Film Art

The Ultimate History of the '80s Teen Movie goes behind the scenes of a genre where cult hits mingled with studio blockbusters, where giants like Spielberg and Coppola rubbed shoulders with baby-faced first-timers, and where future superstars Sean, Demi, and Tom all got their big break. Music, comedy, and politics all play a part in the surprisingly complex history of the '80s teen movie. And while the films might have been aimed primarily at adolescents, the best tackle universal issues and remain relevant to all ages.

In this concise, crisply written guide, Patricia Aufderheide takes listeners along the diverse paths of documentary history and charts the lively, often fierce debates among filmmakers and scholars about the best ways to represent reality and to tell the truths worth telling.

It’s been nearly twenty years since Ron Burgundy burst into movie fans’ lives, reminding San Diego to “stay classy” while lampooning a time gone by—although maybe not as far gone as we might think? In Kind of a Big Deal, comedy historian Saul Austerlitz tells the history of how Anchorman was developed, written, and cast, and how it launched the careers of future superstars like Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, and Paul Rudd, also setting the stage for a whole decade of comedy to come and influencing films like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Talladega Nights, Knocked Up, Superbad, and so many more.

At a time when the studio is making a stunning comeback, film historian Thomas Schatz provides an indispensable account of Hollywood's traditional blend of business and art. Working from industry documents, Schatz traces the development of house styles, the rise and fall of careers, and the making - and unmaking - of movies, from Frankenstein to Spellbound to Grand Hotel. The Genius of the System gives the definitive view of the workings of the Old Hollywood and the foundations of the New.

The animations of Japan's Studio Ghibli are among the most respected in the movie industry. Their delightful films rank alongside the most popular non-English language films ever made, with each new eagerly anticipated release a guaranteed box-office hit. Yet this highly profitable studio has remained fiercely independent, producing a stream of imaginative and individual animations. The studio's founders, the late Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki, have created timeless masterpieces. Although their films are distinctly Japanese, their themes are universal.

This edition of Story by Numbers is no longer available.

Her agent told her not to get on the plane. The male leads weren't even cast. The financing was shaky at best. The script had been rewritten countless times. And yet something about Wild Oats lured Shirley MacLaine to the film's location shoot in the far-off Canary Islands - and straight to the center of one of the most thrilling and paradigm-shifting adventures of her life.

Movies matter—that is the message of Reel to Real, bell hooks' classic collection of essays on film. They matter on a personal level, providing us with unforgettable moments, even life-changing experiences, and they can confront us, too, with the most profound social issues of race, sex and class. Here bell hooks—one of America's most celebrated and thrilling cultural critics—talks back to films that have moved and provoked her, from Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction to the work of Spike Lee.

Charles Band's Full Moon Entertainment was the most remarkable B-movie studio of the 1990s, responsible for a barrage of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror classics during the last true "golden age" of the home video era. From Puppetmaster to Trancers and beyond, Full Moon transformed the VHS experience for fans worldwide, bringing the inner workings of the movie-making process into the living room, and in turn creating a ravenous fan base that remains to this day.

Blake Snyder, uno de los guionistas de más éxito de Hollywood, ofrece una pintura ágil, divertida y franca de la trastienda de la industria cinematográfica. ¡Salva al gato! hace referencia a una de sus infalibles teorías para lograr que las ideas resulten más atractivas y cualquier guión más satisfactorio y, sobre todo, susceptible de venderse. Se trata de un término acuñado por el propio Snyder en alusión a una escena, absolutamente ineludible, en que el público va a conocer al protagonista de la película por primera vez y éste hace algo

"The meaning of life is the most urgent of questions", said the existentialist thinker Albert Camus. And no less a philosopher than Woody Allen has wondered: "How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world, given my waist and shirt size?" The essays in Movies and the Meaning of Life look at popular and cult movies, examining their assumptions and insights on meaning-of-life questions....

La vie de la reine Elisabeth II et de sa famille racontée dans une série à succès de Netflix réunit des millions de fans à chaque épisode de "The Crown". Netflix a investi 140 millions d'euros pour une seule saison de "The Crown", c'est la plus chère de l'histoire devant même "Game of Thrones". Depuis le succès de la série historique Rome diffusée sur HBO, les moyens des séries ont décuplé et le public ne s'y trompe pas.

From its first publication in 1992, Men, Women, and Chain Saws has offered a groundbreaking perspective on the creativity and influence of horror cinema since the mid-1970s. Investigating the popularity of the low-budget tradition, Carol Clover looks in particular at slasher, occult, and rape-revenge films. Although such movies have been traditionally understood as offering only sadistic pleasures to their mostly male audiences, Clover demonstrates that they align spectators not with the male tormentor, but with the females tormented.

Oscar-winning director Hayao Miyazaki is the genius behind such animated classics as Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds. His bountiful imagination and compassion have earned him accolades the world over. Until the early 1990s, Miyazaki’s work was largely unfamiliar to American audiences. But that would soon change, and now fans of all ages eagerly await new material from the master.

In Westworld and Philosophy, philosophers, filmmakers, scientists, activists, and ethicists ask the questions you're not supposed to ask and suggest the answers you're not supposed to know. There's a deeper level to this game, and this book charts a course through the maze of the mind, examining how we think about humans, hosts, and the world around us on a journey toward self-actualization.

In this wholly original work of film criticism, David Thomson, celebrated author of The Biographical Dictionary of Film, probes the many ways in which sexuality has shaped the movies - and the ways in which the movies have shaped sexuality.

The Thin Man films are one of the most highly regarded and successful series of films from Hollywood's classic era. This book looks at the people who populated the films, including full chapter profiles of its stars, William Powell and Myrna Loy, whose chemistry together was a huge reason for the success of the films. As Nick and Nora Charles, they knocked the stereotypes of on-screen marriage out of the park and replaced the stiff and formal with fun and sexy.

Ever since horror leapt from popular fiction to the silver screen in the late 1890s, viewers have experienced fear and pleasure in exquisite combination. Wheeler Winston Dixon's A History of Horror is the only book to offer a comprehensive survey of this ever-popular film genre. Arranged by decades, with outliers and franchise films overlapping some years, this one-stop sourcebook unearths the historical origins of characters such as Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman and their various incarnations in film from the silent era to comedic sequels.

A series of happy coincidences and serendipitous events is the answer. A fluke, then? Yes, but not exactly, given that huge amounts of commitment and hard work have been required. Eclipsed is the unlikely but true story of an ordinary family, muddling through life without much of a plan and dealing with circumstances that confound normal expectations. Written by a dad who as a professional comedian took his own shot at show-biz stardom and called Eclipsed because his carefully honed plans didn't work out so well.

Jewel thievery, car chases, and romance on the French Riviera. Alfred Hitchcock's Oscar-winning film To Catch a Thief brought together Hollywood's two most glamorous stars, Grace Kelly and Cary Grant, in the most glamorous place on Earth, the French Riviera. It is a tale of jewel thievery, intrigue, false identity, covert investigation, and, most of all, romance.