The classic manifesto on popular theatre by the founder of the 7:84 Theatre Companies. John McGrath's manifesto is as relevant today as it was when first published in 1981. Looking at the ways different classes take their entertainment, he puts the case for what theatre could be doing for the populace instead of walling itself up in subsidised fortresses for the well-to-do.
More than any other filmmaker, Sam Peckinpah opened the door for graphic violence in movies. In this book, Stephen Prince explains the rise of explicit violence in the American cinema, its social effects, and the relation of contemporary ultraviolence to the radical, humanistic filmmaking that Peckinpah practiced. Prince demonstrates Peckinpah's complex approach to screen violence and shows him as a serious artist whose work was tied to the social and political upheavals of the 1960s. He exp...
The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers (The Philosophy of Popular Culture)
by Mark T. Conard
Many critics agree that Joel and Ethan Coen are one of the most visionary and idiosyncratic filmmaking teams of the last three decades. Combining thoughtful eccentricity, wry humor, irony, and often brutal violence, the Coen brothers have crafted a style of filmmaking that pays tribute to classic American movie genres yet maintains a distinctly postmodern feel. Since arriving on the film scene, the Coens have amassed an impressive body of work that has garnered them critical acclaim and a devote...
In this book, Peter Brunette analyzes the theatrical releases of Austrian film director Michael Haneke, including The White Ribbon, winner of the 2009 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Perhaps best known to U.S. audiences for Cache, The Piano Teacher, and his remake of his own disturbing Funny Games, Haneke has consistently challenged critics and film viewers to consider their own responsibility for what they watch when they seek to be "merely" entertained by such studio-produced Hollywood...
The Cinema of Ozu Yasujiro (Edinburgh Studies in East Asian Film)
by Woojeong Joo
One of the most well regarded of non-Western film directors, responsible for acknowledged classics like Tokyo Story (1953), Ozu Yasujiro worked during a period of immense turbulence for Japan and its population. This book offers a new interpretation of Ozu's career, from his earliest work in the 1920s up to his death in 1963, focusing on Ozu's depiction of the everyday life and experiences of ordinary Japanese people during a time of depression, war and economic resurgence. Firmly situating him...
ReFocus: The Films of Preston Sturges
How can it be that more people aren't talking about, studying and revering Preston Sturges, the first person to win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, who wrote and directed some of the most bizarre, controversial and hilarious comedies of the 1940s? An influence on filmmakers ranging from Orson Welles to the Coen brothers, Preston Sturges may be the most talented Hollywood filmmaker who has yet to receive the critical recognition he deserves. The Films of Preston Sturges, first book in the...
This book provides almost the only published material on the work of Marc Karlin. On his death in 1999, Karlin was commemorated as one of the visionaries of independent British film culture, with its roots in the seventies and its expansion in the first decades of Channel 4 television. This edited collection will profile his films and ideas, drawing exclusively on documents and correspondence from his recently recovered archive. It includes appraisals both from his collaborators and eminent film...
Exposing and illustrating how an ongoing engagement with nihilistic alienation may contribute to, rather than detract from, the value of life, Cinematic Nihilism both challenges and builds upon past scholarship that has scrutinised nihilism in the media, but which has generally over-emphasised its negative and destructive aspects. Through case studies of popular films, including Prometheus, The Dark Knight Rises, Dawn of the Dead and The Human Centipede, and with chapters on Scotland's cinemati...
One of the most esteemed filmmakers of all time, Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) was also one of the most enigmatic. He broke into the film scene at the age of 26 with the ambitious, independently produced Killer's Kiss and within a few years was working with the likes of Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, and Peter Sellers on such seminal films as Lolita and Spartacus. Having gained the support of the actors, producers, and movie studios with his early efforts, Kubrick garnered the creative control he...
A sharp and witty expose of show business and notorious characters Barry Avrich is a Montreal-born, self-made film producer/director, flamboyant advertising executive, and legendary biographer and connector of moguls and stars. For over three decades he has relentlessly produced films on some of the most notorious show-business titans and also found the time to market and promote feature films, concerts, and the biggest shows on Broadway. In his memoir, Moguls, Monsters and Madmen, Barry takes r...
Wlodzimierz Staniewski's group Gardzienice Theatre has established an unparalleled reputation for a sensual and complex performance aesthetic. The work is inspired by the expressive traditions of indigenous culture and the musicality of the natural environment. This is the first full-length articulation by Staniewski himself of this unique director's philosophy and rigorous practice. In this magnificent book and the remarkable cd-rom which accompanies it, Staniewski, with editor Alison Hodge, g...
The Making of Alternative Cinema [2 volumes] (<p>The Making of Alternative Cinema</p>)
by Mario Falsetto and Liza Bear
The massive investments made in Hollywood today mandate tight studio controls on mainstream cinema. As a result, one must often look to alternative outlets in order to see a movie intended primarily as art—or even as a sincere effort at entertainment—instead of as a simple source of revenue. Foreign and independent movies thus often play the role of bellwether for the Hollywood studios that are unable to experiment themselves: behind the look of the studio smash Sin City, for instance, was the r...
Dagur Kari's Noi the Albino (Nordic Film Classics)
by Bjorn Nordfjord
Dagur Kari's Noi the Albino (Noi albinoi, 2003) succeeded on the international festival circuit as a film that was both distinctively Icelandic and appealingly universal. Noi the Albino taps into perennial themes of escapism and existential angst, while its setting in the Westfjords of Iceland provided an almost surreal backdrop whose particularities of place are uniquely Icelandic. Bjorn Nordfjord's examination of the film integrates the broad context and history of Icelandic cinema into a clos...
'I aim to provide the public with beneficial shocks. Civilisation has become so protective that we're no longer able to get our goose bumps instinctively. The best way to achieve that, it seems to me, is a movie' - Alfred Hitchcock.
In 1983 visionary director John Cassavetes asked journalist Michael Ventura to write a unique film study - an on-set diary of the making of his film Love Streams. Cassavetes laid out his expectations. He wanted 'a daring book, a tough book'. In Ventura's words, 'All I had to do for 'daring' and 'tough' was transcribe this man's audacity day by day.' Cassavetes Directs describes the creation of Love Streams shot by shot, crisis by crisis. During production, the director learned that he was seriou...
Few individuals have made as much of an impact upon a single medium as has Sergei Eisenstein upon cinema. His ground-breaking movies, such as "Battleship Potemkin", "October" and "Aleksandr Nevskii" make regular appearances upon 'all-time best movie' lists, whilst classic sequences from these movies, such as the baby in the pram on the Odessa steps ("Battleship Potemkin"), and the battle on the ice ("Aleksandr Nevskii"), have entered the public consciousness and are referenced constantly by arti...
More consistent than Coppola, more versatile than Scorsese and less of a self-publicist than Spielberg. His range covers comedies, horrors, musicals, gangsters, war-films, thrillers and now science fiction. He discovered Robert De Niro, made Sean Connery an Oscar-winner, and has created many memorable movie moments. A Brian De Palma film is an event. To celebrate the release of De Palma's twenty-fifth feature, the long-awaited sci-fi epic Mission to Mars, we take you on a roller-coaster ride thr...
"James Ivory in Conversation" is an exclusive series of interviews with a director known for the international scope of his filmmaking on several continents. Three-time Academy Award nominee for best director, responsible for such film classics as "A Room with a View" and "The Remains of the Day", Ivory speaks with remarkable candor and wit about his more than forty years as an independent filmmaker. In this deeply engaging book, he comments on the many aspects of his world-traveling career: his...