Keep Calm and Let the Movie Director Handle It
by Real Joy Publications
The Philosophy of Steven Soderbergh (The Philosophy of Popular Culture)
Widely regarded as a turning point in American independent cinema, Steven Soderbergh's sex, lies, and videotape (1989) launched the career of its twenty-six-year-old director, whose debut film was nominated for an Academy Award and went on to win the Cannes Film Festival's top award, the Palme d'Or. The Philosophy of Steven Soderbergh breaks new ground by investigating salient philosophical themes through the unique story lines and innovative approaches to filmmaking that distinguish this cele...
Daniele Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub (Film Culture in Transition)
by Benoit Turquety
Quentin Tarantino (Conversations with Filmmakers (Hardcover)) (Conversations with Filmmakers)
Not since Martin Scorsese with Mean Streets in the mid-1970s has a young American filmmaker made such an instant impact on international cinema as Quentin Tarantino. In many ways, Tarantino is the paradigmatic 1990s success story: from high school dropout, toiling anonymously in a California video store, taking acting lessons, to world acclaim, with Pulp Fiction as the Grand Prix winner at Cannes. With his first film, Reservoir Dogs, the then 29-year-old became an inspiration for filmmakers even...
Reading with Jean-Luc Godard
Books are central to the work of Jean-Luc Godard, avid reader of pulp fiction and philosophical treatises, classical drama and modernist novels, scientific tomes and Maoist doctrine, comic books and volumes of art history. Books inform Godard's thinking and inspire his work in a manner unlike that of any other filmmaker. Godard and his characters quote from books incessantly, altering and inflecting them in ways which provide an entry into his thoughts and his aesthetic, derived in large part fr...
A portrait based on interviews with the landmark movie icon, his family members, and his contemporaries profiles him as a devoted family man, notorious practical joker, and an Englishman whose Victorian tastes shaped his films. By the author of Nobody's Perfect. 25,000 first printing.
Salvador Dalí is one of the most widely recognised and most controversial artists of the twentieth century. He was also an avant-garde filmmaker - collaborating with such giants as Luis Buñuel, Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock - though the impetus and endurance of his fascination with film has rarely been given the attention it merits. King surveys the full range of Dalí's eccentric activities with(in) the cinema. Influenced by the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton and Stanley Kubrick, Dalí used the...
From The 400 Blows to Jules and Jim to The Last Metro, François Truffaut (1932–1984) practically defined the French cinema of his era and was one of the founders of the New Wave which took the industry by storm in the late 1950s. His endlessly touching and romantic films—always tinged by a touch of reflective sadness—made him one of France’s favorite and most successful directors. This book traces Truffaut’s career and includes rare images drawn from his archives.
Luis Buñuel, one of the greatest film directors of all time, the father of surrealist cinema, writes lyrically and passionately about his middle-class boyhood in the provincial Spanish town; his residence as an engineering student in Madrid, where he began to find his way into the surrealist movement of the twenties; his pilgrimage to Paris, home of surrealism; his association with Max Ernst, Picasso, and André Breton; and his involvement in the Spanish Civil War. But Above all the book is, of...
Forever a circus ringleader at heart, Federico Fellini (1920-1993) is remembered as one of cinema's greatest storytellers. From bittersweet, heart wrenching tales (La Strada and Nights of Cabiria) to semi-autobiographical classics (La Dolce Vita and the much-imitated 8 1/2) to ambitious period-pieces (Satyricon and Casanova) to dreamlike pseudo-documentaries (The Clowns, Roma, and Intervista), Fellini brought his inner world to the silver screen in a profoundly original and innovative way. Among...
A collection of the letters of the celebrated film-maker, Jean Renoir.
Called the leading heir to the great directors of post-WWII Europe and lavished with awards, Wong Kar-wai has redefined perceptions of Hong Kong's film industry. Wong's visual brilliance and emphasis on atmosphere over action have set him apart from peers while earning him an admiring international audience. In the Mood for Love regularly appears on lists of the twenty-first century's greatest films while critics and filmgoers recognize works like Chungking Express and Happy Together as modern c...
Known for always pushing the envelope when it comes to showing sex and violence on screen, Paul Verhoeven has directed controversial films in several genres, including the erotic thriller (Basic Instinct), melodrama (Showgirls) and science fiction (RoboCop, Total Recall, Starship Troopers, Hollow Man). However, even before going to Hollywood, Verhoeven had been a succes de scandale in his native Netherlands, where he directed a war saga (Soldier of Orange), a medieval epic (Flesh+Blood), a psych...
British national cinema has produced an exceptional track record of innovative, creative and internationally recognised filmmakers, amongst them Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell and David Lean. This tradition continues today with the work of directors as diverse as Neil Jordan, Stephen Frears, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. This concise, authoritative volume analyses critically the work of 100 British directors, from the innovators of the silent period to contemporary auteurs. An introduction places...
Italian Horror Cinema
In its heyday from the late 1950s until the early 1980s Italian horror cinema was characterised by an excess of gore, violence and often incoherent plot-lines. Films about zombies, cannibals and psychopathic killers ensured there was no shortage of controversy, and the genre presents a seemingly unpromising nexus of films for sustained critical analysis. But Italian horror cinema with all its variations, subgenres and filoni remains one of the most recognisable and iconic genre productions in Eu...