Book picks similar to
The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers by Mark T. Conard
film
philosophy
non-fiction
nonfiction
Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner
Paul M. Sammon - 1996
Dick's brilliant and troubling SF novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, still rules as the most visually dense, thematically challenging, and influential SF film ever made. Future Noir is the story of that triumph.The making of Blade Runner was a seven-year odyssey that would test the stamina and the imagination of writers, producers, special effects wizards, and the most innovative art directors and set designers in the industry.A fascinating look at the ever-shifting interface between commerce and the art that is modern Hollywood, Future Noir is the intense, intimate, anything-but-glamerous inside account of how the work of SF's most uncompromising author was transformed into a critical sensation, a commercial success, and a cult classic.
Universal Horrors: The Studio's Classic Films, 1931-1946
Tom Weaver - 2007
Trekking boldly through haunts and horrors from The Frankenstein Monster, The Wolf Man, Count Dracula, and The Invisible Man, to The Mummy, Paula the Ape Woman, The Creeper, and The Inner Sanctum, the authors offer a definitive study of the 86 films produced during this era and present a general overview of the period. Coverage of the films includes complete cast lists, credits, storyline, behind-the-scenes information, production history, critical analysis, and commentary from the cast and crew (much of it drawn from interviews by Tom Weaver, whom USA Today calls ?the king of the monster hunters?). Unique to this edition are a new selection of photographs and poster reproductions and an appendix listing additional films of interest.
Jean-Luc Godard: Interviews
David Sterritt - 1998
He has pursued his revolution in works ranging from the explosive Breathless to the eloquent Contempt to the controversial Hail Mary and the postmodern Histoire(s) du cinema, shaking up conventional formulas with boldly innovative approaches to every aspect of cinema and video - including film criticism via provocative essays in Cahiers du Cinema and interviews dating to the early years of his career. This book presents a varied selection of his conversations with critics, scholars, and journalists, spanning the 1960s to the 1990s and illuminating key facets of his life work and ideas.
Starting Point: 1979-1996
Hayao Miyazaki - 1996
A hefty compilation of essays (both pictorial and prose), notes, concept sketches and interviews by (and with) Hayao Miyazaki. Arguably the most respected animation director in the world, Miyazaki is the genius behind "Howl's Moving Castle," Princess Mononoke" and the Academy Award-winning film, "Spirited Away."
Not to be Missed: Fifty-four Favorites from a Lifetime of Film
Kenneth Turan - 2008
Kenneth Turan’s fifty-four favorite films embrace a century of the world’s most satisfying romances and funniest comedies, the most heart-stopping dramas and chilling thrillers.Turan discovered film as a child left undisturbed to watch Million Dollar Movie on WOR-TV Channel 9 in New York, a daily showcase for older Hollywood features. It was then that he developed a love of cinema that never left him and honed his eye for the most acute details and the grandest of scenes.Not to be Missed blends cultural criticism, historical anecdote, and inside-Hollywood controversy. Turan’s selection of favorites ranges across all genres. From All About Eve to Seven Samurai to Sherlock Jr., these are all timeless films—classic and contemporary, familiar and obscure, with big budgets and small—each underscoring the truth of director Ingmar Bergman’s observation that “no form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.”
The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation Is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories
Frank Rose - 2011
Now, on YouTube and blogs and Facebook and Twitter, we are media. And while we watch more television than ever before, how we watch it is changing in ways we have barely slowed down to register. No longer content in our traditional role as couch potatoes, we approach television shows, movies, even advertising as invitations to participate—as experiences to immerse ourselves in at will. Wired contributing editor Frank Rose introduces us to the people who are reshaping media for a two-way world—people like Will Wright (The Sims), James Cameron (Avatar), Damon Lindelof (Lost), and dozens of others whose ideas are changing how we play, how we chill, and even how we think. The Art of Immersion is an eye-opening look at the shifting shape of entertainment today.
Afterglow: A Last Conversation With Pauline Kael
Francis Davis - 1990
This is a biography of the ascerbic and witty film critic Pauline Kael.
Screening History
Gore Vidal - 1992
Never before has the renowned author revealed so much about his own life or written with such immediacy about the forces shaping America. 26 halftones.
Granta 122: Betrayal
John Freeman - 2013
The massage therapist who struggles to help a veteran who's biggest regret is tattooed in living detail across his back. The retired CIA operative, now a mother of two, who is still packing heat for the just-in-case scenario that has her trigger finger itching...With award-winning reportage, memoir, fiction and photography, Granta has illuminated the most complex issues of modern life through the refractory light of literature. Feel the sting of betrayal via new writing by Ben Marcus, Janine di Giovanni, Karen Russell, Samantha Harvey, Colin Robinson, Jennifer Vanderbes, Callan Wink, John Burnside and a host of others, including debut author Lauren Wilkinson, whose heroine moves through decades with the forward lean of Richard Yates and the grace of Garcia Marquez.
The Nashville Chronicles: The Making of Robert Altman's Masterpiece
Jan Stuart - 2000
Illustrated throughout with behind-the-scenes photos.
Funny!: Twenty-Five Years in the Pixar Story Room
Walt Disney Company - 2015
But there are hundreds of gags that don't make it past the cutting room floor, like Mater as a ninja and Sadness wearing mom jeans. Funny! explores this material in depth, showcasing classic moments from all of Pixar's films to date, plus never-before-published illustrations and doodles from the Pixar archives. With an introduction by veteran story man Jason Katz, this book is a must-have for any Pixar fan.
Frank: The True Story that Inspired the Movie
Jon Ronson - 2014
Frank wore a big fake head. Nobody outside his inner circle knew his true identity. This became the subject of feverish speculation during his zenith years. Together, they rode relatively high. Then it all went wrong.Twenty-five years later and Jon has co-written a movie, Frank, inspired by his time in this great and bizarre band. Frank is set for release in 2014, starring Michael Fassbender, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Domhnall Gleeson and directed by Lenny Abrahamson.Frank: The True Story that Inspired the Movie is a memoir of funny, sad times and a tribute to outsider artists too wonderfully strange to ever make it in the mainstream. It tells the true story behind the fictionalized movie.
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’.
Don't You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes
Jaime Clarke - 2007
Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Some Kind of Wonderful are timeless tales of love, angst, longing, and self-discovery that illuminated and assuaged the anxieties of an entire generation. Fondly nostalgic, filled with wit and surprising insights, don't you forget about me contains original essays from a skillfully chosen crop of novelists and essayists on the films' far-reaching effects on their own lives -- an irresistible read for anyone who came of age in the eighties (or just wishes they did). Featuring new writing from: Steve Almond * Julianna Baggott * Lisa Borders * Ryan Boudinot * T Cooper * Quinn Dalton * Emily Franklin * Lisa Gabriele * Tod Goldberg * Nina de Gramont * Tara Ison * Allison Lynn * John McNally * Dan Pope * Lewis Robinson * Ben Schrank * Elizabeth Searle * Mary Sullivan * Rebecca Wolff * Moon Unit Zappa
A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960
Jeanine Basinger - 1993
Films widely disparate in subject, sentiment, and technique, they nonetheless shared one dual purpose: to provide the audience (of women, primarily) with temporary liberation into a screen dream - of romance, sexuality, luxury, suffering, or even wickedness - and then send it home reminded of, reassured by, and resigned to the fact that no matter what else she might do, a woman's most important job was...to be a woman. Now, with boundless knowledge and infectious enthusiasm, Jeanine Basinger illuminates the various surprising and subversive ways in which women's films delivered their message. Basinger examines dozens of films, exploring the seemingly intractable contradictions at the convoluted heart of the woman's genre - among them, the dilemma of the strong and glamorous woman who cedes her power when she feels it threatening her personal happiness, and the self-abnegating woman whose selflessness is not always as "noble" as it appears. Basinger looks at the stars who played these women (Kay Francis, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Rosalind Russell, Susan Hayward, Myrna Loy, and a host of others) and helps us understand the qualities - the right off-screen personae, the right on-screen attitudes, the right faces, the right figures for carrying the right clothes - that made them personify the woman's film and equipped them to make believable drama or comedy out of the crackpot plots, the conflicting ideas, and the exaggerations of real behavior that characterize these movies. In each of the films the author discus