The story of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki's life and work, including his impact on Japan and the world A thirtieth‑century toxic jungle, a bathhouse for tired gods, a red‑haired fish girl, and a furry woodland spirit—what do these have in common? They all spring from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki, one of the greatest living animators, known worldwide for films such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and The Wind Rises.

    He studies Lynch's talent for blending the bizarre and the normal to emphasize the odd nature of normality itself. Hollywood is often criticized for distorting reality and providing escapist fantasies, but in Lynch's movies, fantasy becomes a means through which the viewer is encouraged to build a revolutionary relationship with the world.Considering the filmmaker's entire career, McGowan examines Lynch's play with fantasy and traces the political, cultural, and existential impact of his unique style. Each chapter discusses the idea of impossibility in one of Lynch's films, including the critically acclaimed Blue Velvet and The Elephant Man; the densely plotted Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive; the cult favorite Eraserhead; and the commercially unsuccessful Dune. McGowan engages with theorists from the "golden age" of film studies (Christian Metz, Laura Mulvey, and Jean-Louis Baudry) and with the thought of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Hegel. By using Lynch's weirdness as a point of departure, McGowan adds a new dimension to the field of auteur studies and reveals Lynch to be the source of a new and radical conception of fantasy.

    Next he directed four consecutive hit plays, won back-to-back Tonys, ushered in a new era of Hollywood moviemaking with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and followed it with The Graduate, which won him an Oscar and became the third-highest-grossing movie ever. At thirty-five, he lived in a three-story Central Park West penthouse, drove a Rolls-Royce, collected Arabian horses, and counted Jacqueline Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Leonard Bernstein, and Richard Avedon as friends.Where he arrived is even more astonishing given where he had begun: born Igor Peschkowsky to a Jewish couple in Berlin in 1931, he and his younger brother were sent to America on a ship in 1939. The young immigrant boy caught very few breaks. He was bullied and ostracized--an allergic reaction had rendered him permanently hairless--and his father died when he was just twelve, leaving his mother alone and overwhelmed.The gulf between these two sets of facts explains a great deal about Nichols's transformation from lonely outsider to the center of more than one cultural universe--the acute powers of observation that first made him famous; the nourishment he drew from his creative partnerships, most enduringly with May; his unquenchable drive; his hunger for security and status; and the depressions and self-medications that brought him to terrible lows. It would take decades for him to come to grips with his demons. In an incomparable portrait that follows Nichols from Berlin to New York to Chicago to Hollywood, Mark Harris explores, with brilliantly vivid detail and insight, the life, work, struggle, and passion of an artist and man in constant motion. Among the 250 people Harris interviewed: Elaine May, Meryl Streep, Stephen Sondheim, Robert Redford, Glenn Close, Tom Hanks, Candice Bergen, Emma Thompson, Annette Bening, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Lorne Michaels, and Gloria Steinem.Mark Harris gives an intimate and evenhanded accounting of success and failure alike; the portrait is not always flattering, but its ultimate impact is to present the full story of one of the most richly interesting, complicated, and consequential figures the worlds of theater and motion pictures have ever seen. It is a triumph of the biographer's art.

     Much has been written about the storied New Hollywood of the 1970s, but at the same time as Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppola were making their first classic movies, a parallel universe of directors gave birth to the modern horror film-aggressive, raw, and utterly original. Based on unprecedented access to the genre's major players, The New York Times's critic Jason Zinoman's Shock Value delivers the first definitive account of horror's golden age. By the late 1960s, horror was stuck in the past, confined mostly to drive-in theaters and exploitation houses, and shunned by critics. Shock Value tells the unlikely story of how the much-disparaged horror film became an ambitious art form while also conquering the multiplex. Directors such as Wes Craven, Roman Polanski, John Carpenter, and Brian De Palma- counterculture types operating largely outside the confines of Hollywood-revolutionized the genre, exploding taboos and bringing a gritty aesthetic, confrontational style, and political edge to horror. Zinoman recounts how these directors produced such classics as Rosemary's Baby, Carrie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Halloween, creating a template for horror that has been imitated relentlessly but whose originality has rarely been matched. This new kind of film dispensed with the old vampires and werewolves and instead assaulted audiences with portraits of serial killers, the dark side of suburbia, and a brand of nihilistic violence that had never been seen before. Shock Value tells the improbable stories behind the making of these movies, which were often directed by obsessive and insecure young men working on shoestring budgets, were funded by sketchy investors, and starred porn stars. But once The Exorcist became the highest grossing film in America, Hollywood took notice. The classic horror films of the 1970s have now spawned a billion-dollar industry, but they have also penetrated deep into the American consciousness. Quite literally, Zinoman reveals, these movies have taught us what to be afraid of. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of the most important artists in horror, Shock Value is an enthralling and personality-driven account of an overlooked but hugely influential golden age in American film.

    Leonard Maltin’s Classic Movie Guide includes more than 7,000 capsule reviews of classic movies, including: The Birth of a Nation (1915), Gone With the Wind (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940), High Noon (1952), and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967). In addition, this unique volume also offers a star and director index, a full listing of classic movies on DVD, and Leonard Maltin’s unique Top Ten lists. The result is an authoritative, dynamic guide to the classics no film aficionado should be without.

    This book provides a solid image of Escher as he saw himself--not as an 'artist' but as an artisan, a graphic artist with heart and soul, obsessed by contrasts and possessed by a unique creativity.

    She is the last of the great ones: a celebrated actress, a brilliant personality, an original.Barbara Leaming has discovered thousands of never-before-seen documents that finally illuminate the mystery of this enigmatic, fascinating woman. Based on letters by Hepburn, her friends, and her family, as well as interviews with Hepburn herself, Leaming's book is a family story that brings alive three generations of fearless women, personal and political crusaders who shaped the history of women in our century.

    In "Song of Herself", Kahlo expert and child psychiatrist Salomon Grimberg introduces and contextualizes an intimate, deeply introspective interview that Kahlo gave towards the end of her life to her friend the psychologist Olga Campos for an unpublished book on the creative process. Kahlo comments directly and starkly as never before on her life, her loves and her art, and expresses her attitudes towards sexuality, her body, friendship, politics and death, among other personal concerns.The most revealing autobiographical text known on this singular woman, this startling interview is accompanied here by Campos' reflections on her relationship with Kahlo and a psychological assessment of Kahlo by Dr James Bridger Harris. The book is illustrated with selected photographs and works by Kahlo, including previously unseen and rarely seen drawings.

    

    at its peak it surpassed nearly all western countries in number of films released, ruled th e east Asian market, and produced movies (ranging from John Woo's action pictures to the comic adventures of Jackie Chan) that have thrilled global audiences an attained cult status in the West. This book offers an informed and engaging look at how Hong Kong cinema has become one of the success stories of film history, and how it has influenced international film culture and the development of film as a medium.

    After years of research, with the full cooperation of the Disney family and access to private papers and letters, Bob Thomas produced the definitive biography of the man behind the legend--the unschooled cartoonist from Kansas City who went bankrupt on his first movie venture but became the genius who produced unmatched works of animation. Complete with a rare collection of photographs, Bob Thomas' biography is a fascinating and inspirational work that captures the spirit of Walt Disney.

    This witty and allusive book, in the style of classic film theorists/critics like André Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer, includes considerations of global cinema’s most important figures and films, from Lars von Trier and Zia Jiangke to WALL-E, Avatar and Inception.

    With never-heard-before anecdotes and new interviews with Reed's family, friends and peers, What Fresh Lunacy Is This? is a revealing examination of his mould-breaking personality.

    They worked together once, in the film Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, but their real-life dislike of one another transcended even the antagonism depicted in the film.

    Taking the form of a diary, this vibrant graphic novel takes the reader from Goodfellas to The Goonies, Harry Potter to Apocalypse Now in a zany and hilarious exploration of the movies that have shaped Cavolo's life and the lives of his generation.