Book picks similar to
The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity by Tom Gunning
film
movies
biography
cinema
Signs and Meaning in the Cinema
Peter Wollen - 1969
Divided into three sections, Part One deals with the work of S.M. Eisenstein, both as a director and theorist of his art. Part two concerns the auteur theory and investigates the recurrence of themes and images throughout a director's career. Part three shows how the study of cinema can be considered a province of the general study of signs. Throughout this richly illustrated book the relationship of the cinema to the other arts is kept constantly before the reader. This new edition includes a retrospective chapter by the author.
Deep Focus: Reflections On Cinema
Satyajit Ray - 2011
His films, from Pather Panchali in the mid-1950s to Agantuk in the 1990s, changed the way the world looked at Indian cinema. But Ray was not only a film-maker. He was also a bestselling writer of novels and short stories, and possibly the only Indian film-maker who wrote prolifically on cinema. This book brings together, for the first time in one volume, some of his most cerebral writings on film. With the economy and precision that marked his films, Ray writes on the art and craft of cinema, pens an ode to silent cinema, discusses the problems in adapting literary works to film, pays tributes to contemporaries like Godard and Uttam Kumar, and even gives us a peek into his experiences at film festivals, both as a jury member and as a contestant. Published in association with the Society for the Preservation of Satyajit Ray Films, and including fascinating photographs by and of the master, Deep Focus not only reveals Ray's engagement with cinema but also provides an invaluable insight into the mind of a genius.
Making Movies
Sidney Lumet - 1995
Drawing on 40 years of experience on movies ranging from Long Day's Journey Into Night to The Verdict, Lumet explains the painstaking labor that results in two hours of screen magic.
Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Carolina Hein - 2006
These changes can be seen in every field of life. For instance, the way of supplying basic needs or the way how to make own life better, but also certain norms and values are quite different today. Instead of visiting a theatre in order to be entertained, people can watch TV or use the internet. If a man and a woman live together unmarried, hardly anybody will be shocked about that fact. But often certain attitudes are anchored in society and can hardly be changed. One example is the determination which individual role men and women are likely to play as members of a society and how their image appears in every culture. It is especially interesting to see how the media represent women, the so called -weaker sex-. The following pages respond with the representation of women through the years. Additionally, they deal with problems and consequences coming up because of the difference between men and women.
Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo: A Celebration of the Marx Brothers
Joe Adamson - 1973
Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Sometimes Zeppo: A History of the Marx Brothers and a Satire on the Rest of the World
Either You're in Or You're in the Way
Logan Miller - 2009
Either You're in or You're in the Way is the amazing story of how—without a dime to their names nor a single meaningful contact in Hollywood—they managed to write, produce, direct, and act in a feature film alongside four-time Academy Award-nominated actor Ed Harris and fellow nominees Brad Dourif and Robert Forster. Either You're in or You're in the Way tells of the desperate struggle of two sons fighting to keep a vow to their father, and in so doing, creating a better life for themselves. A modern-day Horatio Alger on steroids, this fast-paced thrill ride of heartbreak and redemption will both captivate and inspire.
Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho
Stephen Rebello - 1990
Rebello takes us behind the scenes for every step in the creation of this cinematic masterpiece-from the story's original inspiration to the controversy surrounding the creation of the famous shower scene. Drawing on new in-depth interviews as well as Hitchcock's private files, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho is an eye-opening portrait of the artist at work.
Casablanca: Script and Legend
Howard Koch - 1973
This volume contains the complete screenplay as well as a behind-the-scenes look at how the Oscar-winning movie was made, by one of its writers, Howard Koch. Charles Champlin, Roger Ebert, Umberto Eco, and others contribute incisive analyses of the movie's timeless appeal, and twenty-five beautifully reproduced stills capture the dramatically charged scenes of this true American classic.
Quentin Tarantino: The Man and His Movies
Jami Bernard - 1995
The first comprehensive biography of the writer/director of the Academy Award-winning "Pulp Fiction" who, in only a few short years, took the film industry by storm and became a critical and commercial phenomenon.
Painting With Light
John Alton - 1995
Best known for his highly stylized film noir classics T-Men, He Walked by Night, and The Big Combo, Alton earned a reputation during the 1940s and 1950s as one of Hollywood's consummate craftsmen through his visual signature of crisp shadows and sculpted beams of light. No less renowned for his virtuoso color cinematography and deft appropriation of widescreen and Technicolor, he earned an Academy Award in 1951 for his work on the musical An American in Paris. First published in 1949, and long out of print since then, Painting With Light remains one of the few truly canonical statements on the art of motion picture photography, an unrivalled historical document on the workings of the postwar, American cinema. In simple, non-technical language, Alton explains the job of the cinematographer and explores how lighting, camera techniques, and choice of locations determine the visual mood of film. Todd McCarthy's introduction, written especially for this edition, provides an overview of Alton's biography and career and explores the influence of his work on contemporary cinematography.
It's Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks
James Robert Parish - 2007
Offering many insights into the wacky world of Brooks and his many collaborators, as well as an intimate look into his successful marriage to the brilliant and beautiful actress Anne Bancroft, It's Good to Be the King might just be the most delightful, engaging, and entertaining biography you'll ever read.
Dark Knights and Holy Fools: The Art and Films of Terry Gilliam: From Before Python to Beyond Fear and Loathing
Bob McCabe - 1999
Since 1969, when he became the only American among the otherwise all-British Monty Python team. Terry Gilliam's work has won plaudits and acclaim for its originality and imagination. His films are renowned for the quality of performances from some of Hollywood's top acting talent, such as Robert de Niro, Brad Pitt, Robin Williams and Johnny Depp.For the first time, this book traces thirty years of the work and art of Terry Gilliam, from his pre-Python days through to the astounding adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, released in 1998.Using Gilliam's own drawings, storyboard and scripts, this book builds to a complete overview of the director's work, examining in detail his striking visual sense ad labyrinthing stories of Man against bureaucracy (Brazil, Twelve Monkeys), triumphant tales of imagination winning over mediocrity (Time Bandits, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Fisher King) and, of course, something completely different (Monty Python and the Holy Grail).
Peter Cushing: The Complete Memoirs
Peter Cushing - 2013
Cushing was widely known as ‘the gentleman of horror’, his kind and sensitive nature a sharp contrast with the Hammer Horror roles that dominated his work from the 1950s onwards. This is Cushing’s own account of his remarkable career, and the devastating sense of loss he suffered following the death of his wife. It offers unparalleled insight to the meticulous professionalism and private torment of a legendary film star.
The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics (Hollywood Legends Series)
Sydney Stern - 2019
(1897–1953) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993) wrote, produced, and directed over 150 pictures. With Orson Welles, Herman wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane and shared the picture’s only Academy Award. Joe earned the second pair of his four Oscars for writing and directing All About Eve, which also won Best Picture. Despite triumphs as diverse as Monkey Business and Cleopatra, and Pride of the Yankees and Guys and Dolls, the witty, intellectual brothers spent their Hollywood years deeply discontented and yearning for what they did not have—a career in New York theater. Herman, formerly an Algonquin Round Table habitué, New York Times and New Yorker theater critic, and playwright-collaborator with George S. Kaufman, never reconciled himself to screenwriting. He gambled away his prodigious earnings, was fired from all the major studios, and drank himself to death at fifty-five. While Herman drifted downward, Joe rose to become a critical and financial success as a writer, producer, and director, though his constant philandering with prominent stars like Joan Crawford, Judy Garland, and Gene Tierney distressed his emotionally fragile wife who eventually committed suicide. He wrecked his own health using uppers and downers in order to direct Cleopatra by day and finish writing it at night, only to be very publicly fired by Darryl F. Zanuck, an experience from which he never fully recovered. For this first dual portrait of the Mankiewicz brothers, Sydney Ladensohn Stern draws on interviews, letters, diaries, and other documents still in private hands to provide a uniquely intimate behind-the-scenes chronicle of the lives, loves, work, and relationship between these complex men.
Herzog on Herzog
Paul Cronin - 2003
The sheer number of false rumors and downright lies disseminated about the man and his films is truly astonishing. Yet Herzog's body of work is one of the most important in postwar European cinema. His international breakthrough came in 1973 with Aguirre, The Wrath of God, in which Klaus Kinski played a crazed Conquistador. For The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Herzog cast in the lead a man who had spent most of his life institutionalized, and two years later he hypnotized his entire cast to make Heart of Glass. He rushed to an explosive volcanic Caribbean island to film La Soufrière, paid homage to F. W. Murnau in a terrifying remake of Nosferatu, and in 1982 dragged a boat over a mountain in the Amazon jungle for Fitzcarraldo. More recently, Herzog has made extraordinary "documentary" films such as Little Dieter Needs to Fly. His place in cinema history is assured, and Paul Cronin's volume of dialogues provides a forum for Herzog's fascinating views on the things, ideas, and people that have preoccupied him for so many years.