Films, cinema Books

Book SynopsisDark Crystal: The Ultimate Visual History is the definitive collection of rare artwork, interviews, and on-set photos from the beloved Jim Henson fantasy classic.A true masterpiece brought to life by the ingenious puppetry and peerless storytelling of Jim Henson, Dark Crystal is revered by an entire generation of fans. For the first time, this deluxe and highly comprehensive book tells the complete story of this deeply personal Henson project, highlighting the unique creative journey and groundbreaking techniques that brought the film to the screen. Drawing from unseen archive interviews with Jim Henson and new interviews with the film’s behind-the-scenes creative team, Dark Crystal: The Ultimate Visual History leaves no stone unturned in chronicling the entire production, from the initial concept based on themes close to Henson’s heart to the ingenious conceptual design, puppet construction, and logistics of the shoot itself. The book also delves into the wider world of Dark Crystal, exploring the creation of comics, novels, and other official projects inspired by the film. This deluxe coffee-table book contains an in-depth look at the day-to-day production of the film and showcases a huge range of incredible visuals, including candid set photography, previously unseen concept art, storyboards, production notes, and more. The book also features a plethora of amazing removable items, such as script pages, notes and sketches from Henson, and other unique treasures. Definitive, enthralling, and revelatory, Dark Crystal: The Ultimate Visual History is the last word on an enduring modern classic and the book that fans of the film have been waiting for.Trade Review"Every page is a treasure, overflowing with concept sketches, original illustrations, and photographs" * The Roarbots *

Read more less

Book SynopsisRecord your own magical journey with this Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them­–themed writing journal.Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them takes viewers to 1920s New York, introducing a whole new cast of wizards, witches, and No-Majs. This finely crafted journal celebrates the exquisite art and design of the film, and is the perfect accessory for fans of J.K. Rowling's Wizarding World.   With sturdy construction and a sewn binding, this journal lies flat, and the 192 lined, acid-free pages of high-quality, heavy stock paper take both pen and pencil nicely to encourage inspiration. The journal also features a ribbon placeholder, elastic closure, and back pocket ideal for holding small photographs and sketches.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis work is intended both as a teaching tool and as a reference for film and literature courses. It contains a list of three hundred francophone women directors from all over the world, and the titles of their films. Dates, descriptions, and critical comments on many of the films are included, as well as a glossary of film terms, questions for film analysis, sample syllabi, and an extensive bibliography.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis collection models an approach to Shakespeare and cinema that is concerned with the `other’ side of Shakespeare’s Hollywood celebrity, taking the reader on a practical and theoretical tour through important, non-mainstream films and the oppositional messages they convey. The collection includes essays on early silent adaptations of Hamlet, Greenway’s Prospero’s Books, Godard’s King Lear, Hall’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Taymor’s Titus, Polanski’s Macbeth, Welles’ Chimes at Midnight,I., and Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho.

Read more less

Book SynopsisLike its 1997 predecessor, Francophone Women Film Directors: A Guide is both a teaching tool and a directory for use by scholars and students of film and literature. Unique among guides dealing with film, both for its breadth and for the very fact that it is devoted exclusively to francophone women throughout the world, most of whom are omitted from other directories and studies, this guide contains listings of some three hundred francophone women filmmakers and their films. Whenever possible, dates, brief biographies, descriptions, and brief critical analyses are included. Themes studied include such subjects as abortion, pornography, prostitution, and mother-daughter relationships. A list of film sources and an extensive bibliography, and an index of geographical subdivisions, maximize the directory's usefulness.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book combines subtle readings of eight classic films (Casablanca, Vertigo, The Seventh Seal, Freud, Persona, Children of Paradise, Shakespeare in Love, and 8 ½) with memories and associations that make it possible for both the author and his readers to understand why he sees movies as he does.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book combines subtle readings of eight classic films (Casablanca, Vertigo, The Seventh Seal, Freud, Persona, Children of Paradise, Shakespeare in Love, and 8 ½) with memories and associations that make it possible for both the author and his readers to understand why he sees movies as he does.

Read more less

Book SynopsisFor decades scholarship on Federico Fellini has focused on the figure of the director himself, while formal analysis based on the craft of filmmaking has been largely ignored. Fellini spent countless hours in the studios of Cinecitta recording, mixing, and editing music, voices, and sound effects for his films, but his unique and often revolutionary uses of cinematic sound have never been systematically studied. This book reveals the singularly important role played by music in the construction of meaning in Fellini's black and white feature-length films, and presents a substantial re-reading of the seven films made during the most creative period of Fellini's artistic development: The White Sheik, I vitellini, La strada, Il bidone, The Nights if Cabiria, La dolce vita, and 8 1/2. The editing of music in Fellini's first films represents an entirely new approach to cinematic sound. The sophistication and complexity of Fellini's soundtracks far surpasses the neorealist models that are often assumed to form the practical foundation of Fellini's earliest works, and an analysis of the editing of music in these films reveals extraordinary innovation in the pairing of music and visual image. Although these films may often seem visually conventional, the soundtracks- characterized by abrupt cuts, comic synchronization with the visual image, unrealistic passages between nondiegetic and diegetic musical sources, and the coexistence of diegetic sources with nondiegetic musical accompaniment- undermine the verisimilitude of the projected image, facilitate aesthetic distance, and emphasize artifice at the expense of 'reality.' Functioning as an ironic, often dissonant counterpoint to the narrative structure of the visual images, the manifestly artificial editing of music in Fellini's films questions the verisimilitude of cinematic narration by revealing the interpenetratin of representation and reception, being and seeming, history and story, 'truth' and fiction.Trade Review'This is, without question, one of the most important works on Fellini in the last several decades, and unquestionably the most original. It is absolutely fundamental. It will have to be cited and used by anyone who writes about Fellini or teaches him' -- Ben Lawton, Chair Film/Video Studies, Purdue Unviersity

Read more less

Book SynopsisPlace, Setting, Perspective examines the films of the Italian filmmaker, Nanni Moretti, from a fresh viewpoint, employing the increasingly significant research area of space within a filmic text. The book is conceived with the awareness that space cannot be studied only in aesthetic or narrative terms: social, political, and cultural aspects of narrated spaces are equally important if a thorough appraisal is to be achieved of an oeuvre such as Moretti’s, which is profoundly associated with socio-political commentary and analysis. After an exploration of various existing frameworks of narrative space in film, the book offers a particular definition of the term based on the notions of Place, Setting, and Perspective. Place relates to the physical aspect of narrative space and specifically involves cityscapes, landscapes, interiors, and exteriors in the real world. Setting concerns genre characteristics of narrative space, notably its differentiated use in melodrama, detective stories, fantasy narratives, and gender based scenarios. Perspective encompasses the point of view taken optically by the camera which supports the standpoint of Moretti’s personal philosophy expressed through the aesthetic aspects which he employs to create narrative space. The study is based on a close textual analysis of Moretti’s eleven major feature films to date, using the formal film language of mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound. The aim is to show how Moretti selects, organizes, constructs, assembles, and manipulates the many elements of narrative space into an entire work of art, to enable meanings and pleasures for the spectator.Trade ReviewNanni Moretti’s films are not as well known in the US as they should be. His is an important body of work that follows in the footsteps of the great Italian neorealists and French New Wave filmmaker Eric Rohmer. Moretti (b. 1953) is much better known and acclaimed in his native Italy and across Europe, but this study by Andrews should bring more American viewers to his work. Andrews’s book, which grew from her dissertation, is only the second on Moretti available in English—after Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli's The Cinema of Nanni Moretti (CH, Dec'04, 42-2112)—and it does much to advance the scholarship on this director. As the title indicates, Andrews focuses on the significance of spaces in Moretti’s films. . . .Andrews organized her discussion around the different kinds of spaces—interior, exterior, thresholds, domestic, and so on—in the films and the relationships between spaces and themes and characters. Particularly strong are the chapters on Moretti's cinematic narrators as connected to perspective and on Moretti’s use of different settings and their connections to film genre. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty, professionals. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Clarifications List of Figures Chapter One: Introduction Part One: Place Chapter Two: Nearly All Roads Lead To Rome Chapter Three: Battling With Nature Chapter Four: Inside Chapter Five: Outside Part Two: Setting Chapter Six: Laughter and Tears Chapter Seven: The Scene of the Crime Chapter Eight: Sweet Dreams? Chapter Nine: Whose Space Is It Anyway? Part Three: Perspective Chapter Ten: Inside and Outside the Frame Chapter Eleven: A Certain Point of View Chapter Twelve: An Artist at Work Filmography Bibliography

Read more less

Book SynopsisPlace, Setting, Perspective examines the films of the Italian filmmaker, Nanni Moretti, from a fresh viewpoint, employing the increasingly significant research area of space within a filmic text. The book is conceived with the awareness that space cannot be studied only in aesthetic or narrative terms: social, political, and cultural aspects of narrated spaces are equally important if a thorough appraisal is to be achieved of an oeuvre such as Moretti’s, which is profoundly associated with socio-political commentary and analysis. After an exploration of various existing frameworks of narrative space in film, the book offers a particular definition of the term based on the notions of Place, Setting, and Perspective. Place relates to the physical aspect of narrative space and specifically involves cityscapes, landscapes, interiors, and exteriors in the real world. Setting concerns genre characteristics of narrative space, notably its differentiated use in melodrama, detective stories, fantasy narratives, and gender based scenarios. Perspective encompasses the point of view taken optically by the camera which supports the standpoint of Moretti’s personal philosophy expressed through the aesthetic aspects which he employs to create narrative space. The study is based on a close textual analysis of Moretti’s eleven major feature films to date, using the formal film language of mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound. The aim is to show how Moretti selects, organizes, constructs, assembles, and manipulates the many elements of narrative space into an entire work of art, to enable meanings and pleasures for the spectator.Trade ReviewNanni Moretti’s films are not as well known in the US as they should be. His is an important body of work that follows in the footsteps of the great Italian neorealists and French New Wave filmmaker Eric Rohmer. Moretti (b. 1953) is much better known and acclaimed in his native Italy and across Europe, but this study by Andrews should bring more American viewers to his work. Andrews’s book, which grew from her dissertation, is only the second on Moretti available in English—after Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli's The Cinema of Nanni Moretti (CH, Dec'04, 42-2112)—and it does much to advance the scholarship on this director. As the title indicates, Andrews focuses on the significance of spaces in Moretti’s films. . . .Andrews organized her discussion around the different kinds of spaces—interior, exterior, thresholds, domestic, and so on—in the films and the relationships between spaces and themes and characters. Particularly strong are the chapters on Moretti's cinematic narrators as connected to perspective and on Moretti’s use of different settings and their connections to film genre. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty, professionals. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Clarifications List of Figures Chapter One: Introduction Part One: Place Chapter Two: Nearly All Roads Lead To Rome Chapter Three: Battling With Nature Chapter Four: Inside Chapter Five: Outside Part Two: Setting Chapter Six: Laughter and Tears Chapter Seven: The Scene of the Crime Chapter Eight: Sweet Dreams? Chapter Nine: Whose Space Is It Anyway? Part Three: Perspective Chapter Ten: Inside and Outside the Frame Chapter Eleven: A Certain Point of View Chapter Twelve: An Artist at Work Filmography Bibliography

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis is a definitive study of films that have been built around the themes of love, death, and the afterlife—films about lovers who meet again (and love again) in heaven, via reincarnation, or through other kinds of after-death encounters. Far more than books about mere ghosts in the movies or religion in movies, Love in the Afterlife presents a complex but highly distinctive and unique pattern—the love-death-afterlife pattern—as it was handed down by the ancient Egyptians and Greeks (in the Isis and Orpheus myths, for example), developed by Freud and his followers in the duality of “Eros and Thanatos,” and then featured in popular movies from the 1920s to the recent past. Among its other qualities, Love in the Afterlife may encourage readers to look at movies differently and reflect upon the possibility that other patterns in cinema may have gone undetected for years. Furthermore, this book will show how the love-death-afterlife theme found its way into all sorts of different film types: melodramas, comedies, war films, horror films, film noir, and other genres. The book will be well illustrated and quotations from film reviews will enliven its pages. A long appendix gives production data on almost sixty individual films.Table of ContentsPreface Chapter 1: Philosophic and Literary Sources Chapter 2: The Cultural Milieu after World War I and the Seminal Plays Chapter 3: The “Mythical Method” as Applied to the Plot Template of Supernatural Romance Chapter 4: Berkeley Square and the Philosophic Problem of Time Chapter 5: The “Second Wave” of Plays and the Milieu of the Second World War Chapter 6: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and the Applications of Theology in Supernatural Romance Chapter 7: The Tradition Evolves Conclusion: Underground Religion Appendix One: Case Study: The Making of What Dreams May Come Appendix Two: Other Patters in Film that Justify Additional Study Appendix Three: Production Data for Supernatural Romances and Related Films Select Bibliography About the Author

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn Hitler in the Movies: Finding Der Führer on Film, a Shakespearean and a sociologist explore the fascination our popular culture has with Adolf Hitler. What made him … Hitler? Do our explanations tell us more about the perceiver than the actual historical figure? We ask such question by viewing the Hitler character in the movies. How have directors, actors, film critics, and audiences accounted for this monster in a medium that reflects public tastes and opinions? The book first looks at comedic films, such as Chaplain’s The Great Dictator or Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be (1942), along with the Mel Brooks’s 1983 version. Then, there is the Hitler of fantasy, from trash films like The Saved Hitler’s Brain to a serious work like The Boys from Brazil where Hitler is cloned. Psychological portraits include Anthony Hopkins’s The Bunker, the surreal The Empty Mirror, and Max, a portrait of Hitler in his days in Vienna as a would-be artist. Documentaries and docudramas range from Leni Reinfenstahl’s iconic The Triumph of the Will or The Hidden Führer, to the controversial Hitler: A Film from Germany and Quentin Tarantino’s fanciful Inglourious Basterds. Hitler in the Movies also considers the ways Der Führer remains today, as a ghostly presence, if not an actual character. Why is he still with us in everything from political smears to video games to merchandise? In trying to explain this and the man himself, what might we learn about ourselves and our society?Table of ContentsPreface: Hitler in the Movies Chapter 1: The Comic Hitler Chapter 2: The Hitler of Fantasy Films Chapter 3: Hitler the Character Chapter 4: Documentaries and Docudramas: Playing with the Facts Chapter 5: The Presence of Hitler Afterword: The “H” Word and Present-Day America Notes Index About the Authors

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn Hitler in the Movies: Finding Der Führer on Film, a Shakespearean and a sociologist explore the fascination our popular culture has with Adolf Hitler. What made him … Hitler? Do our explanations tell us more about the perceiver than the actual historical figure? We ask such question by viewing the Hitler character in the movies. How have directors, actors, film critics, and audiences accounted for this monster in a medium that reflects public tastes and opinions? The book first looks at comedic films, such as Chaplain’s The Great Dictator or Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be (1942), along with the Mel Brooks’s 1983 version. Then, there is the Hitler of fantasy, from trash films like The Saved Hitler’s Brain to a serious work like The Boys from Brazil where Hitler is cloned. Psychological portraits include Anthony Hopkins’s The Bunker, the surreal The Empty Mirror, and Max, a portrait of Hitler in his days in Vienna as a would-be artist. Documentaries and docudramas range from Leni Reinfenstahl’s iconic The Triumph of the Will or The Hidden Führer, to the controversial Hitler: A Film from Germany and Quentin Tarantino’s fanciful Inglourious Basterds. Hitler in the Movies also considers the ways Der Führer remains today, as a ghostly presence, if not an actual character. Why is he still with us in everything from political smears to video games to merchandise? In trying to explain this and the man himself, what might we learn about ourselves and our society?Table of ContentsPreface: Hitler in the Movies Chapter 1: The Comic Hitler Chapter 2: The Hitler of Fantasy Films Chapter 3: Hitler the Character Chapter 4: Documentaries and Docudramas: Playing with the Facts Chapter 5: The Presence of Hitler Afterword: The “H” Word and Present-Day America Notes Index About the Authors

Read more less

Book SynopsisCultural Roundabouts: Spanish Film and Novel on the Road, by Jorge Pérez, offers the first comprehensive inquiry about the road genre in Spain. Road narratives have recently received some scholarly attention within the field of Peninsular Studies through a few articles and book chapters, but no book-length study has been published so far. This book investigates how Spanish authors such as Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, Ray Loriga, Eugenio Fuentes, and Eugenia Rico, and filmmakers such as Juan Antonio Bardem, Cecilia Bartolomé, Fernando Guillén Cuervo, and Mariano Barroso employ the road genre to address the reconfiguration of the social, economic, and cultural landscape of Spain since 1975. One of the premises of this book is that, in the context of Spanish culture, road movies and novels should be discussed concurrently, as they emerge as a response to the same socio-historical circumstances, share many thematic and iconographic traits, and show reciprocal influences. The road genre, broadly defined as movies and novels in which the characters travel by driving a vehicle across, out of, or into the Spanish territory, offers the opportunity to examine a country in movement and, thus, to reflect on the topic of national mobility. This genre brings to the fore the modernization of Spain, as highlighted by the remodeled highway system, the development of the automobile industry, and the changes in the landscape. In this study, Pérez argues that road stories offer lenses through which one can observe contemporary Spain and its transformations, but also the shortcomings of its development. It is not a one-way journey of a whole community progressing at the same speed and along the same path. As the trope of the roundabout suggests, contemporary Spain seems to function with a fluid social and cultural circulation that allows movement from and to multiple directions. Yet, as with a roundabout in which specific traffic norms and hierarchies navigate flow, these narratives signalTable of ContentsChapter 1 Acknowledgments Chapter 2 Introduction: The Roundabouts of Spanish Culture and Society Chapter 3 Chapter 1: The Transition to Democracy on the Road Chapter 4 Chapter 2: The Soundtrack of the Road: Exploring Other Routes in Superhighway Spain Chapter 5 Chapter 3: Driving Abroad: The Narcissistic Road Story Chapter 6 Chapter 4: Spanish Women behind the Wheel: Seeking Alternative Communities on the Road Chapter 7 Conclusion Chapter 8 Notes Chapter 9 Bibliography Chapter 10 Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisEarly Modern Drama in Performance is a collection of essays in honor of Lois Potter, the distinguished author of five monographs, including most recently The Life of William Shakespeare (2012), and numerous articles, edited collections, and editions. This collection’s emphasis on Shakespearean and early modern drama reflects the area for which Potter is most widely known, as a performance critic, editor, and literary scholar. The essays by a diverse group of scholars who have been influenced by Potter address recurring themes in her work: Shakespeare and non-Shakespearean early modern drama, performance history and theatre practice, theatrical performance across cultures, play reviewing, and playreading. What unifies them most, though, is that they carry on the spirit of Potter’s work: her ability to meet a text, a performance, or a historical period on its own terms, to give scrupulous attention to specific details and elegantly show how these details generate larger meaning, and to recover and preserve the fleeting and the ephemeral.Table of ContentsIntroduction by Darlene Farabee, Mark Netzloff, and Bradley D. Ryner Chapter 1: Dramatic Verse and Early Modern Playgoers in Marlowe’s Time by Roslyn L. Knutson Chapter 2: The Usurer’s Theatrical Body: Refiguring Profit in The Jew of Malta and The Blind Beggar of Alexandria by Bradley D. Ryner Chapter 3: Theater of Anatomy: The Tragedy of Hoffman by Peter Hyland Chapter 4: 'Know you this ring?': Metonymic Functions of a Prop by Ann Thompson and John O. Thompson Chapter 5: Editing and Staging The Revenger's Tragedy: Three Problems by Alan C. Dessen Chapter 6: The ‘most unsavoury similes’ and Henry IV, Part One by Darlene Farabee Chapter 7: Shakespeare’s Cognitive Vision by Arthur Kinney Chapter 8: Shakespeare's Conception of Tragedy: The Middle Tragedies by Jay L. Halio Chapter 9: Shakespeare or not Shakespeare?: The propogation of the text in Europe through J. F. Ducis’s ‘Imitations’ by Michèle Willems Chapter 10:Un/natural Perspective: Viola on the late nineteenth-century stage by Virginia Mason Vaughan Chapter 11: Reading, Recitation, and Entertainments: The Dunedin Shakespeare Club, 1877-1956 by Evelyn Tribble Chapter 12: The power of Shakespeare’s word in twentieth-century Prague by Zdeněk Stříbrný Chapter 13: Showtime: Temporality and the Video Archive of Julius Caesar at the RSC by Andrew Hartley

Read more less