The director and cowriter of some of the world's most iconic films—including Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd., Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment—Billy Wilder earned acclaim as American cinema's greatest social satirist. Though an influential fixture in Hollywood, Wilder always saw himself as an outsider. His worldview was shaped by his background in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and work as a journalist in Berlin during Hitler's rise to power, and his perspective as a Jewish refugee from Nazism le...
This book celebrates the achievements of Alice Guy Blaché (1873–1968), the first woman motion picture director and producer. From 1896 to 1907, she created films for Gaumont in Paris. In 1907, she moved to the United States and established her own film company, Solax. From 1914 to 1920, Guy Blaché was an independent director for a number of film companies. Despite her immensely productive and creative career, Guy Blaché’s indispensable contribution to film history has been overlooked. She enter...
Sylvain Chomet’s Distinctive Animation (Animation: Key Films/Filmmakers)
by Maria Katsaridou
Sylvain Chomet is a multifaceted French artist best known for his feature animation films The Triplets of Belleville and The Illusionist. Although the films have a highly recognized artistic value, the relevant literature is limited to a modest number of articles. This open access book provides the first in-depth analysis of his animation films and his contribution to contemporary animation. Sylvain Chomet’s Distinctive Animation examines important elements of the artist’s life, his studies an...
A stunning full-colour record of half a century of inspired theatre work marking the 80th birthday of one of the UK's most distinguished stage designers. The book contains models and production shots of over 30 of Ralph Koltai's shows, interlaced with essays by and interviews with Koltai, his collaborators and fellow designers. Ralph Koltai CBE was possibly the most wide-ranging and consistently prolific British stage designer of the late twentieth century. His first designs were for the Eng...
Vern, the self-styled 'outlaw film critic', is known to millions for his hilarious reviews on the "Ain't It Cool News" website, and is described by "Hellboy" director Guillermo Del Toro as "equal parts Hell's Angels and Pauline Kael...a national treasure!"Now Vern unleashes his magnum opus: an in-depth study of the world's only aikido instructor turned movie star, director, writer, blues guitarist, and energy drink inventor - the ass-kicking auteur Steven Seagal. From "Above the Law" to his gues...
Todd Haynes's films are intricate and purposeful, combining the intellectual impact of art cinema with the emotional accessibility of popular genres. They are also underpinned by a serious commitment to feminism and queer theory. From his 1985 student film about Arthur Rimbaud to his shapeshifting portrait of Bob Dylan in I'm Not There (2007) and the riveting HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce (2011), Haynes has made films whose complex weave of stories and characters reveals dark, painful intensiti...
At a moment when superheroes dominate pop culture, Gary Bettinson takes us back to the first comic book blockbuster. Superman: The Movie – The 40th Anniversary Interviews is a revealing behind-the-scenes portrait of the personalities and expertise that went into making this landmark of Hollywood cinema. Marking 40 years since the film’s release, this book presents all-new interviews with the cast and crew, including Richard Donner (director), Ilya Salkind (producer), Pierre Spengler (producer)...
International Horror Film Directors
Horror films have for decades commanded major global audiences, tapping into deep-rooted fears that cross national and cultural boundaries in their ability to spark terror. This book brings together a group of scholars to explore the ways that this fear is utilized and played upon by a wide range of filmmakers. Contributors take up such major figures as Guillermo del Toro, Lars Von Trier, and David Cronenberg, and they also offer introductions to lesser-known talents such as Richard Franklin, Ki...
Hollywood's Italian American Filmmakers explores the different ways in which Italian American directors from the 1920s to the present have responded to their ethnicity. While some directors have used film to declare their ethnic roots and create an Italian American "imagined community," others have ignored or even denied their background. Jonathan J. Cavallero examines the films of Frank Capra, Martin Scorsese, Nancy Savoca, Francis Ford Coppola, and Quentin Tarantino with a focus on what the fi...
Michael Man (born 1943) is one of the most interesting directors of our time, whose work lies at the intersection of the mainstream cinema and the avant-garde, of public entertainment and private obsession. Throughout his career, Mann has moved freely between television and cinema: he produced 'Miami Vice' and 'Crime Story' - two of the most successful TV series of the 1980's - in addition to directing the historical epic 'The Last of the Mohican's (1992), the biopic 'Ali'(2001), and more recent...
If you were first exposed to television as a child in the early 1950s when your parents bought their first set, you probably saw the words "directed by Paul Landres" on the screen several times a week. His name became familiar by sheer repetition on the end credits of episode after episode of what youngsters were watching in those days: The Cisco Kid, Boston Blackie, The Lone Ranger, Sky King, Cowboy G-Men, and Ramar of the Jungle. Francis M. Nevins grew to know Landres' name then, and later in...
Highly lauded film editor, director, writer and sound designer Walter Murch reflects on the six decades of cinematic history he has been a considerable contributor to - and on what makes great films great.Together with Francis Coppola and George Lucas, Murch abandoned Hollywood in 1969 and moved to San Francisco to create the Zoetrope studio. Their vision was of a new kind of cinema for a new generation of film-goers. Murch's subsequent contributions in film editing rooms and sound-mixing theatr...
Walt Disney (Greenwood Biographies)
by Louise Krasniewicz and Michael Blitz
This insightful biography takes a balanced and thoughtful look at the creative and enigmatic man who has had a greater influence on American culture than almost any other individual: Walt Disney.Walt Disney has been dissected, criticized, and lauded in numerous biographies, most of which try to penetrate the psychology of the man and his motives. Walt Disney: A Biography takes a cultural approach, looking at Disney as both a product of his culture and a cultural innovator who influenced entertai...
Archive is the first book by Sofia Coppola, covering the entirety of her singular and influential career in film. Constructed from Coppola's personal collection of photographs and ephemera, including early development work, reference collages, influences, annotated scripts, and unseen behind-the-scenes documentation, it offers a detailed account of all eight of her films to date. Mapping a course from The Virgin Suicides (1999), through Lost in Translation (2003) and Marie Antoinette (2006), to...
The city, with its manifold distractions and violence, its invitation to intoxication and dream, had long served to represent the experience of modernity in works of art at the time John Schlesinger made his acclaimed urban documentary ‘Terminus’ in 1961. To be a reader of the city was to be a reader of modern life, and Schlesinger was a discriminating, at times relentless, reader of the city throughout his career, especially in his three greatest films, ‘Midnight Cowboy’, ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’...
Arriving in cinema when synchronized sound had just been adopted, director Rouben Mamoulian demonstrated key early methods for making sound aid storytelling, for giving films a crisper sense of rhythm, for creating musicals set in backstage, fairy-tale, and folk environments, for providing intricate and arresting colour palettes, and for rendering sexual content more palpable under industry censorship. Mamoulian also wrote many articles throughout his lifetime and gave interviews and lectures wh...
Tenet is a global thriller whose action stretches across time zones, and stars Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki and John David Washington.
This indispensable guide provides a thorough chronological examination of Ridley Scott's directorial career. All of Scott's films are included, along with information on his frequent collaborators, his thoughts on his own films, and a section on his unrealised projects. This is the essential reference guide to one of mainstream cinema's most diverse directors.
This new revised edition brings Mike Leigh's career up-to-date, including his film about J.M.W. Turner, Mr. Turner, and his epic masterpiece, Peterloo.Five-time Oscar nominee and BAFTA winner, the only British director to have won the top prize at both Cannes (for Secrets & Lies) and Venice (for Vera Drake) - Mike Leigh is unquestionably one of world cinema's pre-eminent figures. Now, in this definitive career-length interview, he reflects on all that has gone into the making of his unique body...
Federico Fellini (1920-1993), cinéaste de Rome par excellence, contribue activement et d'une manière décisive à faire de sa ville adoptive la capitale cinématographique du XXe siècle. Sa Rome cinématographique émerge d'une filmographie impressionnante où se déploient trois constellations : celle des attractions (Luci del varietà, Le notti di Cabiria, La dolce vita), celle des survivances (Block-notes di un regista, Satyricon, Roma) et celle des simulacres (Ginger e Fred, Intervista). En confront...
Part of our new series of accessible introductory guides to significant contemporary filmmakers, this guide is a must for film fans and students of contemporary cinema alike. An introductory chapter highlights thematic and visual devices, followed by an exploration of British director Steve McQueen's work, from his short films and video art through his critically acclaimed feature films, including his masterpiece, the Academy Award-winning 12 Years A Slave, to his BBC TV series Small Axe and mor...
Spanning from obscurity to notoriety, the films of director, screenwriter, actor and comic Elaine May have recently experienced a long-overdue renaissance. Although she made only four films -- A New Leaf (1971), The Heartbreak Kid (1972), Mikey and Nicky (1976) and Ishtar (1987) -- and never reached the level of acclaim of her frequent collaborator Mike Nichols, May's work is as enigmatic, sophisticated and unceasingly fascinating as her own complicated, reluctant star persona. This collection f...
They Made the Movies (Screen Classics)
by James Bawden and Ron Miller
For decades, James Bawden and Ron Miller have established themselves as maestros of provocative interviews, giving fans unmatched insights into the lives of Hollywood A-listers. In their fourth collection, the authors pay tribute to film pioneers who lit up Tinseltown from the 1930s through the 1960s. They Made the Movies features conversations with legendary directors who created many of film's all-time classics, including Frank Capra (It's A Wonderful Life, 1946), Richard Fleischer (20,000 Lea...
Charles Burnett (Conversations with Filmmakers) (Conversations with Filmmakers (Hardcover))
Charles Burnett (b. 1944) is a groundbreaking African American filmmaker and one of this country’s finest directors, yet he remains largely unknown. His films, most notably Killer of Sheep (1977) and To Sleep with Anger (1990), are considered classics, yet few filmgoers have seen them or heard of Burnett. The interviews in this volume explore this paradox and collectively shed light on the work of a rare film master whose stories bring to the screen the texture and poetry of life in the black co...