Stratton’s definitive history of the making of The Wild Bunch, named one of the greatest Westerns of all time by the American Film Institute.Sam Peckinpah’s film The Wild Bunch is the story of a gang of outlaws who are one big steal from retirement. When their attempted train robbery goes awry, the gang flees to Mexico and falls in with a brutal general of the Mexican Revolution, who offers them the job of a lifetime. Conceived by a stuntman, directed by a blacklisted director, and shot in the sand and heat of the Mexican desert, the movie seemed doomed. Instead, it became an instant classic with a dark, violent take on the Western movie tradition. In The Wild Bunch, W.K. Stratton tells the fascinating history of the making of the movie and documents for the first time the extraordinary contribution of Mexican and Mexican-American actors and crew members to the movie’s success. Shaped by infamous director Sam Peckinpah, and starring such visionary actors as William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Edmond O’Brien, and Robert Ryan, the movie was also the product of an industry and a nation in transition. By 1968, when the movie was filmed, the studio system that had perpetuated the myth of the valiant cowboy in movies like The Searchers had collapsed, and America was riled by Vietnam, race riots, and assassinations. The Wild Bunch spoke to America in its moment, when war and senseless violence seemed to define both domestic and international life. The Wild Bunch is an authoritative history of the making of a movie and the era behind it.

    The Brat Pack and their contemporaries have grown up, but celluloid has them flickering forever, angst-ridden, haunted, guileless, cocky, stripped to their briefs, and all dressed up pretty in pink. 25 photos, 8-page color insert.

    Hundreds of film stills, many in color, plus dialogue, quotations, and other sources add to and illustrate each chapter's overriding theme.

    Here is a rare opportunity to eavesdrop on two cinematic masters from very different backgrounds as they cover each of Hitch's films in succession. Though this book was initially published in 1967 when Hitchcock was still active, Truffaut later prepared a revised edition that covered the final stages of his career. It's difficult to think of a more informative or entertaining introduction to Hitchcock's art, interests, and peculiar sense of humor. The book is a storehouse of insight and witticism, including the master's impressions of a classic like Rear Window ("I was feeling very creative at the time, the batteries were well charged"), his technical insight into Psycho's shower scene ("the knife never touched the body; it was all done in the [editing]"), and his ruminations on flops such as Under Capricorn ("If I were to make another picture in Australia today, I'd have a policeman hop into the pocket of a kangaroo and yell 'Follow that car!'"). This is one of the most delightful film books in print. --Raphael Shargel

    Cinema is full of neurotic personalities, but few things are more transfixing than a woman losing her mind onscreen. Horror as a genre provides the most welcoming platform for these histrionics: crippling paranoia, desperate loneliness, masochistic death-wishes, dangerous obsessiveness, apocalyptic hysteria. Unlike her male counterpart - 'the eccentric' - the female neurotic lives a shamed existence, making these films those rare places where her destructive emotions get to play. Named after the U.S.-retitling of Carlos Aured's The Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll, House of Psychotic Women is an examination of these characters through a daringly personal autobiographical lens. Anecdotes and memories interweave with film history, criticism, trivia and confrontational imagery to create a reflective personal history and an examination of female madness, both onscreen and off. This sharply-designed book with a 32-page full-colour section is packed with rare stills, posters, pressbooks and artwork that combine with family photos and artifacts to form a titillating sensory overload, with a filmography that traverses the acclaimed and the obscure in equal measure. Films covered include The Entity, The Corruption of Chris Miller, Singapore Sling, 3 Women, Toys Are Not for Children, Repulsion, Let's Scare Jessica to Death, The Haunting of Julia, Secret Ceremony, Cutting Moments, Out of the Blue, Mademoiselle, The Piano Teacher, Possession, Antichrist and hundreds more!

    An experimental, violent prison unit. The death of an American city, as seen through a complex police investigation. A lawless frontier town trying to talk its way into the United States. A corrupt cop who rules his precinct like a warlord. The survivors of a plane crash trying to make sense of their disturbing new island home. A high school girl by day, monster fighter by night. A spy who never sleeps. A space odyssey inspired by 9/11. An embattled high school football coach. A polished ad exec with a secret. A chemistry teacher turned drug lord.These are the subjects of 12 shows that started a revolution in TV drama: The Sopranos. Oz. The Wire. Deadwood. The Shield. Lost. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 24. Battlestar Galactica. Friday Night Lights. Mad Men. Breaking Bad.These 12 shows, and the many more they made possible, ushered in a new golden age of television — one that made people take the medium more seriously than ever before. Alan Sepinwall became a TV critic right before this creative revolution began, was there to chronicle this incredible moment in pop culture history, and along the way “changed the nature of television criticism,” according to Slate. The Revolution Was Televised is the story of these 12 shows, as told by Sepinwall and the people who made them, including David Chase, David Simon, David Milch, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, Vince Gilligan and more.

    Most of this instructive and funny book is written in dialogue form and based on film classes Mamet taught at Columbia University. He encourages his students to tell their stories not with words, but through the juxtaposition of uninflected images. The best films, Mamet argues, are composed of simple shots. The great filmmaker understands that the burden of cinematic storytelling lies less in the individual shot than in the collective meaning that shots convey when they are edited together. Mamet borrows many of his ideas about directing, writing, and acting from Russian masters such as Konstantin Stanislavsky, Sergei M. Eisenstein, and Vsevelod Pudovkin, but he presents his material in so delightful and lively a fashion that he revitalizes it for the contemporary reader.

    The New York Times called it a "triumphant, cleverly disorienting journey," and thirty-one-year-old Quentin Tarantino, with just three feature films to his name, became a sensation: the next great American director. Nearly twenty years later, those who proclaimed Pulp Fiction an instant classic have been proven irrefutably right. In Pulp Fiction: The Complete Story of Quentin Tarantino's Masterpiece, film expert Jason Bailey explores why Pulp Fiction is such a brilliant and influential film. He discusses how the movie was revolutionary in its use of dialogue ("You can get a steak here, daddy-o," "Correct-amundo"), time structure, and cinematography--and how it completely transformed the industry and artistry of independent cinema. He examines Tarantino's influences, illuminates the film's pop culture references, and describes its phenomenal legacy. Unforgettable characters like Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson), Vincent Vega (John Travolta), Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis), and Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) are scrutinized from all-new angles, and memorable scenes--Christopher Walken's gold watch monologue, Vince's explanation of French cuisine--are analyzed and celebrated. Much like the contents of Marcellus Wallace's briefcase, Pulp Fiction is mysterious and spectacular. Illustrated throughout with original art inspired by the film, with sidebars and special features on everything from casting close calls to deleted scenes, this is the most comprehensive, in-depth book on Pulp Fiction ever published.

    In this collection, including two never-before-published essays, Nussbaum writes about her passion for television that began with stumbling upon "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"—a show that was so much more than it appeared—while she was a graduate student studying Victorian literature. What followed was a love affair with television, an education, and a fierce debate about whose work gets to be called “great” that led Nussbaum to a trailblazing career as a critic whose reviews said so much more about our culture than just what’s good on television. Through these pieces, she traces the evolution of female protagonists over the last decade, the complex role of sexual violence on TV, and what to do about art when the artist is revealed to be a monster. And she explores the links between the television antihero and the rise of Donald Trump.The book is more than a collection of essays. With each piece, Nussbaum recounts her fervent search, over fifteen years, for a new kind of criticism that resists the false hierarchy that elevates one form of culture over another. It traces her own struggle to punch through stifling notions of “prestige television,” searching for a wilder and freer and more varied idea of artistic ambition—one that acknowledges many types of beauty and complexity, and that opens to more varied voices. It’s a book that celebrates television as television, even as each year warps the definition of just what that might mean.

    From the over 17,000 entries in his definitive yearly collection Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide, Maltin has selected great movies that will appeal to serious film buffs, but that may have fallen through the cracks. A must-have reference source for the bookshelf of movie connoisseurs everywhere.

    Now, for the first time, del Toro reveals the inspirations behind his signature artistic motifs, sharing the contents of his personal notebooks, collections, and other obsessions. The result is a startling, intimate glimpse into the life and mind of one of the world's most creative visionaries. Complete with running commentary, interview text, and annotations that contextualize the ample visual material, this deluxe compendium is every bit as inspired as del Toro is himself.Contains a foreword by James Cameron, an afterword by Tom Cruise, and contributions from other luminaries, including Neil Gaiman and John Landis, among others.

    80 black-and-white photos.

    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.’

    . . but the riches found in the overlooked B movies of the time, rolled out wherever they might find an audience, unexpectedly tell an eye-opening story about post-Watergate, post-Vietnam America. Revisiting the films that don't make the Academy Award montages, Charles Taylor finds a treasury many of us have forgotten, movies that in fact “unlock the secrets of the times.”Celebrated film critic Taylor pays homage to the trucker vigilantes, meat magnate pimps, blaxploitation “angel avengers,” and taciturn factory workers of grungy, unartful B films such as Prime Cut, Foxy Brown, and Eyes of Laura Mars. He creates a compelling argument for what matters in moviemaking and brings a pivotal American era vividly to life in all its gritty, melancholy complexity.

    During its Golden Age, the studio employed the likes of Garbo, Astaire, and Gable, and produced innumerable iconic pieces of cinema such as The Wizard of Oz, Singin’ in the Rain, and Ben-Hur.It is estimated that a fifth of all films made in the United States prior to the 1970s were shot at MGM studios, meaning that the gigantic property was responsible for hundreds of iconic sets and stages, often utilizing and transforming minimal spaces and previously used props, to create some of the most recognizable and identifiable landscapes of modern movie culture.All of this happened behind closed doors, the backlot shut off from the public in a veil of secrecy and movie magic. M-G-M: Hollywood’s Greatest Backlot highlights this fascinating film treasure by recounting the history, popularity, and success of the MGM company through a tour of its physical property.Featuring the candid, exclusive voices and photographs from the people who worked there, and including hundreds of rare and unpublished photographs (including many from the archives of Warner Bros.), readers are launched aboard a fun and entertaining virtual tour of Hollywood’s most famous and mysterious motion picture studio.