Mark Cousins’s chronological journey through the worldwide history of film is told from the point of view of filmmakers and moviegoers. Weaving personalities, film technology, and production with engaging descriptions of groundbreaking scenes, Cousins uses his experience as film historian, producer, and director to capture the shifting trends of movie history. We learn how filmmakers influenced each other; how contemporary events influenced them; how they challenged established techniques and developed new technologies to enhance their medium. Striking images reinforce the reader’s understanding of cinematic innovation, both stylistic and technical. The images reveal astonishing parallels in global filmmaking, thus introducing the less familiar worlds of African, Asian, and Middle Eastern cinema, as well as documenting the fortunes of the best Western directors. The Story of Film presents Silent (1885-1928), Sound (1928-1990), and Digital (1990-present), spanning the birth of the moving image; the establishment of Hollywood; the European avant-garde movements, personal filmmaking; world cinema; and recent phenomena like Computer Generated Imagery and the ever-more “real” realizations of the wildest of imaginations. The Story of Film explores what has today become the world’s most popular artistic medium.

    "One of the most talked about scripts of the year, Adaptation is the story of an orchid collector (Chris Cooper), a journalist (Meryl Streep, as author Susan Orlean), and the screenwriter (Charlie Kaufman, played by Nicolas Cage) who, in adapting Orlean's bestselling book The Orchid Thief writes himself and his twin brother (also played by Cage) into the movie." "In the foreword, written exclusively for this Newmarket edition, Orlean reveals her own struggle to tell the story of the orchid, and her delight that "strangely, marvelously, hilariously, Kaufman's screenplay has ended up not being a literal adaptation of my book, but a spiritual one."" Kaufman and Jonze take readers behind the scenes of Adaptation and their other films to speak about how they collaborate, where truth and fiction diverge, the challenges of balancing various storylines, why they do not like to comment on the meaning of their work, and Kaufman's approach to writing.

    It's a distinction he's long been building, through a directing career that includes such cinematic landmarks as "The Terminator," "Aliens," "The Abyss," and the highest grossing movie of all time, "Titanic." The Futurist is the first in-depth look at every aspect of this audacious creative genius--culminating in an exclusive behind-the-scenes glimpse of the making of "Avatar," the movie that promises to utterly transform the way motion pictures are created and perceived. As decisive a break with the past as the transition from silents to talkies, "Avatar" pushes 3-D, live action, and photo-realistic CGI to a new level. It rips through the emotional barrier of the screen to transport the audience to a fabulous new virtual world. With cooperation from the often reclusive Cameron, author Rebecca Keegan has crafted a singularly revealing portrait of the director's life and work. We meet the young truck driver who sees "Star Wars" and resolves to make his own space blockbuster--starting by building a futuristic cityscape with cardboard and X-Acto knives. We observe the neophyte director deciding over lunch with Arnold Schwarzenegger that the ex-body builder turned actor is wrong in every way for the Terminator role as written, but perfect regardless. After the success of "The Terminator," Cameron refines his special-effects wizardry with a big-time Hollywood budget in the creation of the relentlessly exciting "Aliens." He builds an immense underwater set for "The Abyss" in the massive containment vessel of an abandoned nuclear power plant--where he pushes his scuba-equipped cast to and sometimes past their physical and emotional breaking points (including a white rat that Cameron saved from drowning by performing CPR). And on the set of "Titanic," the director struggles to stay in charge when someone maliciously spikes craft services' mussel chowder with a massive dose of PCP, rendering most of the cast and crew temporarily psychotic. Now, after his movies have earned over $3 billion at the box office, James Cameron is astounding the world with the most expensive, innovative, and ambitious movie of his career. For decades the moviemaker has been ready to tell the "Avatar" story but was forced to hold off his ambitions until technology caught up with his vision. Going beyond the technical ingenuity and narrative power that Cameron has long demonstrated, "Avatar" shatters old cinematic paradigms and ushers in a new era of storytelling. The Futurist is the story of the man who finally brought movies into the twenty-first century.

    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

    The story of two white-collar managers, Chad and Howard, who maliciously plot to jointly romance the lonely, deaf, beautiful office temp Christine before simultaneously dumping her, is cool and compelling in its depiction of the worst sorts of emotional abuse. What begins as a cat-and-mouse game of one-upmanship quickly escalates into full-scale psychological warfare. Only too late does this 'frat boy' prank reveal itself as deadly serious, with a struggle between the two men at the heart of the battle. The woman is only a means to an end, a pawn easily captured and tossed aside in a dark, wicked duel for corporate ascension.

    This collection of screenplays for a quartet of his most distinguished films shows that he's also a writer of distinction, for the words themselves emerge, in their own right, as a form of powerfully moving literature.

    A young man with no direction of his own, Ripley has been commissioned by Dickie's father, a wealthy industrialist, to journey to Italy and persuade the prodigal playboy home to America.However, on arrival, Ripley is instantly captivated with Dickie's charmed existence: the Amalfi coast, the jaunts to Rome, the first-class hotels, and the beautiful expatriate who completes the triangle. Dickie is amused by his new acquaintance -- never suspecting the dangerous extremes to which Ripley will go to make this lifestyle his own.

    Exploring the cinematic quality and features offered by hybrid DSLRs, this book empowers the filmmaker to craft visually stunning images inexpensively.Learn to think more like a cinematographer than a videographer, whether shooting for a feature, short fiction, documentary, video journalism, or even a wedding. DSLR Cinema offers insight into different shooting styles, real-world tips and techniques, and advice on postproduction workflow as it guides you in crafting a film-like look.Case studies feature an international cast of cutting edge DSLR shooters today, including Philip Bloom (England), Bernardo Uzeda (Brazil), Rii Schroer (Germany), Jeremy Ian Thomas (United States), Shane Hurlbut, ASC (United States), and Po Chan (Hong Kong). Their films are examined in detail, exploring how each exemplifies great storytelling, exceptional visual character, and how you can push the limits of your DSLR.

    Sarris's The American Cinema, the bible of auteur studies, is a history of American film in the form of a lively guide to the work of two hundred film directors, from Griffith, Chaplin, and von Sternberg to Mike Nichols, Stanley Kubrick, and Jerry Lewis. In addition, the book includes a chronology of the most important American films, an alphabetical list of over 6000 films with their directors and years of release, and the seminal essays "Toward a Theory of Film History" and "The Auteur Theory Revisited." Over twenty-five years after its initial publication, The American Cinema remains perhaps the most influential book ever written on the subject.

    Following on from the success of his thriller, Ex Machina, Alex Garland returns to cerebral sci-fi with his adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer's cult novel -a tale of a biologist attempting to uncover the mystery of her husband's disappearance into a restricted zone.What she and her fellow scientists discover is a world populated by mysterious life forms that might offer answers, but which exposes them to madness and death.Beside the screenplay, the book also includes 20 pages of behind-the-scenes photos.

    You will learn how to research and focus a documentary film or video idea, develop a crew, direct the crew, maintain control during shooting, and oversee postproduction. Practical work is emphasized, with dozens of exercises and questionnaires to help focus your ideas and give you hands-on practice. The documentary is treated as an important genre in its own right, as well as a useful prelude to directing feature films. The fourth edition is a significant update. The book's emphasis has always been on concrete steps you can take to become a documentary filmmaker, and there are loads of new projects to help, along with assessment tables that allow you to gauge your progress. In addition, there is new material on location sound, the reality TV trend, top documentaries to see, and more.

    In Sculpting in Time, he has left his artistic testament, a remarkable revelation of both his life and work. Since Ivan's Childhood won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1962, the visionary quality and totally original and haunting imagery of Tarkovsky's films have captivated serious movie audiences all over the world, who see in his work a continuation of the great literary traditions of nineteenth-century Russia. Many critics have tried to interpret his intensely personal vision, but he himself always remained inaccessible.In Sculpting in Time, Tarkovsky sets down his thoughts and his memories, revealing for the first time the original inspirations for his extraordinary films--Ivan's Childhood, Andrey Rublyov, Solaris, The Mirror, Stalker, Nostalgia, and The Sacrifice. He discusses their history and his methods of work, he explores the many problems of visual creativity, and he sets forth the deeply autobiographical content of part of his oeuvre--most fascinatingly in The Mirror and Nostalgia. The closing chapter on The Sacrifice, dictated in the last weeks of Tarkovsky's life, makes the book essential reading for those who already know or who are just discovering his magnificent work.

    In Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks, Anderson’s entire career—from Hard Eight (1996), Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999), Punch Drunk Love (2002), There Will Be Blood (2007), The Master (2012), Inherent Vice (2014), and Phantom Thread (2017) to his music videos for Radiohead to his early short films—is examined in illustrated detail for the first time.   Anderson’s influences, his style, and the recurring themes of alienation, reinvention, ambition, and destiny that course through his movies are analyzed and supplemented by firsthand interviews with Anderson’s closest collaborators—including producer JoAnne Sellar, actor Vicky Krieps, and composer Jonny Greenwood—and illuminated by film stills, archival photos, original illustrations, and an appropriately psychedelic design aesthetic. Masterworks is a tribute to the dreamers, drifters, and evil dentists who populate his world.

    Embraced as a cultural touchstone, the 1993 film would also make Matthew McConaughey’s famous phrase—alright, alright, alright—ubiquitous. But it started with a simple idea: Linklater thought people might like to watch a movie about high school kids just hanging out and listening to music on the last day of school in 1976.    To some, that might not even sound like a movie. But to a few studio executives, it sounded enough like the next American Graffiti to justify the risk. Dazed and Confused underperformed at the box office and seemed destined to disappear. Then something weird happened: Linklater turned out to be right. This wasn’t the kind of movie everybody liked, but it was the kind of movie certain people loved, with an intensity that felt personal. No matter what their high school experience was like, they thought Dazed and Confused was about them.Alright, Alright, Alright is the story of how this iconic film came together and why it worked. Combining behind-the-scenes photos and insights from nearly the entire cast, including Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey, Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, and many others, and with full access to Linklater’s Dazed archives, it offers an inside look at how a budding filmmaker and a cast of newcomers made a period piece that would feel timeless for decades to come.

    Together with Tyler Durden – part-time projectionist, banquet waiter, soap-maker and anarchic genius – he creates Fight Club, where he and men like him can get away from their work-dominated, consumer-driven, image-obsessed lives.Soon there are fight clubs in basement bars across the country; men with cuts, bruises, stitches and missing teeth wherever you look. Tyler Durden has become an urban legend – but when he invents Project Mayhem, things begin to escalate. There’s only one thing to do: shut down Fight Club. But have they created a monster they can't control?This full-cast BBC radio dramatisation of Chuck Palahniuk's visceral, unflinching novel stars Patrick Kennedy as the Narrator, Sam Hazeldine as Tyler and Elaine Cassidy as Marla.Cast:The Narrator...Patrick KennedyTyler Durden...Sam HazeldineMarla Singer... Elaine CassidyBig Bob...Martin ShermanDoctor/Boss...Nigel WhitmeyRecruit One...Danny MahoneyMechanic...John SchwabTed...Sam DaleGlenda...Jane SlavinChloe...Ayesha AntoineDramatised by Tracey Malone and Ed WhitmoreProduced by Heather LarmourDuration: 1 hour approx.