Book picks similar to
Shared Pleasures: A History Of Movie Presentation In The United States by Douglas Gomery
film
non-fiction
film-television
radio-sound-media
Weirdsville U.S.A.: The Obsessive Universe of David Lynch
Paul A. Woods - 1997
Weirdsville U.S.A. charts Lynch’s work from his experimental art school years and the midnight movie hit Eraserhead, the mainstream success of The Elephant Man and the commercial failure of Dune, the birth of Weird Americana with Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks and the neo-noir mystery Lost Highway, to the present day and the film The Straight Story and TV series Mulholland Drive.
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
Seduced by Mrs. Robinson: How "The Graduate" Became the Touchstone of a Generation
Beverly Gray - 2017
. . The book as a whole offers a fascinating look at how this movie tells a timeless story.” —The Washington PostMrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me. Aren’t you? When The Graduate premiered in December 1967, its filmmakers had only modest expectations for what seemed to be a small, sexy art-house comedy adapted from an obscure first novel by an eccentric twenty-four-year-old. There was little indication that this offbeat story—a young man just out of college has an affair with one of his parents’ friends and then runs off with her daughter—would turn out to be a monster hit, with an extended run in theaters and seven Academy Award nominations. The film catapulted an unknown actor, Dustin Hoffman, to stardom with a role that is now permanently engraved in our collective memory. While turning the word plastics into shorthand for soulless work and a corporate, consumer culture, The Graduate sparked a national debate about what was starting to be called “the generation gap.” Now, in time for this iconic film’s fiftieth birthday, author Beverly Gray offers up a smart close reading of the film itself as well as vivid, never-before-revealed details from behind the scenes of the production—including all the drama and decision-making of the cast and crew. For movie buffs and pop culture fanatics, Seduced by Mrs. Robinson brings to light The Graduate’s huge influence on the future of filmmaking. And it explores how this unconventional movie rocked the late-sixties world, both reflecting and changing the era’s views of sex, work, and marriage.
Trier on Von Trier
Stig Björkman - 2000
His own brilliant directing career has been marked by similarly grand ambitions, and he is unique in having premiered all of his features - from the highly styled The Element of Crime to the digital-video-originated The Idiots - at the Cannes Film Festival. Trier is a rare item in contemporary cinema, a restless innovator and polemicist, as his participation in the back-to-basics Dogme95 movement attests; and these conversations with Stig Bjorkman, author of Bergman on Bergman and Woody Allen on Woody Allen, trace the evolution of his career and thought in a manner that is both astonishingly detailed and engagingly humorous.
Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons
Jerry Beck - 1989
cartoons but were afraid to ask, this complete and indispensable reference will delight adults, children, and audiences all over the world.
Thinking In Pictures: The Making Of The Movie Matewan
John Sayles - 1987
Many films later, he still works outside the studio system and guides every phase of his productions.Now Sayles has written an illuminating book about the complex choices that lie at the heart of every movie. Using the making of his film Matewan as an example, he offers chapters on screenwriting, directing, editing, sound, and more. Photographs, sketches, and the complete shooting script illustrate this engaging account of how Sayles's curiosity about a coal miners' strike in the town of Matewan, West Virginia, became a screenplay--and then a movie.
Here on Gilligan's Isle
Russell Johnson - 1993
Features interviews with all the original cast members and a comprehensive episode guide. Photos.
Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood
Todd McCarthy - 1997
Sometime partner of the eccentric Howard Hughes, drinking buddy of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, an inveterate gambler and a notorious liar, Hawks was the most modern of the great masters and one of the first directors to declare his independence from the major studios. He played Svengali to Lauren Bacall, Montgomery Clift, and others, but Hawks's greatest creation may have been himself.As The Atlantic Monthly noted, "Todd McCarthy . . . has gone further than anyone else in sorting out the truths and lies of the life, the skills and the insight and the self-deceptions of the work." "A fluent biography of the great director, a frequently rotten guy but one whose artistic independence and standards of film morality never failed." -- The New York Times Book Review; "Hawks's life, until now rather an enigma, has been put into focus and made one with his art in Todd McCarthy's wise and funny Howard Hawks." -- The Wall Street Journal; "Excellent . . . a respectful, exhaustive, and appropriately smartass look at Hollywood's most versatile director." -- Newsweek.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Peter Krämer - 2010
It has been celebrated for its beauty and mystery, its realistic depiction of space travel and dazzling display of visual effects, the breathtaking scope of its story, which reaches across millions of years, and the thought-provoking depth of its meditation on evolution, technology and humanity's encounters with the unknown. 2001 has been described as the most expensive avant-garde movie ever made and as a psychedelic trip, a unique expression of the spirit of the 1960s and as a timeless masterpiece. Peter Krämer's insightful study explores the complex origins of the film, the unique shape it took and the extraordinary impact it made on contemporary audiences. Drawing on new research in the Stanley Kubrick Archive at the University of the Arts London, Krämer challenges many of the widely-held assumptions about the film. He argues that 2001 was Kubrick's attempt to counter the deep pessimism of his previous film, Dr Strangelove (1964), which culminates in the explosion of a nuclear 'doomsday' device, with a more hopeful vision of humanity's future, facilitated by the intervention of mysterious extra-terrestrial artifacts. This study traces the project's development from the first letter Kubrick wrote to his future collaborator Arthur C. Clarke in March 1964 all the way to the dramatic changes Kubrick made to the film shortly before its release by MGM in April 1968. Krämer shows that, despite – or, perhaps, because of – Kubrick's daring last-minute decision to turn the film itself into a mysterious artifact, 2001 was an instant success with both critics and general audiences, and has exerted enormous influence over Hollywood's output of science fiction movies ever since. The book argues that 2001 invites us to enjoy and contemplate its sounds and images over and over again, and, if we are so inclined, to take away from it an important message of hope.
River Phoenix: A Short Life
Brian J. Robb - 1994
Within an hour he was dead - victim of a lethal cocktail of drugs. His name was River Phoenix and he was 23 years old. His short but incident packed life is a tale of modern Hollywood. He was the antithesis of the traditional hard-living Hollywood star of the past. A strict vegetarian and environmentalist, his later acting roles were not the stereotypical brat pack roles of his contemporaries. And yet to the surprise and dismay of friends and fans alike he succumbed to the corrupting influence of Hollywood.River Phoenix: A Short Life is the first biography of this talented but tragic young star. It explores the contradictions of a life that encompassed the hippy philosophy of his unconventional parents, the abnormal pressures of child stardom on TV, leading inevitably to the big time as a brat pack hopeful in Hollywood. However, there was real talent in this young actor which was recognised by upcoming directors and established names. His performance in Sidney Lumet's Running On Empty and his role as a male prostitute in My Own Private Idaho established his credentials as a serious actor with the potential for greatness.The death of River Phoenix cut a promising career short. Phoenix crossed the boundaries between film and rock music - he had his own band - but he could not avoid the pressures of the system without the crutch of hard drugs.
Eaten Alive!: Italian Cannibal and Zombie Movies
Jay Slater - 2002
Jay Slater explains how the myth of the Haitian walking dead (zombies) merged with legends of third-world cannibalism to create such gruesome zombie cult films as Cannibal Holocaust, an acknowledged influence on The Blair Witch Project.
Best Movies of the 70s (Taschen 25)
Jürgen Müller - 2004
As war raged on in Vietnam and the cold war continued to escalate, Hollywood began to heat up, recovering from its commercial crisis with box-office successes such as Star Wars, Jaws, The Exorcist, and The Godfather. Thanks to directors like Spielberg and Lucas, American cinema gave birth to a new phenomenon: the blockbuster. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, while the Nouvelle Vague died out in France, its influence extended to Germany, where the New German Cinema of Fassbinder, Wenders, and Herzog had its heyday. The sexual revolution made its way to the silver screen (cautiously in the US, more freely in Europe) most notably in Bertolucci's steamy, scandalous Last Tango in Paris. Amidst all this came a wave of nostalgic films (The Sting, American Graffiti) and Vietnam pictures (Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter), the rise of the anti-hero (Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman), and the prestigious short-lived genre, blaxploitation.
Titanic and the Making of James Cameron: The Inside Story of the Three-Year Adventure That Rewrote Motion Picture History
Paula Parisi - 1998
Titanic and the Making of James Cameron by former Hollywood Reporter journalist Paula Parisi recounts the making of this modern classic motion picture from conception to completion, offering a fascinating, detailed, behind-the-scenes look at its stars, including Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, its crew, and its genius director. Republished in time to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the catastrophic sinking of the gargantuan ocean liner, Titanic and the Making of James Cameron is a must-read for Titanic fans and for true movie buffs everywhere.
Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski
Annette Insdorf - 1999
His best-known films, Blue; White; Red; The Double Life of Veronique; and The Decalogue, remain watershed events in lmmaking history. Author Annette Insdorf, Kieslowskis close friend and translator, offers a revealing portrait of his life and monumental body of work. From the gold-bathed images of The Double Life of Veronique to the emotionally dark, visually haunting Blue, Kieslowskis films explore personal and social issues with inimitable brilliance. This paperback edition includes an updated introduction with information on the much anticipated release of Heaven (March 2002) which Kieslowski wrote and planned to film, before he died unexpectedly in March 1996.
Savile: The Beast: The Inside Story of the Greatest Scandal in TV History
John McShane - 2013
But on October 3rd, 2012, ITV broadcast an investigation into Savile's behavior called Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile. In it they revealed the true, predatory, and evil man behind the popular TV persona. In the documentary, several women alleged he sexually abused them when they were underage. This sparked a flurry of allegations in the following days and weeks from other alleged victims. So far police have been called to investigate reports of abuse on young children from as long ago as 1959 and anticipate the number of victims to be in the region of 300. But how Savile was allowed to get away with such monstrous crimes for so long has been the subject of immense debate and has led to the investigations of several British institutions. The BBC has been criticized and is hosting an internal investigation into how Savile's behavior was never called into question and how abuse allegations during his long career at the corporation failed to be flagged. An investigation is also underway into the canceling of a Newsnight program in 2011. The Department of Health has also said it will investigate its own conduct in appointing Savile to lead a "taskforce" overseeing the management of high security psychiatric hospital Broadmoor in 1998. Abuse is also alleged to have taken place at Stoke Mandeville Hospital and Leeds General Infirmary, where Savile volunteered. This is a well researched and informative look at how a predatory pedophile was allowed to go unnoticed for so long and to breach a nation's trust is such a cruel and evil way