"Ikiru "(1952) tells the painful and intimate story of a Japanese civil servant coming to terms with old age and death. In "Seven Samurai "(1954) the inhabitants of a small Janpanese village employ a roaming band of samurai to defend them. In "Throne of Blood" (1957), based on "Macbeth," a samurai is encouraged by his wife to kill his lord.This edition also includes a critical introduction to each screenplay.

    His dialogue--abrasive, rhythmic--illuminates a modern aesthetic evocative of Samuel Beckett. His plots--surprising, comic, topical--have evoked comparisons to masters from Alfred Hitchcock to Arthur Miller. Here are two screenplays demonstrating the astounding range of Mamet's talents.         The Spanish Prisoner, a neo-noir thriller about a research-and-development cog hoodwinked out of his own brilliant discovery, demonstrates Mamet's incomparable use of character in a dizzying tale of twists and mistaken identity. The Winslow Boy, Mamet's revisitation of Terence Rattigan's  classic 1946 play, tells of a thirteen-year-old boy accused of stealing a five-shilling postal order and the tug of war for truth that ensues between his middle-class family and the Royal Navy. Crackling with wit, intelligent and surprising, The Spanish Prisoner and The Winslow Boy celebrate Mamet's unique genius and our eternal fascination with the extraordinary predicaments of the common man.

    Hilariously funny, with all actions included.

    Shot on a shoe-string budget of $175,000 in black-and-white 16mm, the film was made with Spike Lee's persistence and talent plus the help of family and friends. It grossed $8 million at the box office and proved to be a major hit with both critics and audiences. Now Spike Lee reveals how he did it, mapping out the entire creative and production processes-from early notebook jottings to film festival awards. Spike Lee's Gotta Have It is a unique document in film literature - it's funny, absorbing, and fresh as the hit film itself.

    144 pp. Ages 14 and up. Pub: 3/98.

    Deprived of love and respect from his family, Eddie is renamed 'Dirk Diggler' and conquers the world of porn, but manages to retain his essential innocence. As the turbulent seventies shade into the hedonistic eighties, Dirk's career goes into a tailspin; but he is rescued by the safety net of the extended family fostered by hard-core movie director Jack Horner.Paul Thomas Anderson's screenplay is exemplary in its ability to interweave the stories of its large cast of characters. In accord with the wisdom of the Roman dramatist Terence (who claimed, 'Nothing human is alien to me'), Anderson has engaged with a side of life widely considered to be irredeemably sleazy, and has mined humour, sadness and compassion out of his unlikely subject matter.

    Released in 1958, Hitchcock's masterpiece is a pinnacle of the cinema. Yet in it Hitchcock abandoned his trademark suspense, allowing the central mystery to be solved halfway through. What remained was a study in sexual obsession, as James Stewart's Scottie pursues Madeleine/Judy (Kim Novak) to her death in a remote Californian mission. Novak is ice-cool but vulnerable, Stewart - in the darkest role of his career - genial on the surface but damaged within.

    Includes the Academy Award winning screenplay. The original controversial ending of the novel. Many exclusive photos never published before.

    Jack Lemmon played the 'schnook' who lends out his apartment for his boss's sexual trysts, only to fall in love with the boss's girl - played by Shirey MacLaine. The Apartment is a beautifully judged piece of writing saved from cynicism by Wilder and Diamond's tenderness towards their central characters. This edition of the screenplay includes a specially commissioned introduction by Mark Cousins.

    In late nineteenth-century England, two stage illusionists are drawn into a match of wits, each desiring to annihilate the reputation of the other. Upper-class Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) enjoys worldwide fame, while cockney Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) is his most ardent rival. Their antagonism is also a mutual fascination, but the competition between them leads to evermore dangerous acts of conjuring. When Angier raises the stakes by consulting scientist Nikola Tesla (David Bowie), the potential for a deadly reckoning draws near. This volume contains an Introduction by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan.

    For the past ten years he has been attempting to decode the numerical pattern beneath the ultimate system of ordered chaos-the stock market. As Max verges on a solution, chaos is swallowing the world around him. He is pursued by an aggressive Wall Street firm set on financial domination as well as by a Kabbalah sect intent on unlocking the secrets behind its ancient holy texts. Max races to crack the code, hoping to defy the madness that looms before him. In succeeding, he uncovers a secret everyone is willing to kill for.Also included with the screenplay is a full journal of how Darren Aronofsky made this award-winning film on a minuscule budget of $60,000, providing practical advice and inspiration to film students and offering film buffs rare insight into how an independent film is made.

    Cited as an influence by such envelope-pushing directors as Spike Jonze and P. T. Anderson, Altman has created a genre all his own, notable for its improvised, overlapping dialogue and creative cinematography. One of the key moviemakers of the 1970s--commonly considered the heyday of American film--Altman's irrepressible combination of unorthodox vision and style is most clearly evidenced in the fourteen movies he released across that decade. By fine-tuning his talent in a diverse array of genres, including westerns, thrillers, and loopy, absurdist comedies--all subtly altered to fit his signature métier--he cemented his place as one of our most esteemed directors.In these conversations with David Thompson, Altman reflects on his start in industrial filmmaking, as well as his tenure in television directing Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Bonanza, and his big break in feature films as the director of the enormously popular M*A*S*H, a project for which he was the last possible resort behind fourteen other directors. The resulting portrait reveals a quixotic man whose films continue to delight and challenge audiences, both in the United States and beyond.

    Of the scripts included here, Barton Fink--an intense look at the psychological ruin of a New York playwright trying to make it in 1940s Hollywood--is a masterful culmination of these themes.

    This collection of three screenplays displays his defiantly unorthodox approach to film form, as well as the unclassifiable imaginative energy that drives all of his work.

    Coincidentally it was the story of a legendary self-destructive director who returns to Hollywood from years of self-imposed exile in Europe. Welles swore it wasn’t autobiographical.The Other Side of the Wind was supposed to take place during a single day, and Welles planned to shoot it in eight weeks. It took twelve years and remains unreleased and largely unseen. The Last Movie is a fast-paced, behind-the-scenes account of the bizarre, hilarious and remarkable making of what has been called "the greatest home movie that no one has ever seen." Funded by the Shah of Iran’s brother-in-law, and based on a script that Welles rewrote every night for years, a final attempt to one-up his own best-work. It’s almost impossible to tell if art is imitating life or vice versa in the film. It’s a production best encompassed by its star, John Huston, who described the making of the film as "an adventure shared by desperate men that finally came to nothing."