Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast


Patrick McGilligan - 1997
    A thoroughly researched examination of the life of the renowned director not only looks at the great volume of Lang's work, but also at his personal life, including the question of whether or not he murdered his first wife.

Save the Cat!® Writes for TV: The Last Book on Creating Binge-Worthy Content You'll Ever Need


Jamie Nash - 2021
    ​Screenwriter Jamie Nash takes up Snyder’s torch to lay out a step-by-step approach using Blake’s principles so that both new and experienced writers can learn how to: -Use all the nuances, tricks, and techniques of pilot-writing (The Opening Pitch, The Guided Tour, The Whiff of Change) with examples from today’s hottest series -Discover the Super-Secret Keep It On The Downlow TV Pitch Template that combines all the critical points of your amazing TV series into one easy-to-read-over-lunch high-level document -Define the 9 TV Franchise Types -Crack your story using the Save the Cat! beat sheet -Devise high-level series concepts with multi-season potential -Map out and organize TV pilots and multi-season shows -Break down the best and most diverse TV series using examples from Atlanta, Barry, Ozark, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, What We Do in the Shadows, Black-ish, The Mandalorian, Law and Order: SVU and more -Create layered characters who are driven by complex internal struggles It’s time for Save the Cat! Writes for TV to help you create your binge-worthy TV series!

History of Film


David Parkinson - 1995
    It traces the development of film from its scientific origins through to cinema today, covering the key elements and players that have contributed to its artistic and technical development.

A Short History of Film


Wheeler Winston Dixon - 2008
    Succinct yet comprehensive, A Short History of Film provides an accessible overview of the major movements, directors, studios, and genres from the 1880s to the present. More than 250 rare stills and illustrations accompany the text, bringing readers face to face with many of the key players and films that have marked the industry.Beginning with precursors of what we call moving pictures, Wheeler Winston Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster lead a fast-paced tour through the invention of the kinetoscope, the introduction of sound and color between the two world wars, and ultimately the computer generated imagery of the present day. They detail significant periods in world cinema, including the early major industries in Europe, the dominance of the Hollywood studio system in the 1930s and 1940s, and the French New Wave of the 1960s. Special attention is also given to small independent efforts in developing nations and the corresponding more personal independent film movement that briefly flourished in the United States, the significant filmmakers of all nations, censorship and regulation and how they have affected production everywhere, and a wide range of studios and genres. Along the way, the authors take great care to incorporate the stories of women and other minority filmmakers who have often been overlooked in other texts.Compact and easily readable, this is the best one-stop source for the history of world film available to students, teachers, and general audiences alike.

Seeing Is Believing: Or How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the '50s


Peter Biskind - 1983
    It covers films like Giant, Rebel Without A Cause and Invasion of the Body Snatchers to show how politically innocent movies in fact do bear an ideological burden. As we see organization men and rugged individualists, housewives and career women, cops and doctors, teen angels and teenage werewolves fight it out across the screen, from suburbia to the farthest reaches of the cosmos, we understand that we have been watching one long dispute about how to be a man, a woman, and an American.

Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography


Roland Barthes - 1980
    Commenting on artists such as Avedon, Clifford, Mapplethorpe, and Nadar, Roland Barthes presents photography as being outside the codes of language or culture, acting on the body as much as on the mind, and rendering death and loss more acutely than any other medium. This groundbreaking approach established Camera Lucida as one of the most important books of theory on this subject, along with Susan Sontag's On Photography.

Feeding Desire: Fatness, Beauty and Sexuality Among a Saharan People: Fatness and Beauty in the Sahara


Rebecca Popenoe - 2003
    Feeding Desire analyses this beauty ideal in the context of Islam, conceptions of health, and notions of desire Full description

Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento


Maitland McDonagh - 1994
    Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds, which dissects such Argento cult films as Two Evil Eyes, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Suspiria, and Deep Red, includes a new introduction discussing Argento’s most recent films, from The Stendahl Syndrome to Mother of Tears; an updated filmography; and an interview with Argento.

A Critical History and Filmography of Toho's Godzilla Series


David Kalat - 1997
    This work also covers various political and social subtexts of the movies.

Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society


Richard Dyer - 1986
    He draws on a wide range of sources, including the films in which each star appeared, to illustrate how each star's persona was constructed, and goes on to examine each within the context of particular issues in fan culture and stardom. Students of film and cultural studies will find this an invaluable part of there course reading.

Written by Salim-Javed: The Story of Hindi Cinema's Greatest Screenwriters


Diptakirti Chaudhuri - 2015
    From Zanjeer to Deewaar and Sholay to Shakti, their creative output changed the destinies of several actors and filmmakers and even made a cultural phenomenon of the Angry Young Man. Even after they decided to part ways, success continued to court them-a testament not only to their impeccable talent and professional ethos, but also their enterprising showmanship and business acumen. Fizzing with energy and brimming over with enough trivia to delight a cinephile's heart, Written by Salim-Javed tells the story of a dynamic partnership that transformed Hindi cinema forever.

Tragic Hollywood, Beautiful, Glamorous And Dead


Jackie Ganiy - 2013
    What really happened to Natalie Wood aboard The Splendor that cold November night? Was Jayne Mansfield really decapitated? Just how decadent were the days of the silent movies? Maybe you think you've heard it all? Trust me, you haven't! Chock full of new details, shocking photos and even a segment on haunted Hollywood, you've never seen a book quite like Tragic Hollywood. Read about the unbelievable thing that happened to Errol Flynn AFTER he was dead. Find out why Sharon Tate is said to haunt her Cielo Drive Neighborhood to this day. You will not be able to put this book down! These stories are delivered with a wit and poignant observation that will leave you saying "WOW"

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.

Questions for the Movie Answer Man


Roger Ebert - 1997
    Using wit, insight, and dozens of other experts, he resolves some of the most common questions about the moviesand some of the most bizarre.

Film Flam: Essays on Hollywood


Larry McMurtry - 1987
    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