On Kubrick


James Naremore - 2007
    This book argues that in several respects Kubrick was one of the cinema's last modernists.

The Official Razzie Movie Guide: Enjoying the Best of Hollywood's Worst


John Wilson - 2005
    A paperback guide to 100 of the funniest bad movies ever made, this book covers a wide range of hopeless Hollywood product, and also including rare Razzie ceremony photos and a complete history of everything ever nominated for Tinsel Town's Tackiest Trophy.

Spirited Away


Andrew Osmond - 2008
    Spirited Away, directed by the veteran anime film-maker Hayao Miyazaki, is Japan’s most successful film, and one of the top-grossing ‘foreign language’ films ever released.  Set in modern Japan, the film is a wildly imaginative fantasy, at once personal and universal.  It tells the story of a listless little girl who stumbles into a magical world where gods relax in a palatial bathhouse; where there are giant babies and hard-working soot sprites, and where a train runs across the sea. Andrew Osmond’s insightful study describes how Miyazaki wrote, storyboarded and directed Spirited Away with a degree of creative control undreamt of in most popular cinema, using the film’s delightful, freewheeling visual ideas to explore issues ranging from personal agency and responsibility to what Miyazaki sees as the lamentable state of modern Japan.  Osmond unpacks the film’s visual language, which many Western (and some Japanese) audiences find both beautiful and sometimes bewildering.  He traces connections between Spirited Away and Miyazaki’s prior body of work, and provides an account of the film’s production and the creative differences between Miyazaki and his collaborators, arguing that Spirited Away uses the cartoon medium to create a compellingly immersive drawn world.

Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes


Matthew Kennedy - 1993
    Born the child of vaudevillians, she was on stage by age three. With her casual sex appeal, distinctive cello voice, megawatt smile, luminous saucer eyes, and flawless timing, she came into widespread fame in Warner Bros. musicals and comedies of the 1930s, including Blonde Crazy, Gold Diggers of 1933, and Footlight Parade.Frequent co-star to James Cagney, Clark Gable, Edward G. Robinson, and Humphrey Bogart, friend to Judy Garland, Barbara Stanwyck, and Bette Davis, and wife of Dick Powell and Mike Todd, Joan Blondell was a true Hollywood insider. By the time of her death, she had made nearly 100 films in a career that spanned over fifty years.Privately, she was unerringly loving and generous, while her life was touched by financial, medical, and emotional upheavals. Joan Blondell: A Life between Takes is meticulously researched, expertly weaving the public and private, and features numerous interviews with family, friends, and colleagues.

Criterion Designs


The Criterion Collection - 2014
    This volume gathers highlights from designs commissioned by the Criterion Collection, featuring covers, supplemental art, and never-before-seen sketches and concept art plus a gallery of every Criterion cover since the collection’s first laserdisc in 1984. From avant-garde experiments to big-budget blockbusters, cult favorites to the towering classics of world cinema, the depth and breadth of what film can be is on display in these striking images. Whether painstakingly faithful re-creations or bold re-imaginings, the stunningly diverse designs collected here offer new ways for cinephiles and design aficionados alike to engage with the world’s greatest filmmakers.

The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers


Mark T. Conard - 2008
    They had already made films that redefined the gangster movie, the screwball comedy, the fable, and the film noir, among others. No Country is just one of many Coen brothers films to center on the struggles of complex characters to understand themselves and their places in the strange worlds they inhabit. To

Creature Features: The Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Movie Guide


John Stanley - 1997
    From features, made-for-televsion, and straight-to-video, here are all the films you love and hate; the films you forgot about and never knew existed. Horror and science fiction fans will find films that matter and films that splatter in one critical and humorous guide.Featuring * Thousands of capsulized reviews * A five-star rating system * Hundreds of obscure and rare titles * Video distribution informaton (including mail order) *Cross-references to secondary titles, sequels and tricky retitlings * And more.

Sons of Anarchy: The Official Collector's Edition


Tara Bennett - 2014
    Inside you'll find:An introduction by and interviews with Kurt Sutter, series creator on how the show came to beRevealing interviews with the cast, including Charlie Hunnam (Jax), Katey Sagal (Gemma), Maggie Siff (Tara), Ryan Hurst (Opie), Theo Rossi (Juice), Kurt Sutter (Otto), and more"Creating the Chaos:" an all-access tour of the sets, the bikes, the tattoos, and much moreThe actors' most memorable scenes and moments, in their own wordsAn oral history of the pivotal Season 6 finale "A Mother's Work"A look back at Season 7, the series' end and the Teller family legacyComplete with a deluxe package, and hundreds of striking full-color photographs throughout, Sons of Anarchy: The Official Collector's Edition is the must-have book for any "Sons of Anarchy" fan.

101 Things I Learned in Film School


Neil Landau - 2010
    Written by Neil Landau, an experienced screenwriter and script consultant to the major movie studios, this is the perfect book for anyone who wants to know about the inner-workings of this industry. Whether it's someone who wants to make movies as a full-timecareer, or just someone who is interested in film, this book covers it all.

The Music of The Lord of the Rings Films: A Comprehensive Account of Howard Shore's Scores (Book and Rarities CD)


Doug Adams - 2010
    Howard Shores Academy Award-winning score for The Lord of the Rings has been hailed as some of the greatest film music ever written. Sweeping in scope, it is an interpretation of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth as music---an operatic tapestry of cultures,

He's Got Rhythm: The Life and Career of Gene Kelly


Cynthia Brideson - 2017
    One of the most influential and respected entertainers of Hollywood's golden age, Gene Kelly revolutionized film musicals with his innovative and timeless choreography. A would-be baseball player and one-time law student, Kelly captured the nation's imagination in films such as Anchors Aweigh (1945), On the Town (1949), An American in Paris (1951), and Singin' in the Rain (1952).In the first comprehensive biography written since the legendary star's death, authors Cynthia Brideson and Sara Brideson disclose new details of Kelly's complex life. Not only do they examine his contributions to the world of entertainment in depth, but they also consider his political activities-including his opposition to the Hollywood blacklist. The authors even confront Kelly's darker side and explore his notorious competitive streak, his tendency to be a taskmaster on set, and his multiple marriages.Drawing on previously untapped articles and interviews with Kelly's wives, friends, and colleagues, Brideson and Brideson illuminate new and unexpected aspects of the actor's life and work. He's Got Rhythm is a balanced and compelling view of one of the screen's enduring legends.

The Independent Film Producer's Survival Guide: A Business and Legal Sourcebook


Gunnar Erickson - 2002
    In this comprehensive guidebook, three experienced entertainment lawyers tell you everything you need to know to produce and market an independent film-from the development process to deal making, financing, setting up the production, hiring directors and actors, distributing and marketing your film.

Against Interpretation and Other Essays


Susan Sontag - 1966
    Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. It includes the famous essays "Notes on Camp" and "Against Interpretation," as well as her impassioned discussions of Sartre, Camus, Simone Weil, Godard, Beckett, Lévi-Strauss, science-fiction movies, psychoanalysis, and contemporary religious thought.This edition has a new afterword, "Thirty Years Later," in which Sontag restates the terms of her battle against philistinism and against ethical shallowness and indifference.

The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller


John Truby - 2007
    As a result, writers will dig deep within and explore their own values and worldviews in order to create an effective story. Writers will come away with an extremely precise set of tools to work with--specific, useful techniques to make the audience care about their characters, and that make their characters grow in meaningful ways. They will construct a surprising plot that is unique to their particular concept, and they will learn how to express a moral vision that can genuinely move an audience.The foundations of story that Truby lays out are so fundamental they are applicable--and essential--to all writers, from novelists and short-story writers to journalists, memoirists, and writers of narrative non-fiction.

Dangerous Curves Atop Hollywood Heels: The Lives, Careers, and Misfortunes of 14 Hard-Luck Girls of the Silent Screen


Michael G. Ankerich - 1993
    We seemed to be suspended effortlessly in the air, but in reality, our wings were beating very, very fast." - Mae Murray "It is worse than folly for persons to imagine that this business is an easy road to money, to contentment, or to that strange quality called happiness." - Bebe Daniels "A girl should realize that a career on the screen demands everything, promising nothing." - Helen Ferguson In Dangerous Curves Atop Hollywood Heels, author Michael G. Ankerich examines the lives, careers, and disappointments of 15 silent film actresses, who, despite the odds against them and warnings to stay in their hometowns, came to Hollywood to make names for themselves in the movies. On the screen, these young hopefuls became Agnes Ayres, Olive Borden, Grace Darmond, Elinor Fair, Juanita Hansen, Wanda Hawley, Natalie Joyce, Barbara La Marr, Martha Mansfield, Mae Murray, Mary Nolan, Marie Prevost, Lucille Ricksen, Eve Southern, and Alberta Vaughn. Dangerous Curves follows the precarious routes these young ladies took in their quest for fame and uncovers how some of the top actresses of the silent screen were used, abused, and discarded. Many, unable to let go of the spotlight after it had singed their very souls, came to a stop on that dead-end street, referred to by actress Anna Q. Nilsson as, Hollywood's Heartbreak Lane. Pieced together using contemporary interviews the actresses gave, conversations with friends, relatives, and co-workers, and exhaustive research through scrapbooks, archives, and public records, Dangerous Curves offers an honest, yet compassionate, look at some of the brightest luminaries of the silent screen. The book is illustrated with over 150 photographs.