Our Movies series enters the 21st century with this definitive lineup of the 100 most important films made during the 2000s, an age of evergreen franchises, historical epics, and comic-book superheroes, as well as fast-evolving CGI aesthetics, low-key global indies gaining unprecedented audiences, and hard-hitting documentaries (and mockumentaries) becoming mainstream feature hits. Through the gripping stories, insightful dramas, and thrilling, mindless escapism 100 Movies of the 2000s gathers t...
During the Cold War, spy stories became popular on both sides of the Iron Curtain, capturing the imaginations of readers and film goers alike as secret police outfits quietly engaged in espionage and surveillance under the shroud of utmost secrecy. Curiously, in the post-Cold War period there are no signs of this enthusiasm diminishing. With the opening of the secret police archives in many countries in Eastern Europe comes the unique chance to excavate many forgotten spy stories and narrate the...
Gaelic games have repeatedly provided filmmakers and producers with a resonant motif through which they have represented perceived aspects of Irish identity, perceived as this representation has been neither straightforward nor unproblematic: in international productions in particular, Gaelic games have been employed on occasion as a short hand for regressive stereotypes associated with Irish people, including their alleged propensity for violence. For indigenous producers, on the other hand, Ga...
Banned soon after its first midnight screenings, the prints seized and the organizers arrested, Jack Smith’s incendiary Flaming Creatures (1963) quickly became a cause célèbre of the New York underground. Championed and defended by Jonas Mekas and Susan Sontag, among others, the film wildly and gleefully transgresses nearly every norm of Hollywood morality and aesthetics. In a surreal and visually dense series of episodes, the titular “creatures” reenact scenes drawn from the collective cinemati...
Hired in 1976 by Francis Ford Coppola as the still photographer for his masterpiece Apocalypse Now, Chas Gerretsen’s private archive of hundreds of photographs propels readers immediately into the chaos and drama surrounding one of the most important movies ever made. Gerretsen was a renowned freelance photographer working in Vietnam when he got the call from Coppola, who was looking for a combat photographer for a war movie. Given unprecedented access to the film’s stars, extras, crew, a...
Large Print Classic Hollywood Movies Word Search (Large Print Puzzle Books, #3)
by Makmak Puzzle Books
Undoubtedly the most notorious title in director Ken Russell's controversial filmography, The Devils (1973) caused a real furor on its initial theatrical release, only to largely disappear for many years. This Devil's Advocate considers the film's historical context, as the timing of the first appearance of The Devils is of particular importance, its authorship and adaptation (Russell's auteur reputation aside, the screenplay is based on John Whiting's 1961 play of the same name, which was in tu...
Forty years after Quadrophenia first hit the world's cinema screens, its influence on popular culture can still be felt today. Following Jimmy the Mod in his search for identity against the backdrop of the May Bank Holiday riots of the 1960s, the film - based on the classic album by The Who - is widely regards as the finest example of a British "youth movie". And, as the generation that saw it first time around now have teenagers of their own, Quadrophenia has become a glorious benchmark for the...
From the moment Julie Andrews appears on the hills outside Salzburg to the final daring escape from the Nazis, "The Sound of Music" is embedded in the DNA of a generation. But what was it like to be part of all this? For seven children, the summer of 1964 was a magical one, spent in Salzburg, Austria with their parents or guardians, the film's stars and director, and last - but not least - each other. "The Sound of Music Family Scrapbook" tells their story, during the filming and once the movie...
Proposing a political reading of six of Marguerite Duras' works, the author centres on a single narrative core as an allegory of the neocolonial politics of representation. The study sets the work in a larger framework than that of psychoanalysis and feminism.
Imperial Projections (Arethusa Books)
The phenomenal success of the recent film Gladiator ensures that ancient Rome will continue to inspire moviemakers and attract audiences as it has done since the dawn of cinema. Indeed, the creators of popular culture have so often appropriated elements of Roman history and society for films and television programs, novels and comic books, advertising and computer games that most people's knowledge of ancient Rome derives from these representations. In Imperial Projections, scholars from a varie...
Read the Book! See the Movie! From Novel to Film Via 20th Century-Fox
by Gary A Smith
Holocaust movies have become an important segment of world cinema and the de-facto Holocaust education for many. One quarter of all American-produced Holocaust-related feature films have won or been nominated for at least one Oscar. In fact, from 1945 through 1991, half of all American Holocaust features were nominated. Yet most Holocaust movies have fallen through the cracks and few have been commercially successful. This book explores these trends—and many others—with a comprehensive guide to...