Best of
Film

2020

Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused


Melissa Maerz - 2020
    Embraced as a cultural touchstone, the 1993 film would also make Matthew McConaughey’s famous phrase—alright, alright, alright—ubiquitous. But it started with a simple idea: Linklater thought people might like to watch a movie about high school kids just hanging out and listening to music on the last day of school in 1976.    To some, that might not even sound like a movie. But to a few studio executives, it sounded enough like the next American Graffiti to justify the risk. Dazed and Confused underperformed at the box office and seemed destined to disappear. Then something weird happened: Linklater turned out to be right. This wasn’t the kind of movie everybody liked, but it was the kind of movie certain people loved, with an intensity that felt personal. No matter what their high school experience was like, they thought Dazed and Confused was about them.Alright, Alright, Alright is the story of how this iconic film came together and why it worked. Combining behind-the-scenes photos and insights from nearly the entire cast, including Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey, Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, and many others, and with full access to Linklater’s Dazed archives, it offers an inside look at how a budding filmmaker and a cast of newcomers made a period piece that would feel timeless for decades to come.

Fake Love Letters, Forged Telegrams, and Prison Escape Maps: Designing Graphic Props for Filmmaking


Annie Atkins - 2020
    Dublin-based designer Annie Atkins invites readers into the creative process behind her intricately designed, rigorously researched, and visually stunning graphic props. These objects may be given just a fleeting moment of screen time, but their authenticity is vital and their role is crucial: to nudge both the actors on set and the audience just that much further into the fictional world of the film.

Parasite: A Graphic Novel in Storyboards


Bong Joon-ho - 2020
    As part of his unique process, Director Bong Joon Ho storyboarded each shot of PARASITE prior to the filming of every scene. Accompanied by the film's dialog, the storyboards he drew capture the story in its entirety. Director Bong has also written a foreword and provided early concept drawings and photos from the set which take the reader even deeper into the vision that gave rise to this stunning cinematic achievement. Director Bong's illustrations share the same illuminating power of his writing and directing. The result is a gorgeous, riveting read and a fresh look at the vertiginous delights and surprises of Bong Joon Ho's deeply affecting, genre-defying story.

The Nolan Variations: The Movies, Mysteries, and Marvels of Christopher Nolan


Tom Shone - 2020
    A rare, revelatory portrait, as close as you're ever going to get to the Escher drawing that is Christopher Nolan's remarkable brain (Sam Mendes). In chapters structured by themes and motifs (Time; Chaos; Dreams), Shone offers an unprecedented intimate view of the director. Shone explores Nolan's thoughts on his influences, his vision, his enigmatic childhood past--and his movies, from plots and emotion to identity and perception, including his latest blockbuster, the action-thriller/spy-fi Tenet (Big, brashly beautiful, grandiosely enjoyable--Variety).Filled with the director's never-before-seen photographs, storyboards, and scene sketches, here is Nolan on the evolution of his pictures, and the writers, artists, directors, and thinkers who have inspired and informed his films.Fabulous: intelligent, illuminating, rigorous, and highly readable. The very model of what a filmmaking study should be. Essential reading for anyone who cares about Nolan or about film for that matter.--Neal Gabler, author of An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood and Walt Disney, The Biography

This Was Hollywood: Forgotten Stars and Stories (Turner Classic Movies)


Carla Valderrama - 2020
    Clark Gable's secret love child. The film that nearly ended Paul Newman's career. A former child star who, at 93, reveals her #metoo story for the first time. Valderrama unfolds these stories, and many more, in a volume that is by turns riveting, maddening, hilarious, and shocking.Drawing on new interviews, archival research, and an exhaustive library of photographs, This Was Hollywood is a compelling and visually stunning catalogue of the lost history of the movies.

The Tap-Dancing Knife Thrower: My Life (without the boring bits)


Paul Hogan - 2020
    The then father of four and Sydney Harbour Bridge rigger from Granville did it as a dare, but when the network's switchboard lit up, he was invited back. So popular was he with viewers, Hogan became a regular on Mike Willesee's A Current Affair. The rest, as they say, is history. In collaboration with his business partner and best friend John Cornell (who played his sidekick, Strop), he went on to become Australia's favourite TV comedian. His hugely popular comedy shows and appearances in unforgettable and ground-breaking ads for cigarettes, beer and tourism, came to personify Australia and Australians here and overseas, helping to change the perception of who we are as people and as a nation.Then, in 1986, Crocodile Dundee, the movie he conceived, co-wrote and starred in, became an international smash, grossing more than a billion dollars in today's money and earning its star an Oscar nomination. Despite the fact Hoges claimed to be 'retired', many more movies followed, including Crocodile Dundee II, Lightning Jack, Almost an Angel and Charlie & Boots. But even as his star rose ever higher, he always expected someone to grab him by the arm and say, 'What are you doing here? You're just a bloody rigger!'The Tap Dancing Knife Thrower is a funny and candid account of the astonishing life of 'one lucky bastard', as Hoges describes himself. Full of countless stories never previously shared and told in the comedian's inimitable, funny and self-deprecating style, The Tap Dancing Knife Thrower is Paul Hogan's story told his way - 'without the boring bits'.

Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks


Adam Nayman - 2020
    In Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks, Anderson’s entire career—from Hard Eight (1996), Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999), Punch Drunk Love (2002), There Will Be Blood (2007), The Master (2012), Inherent Vice (2014), and Phantom Thread (2017) to his music videos for Radiohead to his early short films—is examined in illustrated detail for the first time.   Anderson’s influences, his style, and the recurring themes of alienation, reinvention, ambition, and destiny that course through his movies are analyzed and supplemented by firsthand interviews with Anderson’s closest collaborators—including producer JoAnne Sellar, actor Vicky Krieps, and composer Jonny Greenwood—and illuminated by film stills, archival photos, original illustrations, and an appropriately psychedelic design aesthetic. Masterworks is a tribute to the dreamers, drifters, and evil dentists who populate his world.

Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game


Oliver Stone - 2020
    Stone, now 73, recounts those formative years with in-the-moment details of the high and low moments: We see meetings with Al Pacino over Stone’s scripts for Scarface, Platoon, and Born on the Fourth of July; the harrowing demon of cocaine addiction following the failure of his first feature, The Hand (starring Michael Caine); his risky on-the-ground research of Miami drug cartels for Scarface; his stormy relationship with The Deer Hunter director Michael Cimino; the breathless hustles to finance the acclaimed and divisive Salvador; and tensions behind the scenes of his first Academy Award–winning film, Midnight Express.Chasing the Light is a true insider’s look at Hollywood’s years of upheaval in the 1970s and ’80s.

The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe


Tara Bennett - 2020
    Year-by-year, project-by-project, the studio’s founding and meteoric growth are described through detailed personal stories, anecdotes, and remembrances of noteworthy challenges, breakthrough milestones, and history-making successes. Together, these stories reveal how each of the films evolved into one ongoing cinematic narrative, as coauthors Tara Bennett and Paul Terry (The Official Making of Big Trouble in Little China, 2017) chart the complete production history of The Infinity Saga’s 23 movies (from 2008’s Iron Man all the way up to, and including, 2019’s Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home).Bennett and Terry were granted unprecedented access to Marvel Studios, which led to this years-in-the-making tome containing personal stories from more than 200 interviews, including every Marvel Studios producer; MCU writers and directors; the stars of The Infinity Saga; concept artists, costume designers, composers, and the talents behind the MCU’s dazzling visual effects; and more. Featuring previously unpublished behind-the-scenes photography and archival production material, as well as personal photos and memorabilia from cast and crew, The Story of Marvel Studios is the essential, collectible chronicle of how the Marvel Cinematic Universe was brought to life.• 512 pages chart the entire history-making story of Marvel Studios—from its inception, through Phases One, Two, and Three, and to the dawn of Phase Four• Featuring more than 200 interviews with the studio’s staff, cast, and crew for all 23 movies in The Infinity Saga• Includes more than 500 production photos, plus never-before-seen filmmakers’ archival materials and personal memorabilia from the cast and crew• Deluxe two-volume, foil-stamped cloth hardcover set, featuring exclusive cover art by Ryan Meinerding (Marvel Studios Head of Visual Development)• Metallized reinforced slipcase with exclusive wrap-around MCU concept art montage, featuring art by Adi Granov, Ryan Meinerding, Andy Park, and Charlie Wen• Foreword by Kevin Feige (President of Marvel Studios and Chief Creative Officer of Marvel)• Afterword by Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man)

The Making of Aliens


J.W. Rinzler - 2020
    Driven by the singular vision of director James Cameron and guided by producer Gale Ann Hurd, its relentless action and unforgettable characters helped cement its place as an undisputed classic of 1980s cinema.The Making of Aliens tells the complete story of how Cameron and Hurd, together with their immensely talented cast and crew, brought heroine Ellen Ripley back to the big screen--and upped the stakes by introducing a whole army of aliens for her to face. Interviews with the cast and crew, alongside revealing photography and fascinating concept art, illustrate the film's eventful journey from its beginnings as a sequel that nobody wanted to make through to its transformation into one of the highest-grossing blockbusters of the decade.

Apropos of Nothing


Woody Allen - 2020
      In this candid and often hilarious memoir, the celebrated director, comedian, writer, and actor offers a comprehensive, personal look at his tumultuous life. Beginning with his Brooklyn childhood and his stint as a writer for the Sid Caesar variety show in the early days of television, working alongside comedy greats, Allen tells of his difficult early days doing standup before he achieved recognition and success. With his unique storytelling pizzazz, he recounts his departure into moviemaking, with such slapstick comedies as Take the Money and Run, and revisits his entire, sixty-year-long, and enormously productive career as a writer and director, from his classics Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Annie and Her Sisters to his most recent films, including Midnight in Paris. Along the way, he discusses his marriages, his romances and famous friendships, his jazz playing, and his books and plays. We learn about his demons, his mistakes, his successes, and those he loved, worked with, and learned from in equal measure.   This is a hugely entertaining, deeply honest, rich and brilliant self-portrait of a celebrated artist who is ranked among the greatest filmmakers of our time.

The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood


Sam Wasson - 2020
    and Fosse comes the revelatory account of the making of a modern American masterpiece Chinatown is the Holy Grail of 1970s cinema. Its twist ending is the most notorious in American film and its closing line of dialogue the most haunting. Here for the first time is the incredible true story of its making.In Sam Wasson's telling, it becomes the defining story of the most colorful characters in the most colorful period of Hollywood history. Here is Jack Nicholson at the height of his powers, as compelling a movie star as there has ever been, embarking on his great, doomed love affair with Anjelica Huston. Here is director Roman Polanski, both predator and prey, haunted by the savage death of his wife, returning to Los Angeles, the scene of the crime, where the seeds of his own self-destruction are quickly planted. Here is the fevered dealmaking of "The Kid" Robert Evans, the most consummate of producers. Here too is Robert Towne's fabled script, widely considered the greatest original screenplay ever written. Wasson for the first time peels off layers of myth to provide the true account of its creation.Looming over the story of this classic movie is the imminent eclipse of the '70s filmmaker-friendly studios as they gave way to the corporate Hollywood we know today. In telling that larger story, The Big Goodbye will take its place alongside classics like Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and The Devil's Candy as one of the great movie-world books ever written.Praise for Sam Wasson:"Wasson is a canny chronicler of old Hollywood and its outsize personalities...More than that, he understands that style matters, and, like his subjects, he has a flair for it." - The New Yorker "Sam Wasson is a fabulous social historian because he finds meaning in situations and stories that would otherwise be forgotten if he didn't sleuth them out, lovingly." - Hilton Als

The Wrong Kind of Women: Inside Our Revolution to Dismantle the Gods of Hollywood


Naomi McDougall Jones - 2020
    The films created by that system influence everything from our worldviews to our brain chemistry. When women's voices are excluded from the medium, the impact on society is immense. Actor, screenwriter, and award-winning independent filmmaker Naomi McDougall Jones takes us inside the cutthroat, scandal-laden film industry, where only 5% of top studio films are directed by women and less than 20% of leading characters in mainstream films are female. Jones calls on all of us to act radically to build a different kind of future for cinema--not only for the women being actively hurt inside the industry but for those outside it, whose lives, purchasing decisions, and sense of selves are shaped by the stories told.Informed by the journey of her own career; by interviews with others throughout the film industry; and by cold, hard data, Jones deconstructs the casual, commonplace sexism rampant in Hollywood that has kept women out of key roles for decades. Next, she shows us the growing women-driven revolution in filmmaking--sparked by streaming services, crumbling distribution models, direct-to-audience access via innovative online platforms, and outside advocacy groups--which has enabled women to build careers outside the traditional studio system. Finally, she makes a business case for financing and producing films by female filmmakers.

Fright Favorites: 31 Movies to Haunt Your Halloween and Beyond


David J. Skal - 2020
    Featured titles:Nosferatu (1922)Phantom of the Opera (1925)Dracula (1931)Frankenstein (1931)Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1931)The Mummy (1933)Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)The Wolf Man (1941)Cat People (1942)Them (1953)Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)Curse of Frankenstein (1957)Horror of Dracula (1958)House on Haunted Hill (1959)The Birds (1963)Black Sunday (1960)Pit and the Pendulum (1961)The Haunting (1963)Night of the Living Dead (1968)Rosemary's Baby (1968)The Exorcist (1972)Young Frankenstein (1976)Halloween (1978)The Shining (1980)The Thing (1982)A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)Beetlejuice (1988)Hocus Pocus (1993)Scream (1996)Get Out (2017)

Dances with Wolves / The Holy Road


Michael Blake - 2020
    1863. The last occupant of Fort Sedgewick, Lieutenant John Dunbar watches over the American frontier. A thousand miles back east, his comrades are locked in battle with the Confederates, but out here he is alone. His desolate posting will bring him into contact with the lords of the southern plains – the Comanche. He has no knowledge of their customs but Dunbar is intrigued by these people and begins a transformation from which he emerges a different man. A man called Dances With Wolves. The story continues, 11 years later in The Holy Road. Times are hard for the Comanche. The white man is closing in from all directions, claiming land, driving the tribes on to reservations. Should the Comanche fight or make peace? Misunderstanding and duplicity lead to raids and atrocities on both sides that can have only one conclusion. The man that was John Dunbar must go to war again.

Wild Minds: The Artists and Rivalries That Inspired the Golden Age of Animation


Reid Mitenbuler - 2020
    McCay is largely forgotten today, but he unleashed an art form, and the creative energy of artists from Otto Messmer and Max Fleischer to Walt Disney and Warner Bros.' Chuck Jones. Their origin stories, rivalries, and sheer genius, as Reid Mitenbuler skillfully relates, were as colorful and subversive as their creations--from Felix the Cat to Bugs Bunny to feature films such as Fantasia--which became an integral part and reflection of American culture over the next five decades.Pre-television, animated cartoons were aimed squarely at adults; comic preludes to movies, they were often "little hand grenades of social and political satire." Early Betty Boop cartoons included nudity; Popeye stories contained sly references to the injustices of unchecked capitalism. "During its first half-century," Mitenbuler writes, "animation was an important part of the culture wars about free speech, censorship, the appropriate boundaries of humor, and the influence of art and media on society." During WWII it also played a significant role in propaganda. The Golden Age of animation ended with the advent of television, when cartoons were sanitized to appeal to children and help advertisers sell sugary breakfast cereals.Wild Minds is an ode to our colorful past and to the creative energy that later inspired The Simpsons, South Park, and BoJack Horseman.

Jurassic Park


Michael Crichton - 2020
    The book that launched a phenomenal global franchise, Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park is a rip-roaring, fact-filled, rollercoaster read and this illustrated Folio Society edition is the T-Rex of them all.

Music by Max Steiner: The Epic Life of Hollywood's Most Influential Composer


Steven C Smith - 2020
    Indeed, revered contemporary film composers like John Williams and Danny Elfman use the same techniques that Steiner himself perfected in his iconic work for such classics as Casablanca, King Kong, Gone with the Wind, The Searchers, Now, Voyager, the Astaire-Rogers musicals, and over 200 other titles. And Steiner's private life was a drama all its own. Born into a legendary Austrian theatrical dynasty, he became one of Hollywood's top-paid composers. But he was also constantly in debt--the inevitable result of gambling, financial mismanagement, four marriages, and the actions of his emotionally troubled son.Throughout his chaotic life, Steiner was buoyed by an innate optimism, a quick wit, and an instinctive gift for melody, all of which would come to the fore as he met and worked with luminaries like Richard Strauss, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, the Warner Bros., David O. Selznick, Bette Davis, Frank Sinatra, and Frank Capra. In Music by Max Steiner, the first full biography of Steiner, author Steven C. Smith interweaves the dramatic incidents of Steiner's personal life with an accessible exploration of his composing methods and experiences, bringing to life the previously untold story of a musical pioneer and master dramatist who helped create a vital new art with some of the greatest film scores in cinema history.

Writing the Romantic Comedy: The Art of Crafting Funny Love Stories for the Screen


Billy Mernit - 2020
    Field-tested writing exercises are also included, guaranteed to short-circuit potential mistakes and ensure inspiration.

Wes Anderson: The Iconic Filmmaker and his Work - Unofficial and Unauthorised


Ian Nathan - 2020
    Acclaimed film journalist Ian Nathan provides an intelligent and thoughtful examination of the work of one of contemporary film’s greatest visionaries, charting the themes, visuals, and narratives that have come to define Anderson’s work and contributed to his films an idiosyncratic character that's adored by his loyal fans. From Anderson’s regular cast members – including Bill Murray and Owen Wilson – to his instantly recognisable aesthetic, recurring motifs and his scriptwriting processes, this in-depth collection will reveal how Wes Anderson became one of modern cinema’s most esteemed and influential directors. Presented in a slipcase with 8-page gatefold section, this stunning package will delight all Wes Anderson devotees and movie lovers in general.

A Kind of Magic: Making the Original Highlander


Jonathan Melville - 2020
    The story of an immortal Scottish warrior battling evil down through the centuries, Highlander fused a high-concept idea with the kinetic energy of a pop promo pioneer and Queen’s explosive soundtrack to become a cult classic.When two American producers took a chance on a college student’s script, they set in motion a chain of events involving an imploding British film studio, an experimental music video director still finding his filmmaking feet, a former James Bond with a spiralling salary, and the unexpected arrival of low-budget production company, Cannon Films.Author Jonathan Melville looks back at the creation of Highlander with the help of more than 60 cast and crew, including stars Christopher Lambert and Clancy Brown, as they talk candidly about the gruelling shoot that took them from the back alleys of London, to the far reaches of the Scottish Highlands, and onto the mean streets of 1980s New York City.With insights from Queen’s Brian May and Roger Taylor on the film’s iconic music, exclusive screenwriter commentary on unmade scripts, never-before-seen photos from private collections, and a glimpse into the promotional campaign that never was, if there can be only one book on Highlander then this is it!

The Nolan Variations


Tom Shone - 2020
    . . brilliant. Immersive, detailed, meticulous, privileged inside-dope.’ - Craig RaineMore than just the tinkerings of a glass watchmaker, Christopher Nolan’s films have an unerring grasp of the way time makes us feel. Time steals people away in his films, and he takes careful note of the theft. Time is Nolan’s great antagonist, his lifelong nemesis. He seems almost to take it personally.Written with the full cooperation of Nolan himself, who granted Tom Shone access to never-before-seen photographs, storyboards and sketches, the book is a deep-dive into the director’s films, influences, methods and obsessions. Here for the first time is Nolan on his dislocated, transatlantic childhood, how he dreamed up the plot of Inception lying awake one night in his dorm at school, his colour-blindness and its effect on Memento, his obsession with puzzles and optical illusions — and much, much more. Written by one of our most penetrating critics, The Nolan Variations is a landmark study of one of the twenty-first century’s most dazzling cinematic artists.'Christopher Nolan is a wonderfully unlikely contemporary filmmaker. We’re fortunate indeed to have him, and fortunate now to have this book.' - William Gibson

The Trial of the Chicago 7: The Screenplay


Aaron Sorkin - 2020
    Originally there were eight defendants, but one, Bobby Seale, was severed from the trial by Judge Julius Hoffman—after Hoffman had ordered Seale bound and gagged in court. The defendants were a mix of counterculture revolutionaries such as Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, and political activists such as Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, and David Dellinger, the last a longtime pacifist who was a generation older than the others. Their lawyers argued that the right to free speech was on trial, whether that speech concerned lifestyles or politics. The Trial of the Chicago 7 stars Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Frank Langella, and Mark Rylance, among others, directed by Aaron Sorkin. This book is Sorkin’s screenplay, the first of his movie screenplays ever published.

Steps Towards a Small Theory of the Visible (Penguin Great Ideas)


John Berger - 2020
    

Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, Feminism, Genre


Alison PeirseKatarzyna Paszkiewicz - 2020
    These assumptions are based on decades of flawed scholarly, critical, and industrial thinking about the genre. Women Make Horror sets right these misconceptions. Women have always made horror. They have always been an audience for the genre, and today, as this book reveals, women academics, critics, and filmmakers alike remain committed to a film genre that offers almost unlimited opportunities for exploring and deconstructing social and cultural constructions of gender, femininity, sexuality, and the body.Women Make Horror explores narrative and experimental cinema; short, anthology, and feature filmmaking; and offers case studies of North American, Latin American, European, East Asian, and Australian filmmakers, films, and festivals. With this book we can transform how we think about women filmmakers and genre.

Film Noir Style: The Killer 1940s


Kimberly Truhler - 2020
    Hollywood fashion expert Kimberly Truhler explores twenty definitive film noir titles from 1941 to 1950 and traces the evolution of popular fashion in the decade of the ’40s, the impact of World War II on home-front fashion, and the influence of the film noir genre on popular fashion then and now. Meet not only the fabulous women of noir, including Betty Grable, Veronica Lake, Gene Tierney, Lauren Bacall, Barbara Stanwyck, Ava Gardner, and many others, but also the costume designers that created and recreated these famous stars as killers—and worse—through the clothes they wore. See how Hollywood sold sex and sin in the 1940s through the ingenious style and symbolism of Hollywood’s most talented costume designers.

The Essentials Vol. 2: 52 More Must-See Movies and Why They Matter


Jeremy Arnold - 2020
    2 -- based on the Turner Classic Movies series -- is packed with behind-the-scenes stories, illuminating commentary, moments to watch for, and hundreds of photos spotlighting films that define what it means to be a classic.Since 2001, Turner Classic Movies' The Essentials has been the ultimate destination for cinephiles both established and new, showcasing films that have had a lasting impact on audiences and filmmakers everywhere. In this second volume based on the series, fifty-two films are profiled with insightful notes on why they're Essential, a guide to must-see moments, and running commentary from Essentials hosts past and present: TCM's Ben Mankiewicz and the late Robert Osborne, as well as Rob Reiner, Sydney Pollack, Molly Haskell, Carrie Fisher, Rose McGowan, Alec Baldwin, Drew Barrymore, Sally Field, William Friedkin, Ava DuVernay, and Brad Bird.Enjoy one film per week for a year of stellar viewing or indulge in your own classic movie festival. Spanning the silent era through the late 1980s with such diverse films as Top Hat, Brief Encounter, Rashomon, Vertigo, and Field of Dreams, it's an indispensable book for movie lovers to expand their knowledge of cinema and discover -- or revisit -- landmark films that impacted Hollywood forever.

The Art of Pulp Horror: An Illustrated History


Stephen Jones - 2020
    Many respected authors and artists worked for the pulp and paperback markets, while films made for the low budget or youth markets are now rightly regarded as classics as they continue to inspire the movies and television we watch today. Profusely illustrated with more than 800 rare and unique images from around the world--including book and magazine covers, interior illustrations, movie posters, comic books, promotional items, tie-ins, and previously unpublished artwork commissioned especially for this book--this handsome volume charts the history of escapist horror and the individuals who created it. Compiled by multiple award-winning writer and editor Stephen Jones, and with a foreword by prolific and acclaimed author Robert Silverberg, this visual history brings together insightful and revelatory commentary from some of the genre's most highly esteemed experts. The Art of Pulp Horror is a stunning and informative guide to how, for over 100 years, we have enthusiastically embraced and exploited the gratuitous and the gory into our popular culture.

Scared Sacred: Idolatry, Religion and Worship in the Horror Film


Rebecca Booth - 2020
    From atheism in Lovecraft’s cinematic adaptations, to martyrdom in modern-day horror, to the relationship between the feline-fatale and zoolatry, the book traces the historical landscape carved by religion, folklore and the cinematic church of horror—culminating in analyses of contemporary, and specifically mainstream, trends. The first in a small series dedicated to religion in the horror film from House of Leaves Publishing, the book includes a foreword by Doug Bradley—“Pinhead” himself—and contributions from myriad leading film critics, historians and writers.First edition (limited to 100 copies with a numbered certificate).

Nobody Does it Better: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of James Bond


Edward Gross - 2020
    For over five decades, the cinematic adventures of James Bond have thrilled moviegoers. Now, bestselling authors Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross take you behind-the-scenes of the most famous and beloved movie franchise of all-time filled with reflections from over 150 cast, crew, critics and filmmakers who reflect on the impact of this legendary movie franchise as well as share their thoughts about their favorite (and least) favorite 007 adventures and spy mania which gripped fans the world over in the wake of the success of the James Bond films.From Russia--with love, course--to Vegas, from below the bright blue waters of the Bahamas in search of a missing nuclear weapon to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge, from below the seas in Stromberg’s new Noah's Ark of Atlantis into orbit with Hugo Drax, Nobody Does It Better: The Complete Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of James Bond tells the amazing, true story of the birth of James Bond through the latest remarkable James Bond adventures as well as the Spy mania classics that enthralled the world. It’s Bond and Beyond from the critically acclaimed authors of the bestselling The Fifty-Year Mission and So Say We All.

Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal Age of Resistance The Ballad of Hup Barfinnious


Jeffrey Addiss - 2020
    But the longer they travel, the more Hup begins to doubt that Barfinnious is truly who he says he is... Based on a story by Jim Henson’s Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance series writers, Will Matthews & Jeff Addiss, Adam Cesare (Clown in a Cornfield) and French Carlomagno (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers) present an official prequel to the next chapter of the pop culture phenomenon, now streaming on Netflix. Collects Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance #5-8.

The Secrets of Tenet: Inside Christopher Nolan's Quantum Cold War


James Mottram - 2020
    This deluxe book takes fans through the full creative journey that brought Tenet to the screen, from the genesis of Nolan’s uniquely imaginative script to the cutting-edge techniques used to realize the film’s innovative action sequences. Featuring exclusive interviews with the director and his crew, including producer Emma Thomas and production designer Nathan Crowley, The Making of Tenet is a can’t-miss companion to Nolan’s thrilling new masterpiece.

Motern on Motern: Conversations with Matt Farley and Charles Roxburgh


Will Sloan - 2020
    

Alien: 40 Years 40 Artists


Dane Hallett - 2020
    40 artists, filmmakers, and fans have been invited to contribute a piece of original art to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Alien in 2019.Pieces range from alternative posters to gothic interpretations of key scenes. Sketches, process pieces, and interview text accompany each new and unique nightmare.In addition to cover artist Dane Hallett—an Alien: Covenant concept artist—the contributors include Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve, Sam Hudecki, and Tanya Lapointe; Star Wars concept artist and creature designer Terryl Whitlatch; and Kong: Skull Island director Jordan Vogt-Roberts, and Jon Wilcox.

Flash Gordon: The Official Story of the Film


John Walsh - 2020
    One of the most quotable and beloved sci-fi films ever, it is legendary for its unique look, tone and iconic soundtrack. This beautiful, first-of-its-kind coffee table book will delve into the making of the movie and celebrate its legacy.Featuring brand new interviews with cast and creative, including stars Sam Jones and Brian Blessed and director Mike Hodges, this stunning book features never-been-seen-before concept artwork and behind-the-scenes photography that makes it a must-have for any classic sci-fi fan.

Sequelland: A Story of Dreams and Screams


Jay Slayton-Joslin - 2020
    Jay Slayton-Joslin, a writer and horror fan, experiencing his own existential crisis takes a direct approach exploring his childhood filled with direct to DVD horror sequels, interviewing those who created the sequels to iconic franchises feel upon looking back on them. The story of people who tried to do what they loved, filled with pride, regret, and resolution.It’s… SEQUELLAND: A STORY OF DREAMS AND SCREAMS.“Jay Slayton-Joslin delivers rare and insightful peeks into the world of Hollywood’s most battle-scarred foot soldiers. Whether legionnaires, barbarians or berserkers, these filmmakers weave their war-stories with equal measures of cynicism, idealism and candor. Less a series of interviews than informal conversations one might have on a hot afternoon over whisky shots in the Mitchum-booth at Boardners. Engaging, compelling fun.”Daniel Knauf, Creator of CarnivaleInterviews with: Uwe Boll, John Skipp, Jeff Burr, Adam Marcus, Ernie Barbarash, Peter Webber, Mary Lambert, Kevin Yagher, Zack Lipovsky, Katt Shea, and Kevin Greutert

The Visual Story: Creating the Visual Structure of Film, TV, and Digital Media


Bruce Block - 2020
    

Assault on the System: The Nonconformist Cinema of John Carpenter: Standard Edition


Troy Howarth - 2020
    He initially aspired to make westerns, but fate had other ideas in mind. Sooner than resist being typecast as a horror filmmaker, Carpenter embraced the moniker of "master of horror," all the while dipping in and out of the genre as he tried his hand at everything from sci-fi romps like THEY LIVE (1988) to gritty action thrillers like ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981) and romantic fantasies like STARMAN (1984). Carpenter's love of old school Hollywood, embodied in his passion for the films of Howard Hawks, inspired him to create a persona which eschews arthouse pretentions in favor of classical storytelling and craftsmanship. Working with budgets low and high, he always saw to it that his films looked and sounded as slick and professional as possible-and his use of anamorphic Panavision in virtually all of his theatrical features gives even the smallest of his films a larger-than-life pictorial allure. Carpenter doesn't specialize in real life: he specializes in movies-and all the artifice that entails. Then there's the music-that distinctive minimalist approach to synthesizer scoring which gives his films an even more unmistakable personality. As the son of an accomplished musician and music historian, Carpenter brought his flair for music, as well as his sense of timing, to bear on a variety of subjects. One of the constant themes running through Carpenter's work is a deep distrust of authority in its various forms. Early hopes of finding acceptance within the Hollywood system soon gave way to an understanding that he preferred being his own boss, working outside of the system in order to preserve the integrity of his vision. ASSAULT ON THE SYSTEM: THE NONCONFORMIST CINEMA OF JOHN CARPENTER charts Carpenter's trajectory from screenwriter-for-hire to director of low-budget oddities like DARK STAR (1974) to his meteoric rise and fall within the very system he came to distrust. All of Carpenter's films are analyzed in detail, including his forays into made-for-TV fare, and his various sideline projects as a writer, a composer, and a producer are also examined. Brand new interviews with Carpenter, his wife Sandy King-Carpenter, and actor Keith Gordon also help to provide a glimpse into the man, his methods, and what makes him tick.In addition, there are hundreds of eye-catching images, including theatrical posters, stills, behind the scenes shots, and more.The end result is a comprehensive celebration of one of America's great, yet oft-unsung auteurs, and a true independent spirit in his chosen medium. Guest essays by: Matty Budrewicz & Dave Wain, Lee Gambin, John Harrison, Randall D. Larson, Robert Russell LaVigne, Francesco Massaccesi, Paul Poet, and Nick Smith. Published by WK Books, publishers of Weng's Chop Cinema Megazine and Monster! Digest.

The Age of Static: How TV Explains Modern Britain


Phil Harrison - 2020
    More than any other country, Britain still gets a sense of itself from the output of its national broadcasters. So what can we learn from the TV of the last two decades? Beginning in 2000, this book explores the televisual contours of Britain via five themed chapters, taking in (among others) Big Brother, The Great British Bake Off, The Thick of It, The Apprentice, This Is England, Detectorists, Killing Eve and Fleabag. Over this period, Britain has become more divided, more fractious and less certain of its place in the world.What did Jamie’s School Dinners tell us about our perceptions of the working classes? What does our love of Downton Abbey say about the national psyche under duress? And how did Top Gear help to ignite Britain’s culture wars?In this lively and wide-ranging account of twenty tumultuous years, The Age of Static asks how we got here – and the role television played in the process.

Robert Wise: The Motion Pictures (Revised Edition) (hardback)


Joe Jordan - 2020
    Wise later found himself at Warner Brothers, MGM, and 20th Century Fox, consistently directing pictures of depth and versatility. The man behind the searing crime film, Odds Against Tomorrow, followed such success with the upbeat West Side Story. Wise guided the great, multi-character drama of Executive Suite and also turned his attention to warfare with The Sand Pebbles. He was the personification of the finest, old style "studio director" and ultimately became a two-time winner of the Academy Award for Best Director. Wise not only made films his way, he made them the right way, directing classics such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Sound of Music, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Joe Jordan's book, which includes over twenty interviews, presents a thorough analysis of the Robert Wise canon."Robert Wise remains one of the great architects of American movies of this last century; the steady, easy personality, hiding a will of steel that allowed him to guide his movies with a hand of knowledge, and authority, and soar in every single genre he undertook. With one of the most wide-ranging careers of any filmmaker ever, J.R. Jordan's book more than does Robert Wise justice in critically assessing his incredibly versatile work, as well as honoring the man who quietly created some of the finest and most famous movies of all time." - C. Courtney Joyner Author of The Westerners: Interviews with Actors, Directors, Writers, and Producers "Meticulous research by J.R. Jordan makes this a thorough study of director Robert Wise, which classic film fans will appreciate. Jordan examines the body of Wise's work in a film-by-film journey, his information woven neatly with interviews of participants providing the voices. They are the soundtrack, and Jordan's careful presentation of the material is the long tracking shot that lures us into a sudden, sharp, and breathtaking close-up, echoing the director's own careful craftsmanship." - Jacqueline T. Lynch Author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. "With this extremely readable volume film historian J.R. Jordan gives us a rigorous examination of Robert Wise's career and contributions to American cinema. Wise often goes underappreciated but Jordan does this pioneer justice. Jordan's prose is accessible and uncompromising at once. This book is a must read for anyone who appreciates the gift of cinema to humanity." - Tony Kashani Author of Movies Change Lives: Pedagogy of Constructive Humanistic Transformation Through Cinema (Minding the Media)About the Author: J.R. Jordan is a motion picture historian and is also the author of Showmanship: The Cinema of William Castle.

The Creative Screenwriter: 12 Rules to Follow—and Break—to Unlock Your Screenwriting Potential


Julian Hoxter - 2020
    This guide distills the craft of screenwriting into 12 key elements, from developing your story to revising and rewriting, plus plenty of inspiration to create your own screenplay with confidence.Discover what to expect within the film industry and how it has evolved. Look behind the scenes at iconic films using a classic structure of screenwriting, along with experimental films from innovative writers that have transcended the rules and paved their own way to the silver screen. Then, get to the exciting part—writing—using a dozen tried-and-true rules of the trade. Each chapter is accompanied with an In the Writer’s Room creative exercise, such as formatting your script, mapping sequences, and creating rich dialogue and characters, to deepen your understanding of what brings a screenplay to life.This screenwriting guide includes:**Filmmaker’s dozen—From loglines to creating a compelling character to root for, you’ll find 12 fundamental but flexible steps to help you craft a powerful, creative screenplay.T**opline terminology—Navigate the film biz like a pro with need-to-know Hollywood jargon, plus troubleshooting tips for any screenwriting hiccups along the way.**Film archive—From William Goldman’s The Princess Bride to Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit, discover emerging and timeless screenwriting techniques used in Hollywood blockbusters, micro-budget films, and more.Take your story from creative conception to complete script with this modern, 12-step approach to screenwriting.

The Cannon Film Guide (Volume I, 1980-1984)


Austin Trunick - 2020
    Through in-depth studies and behind-the-scenes stories from the people who made them, this volume examines such beloved, VHS-era classics as the Breakin’, Missing in Action, Hercules, and Death Wish movies, Revenge of the Ninja, Ninja III: The Domination, The Apple, Bolero, Exterminator 2, The Last American Virgin, and many more.

White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights


Justin Gomer - 2020
    In 1963, Martin Luther King famously stated, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." However, in the decades after the civil rights movement, the ideology of colorblindness co-opted the language of the civil rights era in order to reinvent white supremacy and dismantle the civil rights movement's legal victories without offending political decorum. Yet, the spread of colorblindness could not merely happen through political speeches, newspapers, or books. The key, Justin Gomer contends, was film--as race-conscious language was expelled from public discourse, Hollywood provided the visual medium necessary to dramatize an anti-civil rights agenda over the course of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. In blockbusters like Dirty Harry, Rocky, and Dangerous Minds, filmmakers capitalized upon the volatile racial, social, and economic struggles in the decades after the civil rights movement, shoring up a powerful, bipartisan ideology that would be wielded against race-conscious policy, the memory of black freedom struggles, and core aspects of the liberal state itself.

Gofers: On the Front Lines of Film and Television


Daniel Scarpati - 2020
    "gofer").This is the first position that many people have in the film and television production industry. After working hundreds of overtime hours as a PA, Daniel Scarpati learned that success in showbiz is all about who you don't know! Come behind the scenes of countless sets to hear about the plentiful, sometimes painful tasks PAs are asked to do so the show can go on.Gofers places the entry-level role and hectic lifestyle of a PA in the spotlight. It explains, step-by-step, how Daniel went from making home movies in his backyard and having zero connections to working on dozens of primetime network series, major studio movies and big-budget commercials. Through stories from time spent with renowned cast and crew, Daniel explains how to forge your own path in the industry.This isn't just another textbook. The street smarts, people skills and practical life lessons can translate to any industry."I so wish I had this book when I was first trying to be a writer/producer in L.A. I started as a PA, but this would've saved me the two years it took to learn the protocol of Hollywood."- Russ Woody, producer/writer of Parenthood, The Middle, Becker, Mad About You and The Drew Carey Show"'Gofers' is a must read for anyone interested in breaking into the motion picture industry. Full of how to, on-set knowledge, and peppered with anecdotes told through the eyes of veteran PA Dan Scarpati, it is informative, fun, and tells it like it is."- Tom Reilly, member: the Directors Guild of America, author of The Hollywood MBA: A Crash Course in Management From a Life in The Film Business"Former PA Daniel Scarpati has written a book, and don’t worry, he doesn’t burn anybody. 'Gofers' is a fun, scrappy, very readable memoir/guide to being a PA... If you know anyone thinking of trying to break into movies, they will likely appreciate this book. It would also be good for directors and department heads to read it, if only to remember: Everyone on set might write a book someday, so be nice."- Tim Molloy, Editor-in-Chief, MovieMaker Magazine

Taken by the Muse: On the Path to becoming a Filmmaker


Anne Wheeler - 2020
    

Bond Cars: The Definitive History


Jason Barlow - 2020
    Featuring exclusive and priceless assets such as the original call sheets, technical drawings and story-boards, accompanied by previously unpublished photography and exclusive interviews, we put you behind the wheel of every car driven by 007 on film.With insights from the producers and keepers of the Bond flame, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli as well as Daniel Craig and special effects and action vehicles supervisor and veteran of 15 Bond films, Chris Corbould, this is the story of cinema's greatest icon, told through the prism of the legendary cars he has driven.

Hitchcock Blonde: A Cinematic Memoir


Sharon Dolin - 2020
    A singular cliffhanging tale, reminiscent in style of Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran and Helen Macdonald's H Is for Hawk.

The Films of Bong Joon Ho


Nam Lee - 2020
    Parasite was the first Korean film to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes. These achievements mark a new career peak for the director, who first achieved wide international acclaim with 2006’s monster movie The Host and whose forays into English-language film with Snowpiercer (2013) and Okja (2017) brought him further recognition. As this timely book reveals, even as Bong Joon Ho has emerged as an internationally known director, his films still engage with distinctly Korean social and political contexts that may elude many Western viewers. The Films of Bong Joon Ho demonstrates how he hybridizes Hollywood conventions with local realities in order to create a cinema that foregrounds the absurd cultural anomie Koreans have experienced in tandem with their rapid economic development. Film critic and scholar Nam Lee explores how Bong subverts the structures of the genres he works within, from the crime thriller to the sci-fi film, in order to be truthful to Korean realities that often deny the reassurances of the happy Hollywood ending. With detailed readings of Bong’s films from Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000) through Parasite (2019), the book will give readers a new appreciation of this world-class cinematic talent.

London


Patrick Keiller - 2020
    The unseen pair complete a series of excursions around the city in an attempt to investigate what Robinson calls ‘the problem of London’, during which a palimpsest of the city is revealed.London is a unique take on the essay-film format, with scathing reflections on the recent past, enlivened by offbeat humour and wide-ranging literary anecdotes. A variety of unexpected scenes recover the familiar London of the near past: Concorde almost touches suburban houses as it lands; Union Jacks fly from Wembley Stadium’s Twin Towers and pigeons flock around tourists in Trafalgar Square. Such images, in combination with the script, allow us to see beyond the London typically presented.It is both a fascinating reflection on the diverse histories of Britain’s capital and an illuminating record of 1992, the year of John Major’s re-election, IRA bombs and the first crack in the House of Windsor. With an afterword and location notes from the director, the book’s publication is the first time the film has been fully reproduced in print.

Modernism by Other Means: The Films of Amit Dutta


Srikanth Srinivasan - 2020
    His sensual, stimulating films are as removed from national mainstream cinema(s) as from the international arthouse tradition. They are, instead, incarnations of a personal quest, a lifelong project of research and self-cultivation. They propose newer forms of cinematographic expression through their constant, ongoing dialogue with ancient Indian artistic thought. Taken together, these films constitute a cinema of aesthetic introspection. Despite universal acclaim, including awards and retrospectives across the world, critical commentary on Dutta’s oeuvre has remained scarce.Modernism by Other Means is the first book-length consideration of the output of one of the most compelling film practitioners active today. Through close-grained critical analysis of each of his films, it examines how Dutta’s work strives towards an authentic conception of modernism, one that bypasses Eurocentric rites of passage, inviting us to reframe our ideas of what being modern in art means.

Steffen Appel and Peter Waelty: The Goldfinger Files: The Making of the Iconic Alpine Sequence in the James Bond Movie “Goldfinger”


Steffen Appel - 2020
    

The long-lost autobiography of Georges Méliès


Georges Méliès - 2020
    He told the decades-long story of his central role in the creation of cinema and the subsequent fall which left him bankrupt and forgotten.​This is a first-hand account of the birth of cinema from its greatest innovator, an illuminating and eccentric testimony which has been out-of-print for many decades and never previously available in English.

Touch of Evil


Richard Deming - 2020
    Richard Deming's study of the film considers it as an outstanding example of the noir genre and explores its complex relationship to its source novel, Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson. He traces the film's production history, and provides an insightful close analysis of its key scenes, including its famous opening sequence, a single take in which the camera follows a booby-trapped car on its journey through city streets and across the border.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Original Screenplay)


Charlie Kaufman - 2020
    Nothing is as it seems when a woman experiencing misgivings about her new boyfriend joins him on a road trip to meet his parents at their remote farm.

The Cinema of Survival


Matthew Brown - 2020
    The twelve essays in this book consider how this tale of trauma was told: from the filmmaking to the thematic concerns, the imagery to the “how on earth was this done?” of it all. Witness us.

Around the World in the Cinemas of Paris


Theodore Dalrymple - 2020
    You can travel around the globe in the cinemas of Paris. This is precisely what Theodore Dalrymple did. Here are his reflections — historical, cultural, philosophical — on the 33 films that he saw, often combined with his own reminiscences of the various countries he had visited himself. The universal and the particular are inextricably combined in this highly original and amusing book. Theodore Dalrymple is a retired doctor and psychiatrist who has written many books, including Life at the Bottom, Admirable Evasions and Embargo and Other Stories.

Scoundrels & Spitballers: Writers and Hollywood in the 1930s


Philippe Garnier - 2020
    

Adobe Premiere Pro Classroom in a Book (2020 release)


Maxim Jago - 2020
    The 17 project-based lessons in this book show students step-by-step the key techniques for working in Premiere Pro. Students learn skills to take a project from beginning to end, including the basics on things like organizing media, using audio, creating transitions, producing titles, and adding effects. Once they have the basics down, they'll learn how to take their projects further by sweetening and mixing audio, compositing layered footage, adjusting color, customizing motion graphics, exporting files, and much more. The companion DVD (also available as an online download) includes lesson files so students can work step-by-step along with the book. All buyers of the book also get full access to the Web Edition: a Web-based version of the complete eBook enhanced with video and multiple-choice quizzes.

Federico Fellini: The Book of Dreams


Sergio Tofetti - 2020
    From the late 1960s until 1990, the great director used this diary to represent his nocturnal visions in the form of drawings or, as he himself described them, "scribbles, rushed and ungrammatical notes."Currently out of print, this new edition will include a critical introduction, as well as updated graphic design. It will be published in collaboration with the Municipality of Rimini as well as the Museo Nazionale del Cinema, the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, and the Cineteca di Bologna (the three main Italian institutions in the field of cinema).The volume will be released to coincide with the centenary of Federico Fellini's birth (January 2020), which will be celebrated in Italy with a traveling exhibition on the director that will start its journey from Milan in December 2019.

Springsteen as Soundtrack: The Sound of the Boss in Film and Television


Caroline Madden - 2020
    This book examines a selection of films and TV shows from the 1980s to the present--including Mask, High Fidelity, The Sopranos and The Wrestler--that feature Springsteen's music on the soundtrack. Relating his thematic preoccupations with religion, the Vietnam War, the promise of the open road, economic disparity and blue-collar malaise, his songs color narrative and articulate the inner lives of characters. This book explores the many on-screen contexts of Springsteen's work from Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. to Springsteen on Broadway.

The Films That Made Me...


Peter Bradshaw - 2020
    Peter Bradshaw is an excellent film reviewer for intelligent, curious filmgoers. He's a true journalist who has served as The Guardian's film critic for 20 years and who understands what his readers want to know. His reviews carry his deep experience, knowledge, and understanding of film lightly. Films That Made Me... allows Peter Bradshaw to share his knowledge and guidance directly with readers. His reviews are the substance of this book--from 20 years-worth of Guardian reviewing. Selections are themed, each with a personalized entry-point introduction. Sample contents include:Films that make me sad. Films that make me laugh. Films that make me think. Films that made me feel. Films that make me run for the hills. Films that I want to show to my son.Films that make me think about my parents. Films that make me squirm (in a good way). Films that make me scared. Films that make me Google the real-life people involved (and think about true-life stories.) Films that have me on the edge of my seat.

Silent Film: A Very Short Introduction


Donna Kornhaber - 2020
    In this brief and readable account, these formative decades come vividly to life.Covering the full scope of the silent era-from the invention of motion pictures to the rise of the Hollywood studios-and touching on films and filmmakers from every corner of the globe, Silent Film: A Very Short Introduction offers a window into film's first years as a worldwide entertainment phenomenon. From groundbreaking early shorts to the masterpieces of the cinema's classical era, from street-corner nickelodeons to grand movie palaces, from slapstick to the avant-garde, the silent era's artistic abundance and global variety are here put on full display. In the story of silent film, we see not just the origins of a new culture industry but also a legacy of imagination and innovation that continues to profoundly influence the cinema even to this day.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Cinema Sewer Volume 7: The Adults Only Guide to History's Sickest and Sexiest Movies!


Robin Bougie - 2020
    

sound of metal


Darius Marder - 2020
    Sound of metal movie screenplay

Cinnamon and Strawberries


K.L. Noone - 2020
    But now that filming’s over, they’ll have to figure out what’s next, as holiday bells start ringing in the air. Jason’s ready to move in if Colby asks -- but he’s not sure Colby’s ready for that. Colby’s hoping Jason wants to stay -- but has a hard time believing in promises. Together, they’ll face their first holiday season as a celebrity couple, complete with breakfast in bed, new uses for sparkly ribbon, mince pies, and learning how to live together ... and a few surprise celebrations.

Near Dark


Stacey Abbott - 2020
    The film, an early work of the now-established director Kathryn Bigelow, skilfully mixes genre conventions, combining gothic tropes with those of the Western, road movie and film noir, while also introducing elements of the outlaw romance genre.Stacey Abbott's study of the film addresses it as a genre hybrid that also challenges conventions of the vampire film. The vampires are morally ambiguous and undermine the class structures that have historically defined stories of the undead. These are not aristocrats but instead they capture the allure and horror of the disenfranchised and the underclass. As Abbott describes, Near Dark was crucial in consolidating Bigelow's standing as a director of significance at an early point in her career, not simply because of her visual art background, but because of the way in which she would from Near Dark onward re-envision other traditionally mainstream genres of filmmaking.

Picturing Peter Bogdanovich: My Conversations with the New Hollywood Director


Peter Tonguette - 2020
    Riding the success of What's Up, Doc? (1972) and Paper Moon (1973), Bogdanovich became a bona fide celebrity, making regular appearances in his own movie trailers, occasionally hosting late-night television shows, and publicly advocating for mentors John Ford and Howard Hawks. No director of his era surpassed his ability to capture an audience's imagination.In Picturing Peter Bogdanovich: My Conversations with the New Hollywood Director, journalist and critic Peter Tonguette offers a film-by-film journey through the director's life and work. Beginning with a string of 1970s classics, Tonguette explores well-known films such as Saint Jack (1979), They All Laughed (1981), and Noises Off (1992), as well as the director's work on stage and television. Drawing on interviews conducted over sixteen years, Tonguette pairs his analysis with an extensive, previously unpublished series of Q&As with Bogdanovich. These exclusive interviews reveal behind-the-scenes details about the director's life, work, and future plans. Part memoir, part biography, this book offers a uniquely intimate portrait of one of Hollywood's most underappreciated directors.

Gothic Cinema


Xavier Aldana Reyes - 2020
    Throughout, Aldana Reyes makes a strong case for a tighter and more intuitive approach to the Gothic on screen that acknowledges its position within wider film industries with their own sets of financial pressures and priorities.This ground-breaking book is the first thorough chronological, transhistorical and transnational study of Gothic cinema, ideal for both new and seasoned scholars, as well as those with a wider interest in the Gothic.

The Process Genre: Cinema and the Aesthetic of Labor


Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky - 2020
    In The Process Genre Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky introduces and theorizes the process genre—a heretofore unacknowledged and untheorized transmedial genre characterized by its representation of chronologically ordered steps in which some form of labor results in a finished product. Originating in the fifteenth century with machine drawings, and now including everything from cookbooks to instructional videos and art cinema, the process genre achieves its most powerful affective and ideological results in film. By visualizing technique and absorbing viewers into the actions of social actors and machines, industrial, educational, ethnographic, and other process films stake out diverse ideological positions on the meaning of labor and on a society's level of technological development. In systematically theorizing a genre familiar to anyone with access to a screen, Skvirsky opens up new possibilities for film theory.

Paris in the Dark: Going to the Movies in the City of Light, 1930–1950


Eric Smoodin - 2020
    Drawing on a wealth of journalistic sources, Smoodin recounts the ways films moved through the city, the favored stars, and what it was like to go to the movies in a city with hundreds of cinemas. In a single week in the early 1930s, moviegoers might see Hollywood features like King Kong and Frankenstein, the new Marlene Dietrich and Maurice Chevalier movies, and any number of films from Italy, Germany, and Russia. Or they could frequent the city's ciné-clubs, which were hosts to the cinéphile subcultures of Paris. At other times, a night at the movies might result in an evening of fascist violence, even before the German Occupation of Paris, while after the war the city's cinemas formed the space for reconsolidating French film culture. In mapping the cinematic geography of Paris, Smoodin expands understandings of local film exhibition and the relationships of movies to urban space.

Making Images Move: Handmade Cinema and the Other Arts


Gregory Zinman - 2020
    In this richly illustrated volume, Gregory Zinman explores how moving-image artists who worked in experimental film pushed the medium toward abstraction through a number of unconventional filmmaking practices, including painting and scratching directly on the film strip; deteriorating film with water, dirt, and bleach; and applying materials such as paper and glue. This book provides a comprehensive history of this tradition of “handmade cinema” from the early twentieth century to the present, opening up new conversations about the production, meaning, and significance of the moving image. From painted film to kinetic art, and from psychedelic light shows to video synthesis, Gregory Zinman recovers the range of forms, tools, and intentions that make up cinema’s shadow history, deepening awareness of the intersection of art and media in the twentieth century, and anticipating what is to come.

The American Midwest in Film and Literature: Nostalgia, Violence, and Regionalism


Adam R Ochonicky - 2020
    Louis, Halloween, and A History of Violence, for example—imagine, reify, and reproduce Midwestern identity? And what are the repercussions of such regional narratives and images circulating in American culture? In The American Midwest in Film and Literature: Nostalgia, Violence, and Regionalism, Adam R. Ochonicky provides a critical overview of the evolution, contestation, and fragmentation of the Midwest's symbolic and often contradictory meanings. Using the frontier writings of Frederick Jackson Turner as a starting point, this book establishes a succession of Midwestern filmic and literary texts stretching from the late-19th century through the beginning of the 21st century and argues that the manifold properties of nostalgia have continually transformed popular understandings and ideological uses of the Midwest's place-identity. Ochonicky identifies three primary modes of nostalgia at play across a set of textual objects: the projection of nostalgia onto physical landscapes and into the cultural sphere (nostalgic spatiality); nostalgia as a cultural force that regulates behaviors, identities, and appearances (nostalgic violence); and the progressive potential of nostalgia to generate an acknowledgment and possible rectification of ways in which the flawed past negatively affects the present (nostalgic atonement). While developing these new conceptions of nostalgia, Ochonicky reveals how an under-examined area of regional study has received critical attention throughout the histories of American film and literature, as well as in related materials and discourses. From the closing of the Western frontier to the polarized political and cultural climate of the 21st century, this book demonstrates how film and literature have been and continue to be vital forums for illuminating the complex interplay of regionalism and nostalgia.

Unsettling: Jews, Whiteness, and Incest in American Popular Culture


Eli Bromberg - 2020
    Chapters on Woody Allen, Roseanne Barr, and Henry Roth demonstrate how media coverage of their respective incest denials (Allen), allegations (Barr), and confessions (Roth) intersect with a history of sexual antisemitism, while an introductory chapter on Jewish second-wave feminist criticism of Sigmund Freud considers how Freud became “white” in these discussions. Unsettling reveals how film, TV, and literature have helped displace once prevalent antisemitic stereotypes onto those who are non-Jewish, nonwhite, and poor. In considering how whiteness functions for an ethnoreligious group with historic vulnerability to incest stereotype as well as contemporary white privilege, Unsettling demonstrates how white Jewish men accused of incest, and even those who defiantly confess it, became improbably sympathetic figures representing supposed white male vulnerability.

Conclusions


John Boorman - 2020
    Conclusions continues the story of his life that Boorman began with Adventures of a Suburban Boy and shares what has happened since its publication: films made (such as the award-winning The General) and unmade; new knowledge about the craft of film-making; and, ultimately, the story of of his kith and kin, including the death of his cherished elder daughter.Wielding a metaphorical Excalibur, Boorman's career has been a continual search for the truth that only art can convey, and this memoir shows him at his finest.

Movies of the 2000s


Jürgen Müller - 2020
    Each movie masterpiece is profiled with stills and production photos, a synopsis, analysis, and movie-buff trivia, as well as cast, crew, and technical listings.

The Curse of Sherlock Holmes: The Basil Rathbone Story


David Clayton - 2020
    Though Rathbone had a long and distinguished acting career, it was as Sherlock Holmes that he achieved worldwide fame. Appearing in fourteen Holmes films, Rathbone made the role his own, and every actor who has since played the ingenious detective has been compared to him – almost always failing to live up to Rathbone’s legacy. He continued his career in Hollywood, appearing in numerous roles, but he found it difficult to free himself of Holmes, eventually accepting he never would. This book spans Rathbone’s journey from the trenches of the First World War, when he was awarded a Military Cross for bravery, through to a Hollywood career that earned him three Walk of Fame stars. It also takes in his life away from the silver screen, which included his lifelong friendship with Nigel Bruce, his trusty sidekick Dr Watson in all the Sherlock Holmes films.