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A-Z Great Film Directors

A-Z Great Film Directors
$22.99
A fun introduction to 52 of the greatest film directors, from Almodovar to Ozu, Fellini to Tarantino, and many more.

A striking, design-led reference book. A-Z Great Film Directors features Andy Tuohy's portraits of 52 directors significant for their contribution to cinema including kings of world cinema Wong Kar-Wai and Akira Kurosawa, arthouse pioneers Fritz Lang and David Lynch as well as the often under-appreciated female directors Kathryn Bigelow and Jane Campion.

With text by film journalist Matt Glasby, each director's entry will also have a summary of the essential things you need to know about them, why they're important, a list of their must-see films, and a surprising fact or two about them, as well as images of their key films throughout.

So whether you're already a film aficionado, or looking for a helpful cheat to pass convincingly as an arthouse fan, you'll love this guide to international directors, past and present.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781788404013
0
field_in_author: 
Tuohy, Andy
Author: 
Publisher: 

Bong Joon Ho: Dissident Cinema

Bong Joon Ho: Dissident Cinema
$45.00
Brilliantly illustrated and designed by the London-based film magazine Little White Lies, Bong Joon Ho: Dissident Cinema examines the career of the South Korean writer/director, who has been making critically acclaimed feature films for more than two decades. First breaking out into the international scene with festival-favorite Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000), Bong then set his sights on the story of a real-life serial killer in 2003's Memories of Murder and once again won strong international critical attention. But it was 2006's The Host that proved to be a huge breakout moment both for Bong and the Korean film industry. The monster movie, set in Seoul, premiered at Cannes and became an instant hit--South Korea's widest release ever, setting new box office records and selling remake rights in the US to Universal. Bong's next feature, Mother (2009) also premiered at Cannes, once again earning critical acclaim and appearing on many "best-of" lists for 2009/2010. Bong's first English-language film, Snowpiercer (2013)--set on a postapocalyptic train where class divisions erupt into class warfare--followed on its heels, bringing his work outside of the South Korean and film festival markets and onto the stage of global commercial cinema. With 2017's Okja , Bong became even more of an internationally known name, with the New York Times' A. O. Scott calling the film "a miracle of imagination and technique." Bong's next film, the 2019 black comedy/thriller Parasite, simultaneously scaled back--the film is mostly set in just two locations, with two Korean families taking center stage--and took his career to new heights, winning the Palme d'Or with a unanimous vote, as well as history-making Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film. Parasite's jarring shifts in tone--encompassing darkness, drama, slapstick, and black humor--and its critiques of late capitalism and American imperialism are in conversation with Bong's entire body of work, and this mid-career monograph will survey the entirety of that work, including his short films and music videos, to flesh out the stories behind the films with supporting analytical text and interviews with Bong's key collaborators. The book also explores Bong's rise in the cultural eye of the West, catching up readers with his career before his next masterpiece arrives.
ISBN/SKU: 
9781419758126
0
field_in_author: 
Little White Lies
Author: 
Publisher: 

Cinematic Illuminations : The Middle Ages on Film

Cinematic Illuminations : The Middle Ages on Film
$30.00

This engaging new study analyzes cinematic treatments of the Middle Ages within a diverse range of popular and artistic films.

At a time when students have more experience with watching movies than with reading and evaluating literature and history, Cinematic Illuminations harnesses the power of popular culture to make accessible a period that often seems forbidding and remote. From The Seventh Seal and The Lion in Winter to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the authors examine the ways in which the twentieth century has reimagined medieval times. Such analysis brings to life for students the literature, poetry, history, and art of the Middle Ages.

Drawing from current critical approaches to both medieval and film studies, Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman focus on two main issues of historical film. First is the inherent tension between the artifice required by film to create historical reality and the accuracy central to claims of history. Second are the ways iconography and filming conventions rewrite our understanding of the historical period portrayed in the film. In this case, the authors ask, how do contemporary representations of the Middle Ages influence cultural fantasies about our own time? Their detailed and accessible readings reveal just how strongly medieval history continues to resonate with modern audiences.

Cinematic Illuminations offers medievalists, literary and cultural theorists, and film theorists and buffs a fresh approach to understanding how popular culture interprets and makes use of the past through the medium of film.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780801893452
0
field_in_author: 
Finke, Laurie A./ Shichtman, M

Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World

Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World
$30.00
A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOK OF THE YEAR - BOOKLISTS' EDITOR'S CHOICE - ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

"At once a film book, a history book, and a civil rights book.... Without a doubt, not only the very best film book [but] also one of the best books of the year in any genre. An absolutely essential read." --Shondaland

This unprecedented history of Black cinema examines 100 years of Black movies--from Gone with the Wind to Blaxploitation films to Black Panther--using the struggles and triumphs of the artists, and the films themselves, as a prism to explore Black culture, civil rights, and racism in America. From the acclaimed author of The Butler and Showdown.

Beginning in 1915 with D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation--which glorified the Ku Klux Klan and became Hollywood's first blockbuster--Wil Haygood gives us an incisive, fascinating, little-known history, spanning more than a century, of Black artists in the film business, on-screen and behind the scenes.

He makes clear the effects of changing social realities and events on the business of making movies and on what was represented on the screen: from Jim Crow and segregation to white flight and interracial relationships, from the assassination of Malcolm X, to the O. J. Simpson trial, to the Black Lives Matter movement. He considers the films themselves--including Imitation of Life, Gone with the Wind, Porgy and Bess, the Blaxploitation films of the seventies, Do The Right Thing, 12 Years a Slave, and Black Panther. And he brings to new light the careers and significance of a wide range of historic and contemporary figures: Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier, Berry Gordy, Alex Haley, Spike Lee, Billy Dee Willliams, Richard Pryor, Halle Berry, Ava DuVernay, and Jordan Peele, among many others.

An important, timely book, Colorization gives us both an unprecedented history of Black cinema and a groundbreaking perspective on racism in modern America.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780525656876
0
field_in_author: 
Haygood, Wil
Author: 
Publisher: 

Jane Campion : Cinema, Nation, Identity

Jane Campion : Cinema, Nation, Identity
$34.95

In Jane Campion: Cinema, Nation, Identity a diverse group of contributors challenge the view that Campion's body of work lacks coherence or unity to instead examine the important characteristics and themes that underlie it. Editors Hilary Radner, Alistair Fox, and Irène Bessière have compiled rich, original scholarship on Campion's oeuvre to probe issues previously neglected by scholars--like her debt to New Zealand sources and her personal views of family dynamics--and those that benefit from additional insight--such as her place in the feminist filmmaking tradition. This volume also investigates Campion's distinct cinematic style in light of these issues to examine the source of her enduring cross-cultural and international appeal.

Contributors in the first section explore the creation of subjectivity and identity in Campion's films, which include well-known works like The Piano and Holy Smoke, to trace the unique perspectives of Campion's characters and Campion herself as director. In the second section, essays analyze Campion's close relationship with literature and argue that the singular vision in her literary adaptations stems from her New Zealand background and her personal mythology. Contributors in the third section argue that while Campion devotes considerable attention to the evocation of feminine internal space, she also uses the symbolic potential of her external physical locations to register what is taking place in the inner life of her characters and reflect their search for personal fulfillment. A final group of essays presents a variety of responses to Campion's films, demonstrating that Campion is a highly personal and idiosyncratic director who nonetheless manages to fascinate viewers across a broad cultural spectrum.

Taken together, contributors in Jane Campion: Cinema, Nation, Identity present a compelling analysis of Campion's status as a leading female filmmaker with close attention to her distinctive cinematic style and particular mise-en-scène. The collective nature of this volume will appeal to students and teachers of film, literature, and gender studies, as well as fans of Campion's work.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780814334324
0
field_in_author: 
Radner, Hilary (EDT)/ Fox, Ali

Maltese Touch of Evil : Film Noir and Potential Criticism

Maltese Touch of Evil : Film Noir and Potential Criticism
$39.95
Noir is among the most popular, acclaimed, and critically assessed film styles of all time. The unfortunate consequence is an ever-growing divergence between fans and scholars with regard to goals and methods for appreciating and studying noir. The Maltese Touch of Evil aims to bridge that gap. Based on a series of popular podcasts, this unique and inspired investigation of film noir sets out to examine the case of noir more closely, and in the process reconfigures the critical evidence on noir that has been presented to date. The Maltese Touch of Evil reproduces and re-sequences nearly 150 still images from 31 great films, laying them out with the authors' informed and entertaining insights into the significance of each shot. The result is a de facto meta-film noir, a celebration of the genre that shows how these films are themselves "constrained" texts whose carefully calculated visual forms simultaneously generate narrative and critical commentary on that narrative. You will never look at film noir the same way again.
ISBN/SKU: 
9781611680478
0
field_in_author: 
Clute, Shannon/ Edwards, Richa
Author: 
Publisher: 

Man Who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder, and the Movies

Man Who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder, and the Movies
$28.99
One of the New York Times Best True Crime of 2022

A "spellbinding, thriller-like" (Shelf Awareness) history about the invention of the motion picture and the mysterious, forgotten man behind it--detailing his life, work, disappearance, and legacy.

The year is 1888, and Louis Le Prince is finally testing his "taker" or "receiver" device for his family on the front lawn. The device is meant to capture ten to twelve images per second on film, creating a reproduction of reality that can be replayed as many times as desired. In an otherwise separate and detached world, occurrences from one end of the globe could now be viewable with only a few days delay on the other side of the world. No human experience--from the most mundane to the most momentous--would need to be lost to history.

In 1890, Le Prince was granted patents in four countries ahead of other inventors who were rushing to accomplish the same task. But just weeks before unveiling his invention to the world, he mysteriously disappeared and was never seen or heard from again. Three and half years later, Thomas Edison, Le Prince's rival, made the device public, claiming to have invented it himself. And the man who had dedicated his life to preserving memories was himself lost to history--until now.

The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures pulls back the curtain and presents a "passionate, detailed defense of Louis Le Prince...unfurled with all the cliffhangers and red herrings of a scripted melodrama" (The New York Times Book Review). This "fascinating, informative, skillfully articulated narrative" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) presents the never-before-told history of the motion picture and sheds light on the unsolved mystery of Le Prince's disappearance.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781982114824
0
field_in_author: 
Fischer, Paul
Author: 
Publisher: 

Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy

Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy
$28.00
This is a fascinating book. It will educate you. Schwartzel has done some extraordinary reporting. -- The New York Times Book Review

"In this highly entertaining but deeply disturbing book, Erich Schwartzel demonstrates the extent of our cultural thrall to China. His depiction of the craven characters, American and Chinese, who have enabled this situation represents a significant feat of investigative journalism. His narrative is about not merely the movie business, but the new world order." --Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree and The Noonday Demon

An eye-opening and deeply reported narrative that details the surprising role of the movie business in the high-stakes contest between the U.S. and China

From trade to technology to military might, competition between the United States and China dominates the foreign policy landscape. But this battle for global influence is also playing out in a strange and unexpected arena: the movies.

The film industry, Wall Street Journal reporter Erich Schwartzel explains, is the latest battleground in the tense and complex rivalry between these two world powers. In recent decades, as China has grown into a giant of the international economy, it has become a crucial source of revenue for the American film industry. Hollywood studios are now bending over backward to make movies that will appeal to China's citizens--and gain approval from severe Communist Party censors. At the same time, and with America's unwitting help, China has built its own film industry into an essential arm of its plan to export its national agenda to the rest of the world. The competition between these two movie businesses is a Cold War for this century, a clash that determines whether democratic or authoritarian values will be broadcast most powerfully around the world.

Red Carpet is packed with memorable characters who have--knowingly or otherwise--played key roles in this tangled industry web: not only A-list stars like Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, and Richard Gere but also eccentric Chinese billionaires, zany expatriate filmmakers, and starlets who disappear from public life without explanation or trace. Schwartzel combines original reporting, political history, and show-biz intrigue in an exhilarating tour of global entertainment, from propaganda film sets in Beijing to the boardrooms of Hollywood studios to the living rooms in Kenya where families decide whether to watch an American or Chinese movie. Alarming, occasionally absurd, and wildly entertaining, Red Carpet will not only alter the way we watch movies but also offer essential new perspective on the power struggle of this century.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781984878991
0
field_in_author: 
Schwartzel, Erich
Author: 
Publisher: