'A designer, yes; a director - never' were the words of Luchino Visconti when his protege and estranged lover Franco Zeffirelli emerged from the shadow of his patronage to pursue his own career as a director. They ignited a bitter rivalry which fuelled the raging ambition of the young Florentine stage designer whose subsequent work established him as one of the most profoundly influential cultural figures of the twentieth century. The last of the great post-war directors, Zeffirelli's revolution...
An Irish-Canadian of impeccably uncomic ancestry, Mack Sennett founded in Hollywood in 1912 the world's first studio devoted to movie comedy alone. For the next 20 years he presided over cinema's most famous and popular clowns - from Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, Mabel Normand and Charlie Chaplin, to Ben Turpin, Chester Conklin, Mack Swain, Ford Sterling, Louise Fazenda, Harry Langdon and very many more. Simon Louvish, acclaimed biographer of W. C. Fields, the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy, now...
Katzman, Nicholson and Corman - Shaping Hollywood's Future (hardback)
by Mark Thomas McGee
Ang Lee (b. 1954) has emerged as one of cinema's most versatile, critically acclaimed, and popular directors. Known for his ability to transcend cultural and stylistic boundaries, Lee has built a diverse oeuvre that includes films about culture clashes and globalisation (Eat Drink Man Woman, 1994, and The Wedding Banquet, 1993), a period drama (Sense and Sensibility, 1995), a martial arts epic (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2000), a comic book action movie (Hulk, 2003), and an American western...
The Last Modernist (Cinema Voices S., v. 8.)
Theo Angelopoulos is widely regarded as one of the most distinctive contemporary filmmakers and a highly idiosyncratic film stylist. His work, from the early 1970s to The Beekeeper, Landscape in the Mist, The Suspended Step of the Stalk and the recent Cannes prize-winner Ulysses' Gaze, demonstrates a unique sensibility and a preoccupation with form (notably, the long take, space, and time) and with content, particularly Greek politics and history, and notions of the journey, border-crossing, and...
With celebrated works such as Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, and Gladiator, Ridley Scott has secured his place in Hollywood. This legendary director and filmmaker has had an undeniable influence on art and the culture of filmmaking, but is also a respected media businessman. In Ridley Scott: A Biography, Vincent LoBrutto delves into Ridley Scott's oeuvre in a way that allows readers to understand the yin and yang of his exceptional career. Presented is a unique crosscut between the bi...
You're An Amazing Assistant Director. Keep That Shit Up.
by Workplace - Wonders
For the first time, this book gives an in-depth, film-by-film analysis of all the Coen brothers' work from Blood Simple to The Big Lebowski. The complex production process behind every Coen brothers film to date, including Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink,The Hudsucker Proxy and Fargo, is set out from script to finished film, and the themes and ideas behind their creative work assessed. With authoritative essays by leading film experts, and illustrated with hundreds of b/w photo...
Martin Scorsese (Conversations with Filmmakers (Hardcover)) (Conversations with Filmmakers)
Martin Scorsese (b. 1942) has long been considered one of America's greatest cinematic storytellers. Over the last fifty years he has created some of the most iconic moments in American film, never afraid to confront controversial issues with passion. While few of his films are directly autobiographical, his upbringing in New York's Little Italy, the childhood asthma that kept him from playing sports, and his early desire to enter the priesthood all helped form his sensibilities and later shaped...