Best of
Film

2017

Wonder Woman: The Art and Making of the Film


Sharon Gosling - 2017
    Wonder Woman: The Art & Making of the Film celebrates the creation of this groundbreaking movie, taking fans on a voyage of discovery through the world of Wonder Woman. Showcasing the earliest concept art, set and costume designs, sketches and storyboards, the book delves deep into the filmmaking process, from creating the stunning island of Themyscira to the war-torn trenches and towns of First World War Europe.This official companion explores the Amazons rigorous training regimens, their weaponry, armor, Themysciran culture, and the amazing women themselves. With exclusive insights from cast and crew, including director Patty Jenkins, production designer Aline Bonetto, and Diana herself, Gal Gadot, this volume is the ultimate guide to the past, present, and future of one of the most iconic heroes in the world Wonder Woman.WONDER WOMAN and all related characters and elements (c) and TM DC Comics and Warner Bros. Entertainment. (s16)

The Dark Crystal: The Ultimate Visual History


Caseen Gaines - 2017
    For the first time, this deluxe and highly comprehensive book tells the complete story of this deeply personal Henson project, highlighting the unique creative journey and groundbreaking techniques that brought the film to the screen. Drawing from unseen archive interviews with Jim Henson and new interviews with the film’s behind-the-scenes creative team, Dark Crystal: The Ultimate Visual History leaves no stone unturned in chronicling the entire production, from the initial concept based on themes close to Henson’s heart to the ingenious conceptual design, puppet construction, and logistics of the shoot itself. The book also delves into the wider world of Dark Crystal, exploring the creation of comics, novels, and other official projects inspired by the film.  This deluxe coffee-table book contains an in-depth look at the day-to-day production of the film and showcases a huge range of incredible visuals, including candid set photography, previously unseen concept art, storyboards, production notes, and more. The book also features a plethora of amazing removable items, such as script pages, notes and sketches from Henson, and other unique treasures. Definitive, enthralling, and revelatory, Dark Crystal: The Ultimate Visual History is the last word on an enduring modern classic and the book that fans of the film have been waiting for.

The Art of Mondo


Mondo - 2017
    Over the years, the company has received global recognition for its incredible art posters that bring to life classic films, television shows, and comics in a refreshing and utterly striking new way, offering a unique perspective on everything from Star Wars to Robocop, Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, Game of Thrones, Godzilla, Kill Bill, and many, many more. For the first time, The Art of Mondo brings together this highly sought-after art in one deluxe volume that showcases the incredible ingenuity of the studio’s diverse stable of artists whose vastly different styles are united by one guiding principle: limitless passion for their subject matter.  Adored by the creative talents to whom Mondo’s art pays tribute—including Paul Thomas Anderson, Guillermo del Toro, Zack Snyder, Quentin Tarantino, and Edgar Wright, to name but a few—this richly imaginative work is fueled by a love of pop culture that fans recognize and identify with, giving Mondo’s output a rare and valuable synergy with its audience. While these posters are normally produced in a limited quantity and sell out in minutes, The Art of Mondo allows fans to explore the studio’s remarkable back catalog, including Olly Moss’s iconic Star Wars trilogy work, Laurent Durieux’s brilliantly subtle Jaws poster, and Tyler Stout’s evocative Guardians of the Galaxy art. Other key Mondo artists such as Jock, Martin Ansin, and Aaron Horkey will also feature. Definitive, visually stunning, and filled with art that celebrates some of the biggest and best-loved properties in pop culture, The Art of Mondo is the ultimate book for cult art fans everywhere.

Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water: Creating a Fairy Tale for Troubled Times


Gina McIntyre - 2017
    In the hidden high-security government laboratory where she works, lonely Elisa (Sally Hawkins) is trapped in a life of silence and isolation. Elisa’s life is changed forever when she and coworker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) discover a secret classified experiment. Rounding out the cast are Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Doug Jones.Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water: Creating a Fairy Tale for Troubled Times chronicles the entire filmmaking journey, from development to design to filming. Featuring interviews and commentary from key actors and members of the creative team, the book also showcases the amazing concept art and design work created for the film. For del Toro fans and movie lovers everywhere, it’s the perfect way to explore this exciting new movie from a master filmmaker known for his poignant storytelling and visual grandeur.

Middle-earth from Script to Screen: Building the World of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit


Daniel Falconer - 2017
    R. R. Tolkien’s magic world was brought to vivid life on the big screen in the record-breaking film trilogies The Lord of the Rings Motion Picture Trilogy and The Hobbit Motion Picture Trilogy. Drawing on resources, stories, and content from the archives of the companies and individuals behind the films, much of which have never appeared in print before, as well as interviews with director Peter Jackson and key members of the Art Department, Shooting Crews, Park Road Post, and Weta Digital teams who share their personal insights on the creative process, this astonishing resource reveals: How the worlds were built, brick by brick and pixel by pixel; How environments were extended digitally or imagined entirely as computer generated spaces; How the multiple shooting units functioned; How cast members and characters interacted with their environments. Daniel Falconer takes fans from storyboard concepts to deep into the post-production process where the films were edited, graded, and scored, explaining in depth how each enhanced the films. He also discusses how the processes involved in establishing Middle-earth for the screen have evolved over the fifteen years between the start and finish of the trilogies. Going region by region and culture by culture in this fantasy realm, The Making of Middle-Earth describes how each area created for the films was defined, what made it unique, and what role it played in the stories. Illustrated with final film imagery, behind-the-scenes pictures and conceptual artwork, including places not seen in the final films, this monumental compilation offers unique and far-reaching insights into the creation of the world we know and love as Middle-earth.

High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic


Glenn Frankel - 2017
    It's one of the most revered movies of Hollywood's golden era. Starring screen legend Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly in her first significant film role, High Noon was shot on a lean budget over just thirty-two days but achieved instant box-office and critical success. It won four Academy Awards in 1953, including a best actor win for Cooper. And it became a cultural touchstone, often cited by politicians as a favorite film, celebrating moral fortitude.Yet what has been often overlooked is that High Noon was made during the height of the Hollywood blacklist, a time of political inquisition and personal betrayal. In the middle of the film shoot, screenwriter Carl Foreman was forced to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities about his former membership in the Communist Party. Refusing to name names, he was eventually blacklisted and fled the United States. (His co-authored screenplay for another classic, The Bridge on the River Kwai, went uncredited in 1957.) Examined in light of Foreman's testimony, High Noon's emphasis on courage and loyalty takes on deeper meaning and importance.In this book, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Frankel tells the story of the making of a great American Western, exploring how Carl Foreman's concept of High Noon evolved from idea to first draft to final script, taking on allegorical weight. Both the classic film and its turbulent political times emerge newly illuminated.

Off the Cliff: How the Making of Thelma & Louise Drove Hollywood to the Edge


Becky Aikman - 2017
    "This is just the first chance you've had to express yourself." In 1991, Thelma and Louise, the story of two outlaw women on the run from their disenchanted lives, was a revelation. Suddenly, for the first time, here was a film in which women were, in every sense, behind the wheel. It turned the tables on Hollywood, instantly becoming a classic, and continues today to electrify audiences as a cultural statement of defiance. But if the film's place in history now seems certain, at the time its creation was a long shot. Before Geena Davis, Susan Sarandon, and a young up-and-coming actor named Brad Pitt got involved, Thelma and Louise was just an idea in the head of Callie Khouri, a thirty-year-old music video production manager, who was fed up with working behind the scenes on sleazy sets. At four a.m. one night, sitting in her car outside the ramshackle bungalow in Santa Monica that she shared with two friends, she had a vision: two women on a crime spree, fleeing their dull and tedious lives--lives like hers--in search of a freedom they had never before been able to realize. She knew in that moment that she had to be the one to write it. But in the late 1980s, Hollywood was dominated by men, both on the screen and behind the scenes. The likelihood of a script by an unheard-of screenwriter starring two women in lead roles actually getting made was remote. But Callie had one thing going for her--she had no idea she was attempting the almost impossible. And she pulled it off, by dint of sheer hard work and some good luck when she was able to get the script into the hands of the brilliant English filmmaker Ridley Scott, who saw its huge potential. With Scott on board, a team willing to challenge the odds came together--including not only the stars Davis and Sarandon, but also legends like actor Harvey Keitel, composer Hans Zimmer, and old-school studio chief Alan Ladd Jr.--to create one of the most controversial movies of all time. In Off the Cliff, Becky Aikman tells the full extraordinary story behind this feminist sensation, which crashed through barricades and upended convention. Drawing on 130 exclusive interviews with the key players from this remarkable cast of actors, writers, and filmmakers, Aikman tells an inspiring and important underdog story about creativity, the magic of cinema, and the unjust obstacles that women in Hollywood continue to face to this day.

David Bowie: The Man Who Fell to Earth


Paul Duncan - 2017
    A tour-de-force of science fiction as art form, the movie brought not only hallucinatory visuals and a haunting exploration of contemporary alienation, but also glam-rock legend David Bowie in his lead role debut as paranoid alien Newton. Based on Walter Tevis's 1963 sci-fi fable of the same title, The Man Who Fell to Earth follows alien Newton from his arrival on earth in search of water; his transition to wealthy entrepreneur, leveraging the advanced technologies of his native planet; his sexual awakening with the young Mary-Lou; and then the discovery of his alien identity, his imprisonment, abandonment, and descent into alcoholism. Throughout, Roeg coaxed a beguiling performance from his cast, presenting not only Bowie in ethereal space-traveler glory, but also pitch-perfect supporting performances from Candy Clark, Rip Torn, and Buck Henry. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of this cult movie, TASCHEN's The Man Who Fell to Earth presents a plenitude of stills and behind-the-scenes images by unit photographer David James, including numerous shots of Bowie at his playful and ambiguous best. A new introductory essay explores the shooting of the film and it's lasting impact, drawing upon an exclusive interview with David James, who brings firsthand insights into the making of this sci-fi masterwork.About the series: Bibliotheca Universalis-- Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe at an unbeatable, democratic price!Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, the name TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible, open-minded publishing. Bibliotheca Universalis brings together nearly 100 of our all-time favorite titles in a neat new format so you can curate your own affordable library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia.Bookworm's delight -- never bore, always excite!Text in English, French, and German

Scarred For Life: Volume One: The 1970s


Stephen Brotherstone - 2017
    Public information films, scary kids' TV show, bleak adult dramas, dystopian sci-fi, savage horror films, violent comics, horror-themed toys and sweets and the huge boom in paranormal paraphernalia; all this and much more is covered in depth. Prepare to relive your childhood nightmares. The things that made us... Scarred For Life!

Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Ultimate Visual History


Michael Klastorin - 2017
    It also features a wealth of insightful commentary from every key player involved in the film, from the acclaimed director himself to the film’s stars and the key department heads who brought Spielberg’s vision to life.Special inserts and interactive elements include script pages, call lists, concept sketches, and more. Comprehensive, compelling, and filled with unseen treasures, Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Ultimate Visual History is a fitting tribute to one of history’s most iconic films.

Slash of the Titans: The Road to Freddy vs Jason


Dustin McNeill - 2017
    Featuring new interviews with the original writers and filmmakers, Slash details the production's troubled history from the surprise ending of Jason Goes to Hell all the way to the crossover’s red carpet premiere. Read about the many rejected storylines and learn how the project was eventually able to escape from development hell. This is the story of one film, two horror icons and seventeen screenwriters!SLASH OF THE TITANS includes:- Comprehensive looks at ten different versions of the screenplay- Info on early crossover attempts by Friday the 13th filmmakers- Exclusive details on the never made Freddy vs Jason: Hell Unbound video game- Insights from producers, executives and developers including Sean Cunningham- An examination of why the Shannon/Swift script was finally greenlit- Summaries of the four endings considered for the 2003 film- Coverage of the never made Freddy vs Jason vs Ash sequel- New comments from the titans themselves: Robert Englund and Ken Kirzinger- Appendices full of story details including the outcomes of all ten versions

Backwards and in Heels: The Past, Present and Future of Women Working in Film


Alicia Malone - 2017
    She just did it backwards and in high heels..." - Ann RichardsWomen have been instrumental in the success of American cinema since its very beginning. One of the first people to ever pick up a motion picture camera was a woman. As was the first screenwriter to win two Academy Awards, the inventor of the boom microphone and the first person to be credited with the title Film Editor. Throughout the entire history of Hollywood women have been revolutionizing, innovating, and shaping how we make movies. Yet their stories are rarely shared.This is what film reporter Alicia Malone wants to change. "Backwards and in Heels" tells the history of women in film in a different way, with stories about incredible ladies who made their mark throughout each era of Hollywood. From the first women directors, to the iconic movie stars, and present day activists. Each of these stories are inspiring in the accomplishments of women, and they also highlight the specific obstacles women have had to face. "Backwards and in Heels" combines research and exclusive interviews with influential women and men working in Hollywood today, such as Geena Davis, J.J. Abrams, Ava DuVernay, Octavia Spencer, America Ferrera, Paul Feig, Todd Fisher and many more, as well as film professors, historians and experts.Think of "Backwards and in Heels" as a guidebook, your entry into the complex world of women in film. Join Alicia Malone as she champions Hollywood women of the past and present, and looks to the future with the hopes of leveling out the playing field.

The Thing: Artbook


Eli Roth - 2017
    Bringing together artists from the worlds of comics, fine art, animation and illustration. Over 350 artists from all over the world have contributed art for this comprehensive collection. Also included in the book, an all-new introduction by horror director/actor/producer Eli Roth and an afterword by the Master of Horror himself, John Carpenter.

La La Land: Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack


Justin Hurwitz - 2017
    Written and directed by Damien Chazelle, La La Land tells the story of Mia Emma Stone, an aspiring actress, and Sebastian Ryan Gosling, a dedicated jazz musician, who are struggling to make ends meet in a city known for crushing hopes and breaking hearts. Set in modern day Los Angeles, this original musical about everyday life explores the joy and pain of pursuing your dreams. Our matching folio features 10 piano/vocal/guitar arrangements from the award-winning soundtrack featuring original songs by Justin Hurwitz with lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.

The Making of Dunkirk


James Mottram - 2017
    Featuring a stunning ensemble cast that includes newcomers Fionn Whitehead, Tom Glynn-Carney, and Harry Styles, as well as acclaimed actors Kenneth Branagh, Mark Rylance, Cillian Murphy, and Tom Hardy, Dunkirk offers a breathtaking glimpse at a turning point in the conflict determined by not only the ingenuity of the British forces but also the bravery of British civilians who sailed into war-torn waters to save them.   The Making of Dunkirk tells the incredible story of how Nolan brought this pivotal moment in World War II to life on the screen using innovative film-making techniques that give the film a gritty, exhilarating realism rarely seen in modern cinema. Featuring interviews with the director and key department heads and filled with never-before-seen imagery from the shoot, plus concept art, storyboards, and other amazing visuals, The Making of Dunkirk is the ultimate insider’s look at one of the most anticipated films of 2017.

Film noir: Plus Taschen's top 50 pick of noir classics from 1940-1960


Paul Duncan - 2017
    From private eyes and perfect crimes to corrupt cops and doomed affairs, editors Paul Duncan and Jürgen Müller examine noir’s key themes and their most representative movies from 1940 to 1960.Copiously illustrated with film stills as well as original posters, this book offers page after page of noir’s masterful visual compositions while exploring the narrative paradigms of this cryptic, compelling, and evolving genre. If that weren’t enough to tickle your cinematic appetite, the volume concludes with TASCHEN’s top 50 pick of noir classics.Brimming with the enigmatic dames, desperate gangsters, and psycho killers that continue to cast a long and captivating shadow over cinema, this is a must-have handbook for noir aficionados and amateurs alike.

Producer to Producer: A Step-by-Step Guide to Low-Budget Independent Film Producing


Maureen Ryan - 2017
    Structured to guide the reader through production meetings, every aspect of the film-production pro-cess is outlined in detail. Invaluable checklists -- which begin 12 weeks before shooting and continue through principal (and secondary) photography and postproduction -- keep the filmmaker on track and on target. Ryan is co-producer of James Marsh's Man on Wire, winner of the 2009 Academy Award for Best Documentary

The Art of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2


Jacob Johnston - 2017
    Now, go inside the studio in this new collectible volume! Discover exclusive concept art, production stills, and commentary from cast and crew-including returning director James Gunn and Marvel's extraordinary Visual Development team. Complete your ART OF THE MOVIE collection with this latest installment as the Guardians soar to new heights!

Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film


Alan K. Rode - 2017
    During his unprecedented twenty-seven year tenure at Warner Bros., he directed swashbuckling adventures, westerns, musicals, war epics, romances, historical dramas, horror films, tearjerkers, melodramas, comedies, and film noir masterpieces. The director's staggering output of 180 films surpasses that of the legendary John Ford and exceeds the combined total of films directed by George Cukor, Victor Fleming, and Howard Hawks.In the first biography of this colorful, instinctual artist, Alan K. Rode illuminates the life and work of one of the film industry's most complex figures. He begins by exploring the director's early life and career in his native Hungary, revealing how Curtiz shaped the earliest days of silent cinema in Europe as he acted in, produced, and directed scores of films before immigrating to the United States in 1926. In Hollywood, Curtiz earned a reputation for his explosive tantrums, his difficulty communicating in English, and his disregard for the well-being of others. However, few directors elicited more memorable portrayals from their casts, and ten different actors delivered Oscar-nominated performances under his direction.In addition to his study of the director's remarkable legacy, Rode investigates Curtiz's dramatic personal life, discussing his enduring creative partnership with his wife, screenwriter Bess Meredyth, as well as his numerous affairs and children born of his extramarital relationships. This meticulously researched biography provides a nuanced understanding of one of the most talented filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age.

Godzilla FAQ: All That's Left to Know about the King of the Monsters


Brian Solomon - 2017
    He is the Lizard King well, the King of the Monsters he can do anything. Since he first romped onto the silver screen in 1954, no other character in all of international cinema has been as beloved by American audiences as Godzilla. Despite the modern film industry's affinity for franchises and cinematic universes, he remains one of its most enduring and popular characters, with a total of twenty-eight motion pictures (not even including two American reboots!) under his massive belt. From his home base in Japan, where the legendary Toho Pictures first put him on the map, Godzilla has gone on to become an international phenomenon, a pop culture avatar, a movie monster unrivaled in both size and appeal. The latest installment in Applause Theatre and Cinema Books' FAQ series, Brian Soloman's Godzilla FAQ is a broad and varied exploration of the monumental, fire-breathing radioactive lizard that has roared his way into our hearts over a sixty-year reign of terror. By pairing a colloquial text with a wide array of illustrations and visual media, this 400-page survey encourages readers to drop in and out of the book, as every chapter serves as a self-supporting article on a given subject. Written by a lifelong Godzilla fan and pop culture critic, Godzilla FAQ offers a comprehensive rundown of every Godzilla film ever made, in-depth biographies of major players in the franchise's history, and enough raw information to rebuild a ravaged Tokyo. Don't miss out on this ideal gift for cinema fans, lizard lovers, and pop culture fiends of all ages!

Flowers of Perversion: The Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco


Stephen Thrower - 2017
    His sexually charged, fearlessly personal style of filmmaking has never been in vogue with mainstream critics, but for lovers of the strange and sado-erotic he is a magician, spinning his unique and disturbing dream worlds from the cheapest of budgets.In the world of Jess Franco freedom was the key, and he pushed at the boundaries of taste and censorship repeatedly, throughout an astonishingly varied career spanning sixty years. The director of more than 180 films, at his most prolific he worked in a supercharged frenzy that yielded as many as twelve titles per year, making him one of the most generative auteurs of all time.Franco's taste for the sexy and horrific, his lifelong obsession with the Marquis De Sade, and his roving hand-held camera style launched a whole new strain of erotic cinema. Disturbing, exciting, and defiantly avant-garde, films such as Necronomicon, Vampyros Lesbos, Virgin Among the Living Dead, and Venus in Furs are among the jewels of European horror, while a plethora of multiple versions, re-edits and echoes of earlier works turn the Franco experience into a dizzying hall of mirrors, further entrancing the viewer who dares enter Franco's domain.Stephen Thrower has devoted five years to examining each and every Franco film. This book―the second in a two-volume set―delves into the latter half of Franco's career, covering titles including Shining Sex, Barbed Wire Dolls, Swedish Nympho Slaves, and Lilian the Perverted Virgin.Assisted by the esteemed critic and researcher Julian Grainger, Thrower shines a light into the darkest corners of the Franco filmography and uncovers previously unknown and unsuspected facts about their casts, crews, and production histories.Unparalleled in scope and ambition, Flowers of Perversion brings Franco's career into focus with a landmark study that aims to provide the definitive assessment of Jess Franco's labyrinthine film universe.

The Art and Making of Kong: Skull Island


Simon Ward - 2017
    Pictures and Legendary Pictures. When a scientific expedition to an uncharted island awakens titanic forces of nature, a mission of discovery becomes an explosive war between monster and man. Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson, John Goodman and John C. Reilly star in a thrilling and original new adventure that reveals the untold story of how Kong became King. The Art and Making of Kong: Skull Island goes behind the scenes and reveals how this monster-sized production was brought to the screen. Featuring incredible concept art and on-set photography, this deluxe book is a rare treat for fans as key cast and crew tell the story of how Kong was given a whole new lease of life. (c) 2016 LEGENDARY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Cinema Sewer Volume 6: The Adults Only Guide to History's Sickest and Sexiest Movies!


Robin Bougie - 2017
    Issues 27 to 29 of Robin Bougie's celebrated independent magazine are revisited in this sixth wild FAB Press volume, along with an additional 80 pages of never-before-seen interviews, rants, comics, hard-to-find classic movie advertising, and graphic illustrations by Bougie and his talented friends from both the comic book and animation industries. Regardless of whether readers are just discovering the world of classic porn, horror, and exploitation movies, or if they're long time fans, they'll find plenty to get excited about, as they gleefully slosh around in the filth of the Cinema Sewer!

Start to Finish: Woody Allen and the Art of Moviemaking


Eric Lax - 2017
    Eric Lax has been with Woody Allen almost every step of the way. He chronicled Allen's transformation from stand-up comedian to filmmaker in On Being Funny (1975). His international best seller, Woody Allen: A Biography (1991), was a portrait of a director hitting his stride. Conversations with Woody Allen comprised interviews that illustrated Allen's evolution from 1971 to 2008. Now, Lax invites us onto the set--and even further behind the scenes--of Allen's Irrational Man, which was released in 2015, and starred Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone. Revealing the intimate details of Allen's filmmaking process, Lax shows us the screenplay being shaped, the scenes being prepared, the actors, cinematographers, other crew members, the editors, all engaged in their work. We hear Allen's colleagues speak candidly about working with him, and Allen speaking with equal openness about his lifetime's work. An unprecedented revelation of one of the foremost filmmakers of our time, Start to Finish is sure to delight not only movie buffs and Allen fans, but everyone who has marveled at the seeming magic of the artistic process.

Barbara La Marr: The Girl Who Was Too Beautiful for Hollywood


Sherri Snyder - 2017
    Everything she said, everything she did was colored with news-value." When La Marr was sixteen, her older half-sister and a male companion reportedly kidnapped her, causing a sensation in the media. One year later, her behavior in Los Angeles nightclubs caused law enforcement to declare her "too beautiful" to be on her own in the city, and she was ordered to leave. When La Marr returned to Hollywood years later, her loveliness and raw talent caught the attention of producers and catapulted her to movie stardom.In the first full-length biography of the woman known as the "girl who was too beautiful," Sherri Snyder presents a complete portrait of one of the silent era's most infamous screen sirens. In five short years, La Marr appeared in twenty-six films, including The Prisoner of Zenda (1922), Trifling Women (1922), The Eternal City (1923), The Shooting of Dan McGrew (1924), and Thy Name Is Woman (1924). Yet by 1925 -- finding herself beset by numerous scandals, several failed marriages, a hidden pregnancy, and personal prejudice based on her onscreen persona -- she fell out of public favor. When she was diagnosed with a fatal lung condition, she continued to work, undeterred, until she collapsed on set. She died at the age of twenty-nine.Few stars have burned as brightly and as briefly as Barbara La Marr, and her extraordinary life story is one of tempestuous passions as well as perseverance in the face of adversity. Drawing on never-before-released diary entries, correspondence, and creative works, Snyder's biography offers a valuable perspective on her contributions to silent-era Hollywood and the cinematic arts.

Tarantino: A Retrospective


Tom Shone - 2017
    The script for his first movie took him four years to complete: My Best Friend’s Birthday, a seventy-minute film in which he both acted and directed. The script for his second film, Reservoir Dogs (1992), took him just under four weeks to complete. When it debuted, he was immediately hailed as one of the most exciting new directors in the industry. Known for his highly cinematic visual style, out-of-sequence storytelling, and grandiose violence, Tarantino’s films have provoked both praise and criticism over the course of his career. They’ve also won him a host of awards—including Oscars, Golden Globes, and BAFTA awards—usually for his original screenplays. His oeuvre includes the cult classic Pulp Fiction, bloody revenge saga Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, and historical epics Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained, and The Hateful Eight . This stunning retrospective catalogs each of Quentin Tarantino’s movies in detail, from My Best Friend’s Birthday to The Hateful Eight. The book is a tribute to a unique directing and writing talent, celebrating an uncompromising, passionate director’s enthralling career at the heart of cult filmmaking.

The Week


Joanna Ruocco - 2017
    Literary Nonfiction. Women's Studies. Art. THE WEEK presents models of minds shaped by the 21st century American realities that they also construct. The stories are unconventional in their arcs and uses of characterization, and in their foregrounding of the instabilities in representational practices; they obsess over life and death, female sexuality and family, the economy and language and try out various forms inadequate to their figuration/expression.

A Dance with Fred Astaire


Jonas Mekas - 2017
    Told in Mekas’ warm prose style and illustrated with rare personal materials, this is a revealing visual autobiography of a genuine culture hero.

Reinventing Hollywood: How 1940s Filmmakers Changed Movie Storytelling


David Bordwell - 2017
    Flashbacks began to be used in outrageous, unpredictable ways. Soundtracks flaunted voice-over commentary, and characters might pivot from a scene to address the viewer. Incidents were replayed from different characters’ viewpoints, and sometimes those versions proved to be false. Films now plunged viewers into characters’ memories, dreams, and hallucinations. Some films didn’t have protagonists, while others centered on anti-heroes or psychopaths. Women might be on the verge of madness, and neurotic heroes lurched into violent confrontations. Combining many of these ingredients, a new genre emerged—the psychological thriller, populated by women in peril and innocent bystanders targeted for death.             If this sounds like today’s cinema, that’s because it is. In Reinventing Hollywood, David Bordwell examines for the first time the full range and depth of trends that crystallized into traditions. He shows how the Christopher Nolans and Quentin Tarantinos of today owe an immense debt to the dynamic, occasionally delirious narrative experiments of the Forties. With verve and wit, Bordwell examines how a booming movie market during World War II allowed ambitious writers and directors to push narrative boundaries. Although those experiments are usually credited to the influence of Citizen Kane, Bordwell shows that similar impulses had begun in the late 1930s in radio, fiction, and theatre before migrating to film. And despite the postwar recession in the industry, the momentum for innovation continued. Some of the boldest films of the era came in the late forties and early fifties, as filmmakers sought to outdo their peers.             Through in-depth analyses of films both famous and virtually unknown, from Our Town and All About Eve to Swell Guy and The Guilt of Janet Ames, Bordwell assesses the era’s unique achievements and its legacy for future filmmakers. The result is a groundbreaking study of how Hollywood storytelling became a more complex art. Reinventing Hollywood is essential reading for all lovers of popular cinema.

The Music and Sound of Experimental Film


Holly Rogers - 2017
    It challenges presumptions of visual primacy in experimental cinema and rethinks screenmusic discourse in light of the aesthetics of non-commercial imperatives. Several themes run through the book, connecting with and significantly enlarging upon current critical discourse surrounding realism and audibility in the fiction film, the role of music in mainstream cinema, and theaudiovisual strategies of experimental film. The contributors investigate repertoires and artists from Europe and the USA through the critical lenses of synchronicity and animated sound, interrelations of experimentation in image and sound, audiovisual synchresis and dissonance, experimentalsoundscape traditions, found-footage film, re-mediation of pre-existent music and sound, popular and queer sound cultures, and a diversity of radical technological, aesthetic, tropes in film media traversing the work of early pioneers such as Walther Ruttmann and Len Lye, through the mid-centuryinnovations of Norman McLaren, Stan Brakhage, Lis Rhodes, Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, and studio collectives in Poland, to latter-day experimentalists John Smith and Bill Morrison, as well as the contemporary practices of Vjing.

SCORE: A Film Music Documentary — The Interviews (Featuring Hans Zimmer, Bear McCreary, James Cameron, Brian Tyler and more): The modern maestros of film music reveal their creative secrets


Matt Schrader - 2017
    Superman) and more. Plus, hear rare insight from director James Cameron and the legacy of James Horner, along with one of the final interviews conducted with legendary director Garry Marshall. Modern maestros reveal their creative secrets. Composer David Arnold: Bond, the British sound and using music from dreams. Director James Cameron: How score shapes a film and working with James Horner. Composer Quincy Jones: Music’s evolution and emotive power on us. Composer Randy Newman: Great film music in history and scoring for animated films. Composer Rachel Portman: Using music to your advantage and female film composers. Composer Howard Shore: The great epic film score and connecting all the dots. Composer Hans Zimmer: The joy (and vulnerability) of musical experimentation. Director Garry Marshall: How to use music to fill, fix and enhance film. Composer Bear McCreary: Creating an efficient, tight-knit film composing team. Goosebumps and exploring music’s cutting edge. Composers Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross: Production value and the film score as an album. Composer Brian Tyler: Growth, excitement and striving for perfection. Composer Mychael Danna: Musical styles across different nationalities. Composer Tom Holkenborg: Intensity and goosebumps. Composer Harry Gregson-Williams: Traditional score meets technology. Composer Steve Jablonsky: Reinventing electronic sounds. Composer John Debney: Inspirations from childhood to the scoring stage. Composer Trevor Rabin: Wrestling with the clock and working with producers. Composer Patrick Doyle: Life and passion reflecting through music. Inspiration and film music’s worldwide impact across languages. Composer Mervyn Warren: A record producer approach to film scores. Composer John Powell: Flipping the film score on its head. Composer Alexandre Desplat: International influence and the beauty of music. Composer Elliot Goldenthal: Deadline pressure and mastering a sound. Composer Henry Jackman: The British film score invasion and melody. Composer Marco Beltrami: Finding the right sound and music for thrillers. Composer Mark Mothersbaugh: The rockstar-turned-composer. For bulk pricing discounts for educational institutions, please contact info@epicleff.com.

The Doubles


Scott Esposito - 2017
    His way of seeing—inquisitive and gentle—his way of writing—honest and charismatic—are a life-line out of our self congratulatory provincialism.”—Álvaro Enrigue, author of Sudden Death“Readers of Scott Esposito’s Conversational Reading blog already know him to be one of the most perspicacious literary critics in America. But to read The Doubles is to discover something else: that he is as thrillingly insightful about film, and about human experience, as he is about literature. With a bounding intelligence, a tremendous—and seemingly effortless—erudition, with enormous soulfulness, energy and wit, Esposito strains his life through the prism of cinema (or is it the other way around?) and arrives at something magnificent: a work of sustained criticism that is itself a work of high art, and a profound meditation on how the art we see becomes who we are.”—Mathew Specktor, author of American Dream Machine and Los Angeles Review of Books Senior Editor“Art and life, life and art: What is the border between them, or does it even exist? In The Doubles, Scott Esposito deftly blurs the line. Framed through the lens of film criticism, The Doubles is, in fact, a book that defies categorization, jump-cutting narrative (cultural and otherwise), memoir, and aesthetic insight into a hybrid that is often surprising and always rigorous. In the process, The Doubles manages to highlight both art’s effect and its necessity: the way a work (or works) can get inside us, transforming not only how we think but also who we are.”—David L. Ulin, author of Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los AngelesPart memoir-through-film, part inquiry into the effect art has on our lives, The Doubles is a passionate, exquisitely written examination of 14 films that have come to define him. Retelling one film per year, and covering 20 years of Esposito’s life from 1996 – 2016, The Doubles shows the development via film the formation of self-identity. From classic cinema like A Clockwork Orange to cosmological documentaries like A Brief History of Time to offbeat works like Koyaanisqatsi and major contemporary fare like Boyhood, Esposito’s book inquires into the possibilities of a medium that has made us all.

Slow Writing: Thom Andersen on Cinema


Thom Andersen - 2017
    His critiques of artists and filmmakers as diverse as Yasujirō Ozu, Nicholas Ray, Andy Warhol, and Christian Marclay locate their work within the broader spheres of popular culture, politics, history, architecture, and the urban landscape. The city of Los Angeles and its relationship to film is a recurrent theme. These writings, which span a period of five decades, demonstrate Andersen’s social consciousness, humour and his genuine appreciation of cinema in its many forms. Thom Andersen’s films include the celebrated documentary essays Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (1975), Red Hollywood (1996), Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003), and The Thoughts That Once We Had (2015).

Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide: The Modern Era, Previously Published as Leonard Maltin's 2015 Movie Guide


Leonard Maltin - 2017
    (Note: No new reviews have been added to this edition)Now that streaming services like Netflix and Hulu can deliver thousands of movies at the touch of a button, the only question is: What should I watch?Summer blockbusters and independent sleepers; the masterworks of Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, and Martin Scorsese; the timeless comedy of the Marx Brothers and Woody Allen; animated classics from Walt Disney and Pixar; the finest foreign films ever made. This capstone edition covers the modern era while including all the great older films you can’t afford to miss—and those you can—from box-office smashes to cult classics to forgotten gems to forgettable bombs, listed alphabetically, and complete with all the essential information you could ask for.With nearly 16,000 entries and more than 13,000 DVD listings, Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide remains “head and shoulders above the rest.” (The New York Times) Also included are a list of mail-order and online sources for buying and renting DVDs and videos, official motion picture code ratings from G to NC-17, and Leonard's list of recommended films.

Documentary Editing: Principles & Practice


Jacob Bricca - 2017
    Written by a Sundance award- winning documentary editor with a dozen features to his credit and containing examples from over 100 films, this book presents a step-by-step guide for how to turn seemingly shapeless footage into focused scenes, and how to craft a structure for a documentary of any length. The book contains insights and examples from seven of America's top documentary editors, including Geoffrey Richman (The Cove, Sicko), Kate Amend (The Keepers, Into the Arms of Strangers), and Mary Lampson (Harlan County U.S.A.), and a companion website contains easy-to-follow video tutorials.Written for both practitioners and enthusiasts, Documentary Editing offers unique and invaluable insights into the documentary editing process.

Hito Steyerl: Beyond Representation


Hito Steyerl - 2017
    

The Lego Batman Movie: The Making of the Movie


Tracey Miller-Zarneke - 2017
    

Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone


Matt Zoller Seitz - 2017
    A spiritual companion piece to his Oscar-winning Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), the film shares similar themes and is also set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War, a brutal conflict that turned ordinary men into monsters. Through a series of in-depth and extremely candid interviews with the director, this deluxe volume not only explores the shooting of the film but also delves into a range of other topics with del Toro, including his influences, his uniquely nuanced approach to filmmaking, and the traumatic personal events that colored the creation of The Devil’s Backbone. The book also draws on interviews with key contributors in the film’s creation, including cinematographer Guillermo Navarro and composer Javier Navarrete, to give readers an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at how this gothic horror masterpiece was crafted. Featuring a wealth of exquisite concept art and rare unit photography, Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone is the ultimate behind-the-scenes look at an unforgettable Spanish-language classic.

Pandora's Box


Pamela Hutchinson - 2017
    Putting the film in historical and contemporary contexts, Hutchinson investigates how the film speaks to new audiences.

Thor: Ragnarok The Official Movie Special


Titan Comics - 2017
    This deluxe collector's edition is a must-have for all fans of everything Marvel!The stage is set for 2017's far-out fantasy epic, Marvel Studios' Thor: Ragnarok! Go behind the scenes of the epic new movie, with in-depth interviews with the cast and crew, and a complete guide to the worlds of the highly anticipated movie. Along with a gallery of images and concept art, this deluxe publication also features a synopsis of the movie. This is an essential companion to the film for all fans of one of Marvel's mightiest heroes.

Wynonna Earp Yearbook: Season 1


Emily Andras - 2017
    This yearbook is filled with on-set photos, including action shots from the show and all-new behind-the-scenes goodies. Plus, join the cast as they visit Comic-Con International: San Diego for the first time together. This is a book all Earpers need in their motorcycle saddle bag!

Flickering Treasures: Rediscovering Baltimore's Forgotten Movie Theaters


Amy Davis - 2017
    These monuments to popular culture, adorned with grandiose architectural flourishes, seemed an everlasting part of Baltimore's landscape. By 1950, when the city's population peaked, Baltimore's movie fans could choose from among 119 theaters. But by 2016, the number of cinemas had dwindled to only three. Today, many of the city's theaters are boarded up, even burned out, while others hang on with varying degrees of dignity as churches or stores.In Flickering Treasures, Amy Davis, an award-winning photojournalist for the Baltimore Sun, pairs vintage black-and-white images of opulent downtown movie palaces and modest neighborhood theaters with her own contemporary full-color photographs, inviting us to imagine Charm City's past as we confront today's neglected urban landscape. Punctuated by engaging stories and interviews with local moviegoers, theater owners, ushers, and cashiers, plus commentary from celebrated Baltimore filmmakers Barry Levinson and John Waters, the book brings each theater and decade vividly to life.From Electric Park, the Century, and the Hippodrome to the Royal, the Parkway, the Senator, and scores of other beloved venues, the book delves into Baltimore's history, including its troubling legacy of racial segregation. The descriptions of the technological and cultural changes that have shaped both American cities and the business of movie exhibition will trigger affectionate memories for many readers. A map and timeline reveal the one-time presence of movie houses in every corner of the city, and fact boxes include the years of operation, address, architect, and seating capacity for each of the 72 theaters profiled, along with a brief description of each theater's distinct character.Highlighting the emotional resonance of film and the loyalty of Baltimoreans to their neighborhoods, Flickering Treasures is a profound story of change, loss, and rebirth.

La La Land (Movie Vocal Selections for Piano Voice and Guitar)) (Pvg)


Justin Hurwitz - 2017
    

Storytime: A Little Art Book


Joey Spiotto - 2017
    Storytime brings over 125 images together into one book for the first time. Turning some of our favorite Movies, Music, TV Shows and Video Games into artwork inspired by the books from our childhood.

The Awful Truth


Diana Hamilton - 2017
    Part homage to influences like Bernadette Mayer, part restless meditation on love and identity, "Write in Your Sleep" is a verse 'annotated bibliography' in which the narrator ardently catalogs her dreams in an attempt to discover a link between life and art that dodges both. In the second piece, a novella titled "Fear and Trembling," a woman who styles herself a therapeutic innovator forces her friends to re-enact Hollywood classics, only to be rebuffed by one friend's adaptation of Kierkegaard as paranoiac sci-fi erotica centered around a Bartleby-esque refusal to perform free emotional labor. With a keen sense of both the consolations and the limits of the various genres that animate her work, Hamilton surveys the semiotic scramble of 21st-century subjectivity—obsessions with health and productivity, privacy and commodification—and lays bare the masochism implicit in moralistic imperatives to improve ourselves and to capitalize (literally) on our repressions.

The Tunnel at the End of the Light: Essays on Movies and Politics


Jim Shepard - 2017
    In these ten essays Jim Shepard weaves close readings of film with cultural criticism to explore the ways in which movies work so ubiquitously to reflect how Americans think and act. Whether assessing the “high-spirited glee of American ruthlessness” captured in GoodFellas, or finding in Lawrence of Arabia a “portrait of the lunatic serenity of our leaders’ conviction in the face of all evidence and their own lack of knowledge,” he explores how we enter into conversations with specific genres and films—Chinatown, The Third Man, and Badlands among others—in order to construct and refine our most cherished illusions about ourselves.

Are You in the House Alone?: A TV Movie Compendium 1964-1999


Amanda Reyes - 2017
    Made specifically for the small screen, within the tight constraints of broadcasting standards, what these humble movies lacked in budget and star appeal, they made up for in other ways. Often they served as an introduction to genre films, particularly horror, mirroring their theatrical counterparts with a focus on sinister cults, women in prison, haunted houses and even animals in revolt. They were also a place to address serious contemporary issues - drugs, prostitution, sexual violence and justice -albeit in a cosy domestic environment. Production of telefilms continues to this day, but their significance within the history of mass media remains under-discussed. Are You in the House Alone? seeks to address this imbalance in a series of reviews and essays by fans and critics. It looks at many of the films, the networks and names behind them, and also specific genres - everything from Stephen King adaptations to superheroes to true-life dramas. So, kickback and crack open the TV guide once more for the event that is the Movie of the Week!

Ms. 45


Alexandra Heller-Nicholas - 2017
    45 is today considered one of the most significant feminist cult films of the 1980s. Straddling mainstream, arthouse, and exploitation film contexts, Ms. 45 is a potent case study for cult film analysis. At its heart lies two figures: Ferrara himself, and the movie's star, the iconic Zoe Lund, who would further collaborate with Ferrara on later projects such as Bad Lieutenant. This book explores the entwining histories and contexts that led to Ms. 45's creation and helped establish its enduring legacy, particularly in terms of feminist cult film fandom, and the film's status as one of the most important, influential, and powerful rape-revenge films ever made.

Downtime - The Lost Years of Doctor Who


Dylan Rees - 2017
    Elsewhere, books and comic strips (and eventually licensed audios) kept the flame alive, but it seemed the BBC had little interest in reinvigorating the franchise on television.Meanwhile, seemingly almost forgotten, some of the Doctor’s friends, enemies and legally dubious clones continued their adventures in the direct to video market and their own spin off audio adventures, written by and starring many of the cast/crew who had worked on the original series, and several who would work on the relaunched version.Downtime – The Lost Worlds of Doctor Who combines archive interviews and articles along with over forty new interviews conducted by the author in order to tell the story of these dramas and their impact and influence, and to celebrate the dedication and ingenuity of fandom.

Despicable Me 3: The Junior Novel


Sadie Chesterfield - 2017
    Licensed by Universal. All Rights Reserved.

Studio: Remembering Chris Marker


Adam Bartos - 2017
    Best known for his films La Jetée, A Grin Without a Cat, and Sans Soleil, he was described by fellow filmmaker Alain Resnais as “the prototype of the twenty-first-century man.”In this highly original homage, Adam Bartos’ exquisite photographs of Marker’s studio, a workspace both extraordinarily cluttered and highly organized, appear alongside a moving reminiscence of his friend by the film theorist and practitioner Colin MacCabe. The physical structure of the book, incorporating a concertina of images, echoes Marker’s own commitment to radical, innovative form. The result is a compelling homage to one of the most important and original talents in modern cinema.Illustrated in color throughout, including 8 gatefolds.

Slapstick Divas: The Women of Silent Comedy


Steve Massa - 2017
    Mabel Normand, Marie Dressler, Bebe Daniels, Dorothy Gish, Constance Talmadge, Marion Davies, and Colleen Moore brought riotous laughter to millions around the world, yet their hilarity may seem hidden to those only familiar with Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, and Harold Lloyd. Discover the women of wit, from the supporting players to the stars. Author Steve Massa covers their contributions to comedy with in-depth analyses of the most hilarious heroines of humor, followed by 459 biographies of other droll divas from the famous to the forgotten. Illustrated with 440 rare movie scene shots, formal portraits, candid behind the scenes photos, film frame enlargements, trade magazine advertisements, lobby cards, stage photographs, artist's renderings and caricatures, and casting guide entries. Bibliography, and an Index. About the author: Steve Massa is the author of Lame Brains and Lunatics: The Good, The Bad, and The Forgotten of Silent Comedy and Marcel Perez: The International Mirth-Maker. He has organized and curated comedy film programs for the Museum of Modern Art, The Library of Congress, The Museum of the Moving Image, The Smithsonian Institution, and The Pordenone Silent Film Festival.

Universal Terrors, 1951-1955: Eight Classic Horror and Science Fiction Films


Tom Weaver - 2017
    During the 1950s, more modern monsters were created for the Atomic Age, including one-eyed globs from outer space, mutants from the planet Metaluna, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the 100-foot high horror known as Tarantula. This over-the-top history is the definitive retrospective on Universal’s horror and science fiction movies of 1951–1955. Standing as a sequel to Tom Weaver, Michael Brunas and John Brunas’s Universal Horrors (Second Edition, 2007), it covers eight films: The Strange Door, The Black Castle, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, This Island Earth, Revenge of the Creature, Cult of the Cobra and Tarantula. Each receives a richly detailed critical analysis, day-by-day production history, interviews with filmmakers, release information, an essay on the score, and many photographs, including rare behind-the-scenes shots.

The Story of Looking


Mark Cousins - 2017
    It can provoke desire or express it. And from the blurry, edgeless world we inhabit as infants to the landscape of screens we grow into, looking can define us.In The Story of Looking, filmmaker and writer Mark Cousins takes us on a lightning-bright tour - in words and images - through how our looking selves develop over the course of a lifetime, and the ways that looking has changed through the centuries. From great works of art to tourist photographs, from cityscapes to cinema, through science and protest, propaganda and refusals to look, the false mirrors and great visionaries of looking, this book illuminates how we construct as well as receive the things we see.Brilliant and eclectic, The Story of Looking is a photo album and an art gallery, a road movie and a visual grammar: once you've read it, you'll never see things the same way again.

Horror Film: A Critical Introduction


Murray Leeder - 2017
    Horror Film: A Critical Introduction, the newest in Bloomsbury's Film Genre series, is designed to balance the discussions of horror's history, theory, and aesthetics as no introductory book ever has. As a straightforward and convenient critical introduction to the history and key academic approaches, this book gives concerted attention to the idea that horror has unusually strong reflexive or metafictional tendencies. The emphasis here is on American and UK horror traditions, with other national traditions (German Expressionism, J-Horror, etc.) coming into focus as they circulate within the Anglophone world and exert influences of their own.It is designed to be accessible to the beginner, while also responding to and furthering the research into the horror film that has been undertaken in the last few decades. In particular, it avoids the predominance that "the monster” has traditionally held in research on the horror film. This is not to deny the importance of the monster as a conceptual figure, but to open consideration to branches of horror less amenable to being discussed through the monster, such as haunted house films. Murray Leeder successfully eschews the crisis rhetoric around contemporary horror that hampers much recent writing on cinematic horror.

Monster Squad: Celebrating the Artists Behind Cinema's Most Memorable Creatures


Heather A. Wixson - 2017
    Featuring in-depth interviews with the legendary and visionary creators who share their personal journeys through Hollywood, Monster Squad is a tribute to those who toiled endlessly to helpmake the impossible possible in so many of our favorite movies, and to all the "Monster Kids" out there who still believe in the magic of practical effects in film to this very day.Featuring several hundred behind-the-scenes photos, and crafted from over 75 hours of interviews, Monster Squad includes comprehensive discussions with Jennifer Aspinall, Gabe Bartalos, MichEle Burke, John Dykstra, Mike Elizalde, Tony Gardner, Alec Gillis, John Goodwin, Kevin Haney, Steve Johnson, Bob Keen, Rick Lazzarini, David MartI, Todd Masters, Bart Mixon, John Rosengrant, Phil Tippett, Brian Wade, Steve Wang, and Tom Woodruff, Jr.About the Author:Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A ten-year veteran entertainment journalist, Wixson fell in love with the world of genre cinema at a very early age, and has spent the last decade carvingout a career as a professional writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and sci-fi cinema. Throughout her career, she has contributed to various online outlets, including Terror Tube, Dread Central, FEARnet, and is currently the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, the website she's called home since 2013.

T2 Trainspotting


John Hodge - 2017
    First there is an opportunity, then there is a betrayal.Twenty years have gone by.Much has changed but just as much remains the same.Mark Renton returns to the only place he can ever call home.They are waiting for him, of course: Spud, Sick Boy, and Frank Begbie.But they are not alone.Other old friends are waiting too: sorrow, loss, joy, vengeance, hatred, friendship, love, longing, fear, regret, diamorphine, self-destruction and mortal danger, they are all lined up to welcome him, ready to join the dance.Mark Renton returns, to the chaos of life and death.

Movies That Mattered: More Reviews from a Transformative Decade


Dave Kehr - 2017
    Among his admirers are some of his most influential contemporaries. Roger Ebert called Kehr “one of the most gifted film critics in America.” James Naremore thought he was “one of the best writers on film the country as a whole has ever produced.” But aside from remarkably detailed but brief capsule reviews and top-ten lists, you won’t find much of Kehr’s work on the Internet, and many of the longer and more nuanced essays for which he is best known have not yet been published in book form.             With When Movies Mattered, readers welcomed the first collection of Kehr’s criticism, written during his time at the Chicago Reader. Movies That Mattered is its sequel, with fifty more reviews and essays drawn from the archives of both the Chicago Reader and Chicago magazine from 1974 to 1986. As with When Movies Mattered, the majority of the reviews offer in-depth analyses of individual films that are among Kehr’s favorites, from a thoughtful discussion of the sobering Holocaust documentary Shoah to an irresistible celebration of the raucous comedy Used Cars. But fans of Kehr’s work will be just as taken by his dissections of critically acclaimed films he found disappointing, including The Shining, Apocalypse Now, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Whether you’re a long-time reader or just discovering Dave Kehr, the insights in Movies That Mattered will enhance your appreciation of the movies you already love—and may even make you think twice about one or two you hated.

Unchained Melody: The Films of Meiko Kaji


Tom Mes - 2017
    Devoting plenty of space to her star-making turns as Scorpion and Lady Snowblood, Unchained Melody: The Films of Meiko Kaji goes beyond the movies that made her name. This book traces her career from its earliest beginnings as a teen model and tomboyish basketball fanatic to Kaji's critically-lauded and versatile performances for master directors including Kinji Fukasaku and Kon Ichikawa. Author Tom Mes also investigates Kaji's acting work in television and the singing career that would eventually introduce her to a whole new, international audience as the musical cornerstone to Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. Tom Mes is the author of books on cult Japanese filmmakers Takashi Miike and Shinya Tsukamoto and was one of the founders of the Midnighteye website, the world's go-to website for information on Japanese cinema. Cover illustration: Nathanael Marsh

You're Gonna Need a Bigger Story: The 21st Century Survival Guide To Not Just Telling Stories, But Building Super Stories


Houston Howard - 2017
    Houston Howard's signature Super Story process empowers creative minds to take an initial concept and develop it to its full potential and teaches them how to build a robust story architecture primed for 21st Century expansion and survival.

Bollywood: The Films! The Songs! The Stars!


D.K. Publishing - 2017
    Bollywood features film stills, plot timelines, star and producer profiles, plus historical insights, lesser-known facts, and behind-the-scenes gossip on such iconic movies as Mother India, Mughal-e-Azam, Sholay, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, and Bajirao Mastani.A colorful, glittering cover makes it stand out on any home library shelf, and it is the perfect package for gift-giving.

Egyptomania Goes to the Movies: From Archaeology to Popular Craze to Hollywood Fantasy


Matthew Coniam - 2017
    But the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922, by a sensation-hungry world newly united by mass media, created a wave of fascination unlike anything before. They called it Tutmania and its influence was felt everywhere from fashion to home decor to popular music--and notably in the new medium of film. This study traces the origins of 20th century cinema's obsession with Ancient Egypt through previous eras and relates its recurring themes and ideas to the historical reality of the land of the Pharaohs.

Kelly Reichardt


Katherine Fusco - 2017
    Her work since then has communed with--yet remained apart from--postwar European realisms, the American avant-garde, independent film, and the emerging slow cinema movement. Katherine Fusco and Nicole Seymour read such Reichardt films as Wendy and Lucy and Night Moves to consider the root that emergency shares with emergence --the slowly unfolding or the barely perceptible. They see Reichardt as a filmmaker preoccupied with how environmental and economic crises affect those living on society's fringes. Her spare plots and slow editing reveal an artist who recognizes that disasters are gradual, with effects experienced through duration rather than sudden shock. Insightful and boldly argued, Kelly Reichardt is a long overdue portrait of a filmmaker who sees emergency not as a break from the everyday, but as a version of it.

Pro Bernal Anti Bio


Ishmael Bernal - 2017
    

The End of Japanese Cinema: Industrial Genres, National Times, and Media Ecologies


Alexander Zahlten - 2017
    He traces the evolution of a new media ecology through deep historical analyses of the Japanese film industry from the 1960s to the 2000s. Zahlten focuses on three popular industrial genres: Pink Film (independently distributed softcore pornographic films), Kadokawa (big-budget productions as part of a transmedia strategy), and V-Cinema (direct-to-video films). He examines the conditions of these films' production to demonstrate how the media industry itself becomes part of the politics of the media text and to highlight the complex negotiation between media and politics, culture, and identity in Japan. Zahlten points to a different history of film, one in which a once-powerful film industry transformed into becoming only one component within a complex media-mix ecology. In so doing, Zahlten opens new paths for uncovering similar broad processes in other large media societies. A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

The Visual Guide to Improv


Katarina Wahlberg - 2017
    It explains tricky concepts, ideas, techniques and formats through illustrations and concrete, easy-to-use tips. Whether you are a student or performer wanting to develop your improv skills or a teacher looking for inspiration and new tools to explain improv – this book is a must-have. THE BOOK INCLUDES:• 160 pages with more than 500 illustrations and infographics.• 50 tips that will help you develop brilliant scene work.• A crash course in classic storytelling – how to build heroes, villains and captivating stories.• 24 tips on how to edit scenes.• 18 improv formats.• Inspiration for genre work – ranging from action and rom-com to Jane Austen and Alfred Hitchcock.http://visualimprovguide.com

Ghostbusters: Ectomobile


Troy Benjamin - 2017
    Along with a detailed breakdown of Ecto-1’s capabilities and exclusive cutaway images that show the car’s souped-up engine and onboard ghost-tracking equipment, the book also focuses on the Ghostbusters’ portable tools of the trade, including proton packs, ghost traps, and PKE meters. The book also looks at various models of Ecto-1, including the Ecto-1A from Ghostbusters II and the version of Ecto-1 seen in 2016’s Ghostbusters: Answer the Call. Featuring commentary from familiar characters, including Ray Stantz, Peter Venkman, and Jillian Holtzmann, Ghostbusters: Ectomobile: Owner’s Workshop Manual is the ultimate guide to the Ghostbusters’ legendary vehicles and the ghost-catching equipment the cars haul from one job to the next.

Instant Stories


Wim Wenders - 2017
    He has exhibited his large-format, panoramic photographs in Paris, Hamburg, Berlin, Bilbao, Sydney, Shanghai, Rome, São Paulo, Moscow, Copenhagen, New York and Düsseldorf. Now, for the first time, this book – published to accompany an exhibition at London’s Photographer’s Gallery – presents his polaroids. Spanning the 1970s to the present day, they feature friends, actors and personal heroes, objects, places, spaces and situations from the everyday life of a travelling filmmaker. Wenders does not order his ‘photographic notes’, as he calls them, by theme, but as stories. They are accompanied by his own texts, short stories and haikus. Wim Wenders: Instant Stories is a photographic road trip through the life of the artist, from his early travels through America’s cinematic landscapes to the German provinces and beyond.

Music in Disney's Animated Features: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to the Jungle Book


James Bohn - 2017
    In addition, he also presents a history of music in Disney animated films, as well as biographical information on several of the Walt Disney Studios' seminal composers.The popularity and critical acclaim of Disney animated features truly is built as much on music as it is on animation. Beginning with Steamboat Willie and continuing through all of the animated features created under Disney's personal supervision, music was the organizing element of Disney's animation. Songs establish character, aid in narrative, and fashion the backbone of the Studios' movies from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs through The Jungle Book and beyond.Bohn underscores these points while presenting a detailed history of music in Disney's animated films. The book includes research done at the Walt Disney Archives as well as materials gathered from numerous other facilities. In his research of the Studios' notable composers, Bohn includes perspectives from family members, thus lending a personal dimension to his presentation of the magical Studios' musical history. The volume's numerous musical examples demonstrate techniques used throughout the Studios' animated classics.

Gumby Imagined: The Story of Art Clokey and His Creations


Joe Clokey - 2017
    Filmmaker Art Clokey's personal story is one of mystical adventure, tragedy, triumph, art, and most of all, love. This lavish career-spanning retrospective explores the legendary creator's life and complete works. All of his many creations, including Gumby and Davey & Goliath, are interwoven with a rich tapestry of rare photos and stories - the ingredients for a fascinating tale.

Voices of Labor: Creativity, Craft, and Conflict in Global Hollywood


Michael Curtin - 2017
    The interviews collected here showcase the ingenuity, enthusiasm, and aesthetic pleasures that attract people to careers in the film and television industries. They also reflect critically on changes in the workplace brought about by corporate conglomeration and globalization. Rather than offer publicity-friendly anecdotes by marquee celebrities, Voices of Labor presents off-screen observations about the everyday realities of Global Hollywood. Ranging across job categories—from showrunner to make-up artist to location manager—this collection features voices of labor from Los Angeles, Atlanta, Prague, and Vancouver. Together they show how seemingly abstract concepts like conglomeration, financialization, and globalization are crucial tools for understanding contemporary Hollywood and for reflecting more generally on changes and challenges in the screen media workplace and our culture at large. Despite such formidable concerns, what nevertheless shines through is a commitment to craftwork and collaboration that provides the means to imagine and instigate future alternatives for screen media labor.

Notes on Films 1996-2008 贾想


Jia Zhangke - 2017
    From Fenyang to Beijing, and from Beijing to Paris, and to New York, Jia Zhangke went from the county all the way to the world, and never stopped writing about his county life, and portraying the silent majority's thrilling lives under their calm faces. Facing success and acclaim, he is always on alert, and tries to maintain a free and unrestrained amateur spirit, as well as sheer love of films. Shooting films is the way he is closest to being free. 本书是贾樟柯头十年电影生涯的创作笔记,以文字记录下他跌跌撞撞一路成长的心路历程。从汾阳到北京,从北京到巴黎、纽约,贾樟柯不曾停止书写他的县城生活,刻写沉默的大多数埋藏在波澜不惊面孔下惊心动魄的生活,从县城一路走向世界。面对成功和赞誉,他时时警醒,努力保持一种自由自在的业余精神,以及对电影纯粹的热爱。拍电影,是他接近自由的方式。

Becoming AFI: Inside 50 Years of the American Film Institute


Jean Picker Firstenberg - 2017
    Its graduates, faculty, supporters, and trustees have included such acclaimed individuals as Steven Spielberg, Maya Angelou, Gregory Peck, Meryl Streep, Les Moonves, Patty Jenkins, David Lynch, Jane Fonda, Edward James Olmos, Shonda Rhimes, James L. Brooks, and many other respected leaders in the worlds of film, television, digital media, and philanthropy. Written in a unique memoir style, Becoming AFI: 50 Years Inside the American Film Institute offers a candid look at how this remarkable organization has brought together aspiring filmmakers, outstanding educators, and visionary artists in the film industry. The book also details AFI's journey to becoming the foremost national champion for moving images as a vital form of art and a critical component of America's cultural record. From its early years operating out of the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and the legendary Greystone mansion in Beverly Hills under the leadership of George Stevens, Jr., through its incredible growth into an influential cultural institution at its landmark Hollywood campus under the guidance of Jean Picker Firstenberg, to its continued excellence today under the dynamic leadership of Bob Gazzale, Becoming AFI chronicles the history of the organization through in-depth essays from those who have been involved in its adventures, growth, and success. Becoming AFI provides an insightful, behind-the-scenes look at how AFI, with passionate determination, overcame the hurdles of advancing technology, political shifts, and new audience dynamics to turn its aspirations into a substantial and highly successful organization, becoming a tireless advocate of moving images as one of America's most popular forms of art, and maturing into one of the world's most respected educational and cultural institutions.

Shooting Better Movies: The Student Filmmakers Guide


Paul Dudbridge - 2017
    Everything you need to know - from generating an idea to delivering a finished film - is laid out in an informal and easy to read style. Find everything from script formatting, choosing lenses, and location scouting, to where best to put the camera to film your scenes, working with actors, recording sound, and editing your shots.

Carole Lombard: Twentieth-Century Star


Michelle Morgan - 2017
    A no-nonsense woman, she worked hard, took no prisoners and had a great passion for life. As a result, she became Hollywood’s highest-paid star.From the outside, Carole’s life was one of great glamour and fun, yet privately she endured much heartache. As a child, her mother moved Carole and her brothers across the country away from their beloved father. Carole then began a film career, only to have it cut short after a devastating car accident. Picking herself back up, she was rocked by the accidental shooting of her lover; a failed marriage to actor William Powell; and the sorrow of infertility during her marriage to Hollywood’s King, Clark Gable.Lombard marched forward, promising to be positive. Sadly her life was cut short in a plane crash so catastrophic that pieces of the aircraft are still buried in the mountain today. In Carole Lombard, bestselling author Michelle Morgan accesses previously unseen documents to tell the story of a woman whose remarkable life and controversial death continues to enthral.

Save the Cat!® Goes to the Indies: The Screenwriters Guide to 50 Films from the Masters


Salva Rubio - 2017
    Now his student, screenwriter and novelist Salva Rubio, applies Blake’s principles to 50 independent, auteur, European and cult films (again with 5 beat sheets for each of Blake’s 10 genres). From international sensations like The Blair Witch Project to promising debuts like Pi, from small films that acquired cult status like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to Euro-blockbusters like The Full Monty, from unexpected gems like Before Sunrise to textbook classics such as The 400 Blows, from Dogville to Drive and Boogie Nights to Cinema Paradiso, here are 50 movies that fit both the “indie” label and Blake Snyder’s 15 beats. You’ll find works from Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, David Lynch, Roman Polanski, Danny Boyle, David Mamet, Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman, Sofia Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, Wes Anderson, and the Coen Brothers, among other renowned writers and directors. If you’re a moviegoer, you’ll discover a language to analyze film and understand how filmmakers can effectively reach audiences. If you’re a writer, this book reveals how those who came before you tackled the same challenges you are facing with the films you want to write. With these 50 beat sheets, you’ll see how “hitting the beats” creates stories that resonate the world over.

Yoko Kanno's Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack (33 1/3 Japan)


Rose Bridges - 2017
    Composer Yoko Kanno created an eclectic blend of jazz, rock, lullabies, folk and funk (to list just a few) for Cowboy Bebop's many moods and environments. Cowboy Bebop's blend of science fiction, westerns and gangster films promised to be "the work which becomes a new genre itself," and only Kanno's score could deliver.In this volume of 33 1/3 Japan, musicologist Rose Bridges helps listeners make sense of the music of Cowboy Bebop. The book places it within the context of Bebop's influences and Kanno's larger body of work. It analyzes how the music tells Spike, Faye, Jet and the rest of the crew's stories. Cowboy Bebop and its music are like nothing else, and they deserve a guide to match. 33 1/3 Global , a series related to but independent from 33 1/3, takes the format of the original series of short, music-basedbooks and brings the focus to music throughout the world. With initial volumes focusing on Japanese and Brazilian music, the series will also include volumes on the popular music of Australia/Oceania, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and more.

Bright Eyes, Ape City: Examining the Planet of the Apes Mythos


Rich HandleyDayton Ward - 2017
    This anthology features insightful, analytical essays about the franchise’s long history, from film historians, novelists, bloggers, and subject-matter experts. If you’re eager to learn more about Apes lore, you’ll need to get your stinkin’ paws on this book.From Sequart Organization. More info at http://sequart.org

Hairpins and Dead Ends: The Perilous Journeys of 25 Actresses Through Early Hollywood


Michael G. Ankerich - 2017
    I went home to die, but I wasn’t that fortunate.” Edwina Booth “He who enters Hollywood leaves self—the real self—behind. It is the land of Let’s Pretend, and the hardest acting is done off screen.” Herbert Howe, writer “From the peak of fame to the brink of almost hopeless despair—that’s my story of Hollywood.” Alice Lake You survived Dangerous Curves ‘atop Hollywood Heels, Michael G. Ankerich’s 2010 book about ill-fated actresses of the silent screen, but are you ready for his companion book, Hairpins and Dead Ends: The Perilous Journeys of 25 Actresses Through Early Hollywood? Hairpins and Dead Ends takes you on a hair-raising rollercoaster ride through a time when Hollywood was surrounded by orange groves, not concrete jungles, and into the intimate lives of 25 beauties, ambitious nobodies who wanted to be somebodies. Several became twinkling stars, while others settled as serial queens, slapstick vamps, bathing beauties, western heroines, and everything in between. While many young hopefuls abandoned their quest for fame and returned home disappointed, here are the stories of women who stayed, often to a bitter and tragic end brought on by drugs, booze, and suicide. Through his meticulous research, that included interviews with relatives of the actresses, Ankerich takes you into the dark side of Tinseltown, a world of dope rings, whorehouses, gin joints, and other gritty hellholes some called home. Lavishly illustrated with over 160 photographs, many from family scrapbooks, Hairpins and Dead Ends uncovers a world that offered passion and imagination, but functioned on illicit love, domineering mothers, desperation, greed, abuse, and discrimination. The screen images of these 25 dazzling beauties were fleeting shadows. Their personal passions and struggles in real life held more drama than any role they clamored to play. These ladies make up the ghosts of Hollywood’s past.

A Dream of Resistance: The Cinema of Kobayashi Masaki


Stephen Prince - 2017
    A pacifist drafted into Japan’s Imperial Army, Kobayashi survived the war with his principles intact and created a body of work that was uncompromising in its critique of the nation’s military heritage. Yet his renowned political critiques were grounded in spiritual perspectives, integrating motifs and beliefs from both Buddhism and Christianity.  A Dream of Resistance is the first book in English to explore Kobayashi’s entire career, from the early films he made at Shochiku studio, to internationally-acclaimed masterpieces like The Human Condition, Harakiri, and Samurai Rebellion, and on to his final work for NHK Television. Closely examining how Kobayashi’s upbringing and intellectual history shaped the values of his work, Stephen Prince illuminates the political and religious dimensions of Kobayashi’s films, interpreting them as a prayer for peace in troubled times. Prince draws from a wealth of rare archives, including previously untranslated interviews, material that Kobayashi wrote about his films, and even the young director’s wartime diary. The result is an unprecedented portrait of this singular filmmaker.

Dying in Full Detail: Mortality and Digital Documentary


Jennifer Malkowski - 2017
    Despite technological advances that allow for the easy creation and distribution of death footage, digital media often fail to live up to their promise to reveal the world in greater fidelity. Malkowski analyzes a wide range of death footage, from feature films about the terminally ill (Dying, Silverlake Life, Sick), to surreptitiously recorded suicides (The Bridge), to #BlackLivesMatter YouTube videos and their precursors. Contextualizing these recordings in the long history of attempts to capture the moment of death in American culture, Malkowski shows how digital media are unable to deliver death "in full detail," as its metaphysical truth remains beyond representation. Digital technology's capacity to record death does, however, provide the opportunity to politicize individual deaths through their representation. Exploring the relationships among technology, temporality, and the ethical and aesthetic debates about capturing death on video, Malkowski illuminates the key roles documentary death has played in twenty-first-century visual culture.

'80s Action Movies on the Cheap: 284 Low Budget, High Impact Pictures


Daniel R. Budnik - 2017
    Nonstop, big-budget excitement became the standard as epic adventures like Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Road Warrior set the tone for the summer blockbusters of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chuck Norris. Homages (and ripoffs) made with lesser budgets followed every hit, especially with the advent of direct-to-video releases. Providing detailed commentary on 284 films, this book explores the excitement, audacity and sheer weirdness of '80s low budget action cinema, from the American Ninja series to dime-a-dozen barbarian pictures to such bargain-basement productions as The Courier of Death, Kill Squad and Samurai Cop.

The Practical Guide to Documentary Editing: Techniques for TV and Film


Sam Billinge - 2017
    Working stage by stage through the postproduction process, author Sam Billinge explores project organization, assembling rushes, sequence editing, story structure, music and sound design, and the defining relationship between editor and director.Written by a working documentary editor with over a decade's worth of experience cutting films for major British and international broadcasters, The Practical Guide to Documentary Editing offers a unique introduction to the craft of documentary editing, and provides working and aspiring editors with the tools to master their craft in the innovative and fast-paced world of contemporary nonfiction television and film.

The Science of Things Familiar


Johnny Damm - 2017
    There’s really no way to describe the experience of reading this book as it juxtaposes and repurposes textbook diagrams, prose poetry, and comics panel sequences while opining on the imagined comings and goings of literary giants, failed mid-20th-century filmmakers, and the history of the blues. Damm’s ideal reader is an open-minded culture junkie and fan of poetry, high art, and comics, someone with a penchant for everything from Dada to Derrida." -Publishers Weekly, starred review

Cinema and the Wealth of Nations: Media, Capital, and the Liberal World System


Lee Grieveson - 2017
    It examines the media produced by institutions such as states, corporations, and investment banks, as well as the emergence of a corporate media industry and system supported by state policy and integral to the establishment of a new consumer system. Lee Grieveson shows how media was used to encode liberal political and economic power during the period that saw the United States eclipse Britain as the globally hegemonic nation and the related inauguration of new forms of liberal economic globalization. But this is not a distant history. Cinema and the Wealth of Nations examines a foundational conjuncture in the establishment of media forms and a media system instrumental in, and structural to, the emergence and expansion of a world system that has been—and continues to be—brutally violent, unequal, and destructive.

Hollywood Producers Directory: A Specialized Resource for Producers and Filmmakers


Jesse Douma - 2017
      All of the listings have been personally verified and contain a range of Industry insiders, from ambitious upstarts to established studio shingles, along with management companies who package production deals and independent financiers/distributors with a production wing.   With over 2,500 listings for Industry insiders, this targeted reference book features: Detailed contact information, including phone numbers, and street and email addresses Crucial details for submitting your screenplay to specific markets: how they prefer to receive submissions, and whether they accept unsolicited material The Legal 411 for Producers: a comprehensive guide on the business of filmmaking from script to screen from Entertainment Attorney Dinah Perez Incentives section, with the most comprehensive listing of tax credits issued by states and countries  With the Hollywood Producers Directory by your side, you have a reliable resource that makes contacting fellow filmmaking professionals quick and easy.

The Search for Weng Weng


Andrew Leavold - 2017
    Was he really a black belt, super-spy, stunt king, ladies' man, living saint, and plaything of the Marcos family? What was his real name, how many films did he make, and was he possibly still alive?It took Leavold seven years to complete the film, against seemingly impossible odds, and then screen the film all over the world, including Weng Weng's front yard.But that was just the start of the story.This book is the definitive search for Weng Weng, an even wilder and woollier tale told by the film-maker himself, as he travels from Imelda Marcos' birthday party to the poorest slums of Manila, on the trail of one the Philippines' most unlikeliest heroes - and most heartbreaking stories.Weng Weng's tale of exploitation, greed, and fragile humanity is pieced together fragment by tantalizing fragment, all the while revealing a detailed, never-before-told history of the Filipino Action Film, as told by a cast of actors, stuntmen, Weng Weng's family and colleagues, historians, midget waiters, and Imelda herself.Plunging head-first into the heart and soul of the Philippines' culture and history, Leavold also tells his own story of transforming his own life from fan to film-maker, all the while experiencing the most surreal adventure of a lifetime.It's part detective story and midget bio, part gonzo travelogue, part Filipino B Film history lesson, and part magical Quest for the Holy Grail - if the Grail is a two foot nine James Bond of the Philippines.

American Stranger: Modernisms, Hollywood, and the Cinema of Nicholas Ray (SUNY series, Horizons of Cinema)


Will Scheibel - 2017
    Most famous for Rebel Without a Cause, Ray has since been canonized as a “rebel auteur” and celebrated for seeking a personal vision and signature style under the industrial pressures of Classical Hollywood during its late studio period. In American Stranger, Will Scheibel reconstructs how Ray’s reputation developed over time, analyzing the different historical practices of modernism that set new horizons for artistic rebellion in postwar cinema.Drawing on biographical legends, interviews, film reviews, articles in both national newspapers and international film magazines, and star promotion and publicity, Scheibel examines the contexts in which Ray’s reputation was constructed. These include the consolidation of director-based film criticism and the rise of film studies as an academic discipline; star performances and personifications of the rebel male in Ray’s films; the counterculture in which Ray promoted himself as a teacher and worked as a political avant-gardist; and the art cinemas of Jean-Luc Godard, Wim Wenders, and Jim Jarmusch, each of whom were influenced by Ray. In addition to Rebel Without a Cause, Scheibel also analyzes such classic films as The Lusty Men and In a Lonely Place, as well as collaborative, less-examined films from his later career outside of Hollywood, We Can’t Go Home Again and Lightning Over Water. Reconstructing the evolution of Ray’s place in cinema culture, this intellectual history measures the standards for both rebellion and convention, for the vanguard and the establishment, that determine an artistic reputation.Will Scheibel is Assistant Professor in the English Department at Syracuse University, where he teaches film and screen studies. He is the coeditor (with Steven Rybin) of Lonely Places, Dangerous Ground: Nicholas Ray in American Cinema, also published by SUNY Press.

Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange


Adam Scovell - 2017
    The furrows of Robin Hardy ('The Wicker Man'), Piers Haggard ('Blood on Satan's Claw'), and Michael Reeves ('Witchfinder General') have arisen again, most notably in the films of Ben Wheatley ('Kill List'), as has the Spirit of Dark of Lonely Water, Juganets, cursed Saxon crowns, spaceships hidden under ancient barrows, owls and flowers, time-warping stone circles, wicker men, the goat of Mendes, and malicious stone tapes.Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful And Things Strange charts the summoning of these esoteric arts within the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond, using theories of psychogeography, hauntology, and topography to delve into the genre's output in film, television, and multimedia as its "sacred demon of ungovernableness" rises yet again in the twenty-first century.

Let's Get Monster Smashed: Horror Movie Drinks for a Killer Time


Jon Chaiet - 2017
    There are 55 recipes spread across 5 chapters (shots, gelatin, punches, special fx, and non-alcoholic) inspired by classic pulp horror movies of the '80s and '90s, complete with viewing recommendations. The movies may be weird, the drinks may look gross, but the elevated drink making techniques and unusually tasty recipes keep readers and their guests interested and coming back for more. Great for theme parties, Halloween festivals, movie fans, and retro enthusiasts.

Yuletide Terror: Christmas Horror on Film and Television


Paul CorupeEric Zaldivar - 2017
    The festive holiday season has always included a more somber side, and scary tales of child-stealing demons to ghost stories told ‘round the fireplace go back to pre-Christian celebrations. These long-standing traditions have found modern expression in Christmas horror film and television shows, a unique and sometimes controversial subgenre that cheerfully drives a stake of holly through the heart of cherished Christmas customs.Yuletide Terror: Christmas Horror on Film and Television offers a definitive, in-depth exploration of the history of these subversive film and television presentations that allow viewers to engage in different ways with the complicated cultural history of the Christmas season. Yuletide Terror collects over 20 essays and interviews that will deck your halls with insightful looks at all your festive fright favourites, including the BBC’s A Ghost Story for Christmas anthology series and contentious 1980s Santa slashers like Silent Night, Deadly Night. Unwrapping the true meaning of films featuring everyone from the Krampus and Scrooge to killer snowmen and evil elves, Yuletide Terror is a comprehensive look at TV and cinematic holiday horror from around the world, and includes a compendium including nearly 200 Christmas horror film reviews.

Strolling Player: The Life and Career of Albert Finney


Gabriel Hershman - 2017
    This riveting account of the life and career of Albert Finney examines how one of Britain’s greatest actors built a glittering career without sacrificing his integrity. It’s also the story of an actor who went his own way, did his share of roistering and yet outlived his contemporaries to become one of our most durable international stars. Bon vivant, perennial rebel, self-effacing character star, charismatic charmer, mentor to a generation of working-class artists, a byword for professionalism, lover of horseflesh—and female flesh—Finney is all these things and more—as Gabriel Hershman’s colourful and incisive biography reveals.

1939: Hollywood's Greatest Year


Thomas S. Hischak - 2017
    Lincoln all have in common? They are all classic films released in the same year, but none of them received Academy Award nominations for best picture. Why? In that same year, Hollywood produced Dark Victory, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Ninotchka, as well as two of the most beloved films of all time, Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. In 1939 Hollywood created an unprecedented number of great films, a year that has yet to be surpassed in cinematic achievement.In 1939: Hollywood's Greatest Year, Thomas S. Hischak looks at the most remarkable 365 days in film history. Arranged chronologically from January 1 to December 31, 1939, each entry covers one day and features major news events (national and international) as well as minor curiosities or news items that would prove to be more important in the future. The activities on Broadway, radio, the music business, literature, and other arts are included, as are noteworthy sporting events. Most significantly, this book provides a full description and commentary on the Hollywood movies that were released on that day.All 510 feature films from all the Hollywood studios are included in the book, along with notable shorts, cartoons, newsreels, and foreign releases. While others have looked at the movie highlights of this momentous year, Hischak evaluates Hollywood's entire screen output of 1939, from B pictures and serial installments to the international blockbusters--and every film in between. 1939: Hollywood's Greatest Year is a captivating look at this phenomenon and will fascinate any film aficionado.-- "CHOICE"

The Ultimate Guide to Strange Cinema


Michael Vaughn - 2017
    But for those searching for just that and more strange things in their viewing queue, this film guide is for you. Organized by genre, including comedy, horror, action, drama, fantasy, and sci-fi, this title offers 300 reviews of genre films from all over the world, 160 photos, and exclusive interviews and quotes from the people behind some of the most offbeat films ever made. Alongside this curated list of viewing recommendations, longtime fans and new comers to strange cinema gain bits of fun and informative trivia. For example, David Caruso's film debut was Without Warning (1980), a carefree trip into the woods thwarted by killer flying alien discs. Lurking in these so-bad-they're-good-films, you'll find other familiar actors like David Carradine, James Brolin, Martin Landau, and Ryan Gosling in films like Death Race 2,000 (1975), The Car (1977), The Being (1983), and Lost River (2014). The zombie sushi, by the way, is from Dead Sushi (2012).

Dr. Chuck Tingle's Complete Guide To Film


Chuck Tingle - 2017
    Chuck Tingle is well known in the realm of love and romance literature, but his brilliant artistic analysis extends much farther than just the written word. Now, the good doctor has confidently entered the world of cinema with his illuminating manual, Dr. Chuck Tingle

On The Decay Of Criticism: The Complete Essays Of W. M. Spackman


W.M. Spackman - 2017
    M. Spackman was also a literary critic of formidable power and slashing wit. Gathered here are all the essays and reviews he published, including those that appeared in his 1967 book of essays On the Decay of Humanism. Ranging from ancient Greek and Latin literature to the latest poetry and novels, these brilliant essays argue that a work of literature should be evaluated on its artistry and craftsmanship, not on its content or ideas. Spackman quotes, with approval, Nabokov’s belief that, “Style and structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are a lot of hogwash,” and insists “aesthetic assessments… must come before everything else.” On those grounds, he finds such celebrated masters as Leo Tolstoy and Henry James inferior to lesser-known artists like Henry Green and Ivy Compton-Burnett. His iconoclastic views are supported with close technical analyses, but in a relaxed style that delights as it instructs.

Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s


Elena Gorfinkel - 2017
    Hundreds of such films were produced and shown on both urban and small-town screens over the course of the decade. Yet despite their vital importance to the film scene, and though they are now understood as a gateway to the emergence of publicly exhibited hardcore pornography in the early 1970s, these films have been largely overlooked by scholars.Defined by low budgets, quick production times, unknown actors, strategic uses of nudity, and a sensationalist obsession with unbridled female sexuality, sexploitation films provide a unique window into a tumultuous period in American culture and sexual politics. In Lewd Looks, Elena Gorfinkel examines the social and legal developments that made sexploitation films possible: their aesthetics, their regulation, and their audiences. Gorfinkel explores the ways sexploitation films changed how spectators encountered and made sense of the sexualized body and set the stage for the adult film industry of today. Lewd Looks recovers a lost chapter in the history of independent cinema and American culture—a subject that will engross readers interested in media, sexuality, gender, and the 1960s. Gorfinkel investigates the films and their contexts with scholarly depth and vivid storytelling, producing a new account of the obscene image, screen sex, and adult film and media.

Horror in Space: Critical Essays on a Film Subgenre


Michele Brittany - 2017
    The Alien films launched a new generation of horror films set in the great unknown, while also inspiring genre filmmakers to take Earth-bound franchises like Leprechaun and Friday the 13th to space. This unique collection of essays analyzes the space horror subgenre and its rise as a cinematic phenomenon since the 1950s. With a focus on films including Paul W.S. Anderson's Event Horizon, Duncan Jones' Moon, Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires, John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars, and numerous others, these essays provide a historical retrospective of the genre's cinematic journey and an in-depth examination of how genre filmmakers explored the concepts of the final girl/survivor, the uncanny valley, the isolationism of space travel, religion, and supernatural phenomenons to terrify audiences within the confines of space.

Giant Creatures in Our World: Essays on Kaiju and American Popular Culture


Camille D.G. MustachioNicholas Bollinger - 2017
    From homage to parody to advertising, references to Godzilla--and to a lesser extent Gamera, Rodan, Ultraman and others--abound in entertainment media. Godzilla in particular is so ubiquitous, his name is synonymous with immensity and destruction. In this collection of new essays, contributors examine kaiju representations in a range of contexts and attempt to define this at times ambiguous genre.

Styling the Stars: Lost Treasures from the Twentieth Century Fox Archive


Angela Cartwright - 2017
    Published here for the first time, this archive includes hundreds of riveting portraits of Hollywood’s most treasured leading men and women as they were prepped for the camera.Revered for their indisputable sense of style, the carefully crafted characters portrayed by the likes of Clark Gable, Julie Andrews, and Audrey Hepburn came as the result of meticulous hairstyling, makeup artistry, and lavish costume design. In Hollywood’s trendsetting word of glamour and glitz, continuity photographs ensured that these wardrobe elements remained consistent throughout the filming process. Once fully styled, stars posed for camera-ready continuity shots, which now, decades later, provide a striking record of the evolution of Hollywood fashion and stardom from the 1930s to the early 1970s. Through these long-lost photographs, which were never intended for the public eye, Styling the Stars takes fans of film, fashion, and photography inside the Twentieth Century Fox archive to deliver an intimate look at Hollywood’s Golden Age and beyond.Written by Angela Cartwright (The Sound of Music, Lost in Space) and Tom McLaren, with a foreword by Maureen O’Hara (Miracle on 34th Street), this collection of candid rarities offers a glimpse into the details of prepping Hollywood’s most iconic personalities, as well as revelatory stories about Twentieth Century Fox classics, such as Planet of the Apes, Cleopatra, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Young Lions, and more. Here you’ll find images of Shirley Temple as she runs a brush through her trademark curls, Marilyn Monroe as she’s styled for her role in Let’s Make It Legal, Cary Grant as he suits up for a swim, and Paul Newman donning a six-shooter, among hundreds of rare, never-before-published photographs. The result is a stunning collector’s volume of film and fashion photography, as well as an invaluable compendium of movie history.Styling the Stars is now available in paperback for the first time.