Both a history of film theory and an introduction to the work of the most important writers in the field, Andrew's volume reveals the bases of thought of such major theorists as Munsterberg, Arnheim, Eisenstein, Balazs, Kracauer, Bazin, Mitry, and Metz.

    Providing extended critical discussion on six of his most important films (Shadows, Faces, Minnie and Moskowitz, A Woman Under the Influence, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Love Streams), Ray Carney argues that Cassavetes' work is a distinctly life-affirming form of modernist expression that is at odds with the world-denying modernism of many of the most important art works produced in this century. Cassavetes is revealed to be a profoundly thoughtful and self-aware filmmaker and a deeply philosophical thinker, whose work takes its place in the American tradition along with the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James. The six films treated here emerge as expressive interpretations of the bewildering challenges in contemporary American cultural experience.

    This book argues that in several respects Kubrick was one of the cinema's last modernists.

    John Leonard, New York Times: What emerges from Mr. Lottman's tireless devotions is a portrait of the artist, the outsider, the humanist and skeptic, that breaks the heart. John Sturrock, The New York Times Book Review: Herbert Lottman's life (of Camus) is the first to be written, either in French or English, and it is exhaustive, a labor of love and of wonderful industry.This new edition includes a specially written preface by the author revealing the challenges of a biographer, of some of the problems that had to be dealt with while writing the book and after it appeared.

    Camille Paglia draws together in this text the aesthetic, technical and mythical qualities of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963), and analyzes its depiction of gender and familial relations.

    Long considered the bible for storytellers, Aristotle's Poetics is a fixture of college courses on everything from fiction writing to dramatic theory. Now Michael Tierno shows how this great work can be an invaluable resource to screenwriters or anyone interested in studying plot structure. In carefully organized chapters, Tierno breaks down the fundamentals of screenwriting, highlighting particular aspects of Aristotle's work. Then, using examples from some of the best movies ever made, he demonstrates how to apply these ancient insights to modern-day screenwriting. This user-friendly guide covers a multitude of topics, from plotting and subplotting to dialogue and dramatic unity. Writing in a highly readable, informal tone, Tierno makes Aristotle's monumental work accessible to beginners and pros alike in areas such as screenwriting, film theory, fiction, and playwriting.

    Hiroshima marked one conclusion of this process in the nuclear ‘flash’ which penetrated the city’s darkest recesses, etching the images of its victims on the walls.Since the disappearance of direct vision in battle and the replacement of one-to-one combat by the remote and murderous son et lumiere of trench warfare, military strategy has been dominated by the struggle between visibility and invisibility, surveillance and camouflage. Perception and destruction have now become coterminous.Paul Virilio, one of the most radical French critics of contemporary culture, explores these conjunctions from a range of perspectives. He gives a detailed technical jistory of weaponry, photography and cinematography, illuminating it with accounts of films and military campaigns. He examines in parallel the ideas of strategists and directors, along with views on war and cinema of writers from Apollinaire to William Burrroughs. And he finds further fruitful sources of reflection in the history of cinema architecture or the wartime popularity of striptease and pin-up.The result is a rich and suggestive analysis for military ‘ways of seeing’, and a disturbing account of how these have now permeated our culture: ‘Warsaw, Beirut, Belfast ... the streets themselves have become a permanent film-set for army cameras or the tourist reporters of global civil war.’

    In Bakhtin's view, the spirit of laughter and irreverence prevailing at carnival time is the dominant quality of Rabelais's art. The work of both Rabelais and Bakhtin springs from an age of revolution, and each reflects a particularly open sense of the literary text. For both, carnival, with its emphasis on the earthly and the grotesque, signified the symbolic destruction of authority and official culture and the assertion of popular renewal. Bakhtin evokes carnival as a special, creative life form, with its own space and time.Written in the Soviet Union in the 1930s at the height of the Stalin era but published there for the first time only in 1965, Bakhtin's book is both a major contribution to the poetics of the novel and a subtle condemnation of the degeneration of the Russian revolution into Stalinist orthodoxy. One of the essential texts of a theorist who is rapidly becoming a major reference in contemporary thought, Rabelais and His World is essential reading for anyone interested in problems of language and text and in cultural interpretation.

    At the height of his career, Sturges had not only won an Academy Award but was also one of the most highly paid executives in the country.The only account of his life in his own words, Preston Sturges by Preston Sturges unveils the source of his extraordinary creativity: a life that was every bit as antic and unconventional as his movies.

    What is the value of history? What is the use of history? How do scholars attempt to unpack it and make connections in a responsible manner? While the topics of historiography and historical methodology have become increasingly popular, Bloch remains an authority. He argues that history is a whole; no period and no topic can be understood except in relation to other periods and topics. And what is unique about Bloch is that he puts his theories into practice; for example, calling upon both his experience serving in WWI as well as his many years spent in peaceful study and reflection. He also argues that written records are not enough; a historian must draw upon maps, place-names, ancient tools, aerial surveys, folklore, and everything that is available. This is a work that argues constantly for a wider, more human history. For a history that describes how and why people live and work together. There is a living, breathing connection between the past and the present and it is the historian’s responsibility to do it justice.

    Thomas Lamarre contends that the history, techniques, and complex visual language of animation, particularly Japanese animation, demands serious and sustained engagement, and in The Anime Machine he lays the foundation for a new critical theory for reading Japanese animation, showing how anime fundamentally differs from other visual media.The Anime Machine defines the visual characteristics of anime and the meanings generated by those specifically "animetic" effects-the multiplanar image, the distributive field of vision, exploded projection, modulation, and other techniques of character animation-through close analysis of major films and television series, studios, animators, and directors, as well as Japanese theories of animation. Lamarre first addresses the technology of anime: the cells on which the images are drawn, the animation stand at which the animator works, the layers of drawings in a frame, the techniques of drawing and blurring lines, how characters are made to move. He then examines foundational works of anime, including the films and television series of Miyazaki Hayao and Anno Hideaki, the multimedia art of Murakami Takashi, and CLAMP's manga and anime adaptations, to illuminate the profound connections between animators, characters, spectators, and technology.Working at the intersection of the philosophy of technology and the history of thought, Lamarre explores how anime and its related media entail material orientations and demonstrates concretely how the "animetic machine" encourages a specific approach to thinking about technology and opens new ways for understanding our place in the technologized world around us.

    Comedy in Three Men and a Baby, Hannah and Her Sisters, Ghostbusters, and Back to the Future; all a teenager needs to know in Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Say Anything, The Breakfast Club, and Mystic Pizza; the ultimate in action from Top Gun, Die Hard, Beverly Hills Cop, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom; love and sex in 9 1/2 Weeks, Splash, About Last Night, The Big Chill, and Bull Durham; and family fun in The Little Mermaid, ET, Big, Parenthood, and Lean On Me.In Life Moves Pretty Fast, Hadley puts her obsessive movie geekery to good use, detailing the decade’s key players, genres, and tropes. She looks back on a cinematic world in which bankers are invariably evil, where children are always wiser than adults, where science is embraced with an intense enthusiasm, and the future viewed with giddy excitement. And, she considers how the changes between movies then and movies today say so much about society’s changing expectations of women, young people, and art—and explains why Pretty in Pink should be put on school syllabuses immediately.From how John Hughes discovered Molly Ringwald, to how the friendship between Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi influenced the evolution of comedy, and how Eddie Murphy made America believe that race can be transcended, this is a “highly personal, witty love letter to eighties movies, but also an intellectually vigorous, well-researched take on the changing times of the film industry” (The Guardian).

    Howard Shores Academy Award-winning score for The Lord of the Rings has been hailed as some of the greatest film music ever written. Sweeping in scope, it is an interpretation of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth as music---an operatic tapestry of cultures,

    His ideas were inspired by his contempt for the bourgeois values and traditional attitudes towards art that existed at the time. This volume contains the famous manifestos that first appeared between 1916 and 1921 that would become the basic texts upon which Dada was based. For Tzara, art was both deadly serious and a game. The playfulness of Dada is evident in the manifestos, both in Tzara's polemic—which often uses dadaist typography—as well as in the delightful doodles and drawings contributed by Francis Picabia. Also included are Tzara's Lampisteries, a series of articles that throw light on the various art forms contemporary to his own work. Post-war art had grown weary of the old certainties and the carnage they caused. Tzara was on the cutting edge at a time when art was becoming more subjective and abstract, and beginning to reject the reality of the mind for that of the senses.

    Sikov primes the eye and mind in the special techniques of film analysis. His description of mise-en-scene helps readers grasp the significance of montage, which in turn reveals the importance of a director's use of camera movement. He treats a number of fundamental factors in filmmaking, including editing, composition, lighting, the use of color and sound, and narrative. Film Studies works with any screening list and can be used within courses on film history, film theory, or popular culture. Straightforward explanations of core critical concepts, practical advice, and suggested assignments on particular technical, visual, and aesthetic aspects further anchor the reader's understanding of the formal language and anatomy of film.