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This sixth edition improves upon the fifth edition, primarily by updating many examples to reflect more recent films. Especially interesting is the array of color plates at the center of the book, which helps to make related examples even more vivid.
user comment on amazonRead More »
Hal Ashby set the standard for subsequent independent filmmakers by crafting unique, thoughtful, and challenging films that continue to influence new generations of directors. Initially finding success as an editor, Ashby won an Academy Award for editing In the Heat of the Night (1967), and he translated his skills as an editor into a career as one of the quintessential directors of 1970s.
Perhaps best remembered for the enduring cult classic Harold and Maude (1971), Ashby quickly became known for melding quirky comedy and intense drama with performances from A-list actors such as Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail (1973), Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn in Shampoo (1975), Jon Voight and Jane Fonda in Coming Home (1978), and Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine in Being There (1979). Ashby’s personal life was difficult. He endured his parents’ divorce, his father’s suicide, and his own failed marriage all before the age of nineteen, and his notorious drug abuse contributed to the decline of his career near the end of his life.Read More »
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From the blurb
Pu was born into a stormy household. The courtship and early years of his parents’ marriage are already described in Ingmar Bergman’s novel The Best Intentions. And in Sunday’s Child the eight-year-old boy is all too alert to the recurrent quarrels resounding through the thin walls of the parental bedroom: his daunting father (a priest) and his adored mother, he realises to his terror, no longer want to be together.Read More »
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In the summer of 1984, my brother and his Greek wife came on a visit to my home on the island of Firo. He was then sixty-nine and a retired consul general. He had dutifully stayed in his post despite severe paralysis. By now he could move only his head, his breathing was jerky and his speech difficult to understand. We spent our days talking about our childhood.
He remembered much more than I did. He spoke of his hatred of Father and his strong ties to Mother. To him, they were still parents, mysterious creatures, capricious, incomprehensible and larger than life. We made our way along overgrown paths and stared at each other in astonishment, two elderly gentlemen, now at an insuperable distance from each other. Our mutual antipathy had gone, but had left space for emptiness; there was no contact, no affinity. My brother wanted to die, but was at the same time frightened of dying; a raging will to live keeping his lungs and heart going. He also pointed out that he had no chance of committing suicide because he could not move his hands.Read More »
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This extraordinary book is not just about filmmaking, it’s about all art…about life, faith, inner exploration and the Russian soul. It contains exquisite poetry, mostly written by his father, Arseniy Tarkovsky, and detailed descriptions of the making of several of his films as well as photos of them that are eerie, mystical, and incredibly beautiful. Tarkovsky is the master of making us see the wonder of creation in the most mundane subjects. He brings us one step closer in our journey towards the light. From page 43: “The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good”.Read More »
A revered filmmaker, Andrei Tarkovsky is secure in the long and illustrious line of Russian masters in arts and letters. Linking cinematic technique to broader questions of meaning and intrepretation, Robert Bird offers a wholly original investigation into the aesthetic principles of Tarvkovsky’s filmmaking. While providing a comprehensive analysis of his work in all media, including radio, theatre and opera, Bird argues that Tarkovsky was most at home in the cinema. Accordingly, the author dwells chiefly on Tarkovsky’s major films: Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, Mirror, Stalker, Nostalghia and Sacrifice. With its wealth of film stills and photographs, this book is a key text for all admirers of Tarkovsky and European cinema.Read More »
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Ostensibly a set report on the filming of Lost Highway for Premiere magazine but of course a much more ambitious piece than that; as you can only expect from Foster Wallace. This is more a nuanced (and very funny) interrogation of the whole Lynchian aesthetic with Wallace trying to get straight in his own mind why he’s so fascinated by Lynch’s work.
This is not the Premier piece but the greatly expanded version that appeared in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. If you enjoy this, please do hunt down a copy of this wonderful collection of essays (this is far from the best piece there; still pretty good though).Read More »
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Among Asian countries-where until recently documentary filmmaking was largely the domain of central governments-Japan was exceptional for the vigor of its nonfiction film industry. And yet, for all its aesthetic, historical, and political interest, the Japanese documentary remains little known and largely unstudied outside of Japan. This is the first English-language study of the subject, an enlightening close look at the first fifty years of documentary film theory and practice in Japan.
Beginning with films made by foreigners in the nineteenth century and concluding with the first two films made after Japan’s surrender in 1945, Abé Mark Nornes moves from a “prehistory of the documentary,” through innovations of the proletarian film movement, to the hardening of style and conventions that started with the Manchurian Incident films and continued through the Pacific War. Nornes draws on a wide variety of archival sources-including Japanese studio records, secret police reports, government memos, letters, military tribunal testimonies, and more-to chart shifts in documentary style against developments in the history of modern Japan.
Abé Mark Nornes is associate professor at the University of Michigan, where he teaches in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures and the Program in Film and Video Studies.Read More »
“Perhaps the earliest single source which tried to bring together information on the film industry is The Kinematograph Year Book, Program Diary and Directory for 1914.
The directory gives an overview of the previous year (1913) and contains a wide range of articles and information. Also present are many advertisements, not only for films and film companies but also suppliers and service providers. It also contains a directory of all cinemas in the UK at the time.”
contents:
A Retrospect Of The Year
Kinematograph Finance in 1913
Survey of the Year’s Technical Progress
Important Film Subjects of the Year
Picture Theatre Music during 1913
The Law and the Kinematograph
Interesting Social Functions
New Theatres Opened in 1913
New Companies Registered in 1913
Review of Decisions made under the
Cinematograph Act 1909
Important Law Cases of the Year
Personalities
Pictorial Reminiscences extending
over 40 years – 1873-1914
Exhibitions during 1913
Trade Associations
Useful Tables and RecipesRead More »