Best of
Film

2018

Room to Dream


David Lynch - 2018
    Lynch responds to each recollection and reveals the inner story of the life behind the art.

Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece


Michael Benson - 2018
    Clarke created this cinematic masterpiece.Regarded as a masterpiece today, 2001: A Space Odyssey received mixed reviews on its 1968 release. Despite the success of Dr. Strangelove, director Stanley Kubrick wasn’t yet recognized as a great filmmaker, and 2001 was radically innovative, with little dialogue and no strong central character. Although some leading critics slammed the film as incomprehensible and self-indulgent, the public lined up to see it. 2001’s resounding commercial success launched the genre of big-budget science fiction spectaculars. Such directors as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, and James Cameron have acknowledged its profound influence.Author Michael Benson explains how 2001 was made, telling the story primarily through the two people most responsible for the film, Kubrick and science fiction legend Arthur C. Clarke. Benson interviewed Clarke many times, and has also spoken at length with Kubrick’s widow, Christiane; with visual effects supervisor Doug Trumbull; with Dan Richter, who played 2001’s leading man-ape; and many others.A colorful nonfiction narrative packed with memorable characters and remarkable incidents, Space Odyssey provides a 360-degree view of this extraordinary work, tracking the film from Kubrick and Clarke’s first meeting in New York in 1964 through its UK production from 1965-1968, during which some of the most complex sets ever made were merged with visual effects so innovative that they scarcely seem dated today. A concluding chapter examines the film’s legacy as it grew into it current justifiably exalted status.

Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth


Ian Nathan - 2018
    From the early days of daring to dream it could be done, through the highs and lows of making the films, to fan adoration and, finally, Oscar glory.LightsA nine-year-old boy in New Zealand’s Pukerua Bay stays up late and is spellbound by a sixty-year-old vision of a giant ape on an island full of dinosaurs. This is true magic. And the boy knows that he wants to be a magician.CameraFast-forward twenty years and the boy has begun to cast a spell over the film-going audience, conjuring gore-splattered romps with bravura skill that will lead to Academy recognition with an Oscar nomination for Heavenly Creatures. The boy from Pukerua Bay with monsters reflected in his eyes has arrived, and Hollywood comes calling. What would he like to do next? ‘How about a fantasy film, something like The Lord of the Rings…?’ActionThe greatest work of fantasy in modern literature, and the biggest, with rights ownership so complex it will baffle a wizard. Vast. Complex. Unfilmable. One does not simply walk into Mordor – unless you are Peter Jackson.Anything You Can Imagine tells the full, dramatic story of how Jackson and his trusty fellowship of Kiwi filmmakers dared take on a quest every bit as daunting as Frodo’s, and transformed JRR Tolkien’s epic tale of adventure into cinematic magic, and then did it again with The Hobbit. Enriched with brand-new interviews with Jackson, his fellow filmmakers and many of the films’ stars, Ian Nathan’s mesmerising narrative whisks us to Middle-earth, to gaze over the shoulder of the director as he creates the impossible, the unforgettable, and proves that film-making really is ‘anything you can imagine’.

Inside Black Mirror


Charlie Brooker - 2018
    This first official book logs the entire Black Mirror journey, from its origins in creator Charlie Brooker’s mind to its current status as one of the biggest cult TV shows to emerge from the UK. Alongside a collection of astonishing behind-the-scenes imagery and ephemera, Brooker and producer Annabel Jones will detail the creative genesis, inspiration and thought process behind each film for the first time, while key actors, directors and other creative talents relive their own involvement. ‘Brooker continues to solidify himself as one of the most creative writers in the medium. Even when the unfair creep of expectations rears up, Black Mirror and Brooker deliver.’ – The Hollywood Reporter‘Black Mirror: the future is already here, and it's terrifying’ - Telegraph

True Indie: Life and Death in Filmmaking


Don Coscarelli - 2018
    Travel with him as he chaperones three out-of-control child actors as they barnstorm Japan, almost drowns actress Catherine Keener in her first film role, and transforms a short story about Elvis Presley battling a four thousand year-old Egyptian mummy into a beloved cult classic film.Witness the incredible cast of characters he meets along the way from heavy metal god Ronnie James Dio to first-time filmmakers Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary. Learn how breaking bread with genre icons Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter and Guillermo Del Toro leads to a major cable series and watch as he and zombie king George A. Romero together take over an unprepared national network television show with their tales of blood and horror.This memoir fits an entire film school education into a single book. It's loaded with behind-the-scenes stories: like setting his face on fire during the making of Phantasm, hearing Bruce Campbell's most important question before agreeing to star in Bubba Ho-tep, and crafting a horror thriller into a franchise phenomenon spanning four decades. Find out how Coscarelli managed to retain creative and financial control of his artistic works in an industry ruled by power-hungry predators, and all without going insane or bankrupt.True Indie will prove indispensable for fans of Coscarelli's movies, aspiring filmmakers, and anyone who loves a story of an underdog who prevails while not betraying what he believes.

Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood


Karina Longworth - 2018
    But as Karina Longworth reminds us, long before the Harvey Weinsteins there was Howard Hughes—the Texas millionaire, pilot, and filmmaker whose reputation as a cinematic provocateur was matched only by that as a prolific womanizer.His supposed conquests between his first divorce in the late 1920s and his marriage to actress Jean Peters in 1957 included many of Hollywood’s most famous actresses, among them Billie Dove, Katharine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, and Lana Turner. From promoting bombshells like Jean Harlow and Jane Russell to his contentious battles with the censors, Hughes—perhaps more than any other filmmaker of his era—commoditized male desire as he objectified and sexualized women. Yet there were also numerous women pulled into Hughes’s grasp who never made it to the screen, sometimes virtually imprisoned by an increasingly paranoid and disturbed Hughes, who retained multitudes of private investigators, security personnel, and informers to make certain these actresses would not escape his clutches.Vivid, perceptive, timely, and ridiculously entertaining, Seduction is a landmark work that examines women, sex, and male power in Hollywood during its golden age—a legacy that endures nearly a century later.

Like Brothers


Mark Duplass - 2018
    Now, for the first time, Mark and Jay take readers on a tour of their lifelong partnership in this unique memoir told in essays that share the secrets of their success, the joys and frustrations of intimate collaboration, and the lessons they've learned the hard way.From a childhood spent wielding an oversized home video camera in the suburbs of New Orleans to their shared years at the University of Texas in early-nineties Austin, and from the breakthrough short they made on a three-dollar budget to the night their feature film Baghead became the center of a Sundance bidding war, Mark and Jay tell the story of a bond that's resilient, affectionate, mutually empowering, and only mildly dysfunctional. They are brutally honest about how their closeness sabotaged their youthful romantic relationships, about the jealousy each felt when the other stole the spotlight as an actor (Mark in The League, Jay in Transparent), and about the challenges they faced on the set of their HBO series Togetherness--namely, too much togetherness.But Like Brothers is also a surprisingly practical road map to a rewarding creative partnership. Rather than split all their responsibilities fifty-fifty, the brothers learned to capitalize on each other's strengths. They're not afraid to call each other out, because they're also not afraid to compromise. Most relationships aren't--and frankly shouldn't be--as intense as Mark and Jay's, but their brand of trust, validation, and healthy disagreement has taken them far.Part coming-of-age memoir, part underdog story, and part insider account of succeeding in Hollywood on their own terms, Like Brothers is as openhearted and lovably offbeat as Mark and Jay themselves."Wright. Ringling. Jonas. I'm sure you could name a bunch of famous brother teams. They're all garbage compared to Mark and Jay. I can't wait for you to read this book."--from the foreword by Mindy Kaling

Typeset in the Future: Typography and Design in Science Fiction Movies


Dave Addey - 2018
    In Typeset in the Future, blogger and designer Dave Addey invites sci-fi movie fans on a journey through seven genre-defining classics, discovering how they create compelling visions of the future through typography and design. The book delves deep into 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Alien, Blade Runner, Total Recall, WALL·E, and Moon, studying the design tricks and inspirations that make each film transcend mere celluloid and become a believable reality. These studies are illustrated by film stills, concept art, type specimens, and ephemera, plus original interviews with Mike Okuda (Star Trek), Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall), and Ralph Eggleston and Craig Foster (Pixar). Typeset in the Future is an obsessively geeky study of how classic sci-fi movies draw us in to their imagined worlds—and how they have come to represent “THE FUTURE” in popular culture.

Esoteric Hollywood II: More Sex, Cults Symbols in Film


Jay Dyer - 2018
    Esoteric Hollywood is a game-changer in an arena of tabloid-populated titles. After years of scholarly research, Jay Dyer has compiled his most read essays, combining philosophy, comparative religion, symbolism, and geopolitics and their connections to film. Readers will watch movies with new eyes, able to decipher on their own, as the secret meanings of cinema are unveiled.

The Earth Dies Streaming


A.S. Hamrah - 2018
    S. Hamrah's film writing for n+1, The Baffler, Bookforum, Harper s, and other publications. Acerbic, insightful, hilarious, and damning, Hamrah s aphoristic capsule reviews and lucid career retrospectives of filmmakers and critics have taken up the mantle of serious American film criticism pioneered by James Agee, Robert Warshow, and Pauline Kael and carried it into the 21st century. Taken together, these reviews and essays represent some of the best film criticism in the English language. The Earth Dies Streaming showcases a remarkable critical intelligence while offering a cultural history of the cinema of our times.

Marvel Studios Visual Dictionary


Adam Bray - 2018
    A unique and captivating showcase of the first ten years of Marvel Studios, this is the book that every Marvel movie fan has been waiting for!(c) 2018 MARVEL

The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies


Ben Fritz - 2018
    In the past decade, Hollywood has endured a cataclysm on a par with the end of silent film and the demise of the studio system. Stars and directors have seen their power dwindle, while writers and producers lift their best techniques from TV, comic books, and the toy biz. The future of Hollywood is being written by powerful corporate brands like Marvel, Amazon, Netflix, and Lego, as well as censors in China.Ben Fritz chronicles this dramatic shakeup with unmatched skill, bringing equal fluency to both the financial and entertainment aspects of Hollywood. He dives deeply into the fruits of the Sony hack to show how the previous model, long a creative and commercial success, lost its way. And he looks ahead through interviews with dozens of key players at Disney, Marvel, Netflix, Amazon, Imax, and others to discover how they have reinvented the business. He shows us, for instance, how Marvel replaced stars with “universes,” and how Disney remade itself in Apple’s image and reaped enormous profits.But despite the destruction of the studios’ traditional playbook, Fritz argues that these seismic shifts signal the dawn of a new heyday for film. The Big Picture shows the first glimmers of this new golden age through the eyes of the creative mavericks who are defining what our movies will look like in the new era.

So Say We All: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Battlestar Galactica


Mark A. Altman - 2018
    What began as a three-hour made for TV movie inspired by the blockbuster success of Star Wars followed by a single season of legendary episodes, was transformed into one of the most critically acclaimed and beloved series in television history. And gathered exclusively in this volume are the incredible untold stories of both shows - as well as the much-maligned Galactica 1980.For the first time ever, you will learn the uncensored, unbelievable true story of forty years of Battlestar Galactica as told by the teams that created a television legend in the words of over hundred cast, creators, crew, critics and executives who were there and brought it all to life. So Say We All!

The Art of Avengers: Infinity War


Eleni Roussos - 2018
    A ruthless warlord who plans to collect all six Infi nity Stones. Joined by his formidable allies, he will be near-unstoppable at achieving his goal. The Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange and Spider-Man must join forces and fi ght side by side to stop Thanos, while the fate of the Earth and the universe lies in the balance. Go behind the scenes with this keepsake volume!Filled with exclusive concept art for character, costume and set designs, as well as production stills and in-depth interviews with the fi lmmakers, Marvel's Avengers: Infinity War - The Art of the Movie provides exciting insider details about the making of this highly anticipated film.

The Coen Brothers: This Book Really Ties the Films Together


Adam Nayman - 2018
    In The Coen Brothers: This Book Really Ties the Films Together, film critic Adam Nayman carefully sifts through their complex cinematic universe in an effort to plot, as he puts it, “some Grand Unified Theory of Coen-ness.” The book combines critical text—biography, close film analysis, and enlightening interviews with key Coen collaborators—with a visual aesthetic that honors the Coens’ singular mix of darkness and levity. Featuring film stills, beautiful and evocative illustrations, punchy infographics, and hard insight, this book will be the definitive exploration of the Coen brothers’ oeuvre.

Screenwriting 101: Mastering the Art of Story


Angus Fletcher - 2018
    Scott Fitzgerald, was lured by the promise of Hollywood glamour to try his hand at screenwriting. He failed. His misadventure became a cautionary tale for aspiring screenwriters for decades. Meanwhile, Oscar-nominated scriptwriter John Milius, who penned the script for Apocalypse Now, once said that his job was “hackwork.” So which is it? Is writing for the screen a glamorous vocation or formulaic drudgery? Is it a difficult undertaking that can sink a great novelist at the height of his career, or simply another boring day job that requires minimal skill?

Christmas in the Movies: 30 Classics to Celebrate the Season


Jeremy Arnold - 2018
    "Christmas films" come in many shapes and sizes and exist across many genres. Some, like It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story, are perennials, while others, such as Die Hard, have only gradually become yuletide favorites. But they all have one thing in common: they use themes evoked by the holiday period - nostalgia, joy, togetherness, dysfunction, commercialism, or cynicism - as a force in their storytelling.Turner Classic Movies: Christmas in the Movies showcases the very best among this uniquely spirited strain of cinema. Each film is profiled on what makes it a "Christmas movie," along with behind-the-scenes stories of its production, reception, and legacy. Complemented by a trove of color and black-and-white photos, Turner Classic Movies: Christmas in the Movies is a glorious salute to a collection of the most treasured films of all time.Among the 30 films included: The Shop Around the Corner, Holiday Inn, Meet Me in St. Louis, It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, White Christmas, A Christmas Story, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Home Alone, Little Women,and The Nightmare Before Christmas.

We Don't Go Back: A Watcher's Guide to Folk Horror


Howard David Ingham - 2018
    Enter the haunted landscapes of folk horror, a world of -pagan -village conspiracies, witch finders, and teenagers awakening to evil; of dark fairy tales, backwoods cults and obsolete technologies. Beginning with the classics Night of the Demon, Witchfinder General, The Wicker Man and Blood on Satan's Claw, We Don't Go Back surveys the genre of screen folk horror from across the world. Travelling from Watership Down to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, with every stop in between, We Don't Go Back is a thoughtful, funny and essential overview of folk horror in TV and cinema.

Through a Different Lens: Stanley Kubrick Photographs


Stanley Kubrick - 2018
    His humanist slice-of-life features celebrate his native New York City and already reveal a burgeoning creative genius. With around 300 images, many previously unseen, as well as rare Look magazine tear sheets, this release coincides with a major show at the Museum of the City of New York and includes an introduction by noted photography critic Luc Sante.

Back to the Future: The Heavy Collection, Vol. 1


Bob Gale - 2018
    Read "When Marty Met Emmet," "Jurassic Biff," "Clara's Story," and the six-part story "Continuum Conundrum," where Doc has disappeared in the time stream and Marty is the only one who can find him!Collects issues #1-12 of the Back To The Future comic series.

The Mickey Mouse Museum: The Story of an Icon


Disney Books - 2018
    The Mickey Mouse Museum gives readers the experience of a fascinating exhibition from the pages of a beautiful book. This stunningly curated collection includes rarely-seen artwork from the Disney archives, from concept sketches to final drawings.Chronicling the journey of the world-famous Mickey Mouse, this book is a must-have addition to any collector's shelf.

The Dark Masters Trilogy


Stephen Volk - 2018
    A little boy approaches him, taking him to be the famous vampire-hunter Van Helsing from the Hammer films, begs for his expert help...Leytonstone - 1906.Young Alfred Hitchcock is taken by his father to visit the local police station. There he suddenly finds himself, inexplicably, locked up for a crime he knows nothing about - the catalyst for a series of events that will scar, and create, the world's leading Master of Terror... Netherwood - 1947.Best-selling black magic novelist Dennis Wheatley finds himself summoned mysteriously to the aid of Aleister Crowley - mystic, reprobate, The Great Beast 666, and dubbed by the press ‘The Wickedest Man in the World’ - to help combat a force of genuine evil...

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me


Lindsay Hallam - 2018
    Subsequent reviews from critics were almost unanimously negative, and many fans of the show felt betrayed, as their beloved town was suddenly revealed as a personal hell. Yet in the years since the film’s release, there has begun to be a gradual wave of reappraisal and appreciation, one that accelerated with the broadcast of Twin Peaks: The Return in 2017. What has been central to this reevaluation is the realization that what Lynch had created was not a parody of soap opera and detective television but a horror movie.In this Devil’s Advocate, Lindsay Hallam argues that the horror genre aids Lynch’s purpose in presenting the protagonist Laura Palmer’s subjective experience leading to her death as the incorporation of horror tropes actually leads to a more accurate representation of a victim’s suffering and confusion. She goes on to explore how the film was an attempt by Lynch to take back ownership of the material and to examine the initial reaction and subsequent reevaluation of the film, as well as the paratexts that link to it and the influence that Fire Walk with Me now has on contemporary film and across popular culture.

Once Upon a Time in the West: Shooting a Masterpiece


Christopher Frayling - 2018
    An in-depth analysis and shot by shot look at this iconic film by the world's leading authority on Sergio Leone, Sir Christopher Frayling, who coined the phrase "Spaghetti Western." Set photographer Angelo Novi was given complete access on the film and was present every day. This book features his stunning in-depth photography of every aspect of the shoot, including never-before-seen outtakes, off-screen shots and deleted scenes.

Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story


Chris Nashawaty - 2018
    Of difficult egos, awful behavior, fragile friendships, bursts of inspiration, and blizzards of cocaine―told by the survivors and shaped by Chris Nashawaty's welcome insight and perspective.”― Mark Harris, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures at a Revolution and Five Came BackCaddyshack is one of the most beloved comedies of all time, a classic snobs vs. slobs story of working class kids and the white collar buffoons that make them haul their golf bags in the hot summer sun. It has sex, drugs and one very memorable candy bar, but the movie we all know and love didn’t start out that way, and everyone who made it certainly didn’t have the word “classic” in mind as the cameras were rolling.In Caddyshack:The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story film critic for Entertainment Weekly Chris Nashawaty goes behind the scenes of the iconic film, chronicling the rise of comedy’s greatest deranged minds as they form The National Lampoon, turn the entertainment industry on its head, and ultimately blow up both a golf course and popular culture as we know it. Caddyshack is at once an eye-opening narrative about one of the most interesting, surreal, and dramatic film productions there’s ever been, and a rich portrait of the biggest, and most revolutionary names in Hollywood. So, it’s got that going for it…which is nice.

Lessons from the Set: A DIY Guide to Your First Feature Film, from Script to Theaters


Usher Morgan - 2018
    The book is peppered with filmmaking tips and tricks, as well as valuable, practical insight into the process of writing, directing, producing, and distributing commercial feature films on a low budget – whether you’re working with $1,000 or $1m. You’ll learn how to write, direct, produce, and release your film to theaters, tackle festivals and handle press, create a marketing plan, get reviews, and approach the filmmaking process with both an artistic soul and an entrepreneurial mindset. After releasing his debut feature film to wide acclaim, filmmaker Usher Morgan (Prego, Windblown, Pickings) decided to write a filmmaking book which detailed his approach to writing, directing, and producing his own work, as well as the steps he took to distribute and market his film, Pickings, and release it to theaters across the nation. Lessons from the Set: A DIY Guide to Your First Feature Film, from Script to Theaters is the perfect gift to any aspiring filmmaker, it’s an essential guide for anyone who wants to tell stories and make movies for a living.

Death Valley Superstars: Occasionally Fatal Adventures in Filmland


Duke Haney - 2018
    Fame proved faithful, of course, to Monroe, the book’s most iconic subject, while others, like Steve Cochran, a villain in movies and a “hard-drinking, bed-hopping cop magnet” in reality, were widely forgotten before their untimely, often mysterious deaths. Taking an experimental tack in some instances, Haney employs a psychic medium to conduct a séance at Jim Morrison’s former residence and an astrologer to interpret the birth chart of an astrology-crazed film star-turned-bank robber. He attends the funeral of the “next James Dean” who became a raggedy street person, performs a cringeworthy nude scene in a movie produced by “King of the Bs” Roger Corman, and searches for the camper van where funk trailblazer Sly Stone has been reduced to living. Painstakingly researched and compulsively readable, Death Valley Superstars offers a kind of midnight tour of Los Angeles past and present, highlighting hidden corridors and seldom-heard anecdotes about a few of the many who, fooled by Hollywood’s mirages, found themselves caught in its quicksand.“Duke Haney, one of my favorite writers, has produced yet another masterpiece. This time, Haney trains his one-of-a-kind vision on one of his signature obsessions: fading celebrity, of the kind peculiar to Hollywood. Here is an author at the peak of his powers, writing with precision about a subject that is his absolute forte. No one else has the dark genius to conjure up a book like this, a great American tragedy, endlessly interesting.”—Greg Olear, author of Totally Killer, Fathermucker, and Dirty Rubles“Duke Haney tells the stories you think you’ve heard before but haven’t, and the stories you can’t believe no one else has told. He makes Hollywood more beguiling, more lurid, and more human while getting to the bottom of what it means to chase a dream.” —Jim Ruland, author of Forest of Fortune"A smart, funny pop-culture cocktail, served straight, no chaser. Mixes smooth 100-proof prose with the street-level buzz of a punkish homebrew.”—Paul M. Sammon, author of Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner“Haney is a meticulous virtuoso of his craft, deft in his research, reflection, and prose. Slow read this book without distractions because writing and tales this exceptional must be savored.”—Ronlyn Domingue, author of The Mercy of Thin Air and the Keeper of Tales Trilogy“Like the best kind of writing, these tales, full of disarming charm and sly wit, both entertain and leave an ache in your heart.”—Mary Guterson, author of We Are All Fine Here“Haney bravely guides us like Dante into the searing inferno of our collective fantasy life.” —Brin-Jonathan Butler, author of The Domino Diaries and The Grandmaster“I only have two requirements of book authors. One is that he loves his material. The second is that his sensibility yields insight. Duke Haney is one of a handful of writers I trust implicitly in both categories. In these times of lie and compromise, we need his truth all the more.”—Art Edwards, author of Badge“I know what you’re saying. Yet another Hollywood book? As if. I’m on a Death Valley trip riding shotgun with Steve Cochran and Sean Flynn and I’m not giving up my seat. Even if there’s no escape hatch.” —Donna Lethal, author of Milk of Amnesia

A Star Is Born: Judy Garland and the Film that Got Away


Lorna Luft - 2018
    This is a vivid account of a film classic's production, loss, and reclamation.A Star Is Born -- the classic Hollywood tale about a young talent rising to superstardom, and the downfall of her mentor/lover along the way -- has never gone out of style. It has seen five film adaptations, but none compares to the 1954 version starring Judy Garland in her greatest role. But while it was the crowning performance of the legendary entertainer's career, the production turned into one of the most talked about in movie history.The story, which depicts the dark side of fame, addiction, loss, and suicide, paralleled Garland's own tumultuous life in many ways. While hitting alarmingly close to home for the fragile star, it ultimately led to a superlative performance -- one that was nominated for an Academy Award, but lost in one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history. Running far too long for the studio's tastes, Warner Bros. notoriously slashed extensive amounts of footage from the finished print, leaving A Star is Born in tatters and breaking the heart of both the film's star and director George Cukor.Today, with a director's cut reconstructed from previously lost scenes and audio, the 1954 A Star is Born has taken its deserved place among the most critically acclaimed movies of all time, and continues to inspire each new generation that discovers it. Now, Lorna Luft, daughter of Judy Garland and the film's producer, Sid Luft, tells the story of the production, and of her mother's fight to save her career, as only she could. Teaming with film historian Jeffrey Vance, A Star Is Born is a vivid and refreshingly candid account of the crafting, loss, and restoration of a movie classic, complemented by a trove of images from the family collection taken both on and off the set. The book also includes essays on the other screen adaptations of A Star Is Born, to round out a complete history of a story that has remained a Hollywood favorite for close to a century.

Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture


Racquel Gates - 2018
    In Double Negative Racquel J. Gates examines the generative potential of such images, showing how some of the most disreputable representations of black people in popular media can strategically pose questions about blackness, black culture, and American society in ways that more respectable ones cannot. Rather than falling back on claims that negative portrayals hinder black progress, Gates demonstrates how reality shows such as Basketball Wives, comedians like Katt Williams, and movies like Coming to America play on "negative" images to take up questions of assimilation and upward mobility, provide a respite from the demands of respectability, and explore subversive ideas. By using negativity as a framework to illustrate these texts' social and political work as they reverberate across black culture, Gates opens up new lines of inquiry for black cultural studies.

Harmony Korine


Harmony Korine - 2018
    Harmony Korine's talent as a writer and filmmaker has earned the approval of a wide range of audiences. His first major monograph gathers together many of his most significant projects, spanning film, writing, and art.Korine rose to prominence after penning Larry Clark's infamous Kids (1995) at the age of nineteen. In the years since, he has created critically acclaimed cult classics, including Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy, Mister Lonely, Trash Humpers, and Spring Breakers, as well as the lauded street-art documentary Beautiful Losers. Korine's creative practice extends to photography, drawing, and figurative and abstract painting.This book is the first to reflect on Korine's career to date, and will mark his massive influence on indie culture over the past twenty years. This project aims to explore the importance of process and experimentation as well as the artist's wide variety of creative tools such as collage and editing that help shape his ever-changing practice. An interview by film critic Emmanuel Burdeau and an essay by curator Alicia Knock trace common themes through his films and art works, exploring Korine's interests in the surreal quality of contemporary life.

The Essential Screenplay (3-Book Bundle): Screenplay: Foundations of Screenwriting, Screenwriter's Workbook, and Screenwriter's Problem Solver


Syd Field - 2018
    His pioneering insights into structure, concept, and character launched innumerable careers. Now in one handy collection, his invaluable expertise is available to aspiring writers and working professionals alike.  The Essential Screenplay contains Syd Field's Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, the industry standard for script development; The Screenwriter's Workbook, a hands-on workshop full of practical exercises for creating successful screenplays; and The Screenwriter's Problem Solver, a guide to identifying and fixing problems in your latest draft.  Throughout, you'll learn:* why the first ten pages of your script are crucially important* how to visually "grab" the reader from page one* what makes great stories work* the basics of writing dialogue* the essentials of creating great characters* how to adapt a novel, a play, or an article for the screen* the three ways to claim legal ownership of your work* tips for allowing your creative self to break free when you hit the "wall"* how to overcome writer's block forever Featuring expert analysis of popular films including Pulp Fiction, Thelma & Louise, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Essential Screenplay will transform your initial idea into a screenplay that's destined for success--and maybe even Cannes.  Praise for Syd Field "The most sought-after screenwriting teacher in the world."--The Hollywood Reporter  "Syd Field is the preeminent analyzer in the study of American screenplays."--James L. Brooks, Academy Award-winning writer, director, producer  "I based Like Water for Chocolate on what I learned in Syd's books. Before, I always felt structure imprisoned me, but what I learned was structure really freed me to focus on the story."--Laura Esquivel, writer, Like Water for Chocolate

Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema


Criterion Collection - 2018
    One of the most revelatory voices to emerge from the postwar explosion of international art-house cinema, Bergman was a master storyteller who startled the world with his stark intensity and naked pursuit of the most profound metaphysical and spiritual questions. The struggles of faith and morality, the nature of dreams, and the agonies and ecstasies of human relationships—Bergman explored these subjects in films ranging from comedies whose lightness and complexity belie their brooding hearts to groundbreaking formal experiments and excruciatingly intimate explorations of family life.Arranged as a film festival with opening and closing nights bookending double features and centerpieces, this selection spans six decades and thirty-nine films—including such celebrated classics as The Seventh Seal, Persona, and Fanny and Alexander alongside previously unavailable works like Dreams, The Rite, and Brink of Life. Accompanied by a 248-page book with essays on each program, as well as by more than thirty hours of supplemental features, Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema traces themes and images across Bergman’s career, blazing trails through the master’s unequaled body of work for longtime fans and newcomers alike.

Hitchcock's Heroines


Caroline Young - 2018
    From his early days as a director in the 1920s to his heyday as the Master of Suspense in the 1960s, Hitchcock had a complicated and controversial relationship with his leading ladies. He supervised their hair, their makeup, their wardrobe, pushing them to create his perfect vision onscreen. Yet these women were also style icons in their own right, and the clothes they wore imbued the films with contemporary glamour. From Kim Novak’s gray suit in Vertigo to Janet Leigh’s thematically symbolic lingerie in Psycho, these actresses and their clothes broke barriers, made history, and transfixed audiences around the world. In this book, Caroline Young chronicles six decades of glamorous style, exploring the fashion legacy of these amazing women and their experiences working with Hitchcock. Meticulously researched and beautifully illustrated with studio pictures, film stills, and original drawings of the costume designs, this book offers revealing insight into a fascinating period of movie history and the relationships between one of its leading directors and his female stars.

People Only Die of Love in Movies: Film Writing by Jim Ridley


Jim Ridley - 2018
    At the time of his unexpected death in 2016, Ridley was editor-in-chief of the alt-weekly Nashville Scene, the paper where his incisive, wide-ranging film reviews won him a devoted readership beginning in 1989.People Only Die of Love in Movies takes its title from a line in the 1964 movie musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, the subject of one of Ridley's best-known pieces, included in this volume. In all, the anthology collects nearly one hundred of Ridley's film reviews, essays, and journalistic works, expertly organized by editor Steve Haruch into writing by film genre (e.g., Westerns, the Nouvelle Vague), cinematic theme (e.g., heroes, sexuality), and writing style (e.g., negative reviews, narrative journalism) to demonstrate Ridley's range.People Only Die of Love in Movies invites its readers to revisit favorite films, discover new loves, and immerse themselves in the unparalleled writing of a discerning and knowledgeable critic.

The Science of Screenwriting: The Neuroscience Behind Storytelling Strategies


Paul Gulino - 2018
    Paul Gulino, author of the best-selling Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach, and Connie Shears, a noted cognitive psychologist, build, chapter-by-chapter, an understanding of the human perceptual/cognitive processes, from the functions of our eyes and ears bringing real world information into our brains, to the intricate networks within our brains connecting our decisions and emotions. They draw on a variety of examples from film and television -- The Social Network, Silver Linings Playbook and Breaking Bad -- to show how the human perceptual process is reflected in the storytelling strategies of these filmmakers. They conclude with a detailed analysis of one of the most successful and influential films of all time, Star Wars, to discover just how it had the effect that it had.

Hotel Transylvania 3 Movie Novelization


Stacia Deutsch - 2018
    Everyone’s favorite monsters are back, and this time, they’re funnier than ever. Join Dracula, Mavis, Johnny, Dennis, Frankenstein, Wayne the Werewolf, Murray the Mummy, Invisible Man Griffin, and more for a spook-tacular monster vacation that’s shore to be a good time. Find out what happens on this exciting cruise adventure in this hilarious monster comedy! ™ & © 2018 Sony Pictures Animation Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Miriam Hopkins: Life and Films of a Hollywood Rebel


Allan R. Ellenberger - 2018
    Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), The Story of Temple Drake (1933), and Ernst Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise (1932). Though she enjoyed popular and critical acclaim in her long career—receiving an Academy Award nomination for Becky Sharp (1935) and a Golden Globe nomination for The Heiress (1949—she is most often remembered for being one of the most difficult actresses of Hollywood’s golden age. Whether she was fighting with studio moguls over her roles or feuding with her avowed archrival, Bette Davis, her reputation for temperamental behavior is legendary.In the first comprehensive biography of this colorful performer, Allan R. Ellenberger illuminates Hopkins’s fascinating life and legacy. Her freewheeling film career was exceptional in studio-era Hollywood, and she managed to establish herself as a top star at Paramount, RKO, Goldwyn, and Warner Bros.Over the course of five decades, Hopkins appeared in thirty-six films, forty stage plays, and countless radio programs. Later, she emerged as a pioneer of TV drama. Ellenberger also explores Hopkins’s private life, including her relationships with such intellectuals as Theodore Dreiser, Dorothy Parker, Gertrude Stein, and Tennessee Williams. Although she was never blacklisted for her suspected Communist leanings, her association with these freethinkers and her involvement with certain political organizations led the FBI to keep a file on her for nearly forty years.This skillful biography treats readers to the intriguing stories and controversies surrounding Hopkins and her career, but also looks beyond her Hollywood persona to explore the star as an uncompromising artist. The result is an entertaining portrait of a brilliant yet underappreciated performer.

This Is No Dream: Making Rosemary's Baby


James Munn - 2018
    

Fantastic Beasts of the Wizarding World: The Complete Guide to J.K Rowling's Magical Creatures


Newsweek - 2018
    

The Photographer's Mind Remastered: Creative Thinking for Better Digital Photos


Michael Freeman - 2018
    You've bought your camera. You've learnt how to use it. Now what?The secret behind a good photograph is not your camera. It's not even the scene viewed through the viewfinder. It's the mind of the photographer which turns an average photograph into an exceptional one.In The Photographer's Mind, professional photographer and author Michael Freeman unravels the mystery behind the creation of a photograph and reveals how to capture photos that really make you feel something.The aim of this book is to answer what makes a photograph great, and explore the ways that top photographers achieve this goal time and time again.The Photographer's Mind will provide you with invaluable knowledge on:· Avoiding cliché· The recurring nature of trends· Style and composition· Capturing light· How to handle the unexpected

Halloween: The Changing Shape of an Iconic Series


Ernie Magnotta - 2018
    

The Art of Ready Player One


Gina McIntyre - 2018
    When Halliday dies, he leaves his immense fortune in the form of a digital Easter egg hidden somewhere in the OASIS, sparking a contest that grips the entire world. Wade Watts, an unlikely young hero, decides to join the contest and embarks on a reality-bending treasure hunt through a fantastical world of action, danger, and mystery. Directed by Steven Spielberg and based on author Ernest Cline’s internationally best-selling book, Ready Player One is a hugely imaginative sci-fi adventure set in a rich virtual world. The Art of Ready Player One explores the creation of the incredible design work for this much-anticipated film, showcasing a wealth of concept art, sketches, storyboards, and other stunning visuals. The book also features exclusive interviews and commentary from the creative team, forming the perfect companion to one of the most exciting films of 2018.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse The Official Movie Special


Titan Comics - 2018
    

LIFE Casablanca: The Most Beloved Movie of All Time


LIFE - 2018
    Go on set and behind the scenes with these memorable images and with compelling, insightful text. Learn about the making of the film that changed the industry, and discover the stories of the actors and creators of the movie—many of whom were refugees from Hitler’s oppression, lending authenticity to the film. By delving into enduring moments and lines like “Play it, Sam” and “We’ll always have Paris” and “As Time Goes By” and “Here’s looking at you, kid,” LIFE: Casablanca provides an intimate and inspiring look at one of Hollywood’s greatest achievements. Plus: a special look at Casablanca's cultural impact today.

Robin Wood on the Horror Film: Collected Essays and Reviews


Robin Wood - 2018
    Wood's interest in horror spanned his entire career and was a form of popular cinema to which he devoted unwavering attention. Robin Wood on the Horror Film: Collected Essays and Reviews compiles over fifty years of his groundbreaking critiques.In September 1979, Wood and Richard Lippe programmed an extensive series of horror films for the Toronto International Film Festival and edited a companion piece: The American Nightmare: Essays on the Horror Film - the first serious collection of critical writing on the horror genre. Robin Wood on the Horror Film now contains all of Wood's writings from The American Nightmare and nearly everything else he wrote over the years on horror-published in a range of journals and magazines-gathered together for the first time. It begins with the first essay Wood ever published, "Psychoanalysis of Psycho," which appeared in 1960 and already anticipated many of the ideas explored later in his touchstone book, Hitchcock's Films. The volume ends, fittingly, with, "What Lies Beneath?," written almost five decades later, an essay in which Wood reflects on the state of the horror film and criticism since the genre's renaissance in the 1970s. Wood's prose is eloquent, lucid, and convincing as he brings together his parallel interests in genre, authorship, and ideology. Deftly combining Marxist, Freudian, and feminist theory, Wood's prolonged attention to classic and contemporary horror films explains much about the genre's meanings and cultural functions.Robin Wood on the Horror Film will be an essential addition to the library of anyone interested in horror, science fiction, and film genre.

Analog Nightmares: The Shot On Video Horror Films of 1982-1995


Richard MoggWalter Ruether - 2018
    

Nudes


David Lynch - 2018
    The infinite variety of the human body is fascinating: it is amazing and magic to see how different women are.”— David LynchTen years after the exhibition The Air Is on Fire, which unveiled David Lynch’s photographic and painting work, comes the new photographic volume, David Lynch, Nudes, published by the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris.Featuring more than one hundred black-and-white and color images, many of them published for the first time, of feminine nudes captured by the iconic artist, these erotically charged photographs are close to abstraction, offering kaleidoscopic visions of the woman and attesting to David Lynch’s fascination with the infinite variety of the human body while also reminiscent of his cinematographic work.

The Female Gaze: Essential Movies Made by Women


Alicia Malone - 2018
    The viewer is forced to see female characters through a male lens, which distorts how all of us see women, and even how women see themselves.Typically, the keepers of film history and writers of film criticism have also been men. Yet, since the very birth of cinema, women have been making movies. So, what does the world look like through the “female gaze”? This is the question bestselling author and film reporter Alicia Malone poses, as she presents The Female Gaze―a collection of essays on fifty-two movies made by women. These films encompass various eras, nationalities, and stories, yet each movie is distinctly feminine. Joining Alicia Malone is a variety of established and aspiring female film critics, who write about their favorite film made by a female director.In these fascinating chapters you’ll discover brilliantly talented and accomplished women filmmakers―both world-renowned and obscure―who have shaped the film industry in ways rarely acknowledged. Learn about the hidden figures of filmmaking and about the acclaimed luminaries of the past and present.Readers will discover:• The accomplishments of numerous women in film such as Dorothy Arzner, Ida Lupino, Kathryn Bigelow, Lady Bird’s Greta Gerwig and more• The complex lives of these women and the struggles they faced carving a place for themselves in the film industry• How these women’s unique voices shaped the films they made and influenced the film world

A Place of Darkness: The Rhetoric of Horror in Early American Cinema


Kendall R. Phillips - 2018
    The term “horror film” was coined in 1931 between the premiere of Dracula and the release of Frankenstein, but monsters, ghosts, demons, and supernatural and horrific themes have been popular with American audiences since the emergence of novelty kinematographic attractions in the late 1890s. A Place of Darkness illuminates the prehistory of the horror genre by tracing the way horrific elements and stories were portrayed in films prior to the introduction of the term “horror film.”Using a rhetorical approach that examines not only early films but also the promotional materials for them and critical responses to them, Kendall R. Phillips argues that the portrayal of horrific elements was enmeshed in broader social tensions around the emergence of American identity and, in turn, American cinema. He shows how early cinema linked monsters, ghosts, witches, and magicians with Old World superstitions and beliefs, in contrast to an American way of thinking that was pragmatic, reasonable, scientific, and progressive. Throughout the teens and twenties, Phillips finds, supernatural elements were almost always explained away as some hysterical mistake, humorous prank, or nefarious plot. The Great Depression of the 1930s, however, constituted a substantial upheaval in the system of American certainty and opened a space for the reemergence of Old World gothic within American popular discourse in the form of the horror genre, which has terrified and thrilled fans ever since.

Towards A Third Cinema


Charu Nivedita - 2018
    This book, with its compelling insights, intends to put the stylistically groundbreaking, exceedingly true to life and aesthetically mesmerizing Latin American cinema on the map and establish it as the " Third Cinema:

Shaken: Drinking with James Bond and Ian Fleming, the official cocktail book


Edmund Weil - 2018
    Whether it's the favoured Martini, which features in almost every book, or a refreshing Negroni or Daiquiri, strong, carefully crafted drinks are a consistent feature of the Bond novels. Recipes are divided into five categories: Straight Up; On The Rocks; Tall; Fizzy; and Exotic. Sip on inventions such as Smersh, Moneypenny, That Old Devil M and Diamonds are Forever, as well as classic Bond cocktails such as the Vesper and, of course, the Dry Martini. Each recipe is accompanied by extracts from Fleming's writings - be it the passage where the classic drink was featured or a place, character or plot that inspired one of the drinks.Also features Ian Fleming's writings on whisky, gin and other spirits. Foreword by Fergus Fleming.

Sherlock Gnomes Movie Novelization


Mary Tillworth - 2018
    Young fans of the film can relive the fun with this hilarious novelization! TM & © 2018 Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

The Cyberpunk Nexus: Exploring the Blade Runner Universe


Lou TamboneBryce Carlson - 2018
    Based on the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by the acclaimed novelist Philip K. Dick and directed by Ridley Scott, Blade Runner was a visual and philosophical tour-de-force, set in a dystopian future in which artificially intelligent replicants, nearly indistinguishable from humans, are hunted down by police-operatives known as Blade Runners. Featuring the talents of Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Joanna Cassidy, Edward James Olmos, and Darryl Hannah, the film tackled numerous themes and birthed controversies that have been poured over by fans and critics ever since. Blade Runner has also inspired literary and comic-book spin-offs, and a cinematic sequel released in 2017.The Cyberpunk Nexus: Exploring the Blade Runner Universe examines the entire Blade Runner saga, from the original novel to its numerous film iterations. The book features a foreword by Paul M. Sammon (Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner). Essayists include Bryce Carlson (of BOOM! Comics’ Sheep adaptation), Paul J. Salamoff, Robert Meyer Burnett, Rich Handley, Zaki Hasan, Julian Darius, and many others, with a cover by popular artist Matt Busch.From Sequart Organization. More info at http://sequart.org

The Producer's Brain: A Pocket Guide to Thinking Like a Film Producer


David Kaufmann - 2018
    They must have the skills to incubate and shepherd creative ideas alongside the ability to manage complex negotiations, financing arrangements, and large groups of people. Over the course of the following pages, I will break down what I’ve learned from operating on both the independent and corporate sides of media and film, and help you to understand the invisible forces that govern the content business. We’ll look at each aspect of the producer’s process from finding an idea, to acquiring intellectual property, sourcing financing, pitching, and relationship-building. Through this lens, we’ll examine the economic and social underpinnings that drive decision making in the industry.

The Complete Matinee Junkie: Five Years At The Movies


Jordan Jeffries - 2018
    Part autobiography, part cultural review, Matinee Junkie contains entries for every movie the author saw in theaters each year, with the complete collection spanning almost 250 movies over five years, from 2013-2017. In-depth rants about bland cinematography and stories of nightmarish theater experiences combine with five years' worth of autobiography, reflecting the way our own lives intersect with the stories we love to lose ourselves in.7.5” x 10”, 288 pages. $20Full-color cover with b+w interior. Perfect-bound

The Middle Ages in Popular Imagination: Memory, Film and Medievalism


Paul B. Sturtevant - 2018
    But the truth is not so simple. Non-specialists in fact learn a great deal from the myriad medievalisms - post-medieval imaginings of the medieval world - that pervade our everyday culture. These, like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, offer compelling, if not necessarily accurate, visions of the medieval world. And more, they have an impact on the popular imagination, particularly since there are new medievalisms constantly being developed, synthesised and remade. But what does the public really know? How do the conflicting medievalisms they consume contribute to their knowledge? And why is this important?In this book, the first evidence-based exploration of the wider public's understanding of the Middle Ages, Paul B. Sturtevant adapts sociological methods to answer these important questions. Based on extensive focus groups, the book details the ways - both formal and informal - that people learn about the medieval past and the many other ways that this informs, and even distorts, our present. In the process, Sturtevant also sheds light, in more general terms, onto the ways non-specialists learn about the past, and why understanding this is so important. The Middle Ages in Popular Imagination will be of interest to anyone working on medieval studies, medievalism, memory studies, medieval film studies, informal learning or public history.

What You Don't Learn In Film School: A Complete Guide To (Independent) Filmmaking


Shane Stanley - 2018
    This book is an especially invaluable tool to those who have, or plan to, attend a college or university film school. Your Complete Guide To (Independent) Filmmaking. An in-depth, no holds barred look at making movies from ‘concept to delivery’ in today’s ever-evolving climate while breaking down the dos and don’ts of (independent) filmmaking. Learn invaluable industry secrets from top to bottom and discover the truth about independent film distribution as the lid is torn off the many myths surrounding sales agents and today’s release platforms that are certain to open reader’s eyes - and ruffle a few feathers! READ THE REVIEWS AND WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY "Impressively informative, exceptionally well written, organized and presented...an iconoclastic and invaluable course of 'real world practical' instruction and directly usable information that is unreservedly recommended as a film school curriculum textbook, as well as professional, community, and academic library Cinema Technology collections and supplemental studies lists. It should be noted for personal reading lists of film students and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject."  - MIDWESTERN BOOK REVIEW "Hollywood filmmaker Shane Stanley writes a book anyone and everyone should read if they want an entertainment industry insider's professional guidance on how to create a movie. This book is an especially invaluable tool to those who have, or plan to, attend a college or university film school." - ABC NEWS, CROSSROADS TODAY "Stanley illuminates the world of movie-making in detail in his fast-paced book, speaking from his own sometimes-agonized experience in the film realm. His book gets down into the nitty-gritty, touching upon real-life topics...” - STACY JENEL SMITH, BECK/SMITH THE HOLLYWOOD EXCLUSIVE "A unique and personal perspective from a well-rounded, solid vantage point. A quality reference for anyone interested in independent filmmaking. Film school curriculums would do students a services to include Stanley's book on a required reading list. A very valuable resource which needs to be in everyone's bookshelf from the beginning actor to the accomplished director/producer." - PACIFIC BOOK REVIEW “A no holds barred, transparent look at making movies from concept to delivery. This book isn't just for students - it's for anyone trying to carve out a career in the film or television industry and evident that Stanley is trying to help bridge the gap between the classroom and real life by giving the next generation of filmmakers as much ammunition as possible before they venture out into Hollywood.” - www.businessinsider.com ‘Pulls no punches. It's one of the most insightful and accurate books ever written on the subject. A master class bridging the gap between school and real life experience that will save you years of heartache. A must-read for anyone interested in pursuing a career in film.’ - Neal H. Moritz, Producer (Fast & Furious, S.W.A.T., 21 and 22 Jump Street) ‘Shane Stanley takes you to a Film School that only years of practical experience can teach. He covers both the business of independent filmmaking as well as the hard earned secrets of a successful production. A must-read for anyone who wants to produce.’ - Jeff Sagansky, Former President of Sony Entertainment and CBS Entertainment ‘An incredibly practical guide to making indie films in the current marketplace.

Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema


Frank Lehman - 2018
    Filmgoing is an intensely musical experience, one in which the soundtrack structures our interpretations and steers our emotions. Hollywood Harmony explores the inner workings of film music, bringing together tools frommusic theory, musicology, and music psychology in this first ever book-length analytical study of this culturally central repertoire. Harmony, and especially chromaticism, is emblematic of the film music sound, and it is often used to evoke that most cinematic of feelings-wonder. To help parsethis familiar but complex musical style, Hollywood Harmony offers a first-of-its kind introduction to neo-Riemannian theory, a recently developed and versatile method of understanding music as a dynamic and transformational process, rather than a series of inert notes on a page. This application ofneo-Riemannian theory to film music is perfect way in for curious newcomers, while also constituting significant scholarly contribution to the larger discipline of music theory. Author Frank Lehman draws from his extensive knowledge of cinematic history with case-studies that range from classics ofGolden Age Hollywood to massive contemporary franchises to obscure cult-films. Special emphasis is placed on scores for major blockbusters such as Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Inception. With over a hundred meticulously transcribed music examples and more than two hundred individual moviesdiscussed, Hollywood Harmony will fascinate any fan of film and music.

James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction


Randall Frakes - 2018
    This book reproduces the interviews in full as the greatest minds in the genre discuss key topics including alien life, time travel, outer space, dark futures, monsters, and intelligent machines.  An in-depth interview with Cameron is also featured, plus essays by experts in the science fiction field on the main themes covered in the show. Illustrated with rare and previously unseen concept art from Cameron’s personal archives, plus imagery from iconic sci-fi movies, TV shows, and books, James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction offers a sweeping examination of a genre that continues to ask questions, push limits, and thrill audiences around the world.

Hollywood's Lost Backlot: 40 Acres of Glamour and Mystery


Steven Bingen - 2018
    Stars and studios rise and fall. Genres and careers wax and wane. Movies and movie moguls and movie makers and movie palaces are acclaimed and patronized and loved and beloved, and then forgotten. And yet... And yet one place in Southern California, built in the 1920s by (allegedly murdered) producer Thomas Ince, acquired by Cecil B. DeMille, now occupied by Amazon.com, has been the home for hundreds of the most iconic and legendary films and television shows in the world for a remarkable and star-studded fifty years. This bizarre, magical place was the location for Tara in Gone with The Wind, the home of King Kong and Superman, of Tarzan and Batman, of the Green Hornet, of Elliot Ness, of Barney Fife, of Tarzan, of Rebecca, of Citizen Kane, of Hogan's Heroes and Gomer Pyle, of Lasse, of A Star is Born and Star Trek, and at least twice, of Jesus Christ. For decades, every conceivable star in Hollywood, from Clark Gable to Warren Beatty, worked and loved and gave indelible performances on the site. And yet, today, it is completely forgotten. Pretty much anyone alive today, from college professors to longshoremen, have probably heard of Paramount and of MGM, of Warner Bros. and of Universal, and of Disney and Fox and Columbia, but the place where many of these studio's beloved classics were minted is today as mysterious and unknowable as the sphinx. Hollywood's Lost Backlot: 40 Acres of Glamour and Mystery will, for the first time ever, unwind the colorful and convoluted threads that make for the tale of one of the most influential and photographed places in the world. A place which most have visited, at least on screen, and which has contributed significantly and unexpectedly to the world's popular culture, and yet which few people today, paradoxically, have ever heard of.

Eric Rohmer: A Biography


Antoine de Baecque - 2018
    Such brilliance does not develop in a vacuum, and Rohmer cultivated a fascinating network of friends, colleagues, and industry contacts that kept his outlook sharp and propelled his work forward. Despite his privacy, he cared deeply about politics, religion, culture, and fostering a public appreciation of the medium he loved.This exhaustive biography uses personal archives and interviews to enrich our knowledge of Rohmer's public achievements and lesser known interests and relations. The filmmaker kept in close communication with his contemporaries and competitors: François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette. He held a paradoxical fascination with royalist politics, the fate of the environment, Catholicism, classical music, and the French nightclub scene, and his films were regularly featured at New York and Los Angeles film festivals. Despite an austere approach to life, Rohmer had a voracious appetite for art, culture, and intellectual debate captured vividly in this definitive volume.

Sofia Coppola: The Politics of Visual Pleasure


Anna Backman Rogers - 2018
    Drawing on insights from feminist philosophy and psychology, the author here takes an original approach to Coppola, exploring vital themes from the subversion of patriarchy in The Virgin Suicides to the "female gothic" in The Beguiled. As Rogers shows, far from endorsing a facile and depoliticized postfeminism, Coppola's films instead deploy beguilement, mood, and pleasure in the service of a robustly feminist philosophy.

The Hal Roach Comedy Shorts of Thelma Todd, Zasu Pitts and Patsy Kelly


James L. Neibaur - 2018
    Pitts left the studio for other pursuits, was replaced by Patsy Kelly and the series continued to be successful. Todd died under mysterious circumstances in 1935 and Kelly tried to carry on, first with Pert Kelton, then with Lyda Roberti. When Roberti died in 1938, the series ended. This book takes the first film-by-film look at each of the comedies these women made, how they responded to different directors and how production adapted to changes along the way. Credits, production information, period reviews, and critical assessments are included.

Marvel Studios 101: All Your Questions Answered


Adam Bray - 2018
    

Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors and the Feminist Reform of 1970s American Cinema


Maya Montañez Smukler - 2018
    film industry. Throughout the 1970s feminist reform efforts resulted in a noticeable rise in the number of women directors, yet at the same time the institutionalized sexism of Hollywood continued to create obstacles to closing the gender gap. Maya Montañez Smukler reveals that during this era there were an estimated sixteen women making independent and studio films: Penny Allen, Karen Arthur, Anne Bancroft, Joan Darling, Lee Grant, Barbara Loden, Elaine May, Barbara Peeters, Joan Rivers, Stephanie Rothman, Beverly Sebastian, Joan Micklin Silver, Joan Tewkesbury, Jane Wagner, Nancy Walker, and Claudia Weill. Drawing on interviews conducted by the author, Liberating Hollywood is the first study of women directors within the intersection of second wave feminism, civil rights legislation, and Hollywood to investigate the remarkable careers of these filmmakers during one of the most mythologized periods in American film history.

Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon


Johanna Burton - 2018
    The exhibition features over 40 artists working across a variety of mediums and genres, including film, video, performance, painting and sculpture. Many embrace explicit pleasure and visual lushness as political strategies, and some deliberately reject or complicate overt representation, turning to poetic language, docufiction and abstraction to affirm ambiguities and reflect shifting physical embodiment. Among the artists included are Morgan Bassichis, Nayland Blake, Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz, Vaginal Davis, ektor garcia, House of Ladosha, Candice Lin, Christina Quarles, Tschabalala Self, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Sable Elyse Smith and Wu Tsang.

Father, Son, Sword: The Lone Wolf and Cub Saga


Tom Mes - 2018
    Betrayed and exiled by the treacherous Yagyu clan, they wander feudal Japan as assassins on the road to hell.An epic, multi million-selling manga that spanned six years and nearly 9000 pages. A long-running television series that is one of the staples of Japanese broadcasting. And six ferocious, inimitable films that are among the best that Japanese cinema has to offer. More than 40 years after they were made, these films continue to fascinate and enthral viewers the world over.Lone Wolf and Cub and the Baby Cart films are among the true classics of Japanese pop culture. Read and watched all across the globe, they inspired countless filmmakers, comic book artists, and writers, including Quentin Tarantino, Frank Miller, John Carpenter, John Woo, and Takashi Miike.Written by Japanese film expert Tom Mes, Father, Son, Sword is the full story behind the films, the manga, and the phenomenon Lone Wolf and Cub.

Victorian Giants: The Birth of Art Photography (National Portrait Gallery)


Philip Prodger - 2018
    These four artists – a Swedish émigré with a mysterious past, a middle -­‐ aged Ceylonese expatriate , an Oxford academic and writer of fantasy literature , and a Scottish countess – formed the most unlikely of schools. Both Carroll and Cameron studied under Rejlander briefly, and maintained a lasting association based around intersecting approaches to portraiture and narrative. Influenced by historical painting and working in close association with the Pre -­‐ Raphaelite brother hood , they formed a bridge between the art of the past and the art of the future, standing as true giants in Victorian photography.Separately, Cameron, Carroll , Hawarden and Rejlander produced some of the most spectacular images in history. Divided into three main sections, this book brings together many of these works for the first time, drawing heavily from the National Portrait Gallery Collection.The selection will be enriched with key works from other collections from around the globe . Of special interest is an exploration of historical and contemporary painters and their role in the young fine -­‐ art -­‐ photography movement.

Inhospitable World: Cinema in the Time of the Anthropocene


Jennifer Fay - 2018
    In this new epoch, humans have come to reshape unwittingly both the climate and natural world; humankind has caused massextinctions of plant and animal species, polluted the oceans, and irreversibly altered the atmosphere. Ironically, our efforts to make the planet more hospitable to ourselves seem to be driving us toward our inevitable extinction. A force of nature, humanity is now decentered as the agent ofhistory. As Jennifer Fay argues, this new situation is to geological science what cinema has always been to human culture.Film, like the Anthropocene, is a product of the industrial revolution, but arises out of a desire to preserve life and master time and space. It also calls for the creation of artificial worlds, unnatural weather, and deadly environments for entertainment, scientific study, and devising militarystrategy. Filmmaking stages, quite literally, the process by which worlds and weather come into being and meaning, and it mimics the forces that are driving this new planetary inhospitality. Cinema, in other words, provides an image of nature in the age of its mechanical reproducability. Fayargues that cinema exemplifies the philosophical, political, and perhaps even logistical processes by which we can adapt to these forces and also imagine a world without humans in it. Whereas standard ecological criticism attends to the environmental crisis as an unraveling of our natural state, this book looks to film (from Buster Keaton, to Jia Zhangke, to films of atomic testing and early polar exploration) to consider how it reflects upon the creation and destruction of human environments. What are the implications of ecological inhospitality? What role might cinema and media theoryplay in challenging our presumed right to occupy and populate the world? As an art form, film enjoys a unique relationship to the material, elemental world it captures and produces. Through it, we may appreciate the ambitions to design an unhomely planet that may no longer accommodate us.

Introduction to Cinematography: Learning Through Practice


Tania Hoser - 2018
    Building from a skills-based approach focused on professional practice, cinematographer and author Tania Hoser provides a step-by-step introduction for both cinematographers and camera assistants to the techniques, processes, and procedures of working with cameras, lenses, and light. She provides hands-on insight into negotiating with production constraints and understanding the essentials of the image workflow from shot to distribution, on projects of any scope and budget.Richly illustrated, the book incorporates exercises and sample scripts throughout, exploring light, color, movement, 'blocking', and pacing scenes. The principles and techniques of shaping and controlling light are applied to working with natural light, film lamps, and, as with all areas of cinematography, to low budget alternatives. This makes Introduction to Cinematography the perfect newcomer's guide to learning the skills of cinematography that enables seamless progression from exercises through to full feature shoots. Assessment rubrics provide a framework to measure progress as the reader's ability to visually interpret scripts and enhance the director's vision develops.The book also teaches readers:To understand and develop the combination of skills and creativity involved in cinematography; Photographic principles and how they are applied to control focus exposure, motion blur, and image sharpness; To identify the roles and skills of each member of the camera department, and how and when each are required during a shoot; The order and process of lighting on all scales of productions and the use and application of the four main types of lamps; How to use waveforms, false color, and zebras for monitoring light levels, and meters for guiding exposure choices; The principles of the color wheel, color palettes, and the psychological effects of color choices; How to shoot for different types of fiction and nonfiction/documentary films and how to apply these skills to other genres of TV and film production; Strategies for both starting and progressing your career within cinematography and the camera department.**Winner of 'Best new Textbook in Humanities and Media Arts' in the Taylor and Francis Editorial Awards 2018**

Quentin Tarantino: Poetics and Politics of Cinematic Metafiction


David Roche - 2018
    Each in-depth chapter focuses on a salient feature, some which have drawn much attention (history, race, gender, violence), others less so (narrative structure, style, music, theatricality).Roche sets Tarantino's films firmly in the legacy of Howard Hawks, Jean-Luc Godard, Sergio Leone, and the New Hollywood, revising the image of a cool pop-culture purveyor that the American director cultivated at the beginning of his career. Roche emphasizes the breadth and depth of his films' engagement with culture, highbrow and lowbrow, screen and print, American, East Asian, and European.

The Birth of the American Horror Film


Gary D. Rhodes - 2018
    Using thousands of primary sources and long-unseen illustrations, The Birth of the American Horror Film examines a history that begins in colonial Salem, taking an interdisciplinary approach to explore the influence of horror-themed literature, theatre and visual culture in America, and how that context established an amorphous structural foundation for films produced between 1895 and 1915. Exhaustively researched, bridging scholarship on Horror Studies and Early Cinema, The Birth of the American Horror Film is the first major study dedicated to this vital but often overlooked subject.

The Quay Brothers: The Black Drawings: Philadelphia Pennsylvania 1974-1977: Black drawings 1974-1977


Edwin Carels - 2018
    They kept their first autonomous art project hidden for decades, allowing only a few glimpses to transpire in some of their animation classics such as Nuctura Artificialia and Street of Crocodiles. In hindsight, the Black Drawings can be considered as a blueprint for their future work. This book offers a first in depth exploration of this important graphic series that reveals many of the themes and techniques that would come to life in their celebrated animation films. The Quay brothers (Stephen and Timothy Quay; born June 17, 1947) are American identical twin brothers and influential stop-motion animators. They have been the subject of a grand retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, entitled "Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets" which featured work spanning their entire career, tracing back as early as childhood, with much of the material shown for the first time. They are also the recipients of the 1998 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design for their work on the play The Chairs.

Final Cut Pro X 10.4 - Apple Pro Training Series: Professional Post-Production


Brendan Boykin - 2018
    Using professionally acquired media, you'll utilize the same tools and editing techniques used by editors worldwide in this revolutionary editing software. Renowned editor and master trainer Brendan Boykin starts with basic video editing techniques and takes you all the way through Final Cut Pro's powerful features. The lessons start as real world as it gets--with an empty application. After downloading the media files, you will be guided through creating a project from scratch to finished draft. The basic workflow and tools are covered in Lessons 1 through 4 where you create a rough cut. The real-world workflow continues through the remaining lessons as you take the basic project and enhance it with a dive into more robust features including the newest Final Cut Pro X 10.4 tools for 360� editing, precision color grading, and more. - Downloadable lesson and media files to work sequentially through exercises for hours of hands-on training. - Focused lessons teach concepts and take students step by step through professional, real-world editing scenarios to create a final project. - Chapter review questions summarize what students learn to prepare them for the Apple certification exam. - Web Edition provides full text of the book available online with revised content for significant software updates. The Apple Pro Training Series is both a self-paced learning tool and the official curriculum of the Apple Training and Certification program. Upon completing the course material in this guide, you can become Apple Certified by passing the certification exam at an Apple Authorized Training Center. To find an Apple Authorized Training Center near you, please visit training.apple.com.

Reframing Luchino Visconti: Film and Art


Ivo Blom - 2018
    Meticulously examining Visconti’s use of European art in his set and costume design, Reframing Luchino Visconti also investigates his cinematography in terms of staging, framing, and mirroring, among other aspects, offering valuable contextualization for the optical splendor in Visconti’s films and revealing their close ties to the other visual arts.

Selected Writings, 1998-2015


Babette Mangolte - 2018
    The dancers performing Trisha Brown's Roof Piece characterize perfectly the wild spirit of the time. Choreographed as an echo of movement unfolding across SoHo's rooftops, the dancers mimed the chimneys, water towers, and fire escapes which surrounded them across that skyline. Influenced early on by Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera and the work of Stan Brakhage and Jonas Mekas, Mangolte began studies in 1964 at the renowned �cole nationale de la photographie et de la cinematographie in Paris, one of the school's first female students. In 1970, having become disillusioned with the film scene in France, Mangolte moved to New York and became involved in the avant-garde film and dance milieus of the Kitchen and the Anthology Film Archives. EndFragmentSelected Writings, 1998-2015 is a collection of texts by Mangolte in which she reflects on her practice as a photographer and filmmaker and her collaborative work with filmmakers, artists, dancers, and choreographers. She provides insights into the techniques and methods she created as well as her relationships with notable collaborators such as Marina Abramovic, Chantal Akerman, Trisha Brown, and Yvonne Rainer.Copublished with Kunsthalle Wien on occasion of the exhibition "Babette Mangolte: I = Eye"

The Lives of Justine Johnstone: Follies Star, Research Scientist, Social Activist


Kathleen Vestuto - 2018
    For the remainder of her life, she dedicated herself to medical research and social activism. As a cutting-edge pathologist, she contributed to the pre-penicillin treatment of syphilis at Columbia University, participated in the development of early cancer treatments at Caltech, and assisted Los Angeles physicians in oncology research. As a divorced woman in the 1940s, she adopted and raised two children on her own. She later helped find work for blacklisted Hollywood screenwriters and became a prominent participant in social and political causes. The first full-length biography of Johnstone chronicles her extraordinary success in two male-dominated fields—show business and medical science—and follows her remarkable journey into a fascinating and fulfilling life.

Race and the Revolutionary Impulse in The Spook Who Sat by the Door


Michael T. Martin - 2018
    Based on Sam Greenlee's novel by the same name, the film is a searing portrayal of an American Black underclass brought to the brink of revolution. This series of critical essays situates the film in its social, political, and cinematic contexts and presents a wealth of related materials, including an extensive interview with Sam Greenlee, the original United Artists' press kit, numerous stills from the film, and the original screenplay. This fascinating examination of a revolutionary work foregrounds issues of race, class, and social inequality that continue to incite protests and drive political debate.

Beyond the Stars, Part 1: The Boy from Riga


Sergei Eisenstein - 2018
    Not only did Eisenstein direct some of the most important and lasting works of the silent era, including Strike, October, and Battleship Potemkin, as well as, in the sound era, the historical epics Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible—he also was a theorist whose insights into the workings of film were so powerful that they remain influential for both filmmakers and scholars today. ​Seagull Books is embarking on a series of translations of key works by Eisenstein into English. A fascinating memoir in two volumes, Beyond the Stars—first published by Seagull in 1995 and now available again. Begun as Eisenstein approached fifty, it is full of the famous names of his era, including Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, John Dos Passos, Jean Cocteau, and many more; at the same time, it is a serious book of inquiry about film as a medium, offering countless reflections by Eisenstein on his own work and that of other movie pioneers.

The Bodies Beneath. The Flipside of British Film & Television


William Fowler - 2018
    From occult rites in soft porn discos to Sooty the TV puppet's amphetamine problem, from Old Mother Riley, and Vampire Hunter to Vincent Price's heart-attack-inducing cookery program, in this book veteran curators William Fowler and Vic Pratt have delved deep into the archives of the British Film Institute to serve up a feast of curiosities that will tempt the palate of even the most jaded cinephile.Each chapter considers a key aspect of British life as seen through the psychotronic lens of pop culture. Do All the Right Noises and Under the Doctor tell us more about attitudes to marriage and sexuality than a sociological survey? Can American musicologist Alan Lomax capture a truer image of the weird rites of Cornish folk culture than a native Cornishman? Why was Peter Watkins's The War Game banned from TV screens? These crucial questions, and many more, will be answered, and awkward truths told, by our highly informed, erudite and amusing guides to this cultural hinterland.

Everything Is Permitted Loth


Ira Silverberg - 2018
    160 photographs.

Selling the Movie: The Art of the Film Poster


Ian Haydn Smith - 2018
    Posters came into existence just decades before the inception of film, and as movies became a universal medium of entertainment, posters likewise became a ubiquitous form of advertising. At first, movie posters suggested a film's theme, from adventure and romance to thrills and spine-tingling horror. Then, with the ascendancy of the film star, posters began to sell icons and lifestyles, nowhere more so than in Hollywood. But every country producing films used posters to sell their product.Selling the Movie: The Art of the Film Poster charts the history of the movie poster from both a creative and a commercial perspective. It includes sections focusing on poster artists, the development of styles, the influence of politics and ideology, and how commerce played a role in the film poster's development. The book is richly illustrated with poster art from many countries and all eras of filmmaking.From creating the brand of Charlie Chaplin's tramp and marketing the elusive mystique of Greta Garbo, to the history of the blockbuster, the changing nature of graphic design by the decade, and the role of the poster in the digital age, Selling the Movie is an entertaining and enthralling journey through cinema, art, and the business of attracting audiences to the box office.

Scenarios II: Signs of Life / Even Dwarfs Started Small / Fata Morgana / Heart of Glass


Werner Herzog - 2018
    In a brief introduction, Herzog describes the circumstances surrounding each scenario, inviting readers into the mysterious process whereby one man’s vision becomes every viewer’s waking dream.

Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes


Maggie Hennefeld - 2018
    Feminist activists play practical jokes to lobby for voting rights, while overworked kitchen maids dismember their limbs to finish their chores on time. In early slapstick films with titles such as Saucy Sue, Mary Jane's Mishap, Jane on Strike, and The Consequences of Feminism, comediennes exhibit the tensions between joyful laughter and gendered violence. Slapstick comedy often celebrates the exaggeration of make-believe injury. Unlike male clowns, however, these comic actresses use slapstick antics as forms of feminist protest. They spontaneously combust while doing housework, disappear and reappear when sexually assaulted, or transform into men by eating magic seeds--and their absurd metamorphoses evoke the real-life predicaments of female identity in a changing modern world.Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes reveals the gender politics of comedy and the comedic potentials of feminism through close consideration of hundreds of silent films. As Maggie Hennefeld argues, comedienne catastrophes provide disturbing but suggestive images for comprehending gendered social upheavals in the early twentieth century. At the same time, slapstick comediennes were crucial to the emergence of film language. Women's flexible physicality offered filmmakers blank slates for experimenting with the visual and social potentials of cinema. Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes poses major challenges to the foundations of our ideas about slapstick comedy and film history, showing how this combustible genre blows open age-old debates about laughter, society, and gender politics.

When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry


Rosanne Welch - 2018
    The contributors trace the careers of such writers as Anita Loos, Adela Rogers St. Johns, Lillian Hellman, Gene Gauntier, Eve Unsell and Ida May Park, and explore themes of their writing in classics like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Ben Hur, and It's a Wonderful Life.

James Benning's Environments: Politics, Ecology, Duration


Nikolaj Lubecker - 2018
    In James Benning's Environments a range of international scholars highlight the thematic and formal coherence of Benning's practice, whilst providing readers with an artistic andhistorical context to understand his experimental film work. The volume offers a number of interpretative frameworks drawing on film theory, environmental humanities, visual culture and philosophy, explaining why Benning has emerged as one of today's essential filmmakers.

The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures


Pauline Greenhill - 2018
    It offers a clear, detailed, and expansive overview of contemporary themes and issues throughout the intersections of the fields of fairy-tale studies, media studies, and cultural studies, addressing, among others, issues of reception, audience cultures, ideology, remediation, and adaptation. Examples and case studies are drawn from a wide range of pertinent disciplines and settings, providing thorough, accessible treatment of central topics and specific media from around the globe.

The Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements


Kristen Hoerl - 2018
    In The Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements, Kristen Hoerl focuses on fictionalized portrayals of 1960s activism in popular television and film. Hoerl shows how Hollywood has perpetuated politics deploring the detrimental consequences of the 1960s on traditional American values. During the decade, people collectively raised fundamental questions about the limits of democracy under capitalism. But Hollywood has proved dismissive, if not adversarial, to the role of dissent in fostering progressive social change.Film and television are salient resources of shared understanding for audiences born after the 1960s because movies and television programs are the most accessible visual medium for observing the decade's social movements. Hoerl indicates that a variety of television programs, such as Family Ties, The Wonder Years, and Law and Order, along with Hollywood films, including Forrest Gump, have reinforced images of the bad sixties. These stories portray a period in which urban riots, antiwar protests, sexual experimentation, drug abuse, and feminism led to national division and moral decay. According to Hoerl, these messages supply distorted civics lessons about what we should value and how we might legitimately participate in our democracy.These warped messages contribute to selective amnesia, a term that stresses how popular media renders radical ideas and political projects null or nonexistent. Selective amnesia removes the spectacular events and figures that define the late-1960s from their motives and context, flattening their meaning into reductive stereotypes. Despite popular television and film, Hoerl explains, memory of 1960s activism still offers a potent resource for imagining how we can strive collectively to achieve social justice and equality.

Terror in the Desert: Dark Cinema of the American Southwest


Brad Sykes - 2018
    For more than half a century, these diverse and troubling films have eluded critical classification and analysis. Highlighting pioneering filmmakers and bizarre production stories, the author traces the genre's origins and development, from cult exploitation (The Hills Have Eyes, The Hitcher) to crowd-pleasing franchises (Tremors, From Dusk Till Dawn) to quirky auteurist fare (Natural Born Killers, Lost Highway) to more recent releases (Bone Tomahawk, Nocturnal Animals). Rare stills, promotional materials and a filmography are included.

Where Monsters Walked: California Locations of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, 1925-1965


Gail Orwig - 2018
    This richly illustrated guide to dozens of California filming locations covers five decades of science fiction, fantasy and horror movies, documenting such familiar places as the house used in Psycho and the Bronson Caves of Robot Monster, along with less well known sites from films like Lost Horizon and Them! Arranged alphabetically by movie title--from Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves to Zotz!--the entries provide many "then" and "now" photos, with directions to the locations.

Hollywood vs. The Author


Stephen Jay Schwartz - 2018
    The oft-repeated cliché that “the book was better than the movie” holds true for more reasons than the average reader will ever know. When asked about selling their book rights to Hollywood authors like to joke that they drive their manuscripts to the border of Arizona and California and toss them over the fence, driving back the way they came at breakneck speed. This is probably because Hollywood just doesn’t “get it.” Its vision for the film or TV series rarely seems to match the vision of the author. And for those rare individuals who’ve had the fortune of sitting across the desk from one of the myriad, interchangeable development execs praising the brilliance of their work while ticking off a never-ending list of notes for the rewrite, the pros of pitching their work to Hollywood rarely outweigh the cons.Stephen Jay Schwartz has sat on both sides of that desk―first as the Director of Development for film director Wolfgang Petersen, then as a screenwriter and author pitching his work to the film and television industry. He’s seen all sides of what is known in this small community as “Development Hell.” The process is both amusing and heartbreaking. Most authors whose work contains a modicum of commercial potential eventually find themselves in “the room” taking a shot at seeing their creations re-visualized by agents, producers or development executives. What they often discover is that their audience is younger and less worldly as themselves. What passes for “story notes” is often a mishmash of vaguely connected ideas intended to put the producer’s personal stamp on the project.Hollywood Versus The Author is a collection of non-fiction anecdotes by authors who’ve had the pleasure of experiencing the development room firsthand―some who have successfully managed to straddle the two worlds, seeing their works morph into the kinds of feature films and TV shows that make them proud, and others who stepped blindsided into that room after selling their first or second novels. All the stories in this collection illustrate the great divide between the world of literature and the big or small screen. They underscore the insanity of every crazy thing you’ve ever heard about Hollywood. For insiders and outsiders alike, Hollywood Versus The Author delivers the goods.

4:30 Movie: Poems


Donna Masini - 2018
    She brings her wit, grief, fury, and propulsive energy to bear on the preoccupations of our daily lives and our attempts to bargain with endings of every kind. Equal parts lament and praise, 4:30 Movie is fueled by despair and humor, governed by the ways in which movies enter our imaginations and frame our experiences. The movie theater becomes a presiding metaphor: part waiting room, part childhood, part underground depths where the self is a bit player, riding the subway with “its engine of extras.” Masini's exquisite wordplay shows the mind wrestling ferociously to forestall grief, as if finding the right words might somehow allow us to extend our beautiful, foreshortened run.

The Art of American Screen Acting, 1912–1960


Dan Callahan - 2018
    Others say they go for the director. But most really go to see their favorite actors and actresses. This book explores the work of many of classic Hollywood’s influential stars, such as James Cagney, Bette Davis, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. These so-called “pre–Brando” entertainers, often dismissed as old fashioned, were part of an explosion of talent that ran from the late 1920s through the early 1950s. The author analyzes their compelling styles and their ability to capture audiences.

Commercial Directing Voodoo: Filmmaking Spells & Production Potions


Jordan Brady - 2018
    Filmmaker Jordan Brady has directed over 1,000 spots and shares his insights from over 20 years filming for advertising.

Solo: A Star Wars Story – The Official Collector’s Edition


Titan Comics - 2018
    Meet the characters including familiar acquaintances such as Lando Calrissian and the mighty Chewbacca!

Brain Freeze (Trolls Graphic Novels #4)


Dave Scheidt - 2018
    DINKLES, DJ SUKI, AND THE BERGENS RETURN FOR SEVEN ALL-NEW STORIES BASED ON THE MOVIE FROM DREAMWORKS ANIMATION!On a quest to find a cure for “Brain Freeze,” Cooper stops at nothing in order to eat as much ice cream as possible! Then the Trolls compete against the Bergens in a friendly “Rap Battle” to see who has the sickest rhymes! But Poppy feels bad that her “New Friends” feel out of place in Troll Town, so she and the Snack Pack shower them with new hairstyles and a new attitude! These and four more Troll tales await you in this all-new volume from Papercutz!

Christopher Nolan: A Critical Study of the Films


Darren Mooney - 2018
    Few of his contemporaries can compete in terms of critical and commercial success, let alone cultural impact. His films have a rare ability to transcend audience expectations, appealing to both casual moviegoers and dyed-in-the-wool cineastes. Nolan's work ranges from gritty crime thrillers (Memento, Insomnia) to spectacular blockbusters (the Dark Knight trilogy, Inception). They have taken audiences from the depths of space (Interstellar) to the harsh realities of war (Dunkirk). And they have pushed the boundaries of the possible in modern movie making. This critical history covers his complete filmography, tracing his career from film student to indie darling to Oscar-nominated auteur.

Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film


Meredith McCarroll - 2018
    Meredith McCarroll's Unwhite analyzes the fraught location of Appalachians within the southern and American imaginaries, building on studies of race in literary and cinematic characterizations of the American South. Not only do we know what "rednecks" and "white trash" are, McCarroll argues, we rely on the continued use of such categories in fashioning our broader sense of self and other. Further, we continue to depend upon the existence of the region of Appalachia as a cultural construct. As a consequence, Appalachia has long been represented in the collective cultural history as the lowest, the poorest, the most ignorant, and the most laughable community. McCarroll complicates this understanding by asserting that white privilege remains intact while Appalachia is othered through reliance on recognizable nonwhite cinematic stereotypes.Unwhite demonstrates how typical characterizations of Appalachian people serve as foils to set off and define the "whiteness" of the non-Appalachian southerners. In this dynamic, Appalachian characters become the racial other. Analyzing the representation of the people of Appalachia in films such as Deliverance, Cold Mountain, Medium Cool, Norma Rae, Cape Fear, The Killing Season, and Winter's Bone through the critical lens of race and specifically whiteness, McCarroll offers a reshaping of the understanding of the relationship between racial and regional identities.

Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual


Nathan Abrams - 2018
    Yet few critics or scholars have considered how he emerged from a unique and vibrant cultural milieu: the New York Jewish intelligentsia.  Stanley Kubrick reexamines the director’s work in context of his ethnic and cultural origins. Focusing on several of Kubrick’s key themes—including masculinity, ethical responsibility, and the nature of evil—it demonstrates how his films were in conversation with contemporary New York Jewish intellectuals who grappled with the same concerns.  At the same time, it explores Kubrick’s fraught relationship with his Jewish identity and his reluctance to be pegged as an ethnic director, manifest in his removal of Jewish references and characters from stories he adapted.   As he digs deep into rare Kubrick archives to reveal insights about the director’s life and times, film scholar Nathan Abrams also provides a nuanced account of Kubrick’s cinematic artistry. Each chapter offers a detailed analysis of one of Kubrick’s major films, including Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut. Stanley Kubrick thus presents an illuminating look at one of the twentieth century’s most renowned and yet misunderstood directors.

Grindhouse Purgatory - Issue 8


Pete Chiarella - 2018
    It's GRINDHOUSE PURGATORY! In this issue: We say goodbye to Balls Mahoney and the Great Bill Cardille. We study three Jacks. We are threatened by giant reptiles. We say hello to Old Gods returned. We look at violence against women in fact and fiction. Plus: El Condor!