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Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer Joan Simon(ed) Yale University Press, 2009 $77.95pb This book celebrates the achievements of Alice Guy Blaché (1873–1968), the first woman motion picture director and producer. From 1896 to 1907, she created films for Gaumont in Paris. In 1907, she moved to the United States and established her own film company, Solax.
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The Art of Film: John Box and Production Design Ian Christie Wallflower Press, 2009 $75.00 pb John Box had one of the most continuously productive design careers in British cinema, winning a record four Academy Awards and four BAFTAs. After learning his craft in the 1950s, he shot to fame with Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Directors from David Lean and Carol Reed to Michael Mann and Norman Jewison have valued his experience, as he brought 'a vocabulary of life' to bear on the new challenges posed by each film. Whether creating China in Wales for The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), or revolutionary Russia in Spain for Dr. Zhivago (1965), imagining the future in Rollerball (1975) or the mythic past in First Knight (1995), Box shaped screen worlds across five decades, helping to establish the traditions of British production design which continue today. His greatest wish was that his career should encourage others by example.
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Ava Gardner: Love is Nothing Lee Server Bloomsbury, 2010 $26.99 pb Ava Gardner
was the sex symbol who dazzled the other sex symbols. Elizabeth Taylor and
Lana Turner thought her the most beautiful woman they had ever seen. She
drove Frank Sinatra to the brink of suicide. Ernest Hemingway carried around
one of her kidney stones as a sacred memento. Howard Hughes begged her to
marry him, she punched out his front teeth.
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Behind a Velvet Light Trap Anthony Buckley Hardie Grant, 2009 $59.95hb As the editor of the classic films Wake in Fright, Age of Consent and Nureyev’s Don Quixote, and producer of such masterly films as Caddie, Bliss, The Oyster Farmer, The Night, the Prowler and The Killing of Angel Street, as well as television series that include Poor Man’s Orange, Celluloid Heroes and Man on the Rim, Tony Buckley is well placed to take us behind the scenes to observe through his eyes the fascinating growth of Australian film making.
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Blade Runners, Deer Hunters & Blowing the Bloody Doors Off: My Life in Cult Movies Michael Deeley Faber, 2010 $24.99 pb One man links The Deer Hunter, Blade Runner, The Italian Job, Don't Look Now, The Wicker Man and The Man Who Fell To Earth. Producer Michael Deeley, an urbane Englishman in Hollywood, had to fight wars to get these movies made, from defending the legendary sex scene of Don't Look Now from a disapproving Warren Beatty to seizing control of Convoy from a cocaine-ridden Sam Peckinpah. This is a no-holds-barred look at the true stories behind some of the greatest cult movies ever made.
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Born to Be Hurt: the Untold Story of Imitation of Life Sam Staggs St. Martins Press, 2010 $28.95 pb Douglas Sirk's film Imitation of Life sparks another beguiling celebration of Old Hollywood for Staggs, author of All About All About Eve. Staggs sections the 1959 melodrama’s subplots into a campy blonde side (Lana Turner and Sandra Dee as a Broadway star and her daughter, battling over a man), and a tragic dark side (Juanita Miller and Susan Kohner as a black maid and the light-skinned daughter who repudiates her). Refracting themes of racial anxiety, confused identity and the mutual wounds parents and children inflict through Sirk’s subtly ironic direction, the movie, Staggs writes, is a florid valentine with a deaths-head where Cupid ought to be. Staggs's luxuriously digressive account ranges far beyond the featured attraction.
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Casting a Shadow: Creating the Alfred Hitchcock Film Will Schemmer Northwestern University Press, 2008 $64.95 pb Alfred Hitchcock is often held up as the prime example of the one-man filmmaker, conceiving and controlling all aspects of his films’ development - the archetype of genius over collaboration. An exhibition at the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, however, put the lie to Hitchcock-as-auteur, presenting more than seventy-five sketches, designs, watercolors, paintings, and storyboards that, together, examine Hitchcock’s very collaborative filmmaking process. The four essays in this collection were written to accompany the exhibition and delve further into Hitchcock’s contributions to the collaborative process of art in film. Curtis considers the four functions of Hitchcock’s sketches and storyboards and how they undermine the impression of Hitchcock as a lone artist. Tom Gunning examines the visual vocabulary and cultural weight of Hitchcock’s movies. Bill Krohn focuses sharply on the film I Confess, tracking its making over a very cooperative path. Finally, Jan Olsson draws on the television series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, to show the ways that collaboration contributes to the formation of his well known public persona.
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The Cinema of Ang Lee: The Other Side of the Screen Whitney Dilley Wallflower, 2008 $49.95 pb Born in Taiwan, Ang Lee is one of cinema's most versatile yet popular directors, whose ability to cut across cultural, national and sexual boundaries has given him recognition in all corners of the world. His astonishingly diverse CV shows him tackling culture clashes and globalisation (Eat Drink Man Woman, 1993), period drama (Sense and Sensibility, 1995), blockbusters (Hulk, 2003) and even the western (Brokeback Mountain, 2005). In this book, the first full-length study of Ang Lee's work, Dilley uses suggestive readings of gender and identity to uncover the enormous appeal of this acclaimed contemporary director.
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The Cinema of Jan Svankmajer: Dark Alchemy Peter Hames Wallflower, 2008 $49.95 pb Explores the legacy of this legendary Czech surrealist filmmaker, a key influence on directors such as Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton, and one of the greatest animators in cinema history. This updated second edition - still the only full-length study of his work - features contributions from scholars and colleagues within the Czech Surrealist movement, as well as a new chapter on Svankmajer's feature films and an extended interview with Svankmajer himself.
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The Cinema of Sally Potter: the Poetics of Performance Sophie Mayer Wallflower Press, 2009 $49.95 pb Sally Potter is one of the great independent film-makers. She's best known for Orlando, but her career goes back to the avant-garde feminist cinema of the 1970s, and is still finding new fans across the world, thanks to cutting-edge films such as YES and Rage. Her films are stylish, engaging and unusually intelligent - all of which could be said of this pioneering study of her work. It provides a thorough career overview, as you'd expect from a book in the Wallflower Directors' Cuts series, but also delves deeper into the themes of Potter's work, exploring areas that film books often neglect - performance, music, politics, metaphysics. It's a rare film book that can find connections between punk rock, alchemy and poetry, but Mayer achieves it effortlessly.
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The Cinema of Terence Malick: Poetic Visions of America Hannah Patterson Wallflower, 2007 $49.95 pb Terrence Malick is one of Hollywood's most enigmatic and legendary film-makers. Despite his limited output, and a famous twenty-year absence from cinema, Badlands, Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line have challenged genre expectation and redefined notions of contemporary film language. This collection explores his work from a series of vantage points, encompassing issues of identity, the poetics of cinema, representation of the road, youth culture and the American West, depiction of landscape and nature, use of sound and music, and the influence of philosopher Martin Heidegger. Particular emphasis is placed on The Thin Red Line, Malick's haunting evocation of human suffering during World War II, an important classic of modern cinema. Tracing his unique and under-explored film-making style from the 'golden age' of Hollywood to the present, each essay provides innovative ways of reading his films, thus highlighting the significance this truly original director.
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The Cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy & Truth Brad Prager Wallflower, 2007 $49.95 pb Werner Herzog is renowned for pushing the boundaries of conventional cinema, especially those between the fictional and the factual, the fantastic and the real. The Cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Truth is the first study in twenty years devoted entirely to an analysis of Herzog's work. It explores the director's continuing search for what he has described as 'ecstatic truth,' drawing on over thirty-five films, from the epics Aguirre: Wrath of God (1972) and Fitzcarraldo (1982) to innovative documentaries like Fata Morgana (1971), Lessons of Darkness (1992), and Grizzly Man (2005). Special attention is paid to Herzog's signature style of cinematic composition, his "romantic" influences, and his fascination with madmen, colonialism, and war.
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Clint Eastwood ICON: the Essential Film Art Collection David Frangioni Insight Editions, 2009 $80.00 hb Clint Eastwood ICON presents an unprecedented collection of film art surrounding the legendary actor. This comprehensive trove gathers together poster art, lobby cards, studio ads, and esoteric film memorabilia from around the world. From his early roles as the nameless gunslinger in Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns, to the vigilante films of the 1970s and 1980s, through his directorial roles and latest releases, Clint Eastwood ICON captures the powerful presence and quiet intensity that turned Eastwood into the definitive American hero.
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David Lynch Colin Odell Kamera Books, 2007 $29.95 pb Internationally renowned, David Lynch is America's premier purveyor of the surreal; an artist whose work in cinema and television has exposed the world to his highly personalized view of society. Examining Lynch's entire body of work—from the cult surrealism of his debut feature Eraserhead to his latest mystery Inland Empire—this book considers the themes, motifs, and stories behind his incredible works. In Lynch's world the mundane and the fantastical collide, often with terrifying consequences. It is a place where the abnormal is normal, the respectable becomes sinister, where innocence is lost, redemption gained at a terrible price, and where there's always music in the air. From the deserts of a distant world to an ordinary backyard, at the breakneck speed of Lost Highway or the sedate determination of The Straight Story, readers will experience amateur sleuths, messiahs, giants and dwarves, chanteuses, psychopaths, cherry pie, and fine coffee.
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Dennis Hopper & the New Hollywood Matthieu Orlean et al Flammarion, 2009 $75.00hb Dennis Hopper's many talents—actor, director, photographer, painter, and collector—are showcased in this monograph on an American icon. Dennis Hopper’s role in the seminal film Easy Rider (1969) made him an icon for the greatest directors of modern times, such as Coppola, Peckinpah, Altman, Wenders, Lynch, and Ferrara. Alternately a wonder boy and a pariah of the industry, Hopper’s original ideas have transformed film as we know it.
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Ever, Dirk: the Bogarde Letters John Coldstream (ed) Phoenix, 2009 $35.00 pb Dirk Bogarde was known as the star of more than sixty films and a critically acclaimed author. To a privileged few, however, he was also a prolific, stimulating and treasured correspondent. Bogarde was a secretive man, who destroyed many of his own papers and diaries. Fortunately, the recipients of his letters treasured them, enabling John Coldstream to bring together this fascinating collection of hitherto unpublished material. Bogarde's letters were invariably frank, gossipy, funny and often malicious. The joy of writing, particularly as he grew older and chose to live in France, was never far away. The letters display the qualities familiar to those who knew the private Bogarde: acute observation, laser-like intelligence, impatience with the foolish, compassion for the needy, a relish for the witty metaphor and a catastrophic disdain for correct spelling and punctuation. Above all, to read his letters is to hear him talk and no conversation with Dirk Bogarde was dull. Also available – Dirk Bogarde: the Authorised Biography John Coldstream Phoenix, 2005 $29.99 pb
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Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard Richard Brody Faber, 2008 $69.95 hb Jean-Luc Godard is one the most influential film-makers of the last fifty years. Scorsese, Tarantino, Wong Kar-Wai and Lars von Trier are but a few of the directors who have fallen under the spell of his free-wheeling style. In his 1960s heyday Godard - always in dark shades, cigarette in hand - epitomised European cool. But he subsequently grew into one of the most formidable artists the cinema has produced. Writer and film-maker Richard Brody, one of the few to have interviewed Godard in his Swiss retreat, here offers an accessible account of this extraordinary and fascinating artist.
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Farber on Film: the complete film writings of Manny Farber Robert Polito (ed) Library of America, 2009 $59.95hb Manny Farber (1917–2008) was a unique figure among American movie critics. Champion of what he called ‘termite art’ (focused, often eccentric virtuosity as opposed to ‘white elephant’ monumentality), master of a one-of-a- kind prose style whose jazz-like phrasing & incandescent twists & turns made every review an adventure, he has long been revered by his peers. Susan Sontag called him ‘the liveliest, smartest, most original film critic this country ever produced’. With an introduction by editor Robert Polito that examines in detail the stages of Farber’s career Farber on Film contains his extraordinary body of work in its entirety.
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Federico Fellini: His Life & Work Tullio Kezich I.B. Tauris, 2007 $39.95 pb In 1963, with the revolutionary 8 1/2, Federico Fellini put his deepest desires and anxieties before the lens - and changed the art of cinema. Now, more than forty years later, film critic and Fellini's long-time friend Tullio Kezich has written the work against which all other biographies of the filmmaker will be measured. In this moving and intimately revealing account of a lifetime spent in pictures, Kezich utilises his friendship with Fellini to step outside the mythologies that surround him - many of which are of the director's own making. A great lover of women and a meticulous observer of dreams, Fellini, perhaps more than any other director of the twentieth century, created films that embodied a thoroughly modern sensibility, eschewing traditional narrative along with religious and moral precepts. His is the art of delicate pathos, of episodic films that directly address the intersection of reality, fantasy, and desire that existed as a product of mid-century Italy - a country that was reeling from a Fascist regime as it struggled with an outmoded Catholic national identity. As Kezich reveals, the dilemmas Fellini presents in his movies reflect not only his personal battles but also those of Italian society.
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Federico Fellini The Book of Dreams Federico Fellini Rizzoli, 2008 $270.00 hb His insights into the world of dreams have contributed to his many famous cinematic creations, including La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, and La Strada. A unique combination of memory, fantasy, and desire, this illustrated volume is a personal diary of Fellini's private visions and night-time fantasies. Fellini, winner of four Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, kept notebooks filled with unique sketches and notes from his dreams from the 1960s onward. This collection delves into his cinematic genius as it is captured in widely detailed caricatures and personal writings. This dream diary exhibits Fellini's deeply personal taste for the bizarre and the irrational. His sketches focus on the profound struggle of the soul and are tinged with humour, empathy, and insight. This is an intriguing source of never-before-published writings and drawings, which reveal the master filmmaker's personal vision and his infinite imagination. 584 pp
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Graham Kennedy Treasures: Friends Remember the King Mike McColl-Jones Melbourne University Press, 2008 $64.99 hb In this insider portrait of Graham Kennedy, Mike McColl-Jones offers a never-before-seen side to the life of the King of Television. This lavishly illustrated memoir tells Kennedy's remarkable story, from his childhood in suburban Melbourne to the radio years, and his eventual dominance of television with programs such as In Melbourne Tonight, Blankety Blanks, Coast to Coast and Graham Kennedy's Funniest Home Videos, to his life in the country after he retired. Included are insight, gossip and stories from all of Kennedy's friends, including Bert Newton, Noeline Brown, Tony Sattler, Philip Brady, and the people who took care of him towards the end of his life.
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Hollywood Hellraisers: the Wild Lives and Fast Times of Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson Robert Sellers Random House, 2010 $24.95 pb “I dont know what people expect when they meet me. They seem to be afraid that I’m going to piss in the potted palm and slap them on the ass.” -Marlon Brando “I should have been dead ten times over. I believe in miracles. It’s an absolute miracle that I’m still around.” - Dennis Hopper “The best time to get married is noon. That way, if things don’t work out, you haven’t blown the whole day.” - Warren Beatty “You only lie to two people in your life: your girlfriend and the police.” – Jack Nicholson. They’re the baddest bad asses Hollywood has ever seen: Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson. These are men for whom rules did not apply, men for whom normal standards of behaviour were simply too wearisome to worry about. These are men who brawled, boozed, snorted and shagged their way into legend-hood but along the way they changed acting and the way movies were made forever.
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A Hundred More Hidden Things: the Life and Films of Vincente Minnelli Mark Griffin Da Capo Press, 2010 $24.99 pb This highly readable volume about Hollywood director Vincente Minnelli deftly balances Griffin’s strong emotional connection to Minnelli’s work, which he celebrates generally in the heartfelt introduction, and a scholarly desire to unearth the truth about the man and critically analyse the work. By turns gossipy and informative, catty and objective, Griffin is utterly fixated on questions of Minnelli’s not-well-closeted homosexuality and also fascinated by Minnelli’s ability to turn Hollywood straw into gold. As a biographer, Griffin reveals fascinating details of Minnelli’s early life and artistic development, including a formative friendship with “the Andy Warhol of his day,” mannequin designer Lester Gaba. On the cineaste side, Griffin’s informative discussions of Minnelli’s masterpieces (among them Meet Me in St. Louis, An American in Paris, and Gigi) and misses (notably The Pirate) go a long way toward showing why Minnelli should be remembered for more than his ill-fated marriage to Judy Garland (and more successful fathering of Liza Minnelli).
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I Peed on Fellini: recollections of a life in film David Stratton Random House, 2008 $34.95 pb This is the long-awaited memoir from local film critic David Stratton - an honest, funny and thoroughly entertaining journey through a remarkable life in film. Passionate since boyhood about the cinema, Stratton has reviewed thousands of movies, directed and adjudicated at international film festivals, and lectured in film history at the University of Sydney. His best-known role, however, has been as the co-host, with Margaret Pomeranz, of The Movie Show on SBS and - more recently - At the Movies on the ABC. Since 1986 the duo has entertained Australia with their honest and often controversial reviews and interviews; for many, they are the most influential film critics in the country.
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In My Father’s Shadow: Orson Welles Chris Welles Feder Random House, 2010 $49.95 hb Of all the myriad stars and celebrities Hollywood has produced, only a handful have achieved the fame and, some would say, infamy of Orson Welles, the creator and star of what is arguably the greatest film ever, Citizen Kane. Many books have been written about him, detailing his achievements as an artist as well as his foibles as a human being. None of them, however, has come so close to the real man as Chris Welles Feder does in this beautifully realised portrait of her father. In My Fathers Shadow is a classic story of a life lived in the public eye, told with affection and the wide-eyed wonder of a daughter who never stopped believing that some day she would truly know and understand her elusive and larger-than-life father. The result is a moving and insightful look at life in the shadow of a legendary figure and an immensely entertaining story of growing up in the unreal reality of Hollywood.
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Ingmar Bergman: The Life & Films of the Last Great European Director Geoffrey Macnab I. B Tauris, 2009 $59.95hb Ingmar Bergman was the last and arguably the greatest of the old-style European auteurs and his influence across all areas of contemporary cinema has continued to be considerable since his death in July 2007. Drawing on interviews with collaborators and original research, this book puts Bergman's career into the context of his life and offers a new and revealing portrait of this great filmmaker. Macnab explores the often painfully autobiographical nature of Bergman’s work, while also looking in detail at him as a craftsman. He considers Bergman's working relationship with his actors (especially the actresses he helped make into international stars), his passion for theatre, literature and classical music and his obsession with death and cruelty.
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The Ingmar Bergman Archives Paul Duncan (ed) Taschen, 2008 $449.00 hb This book presents the complete works of Ingmar Bergman: a tribute to one of the most esteemed film and theatre artists of all time, began in co-operation with Bergman himself and made with full access to his archives. Since 1957, when he released The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, Ingmar Bergman has been one of the leading figures in international cinema, along with others such as Federico Fellini and Akira Kurosawa. In a career that spanned 60 years, he wrote, produced, and directed 50 films that defined how we see ourselves and how we interact with the people we love, in films like Persona, Scenes from a Marriage, and Fanny and Alexander. Before his death in 2007, Bergman gave co-publishers TASCHEN and Max Strom complete access to his archives at The Bergman Foundation, and permission to reprint his writings and interviews, many of which have never been seen outside of Sweden. This book also features a new introduction by Bergman's close friend, actor and collaborator Erland Josephson, as well as a DVD full of rare and previously unseen material, and a film strip from Fanny and Alexander.
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Jane Campion (Routledge Film Guidebooks) Deb Verhoeven Routledge, 2009 $48.00 pb Jane Campion is one of the most celebrated auteurs of modern cinema and was the first female director to be awarded the prestigious Palme d'Or. Throughout her relatively short career, Campion has received extraordinary attention from the media and scholars alike and has provoked fierce debates on issues such as feminism, colonialism, and nationalism. In the first detailed account of Jane Campion's career as a filmmaker, Deb Verhoeven examines specifically how contemporary film directors 'fashion' themselves as auteurs - through their personal interactions with the media, in their choice of projects, in their emphasis on particular filmmaking techniques and finally in the promotion of their films. Through analysis of key scenes from Campion's films, such as The Piano; In the Cut; Sweetie; An Angel at My Table; and Holy Smoke, Verhoeven introduces students to the key debates surrounding this controversial and often experimental director. Featuring a career overview, a filmography, scene by scene analysis and an extended interview with Campion on her approach to creativity, this is a great introduction to one of the most important directors of contemporary cinema.
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Jerry Lewis (contemporary film directors) Chris Fujiwara University of Illinois Press, 2009 $34.95pb This is the premier study of an incomparable American director. Well known for his slapstick comedic style, Jerry Lewis has also delighted worldwide movie audiences with a directing career spanning five decades. One of American cinema’s great innovators, Lewis made unmistakably personal films that often focused on an ideal masculine image and an anarchic, manic acting out of the inability to assume this image.
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Josh Hartnett Definitely Wants to Do This...true stories from a life in the screen trade Bruce Beresford Flamingo, 2007 $39.99 pb A wickedly funny account of celebrity, Hollywood and everything in between. What′s it like to be a veteran director up against the machinations of modern-day Hollywood, with its self-absorbed stars, studio executives who think ′Singapore′ is a made-up country, destitute producers posing as lords of finance -- the mad, the bad and the downright notorious? Award-winning film-maker Bruce Beresford takes us through the highs and lows of the screen trade -- from high-powered dinner tables to obscure backlots, from the centres of power to far-flung locations -- with a cast of characters that includes Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Jeffrey Archer, Steven Seagal, and many others. Delightfully literate and sharply observed, this is a highly entertaining insider′s account of a rarely glimpsed world.
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Leni Riefenstahl: a life Jurgen Trimborn I.B. Tauris, 2008 $42.00 pb Leni Riefenstahl in her long and extraordinary life (she died in 2003 aged 101) was a dancer, actress, mountaineer, photographer and world famous filmmaker. She was also a liar. Riefenstahl was a protegee and confidante of Adolf Hitler, for whom she made her internationally renowned films "Triumph of the Will" and "Olympia". During her eventful post-war career, she has been both villainized for her lionization of Hitler and championed as an adventurer and artist. Her remarkable ad innovative creative vision is beyond doubt. The controversy that still rages around her memory is based on her apparent complicity with Nazi leaders - right up to Josef Goebbels and Hitler himself - in allowing her work to be used as the most potent propaganda weapon in their arsenal. Jurgen Trimborn knew Leni personally. He uses detailed research and his own unblinking eye as an authority on the Third Reich to reveal this portrait of a stubborn, intimidating visionary who inspired countless photographers and filmmakers with her artistry but refused to accept accountability for her role in supporting the agenda of the Nazi high command.
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Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh Amy Raphael (ed) Faber, 2008 $45.00 pb In this definitive career-length interview British director Mike Leigh reflects on all that has gone into the making of his unique body of work. Leigh's work has always reflected its times, whether the harsh studies of Meantime and Naked or the humour of the now-legendary Abigail's Party and Nuts in May. Above all, Leigh is an accomplished storyteller, and these films deal with universal themes: births, marriages and deaths, parenthood and failed relationships, families and their secrets and lies.
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No Man an Island: the Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien James Udden Hong Kong University Press, 2009 $64.95 hb This is the first book-length study in English on Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Taiwan's famous director of movies such as The Puppetmaster, City of Sadness, Flowers of Shanghai, and Goodbye South, Goodbye. His body of work reflects a unique film style characterized by intricate lighting, improvisational acting, and exceptionally long, static shots. Udden argues Hou's films reflect Taiwan's peculiar historical and geographical situation and could only have emerged there.
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Paul Newman: a life Shawn Levy Aurum Press, 2009 $49.95 hb Paul Newman, who died in 2008, achieved superstar status by playing charismatic renegades, broken heroes, and winsome anti-heroes in such classic films as The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Verdict and The Color of Money. And for all the diverse parts he played on the silver screen, Newman occupied nearly as many roles off it. He was a loving husband and family man, a fund raiser, sold his own brand of pasta sauce to make millions for charity, drove racing cars, and much more. Shawn Levy reveals the many sides of this legendary actor in the most comprehensive biography of the star yet published.
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The Queer Cinema of Derek Jarman Niall Richardson I.B. Tauris, 2008 $52.00 pb Derek Jarman has been called the 'godfather' of the early 1990s cinematic movement now known as 'Queer Cinema'. 'Queer' rejects labels, challenges fixed ideas of gender and sexual identity and refuses the status of a tolerated minority, and queer imagery dominates Jarman's cinema. Yet there has been little attention given to this rich vein in his work. This is the first book to view Jarman's uniquely personal - and pleasurable - cinema through the analytical prism of 'queer'. Niall Richardson takes up queer theory and its debates, as well as the tension between theory and activism, to apply these issues to Jarman's cinema in critical readings of his films, with special attention given to Caravaggio, Edward II and Blue. Richardson enters the debates about queer sexuality and particularly the dynamics of sadomasochism in sexual relations. He considers alternative regimes of gender and sexuality, desire and its relationship to the body, and the political impact of such images. Although Jarman's films have often been praised for being allegories of political resistance, this book argues convincingly that the 'queer' status of his cinema is as much indebted to the representation of alternative paradigms of gender and sexuality as it is to his portrayal of tendentious political battles.
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Sergei Eisenstein Mike O’Mahony Reaktion, 2008 $32.95 pb Drawing on an extensive archive of Eisenstein’s published and unpublished writings, O’Mahony situates his oeuvre in the social and political context of the first three decades of Communist rule in the Soviet Union. The book analyses his most influential films - including Battleship Potemkin, October, and Aleksandr Nevskii - as well as his uncompleted film projects, pioneering theories and methods, and copious archive of writings and drawings. O’Mahony examines how Eisenstein’s projects were generated or constrained by his volatile and complex personality, ongoing political events, and the conflict between his beliefs, the Stalinist regime and his beliefs as a Bolshevik artist. The arcs of success and defeat in Eisenstein’s career, the book ultimately reveals, are inextricably intertwined with these fraught political and personal circumstances. An in-depth and thoughtful biographical treatment, Sergei Eisenstein gives us a new, richer understanding of this standard-bearer in modern filmmaking.
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Talking Movies: Contemporary World Filmmakers in Interview Jason Wood Wallflower, 2007 $49.95 pb Talking Movies is a collection of interviews with audacious and respected contemporary filmmakers. Selected directors represent figures whose work has defined how images are processed and appreciated by modern audiences. The book offers a truly international perspective, including global pioneers who frankly discuss their craft and the social, political, and technological forces that inform it: Laurent Cantet, Robert Guédiguian, Cédric Kahn, and Bertrand Tavernier (France); David Gordon Green, Hal Hartley, and Richard Linklater (USA); Alejandro González Iñárritu and Carlos Reygadas (Mexico); Stephen Frears and Andrew Kötting (UK); Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey); Atom Egoyan (Canada); Suzanne Bier (Denmark); Tran Anh Hung (Vietnam); Samira Makhmalbaf (Iran); Elia Suleiman (Palestine); and Lucrecia Martel (Argentina).
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Tim Burton Jenny He, Tim Burton et al MOMA, 2009 $39.95pb Tim Burton has reinvented Hollywood genre filmmaking over the past three decades. With a visual style inspired by the aesthetics of animation and silent comedy, Burton's work melds the exotic, the horrific and the comic, manipulating expressionism and fantasy with the skill of a graphic novelist. Published to accompany a major career retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, this volume considers Burton's career as an artist and filmmaker. Illustrated with works on paper, moving-image stills, drawn and painted concept art, puppets and maquettes, storyboards and examples of his work as a graphic artist for his non-film projects, this volume sheds new light on Burton and presents previously unseen works from the artist's personal archive.
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The World and Its Double: The Life and Work of Otto Preminger Chris Fujuwara Faber, 2009 $69.99 hb Otto Preminger was one of Hollywood's first truly independent producer/directors. Blazing a trail in the examination of controversial issues such as drug addiction (The Man with the Golden Arm) and homosexuality (Advise and Consent), Preminger broke the censorship of the Hollywood Production Code and the blacklist, while creating some of Hollywood's most enduring film noir classics. Chris Fujiwara's critical biography - the first in more than thirty years - follows Preminger throughout his varied career, penetrating his carefully constructed public persona and revealing the many layers of his work.
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