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.

    Over the course of his career, he has remained true to a vision of the innocent lost in darkness and confusion, balancing hallucination and surrealism with a sense of Americana that is as pure and simple as his compelling storylines. In this volume, Lynch speaks openly about his films as well as about his lifelong commitment to painting, his work in photography, his television projects, and his musical collaborations with Angelo Badalamenti.

    To appreciate this, though it is necessary to look at what happens on the screen without bringing preconceptions to bear.

    He shows how broad Tarantino's points of reference are, and analyzes the narrative accomplishment and complexity. In addition, Polan argues that macho attitudes celebrated in film are much more complex than they seem.

    Abagnale's story has captured the imagination of audiences around the world as a modern-day folk hero-but the truth could not be more different from the fictitious autobiography he sold to Hollywood. Self-proclaimed as "the world's greatest con man," the true dimensions of Abagnale's hoax are revealed for the first time in this dramatic true story.A shocking new reality emerges through the voices of victims, their families, and others who have seen the truth concealed by decades of deception. Their stories are now exquisitely woven into a tapestry of hard evidence and insights from his former manager, Mark Zinder. The result is a fast-paced drama filled with heroes, villains, mystery and intrigue, answered with unquestionable facts and official records-all definitively disproving Abagnale's longstanding claims of roaming the world as a "teenage millionaire imposter" and working for the District Attorney in Baton Rouge.

    Although she made her name as a star of the silent screen, she found her calling as a gossip columnist, where she had the ear of the most powerful force in show business: the public. With a readership of 20,000,000 people, Hopper turned nobodies into stars, and brought stars to their knees. And in this sensational memoir, she tells all. In her career, Hopper crossed some of Hollywood’s biggest bold-faced names, from Joan Crawford and Bette Davis to Charlie Chaplin and Katherine Hepburn, and her feud with rival gossip columnist Louella Parsons became the stuff of legend. In The Whole Truth and Nothing But, we get Hedda’s side of the story—and what a story it is. Hedda Hopper is portrayed by Judy Davis in the Ryan Murphy TV series Feud.

    His experiences and thoughts on screenwriting, adapting novels, adapting one's own novels (a bad idea), and on the craft itself contain more useful information than a pile of how-to manuals. As in his novels, McMurtry is by turns witty, acerbic, and thoughtful; the pieces are surprisingly stylish in that the bulk of them (17 out of 21) were spun off on monthly deadlines (for American Film magazine, in 1975-77), and McMurtry admittedly can't remember writing most of them. A fine collection, from a fine writer.No Clue: Or Learning to Write for the Movies. --The Hired Pen. --The Deadline Syndrome. --The Telephone Booth Screenwriter. --The Fun of It All. --All the President's Men, Seven Beauties, History, Innocence, Guilt, Redemption, and the Star System. --The Screenplay as Non-Book: A Consideration. --Pencils West: Or a Theory for the Shoot-'Em Up. --"Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" and the Movie-Less Novelists. --O Ragged Time Knit Up Thy Ravell'd Sleave. --The Situation in Criticism: Reviewers, Critics, Professors. --Character, the Tube, and the Death of Movies. --The Disappearance of Love. --Woody Allen, Keith Carradine, Lily Tomlin, and the Disappearance of Grace. --The Last Picture Shows. --The Seasons of L.A.. --The Last Movie Column. --The Last Picture Show: A Last Word. --Approaching Cheyenne ... Leaving Lumet. Oh, Pshaw!. --Movie-Tripping: My Own Rotten Film Festival. --A Walk in Pasadena with Di-Annie and Mary Alice

    Film Theory multiplies the perspectives and positions, the situations and locations, from which film theory is spoken.

    It traces the experiments and innovations that gave rise to the modern cinema, developing a vocabulary that helps explain the variety of choices filmmakers make when they construct shots and edit them together. In each lecture, Professor Raphael Shargel introduces a period of film history, talks about its importance, covers aspects of cinematic technique, and illustrates his points by analyzing specific movies from the era under discussion. The course thus has both breadth and depth, covering the major movements in film history while at the same time focusing on key pictures worthy of study and enjoyment. Lecture 1 The Origins of Cinema and the Grammar of FilmLecture 2 Film Imagery and the Theory of MontageLecture 3 Storytelling in the 1930s and StagecoachLecture 4 Citizen Kane: An American MasterpieceLecture 5 World War II and the Cinema of Community: Casablanca; Now, Voyager; and It's a Wonderful LifeLecture 6 Noir and Neorealism: Bicycle Thieves and On the WaterfrontLecture 7 Love and the Mirror of Death: Alfred Hitchcock's VertigoLecture 8 Widescreen: The World Writ Large and Intimate: The ApartmentLecture 9 The New Wave in France: The 400 Blows and Week-endLecture 10 The American New Wave I: Politics and Family: The GodfatherLecture 11 The American New Wave II: The Social Canvas: NashvilleLecture 12 The Rule of the Blockbuster: Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost ArkLecture 13 Gender, Race, and the Varieties of Cinematic Experience: Vagabond, Do the Right Thing, and Lone StarLecture 14 The Contemporary Maverick: Goodfellas, Million Dollar Baby, Persepolisfrom www.learnoutloud.com

    Filled with stunning revelations about the men in her life—Burton, Clift, Hilton, Dean, Fisher—it is a glorious celebration of the turbulent life of a brilliant star that none in Hollywood or heaven could ever outshine.

    Decades after their release, his movies remain unsurpassed marvels of comic invention and mechanical timing. In Buster Keaton Remembered, a unique illustrated survey of Keaton's career, Eleanor Keaton, his wife of 26 years, and film historian Jeffrey Vance provide a personal account of this icon of American cinema.Drawing on professional papers, screenplays, studio records, and scrapbooks, the authors trace Keaton's beginnings in vaudeville, where he perfected his gags; his first silent shorts with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle; the brilliant features he conceived, directed, produced, and performed in; and his later sound films for M-G-M and others. Fresh prints of classic film stills and never-before-published photos from the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, together with a lively, anecdotal text, offer a behind-the-scenes look at how Keaton came up with his hilarious ideas, choreographed his elaborate stunts, and crafted his films.

    Its fans tend to be fanatical, congregating at 'Lebowski Conventions' in bowling alleys across American and Britain, and even dressing up as characters from the film. Among the funniest films of the last twenty-five years, and one of the high-water marks of 1990s genre recycling and pastiche, The Big Lebowski is also littered with playful and subversive references to film history, especially to Raymond Chandler's world of hardboiled detective classics and the world of film noir. The Big Lebowski is the rarest kind of film, a comedy whose jokes become funnier with repetition. The same goes for its multitudinous jukebox-like references to other films, many of which open up vistas for intertextual interpretation. Underneath the film's breakneck pacing and foul-mouthed characters, a farcical collection of flakes, losers, and phonies, is a surprisingly humane account of what fools we mortals be. It is one of the oddest buddy films ever made, with extraordinary performances by Jeff Bridges and John Goodman. In this study, The Big Lebowski is set into the context of 1990s Hollywood cinema, anatomised for its witty relationship with the classics which it satirises, and discussed in terms of its key theme: the hopeless flailing of ridiculously unmanly men in the world of discombobulated, mixed-up, or put-on identities that is Los Angeles.

    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.

    A paperback guide to 100 of the funniest bad movies ever made, this book covers a wide range of hopeless Hollywood product, and also including rare Razzie ceremony photos and a complete history of everything ever nominated for Tinsel Town's Tackiest Trophy.

    A backstage glimpse of the realities of the new Hollywood focuses on the film releases and strategies of the summer of 1998, showing why Godzilla was fated to fail and how Spielberg triumphed.