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."

Star Wars: The Action Figure Archive


Stephen J. Sansweet - 1999
    These are the immensely popular and eminently collectible action figures that Kenner Toys has produced for the past 20 years. Until now, there has never been a comprehensive book for the legions who collect these fantastic figures. "Star Wars: The Action Figure Archive is the visual compendium they've been waiting for. This definitive reference covers the older Kenner action figures as well as the new Hasbro/Kenner line. Every full-color page features shots of the action figures, many with movie stills on which the figure was based, and showcases accessories and the original packaging. Captions enumerate different versions of the figures, providing the exhaustive information required by the serious collector. With over 2,000 color photos, this is the definitive tour of the "Star Wars action figure galaxy.To the Official "Star Wars" Web SiteCheck out other Star Wars titles published by Chronicle Books!

Ginger: My Story


Ginger Rogers - 1991
    Ginger is at once a heartwarming personal memoir and an inside look at the heyday of Hollywood. More than 30 photographs.

Nicholson: A Biography


Marc Eliot - 2013
    With twelve Oscar nominations to his credit and legendary roles in films like Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Terms of Endearment, The Shining, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Nicholson creates original, memorable characters like no other actor of his generation. And his personal life has been no less of an adventure—Nicholson has always been at the center of the Hollywood elite and has courted some of the most famous and beautiful women in the world.    Relying on years of extensive research and interviews with insiders who know Nicholson best, acclaimed biographer Marc Eliot sheds new light on Nicholson's life on and off the screen. From Nicholson’s working class childhood in New Jersey, where family secrets threatened to tear his family apart, to raucous nights on the town with Warren Beatty and tumultuous relationships with starlets like Michelle Phillips, Anjelica Huston, and Lara Flynn Boyle, to movie sets working with such legendary directors and costars as Dennis Hopper, Stanley Kubrick, Meryl Streep, and Roman Polanski, Eliot paints a sweeping picture of the breadth of Nicholson’s fifty-year career in film, as well as an intimate portrait of his personal life.     Equally at home on the bookshelves of serious film historians and fans of compulsively readable Hollywood biographies, Nicholson is both a comprehensive tribute to a film legend and an entertaining look at a truly remarkable life.

Hurrell's Hollywood Portraits


Mark A. Vieira - 1993
    The book traces his immense impact on the portrayal of the leading stars year by year, from his arrival in California in 1925 until his departure in 1943. During that time he photographed all of the greatest personalities, at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Brothers, and Columbia as well as independently. The prints come from the Chapman Collection, one of the most extensive archives of original Hurrell photographs in the world, and they include a number of rarities and surprises. Although some photos by Hurrell are familiar and frequently reproduced, most of the images in this book will come as a revelation, since they have not been published in over half a century. The genesis of the pictures is examined in a remarkable text by Mark A. Vieira, himself a highly regarded portrait photographer, who came to know Hurrell well during the photographer's later years. Vieira explains in detail Hurrell's technical feats of lighting and retouching. And drawing on firsthand accounts, he vividly re-creates the lively interplay between the photographer and his subjects at the shooting sessions in which these portraits were taken.

True Indie: Life and Death in Filmmaking


Don Coscarelli - 2018
    Travel with him as he chaperones three out-of-control child actors as they barnstorm Japan, almost drowns actress Catherine Keener in her first film role, and transforms a short story about Elvis Presley battling a four thousand year-old Egyptian mummy into a beloved cult classic film.Witness the incredible cast of characters he meets along the way from heavy metal god Ronnie James Dio to first-time filmmakers Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary. Learn how breaking bread with genre icons Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter and Guillermo Del Toro leads to a major cable series and watch as he and zombie king George A. Romero together take over an unprepared national network television show with their tales of blood and horror.This memoir fits an entire film school education into a single book. It's loaded with behind-the-scenes stories: like setting his face on fire during the making of Phantasm, hearing Bruce Campbell's most important question before agreeing to star in Bubba Ho-tep, and crafting a horror thriller into a franchise phenomenon spanning four decades. Find out how Coscarelli managed to retain creative and financial control of his artistic works in an industry ruled by power-hungry predators, and all without going insane or bankrupt.True Indie will prove indispensable for fans of Coscarelli's movies, aspiring filmmakers, and anyone who loves a story of an underdog who prevails while not betraying what he believes.

From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film


Siegfried Kracauer - 1947
    Siegfried Kracauer--a prominent German film critic and member of Walter Benjamin's and Theodor Adorno's intellectual circle--broke new ground in exploring the connections between film aesthetics, the prevailing psychological state of Germans in the Weimar era, and the evolving social and political reality of the time. Kracauer's pioneering book, which examines German history from 1921 to 1933 in light of such movies as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, M, Metropolis, and The Blue Angel, has never gone out of print. Now, over half a century after its first appearance, this beautifully designed and entirely new edition reintroduces Kracauer for the twenty-first century. Film scholar Leonardo Quaresima places Kracauer in context in a critical introduction, and updates the book further with a new bibliography, index, and list of inaccuracies that crept into the first edition. This volume is a must-have for the film historian, film theorist, or cinema enthusiast.In From Caligari to Hitler, Siegfried Kracauer made a startling (and still controversial) claim: films as a popular art provide insight into the unconscious motivations and fantasies of a nation. In films of the 1920s, he traced recurring visual and narrative tropes that expressed, he argued, a fear of chaos and a desire for order, even at the price of authoritarian rule. The book has become an undisputed classic of film historiography, laying the foundations for the serious study of film.Kracauer was an important film critic in Weimar Germany. A Jew, he escaped the rise of Nazism, fleeing to Paris in 1933. Later, in anguish after Benjamin's suicide, he made his way to New York, where he remained until his death in 1966. He wrote From Caligari to Hitler while working as a "special assistant" to the curator of the Museum of Modern Art's film division. He was also on the editorial board of Bollingen Series. Despite many critiques of its attempt to link movies to historical outcomes, From Caligari to Hitler remains Kracauer's best-known and most influential book, and a seminal work in the study of film. Princeton published a revised edition of his Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality in 1997.

Night of the Living Dead: Behind the Scenes of the Most Terrifying Zombie Movie Ever


Joe Kane - 2010
    George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead raised the bar for onscreen violence. Moviegoers were bludgeoned with horrific scenes of zombies blood-feasting on human body parts. Nothing was taboo. A six-year-old child nibbling on her daddy's arm! Plunging a garden tool into her mother's heart! More blood spewed onscreen than ever before! And yet, people returned for more--in hordes. The zombie movie phenomenon had officially been spawned. This is the true story of the flesh-eating classic that started it all.Special Features Dozens of photos too shocking to be seen until now Stomach-churning details behind the groundbreaking FX Compelling, revealing interviews with cast and crew The legacy of Night of the Living Dead for today's horror directors

The Film Sense


Sergei Eisenstein - 1942
    Includes an analysis of a sound-film sequence from Alexander Nevsky. “The most instructive discussion of the film art yet put between the covers of a book” (New York Times Book Review). Edited and translated by Jay Leyda; Index; photographs and diagrams.

Leslie Nielsen: The Naked Truth


Leslie Nielsen - 1993
    Leslie Nielsen is a true veteran of the Hollywood scene and one of America's funniest slap-stick film star. He is well-known in Britain for his movies and appearances in cider commercials and the movie "Naked Gun 33 1/3" is on its way from Paramount. From the frozen wilds of northern Canada to New York, Los Angeles, and the flashiest bars all around the world, Leslie Nielsen tells the dramatic, heart-wrenching, explosively erotic, sleazy, entirely truthful, and hilarious story of his life.

Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting


Syd Field - 1979
    Now the celebrated producer, lecturer, teacher, and bestselling author has updated his classic guide for a new generation of filmmakers, offering a fresh insider’s perspective on the film industry today. From concept to character, from opening scene to finished script, here are easily understood guidelines to help aspiring screenwriters—from novices to practiced writers—hone their craft. Filled with updated material—including all-new personal anecdotes and insights, guidelines on marketing and collaboration, plus analyses of recent films, from American Beauty to Lord of the Rings—Screenplay presents a step-by-step, comprehensive technique for writing the screenplay that will succeed in Hollywood. Discover:•Why the first ten pages of your script are crucially important•How to visually “grab” the reader from page one, word one •Why structure and character are the essential foundation of your screenplay•How to adapt a novel, a play, or an article into a screenplay•Tips on protecting your work—three legal ways to claim ownership of your screenplay•The essentials of writing great dialogue, creating character, building a story line, overcoming writer’s block, getting an agent, and much more.With this newly updated edition of his bestselling classic, Syd Field proves yet again why he is revered as the master of the screenplay—and why his celebrated guide has become the industry’s gold standard for successful screenwriting.

Hot Toddy: The True Story of Hollywood's Most Sensational Murder


Andy Edmonds - 1989
    Set against the Hollywood industry where Toddy worked and played--an industry infiltrated by the Mob. 21 photos.

The Good, the Bad, and Me: In My Anecdotage


Eli Wallach - 2005
    Beginning with his early days in Brooklyn and his college years in Texas, where he dreamed of becoming an actor, this book follows his career as one of the earliest members of the famed Actors Studio and as a Tony Award winner for his work on Broadway. Wallach has worked with such stars as Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe, Gregory Peck, and Henry Fonda, and his many movies include The Magnificent Seven, How the West Was Won, the iconic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and, most recently, Mystic River. For more than fifty years Eli Wallach has held a special place in film and theater, and in a tale rich with anecdotes, wit, and remarkable insight he recounts his magical life in a world unlike any other.

What Fresh Lunacy is This?: The Authorized Biography of Oliver Reed


Robert Sellers - 2012
    With never-heard-before anecdotes and new interviews with Reed's family, friends and peers, What Fresh Lunacy Is This? is a revealing examination of his mould-breaking personality.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - Chronicles I: Art & Design


Daniel Falconer - 2012
    It is packed with more than 1,000 images of concept artwork, photographs and development paintings by the artists working behind the scenes to bring Middle-earth to life, who each provide detailed and entertaining commentary that reveals the story behind the vision. Compiled by Weta Workshop senior concept designer Daniel Falconer, this is the first in a series of lavish hardback books written and designed by the award-winning team at Weta, who are working closely with the production team to guarantee that these books will be bursting with insider information and stunning visual imagery.