An in-depth look at one of the film industry's most audacious working actors In 1982, a gangly teenager named Nicolas Coppola made his film debut and changed his name to Nicolas Cage, determined to distance himself from his famous family. Once he achieved stardom as the rebel hunk of 1983's Valley Girl, Cage began a career defined by unorthodox risks and left turns that put him at odds with the stars of the Brat Pack era. How Coppola Became Cage takes readers behind the scenes of the beloved cu...
Refocus: the Films of Ken Russell (Refocus: The International Directors)
Showcases the most contemporary scholarly and archival research into Ken Russell's career and work Contains writing and research from a range of new and emerging scholars of Russell's work Includes reflections and discussion from those who knew and worked with Russell: his wife Elize Russell and editor Roger Crittenden Foreword by Russell influenced film director Bernard Rose Ken Russell was among the most provocative, creative, original and important directors in British film and television h...
Artist and writer Steve Reinke is best know for his video work, an acerbic oeuvre that spans over a decade and includes his most famous piece, The Hundred Videos, literally a hundred short videos in which he explores the myriad permutations of identity, sexuality and art. The titles of his videos -- In the Realm of Perpetual Embarrassment, Sad Disco Fantasia, How Photographs Are Stored in the Brain are some examples -- encapsulate the tenor of Reinke's work: deadpan, self-deprecating, personal a...
Howard Hawks (1896-1977) is one of America's great film directors. During a career that spanned fifty years and produced more than forty films, this writer, producer, and director made highly successful movies and managed to maintain remarkable artistic control during a time when studio moguls usually ruled. Hawks conquered virtually every genre, including action/adventure, comedy, western, film noir, gangster, science fiction, and musical films. The remarkable diversity of his work may have kep...
What happens when we listen to a film? How can we describe the relationship of sound to vision in cinema, and in turn our relationship as spectators with the audio-visual? Jean-Luc Godard understood the importance of the soundtrack in cinema and relied heavily on the impact of carefully constructed sound to produce innovative effects. For the first time, this book brings together his post-1979 multimedia works, and an analysis of their rich soundscapes.The book provides detailed critical discuss...
James Cameron (Conversations with Filmmakers) (Conversations with Filmmakers (Hardcover))
James Cameron (b. 1954) is lauded as one of the most successful and innovative filmmakers of the last thirty years. His films often break records, both in their massive budgets and in their box-office earnings. They include such hits as The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, Titanic, and Avatar. Part scientist, part dramatist, Cameron combines these two qualities into inventive and captivating films that often push the boundaries of special effects to accommodate his imagination. James Cameron: Inte...
The first multi-disciplinary reconsideration of Lynch's uvre Offers multi-disciplinary approaches to transmediality Provides new readings of David Lynch's open uvre Explores new methods and approaches in film studies, e.g. videographic criticism Networked David Lynch is a multi-disciplinary reconsideration of Lynch's uvre in the context of the challenges and opportunities offered by transmedia environments and networks of the 21st century. This collection builds on state-of-the-art-research...
Abbas Kiarostami (Contemporary Film Directors)
by Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa and Jonathan Rosenbaum
Penetrating study of the Iranian filmmaker Kiarostami's life and work
Dancer, actress, mountaineer, and director Leni Riefenstahl's uncompromising will and audacious talent for self-promotion appeared unmatched--until 1932, when she introduced herself to her future protector and patron: Adolf Hitler. Known internationally for two of the films she made for him, Triumph of the Will and Olympia, Riefenstahl's demanding and obsessive style introduced unusual angles, new approaches to tracking shots, and highly symbolic montages. Despite her lifelong claim to be an apo...
Gervais shows also how Bergman's work resonates in a much broader sphere than the personal. His films, which are without equal in the history of cinema in quality, consistency, and relevance, are crucial moments in an ongoing conversation with western culture in its frenetic evolution since World War II. Gervais situates Bergman within the tensions of modernism and the western tradition that have manifested themselves in the twentieth century from existentialism, through deconstruction, and int...
Covering all aspects of his film experience B from his childhood encounter with an exploding nickelodeon show, to his apprenticeship as a lab technician in Hollywood's Jessie Lasky Studios, to director of photography for Paramount Pictures - Life through a Lens details how "Bordie" thrived on the evolving technical demands of an art form in constant flux. Accepting Alexander Korda's invitation to join London Film Productions, he travelled the world, making such memorable films as The Private Li...
Humphrey Jennings, born in 1907, was a writer, set designer, painter, editor and, perhaps most famously, a director of ground-breaking documentary films for the renowned GPO film unit: Listen to Britain, Fires Were Started and A Diary for Timothy -- films which changed the face of public service broadcasting. Throughout his life, Jennings also worked on his great anthology on the Industrial Revolution and the human imagination, Pandaemonium. Jennings died while making a film in Greece in 1950;...
The British Film Guides are a fresh departure for the Cinema and Society series, each telling the story of an important British film, presented and priced for a readership spanning scholars, students and general film enthusiasts. These compact guides, based on new and original research, present each film's historical and cinematic context within its decade, genre and director's body of work; details of its production history; a full analysis of the film itself; and a survey of critical response...
Eminent Hitchcock specialist Murray Pomerance offers an illuminating account of one of Hitchcock's most successful films, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), starring James Stewart and Doris Day. Through a close reading of the film alongside analysis of its complex production history, Pomerance underlines its significance within Hitchcock's oeuvre.
George Kleine and American Cinema (Cultural Histories of Cinema)
by Joel Frykholm
George Kleine was a New York City optician who moved to Chicago in 1893 to set up an optical store. In 1896 he branched out and began selling motion picture equipment and films. Within a few years he becameAmerica's largest film distributor and a pivotal figure in the movie business. In chronicling the career of this motion picture pioneer - including his rapid rise to fame and fortune, but also his gradual downfall after 1915 as the era of Hollywood began - Joel Frykholm provides an in-depth...
Philip French has called Alex Cox, 'British Cinema's oldest enfant terrible'; it's a description that its recipient fully approves of. He is the genuine article, a radical, international, independent filmmaker, who is also a good writer, insightful commentator on cinema now, and expert critic of the power of Hollywood. He grew up with a passion for the pictures, and this book has as its centre the filmmaking autobiography of a fine director, the journey through all the major films he has made an...
Vertov, Snow, Farocki: Machine Vision and the Posthuman begins with a comprehensive and original anthropological analysis of Vertov's film The Man With a Movie Camera. Tomas then explores the film's various aspects and contributions to media history and practice through detailed discussions of selected case studies. The first concerns the way Snow's La RĂ©gion Centrale and De La extend and/or develop important theoretical and technical aspects of Vertov's original film, in particular those aspect...
In this pictorial study, Douglas Brode explores Steven Spielberg's work. Starting with "The Sugarland Express", his first feature film, the book moves on "Jaws", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark" to "Jurassic Park". The smaller films like "Duel" are also covered. Brode offers a perspective on the films, pointing out constant themes in Spielberg's work, and areas which have been previously misunderstood. He also considers how an underlying seriousness, which recen...
Satyajit Ray is one of the most revered of film directors: Pather Panchali (1955) remains one of the greatest directing debuts. It was the first Indian film to attract widespread attention in Europe and America and is the first instalment in what was to become known, along with Aparajito (1956) and Apur Sansar (1958), as the 'Apu trilogy'. In Pather Panchali, Apu is a young boy living with his parents, sister and elderly aunt, in a village in Bengal, against a background of poverty. Influenced b...
Alfred Hitchcock relished his power to frighten us and believed the shocks he administered improved our psychological health. But he could never satisfactorily explain our curiosity to see forbidden things or the perverse desire to experience anxiety and dread that made his work so popular. "In The Hitchcock Murders," Peter Conrad, one of Hitchcock's eager victims, undertakes the task on the master's behalf. At the age of thirteen, Conrad snuck into his first screening of "Psycho," and he's bee...
Most of what we've heard about Werner Herzog is untrue. The sheer number of false rumours and downright lies disseminated about the man and his films is truly astonishing. Yet Herzog's body of work is one of the most important in post-war European cinema. His international breakthrough came in 1973 with Aguirre, the Wrath of God, in which Klaus Kinski played a crazed Conquistador. For "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser", Herzog cast in the lead a man who had spent most of his life institutionalised, a...