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By Design: Interviews with Film Production Designers by Vincent Lobrutto
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production-design
The Film That Changed My Life: 30 Directors on Their Epiphanies in the Dark
Robert K. Elder - 2011
The Film That Changed My Life captures that epiphany. It explores 30 directors’ love of a film they saw at a particularly formative moment, how it influenced their own works, and how it made them think differently. Rebel Without a Cause inspired John Woo to comb his hair and talk like James Dean. For Richard Linklater, “something was simmering in me, but Raging Bull brought it to a boil.” Apocalypse Now inspired Danny Boyle to make larger-than-life films. A single line from The Wizard of Oz--“Who could ever have thought a good little girl like you could destroy all my beautiful wickedness?”--had a direct impact on John Waters. “That line inspired my life,” Waters says. “I sometimes say it to myself before I go to sleep, like a prayer.” In this volume, directors as diverse as John Woo, Peter Bogdanovich, Michel Gondry, and Kevin Smith examine classic movies that inspired them to tell stories. Here are 30 inspired and inspiring discussions of classic films that shaped the careers of today’s directors and, in turn, cinema history.
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
The Devil's Candy: The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco
Julie Salamon - 1991
How could it lose? But instead Salamon got a front-row seat at the Hollywood disaster of the decade. She shadowed the film from its early stages through the last of the eviscerating reviews, and met everyone from the actors to the technicians to the studio executives. They'd all signed on for a blockbuster, but there was a sense of impending doom from the start--heart-of-gold characters replaced Wolfe's satiric creations; affable Tom Hanks was cast as the patrician heel; Melanie Griffith appeared mid-shoot with new, bigger breasts. With a keen eye and ear, Salamon shows us how the best of intentions turned into a legendary Hollywood debacle.The Devil's Candy joins John Gregory Dunne's The Studio, Steven Bach's Final Cut, and William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade as a classic for anyone interested in the workings of Hollywood. With a new afterword profiling De Palma ten years after the movie's devastating flop (and this book's best-selling publication), Julie Salamon has created a riveting insider's portrait of an industry where art, talent, ego, and money combine and clash on a monumental scale.
Saving Private Ryan: The Men, the Mission, the Movie : A Film by Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg - 1998
Includes excerpts from Stephen Ambrose's books, screenplay extracts, and commentary by Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Janusz Kaminski and others. 100 illustrations, 130 color plates.
The Magnificent Ambersons
V.F. Perkins - 1999
Second only to "Citizen Kane" in work, this film can never be seen as he intended it after being heavily cut by RKO. However, it remains a remarkable picture of dynastic ruin and social change.
The Man with the Golden Touch: How The Bond Films Conquered the World
Sinclair McKay - 2008
This is the story of how, with the odd misstep along the way, the owners of the Bond franchise, Eon Productions, have contrived to keep James Bond abreast of the zeitgeist and at the top of the charts for 45 years, through 21 films featuring six Bonds, three M’s, two Q’s and three Moneypennies. Thanks to the films, Fleming’s original creation has been transformed from a black sheep of the post-war English upper classes into a figure with universal appeal, constantly evolving to keep pace with changing social and political circumstances. Having interviewed people concerned with all aspects of the films, Sinclair McKay is ideally placed to describe how the Bond ‘brand’ has been managed over the years as well as to give us the inside stories of the supporting cast of Bond girls, Bond villains, Bond cars and Bond gadgetry. Sinclair McKay, formerly assistant features editor of the Daily Telegraph, works as a freelance writer and journalist. He is also the author of A Thing of Unspeakable Horror: The History of Hammer Films, which the Guardian called ‘A splendid history’ and the Independent on Sunday described as ‘Brisk, cheerful and enthusiastic.’
Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings
Leo Braudy - 1974
Extensively revised and updated, this sixth edition highlights both classic texts and cutting edge essays from more than a century of thought and writing about the movies. Editors Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen have reformulated the book's sections and their introductions in order to lead students into a rich understanding of what the movies have accomplished, both as individual works and as contributions to what has been called "the art form of the twentieth [and now twenty-first] century." Building upon the wide range of selections and the extensive historical coverage that marked previous editions, this new compilation stretches from the earliest attempts to define the cinema to the most recent efforts to place film in the contexts of psychology, sociology, and philosophy, and to explore issues of gender and race. The sixth edition features several new essays that discuss the impact of digital technology on the traditional conceptions of what films do and how they manage to do it. Additional selections from the important works of Gilles Deleuze round out sections dealing with the theories of such writers as Sergei Eisenstein, Andre Bazin, and Christian Metz, among others. New essays also strengthen sections dealing with the idea of "excess" in film, film spectatorship, the horror genre, and feminist criticism. Film Theory and Criticism, 6/e, is ideal for undergraduate and graduate courses in film theory and criticism."
101 Movies to Watch Before You Die
Ricardo Cavolo - 2017
Taking the form of a diary, this vibrant graphic novel takes the reader from Goodfellas to The Goonies, Harry Potter to Apocalypse Now in a zany and hilarious exploration of the movies that have shaped Cavolo's life and the lives of his generation.
I'll Have What She's Having: How Nora Ephron's Three Iconic Films Saved the Romantic Comedy
Erin Carlson - 2017
With a cast of famous faces including Rob Reiner, Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, and Billy Crystal, Carlson takes readers on a rollicking, revelatory trip to Ephron's New York City, where reality took a backseat to romance and Ephron--who always knew what she wanted and how she wanted it--ruled the set with an attention to detail that made her actors feel safe but sometimes exasperated crew members. Along the way, Carlson examines how Ephron explored in the cinema answers to the questions that plagued her own romantic life and how she regained faith in love after one broken engagement and two failed marriages. Carlson also explores countless other questions Ephron's fans have wondered about: What sparked Reiner to snap out of his bachelor blues during the making of When Harry Met Sally? Why was Ryan, a gifted comedian trapped in the body of a fairytale princess, not the first choice for the role? After she and Hanks each separatel balked at playing Mail's Kathleen Kelly and Sleepless' Sam Baldwin, what changed their minds? And perhaps most importantly: What was Dave Chappelle doing ... in a turtleneck? An intimate portrait of a one of America's most iconic filmmakers and a look behind the scenes of her crowning achievements, I'll Have What She's Having is a vivid account of the days and nights when Ephron, along with assorted cynical collaborators, learned to show her heart on the screen.
Born to Be Hurt: The Untold Story of Imitation of Life
Sam Staggs - 2009
In a passionate and witty behind-the-scenes expose, the author of 'All About All About Eve' takes on the classic 1959 Douglas Sirk film, Born To Be Hurt, starring Lana Turner.
The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook
Chris Jones - 1998
Chris Jones and Genevieve Jolliffe provide a step-by-step guide to all aspects of production, from copyright law to casting agents, directions to stuns, cash sources to distribution. Case studies and a Producer's Toolkit with information on legal documentation, including blank forms and a complete budget breakdown make this an invaluable tool for any independent filmmaker.
The Magic Lantern
Ingmar Bergman - 1987
. . . At the editing table, when I run the strip of film through, frame by frame, I still feel that dizzy sense of magic of my childhood.” Bergman, who has conveyed this heady sense of wonder and vision to moviegoers for decades, traces his lifelong love affair with film in his breathtakingly visual autobiography, The Magic Lantern.More grand mosaic than linear account, Bergman’s vignettes trace his life from a rural Swedish childhood through his work in theater to Hollywood’s golden age, and a tumultuous romantic history that includes five wives and more than a few mistresses. Throughout, Bergman recounts his life in a series of deeply personal flashbacks that document some of the most important moments in twentieth-century filmmaking as well as the private obsessions of the man behind them. Ambitious in scope yet sensitively wrought, The Magic Lantern is a window to the mind of one of our era’s great geniuses.“[Bergman] has found a way to show the soul’s landscape . . . . Many gripping revelations.”—New York Times Book Review“Joan Tate’s translation of this book has delicacy and true pitch . . . The Magic Lantern is as personal and penetrating as a Bergman film, wry, shadowy, austere.”—New Republic“[Bergman] keeps returning to his past, reassessing it, distilling its meaning, offering it to his audiences in dazzling new shapes.”—New York Times“What Bergman does relate, particularly his tangled relationships with his parents, is not only illuminating but quite moving. No ‘tell-all’ book this one, but revealing in ways that much longer and allegedly ‘franker’ books are not.”—Library Journal
The Devil Finds Work
James Baldwin - 1976
Bette Davis's eyes, Joan Crawford's bitchy elegance, Stepin Fetchit's stereotype, Sidney Poitier's superhuman black man... These are the movie stars and the qualities that influenced James Baldwin... and now become part of his incisive look at racism in American movies.Baldwin challenges the underlying assumptions in such films as In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and The Exorcist, offering us a vision of America's self-delusions and deceptions. Here are our loves and hates, biases and cruelties, fears and ignorance reflected by the films that have entertained us and shaped our consciousness. And here, too, is the stunning prose of a writer whose passion never diminished his struggle for equality, justice, and social change.From The Birth of a Nation to The Exorcist--one of America's most important writers turns his critical eye to American film.
Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven's Gate, the Film That Sank United Artists
Steven Bach - 1985
Its notoriety is so great that its title has become a generic term for disaster, for ego run rampant, for epic mismanagement, for wanton extravagance. It was also the film that brought down one of Hollywood’s major studios—United Artists, the company founded in 1919 by Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, D. W. Griffith, and Charlie Chaplin. Steven Bach was senior vice president and head of worldwide production for United Artists at the time of the filming of Heaven's Gate, and apart from the director and producer, the only person to witness the film’s evolution from beginning to end. Combining wit, extraordinary anecdotes, and historical perspective, he has produced a landmark book on Hollywood and its people, and in so doing, tells a story of human absurdity that would have made Chaplin proud.
The Location Sound Bible: How to Record Professional Dialog for Film and TV
Ric Viers - 2012
Book annotation not available for this title...Title: .The Location Sound Bible..Author: .Viers, Ric..Publisher: .Ingram Pub Services..Publication Date: .2012/09/01..Number of Pages: .354..Binding Type: .PAPERBACK..Library of Congress: .2012016109