Author: David Puttnam Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0307488446 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 365
Book Description
From David Puttnam—producer of such modern film classics as Chariots of Fire, The Killing Fields, Midnight Express, and The Mission, and the only European to have run a major Hollywood studio—an insightful and provocative history that explains the personalities and events which shaped film's transformation from a technological curiosity into one of the world's most powerful cultural and economic forces. From the early rivalry between its inventors to the power-brokering and political influence of today's mega-stars; from Zukor and Laemmle to Ovitz and Eisner; from the serendipitous discovery of Los Angeles ("flagstaff no good," wired Cecil B. De Mille. "want authority to rent barn for $75 a month in place called hollywood") to the exploitation and depredation of Europe's film culture in the name of the marketplace, Puttnam captures the urgency and wonder that swept through a young industry and set it spinning on an axis of money and power. Movies and Money chronicles the unprecedented collision between art and commerce, and incisively analyzes its implications in today's global arena. Puttnam's engaging history is also an impassioned polemic: From the moment Thomas Edison stole the first crude attempt at a movie camera from the French scientist Étienne Jules Marey, Hollywood and Europe have existed, the author claims, in a state of undeclared hostility—hostility that has occasionally erupted into open battle for control of the century's most powerful artistic medium. And this battle, he contends, will ultimately determine the nature of Europe's cultural identity. He also argues forcefully for the intelligent application of the language and techniques of cinema to education, urging filmmakers to make films that challenge and inspire as well as entertain. Ten years after his abrupt departure from Columbia, Puttnam re-enters the debate about cinema with characteristic audacity, with the irreverence of an iconoclast and the canniness of a seasoned player. Movies and Money is a book that will change our understanding of the history—and future—of film.
Author: Leslie Halpern Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 9780786480760 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 216
Book Description
Films with dream sequences, or a dreamlike quality, allow directors to create their own rules of logic and nature to meet a variety of artistic needs. For instance, an opening dream immediately establishes what a character is feeling; a later dream--or series of them--provides viewers with a glimpse of the climax, and a concluding dream ties up loose ends. (In real life, of course, dreams do not occur at such convenient times or serve such useful purposes.) This book explores why science is lost or distorted in the process of representing dreams on film and why audiences prefer this figurative truth of art over the literal truth of science. Part One discusses changes in form and considers the history of dream theory. Additionally, the physiology of sleeping and dreaming, dream structure, sleep deprivation, dreams under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and waking up, as depicted on film, are examined. Part Two investigates changes in content, and delves into the psychology of sleeping and dreaming, dream interpretation, altered states of consciousness, visions and prophecies, dreams as wish fulfillment, sex and death, nightmares, and reality versus illusion. The author uses theories by Freud, Jung, and current experts in her analyses of dream sequences and their use in film.
Author: David Puttnam Publisher: ISBN: Category : Cinema Languages : en Pages : 456
Book Description
An account of the way in which Hollywood has achieved almost total sovereignty over the world's movies. It tells of a battle which has seen Hollywood establish itself as a global cultural and economic force, and in the process, devastate the national industries of many other countries.
Author: Stephan Eicke Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 1476676313 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 228
Book Description
Do you want to pick up a light saber whenever you hear John Williams' Star Wars theme? Get the urge to ride into the desert and face down steely-eyed desperados to the refrain of Ennio Morricone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly? Does Hans Zimmer's Pirates of the Caribbean score have you talking like Jack Sparrow? From the Westerns of the 1960s to current blockbusters, composers for both film and television have faced new challenges--evermore elaborate sound design, temp tracks, test audiences and working with companies that invest in film score recordings all have led to creative sparks, as well as frustrations. Drawing on interviews with more than 40 notable composers, this book gives an in-depth analysis of the industry and reveals the creative process behind such artists as Klaus Badelt, Mychael Danna, Abel Korzeniowski, Walter Murch, Rachel Portman, Alan Silvestri, Randy Thom and others.
Author: George Faraday Publisher: Penn State Press ISBN: 9780271042466 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 270
Book Description
One of the many unforeseen consequences of the fall of the Soviet Union has been the sudden collapse of the domestic film industry, probably the most privileged mass cultural medium of the Soviet Union. By the mid-1980s, some 150 feature films were produced annually for audiences numbering nearly four billion per year. Since 1991, however, cinema attendance has plummeted by a factor of at least one hundred, and the remnants of the once huge audiences now watch an overwhelming number of imported, mostly American, films. Revolt of the Filmmakers is the first account of Russia's film industry since this disastrous decline. According to Faraday, who was film correspondent for The Moscow Times during the mid-1990s, the turning point came during the years of perestroika, when Russian filmmakers achieved an unprecedented degree of freedom from managerial control. They immediately used their newfound liberty to dismantle the industry's central administrative structures in the name of artistic autonomy. Filmmakers were at last free to follow their own aesthetic criteria, and many began to orient their work entirely toward critical acclaim at festivals. But the unintended result of this revolution in the name of art was the alienation of the mass Russian audience. Today some filmmakers are attempting to regain a mass audience by celebrating and mythologizing national cultural identity, but the Russian film industry has never fully recovered from the "revolt" of the filmmakers. For this book Faraday has interviewed Russian filmgoers, critics, directors, and other industry insiders. Among those directors whose work he considers are Alexei Balabanov (The Castle), Nikita Mikhalkov (Burnt by the Sun), Karen Shaknazarov (American Daughter), Pyotr Todorovsky (Moscow Country Nights), and Marina Tsurtsumia (Only Death Comes for Sure). He also draws upon documentary evidence, including the Russian press and the diaries of Andrei Tarkovsky (The Sacrifice, Solaris). Few predicted that the loosening of state ideological and institutional controls would threaten the survival of Russia's once-mighty film industry. Even today Lenin's often-quoted, if apocryphal, declaration that "cinema is the most important of all the arts" remains emblazoned over the gateway to Mosfilm studios--but its relevance is in doubt at the start of a new millennium.
Author: Tony Shaw Publisher: ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
The first book-length survey of cinema's vital role in the Cold War cultural combat between the U.S. and the USSR. Focuses on 10 films--five American and five Soviet, both iconic and lesser-known works--showing that cinema provided a crucial outlet for the global "debate" between democratic and communist ideologies.
Author: Mark Salisbury Publisher: National Geographic Books ISBN: 1789093597 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This lavish coffee table hardback takes readers behind the scenes of the 25th official James Bond film and reveals the locations, characters, gadgets, weapons, and cars of No Time To Die. Bond has left active service and is enjoying a tranquil life in Jamaica. His peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA turns up asking for help. The mission to rescue a kidnapped scientist turns out to be far more treacherous than expected, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology. This lavish coffee table hardback takes readers behind the scenes of the 25th official James Bond film and reveals the locations, characters, gadgets, weapons, and cars of No Time To Die, with exclusive on-set photography, concept art, costume designs, stunt breakdowns, and more, accompanied by cast and crew interviews.
Author: Charlene B. Regester Publisher: Indiana University Press ISBN: 0253004314 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 440
Book Description
Nine actresses, from Madame Sul-Te-Wan in Birth of a Nation (1915) to Ethel Waters in Member of the Wedding (1952), are profiled in African American Actresses. Charlene Regester poses questions about prevailing racial politics, on-screen and off-screen identities, and black stardom and white stardom. She reveals how these women fought for their roles as well as what they compromised (or didn't compromise). Regester repositions these actresses to highlight their contributions to cinema in the first half of the 20th century, taking an informed theoretical, historical, and critical approach.
Author: Robert Lipsyte Publisher: Harper Collins ISBN: 0061995916 Category : Young Adult Fiction Languages : en Pages : 146
Book Description
The acclaimed book behind the new major motion picture Measure of a Man, starring Donald Sutherland, Judy Greer, Luke Wilson, and Blake Cooper. A New York Times Outstanding Book and ALA Best of the Best Books for Young Adults For Bobby Marks, summer does not equal fun. While most people are happy to take off their heavy jackets and long pants, Bobby can't even button his jeans or reach over his belly to touch his toes. Spending the summer at Rumson Lake is sheer torture. This particular summer promises to be worse than usual. His parents can't stop fighting. His best friend, Joanie, goes home to New York City and won't tell him why. Dr. Kahn, a rich, stingy estate owner who hires him to manage an enormous lawn, is working him to death. And to top it off, a local bully won't stop torturing him. Bobby is about to find out just how terrifying and exhilarating one fat summer can be.
Author: Elizabeth Jelin Publisher: Berghahn Books ISBN: 1789207835 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 236
Book Description
In all societies—but especially those that have endured political violence—the past is a shifting and contested terrain, never fixed and always intertwined with present-day cultural and political circumstances. Organized around the Argentine experience since the 1970s within the broader context of the Southern Cone and international developments, The Struggle for the Past undertakes an innovative exploration of memory’s dynamic social character. In addition to its analysis of how human rights movements have inflected public memory and democratization, it gives an illuminating account of the emergence and development of Memory Studies as a field of inquiry, lucidly recounting the author’s own intellectual and personal journey during these decades.
Author: David Puttnam
Author: Leslie Halpern
Author: David Puttnam
Author: Stephan Eicke
Author: George Faraday
Author: Tony Shaw
Author: Mark Salisbury
Author: Charlene B. Regester
Author: Robert Lipsyte
Author: Elizabeth Jelin