Scenes of Anomalisa


Book Description

"Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson's Anomalisa is a stop-motion animated film about a man crippled by the mundanity of his life. Michael (voiced by David Thewlis), a motivational speaker, hears everyone having, quite literally, the same voice and having the same face. From the passengers on the airplane to the employees at the hotel to his ex girlfriend, each of the characters (all voiced by Tom Noonan) have the same voices and faces. Until he meets Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a mousy woman with poor self-image who sounds and looks completely different than everyone else in the world. Michael and Lisa's instant attraction and affair quickly turns from exciting to boring, though, when she, too, begins to look and sound like everyone else. As Lisa's uniqueness fades, Michael becomes disenchanted, and returns home to his family and friends, all of whom look and sound alike. A meditation on life, love, wants, needs, and perceptions of self and others, Anomalisa upholds the cinematic tradition of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation., Being John Malkovich, and the filmmaker's other films. The book contains screen grabs from the film, an abridged screenplay, as well as behind-the-scenes images, including shots of the puppets being built, construction of the miniature sets, and the crew painstakingly positioning, and re-positioning the puppets and cameras for each frame of film. The book also contains a foreword written in the style of Studs Terkel's 1975 book, Working, in which a hotel bellman tells his story. Undeniably Kafumanesque in its tone and manner, readers will see this book as a physical embodiment of Kaufman & Johnson's vision."--Publisher's website.




Antkind


Book Description

The bold and boundlessly original debut novel from the Oscar®-winning screenwriter of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Synecdoche, New York. LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • “A dyspeptic satire that owes much to Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon . . . propelled by Kaufman’s deep imagination, considerable writing ability and bull’s-eye wit."—The Washington Post “An astonishing creation . . . riotously funny . . . an exceptionally good [book].”—The New York Times Book Review • “Kaufman is a master of language . . . a sight to behold.”—NPR NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND MEN’S HEALTH B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, neurotic and underappreciated film critic (failed academic, filmmaker, paramour, shoe salesman who sleeps in a sock drawer), stumbles upon a hitherto unseen film made by an enigmatic outsider—a film he’s convinced will change his career trajectory and rock the world of cinema to its core. His hands on what is possibly the greatest movie ever made—a three-month-long stop-motion masterpiece that took its reclusive auteur ninety years to complete—B. knows that it is his mission to show it to the rest of humanity. The only problem: The film is destroyed, leaving him the sole witness to its inadvertently ephemeral genius. All that’s left of this work of art is a single frame from which B. must somehow attempt to recall the film that just might be the last great hope of civilization. Thus begins a mind-boggling journey through the hilarious nightmarescape of a psyche as lushly Kafkaesque as it is atrophied by the relentless spew of Twitter. Desperate to impose order on an increasingly nonsensical existence, trapped in a self-imposed prison of aspirational victimhood and degeneratively inclusive language, B. scrambles to re-create the lost masterwork while attempting to keep pace with an ever-fracturing culture of “likes” and arbitrary denunciations that are simultaneously his bête noire and his raison d’être. A searing indictment of the modern world, Antkind is a richly layered meditation on art, time, memory, identity, comedy, and the very nature of existence itself—the grain of truth at the heart of every joke.




The Futurist


Book Description

With the release of Avatar in December 2009, James Cameron cements his reputation as king of sci-fi and blockbuster filmmaking. It’s a distinction he’s long been building, through a directing career that includes such cinematic landmarks as The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, and the highest grossing movie of all time, Titanic. The Futurist is the first in-depth look at every aspect of this audacious creative genius—culminating in an exclusive behind-the-scenes glimpse of the making of Avatar, the movie that promises to utterly transform the way motion pictures are created and perceived. As decisive a break with the past as the transition from silents to talkies, Avatar pushes 3-D, live action, and photo-realistic CGI to a new level. It rips through the emotional barrier of the screen to transport the audience to a fabulous new virtual world. With cooperation from the often reclusive Cameron, author Rebecca Keegan has crafted a singularly revealing portrait of the director’s life and work. We meet the young truck driver who sees Star Wars and sets out to learn how to make even better movies himself—starting by taking apart the first 35mm camera he rented to see how it works. We observe the neophyte director deciding over lunch with Arnold Schwarzenegger that the ex-body builder turned actor is wrong in every way for the Terminator role as written, but perfect regardless. After the success of The Terminator, Cameron refines his special-effects wizardry with a big-time Hollywood budget in the creation of the relentlessly exciting Aliens. He builds an immense underwater set for The Abyss in the massive containment vessel of an abandoned nuclear power plant—where he pushes his scuba-breathing cast to and sometimes past their physical and emotional breaking points (including a white rat that Cameron saved from drowning by performing CPR). And on the set of Titanic, the director struggles to stay in charge when someone maliciously spikes craft services’ mussel chowder with a massive dose of PCP, rendering most of the cast and crew temporarily psychotic. Now, after his movies have earned over $5 billion at the box office, James Cameron is astounding the world with the most expensive, innovative, and ambitious movie of his career. For decades the moviemaker has been ready to tell the Avatar story but was forced to hold off his ambitions until technology caught up with his vision. Going beyond the technical ingenuity and narrative power that Cameron has long demonstrated, Avatar shatters old cinematic paradigms and ushers in a new era of storytelling. The Futurist is the story of the man who finally brought movies into the twenty-first century.




Nobody's Perfect


Book Description

Anthony Lane on Con Air— “Advance word on Con Air said that it was all about an airplane with an unusually dangerous and potentially lethal load. Big deal. You should try the lunches they serve out of Newark. Compared with the chicken napalm I ate on my last flight, the men in Con Air are about as dangerous as balloons.” Anthony Lane on The Bridges of Madison County— “I got my copy at the airport, behind a guy who was buying Playboy’s Book of Lingerie, and I think he had the better deal. He certainly looked happy with his purchase, whereas I had to ask for a paper bag.” Anthony Lane on Martha Stewart— “Super-skilled, free of fear, the last word in human efficiency, Martha Stewart is the woman who convinced a million Americans that they have the time, the means, the right, and—damn it—the duty to pipe a little squirt of soft cheese into the middle of a snow pea, and to continue piping until there are ‘fifty to sixty’ stuffed peas raring to go.” For ten years, Anthony Lane has delighted New Yorker readers with his film reviews, book reviews, and profiles that range from Buster Keaton to Vladimir Nabokov to Ernest Shackleton. Nobody’s Perfect is an unforgettable collection of Lane’s trademark wit, satire, and insight that will satisfy both the long addicted and the not so familiar.




Acting for Animators


Book Description

"A guide to acting theory written specifically for animators"--Provided by publisher.




Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind


Book Description

Joel discovers that his girlfriend has had her memories of their tumultuous relationship erased. Not wishing to be left behind he contacts the inventor of the technique to erase his memories too. The resulting confusion is only compounded when he rediscovers his passion for the girl he has forgotten.




Charlie Kaufman Shooting Script


Book Description

The Newmarket Shooting Script(R) Sets offer a value-priced opportunity for screenplay lovers to build their collection. Each book within the set includes a facsimile of the film's actual shooting script, plus exclusive extras, such as introductions by or interviews with the filmmakers, notes on the film's production, selected movie stills, and complete cast and crew credits. Includes: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Oscar(R)-winner for Best Original Screenplay; features a Q&A with Charlie Kaufman and introduction by director Michel Gondry Adaptation: Kaufman's adaptation of Susan Orlean's bestselling book The Orchid Thief with commentaries by Orlean and Robert McKee, plus an in-depth interview with Kaufman and director Spike Jonze.




Reel Spirituality


Book Description

A comprehensive study of theology and film that explores how the Christian faith is portrayed in film throughout history.




The End of the World


Book Description

From the imagination of legendary animator and two-time Oscar nominee Don Hertzfeldt comes a hilarious fever-dream vision of the apocalypse, now available in wide release for the first time since the rare original edition sold out. Created during sleepless nights while he worked on his animated films, The End of the World was illustrated entirely on Post-It notes over the course of several years, slowly taking shape from all the deleted scenes, bad dreams, and abandoned ideas that were too strange to make it to the big screen, including essential early material that was later developed into the animated classic World of Tomorrow. Hertzfeldt's visually striking work transcends its unusual nature and taps into the deeply human, universal themes of mortality, identity, memory, loss, and parenthood . . . with the occasional monstrous biting eel descending from the sky.




Synecdoche, New York


Book Description

The exclusive tie-in to the movie starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Catherine Keener and Emily Watson, from the writer of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The Shooting Script contains: * the complete original screenplay * 16 pages of colour photos * introduction by Charlie Kaufman * exclusive Q&A with Charlie Kaufman * full cast and crew credits 'Astonishing. Kaufman has surpassed himself with a film that will delight and confound. You will want to see it again. And again' Empire 'Brilliant... Imagine the most neurotic, inventive moments of Woody Allen’s films, distilled and squeezed into a feature-length splurge of artistic male anxieties' Time Out 'surreal, utterly distinctive, witty, gloomy in the manner that his fans will recognise and adore, but with a new epic confidence... a film of mad Beckettian grandeur' Guardian




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