Book picks similar to
Telling Time: Essays of a Visionary Filmmaker by Stan Brakhage
cinema
film
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Ayoade on Ayoade: A Cinematic Odyssey
Richard Ayoade - 2014
It wouldn't. In fact, it's actually pretty insulting that this so-called 'Community' hasn't done more to acknowledge (or even begin to repay) its undoubted debt to me.Richard Ayoade is many things - film director (of Submarine and the forthcoming The Double), comedy actor (The IT Crowd), comedian and TV presenter (Gadget Man). Ayoade on Ayoade captures the director in his own words: pompous, vain, angry and very, very funny.
Closely Watched Films: An Introduction to the Art of Narrative Film Technique
Marilyn Fabe - 2004
Ranging from D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation to Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, and ending with an epilogue on digital media, Closely Watched Films focuses on exemplary works of fourteen film directors whose careers together span the history of the narrative film. Lively and down-to-earth, this concise introduction provides a broad, complete, and yet specific picture of visual narrative techniques that will increase readers' excitement about and knowledge of the possibilities of the film medium.Shot-by-shot analyses of short passages from each film ground theory in concrete examples. Fabe includes original and well-informed discussions of Soviet montage, realism and expressionism in film form, classical and modern sound theory, the classic Hollywood film, Italian neorealism, the French New Wave, auteur theory, modernism and postmodernism in film, political cinema, feminist film theory and practice, and narrative experiments in new digital media. Encompassing the earliest silent films as well as those that exploit the most recent technological innovations, this book gives us the particulars of how film—arguably the most influential of contemporary forms of representation—constitutes our pleasure, influences our thoughts, and informs our daily reality.
Once Upon a Time in Italy: The Westerns of Sergio Leone
Christopher Frayling - 2005
With an American TV actor named Clint Eastwood and a script based on a samurai epic, Leone wound up creating "A Fistful of Dollars", the first in a trilogy of films (with "For a Few Dollars More" and "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly") that was violent, cynical, and visually stunning. Along with his later masterpiece, "Once Upon a Time in the West", these films came to define the Spaghetti Western
Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood
Todd McCarthy - 1997
Sometime partner of the eccentric Howard Hughes, drinking buddy of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, an inveterate gambler and a notorious liar, Hawks was the most modern of the great masters and one of the first directors to declare his independence from the major studios. He played Svengali to Lauren Bacall, Montgomery Clift, and others, but Hawks's greatest creation may have been himself.As The Atlantic Monthly noted, "Todd McCarthy . . . has gone further than anyone else in sorting out the truths and lies of the life, the skills and the insight and the self-deceptions of the work." "A fluent biography of the great director, a frequently rotten guy but one whose artistic independence and standards of film morality never failed." -- The New York Times Book Review; "Hawks's life, until now rather an enigma, has been put into focus and made one with his art in Todd McCarthy's wise and funny Howard Hawks." -- The Wall Street Journal; "Excellent . . . a respectful, exhaustive, and appropriately smartass look at Hollywood's most versatile director." -- Newsweek.
Tales of Times Square
Josh Alan Friedman - 1986
He writes about the porn palaces with live sex shows, and the men and women who perform in them, prostitutes and their pimps, the runaways who will likely be the next decade's prostitutes, the clergymen who fight the smut merchants and the cops who feel impotent in the face of the judiciary."-bPublishers Weekly/b/p brbrPThis classic account of the ultra-sleazy, pre-Disneyfied era of Times Square is now the subject of a documentary film of the same name to be theatrically released this year. With this edition, bTales of Times Square/b returns to print with seven new chapters./p
On the History of Film Style
David Bordwell - 1979
Style assigns films to a tradition, distinguishes a classic, and signals the arrival of a pathbreaking innovation. David Bordwell now shows how film scholars have attempted to explain stylistic continuity and change across the history of cinema.Bordwell scrutinizes the theories of style launched by AndrE Bazin, NoEl Burch, and other film historians. In the process he celebrates a century of cinema, integrating discussions of film classics such as The Birth of a Nation and Citizen Kane with analyses of more current box-office successes such as Jaws and The Hunt for Red October. Examining the contributions of both noted and neglected directors, he considers the earliest filmmaking, the accomplishments of the silent era, the development of Hollywood, and the strides taken by European and Asian cinema in recent years.On the History of Film Style proposes that stylistic developments often arise from filmmakers' search for engaging and efficient solutions to production problems. Bordwell traces this activity across history through a detailed discussion of cinematic staging. Illustrated with more than 400 frame enlargements, this wide-ranging study provides a new lens for viewing cinema.
In the World but Not of It: New Teachings from Jesus on Embodying the Divine
Gina Lake - 2016
You can become Christ within this human life and learn to embody all that is good within you. I came to show you the beauty of your own soul and what is possible as a human. I came to show you that it is possible to be both human and divine, to be love incarnate. You are equally both. You walk with one foot in the world of form and another in the Formless. This mysterious duality within your being is what this book is about.” "The consciousness that is within me is also within you. You are the son as equally as I am. You are the ‘I am’ I spoke about. You and I are one. You and everyone else are one. Many are ready for the Christ within to come forward and manifest in the world more fully. The birthing of this Christ—of Christ Consciousness—is the true second coming. ‘Christ Consciousness,’ as I am using it, points to the divinity within everyone and the potential for that divinity to become a living reality, to become what lives you. I was an example of that possibility in my lifetime two thousand years ago.” This book was given to Gina Lake by Jesus. It is part of a series of books, including A Heroic Life and The Jesus Trilogy. You will learn: • How to embody the divine self in the world • How to tell when you are identified with the ego • How to spot the ego in your thoughts and conversations • What kind of thoughts are in the thought-stream • How to disidentify from the ego • How to be in your body and senses • How to move into Presence and stay there • How to be present while speaking and acting in the world • Spiritual practices that support Presence • What embodiment, enlightenment, self-realization, and awakening are • Pitfalls on the spiritual path • How to be with emotions • How to be with and heal energetic blocks in the body • How to overcome bad habits and addictions Review from David Fishman, teacher of A Course in Miracles: "I love this book! It's a perfect companion to all students and teachers of A Course in Miracles, for it encompasses the core themes and values of ACIM in a simple format that provides practical guidance for everyday use. The guidance our elder brother offers in the pages of this book is priceless. I highly recommend this book as the perfect complement to ACIM and the perfect first book to all you love and care for who may not appear to be ready now for opening A Course in Miracles."
Pulp Fiction
Dana Polan - 2000
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.
It's Only a Movie: Reel Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive
Mark Kermode - 2010
Just as likely, you soon realised that there was only one career open to you - you'd have to become a film critic.In It's Only a Movie, the incomparable Mark Kermode takes us into the weird world of a life lived in widescreen. Join him as he embarks on a gut-wrenching journey through the former Soviet Union on the trail of the low-budget horror flick Dark Waters, cringe as he's handbagged by Helen Mirren at the BAFTA awards ceremony, cheer as he gets thrown out of the Cannes Film Festival for heckling in very bad French, and don't forget to gasp as he's shot at while interviewing Werner Herzog in the Hollywood Hills. Written with sardonic wit and wry good humour, this compelling cinematic memoir is genuinely 'inspired by real events'.
The Rainman's Third Cure: An Irregular Education
Peter Coyote - 2015
For Coyote, the twin forces Dylan identifies as Texas Medicine and Railroad Gin – represent the competing forces of the transcendental, inclusive, and ecstatic world of love with the competitive, status-seeking world of wealth and power. The Rainman’s Third Cure is the tale of a young man caught between these apparently antipodal options and the journey that leads him from the privileged halls of power to Greenwich Village jazz bars, to jail, to the White House, lessons from a man who literally held the power of life and death over others, to government service and international success on stage and screen.Expanding his frame beyond the wild ride through the 1960’s counterculture that occupied so much of his lauded debut memoir, Sleeping Where I Fall, Coyote provides readers intimate portraits of mentors that shaped him—a violent, intimidating father, a be-bop Bass player who teaches him that life can be improvised, a Mafia consiglieri, who demonstrates to him that men can be bought and manipulated, an ex game-warden who initates him into the laws of nature, a gay dancer in Martha Graham’s company who introduces him to Mexico and marijuanas, beat poet Gary Snyder, who introduces him to Zen practice, and finally famed fashion designer Nino Cerruti who made the high-stakes world of haute monde Europe available to him.What begins as a peripatetic flirtation with Zen deepens into a life-long avocation, ordination as a priest, and finally the road to Transmission---acknowledgement from his teacher that he is ready to be an independent teacher. Through Zen, Coyote discovers a third option that offers an alternative to both the worlds of Love and Power’s correlatives of status seeking and material wealth. Zen was his portal, but what he discovers on the inside is actually available to all humans. In this energetic, reflective and intelligent memoir, The Rainman’s Third Cure is the way out of the box. The way that works.
On The Exorcist: From Novel to Film
William Peter Blatty
Includes the Academy Award winning screenplay. The original controversial ending of the novel. Many exclusive photos never published before.
Essays in Biography
Joseph Epstein - 2012
Epstein is penetrating. He is witty. He has a magic touch with words, that hard to define but immediately recognizable quality called style. Above all, he is impossible to put down. How easy it is today to forget the simple delight of reading for no intended purpose. Each of the 39 pieces in this book is a pure pleasure to read.
Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen
Brian Raftery - 2019
The Matrix. Office Space. Election. The Blair Witch Project. The Sixth Sense. Being John Malkovich. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. American Beauty. The Virgin Suicides. Boys Don’t Cry. The Best Man. Three Kings. Magnolia. Those are just some of the landmark titles released in a dizzying movie year, one in which a group of daring filmmakers and performers pushed cinema to new limits—and took audiences along for the ride. Freed from the restraints of budget, technology (or even taste), they produced a slew of classics that took on every topic imaginable, from sex to violence to the end of the world. The result was a highly unruly, deeply influential set of films that would not only change filmmaking, but also give us our first glimpse of the coming twenty-first century. It was a watershed moment that also produced The Sopranos; Apple’s Airport; Wi-Fi; and Netflix’s unlimited DVD rentals. Best. Movie. Year. Ever. is the story of not just how these movies were made, but how they re-made our own vision of the world. It features more than 130 new and exclusive interviews with such directors and actors as Reese Witherspoon, Edward Norton, Steven Soderbergh, Sofia Coppola, David Fincher, Nia Long, Matthew Broderick, Taye Diggs, M. Night Shyamalan, David O. Russell, James Van Der Beek, Kirsten Dunst, the Blair Witch kids, the Office Space dudes, the guy who played Jar-Jar Binks, and dozens more. It’s the definitive account of a culture-conquering movie year none of us saw coming…and that we may never see again.
Movies (And Other Things)
Shea Serrano - 2019
One of the chapters, for example, answers which race Kevin Costner was able to white savior the best, because did you know that he white saviors Mexicans in McFarland, USA, and white saviors Native Americans in Dances with Wolves, and white saviors Black people in Black or White, and white saviors the Cleveland Browns in Draft Day? Another of the chapters, for a second example, answers what other high school movie characters would be in Regina George's circle of friends if we opened up the Mean Girls universe to include other movies (Johnny Lawrence is temporarily in, Claire from The Breakfast Club is in, Ferris Bueller is out, Isis from Bring It On is out...). Another of the chapters, for a third example, creates a special version of the Academy Awards specifically for rom-coms, the most underrated movie genre of all. And another of the chapters, for a final example, is actually a triple chapter that serves as an NBA-style draft of the very best and most memorable moments in gangster movies. Many, many things happen in Movies (And Other Things), some of which funny, others of which are sad, a few of which are insightful, and all of which are handled with the type of care and dedication to the smallest details and pockets of pop culture that only a book by Shea Serrano can provide.
Cautionary Tales
Stephen Tobolowsky - 2011
He has played everyone from Ned Ryerson in "Groundhog Day" to Sandy Ryerson in "Glee." He has amused thousands with his true stories on "The Tobolowsky Files" at Slashfilm.com. Here he shares some homespun philosophy and more true stories that prove tales of sex, drugs, and rock and roll are often the most humiliating and almost always the most enjoyable.