Book picks similar to
Darkness in the Bliss-Out: A Reconsideration of the Films of Steven Spielberg by James Kendrick
cinema
criticism
film
learn-you-a-thing
John Badham On Directing: Notes from the Set of Saturday Night Fever, War Games, and More
John Badham - 2013
Badham’s list of “12 Questions You Must Ask Before Stepping On Set” is an absolute must in any filmmaker’s toolbox. Whether actor, director, cinematographer, production designer, or any other creative, Badham gives you the tools to deconstruct and solve scenes that either don’t work or need sharpening. Continuing the work begun in his best-selling book I’ll Be In My Trailer, Badham shares more insights into working with difficult actors, rehearsal techniques, and getting the best performance from your cast.
The Krays
Philip Ridley - 1997
Ronnie and Reggie Kray are school ground bullies brought up by a domineering mother and two devoted aunts. National Service and spells in prison expose the brutality that helps establish the twin brothers as the kings of 1960s gangland London.Philip Ridley's original, uncut screenplay, almost as notorious as its subject matter is a stylised meditation on maternal love, childhood, violence and homoeroticism and takes its place as one of the masterpieces of contemporary cinema.
Pulp Fiction
Dana Polan - 2000
He shows how broad Tarantino's points of reference are, and analyzes the narrative accomplishment and complexity. In addition, Polan argues that macho attitudes celebrated in film are much more complex than they seem.
Johnny Depp
Paul Duncan - 2009
Few are so angelically androgynous and masculine in the same breath. From teen hearth-throb to an accomplished actor who has worked with art house directors such as Emir Kusturica, Terry Gilliam, Roman Polanski, Jim Jarmusch, and John Waters, Depp has built himself wildly successful and unconventional career. Movie Icons is a series of photo books that feature the most famous personalities in the history of cinema. These 192-page books are visual biographies of the stars.
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.
More Hollywood Murders and Scandals: Tinsel Town After Dark, More Famous Celebrity Murders, Scandals and Crimes (Murder, Scandals and Mayhem Book 2)
Mike Riley - 2014
It adds to the collection of the most famous and infamous Hollywood scandals and celebrity murders from the early beginnings of Hollywood right up to today.From Thomas Ince to Tupac Shakur and George Reeves to Natalie Wood, the stories will capture your imagination as they describe the backstories of the major characters, the circumstances of the celebrity crimes and the results of the investigations.Included are the famous murders of:
The mysterious death of Paul Bern, husband of Jean Harlow
The shocking death of Jayne Mansfield
The loss of Sal Mineo
Dorothy Stratten's senseless death
and More.
Included is a description of changes in the film industry, from the earliest film displayed in New York City to the films of today that provide entertainment and escapism for moviegoers around the world.Many of your questions about these Hollywood crimes and scandals will be answered and you will be amazed at all the facts and theories contained in this book associated with these incredible events. Click BUY to get your copy of More Hollywood Murders and Scandals: Tinsel Town After Dark NOW.
The Mommie Dearest Diary: Carol Ann Tells All
Rutanya Alda - 2015
Rutanya frames her diary with anecdotes of Robert Altman, Joan Crawford, Brian De Palma, Bob Dylan, Elia Kazan, Sam Peckinpah, Roman Polanski, Lee Strasberg, Barbra Streisand, and John Wayne, among others-a rich cast of her life's characters, who in turn entertain, illuminate, and ultimately weave Rutanya's life into Carol Ann's, setting the stage for you to vicariously live through the making of this cult classic, from her audition in the living room of director Frank Perry to the wrap party on the last day of shooting.
Polanski
Christopher Sandford - 2007
Polanski would go on to become one of the best and most infamous directors in Hollywood’s history, with a list of achievements that includes Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, Macbeth, Chinatown, Tess, Frantic, and more recently, the Golden Globe- and Oscar-winning The Pianist.Yet the most dramatic story has unfolded within his own personal life: in August 1969, his pregnant wife Sharon Tate and seven of their friends were butchered by the Manson family. Polanski was in London at the time. Eight years later he was arrested by L.A. police on charges of drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl in Jack Nicholson’s home. Polanski fled the country and has since lived in exile in Paris.The director is currently filming Oliver Twist and promises to follow it with his version of the Tate killings. Both projects, dealing with child exploitation and murder, can only fuel the controversy that surrounds him. This biography is timed to coincide with the release of the movies, and will be the first opportunity to read about this talented yet wildly excessive personality in such depth for over fourteen years.
Eyes Wide Shut
Michel Chion - 2002
To appreciate this, though it is necessary to look at what happens on the screen without bringing preconceptions to bear.
The Gore Supremacy
James Wolcott - 2012
(He died on July 31st, 2012 at the age of 86.) The triumphant arc of Vidal’s literary career wasn’t solely a mastery of language, though that never hurts. Handsome, poised, slim, charismatic, able to hold his own in verbal fisticuffs without losing his imperious cool, Vidal was the premiere star author of his generation, the one who elevated the role of talk-show guest to a command performance--a theatrical event. He brought the electronic crackle of the TV screen to his prose and the tactical precision of his prose to combat debate on TV. His near-violent altercations on camera with William F. Buckley, Jr. and Norman Mailer are the stuff of YouTube legend and the secret to The Gore Supremacy. A contributing writer to Vanity Fair, a partisan observer of pop culture, and the author of the New York-in-the-70s memoir Lucking Out (which comes out in paperback this fall), James Wolcott has been a closeup observer of Vidal on-camera and off for more years than seems respectable. This, his first Kindle Single, is his way of paying homage--and saying goodbye.
The Big Lebowski
J.M. Tyree - 2007
Its fans tend to be fanatical, congregating at 'Lebowski Conventions' in bowling alleys across American and Britain, and even dressing up as characters from the film. Among the funniest films of the last twenty-five years, and one of the high-water marks of 1990s genre recycling and pastiche, The Big Lebowski is also littered with playful and subversive references to film history, especially to Raymond Chandler's world of hardboiled detective classics and the world of film noir. The Big Lebowski is the rarest kind of film, a comedy whose jokes become funnier with repetition. The same goes for its multitudinous jukebox-like references to other films, many of which open up vistas for intertextual interpretation. Underneath the film's breakneck pacing and foul-mouthed characters, a farcical collection of flakes, losers, and phonies, is a surprisingly humane account of what fools we mortals be. It is one of the oddest buddy films ever made, with extraordinary performances by Jeff Bridges and John Goodman. In this study, The Big Lebowski is set into the context of 1990s Hollywood cinema, anatomised for its witty relationship with the classics which it satirises, and discussed in terms of its key theme: the hopeless flailing of ridiculously unmanly men in the world of discombobulated, mixed-up, or put-on identities that is Los Angeles.
Guide to Screenplay Structure
Dan O'Bannon - 2012
O’Bannon also includes his insights on subjects such as the logic of the three-act structure, the role of the producer in screenplay development, and the psychological principle known as “hedonic adaptation,” which has a unique effect on the structuring of screen stories.
Goodbye, Dragon Inn
Nick Pinkerton - 2021
In this wide-ranging and elegiac essay, Nick Pinkerton reflects upon Tsai Ming-liang’s 2003 film Goodbye, Dragon Inn, a modern classic haunted by the ghosts and portents of a culture in flux.
The Best of Vanity Fair ELIZABETH TAYLOR: Eight Remarkable Stories About Hollywood's Most Beautiful, Most Controversial Star
Dominick DunneGraydon Carter - 2011
In a moving tribute to the big screen’s grande dame, the editors of Vanity Fair have published the magazine’s first e-book, a star-studded collection of classic stories from the likes of Dominick Dunne and George Hamilton—taken from the pages of Vanity Fair, Hollywood’s acknowledged arbiter of talent, glamour, and power. This e-book lifts the veil on the real Elizabeth Taylor—the child star and cinematic beauty, the seductress and consummate diva—through her more than 50 films and seven husbands, through her torrid affairs and countless illnesses, meltdowns, and triumphs. Here is a behind-the-scenes portrait of La Liz—in all her dazzling, madcap glory.