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With Light remains one of the few truly canonical statements on the art of motion picture photography, an unrivalled historical document on the workings of the postwar, American cinema.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.

The Visual Culture Reader


Nicholas Mirzoeff - 1998
    This thoroughly revised and updated second edition of The Visual Culture Reader brings together key writings as well as specially commissioned articles covering a wealth of visual forms including photography, painting, sculpture, fashion, advertising, television, cinema and digital culture.The Reader features an introductory section tracing the development of visual culture studies in response to globalization and digital culture, and articles grouped into thematic sections, each prefaced by an introduction by the editor and conclude with suggestions for further reading.

Our Films, Their Films


Satyajit Ray - 1983
    'Our Films' is devoted mainly to his own experiences and contains many interesting anecdotes, but also has observations to offer on trends in Indian films. 'Their Films' deals with some films from abroad that have become landmarks in the history of the cinema from the silent era to the present day.

Kino-Eye


Dziga Vertov - 1973
    The radical complexity of his work--in both sound and silent forms--has given it a central place within contemporary theoretical inquiry. Vertov's writings, collected here, range from calculated manifestos setting forth his heroic vision of film's potential to dark ruminations on the inactivity forced upon him by the bureaucratization of the Soviet state.

Poetry, Language, Thought


Martin Heidegger - 1971
    Essential reading for students and anyone interested in the great philosophers, this book opens up appreciation of Heidegger beyond the study of philosophy to the reaches of poetry and our fundamental relationship to the world. Featuring "The Origin of the Work of Art," a milestone in Heidegger's canon, this enduring volume provides potent, accessible entry to one of the most brilliant thinkers of modern times.

The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror


David J. Skal - 1993
    Skal chronicles one of our most popular and pervasive modes of cultural expression. He explores the disguised form in which Hollywood's classic horror movies played out the traumas of two world wars and the Depression; the nightmare visions of invasion and mind control catalyzed by the Cold War; the preoccupation with demon children that took hold as thalidomide, birth control, and abortion changed the reproductive landscape; the vogue in visceral, transformative special effects that paralleled the development of the plastic surgery industry; the link between the AIDS epidemic and the current fascination with vampires; and much more. Now with a new Afterword by the author that looks at horror's popular renaissance in the last decade, The Monster Show is a compulsively readable, thought-provoking inquiry into America's obsession with the macabre.

The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey


Stephanie Schwam - 2000
    The critics initially disliked it, but the public loved it. And eventually, the film took its rightful place as one of the most innovative, brilliant, and pivotal works of modern cinema. The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey consists of testimony from Kubrick's collaborators and commentary from critics and historians. This is the most complete book on the film to date--from Stanley Kubrick's first meeting with screenwriter Arthur C. Clarke to Kubrick's exhaustive research to the actual shooting and release of the movie.From the Trade Paperback edition.

The Hollywood Standard: The Complete and Authoritative Guide to Script Format and Style


Christopher Riley - 2005
    Finally a script format guide that is accurate, complete, authoritative and easy to use, written by Hollywood's foremost authority on industry standard script formats.

Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies


Ann Hornaday - 2017
    But with so much variety between an Alfred Hitchcock thriller and a Nora Ephron romantic comedy, how can everyday viewers determine what makes a good movie?In Talking Pictures, veteran film critic Ann Hornaday walks us through the production of a typical movie—from writing the script and casting to the final sound edit—and explains how to evaluate each piece of the process. How do we know if a film is well-written, above and beyond snappy dialogue? What constitutes a great screen performance? What goes into praiseworthy cinematography, editing, and sound design? And what does a director really do? Full of engaging anecdotes and interviews with actors and filmmakers, Talking Pictures will help us see movies in a whole new light—not just as fans, but as film critics in our own right.

Stanley Kubrick: Interviews


Gene D. Phillips - 2001
    In doing so, he adapted such popular novels as The Killing, Lolita, A Clockwork Orange, and The Shining and selected a wide variety of genres for his films -- black comedy (Dr. Strangelove), science fiction (2001: A Space Odyssey), and war (Paths of Glory and Full Metal Jacket). Because he was peerless in unveiling the intimate mysteries of human nature, no new film by Kubrick ever failed to spark debate or to be deeply pondered.Kubrick (1928-1999) has remained as elusive as the subjects of his films. Unlike many other filmmakers he was not inclined to grant interviews, instead preferring to let his movies speak for themselves. By allowing both critics and moviegoers to see the inner workings of this reclusive filmmaker, this first comprehensive collection of his relatively few interviews is invaluable. Ranging from 1959 to 1987 and including Kubrick's conversations with Gene Siskel, Jeremy Bernstein, Gene D. Phillips, and others, this book reveals Kubrick's diverse interests -- nuclear energy and its consequences, space exploration, science fiction, literature, religion, psychoanalysis, the effects of violence, and even chess -- and discloses how each affects his films. He enthusiastically speaks of how advances in camera and sound technology made his films more effective.Kubrick details his hands-on approach to filmmaking as he discusses why he supervises nearly every aspect of production. "All the hand-held camerawork is mine," he says in a 1972 interview about A Clockwork Orange. "In addition to the fun of doing the shooting myself, I find it virtually impossible to explain what I want in a hand-held shot to even the most talented and sensitive camera operator. "Neither guarded nor evasive, the Kubrick who emerges from these interviews is candid, opinionated, confident, and articulate. His incredible memory and his gift for organization come to light as he quotes verbatim sections of reviews, books, and articles. Despite his reputation as a recluse, the Kubrick of these interviews is approachable, witty, full of anecdotes, and eager to share a fascinating story.

The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences


Michel Foucault - 1966
    The result is nothing less than an archaeology of the sciences that unearths old patterns of meaning and reveals the shocking arbitrariness of our received truths.In the work that established him as the most important French thinker since Sartre, Michel Foucault offers startling evidence that “man”—man as a subject of scientific knowledge—is at best a recent invention, the result of a fundamental mutation in our culture.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind


Christopher Grau - 2009
    Beginning with a helpful introduction that places each essay in context, specially commissioned chapters examine the following topics:philosophical issues surrounding love, friendship, affirmation and repetitionthe role of memory (and the emotions) in personal identity and decision-makingthe morality of imagination and ethical importance of memoryphilosophical questions about self-knowledge and knowing the minds of othersthe aesthetics of the film considered in relation to Gondry's other works and issues in the philosophy of perceptionIncluding a foreword by Michel Gondry and a list of further reading, this volume is essential reading for students interested in philosophy and film studies.

Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature


Erich Auerbach - 1942
    A brilliant display of erudition, wit, and wisdom, his exploration of how great European writers from Homer to Virginia Woolf depicted reality has taught generations how to read Western literature. This new expanded edition includes a substantial essay in introduction by Edward Said as well as an essay, never before translated into English, in which Auerbach responds to his critics.A German Jew, Auerbach was forced out of his professorship at the University of Marburg in 1935. He left for Turkey, where he taught at the state university in Istanbul. There he wrote "Mimesis," publishing it in German after the end of the war. Displaced as he was, Auerbach produced a work of great erudition that contains no footnotes, basing his arguments instead on searching, illuminating readings of key passages from his primary texts. His aim was to show how from antiquity to the twentieth century literature progressed toward ever more naturalistic and democratic forms of representation. This essentially optimistic view of European history now appears as a defensive--and impassioned--response to the inhumanity he saw in the Third Reich. Ranging over works in Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and English, Auerbach used his remarkable skills in philology and comparative literature to refute any narrow form of nationalism or chauvinism, in his own day and ours. For many readers, both inside and outside the academy, "Mimesis" is among the finest works of literary criticism ever written.

Art as Experience


John Dewey - 1934
    Based on John Dewey's lectures on esthetics, delivered as the first William James Lecturer at Harvard in 1932, Art as Experience has grown to be considered internationally as the most distinguished work ever written by an American on the formal structure and characteristic effects of all the arts: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature.

How I Made A Hundred Movies In Hollywood And Never Lost A Dime


Roger Corman - 1990
    He also discusses his distribution of the Bergman, Fellini, and Truffaut movies that later won Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Film category. Corman alumni—John Sayles, Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Vincent Price, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Peter Fonda, Joe Dante, and Jonathan Demme, among others—contribute their recollections to give added perspective to Corman's often hilarious, always informative autobiography.