A-Z Great Film Directors


Book Description

A fun introduction to 52 of the greatest film directors, from Almodovar to Ozu, Fellini to Tarantino, and many more. A striking, design-led reference book. A-Z Great Film Directors features Andy Tuohy's portraits of 52 directors significant for their contribution to cinema including kings of world cinema Wong Kar-Wai and Akira Kurosawa, arthouse pioneers Fritz Lang and David Lynch as well as the often under-appreciated female directors Kathryn Bigelow and Jane Campion. With text by film journalist Matt Glasby, each director's entry will also have a summary of the essential things you need to know about them, why they're important, a list of their must-see films, and a surprising fact or two about them, as well as images of their key films throughout. So whether you're already a film aficionado, or looking for a helpful cheat to pass convincingly as an arthouse fan, you'll love this guide to international directors, past and present.




Great Film Directors


Book Description




Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood's Golden Age at the American Film Institute


Book Description

ONE OF THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER'S 100 GREATEST FILM BOOKS OF ALL TIME • The first book to bring together interviews of master moviemakers from the American Film Institute’s renowned seminars, Conversations with the Great Moviemakers, offers an unmatched history of American cinema in the words of its greatest practitioners. Here are the incomparable directors Frank Capra, Elia Kazan, King Vidor, David Lean, Fritz Lang (“I learned only from bad films”), William Wyler, and George Stevens; renowned producers and cinematographers; celebrated screenwriters Ray Bradbury and Ernest Lehman; as well as the immortal Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini (“Making a movie is a mathematical operation. It’s absolutely impossible to improvise”). Taken together, these conversations offer uniquely intimate access to the thinking, the wisdom, and the genius of cinema’s most talented pioneers.




Who the Devil Made It


Book Description

“A must have for any film nut.”—Details Peter Bogdanovich, award-winning director, screenwriter, actor and critic, interviews 16 legendary directors over a 15-year period. Their richly illuminating conversations combine to make this a riveting chronicle of Hollywood and picture making. Join him in conversations with: Robert Aldrich • George Cukor • Allan Dwan • Howard Hanks • Alfred Hitchcock • Chuck Jones • Fritz Lang • Joseph H. Lewis • Sidney Lumet • Leo McCarey • Otto Preminger • Don Siegel • Josef von Sternberg • Frank Tashlin • Edgar G. Ulmer • Raoul Walsh NOTE: This edition does not include photographs. Praise for Who the Devil Made It “Illuminating . . . These were (and sometimes are: a few yet breathe) men rooted in history as much as in Hollywood. Their collected memories make the past look fearfully rich beside a present that is poverty-stricken in everything except money.”—The New Yorker “Bogdanovich is one of America’s finest writers on the cinema. . . . Thank goodness [his] Who the Devil Made It has come along to remind us that films and writing about film were, at one time, focused on the work and not strictly on the bottom line.”—The Boston Globe “A treasure trove on the craft of directing.”—Newsday “Monumental . . . The directors’ reminiscences about technique, working methods, sources of ideas, and relationships with actors and studios are thoroughly entertaining.”—Publishers Weekly “A fine achievement that helps illuminate the art and craft of some remarkable directors . . . There are plenty of revealing anecdotes.”—Kirkus Reviews




501 Movie Directors


Book Description

A comprehensive guide to all the movie directors you should know before it is too late.




Great Directors at Work


Book Description

The subject of this book is theatre directing in four internationally famous instances. The four directors—Konstantin Stanislavsky, Bertolt Brecht, Elia Kazan, and Peter Brook—all were monarchs of the profession in their time. Without their work, theatre in the twentieth century—so often called "the century of the director" —would have a radically different shape and meaning. The four men are also among the dozen or so modern directors whose theatrical achievements have become culture phenomena. In histories, theories, hagiographies, and polemics, these directors are conferred classic stature, as are the four plays on which they worked. Chekhov's The Seagull, Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children, and Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire have long been recognized, in the theatre and in the study, as masterpieces. They are anthologized, quoted, taught, parodied, read, and produced constantly and globally. The culturally conservative might question the presence of MaratiSade in such august company, but Peter Weiss's play stands every chance of figuring in Western repertories, classroom study, and theatrical histories until well into the twenty-first century. In their quite different ways, these are all classics of that Western drama which is part of our immediate heritage.




Movie Makers


Book Description

Moviemakers provides profiles of the 50 greatest film directors in cinematic history. From D. W. Griffith to the iconic films of Quentin Tarantino, the range is wide, featuring not only the Hollywood greats, but also a full complement of European and Asian directors. Author Ian Freer writes with infectious enthusiasm for his subject and outlines the life of every director, the passage of each career, seminal influences, and major films, plus fascinating anecdotes from behind the scenes.




The Greatest Movies You'll Never See


Book Description

From Hitchcock and Dali to Peckinpah and Lynch, cinema history is littered with masterpieces that have never seen the light of day. Now, The Greatest Movies You'll Never See unveils the fascinating - and frequently heart-breaking - stories of these projects' faltering steps from green light to movie graveyard. Opening at the dawn of contemporary cinema with Charlie Chaplin's Return from St. Helena, and closing with the collapse of Tony Scott's Potsdamer Platz, following the director's suicide in 2012, this riveting compendium of celluloid 'what ifs' goes behind the scenes of more than fifty 'lost' films to explain exactly why they never made it to the final cut. Discover the meticulous preparations behind Ray Harryhausen's War of the Worlds and Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon; learn why Brazzaville, a sequel to Casablanca, and Night Skies, a science-fiction horror story by Steven Spielberg, fell by the wayside; and read about the unrealized dreams of sometimes ill-fated auteurs Tim Burton and the Coen Brothers. The Greatest Movies You'll Never See details all the obstacles encountered, from unsympathetic studios and preposterous plots to the untimely deaths of stars. Alongside these compelling tales from development hell are script extracts, storyboards, concept artwork and frames of surviving footage. In addition, all the unmade movies are accompanied by original posters from acclaimed modern designers, including Akiko Stehrenberger (Funny Games, Kiss of the Damned) and Heath Killen (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Never Let Me Go). An endlessly absorbing alternative history of the silver screen, The Greatest Movies You'll Never See is an essential read for all true cineastes.




The Film That Changed My Life


Book Description

The movie that inspired filmmakers to direct is like the atomic bomb that went off before their eyes. The Film That Changed My Life captures that epiphany. It explores 30 directors' love of a film they saw at a particularly formative moment, how it influenced their own works, and how it made them think differently. Rebel Without a Cause inspired John Woo to comb his hair and talk like James Dean. For Richard Linklater, “something was simmering in me, but Raging Bull brought it to a boil.” Apocalypse Now inspired Danny Boyle to make larger-than-life films. A single line from The Wizard of Oz--“Who could ever have thought a good little girl like you could destroy all my beautiful wickedness?”--had a direct impact on John Waters. “That line inspired my life,” Waters says. “I sometimes say it to myself before I go to sleep, like a prayer.” In this volume, directors as diverse as John Woo, Peter Bogdanovich, Michel Gondry, and Kevin Smith examine classic movies that inspired them to tell stories. Here are 30 inspired and inspiring discussions of classic films that shaped the careers of today's directors and, in turn, cinema history.




Post-Classical Hollywood


Book Description

At the end of World War II, Hollywood basked in unprecedented prosperity. Since then, numerous challenges and crises have changed the American film industry in ways beyond imagination in 1945. Nonetheless, at the start of a new century Hollywood's worldwide dominance is intact - indeed, in today's global economy the products of the American entertainment industry (of which movies are now only one part) are more ubiquitous than ever. How does today's "e;Hollywood"e; - absorbed into transnational media conglomerates like NewsCorp., Sony, and Viacom - differ from the legendary studios of Hollywood's Golden Age? What are the dominant frameworks and conventions, the historical contexts and the governing attitudes through which films are made, marketed and consumed today? How have these changed across the last seven decades? And how have these evolving contexts helped shape the form, the style and the content of Hollywood movies, from Singin' in the Rain to Pirates of the Caribbean? Barry Langford explains and interrogates the concept of "e;post-classical"e; Hollywood cinema - its coherence, its historical justification and how it can help or hinder our understanding of Hollywood from the forties to the present. Integrating film history, discussion of movies' social and political dimensions, and analysis of Hollywood's distinctive methods of storytelling, Post-Classical Hollywood charts key critical debates alongside the histories they interpret, while offering its own account of the "e;post-classical."e; Wide-ranging yet concise, challenging and insightful, Post-Classical Hollywood offers a new perspective on the most enduringly fascinating artform of our age.