An Actor Prepares


Konstantin Stanislavski - 1938
    Stanislavski's simple exercises fire the imagination, and help readers not only discover their own conception of reality but how to reproduce it as well.

WKW: The Cinema of Wong Kar Wai


Wong Kar-Wai - 2016
    Wong Kar Wai is known for his romantic and stylish films that explore—in saturated, cinematic scenes—themes of love, longing, and the burden of memory. His style reveals a fascination with mood and texture, and a sense of place figures prominently. In this volume, the first on his entire body of work, Wong Kar Wai and writer John Powers explore Wong’s complete oeuvre in the locations of some of his most famous scenes. The book is structured as six conversations between Powers and Wong (each in a different locale), including the restaurant where he shot In the Mood for Love and the snack bar where he shot Chungking Express. Discussing each of Wong’s eleven films, the conversations also explore Wong’s trademark themes of time, nostalgia, and beauty, and their roots in his personal life. This first book by Wong Kar Wai, lavishly illustrated with more than 250 photographs and film stills and featuring an opening critical essay by Powers, is as evocative as walking into one of Wong’s lush films.

Kubrick: The Definitive Edition


Michel Ciment - 1980
    If Stanley Kubrick had made only" 2001: A Space Odyssey" or "Dr. Strangelove," his cinematic legacy would have been assured. But from his first feature film, "Fear and Desire," to the posthumously released "Eyes Wide Shut," Kubrick created an accomplished body of work unique in its scope, diversity, and artistry, and by turns both lauded and controversial.In this newly revised and definitive edition of his now classic study, film critic Michel Ciment provides an insightful examination of Kubrick's thirteen films--including such favorites as "Lolita, A Clockwork Orange," and "Full Metal Jacket-"-alongside an assemblage of more than four hundred photographs that form a complementary photo essay. Rounding out this unique work are a short biography of Kubrick; interviews with the director, as well as cast and crew members, including Malcolm McDowell, Shelley Duvall, and Jack Nicholson; and a detailed filmography and bibliography. Meshed with masterful integrity, the book's text and illustrations pay homage to one of the most visionary, original, and demanding filmmakers of our time.

Kieslowski on Kieslowski


Krzysztof Kieślowski - 1993
    Kieslowski was notoriously reticent, and even dismissive of his work and talent, but these frank and detailed discussions show a passion for film-making and a career which was often threatened by political and economic change within Poland. In the book he talks at length about his life: his childhood, disrupted by Hitler and Stalin; his four attempts to get into film school; and what Poland and its future meant to him at the time of writing, before his death in 1996.

Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema


Christian Metz - 1974
    . . can be held to date from the publication in 1964 of the famous essay by Christian Metz, 'Le cinéma: langue ou langage?'"—Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Times Literary Supplement"Modern film theory begins with Metz."—Constance Penley, coeditor of Camera Obscura"Any consideration of semiology in relation to the particular field signifying practice of film passes inevitably through a reference to the work of Christian Metz. . . . The first book to be written in this field, [Film Language] is important not merely because of this primacy but also because of the issues it raises . . . issues that have become crucial to the contemporary argument."—Stephen Heath, Screen

Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci


Stephen Thrower - 1999
    From horror masterpieces like The Beyond and Zombie Flesh-Eaters to erotic thrillers like One On Top of the Other and A Lizard in a Woman's Skin; from his earliest days as director of manic Italian comedies to his notoriety as purveyor of extreme violence in the terrifying slasher epic The New York Ripper, his whole career is explored. Supernatural themes and weird logic collide with flesh-ripping gore to breathtaking effect. Bleak horrors are transformed into bloody poetry - Fulci's loving camera technique, and the decayed splendour of his art design, make the films more than just a gross endurance test. Lucio Fulci built up a fanatical following, who at last will have the chance to own this book - five years in the making - which is the ultimate testament to 'The Godfather of Gore'. Featuring a foreword by Fulci's devoted daughter Antonella, and produced with her blessing and full co-operation. This book is quite simply the last word on Fulci. His whole career is studied in obsessive depth. Huge supplementary appendices make this volume essential for all serious students of the Italian horror movie scene. Featuring COMPLETE FILMOGRAPHIES for ALL the major actors and actresses ever to appear in Fulci films, the appendices alone are a unique, breathtakingly detailed reference source in their own right. Without doubt, by far and away the largest collection of Fulci posters, stills, press-books and lobby cards ever seen together in print. We have scoured the Earth to find the most stunning, rare and eye-catching Fulci images. Everything worth seeing is here. This is a truly beautiful book.

Masters of Light: Conversations with Contemporary Cinematographers


Dennis Schaefer - 1984
    Through conversations held with fifteen of the most accomplished contemporary cinematographers, the authors explore the working world of the person who controls the visual look and style of a film.

An Open Book


John Huston - 1980
    Huston shows a master screenwriter's skill in setting a scene and delineating a character with a few words."--New York Times Book ReviewIn An Open Book, this veteran of five marriages, innumerable friendships, practical jokes, horses, love affairs, and intellectual obsessions tells his own story in his own way. It is direct, unadorned, complete-and wonderful reading. Here is Huston on stage for the first time at age three, dressed in an Uncle Sam suit; in the ring at eighteen, boxing for small purses; selling his first short story to H.L. Mencken; down and out in London; acting in Greenwich Village; going to Hollywood to work for Jack Warner as a writer; directing his first picture, The Maltese Falcon; filming dangerous combat scenes in the Aleutians and in Italy; and making over forty years worth of movies, from Key Largo to The Man Who Would Be King. And the stories behind those movies are often as exciting as the movies themselves, featuring such notables as Hemingway, Selznick, Sartre, Hepburn, Monroe, Flynn, Welles, Gable, Bogart, Clift, and Brando. An Open Book is alive with John Huston's presence: his boldness and daring, his candor and style, and the spontaneity with which he followed his dreams to their ultimate destination, the well-deserved acclaim of a world enchanted by his work.

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

Live Cinema and Its Techniques


Francis Ford Coppola - 2017
    But the time is not far off, Live Cinema and Its Techniques demonstrates, when a director or a collaborative team of filmmakers working across the internet will create "live" movies that will be sent instantly via satellite for viewing throughout the world.Yet the creative demands posed by airing live sporting contests, as impressive as the final product is, pale in contrast with the ambitions of "cinematic auteurs," who are inspired by great directors, like Serge Eisenstein, Max Ophuls, or Alfred Hitchcock, among many others. As daunting as the challenge is, the process of integrating the highest artistic standards of previous generations into the medium of "live cinema" can, Coppola explains, be achieved, thus creating an entirely new art form for the so-called "screen." Tapping into his own encyclopedic knowledge of twentieth-century film history, Coppola threads his vision of this burgeoning cinematic medium with autobiographical and historical vignettes gleaned from the past, recalling his own boyhood obsession with film and his early fascination with the "Golden Age of Television," when 1950s viewers were treated to live productions of classics, like Days of Wine and Roses and Requiem for a Heavyweight.Especially exciting is the exhilaration and drama that results from retraining actors and using a multitude of cameras to create a film that has the in-the-moment energy of a live event. Having already tried out this new medium with "proof-of-concept workshops" at Oklahoma City Community College and at UCLA, Coppola has created an invaluable guide for students and teachers alike. Filled with discussions of how to rehearse actors, how to choose scenery and location, and how to overcome theatrical, as well as technical, obstacles, Live Cinema and Its Techniques reveals how the spontaneity of this new genre can ultimately transport filmmaking into a new era of creativity still unimaginable today.Featuring chapters on:A Short History of Film and TelevisionThe Actors, Acting, and RehearsalThe Question of Style in the CinemaObstacles and Other Thoughts on Live Cinema No Matter What They May BeEquipment: Now and in the Near Future

Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies


bell hooks - 1996
    Reel To Real collects hooks' classic essays on films such as Paris Is Burning or the infamous "Whose Pussy Is It" essay about Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It, as well as newer work on Pulp Fiction, Crooklyn and Waiting To Exhale. hooks also examines the world of independent cinema. Conversations with filmmakers Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, and Arthur Jaffa are linked with critical essays, including a piece on Larry Clark's Kids, to show that cinema can function subversively as well as maintain the status quo.

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.

Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light


Patrick McGilligan - 2003
    Acclaimed biographer Patrick McGilligan re-examines his life and extraordinary work, challenging perceptions of Hitchcock as the “macabre Englishman” and sexual obsessive, and reveals instead the ingenious craftsman, trickster, provocateur, and romantic.With insights into his relationships with Hollywood legends – such as Cary Grant, James Stewart, Ingrid Bergman, and Grace Kelly – as well as his 54-year marriage to Alma Reville and his inspirations in the thriller genre, the book is full of the same dark humor, cliffhanger suspense, and revelations that are synonymous with one of the most famous and misunderstood figures in cinema.

The Major Film Theories: An Introduction


Dudley Andrew - 1975
    Both a history of film theory and an introduction to the work of the most important writers in the field, Andrew's volume reveals the bases of thought of such major theorists as Munsterberg, Arnheim, Eisenstein, Balazs, Kracauer, Bazin, Mitry, and Metz.

Illuminations: Essays and Reflections


Walter Benjamin - 1955
    Illuminations includes Benjamin's views on Kafka, with whom he felt the closest personal affinity, his studies on Baudelaire and Proust (both of whom he translated), his essays on Leskov and on Brecht's Epic Theater. Also included are his penetrating study on "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," an illuminating discussion of translation as a literary mode, and his thesis on the philosophy of history. Hannah Arendt selected the essays for this volume and prefaces them with a substantial, admirably informed introduction that presents Benjamin's personality and intellectual development, as well as his work and his life in dark times. Reflections the companion volume to this book, is also available as a Schocken paperback.Unpacking My Library, 1931The Task of the Translator, 1913The Storyteller, 1936Franz Kafka, 1934Some Reflections on Kafka, 1938What Is Epic Theater?, 1939On Some Motifs in Baudelaire, 1939The Image of Proust, 1929The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1936Theses on the Philosophy of History, written 1940, pub. 1950