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Film
In recent years, film has been one of the major genres within which the imaginaries involved in mapping the geopolitical world have been represented and reflected upon.
In this book, one of America's foremost theorists of culture and politics treats those aspects of the geopolitical aesthetic that must be addressed in light of both the post cold war and post 9/11 world and contemporary film theory and philosophy. Beginning with an account of his experience as a juror at film festival's, Michael J. Shapiro's Cinematic Geopolitics analyzes the ways in which film festival space and both feature and documentary films function as counter-spaces to the contemporary violent cartography occasioned by governmental policy, especially the current war on terror.
Influenced by the cinema-philosophy relationship developed by Gilles Deleuze and the politics of aesthetics thinking of Jacques Ranciere, the book's chapters examines a range of films from established classics like the Deer Hunter and the Battle of Algiers to contemporary films such as Dirty Pretty Things and the Fog of War. Shapiro's use of philosophical and theoretical works makes this cutting edge examination of film and politics essential reading for all students and scholars with an interest in film and politics.
What the industry's most succcessful writers and directors have in common is that they have mastered the cinematic conventions specific to the medium.
The Cinematographer's Voice is a unique exploration of contemporary filmmaking and cinematography. The distillation of more than one-hundred interviews with cinematographers from around the world, and the product of a decade's worth of scholarship, the book is not only a collection of interviews with some of the world's leading cinematographers, but also a panoramic sweep of what image-making means in the era of digital cinema. Frequently, cinematography may seem intimidating as a discipline, the preserve solely of practitioners who have learned, through years of exposure to photographic technology, both the required jargon and background knowledge to comfortably engage with an often-technical field. In our present era of film studies, this is no longer the case. The interviews collected here are informative not only on matters of technique, but also on the ways in which practitioners formulate their methodologies, work with directors, and engage with the many logistical hurdles of visual storytelling. The result is an oral history of the past forty years of filmmaking and the cinematography it has produced.
Through interviews with current ASC cinematographers, and a balance between technical, aesthetic, and historical content, this book guides the director into a powerful collaboration with their closest on-set ally. Topics include selecting a cinematographer, collectively discussing the script, choosing an appropriate visual style for a film, color palette, film and digital formats, lenses, camera movement, genres, and postproduction processes--including the digital intermediate (DI). Interwoven are quotes from working ASC cinematographers.
There's more to being a DP than holding a light meter! With this book as your guide, you are on your way to learning not only about the equipment and technology, but also about the concepts and thought processes that will enable you to shoot professionally, efficiently, and with artistic mastery. A leading book in the field, Cinematography has been translated into many languages and is a staple at the world's top film schools. Lavishly produced and illustrated, it covers the entire range of the profession. The book is not just a comprehensive guide to current professional practice; it goes beyond to explain the theory behind the practice, so you understand how the rules came about and when it's appropriate to break them. In addition, directors will benefit from the book's focus on the body of knowledge they should share with their Director of Photography.
Cinematography presents the basics and beyond, employing clear explanations of standard practice together with substantial illustrations and diagrams to reveal the real world of film production.
Recognizing that professionals know when to break the rules and when to abide by them, this book discusses many examples of fresh ideas and experiments in cinematography. Covering the most up-to-date information on the film/digital interface, new formats, the latest cranes and camera support and other equipment, it also illustrates the classic tried and true methods.
New! A DVD and website features hours of video footage, offering key instruction in topics such as camera basics and essentials, lighting, shooting methods, and much more.
Topics include:
. Concepts of filmmaking
. Language of the lens
. Cinematic continuity
. Lighting for film, digital, and HD
. Exposure
. HD cinematography and shooting
. Shooting in HD
. Image control and filters
. Bleach bypass processes
. Lighting as storytelling
. Shooting special effects
. Set procedures and other issues
The DVD files are also available at http: //www.taylorandfrancis.com/cw/brown-9780240812090/.
"This book is a gold mine for fans."--Kirkus Reviews
It is the story of a film masterpiece--how it was created and how it was almost destroyed.
It is the celebration of brilliant achievement and a sinister tale of conspiracy, extortion, and Communist witch hunts.
It is the chronicle of a plot orchestrated in boardrooms and a mountaintop palace, as a media company that claimed to stand for "genuine democracy" defied the First Amendment and schemed to burn Hollywood's greatest creation.
Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker's Journey is the extraordinary story of the production of Orson Welles' classic film, using previously unpublished material from studio files and the Hearst organization, exclusive interviews with the last surviving members of the cast and crew, and what may be the only surviving copies of the "lost" final script.
Harlan Lebo charts the meteoric rise to stardom of the twenty-three-year-old Orson Welles, his defiance of the Hollywood system, and the unprecedented contract that gave him near-total creative control of his first film. Lebo recounts the clashes between Welles and studio executives eager to see him fail, the high-pressure production schedule, and the groundbreaking results. Lebo reveals the plot by the organization of publisher William Randolph Hearst to attack Hollywood, discredit Welles, and incinerate the film. And, at last, he follows the rise of Citizen Kane to its status as the greatest film ever made.
A prolific film industry has flourished on the banks of the Nile since the earliest days of cinema, producing movies that have been hugely popular and immensely influential not only in Egypt but across the Arab world. Concentrating on productions written and produced entirely in Egypt, Sameh Fathy--a film critic with an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of Egyptian cinema--here selects the 101 most important movies to come out of Cairo's famous studios over the last eighty years. From classic comedies like Salam Is Fine to social dramas like The Second Wife, and from literary adaptations like Call of the Curlew to masterpieces of the cinematic art like The Night of Counting the Years, the author introduces us to each film's writers, producers, directors, and stars, and explains the movie's particular historical, cultural, or artistic significance. Illustrated throughout with posters and stills from all the movies covered.
Studies of "Classic Hollywood" typically treat Hollywood films released from 1930 to 1960 as a single interpretive mass. Veronica Pravadelli complicates this idea. Focusing on dominant tendencies in box office hits and Oscar-recognized classics, she breaks down the so-called classic period into six distinct phases that follow Hollywood's amazingly diverse offerings from the emancipated females of the "Transition Era" and the traditional men and women of the conservative 1930s that replaced it to the fantastical Fifties movie musicals that arose after anti-classic genres like film noir and women's films. Pravadelli sets her analysis apart by paying particular attention to the gendered desires and identities exemplified in the films. Availing herself of the significant advances in film theory and modernity studies that have taken place since similar surveys first saw publication, she views Hollywood through strategies as varied as close textural analysis, feminism, psychoanalysis, film style and study of cinematic imagery, revealing the inconsistencies and antithetical traits lurking beneath Classic Hollywood's supposed transparency.
The extraordinary story of the making of Cleopatra, the film that changed the face of Hollywood Cleopatra has its place as one of the most fabled films of all time. While others have won more Oscars, attracted better reviews and taken more money at the box office, the 1963 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton stands alone in cinema legend. What began in 1958 as a $2 million vehicle for Joan Collins eventually opened five years later, having cost more than twenty times that amount. The making of the film soon became a cautionary tale, for the lavish extravagance of Cleopatra all but bankrupted 20th Century Fox and almost singlehandedly set in motion the decline of the major studios. Actors and filmmakers were hired and fired at a breathtaking rate, and by the time the film was finally released, Hollywood could only watch in horror as it died at the box office. This is an epic tale of love and lust; of gossip, money, sex, movie-star madness, studio politics and the birth of paparazzi journalism. Within the saga of Cleopatra lies the end of the era of Hollywood's studio system, the seeds of the Swinging Sixties, and the stuff of timeless movie legend.
Clint Eastwood (b. 1930) is the only popular American dramatic star to have shaped his own career almost entirely through films of his own producing, frequently under his own direction; no other dramatic star has directed himself so often. He is also one of the most prolific active directors, with thirty-three features to his credit since 1971. As a star, he is often recalled primarily for two early roles--the "Man with No Name" of three European-made Westerns, and the uncompromising cop "Dirty" Harry Callahan. But on his own as a director, Eastwood has steered a remarkable course. A film industry insider who works through the established Hollywood system and respects its traditions, he remains an outsider by steadfastly refusing to heed cultural and aesthetic trends in film production and film style. His films as director have examined an eclectic variety of themes, ranging from the artist's life to the nature of heroism, while frequently calling into question the ethos of masculinity and his own star image. Yet they have remained accessible to a popular audience worldwide. With two Best Director and two Best Picture Oscars to his credit, Eastwood now ranks among the most highly honored living filmmakers. These interviews range over the more than four decades of Eastwood's directorial career, with an emphasis on practical filmmaking issues and his philosophy as a filmmaker. Nearly a third are from European sources--several appearing here in English for the first time.
The indispensable, illustrated pocket guide to the films of Wes Anderson, from Bottle Rocket to Isle of Dogs.
See movies through a new lens with Close-Ups, a series of pocket guides from the award-winning film magazine Little White Lies.
Wes Anderson is a distinctive auteur of modern American cinema, known for having created a personal universe out of pastel colour palettes, meticulous set design, nostalgic soundtracks and a troupe of familiar actors - all seen in films such as Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Isle of Dogs.
In this illustrated pocket guide Sophie Monks Kaufman delves beneath Anderson's pristine surfaces to examine his emotional preoccupations with family, romance, failure, adventure and death. She carefully unspools the cultural threads that inform his aesthetic to explain why this precocious arthouse film nerd from Texas has become one of the most popular directors of his generation.
"Smart and entertaining . . . Gefter shows why Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? hit the '60s like a torpedo." -NPR, Fresh Air
"Delicious." -New York Times Book Review The behind-the-scenes story of a provocative play, the groundbreaking film it became, and how two iconic stars changed the image of marriage forever. From its debut in 1962, Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a wild success and a cultural lightning rod. It scandalized critics but magnetized audiences. Across 644 sold-out Broadway performances, the drama demolished the wall between what could and couldn't be said on the American stage and marked a definitive end to the I Love Lucy 1950s. Then, Hollywood took a colossal gamble on Albee's sophisticated play-and won. Costarring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the sensational 1966 film minted first-time director Mike Nichols as industry royalty and won five Oscars. How this scorching play became a movie classic-surviving censorship attempts, its director's inexperience, and its stars' own tumultuous marriage-is one of the most riveting stories in all of cinema. Marfield Prizewinner Philip Gefter tells that deliciously entertaining story in full for the first time, tracing Woolf from its hushed origins in Greenwich Village's bohemian enclave, through its tormented production process, to its explosion onto screens and its permanent place in the canon of American cinema. This deliciously entertaining book explores how two couples-one fictional, one all too real-forced a nation to confront its most deeply held myths about relationships, sex, family, and, against all odds, love.
"Very smart and entertaining . . . dishy-yet-earnest . . . Gefter shows why Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? hit the '60s like a torpedo."-NPR, Fresh Air
"Raucous, unpredictable, wild, and affecting."-Entertainment WeeklyAn award-winning writer reveals the behind-the-scenes story of the provocative play, the groundbreaking film it became, and how two iconic stars changed the image of marriage forever. From its debut in 1962, Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a wild success and a cultural lightning rod. The play transpires over one long, boozy night, laying bare the lies, compromises, and scalding love that have sustained a middle-aged couple through decades of marriage. It scandalized critics but magnetized audiences. Across 644 sold-out Broadway performances, the drama demolished the wall between what could and couldn't be said on the American stage and marked a definitive end to the I Love Lucy 1950s. Then, Hollywood took a colossal gamble on Albee's sophisticated play-and won. Costarring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the sensational 1966 film minted first-time director Mike Nichols as industry royalty and won five Oscars. How this scorching play became a movie classic-surviving censorship attempts, its director's inexperience, and its stars' own tumultuous marriage-is one of the most riveting stories in all of cinema. Now, acclaimed author Philip Gefter tells that story in full for the first time, tracing Woolf from its hushed origins in Greenwich Village's bohemian enclave, through its tormented production process, to its explosion onto screens across America and a permanent place in the canon of cinematic marriages. This deliciously entertaining book explores how two couples-one fictional, one all too real-forced a nation to confront its most deeply held myths about relationships, sex, family, and, against all odds, love.
Brought completely up to date, this insightful biography remains a must for any self-respecting Coen fan (Screentrade). This fully updated edition of the first biography of the Coen Brothers includes their complete work so far, from Blood Simple to Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), with a reassessment of their remarkable career as a whole. Joel and Ethan Coen have pulled off the ultimate balancing act. Despite having their movies financed and distributed by major studios, they have managed to remain true independents, rejecting commercial clichés and never giving up on their own fiercely idiosyncratic vision. While doing so, they have established themselves among the world's leading filmmakers. From their startling debut, Blood Simple (1984), all of their movies reveal a distinctive stamp: a flamboyant visual style, richly conceived characters, crisp dialogue, and brilliant casting. They have revitalized old Hollywood genres such as noir, screwball, and the western, giving them a contemporary sensibility. In this biography, Ronald Bergan traces the brothers' Jewish roots, their beginnings as film geeks in suburban Minneapolis, their battle to get their first feature made and released, through their early features and the movies of their maturity. He gives blow-by-blow accounts of the making of each movie. New chapters cover all those released since O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), with which the first edition of this book ended.
These four early works by the internationally lauded filmmaking team deal with the subject for which they are best known: corruption and crime in situations that combine the real and the surreal with the hilarious. Of the scripts included here, Barton Fink--an intense look at the psychological ruin of a New York playwright trying to make it in 1940s Hollywood--is a masterful culmination of these themes.
"The Comedy Film Nerds Guide to Movies" brings what has been missing from movie discussion for too long: A healthy dose of humor. This is the first time ever two filmmakers who are also comedians give their views on film. It will bring movie discussion to a younger audience in a way they can relate to it without all the stodgy film school discussion. This is a movie book for film and comedy fans, by filmmakers and comedians. In the way that Jon Stewart and Bill Mahr have brought comedy to politics, Chris and Graham will do this for film.
The superheroes are back! Since the 1970s, the film world has found inspiration in comic books and graphic novels. These days no summer is complete without a major blockbuster movie based on a comic: Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, X-Men, Men in Black, Daredevil, and The Hulk. Modern special effects have made large-scale superhero epics possible, but the diversity of the comics being published has made for a wide variety of subjects, as evidenced by Ghost World, From Hell, Akira and Road to Perdition. This book looks in detail at twenty key titles, covering every step of the development from comic book panel to feature film frame. Includes interviews with key creative artists about the evolution of the films from the original comics, and speculates about future films.
Over the course of her sixty-five-year career, the longest of any female filmmaker, Agnès Varda (1928-2019) wrote and directed some of the most acclaimed films of her era, from her tour de force Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), a classic of modernist cinema, to the beloved documentary The Gleaners and I (2000) four decades later. She helped to define the French New Wave, inspired an entire generation of filmmakers, and was recognized with major awards at the Cannes, Berlin, and Venice Film Festivals, as well as an honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards.
In this lively biography, former Philadelphia Inquirer film critic Carrie Rickey explores the "complicated passions" that informed Varda's charmed life and indelible work. Rickey traces Varda's three remarkable careers--as still photographer, as filmmaker, and as installation artist. She explains how Varda was a pioneer in blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, using the latest digital technology and carving a path for women in the movie industry. She demonstrates how Varda was years ahead of her time in addressing sexism, abortion, labor exploitation, immigrant rights, and race relations with candor and incisiveness. She makes clear Varda's impact on contemporary figures like Ava DuVernay, Greta Gerwig, Barry Jenkins, the Safdie brothers, and Martin Scorsese, who called her one of the Gods of cinema. And she delves into Varda's incredibly rich social life with figures such as Harrison Ford, Jean-Luc Godard, Jim Morrison, Susan Sontag, and Andy Warhol, and her nearly forty-year marriage to the celebrated director Jacques Demy.
A Complicated Passion is the vibrant biography that Varda, regarded by many as the greatest female filmmaker of all time, has long deserved.