Search results for ""Author David Thomson""

In little more than a century of cinema - Birth of a Nation was one hundred years old in 2015 - our sense of what a film director is, or should be, has shifted in fascinating ways. A director was once a functionary; then an important but not decisive part of an industrial process; then accepted as the person who was and should be in charge, because he was an artist and a hero. But the world has changed. In a nutshell, the change takes the form of a question: Who directed The Sopranos or Homeland? Hardly anyone knows, because we don't tend to read TV credits and the director has returned to a more subservient and anonymous role. Directors now try to be efficient, the deliverers of profitable films, and are often involved as producers, like Steven Spielberg.David Thomson's brilliant A Light in the Dark personalises each chapter through an individual: Jean Renoir, Howard Hawks, Jean-Luc Godard, Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Bunuel, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, Jane Campion, Stephen Frears and Quentin Tarantino. Through these characters (and other directors not mentioned here), David Thomson relates an imaginative new history of a medium that has changed the world.

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The Big Sleep: Marlowe and Vivian practising kissing; General Sternwood shivering in a hothouse full of orchids; a screenplay, co-written by Faulkner, famously mysterious and difficult to solve. Released in 1946, Howard Hawks' adaptation of Raymond Chandler reunited Bogart and Bacall and gave them two of their most famous roles. The mercurial but ever-manipulative Hawks dredged humour and happiness out of film noir. 'Give him a story about more murders than anyone can keep up with, or explain,' David Thomson writes in his compelling study of the film, 'and somehow he made a paradise.' When it was first shown to a military audience The Big Sleep was coldly received. So, as Thomson reveals, Hawks shot extra scenes, 'fun' scenes, to replace one in which the film's murders had been explained, and in so doing left the plot unresolved. Thomson argues that, if this was accidental, it also signalled a change in the nature of Hollywood cinema: 'The Big Sleep inaugurates a post-modern, camp, satirical view of movies being about other movies that extends to the New Wave and Pulp Fiction.'

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In this triumphant work David Thomson, one of film's greatest living experts and author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, tells the enthralling story of the movies and how they have shaped us.Sunday Times, New Statesman, The Times, Guardian, Observer and Independent BOOKS OF THE YEARTaking us around the globe, through time and across multiple media, Thomson tracks the ways in which we were initially enchanted by this mesmerizing imitation of life and let movies - the stories, the stars, the look - show us how to live. But at the same time he shows us how movies, offering a seductive escape from the everyday reality and its responsibilities, have made it possible for us to evade life altogether. The entranced audience has become a model for powerless citizens trying to pursue happiness by sitting quietly in a dark room. Does the big screen take us out into the world, or merely mesmerize us? That is Thomson's question in this great adventure of a book. A passionate feat of storytelling that is vital to anyone trying to make sense of the age of screens - the age that, more than ever, we are living in.

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Noah Cross, Norma Desmond, Norman Bates, Harry Lime - these are a few of nearly a hundred names that inhabit the mind of the narrator as he starts to compose short biographies of some of the most famous characters in the history of film noir. He sketches in whole lives, lives as intense as the dreams put up on the screen. Then these characters start to meet each other outside the films as if they were real people with real needs and passions. The book is becoming a novel. The names and faces are familiar to us - Jake Gittes from Chinatown, Laura Hunt and Waldo Lydecker from Laura, Rick and Ilsa from Casablanca - but is it true that Noah Cross and Norma Desmond were lovers in the twenties, that she and Joe Gillis had a son who grew up to be Julian Kay in American Gigolo? For the narrator is not merely the author. Married to the sister of Laura Hunt, he has a mission to carry out, a lost family link to find, a thread to pull so that nearly all these disparate characters come together to form a kind of society. Suspects is the most inspired of commentaries on film noir and the forms of Hollywood story-telling. It is in its way a biographical dictionary, but it is also a dazzlingly original work of fiction, so full of America, of an old man's dread of loss and failure, and of a simultaneous love and rage for these movies that you may find its impossible world as real and as touching as any you have ever inhabited. Ultimately an examination on how movies affect the way we think and how film not only shapes our perceptions and our memories but in some ways comes to stand in for them, Suspects can be read as an unsettling examination of identity and the construction of self through the medium of narratives, or simply as a fascinating take on movie fandom. Either way, it's fabulous.

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A leading film critic on the evolving world of streaming media and its impact on society The city at night under lockdown, a time of plague and anxiety. It is an exciting new age of television, the light that flutters in every cell in the city. But no one seems to be asking: What is the endless stream doing to us? In Remotely, the most innovative writer on film and screens asks what happened to us as we sought consolation under lockdown by becoming a society of bingeing creatures. From Candid Camera and I Love Lucy to Ozark, Succession, and Chernobyl, David Thomson and his wife, Lucy Gray, wander through shows old and new, trying to pin down the nature and justification for what we call “entertainment.” Funny, mysterious, and warm, at last here is a book that grasps the extent to which television is not just a collection of particular shows—hits and misses—but a weather system in which we are lost pilgrims searching for answers.

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A deep—and darkly comic—dive into the nature of disasters, and the ways they shape how we think about ourselves in the world “In this brilliant book, David Thomson tells the story of how we came to make disaster and catastrophe our best friends—how we let terror cocoon and take over our imaginations to avoid seeing the things that really frighten us. Riveting and totally original.”—Adam Curtis, BBC filmmaker and political journalist “Erudite. . . . Engaging. . . . A cri de coeur about art’s struggle to keep up with reality.”—Kirkus Reviews Audiences swell with the scale of disaster; humans have always been drawn to the rumors of our own demise. In this searching treatment, noted film historian David Thomson examines iconic disasters, both real and fictional, exposing the slippage between what occurs and what we observe. With reportage, film commentary, speculation, and a liberating sense of humor, Thomson shows how digital culture commodifies disaster and sates our desire to witness chaos while suffering none of its aftereffects. Ranging from Laurel and Hardy and Battleship Potemkin to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and from the epic San Andreas to the intimate Don’t Look Now, Thomson pulls back the curtain to reveal why we love watching disaster unfold—but only if it happens to others.

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From one of the greatest living writers on film, a magisterial look at a century of battle depicted on screen, and a meditation on the twisted relationship between war and the movies.“Thomson’s own genius is his ability to remain one of the leading authorities on cinematic history, without shying away from the controversial. Cinephiles seeking provocative arguments will appreciate his work.”—Library JournalIn The Fatal Alliance the acclaimed film critic David Thomson offers us one of his most provocative books yet—a rich, arresting, and troubling study of that most beloved genre: the war movie. It is not a standard history or survey of war films, although Thomson turns his typically piercing eye to many favorites—from All Quiet on the Western Front to The Bridge on the River Kwai to Saving Private Ryan. But The Fatal Alliance does much more, exploring how war and cinema in the twentieth century became inextricably linked. Movies had only begun to exist by the beginning of World War I, yet in less than a century, had transformed civilian experience of war—and history itself—for millions around the globe. This reality is the moral conundrum at the heart of Thomson’s book. War movies bring both prestige and are so often box office blockbusters; but is there something problematic at how much moviegoers enjoy depictions of violence on a grand scale, such as Apocalypse Now, Black Hawk Down, or even Star Wars? And what does this truth say about us, our culture, and our changing sense of warfare and the past?

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Renowned film critic David Thomson plumbs the horror and inspiration of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest film.

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A renowned movie critic on film’s treatment of one of mankind’s darkest behaviors: murder “[Thomson’s] analysis of death in Hitchcock movies is gorgeous. His restlessness is palpable. There is an anxiety in this brief, hurried book that suits these political and medical times.”—Lisa Schwarzbaum, New York Times Book Review Included in the New York Times Book Review’s “Best Books to Give” holiday list, 2020 How many acts of murder have each of us followed on a screen? What does that say about us? Do we remain law-abiding citizens who wouldn’t hurt a fly? Film historian David Thomson, known for wit and subversiveness, leads us into this very delicate subject. While unpacking classics such as Seven, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Strangers on a Train, The Conformist, The Godfather, and The Shining, he offers a disconcerting sense of how the form of movies makes us accomplices in this sinister narrative process. By turns seductive and astringent, very serious and suddenly hilarious, Murder and the Movies admits us into what Thomson calls “a warped triangle”: the creator working out a compelling death; the killer doing his and her best; and the entranced reader and spectator trying to cling to life and a proper sense of decency.

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From one of the most admired critics of our time, brilliant insights into the act of watching movies and an enlightening discussion about how to derive more from any film experience. Since first publishing his landmark Biographical Dictionary of Film in 1975 (now in its sixth edition), David Thomson has been one of the most trusted authorities on all things cinema. Now, he offers his most inventive exploration of the medium yet: guiding us through each element of the viewing experience, considering the significance of everything from what we see and hear on screen - actors, shots, cuts, dialogue, music - to the specifics of how, where, and with whom we do the viewing. With customary candour and wit, Thomson delivers keen analyses of a range of films from classics such as Psycho and Citizen Kane to contemporary fare such as 12 Years a Slave and All Is Lost, revealing how to more deeply appreciate both the artistry and manipulation of film, and how watching movies approaches something like watching life itself. Discerning, funny and utterly unique, How to Watch a Movie is a welcome twist on the classic proverb: Give a movie fan a film, she'll be entertained for an hour or two; teach a movie fan to watch, her experience will be enriched forever.

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A history of Europe since Napoleon, covering all of the main topics of that period.

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David Thomson is a British film critic and historian based in the USA and the author of more than twenty books. His reference works in particular Have You Seen...?: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films and The New Biographical Dictionary of Film have been praised as works of high literary merit and eccentricity. John Banville called him the greatest living writer on the movies'.

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The third novel in David Thomson's series inspired by movie genres - an enchanting yet haunting celebration of screwball romantic comedies. In 1985, with the acclaimed Suspects, and then in 1990 with the exhilarating Silver Light, David Thomson delivered unprecedented fictions in which the characters were figures from film noir and the Western. Now a trilogy is completed with Connecticut. Why Connecticut? Because that lovely, liberal state has been set aside as the resting place for every disturbed person in the nation! At first, this seems like an opportunity for meeting up with the merry ghosts of Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, William Powell and Margaret Sullavan. We get glimpses of Bringing Up Baby, My Man Godfrey and The Lady Eve. But then the wild comedy darkens as we realize that Connecticut itself is on the edge of a demented and cruel war that challenges all its inmates to keep seeing the comic side of mishap and madness. The trilogy is revealed not just as a set of dazzling stories. But a commentary on how far we have all been steered towards delightful but dangerous fantasies by the movies. Aren't we all screwball now? Is Connecticut safe to visit?

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Behind the scenes at the legendary Warner Brothers film studio, where four immigrant brothers transformed themselves into the moguls and masters of American fantasyWarner Bros charts the rise of an unpromising film studio from its shaky beginnings in the early twentieth century through its ascent to the pinnacle of Hollywood influence and popularity. The Warner Brothers—Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack—arrived in America as unschooled Jewish immigrants, yet they founded a studio that became the smartest, toughest, and most radical in all of Hollywood. David Thomson provides fascinating and original interpretations of Warner Brothers pictures from the pioneering talkie The Jazz Singer through black-and-white musicals, gangster movies, and such dramatic romances as Casablanca, East of Eden, and Bonnie and Clyde. He recounts the storied exploits of the studio’s larger-than-life stars, among them Al Jolson, James Cagney, Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, Doris Day, and Bugs Bunny. The Warner brothers’ cultural impact was so profound, Thomson writes, that their studio became “one of the enterprises that helped us see there might be an American dream out there.”

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Woodbrook is a rare house that gives its name to a small, rural area in Ireland, not far from the old port of Sligo. It has been owned since the seventeenth century by the Anglo-Irish Kirkwoods. In 1932, David Thomson, aged eighteen, went there are a tutor. He stayed for ten years.This memoir, acknowledged as a masterpiece, grew out of two great loves - for Woodbrook and for Phoebe, his pupil. In it he builds up a delicate, lyrical picture of a gentle pre-war society, of Irish history and troubled Anglo-Irish relations, and of a delightful family. Above all, his story reverberates with the enchantment of falling in love and with the desolation of bereavement.

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From 1865 to 1950, the multi-faceted world of the American West, its rich, colorful characters, and its many faces - historical, mythic, and cinematic - are captured in the story of a reclusive, elderly photographer and her friend, a writer of Western comic books. Two characters dominate the novel's foreground: a Georgia O'Keeffe-like figure, photographer Susan Garth, shrewd, cantankerous, reclusive, and still self-reliant at 80, and her longtime friend Bark Blaylock, a western writer/filmmaker who may be Wyatt Earp's son. A subplot involves James Averill, a wealthy Easterner who sees his philandering as a frontiersman's quest for knowledge. As the time frame shuttles between 1950 and the late 1800s, we meet Susan's father, a gentlemanly cattle rancher who reads Thomas Hardy, and serves as a springboard to the Old West of Bat Masterson, Geronimo and Billy the Kid. The cast includes Willa Cather, Montgomery Clift, Charles Ives, Judge Roy Bean and numerous characters smuggled in from such movies as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Silver Light artfully juxtaposes the brimming frontier of legend against a construct of the West as a constricted wilderness of the soul.

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A book that sees Hollywood as an idea, a trick, a religion even that swept the world, a book that knows what the bosses did, and why and how, but which also feels the impact on the mass audiences in the dark auditoriums. There isn't a book that explains - even at a basic level - how the business, the money, of pictures operates. THE WHOLE EQUATION takes the history and describes the grand panorama so that the reader knows how he or she fitted in, along with Bogart, the Marx Brothers and Daryl Zanuck. The business is the neglected aspect of the story, neglected because its truths threaten the alleged magic, the romance of the movies. Yet, the money is the true sexual secret of Hollywood, and David Thomson leaves the reader quite clear, that amid all the hype and pretension, we should always 'follow the money'.

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All 82 photographs included in this two-volume set date from the Second World War; none were taken by professional photographers. In the back of each volume the images are exhibited at their actual size, showing front and back. In the front sections, the images are enlarged. This edit provides a guidebook to the stratified emotions of warfare.

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Since 2012, hundreds of men and women have left Western countries to join jihadist groups fighting in Syria. Many are still there, many have been killed, but some have chosen to return to their countries of origin. French Journalist David Thomson met some of those who came back. Bilel, Yassin, Zoubeir, Lena, each has a different profile and story. Some have returned disgusted by the violence of the Syrian battlefields, or the terrorist attacks that have struck across Europe; they try to become forgotten, living under extreme surveillance. Others return seriously wounded or psychologically destroyed. Others still are in jail, a breeding ground for broader radicalization. And some have come back to continue to carry out jihad in Europe. In utmost secrecy, David Thomson gathered their testimonies and recounts them in this remarkable and revealing book. With ISIS losing ground on all fronts, the steady flow of jihadists returning to Europe represents one of the greatest challenges facing countries across the continent. This nuanced analysis of the social, religious, political, familial and psychological factors that push people to violent extremism is more necessary now than ever. It will be essential reading for all those seeking to understand how we might address this threat.

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Since 2012, hundreds of men and women have left Western countries to join jihadist groups fighting in Syria. Many are still there, many have been killed, but some have chosen to return to their countries of origin. French Journalist David Thomson met some of those who came back. Bilel, Yassin, Zoubeir, Lena, each has a different profile and story. Some have returned disgusted by the violence of the Syrian battlefields, or the terrorist attacks that have struck across Europe; they try to become forgotten, living under extreme surveillance. Others return seriously wounded or psychologically destroyed. Others still are in jail, a breeding ground for broader radicalization. And some have come back to continue to carry out jihad in Europe. In utmost secrecy, David Thomson gathered their testimonies and recounts them in this remarkable and revealing book. With ISIS losing ground on all fronts, the steady flow of jihadists returning to Europe represents one of the greatest challenges facing countries across the continent. This nuanced analysis of the social, religious, political, familial and psychological factors that push people to violent extremism is more necessary now than ever. It will be essential reading for all those seeking to understand how we might address this threat.

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When David Thomson took a journey to the sea coasts of Scotland and Ireland to seek out the legend of the selchies - mythological creatures who transform from seals into humans - a magical world emerged. Men were rescued by seals in stormy seas, took seal-women for their wives and had their children suckled by seal-mothers.Timeless and haunting, The People of the Sea retains its spellbinding charm and brings to life the enchanting stories of these mysterious creatures of Celtic folklore.

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"This monograph offers vivid explanatory captions, but there is little additional text to distract from the powerful images that put a human face on conflict." — Communication Arts “Tomasevic’s images sear themselves into your consciousness. I have never seen such powerful imagery that not only captures the horror of war itself but also its heartrending impact on innocent civilians, on our sense of our own humanity. But they do much more than that. They have an iconic quality as if created with a painter’s eye for detail, composition and contrast.” - John Green, Morning Star “This powerful, terrible book conveys a Dantesque vision of our humanity. Admiration for Goran Tomašević, a wonderful Caravaggio of photography!” - Francis Kochert, Académie nationale de Metz Goran Tomašević is a living legend. Not only has he survived for 30 years in crisis zones, but he has mastered the supreme art of photography, interpreting the world in a humanistic way, following in the footsteps of Robert Capa and James Nachtwey. This powerful, terrifying book conveys a Dantesque vision of our humanity. Current circumstances lead us to believe that this madness will go on and on. Goran is just 13 years old when his father gives him his first camera - an ancient FED 5V. And with it, his life begins to become a constant adventure, described in the 444 pages of this book. The quality of his reportage and the power of his images enabled him to join the Reuters agency in 1996 and, over the next 20 years, to become one of the most awarded photographers in the world. His œuvre can be called a photographic synthesis of the arts, an eminent contribution to the great path of photo reportage and an indispensable history of the last 30 years. Goran Tomašević's credo: "If you want to present the facts authentically, you have to be where they are. That's the challenge."  Text in English, German, and French.

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Practical strategies to propel your company to the top American business is entering unchartered territory. Recent trends suggest that we are moving out of a recession-fairly labeled The Great Recession-into a recovery phase characterized by high unemployment with growth. As such, the business road ahead will be challenging. Growth will be harder to achieve and business failure will be more prevalent. But the best of America's growth businesses will pass through this cycle to experience renewed and hopeful growth in contrast to the high failure rate of those who fail to grow. The numbers are proving this to be the extreme case-a higher upside with a greater failure rate. What are America's recession-proof, highest growth companies doing differently? What are the values, fundamentals, and actions that will make the difference between failure, or just surviving and thriving? The answer to these questions is, what Thomson calls, The 7 Essentials-value proposition, high growth market segment, marquee customers, big brother alliances, exponential returns, inside/outside leadership, and essential board experts. This book is the timely answer to the search for what it will take to propel a company's growth through these challenging times. It's for management teams of any business, independent of size or industry, which desires to identify a course of action to improve their opportunities to grow. "Applying the 7 Essentials will improve your company's growth prospects," says author David Thomson. Growth companies are especially defined by their ability to grow through recession and recovery periods to become the new growth leaders. The case studies and the numbers in this book prove it. This reliable resource extends the insights from Thomson's bestselling book, Blueprint to a Billion: 7 Essentials to Achieve Exponential Growth to apply the 7 Essentials to all companies. Thomson is known as America's growth expert on what it takes to transform a small business into a billion dollar one. He has been recognized by Investors Business Daily as the "Guru for Uncovering the Blueprint for Sizzling Growth Companies." Offers busy professionals essential insights that will move their business or business unit beyond surviving and into thriving now and in the future Written by an expert on how companies achieve growth in challenging markets Contains key CEO interviews and quick case studies and is supported by on-line scoring tools to help teams apply the 7 Essentials Economic weakness has not changed the need for companies to grow. This book provides you with a proven framework to overcome such challenges and thrive in today's challenging business environment.

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