horror film genre. Examines the ways in which horror movies have been produced, received, and interpreted by filmmakers, audiences, and critics, from the 1920s to the present. Provides a short historical introduction of the horror film as an orientation to the field. Analyses a wide variety of major works in the genre, including Frankenstein, Cat People, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween and Bram Stoker's Dracula.

    With feature spreads on related themes appearing throughout—from vampires, ghosts, and comedy horror, to the occult, giallo, cannibalism, and serial killers—this book offers a superb introduction for beginners as well as something new for the die-hard horror fan. Each section has a detailed introduction looking at the development of the genre, followed by an A-Z review listing of key films, with feature spreads on dominant themes.

    Here is an account of a filmmaker who looks straight into the eye of the Hollywood blockbuster storm and dares not to blink.In "A Killer Life," Christine Vachon follows up her independent producing handbook, "Shooting to Kill," with a behind-the-scenes memoir of the battle between creativity and commerce -- and a renegade's rise to being one of the most powerful female producers in independent film today."A Killer Life" traces the early years Vachon spent producing such controversial and critically acclaimed movies as "Poison, Happiness," and "Kids," films that paved the way for Academy Award-winning triumphs like "Boys Don't Cry." She recounts the birth and rise of independent film and the evolution of her company, Killer Films, revealing the stories behind star castings and firings and films that never got made; how sexuality factors into the films she produces; and how the often lethal combination of finance and creativity affects what we see on the big screen.Intelligent and tough as nails, but endearingly self-effacing, Vachon's account of her filmmaking experiences, and the successes and failures that have made Killer Films one of the few truly independent film companies in New York, is a thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking read for filmmakers and fans alike.

    Amrish Puri, whose voice could send shivers down your spine, while his antics made you chuckle; his costumes could drive you nuts, and his one-liners ranging from Mogambo khush hua to Dong kabhi wrong nahin hota become household parlance. The industry's ace villain was credited with bringing the hitherto mundane villainy into strobe light, and lent it a pride of place on the billboard with his unmatched histrionics. This son of the soil, born in the heart of Punjab in Naushahr, spent his formative years in the hilly regions and trekked miles in the valley of Simla, the summer capital of British India. He followed his creative instincts in college rather surreptitiously, given the stern scrutiny of a conservative, authoritarian father. Moved to the tinsel town of Bombay in the early 1950s, where his elder siblings Chaman and Madan Puri were already groping in the glamour world and he had to write his own destiny. After initial heartbreaks, dejected as a hero aspirant, he turned to theatre and created an amazing repertoire essaying some of the most challenging roles under the aegis of stalwarts, like Ebrahim Alkazi, Satyadev Dubey, Vijay Tendulkar, Girish Kamad, Badal Sircar and Mohan Rakesh, among others.But pursuing this innate passion for stage didn't provide for livelihood; bread and butter came from the rigmarole of a clerical job in a government office. And recording advertisement jingles and radio plays extended a little icing on the cake. The providential break on the silver screen came at an age when lesser mortals would be resolving mid-career crisis. And once again, he made a distinct mark in offbeat, parallel cinema of Shyam Benegal and Govind Nihalani, as he subtly transplanted the stark profundity of theatre on to celluloid. But the real litmus test was the commercial viability of his talent, as he could also rake in revenue at the box-office. Here too, he graduated with stunning performances, and became the highest paid villain breathing life into characters as the bald baddie, the cold-blooded don, the ruthless politician, the lecherous viper. The machiavellian prince evoked the essence of evil and went on to build a treasure of excellence, whether he played a wily father or an affectionate patriarch. This star-actor became a reckoning force in both Hindi and regional films with over 300 titles in his kitty. His brilliant renditions elicited the attention of renowned Hollywood director Steven Spielberg, thus emerging on the international horizon. The book captures poignant moments in the life of a terrific performer with the class act of a chameleon, who depicted an era that encountered the most challenging facet of blending art and commerce, seeking triumph over the paradox of playing the negative and positive, to create cinematic history. Hats off.

    These figures have gained iconic status and continue to hold sway over popular culture and the modern imagination. This book offers extended entries on 24 of the most enduring and significant figures of horror and the supernatural, including The Sea Creature, The Witch, The Alien, The Vampire, The Werewolf, The Sorcerer, The Ghost, The Siren, The Mummy, The Devil, and The Zombie. Each entry is written by a leading authority on the subject and discusses the topic's essential features and lasting influence, from the classical epics of Homer to the novels of Stephen King. Entries cite sources for further reading, and the Encyclopedia closes with a selected, general bibliography. Entries include illustrations, sidebars of interesting information, and excerpts from key texts.Horror and the supernatural have fascinated people for centuries, with many of the most central figures appearing over and over again across time and cultures. These figures have starred in the world's most widely read literary works, most popular films, and most captivating television series. Because of their popularity and influence, they have attained iconic status and a special place in the popular imagination. This book overviews 24 of the most significant icons of horror and the supernatural.

    Beginning with a survey of such classics as Breakfast at Tiffany's, Scenes from the City captures how the changing face of New York, as well as the founding of the MOFTB, have contributed to a particular school of film characterized most emphatically in the street-style work of directors as diverse as Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee. With over 200 stills and contributions from noted New York film personalities such as Sidney Lumet and Nora Ephron, the book also includes rare, unpublished, behind-the-scenes shots and stories from the quintessential New York filmmaker himself--Woody Allen. With a special section on the landmark TV series, commercials and music videos filmed in New York, Scenes from the City is an affectionate and vivacious ovation for this captivating -character- that rarely receives billing but always steals the show.

    Social and political concerns had often featured in Chaplin's films, but in Modern Times they culminate in a protest against conditions during the Great Depression.Joan Mellen situates Modern Times within the context of Chaplin's life and his work, exploring its history and influences as well as its ongoing appeal. She explores how the film's themes of oppression, industrialization, and dehumanization are embodied in the little tramp's struggle to survive in the modern world. Joan Mellen dedicates the final chapter of the book to the fascinating details of the FBI's file on Chaplin, which was opened in 1922 and maintained until long after his death.

    British-born Lean asserted himself in Hollywood as a major filmmaker with his epic storytelling and panoramic visions of history, but he started out as a talented film editor and director in Great Britain. As a result, he brought an art-house mentality to b

    Officially authorized by Universal Studios, this book draws on the experience of Eddie Paul in acquiring, constructing and modifying the cars for both movies. This book, with 300 color illustrations, reveals how the automotive stunts were choreographed, performed and filmed. This is a true insider's guide to the exciting world of fast cars, thrilling stunts, and motion-picture production.

    With true artistic passion and finesse, a stop-motion film evokes the nostalgia of childhood when imagination could bring toys to life. Stop-motion retains the art and performance that are the heart and soul of captivating animation. Beginning with a history of stop-motion animation, The Art of Stop-Motion Animation takes you on a unique journey uncovering the origins of this art form and examining what continues to draw viewers to these films. Through several hands-on exercises, you ll learn how to create puppets and how to bring them to life as you create your own stop-motion film. Interviews with industry professionals offer a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look into the undying art form of stop-motion animation.

    Deeply rooted in the historic struggles for national self-determination, this cinema is the single most important artistic expression of a much-maligned people. In Dreams of a Nation, filmmakers, critics and scholars discuss the extraordinary social and artistic significance of Palestinian film. It is the only volume of its kind in any language.

    This edition includes the complete screenplay - with stills and frame enlargements - with Pauline Kael's classic essay on how the picture came to be made.

    The stock market crash of 1929 had left the America?and the globe?in a devastating depression that would not begin to lift until World War II. With so many jobless, penniless, broken people singing the blues, is it any wonder that Hollywood strove to distract viewers from their misery with comedies like Chaplin's Modern Times (1936), Capra's feel-good Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), and the Marx Brothers? hilarious Duck Soup (1933), thrillers such as Hitchcock's seminal The 39 Steps (1935) or Hawks's Scarface (1932), or the epic romantic classic Gone with the Wind (1939)? While American moviegoers flocked to the theaters to escape their troubles and find solace in the magical world of Hollywood movies, filmmakers in Europe were experimenting with new techniques in a medium that had only recently gained sound; Fritz Lang's German Expressionist M (1931) and Jean Renoir's anti-war masterpiece La Grande Illusion (1937) greatly enhanced cinema as an art form, while Leni Riefenstahl's visually stunning Olympia (1936-38) pushed the limits of the medium's technical capacities. It's clear that while the 1930s was a time of poverty and struggle for many people, the world of cinema was much enriched. Film entries include: ? Synopsis ? Film stills and production photos ? Cast/crew listings ? Trivia ? Useful information on technical stuff ? Actor and director bios Plus: a complete Academy Awards list for the decade The editor: J?rgen M?ller studied art history in Bochum, Paris, Pisa, and Amsterdam. He has worked as an art critic, a curator of numerous exhibitions, a visiting professor at various universities, and has published books and numerous articles on cinema and art history. Currently he holds the chair for art history at the University of Dresden, where he lives. M?ller is the series editor for TASCHEN's Movies decade titles.

    . . It's never got an axe to grind, it's not a kiss-my-ass magazine but it doesn't want to take a chomp out of you either' Quentin TarantinoThe team behind Britain's biggest-selling movie magazine bring you over 2,800 reviews of some of the most important movies, both past and present. Each review offers star ratings and award guides as well as a lengthy and informative review of each film, all compiled by Empire's team of experts in the magazine's inimitable style. This indispensable guide also includes photos, sidebars and boxouts of films to see, and lists of Top 10s to make film viewing even more entertaining.

    Written by an author team with extensive professional and academic experience, The Screenwriter's Manual is the only book that offers a systematic approach to mastering the complexities of writing for the screen. With its step-by step approach, this text is appropriate for readers of all experience levels.

    The guide looks at what makes a good Western, considering the seven basic Western plots, the pens behind the movies, the major historic events and their influences, and the genre''s central ritual - the gunfight. There is a potted history of the Western decade-by-decade and a critical canon of the 50 greatest Westerns. From the pioneers and directors to the iconic cowboys and railroads, this guide covers it all.

    Drawing upon the more than 30-years experience of an industry professional, the book examines how to identify and break down shooting sequences in scripts, scout locations, create a production board and shooting schedule, deal with unions, budget a film, and rebound when it all goes wrong. Along the way, readers learn how to economize to get the most value from limited funds and what to look for in a prospective crew. To facilitate an understanding of the concepts, a real-life example of a complete budget and production board for an independent low-budget feature film, The Anarchist Cookbook, is provided.  The guide’s concise list of contacts—film commissions in all 50 states, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and England; payroll companies; and vendors of supplies—along with a directory of unions and guides will simplify sourcing. Other supplementary aids include a complete glossary of industry terms, a list of all safety bulletins issued by the Industry Wide Labor/Management Safety committee, and a comprehensive index.

    This is the most important book an independent writer/director/producer may ever read. Includes never before published interviews with low-budget mavericks such as Steven Soderbergh, Roger Corman, Jon Favreau, Henry Jaglom, and many more.

    This is the definitive reevaluation of one of the giants of filmdom.

    Approximately 200 entries cover specific topics, including acting, censorship, editing, lighting and others. Also included are more than 230 career profiles, placing individual achievements in the context of specific topics (for example, Robert Altman is featured in the article on Sound ). Additional features include a comprehensive index; a list of further reading sources; 350 black-and-white and 150 full color photographs; and more. 01

    Written by noted director-producer Myrl Schreibman, The Film Director Prepares offers practical insights on filmmaking, using real-life examples directors won’t learn in school. With topics including working with actors, using the camera to tell a story, setting mood, staging, maintaining performance levels, covering shots, and directing for different mediums, The Film Director Prepares will leave new directors truly prepared for their careers.

    Beginning with the unconventional sources of Clive Barker's inspiration, the book follows Barker from his pre?Hellraiser cinematic experience through the filming of the horror classic. It examines various themes (such as the undermining of the traditional family unit and the malleability of the flesh) found throughout the film series and the ways in which the representation of these themes changes from film to film. The religious aspects of the films are also discussed. Characters central to the franchise?and the mythos?are examined in detail. Included is a foreword by actor Doug Bradley, who portrayed the infamous Pinhead.

    Fans have come to enjoy the antics and erstwhile efforts of obsessive-compulsive Adrian Monk, who was once a rising star with the San Francisco Police Department until the tragic murder of his wife pushed him to the brink of a breakdown. This authorized guide covers the first four extraordinary seasons and is complete with a foreword from the show's creator, Andy Breckman, as well as an afterword from the show's star.Authors Terry J. Erdmann and Paula M. Block were granted exclusive interviews, behind-the-scenes secrets, and total access to the scripts and sets to bring a comprehensive look at one of today's most brilliant defective detectives.This is the ultimate book for fans of "Monk"!

    You'll learn how to use proven techniques to get actors to give their best performances - including the ten best and ten worst things to say - and what you can do when an actor won't or can't do what the director wants. Includes never before published stories from veteran director, John Badham, as well as Sydney Pollock, Mel Gibson, James Woods, Michael Mann and many more.

    Among filmmakers and film buffs, Cassavetes is revered, almost as a god. A major star of live television and a serious actor, he stumbled into making his first film, Shadows, and created a template for working outside the Hollywood system that would produce some of the most piercing and human films of the last thirty years including A Woman Under the Influence and Husbands. He became the prototypical outsider fighting the system for much of his career. Film critic Marshall Fine had unprecendented access to Cassavetes' wife, Gena Rowlands, and other members of their inner circle, as well as industry insiders who worked with Cassavetes -- some speaking publicly for the first time. Together, they tell his daring, tumultuous, and compelling story.

    Book by Golden, John

    He remains, after his suicide in 1996, one of the most intriguing figures in the cinematic firmament and one of the least familiar. This book includes a discussion of Cammell's early career in portraiture and a complete analysis of his films.

    Here you'll meet, among many others, the 20s film idols snorting cocaine from an illuminated glass dance floor on the bank of the Thames, the model who escaped Soho's gangsters to become the queen of the nudie flicks and the genteel Scottish comedienne who, at the age of fifty-five, reinvented herself as a star of exploitation cinema, and fondly remembers 'the one where I drilled in people's heads and ate their brains'. Welcome to the lost worlds of British cinema.

    This is in opposition to classical Hollywood cinema and International Art cinema, whose form has been analyzed and deconstructed in great detail. Directed By Steven Spielberg fills this gap by examining the distinctive form of the blockbuster. The book focuses on Spielberg's blockbusters, because he is the most consistent and successful director of this type of film - he defines the standard by which other Hollywood blockbusters are judged and compared. But how did Spielberg attain this position? Film critics and scholars generally agree that Spielberg's blockbusters have a unique look and use visual storytelling techniques to their utmost effectiveness. In this book, Warren Buckland examines Spielberg's distinct manipulation of film form, and his singular use of stylistic and narrative techniques.The book demonstrates the aesthetic options available to Spielberg, and particularly the choices he makes in structuring his blockbusters. Buckland emphasizes the director's activity in making a film (particularly such a powerful director as Spielberg), including: visualizing the scene on paper via storyboards; staging and blocking the scene; selecting camera placement and movement; determining the progression or flow of the film from shot to shot; and deciding how to narrate the story to the spectator.Directed By Steven Spielberg combines film studies scholarship with the approach taken by many filmmaking manuals. The unique value of the book lies in its grounding of formal film analysis in filmmaking.

    It offers an insight into the development of Soviet film, from 'the most important of all arts' as a propaganda tool to a means of entertainment in the Stalin era, from the rise of its 'dissident' art-house cinema in the 1960s through the glasnost era with its broken taboos to recent Russian blockbusters. Films have been chosen to represent both the classics of Russian and Soviet cinema as well as those films that had a more localised success and remain to date part of Russia's cultural reference system. The volume also covers a range of national film industries of the former Soviet Union in chapters on the greatest films and directors of Ukrainian, Kazakh, Georgian and Armenian cinematography. Films discussed include Strike (1925), Earth (1930), Ivan's Childhood (1962), Mother and Son (1997) and Brother (1997).

    The works of Spaniard Victor Erice and Iranian Abbas Kiarostami share a common preoccupation with investigating the tension that exists between the individual and society. As filmmakers, they are both intensely independent, determined to advance the expressive potential and capacity of cinema. Working in contemporary cinema, these two quintessential figures often purposely recapture the stark and primal character developed by early cinema pioneers.

    The star of television's I Married Joan and film classics Hold That Ghost, Show Business, Thin Ice and many more, very little has been documented about Joan's comical career - until now.

    By combining an impressive command of Chinese and Western literary as well as film source materials with a sophisticated mode of analysis and an unassuming argumentative style, he has authored an exhilarating book--one that not only treats cinematic representations of male homosexuality with great sensitivity but also demonstrates what it means to read with critical intelligence and vision. --Rey Chow, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Brown UniversityCelluloid Comrades is a timely demonstration of the importance of queer studies in the field of transnational Chinese cinemas. Lim dissects gay sexuality in selective Chinese-language films, and vigorously contests commonly accepted critical paradigms and theoretical models. Readers will find a provocative, powerful voice in this new book. --Sheldon H. Lu, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of California at DavisCelluloid Comrades offers a cogent analytical introduction to the representation of male homosexuality in Chinese cinemas within the last decade. It posits that representations of male homosexuality in Chinese film have been polyphonic and multifarious, posing a challenge to monolithic and essentialized constructions of both 'Chineseness' and 'homosexuality.' Given the artistic achievement and popularity of the films discussed here, the position of 'celluloid comrades' can no longer be ignored within both transnational Chinese and global queer cinemas. The book also challenges readers to reconceptualize these works in relation to global issues such as homosexuality and gay and lesbian politics, and their interaction with local conditions, agents, and audiences.Tracing the engendering conditions within the film industries of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, Song Hwee Lim argues that the emergence of Chinese cinemas in the international scene since the 1980s created a public sphere in which representations of marginal sexualities could flourish in its interstices. Examining the politics of representation in the age of multiculturalism through debates about the films, Lim calls for a rethinking of the limits and hegemony of gay liberationist discourse prevalent in current scholarship and film criticism. He provides in-depth analyses of key films and auteurs, reading them within contexts as varied as premodern, transgender practice in Chinese theater to postmodern, diasporic forms of sexualities.Informed by cultural and postcolonial studies and critical theory, this acutely observed and theoretically sophisticated work will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students as well as general readers looking for a deeper understanding of contemporary Chinese cultural politics, cinematic representations, and queer culture.

    Yet Westerns began in the early twentieth century as far more fluid works of comedy, adventure, and historical explorations of the frontier landscape. Nanna Verhoeff examines here the earliest films made in the Western genre and proposes the thought-provoking argument that these little-studied films demand new ways of considering Westerns and the history of cinema. Verhoeff analyzes the earliest American and European Westerns—made between 1894 and 1915—and finds them to be an international repository for anxieties about modernity and identity, not the instructional morality tales we assume them to be. She draws on an array of archival materials—photography, paintings, Wild West shows, popular ethnographic studies, and pulp literature—to locate these early Westerns more precisely in their original social and cultural contexts. These early films—which coincided with the “closing” of the West and rises in rates of immigration, railroad travel, and urbanization—drove the transformation of film, Verhoeff argues, from just another new technology into the dominant cultural vehicle for dealing with issues of national and personal nostalgia, as well as uncertainty in the face of modernity. From these fragmentary early films Verhoeff extracts a rich historical analysis that radically reorients our view of the first two decades of cinema history in America and provocatively connects the evolution of Westerns to our transition today into a new media culture. The West in Early Cinema challenges established history and criticism of the Western film and will be an invaluable resource for the film scholar and John Wayne fan alike.

    Discerning fans around the world have followed "Toxie's" adventures through four films, an animated feature, a Saturday-morning cartoon series, comic books, action figures, and more. His name has been used by everyone from the Environmental Protection Agency to the U.S. Army to PETA; he appears in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade; and his creator, Lloyd Kaufman, is claimed as an influence by directors like Peter Jackson and Quentin Tarantino. Now Kaufman has set aside his video camera and unleashed his twisted brilliance on the artistic form of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, and Mitch Albom. And to put it simply, Kaufman has blown those jokers out of the water. Readers who dare to crack the spine of this book will experience the gamut of human emotion (and then some): laughter, tears, and perhaps even vomiting and spontaneous ejaculation. With more girl-on-girl action than an episode of Springer, more blood-soaked bad taste than an After School Special, and with special "guest narrators" such as J. D. Salinger and Oliver Stone, The Toxic Avenger oozes hilarity on every page.

    This is the story of how four people, Spike Milligan, Eric Sykes, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, grouped together inside a set of offices five floors above a greengrocer's shop on Shepherd's Bush Green and launched a golden age of comedy, producing shows like 'The Goons' and 'Hancock's Half Hour' among many others.

    In looking at the early film industry as an industry—a place of work—Mahar not only unravels the mystery of the disappearing female filmmaker but untangles the complicated relationship among gender, work culture, and business within modern industrial organizations.In the early 1910s, the film industry followed a theatrical model, fostering an egalitarian work culture in which everyone—male and female—helped behind the scenes in a variety of jobs. In this culture women thrived in powerful, creative roles, especially as writers, directors, and producers. By the end of that decade, however, mushrooming star salaries and skyrocketing movie budgets prompted the creation of the studio system. As the movie industry remade itself in the image of a modern American business, the masculinization of filmmaking took root.Mahar's study integrates feminist methodologies of examining the gendering of work with thorough historical scholarship of American industry and business culture. Tracing the transformation of the film industry into a legitimate "big business" of the 1920s, and explaining the fate of the female filmmaker during the silent era, Mahar demonstrates how industrial growth and change can unexpectedly open—and close—opportunities for women.

    He had grown rich playing the poorest of men. He was to go on playing unforgettable characters in timeless films, but now the psychology of celebrity began both to drive and to damage his creativity. Richard Schickel, the distinguished film critic, has called Chaplin the first victim of modern celebrity culture, "driven by his relentless ego, by his helpless need for an audience to dominate, to lead. All the tragedies of his life stemmed from those drives and needs." Mr. Schickel is the rarest of Chaplin enthusiasts, an unabashed fan who can celebrate the object of his affection without looking away when his subject deserves a poking. In this indispensable collection of some thirty essays, he has selected the most provocative and insightful criticisms of Chaplin's life and work, from the great comedian's beginnings through his early features, his mid-life crisis, and his late films. The contributors include Andrew Sarris, David Thomson, Andre Bazin, Gilbert Seldes, Alistair Cooke, Frances Hackett, Robert E. Sherwood, Stark Young, Penelope Gilliatt, Edmund Wilson, Stanley Kauffmann, Alexander Woollcott, George Jean Nathan, Winston Churchill, Max Eastman, Graham Greene, Otis Ferguson, James Agee, Dwight Macdonald, Robert Warshow, Walter Kerr, J. Hoberman, and others. Mr. Schickel, the last critic to study Chaplin intensively (for his award-winning documentary of a year ago), offers a long Introduction.

    The final chapter draws together the underlying concern of the book with affect and poetics and discusses the politics of pastiche.

    With this under-the-hood, in-depth guide to Adobe's updated motion graphics and effects powerhouse, you'll get complete coverage of all the big features in After Effects 7.0: High dynamic range (HDR) 32 bit per channel color compositing, cinema preview and color management, a redesigned user interface, a new Graph Editor to animate using explicit translation curves, retiming effects using Timewarp, and dozens of other enhancements. Get blockbuster results without the big budget as you delve deep into the essence of visual effects. This book goes beyond conventional step-by-step instruction, teaching you bread-and-butter effects that you can adapt and combine for countless projects. Real solutions from real professionals: learn the techniques and approach used to create shots for big-budget special effects films. Compositing essentials: No matter how sophisticated the effect, they all begin with the same building blocks. Find out what you've been missing about color and light matching, keying, motion tracking, rotoscoping, working with film, and more. Advanced techniques: Your goal should be effects so good that no one notices them. From sky replacement to explosions, from smoke to fire, learn to bring your shots to life and enhance scenes without anyone ever knowing what they're seeing isn't 100% real. Companion CD-ROM: Professional tools produce professional results. The book's companion disc includes plenty of sample projects including HD footage from Pixel Corps and the Artbeats Digital Film Library, as well as more than a dozen plug-ins and programs that you can use to build up and customize your own effects.

    Evaluating Cocteau’s career and his fascinating personal life on equal terms, James Williams offers here a groundbreaking analysis that sets them both within highly revealing historical and artistic contexts.Williams’s biographical investigation of this poet, dramatist, novelist, designer, and filmmaker centers around Cocteau’s constant self-questioning and how it permeated his work. From Cocteau’s work in fashion and photography to his formal experimentation to his extensive collaborations with male friends and lovers, the book charts the complex and unpredictable evolution of his work and aesthetic. Williams argues that Cocteau’s body of work is best viewed as an ethical, erotic project of aesthetics that carries important ramifications for our contemporary understanding of being and subjectivity.An engaging and wholly accessible account, Jean Cocteau is essential reading for all those fascinated by the man and his unforgettable films.

    Primarily known as the filmmaker behind such cult classics as Pink Flamingos, Polyester and Pecker, Waters has been making "fine" art since the early 1990s. In it, he tackles both cinematic themes and political events by building narratives, frame by frame, from early commercial films. In this publication, Waters shares the method by which he constructs each work as if he were making a personal guidebook, so that his snapshots, color photographs and handwritten notes indicating composition are re-created as if in their original plastic organizational sleeves. Neither the art world, celebrity miscreants, politicians or Waters himself are spared in these incisive new works. An essay by Brenda Richardson examines Waters's history, as well as each work, in brief and brilliant detail.

    With the proliferation of popular genres such as the martial arts film, the contest among various modernist filmmakers, and the advent of sound, Chinese cinema was transforming urban life. But with the Japanese invasion in 1937, all of this came to a screeching halt. Until recently, the political establishment has discouraged comprehensive studies of the cultural phenomenon of early Chinese film, and this momentous chapter in China's history has remained largely unexamined. The first sustained historical study of the emergence of cinema in China, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen is a fascinating narrative that illustrates the immense cultural significance of film and its power as a vehicle for social change. Named after a major feature film on the making of Chinese cinema, only part of which survives, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen reveals the intricacies of this cultural movement and explores its connections to other art forms such as photography, architecture, drama, and literature. In light of original archival research, Zhang Zhen examines previously unstudied films and expands the important discussion of how they modeled modern social structures and gender roles in early twentieth-century China. The first volume in the new and groundbreaking series Cinema and Modernity, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen is an innovative—and well illustrated—look at the cultural history of Chinese modernity through the lens of this seminal moment in Shanghai cinema.

    Looking at individual films within the context of feminist film as a genre, Ramanathan examines film from diverse cultural traditions, while paying close attention to what might be regarded as feminist in different cultural contexts. The films chosen expand our ideas of feminism covering as they do film from Africa, Latin America, Europe, Asia and the US. Full-length interpretations of twenty-four films, both older and contemporary, including Vagabond, India Song, Bhaji on the Beach, Chocolat, and Daughters of the Dust lay out a complete and powerful framework for reading women's film.

    ?This book explores every aspect of Andrei Tarkovsky's output in the most detailed fashion - including scripts, budget, production, shooting, editing, camera, sound, music, acting, themes, symbols, motifs, and spirituality. Tarkovsky's films are analyzed in depth, with scene-by-scene discussions.This is an important addition to film studies, the most painstaking study of Andrei Tarkovsky's work available.Contains 150 illustrations, of Tarkovsky's films, Tarkovsky at work, his contemporaries, and his favourite painters.Andrei Tarkovsky is one of the most fascinating of filmmakers. He is supremely romantic, an old-fashioned, traditional artist - at home in the company Leonardo da Vinci, Pieter Brueghel, Aleksandr Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoievsky and Byzantine icon painters. Tarkovsky is a magician, no question, but argues for demystification (even while films celebrate mystery). His films are full of magical events, dreams, memory sequences, multiple viewpoints, multiple time zones and bizarre occurrences.As genre films, Andrei Tarkovsky's movies are some of the most accomplished in cinema. As science fiction films, Stalker and Solaris have no superiors, and very few peers. Only the greatest sci-fi films can match them: Metropolis, King Kong, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Tarkovsky happily and methodically rewrote the rules of the sci-fi genre: Stalker and Solaris are definitely not routine genre outings. They don't have the monsters, the aliens, the visual effects, the battles, the laser guns, the stunts and action set-pieces of regular science fiction movies.No one could deny that Andrei Roublyov is one of the greatest historical films to explore the Middle Ages, up there with The Seventh Seal, El Cid, The Navigator and Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'Life' trilogy. If you judge Andrei Roublyov in terms of historical accuracy, epic spectacle, serious themes, or cinematic poetry, it comes out at the top. Finally, in the religious film genre, The Sacrifice and Nostalghia are among the finest in cinema, the equals of the best of Ingmar Bergman, Luis Bunuel, Robert Bresson and Carl-Theodor Dreyer.

    Rajhans of Malaysia, George Tarr of New Zealand, Woon-kyu Na of South Korea, and screen masters like Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, and Lino Brocka are included in this anthology but, alas, only as memory. Copies of their films important in charting the history of cinema in their respective countries and region are forever gone. Films like Mizoguchi's Kyoren no Onna Shisho (1926), hailed as one of the best Japanese films ever made, are lamentably nowhere to be found. By "lost," the films may have been destroyed by natural or man-made causes. While there are only fragments or video copies that survive, the actual films are gone.Films are no different from prehistoric carvings on cave walls or ancient calligraphy on scrolls. They tell the stories of our time. They are one of our modern-day cultural recorders. The value of "lost" films lies in the regard given them by their respective countries and the international community for their historical, artistic, social, technological, political, and archival worth.LOST FILMS OF ASIA hopes not only to awaken nostalgia of the past but also to make readers appreciate what remains of the film treasures that face certain danger of disappearance and to inspire people to help in the preservation of the film--an important recorder of our history--for this generation and those to come.

    By contrasts of novels with visual storytelling the book also displays how fiction facilitates sharing of subjective fantasies, frees the mind from limiting spatial and temporal preconceptions, and dramatizes the ethical significance of even trivial and commonplace behavior, while intensifying readers' awareness of how they think and feel.

    Essays range from close film analyses to phenomenological and cognitive approaches, spectatorship, performance, literary theory, and digital aesthetics. Authors include Vivian Sobchack, Richard Weihe, Thomas Lamarre, Paul Wells, and Karin Wehn.

    In addition, the digital revolution has made documentaries even more accessible to the general filmmaker. Documentary films can now be shot professionally using cheaper equipment, and smaller cameras enable the documentarian to be less intrusive and therefore more intimate in the subjects' lives. With an increasing number of documentaries making it to the big screen (and enjoying ongoing sales on DVD), the time is right for an information-packed handbook that will guide new filmmakers towards potential artistic and commercial success.The Documentary Film Makers Handbook features incisive and helpful interviews with dozens of industry professionals, on subjects as diverse as interview techniques, the NBC News Archive, music rights, setting up your own company, the Film Arts Foundation, pitching your proposal, the Sundance Documentary Fund, the Documentary Channel, the British Film Council, camera hire, filmmaking ethics, working with kids, editing your documentary, and DVD distribution.The book also includes in-depth case studies of some of the most successful and acclaimed documentary films of recent years, including Mad Hot Ballroom, Born Into Brothels, Touching the Void, Beneath the Veil,and Amandla!The Documentary Film Makers Handbook will be an essential resource for anyone who wants to know more about breaking into this exciting field.

    This process, he says, underpins the current global economy. By exploring a set of films made since the late 1920s, Beller argues that, through cinema, capital first posits and then presupposes looking as a value-productive activity. He argues that cinema, as the first crystallization of a new order of media, is itself an abstraction of assembly-line processes, and that the contemporary image is a politico-economic interface between the body and capitalized social machinery. Where factory workers first performed sequenced physical operations on moving objects in order to produce a commodity, in the cinema, spectators perform sequenced visual operations on moving montage fragments to produce an image. Beller develops his argument by highlighting various innovations and film texts of the past century. These innovations include concepts and practices from the revolutionary Soviet cinema, behaviorism, Taylorism, psychoanalysis, and contemporary Hollywood film. He thus develops an analysis of what amounts to the global industrialization of perception that today informs not only the specific social functions of new media, but also sustains a violent and hierarchical global society.

    The text is designed to be used in courses in which outstanding films from the Spanish-speaking world are used as springboards for classroom Spanish-language discussion. Using high-interest feature films, students hear Spanish as it is spoken in different countries and in a wide variety of situations and are encouraged to listen to and converse about the social and cultural aspects of Spanish-speaking countries around the world. The second edition includes a high-interest reading for each chapter; reading selections include interviews, magazine or newspaper articles, and selections from film scripts or literary pieces. Each reading is followed by an activity. These readings are optional; they can be covered in-depth if reading is one of the goals of the course. Each chapter is devoted to one movie, and contains appropriate vocabulary, cultural notes, special terms for conversation and ]composition, a focus on a specific scene for structured discussion or writing, questions for review and understanding, and quotations from directors or critics. Difficult-to-find or older films have been replaced by films of more immediate interest to students. New to this edition are: Mar?a llena eres de gracia Maria Full of Grace], Diarios de motocicleta The Motorcycle Diaries], and Mar adentro The Sea Inside].

    The characters and events of the 1960s film were based on a real-life romantic triangle, begun in the summer of 1920, which involved Roché himself, the German-Jewish writer Franz Hessel, and his wife, the journalist Helen Grund.Drawing on this film and others by Truffaut, Robert Stam provides the first in-depth examination of the multifaceted relationship between Truffaut and Roché. In the process, he provides a unique lens through which to understand how adaptation works from history to novel, and ultimately to film and how each form of expression is inflected by the period in which it is created. Truffaut's adaptation of Roché's work, Stam suggests, demonstrates how reworkings can be much more than simply copies of their originals; rather, they can become an immensely creative enterprise a form of writing in itself.The book also moves beyond Truffaut's film and the ménage à trois involving Roché, Hessel, and Grund to explore the intertwined lives and work of other famous artists and intellectuals, including Marcel Duchamp, Walter Benjamin, and Charlotte Wolff. Tracing the tangled webs that linked these individuals' lives, Stam opens the door to an erotic/writerly territory where the complex interplay of various artistic sensibilities all mulling over the same nucleus of feelings and events vividly comes alive.

    Illustrated with over 100 scenic photos and 20 easy-to-read maps, Hollywood Escapes: The Moviegoer's Guide to Exploring Southern California's Great Outdours not only takes you to movie history's most memorable destinations, but also recommends places to dine and lodge along the way, from mountain hideaways to beach side resorts. Written by inveterate movie buffs and outdoors enthusiasts Harry Medved and Bruce Akiyama, these two native Southern Californians have interviewed dozens of actors, filmmakers, location scouts and rangers to help you explore Hollywood's most spectacular scenery.

    The significance lay not only in the description of a particular milieu and the social reality evoked, but more particularly in the form of writing used to portray the lives of the fictional Barrytown characters. The book explores the dialectical relationship between the world of the Barrytown characters as mediated through filmed and televised experiences and the translation of these experiences into the film medium in Parker's and Frears' work. The book will trace the genesis and impact of the change in Ireland's fortunes on the work of Doyle, Parker, and Frears and show how the increasing de-differentiation of boundaries between economy and culture meant that a body of literary and cinematographic work like the Trilogy was as much a contributory factor to the contemporary transformation of Ireland as a reflection of it.