Music and Movies

Hollywood vs. America

Why does our popular culture seem so consistently hostile to the values that most Americans hold dear? Why does the entertainment industry attack religion, glorify brutality, undermine the family, and deride patriotism? In this explosive book, one of the nation's best known film critics examines how Hollywood has broken faith with its public, creating movies, television, and popular music that exacerbate every serious social problem we face, from teenage pregnancies to violence in the streets. Michael Medved powerfully argues that the entertainment business follows its own dark obsessions, rather than giving the public what it wants: In fact, the audience for feature films and network television has demonstrated its profound disillusionment in recent years, with disastrous consequences for many entertainment companies. Meanwhile, overwhelming numbers of our fellow citizens complain about the wretched quality of our popular culture--describing the offerings of the mass media as the worst ever. Medved asserts that Hollywood ignores--and assaults--the values of ordinary American families, pursuing a self-destructive and alienated ideological agenda that is harmful to the nation at large and to the industry's own interests. In hard-hitting chapters on "The Attack on Religion," "The Addiction to Violence," "Promoting Promiscuity," "The Infatuation with Foul Language," "Kids Know Best," "Motivations for Madness," and other subjects, Medved outlines the underlying themes that turn up again and again in our popular culture. He also offers conclusive evidence of the frightening real-world impact of these messages on our society and our children. Finally, Medved shows where and how Hollywood took a disastrous wrong turn toward its current crisis, and he outlines promising efforts both in and outside the industry to restore a measure of sanity and restraint to our media of mass entertainment. Sure to elicit strong response, whether it takes the form of cheers of support or howls of enraged dissent, Hollywood vs. America confronts head-on one of the most significant issues of our times.

Meaning at the Movies

This illuminating book helps Christians think biblically and critically about the art and culture of film, moving beyond simple moral judgments to an understanding of deeper worldviews and philosophical meaning. Hollywood produces, packages, and sells hundreds of movies every year. Many of these movies propagate a distorted sense of morality and ethics. Under the surface of immoral behavior and unlawfulness, however, there can be deeper problems in Hollywood's messages. What are these stories telling the viewer about life, relationships, and God? What worldviews and ideas do they espouse? If Christians are to tread carefully at the theater complex, they need resources to help them. This book is just such a resource. By exploring the relationship between Christianity and art, the theology of biblical discernment, and a brief history of filmmaking, as well as through analysis of popular films, Meaning at the Movies equips readers for careful discernment in the cinema. The book does not simply list criteria for judging film art; instead it encourages Christians to develop biblical and critical discernment in regard to not only film, but all aspects of culture.

Minding Movies

David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson are two of America’s preeminent film scholars. You would be hard pressed to find a serious student of the cinema who hasn’t spent at least a few hours huddled with their seminal introduction to the field— Film Art , now in its ninth edition—or a cable television junkie unaware that the Independent Film Channel sagely christened them the “Critics of the Naughts.” Since launching their blog Observations on Film Art in 2006, the two have added web virtuosos to their growing list of accolades, pitching unconventional long-form pieces engaged with film artistry that have helped to redefine cinematic storytelling for a new age and audience.   Minding Movies presents a selection from over three hundred essays on genre movies, art films, animation, and the business of Hollywood that have graced Bordwell and Thompson’s blog. Informal pieces, conversational in tone but grounded in three decades of authoritative research, the essays gathered here range from in-depth analyses of individual films such as Slumdog Millionaire and Inglourious Basterds to adjustments of Hollywood media claims and forays into cinematic humor. For Bordwell and Thompson, the most fruitful place to begin is how movies are made, how they work, and how they work on us. Written for film lovers, these essays—on topics ranging from Borat to blockbusters and back again—will delight current fans and gain new enthusiasts.   Serious but not solemn, vibrantly informative without condescension, and above all illuminating reading, Minding Movies offers ideas sure to set film lovers thinking—and keep them returning to the silver screen.

Silent Movies

A gorgeous, lavish history of silent movies - with more than 400 amazing images - captures the birth of film and icons like Chaplin, Garbo, Clara Bow, and Valentino. Drawing on the extraordinary collection of The Library of Congress, one of the greatest repositories for silent film and memorabilia, Peter Kobel has created the definitive visual history of silent film. From its birth in the 1890s, with the earliest narrative shorts, through the brilliant full-length features of the 1920s, SILENT MOVIES captures the greatest directors and actors and their immortal films. SILENT MOVIES also looks at the technology of early film, the use of color photography, and the restoration work being spearheaded by some of Hollywood 's most important directors, such as Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. Richly illustrated from the Library of Congress's extensive collection of posters, paper prints, film stills, and memorabilia-most of which have never been in print-SILENT MOVIES is an important work of history that will also be a sought-after gift book for all lovers of film.

Nixon at the Movies

Was it an omen? Richard Nixon and the film industry arrived in Southern California in the same year, 1913. As Mark Feeney relates in this unusual and unusually absorbing book, Nixon and the movies have shared a long and complex history. Some of that history—the president's multiple screenings of Patton before and during the invasion of Cambodia, or Oliver Stone's Nixon —is well known. Yet much more is not. How many are aware, for example, that Nixon was an enthusiastic filmgoer who watched more than five hundred movies during his presidency? Nixon at the Movies takes a new and often revelatory approach to looking at Nixon's career—and Hollywood's. From the obvious ( All the President's Men ) to the less so (Elvis Presley movies and Nixon's relationship to '60s youth culture) to several onscreen "alternate" Nixons (Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity , Tony Curtis in The Sweet Smell of Success , Gene Hackman in The Conversation ), Feeney sees aspects of Nixon's character, and the nation's, refracted and reimagined in film. Conversely, Feeney argues that Nixon can help us see the movies in a new light, making a strong case for Nixon as the movies' tutelary deity during the early '70s, playing a role in Hollywood's Silver Age comparable to FDR's during its Golden Age. Stylishly written and bracingly eclectic, Nixon at the Movies draws on biography, politics, cultural history, and film criticism to show just how deeply in the twentieth-century American grain lies the pair of seemingly incongruous nouns in its title. As Nixon once remarked to Garry Wills: "Isn't that a hell of a thing, that the fate of a great country can depend on camera angles?"

Hollywood Singing and Dancing: A Musical History - Movies That Rocked &#...

This installment in the Hollywood Singing and Dancing documentary series takes a look at the musicals and musical programming that brought the energy and attitude of rock music into the genre, exploring incarnations of rock and roll in traditional and non-traditional musfrom BYE BYE BIRDIE to MOULIN ROUGE.

Hollywood Singing and Dancing: A Musical History - Movies That Rocked &#...

This installment in the Hollywood Singing and Dancing documentary series takes a look at the musicals and musical programming that brought the energy and attitude of rock music into the genre, exploring incarnations of rock and roll in traditional and non-traditional musfrom BYE BYE BIRDIE to MOULIN ROUGE.

The Marxist and the Movies

As part of its effort to rid the nation of Communist influence and infiltration, the House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed hundreds of actors, screenwriters, producers, and directors with suspected Red leanings in 1947. Some of these film industry veterans, including screenwriter Paul Jarrico (19151997), refused to testify on Capitol Hill and were denied subsequent employment. In The Marxist and the Movies, Larry Ceplair illuminates the life, career, and political activism of Jarrico, the recipient of an Oscar nomination for his screenplay for Tom, Dick, and Harry (1941) and the producer of the only film ever blacklisted, The Salt of the Earth. Although the story of the Hollywood Ten has been told, The Marxist and the Movies is a unique look at Communist activities during this seminal period in American history. Ceplair recounts Jarrico's struggles against both personal demons and the prevailing power structures of his era. Through firsthand accounts from Jarrico himself and interviews with those closest to him, as well as congressional records and statements from those on both sides of the Red Scare, Ceplair provides an intimate view of Paul Jarrico's life, set in historical and cultural context.

The Hidden Art of Hollywood

Although we tend to accord our highest praise to films with strong messages, Hollywood is resolutely unserious in its goals, and closer perhaps to music than to literature in this regard. Thus, in order to appreciate Hollywood's classic movies, we have to understand them as the result of a style of filmmaking that justifies itself through the grace and beauty of its form. This beauty, when seen, challenges our notion of film as the poorer cousin of the high arts, or as worthwhile only when it serves a social purpose. The Hidden Art of Hollywood draws from a huge fund of recorded interviews with the directors, writers, cinematographers, set designers, producers, and actors who were a part of the studio process, in order to give the filmmakers themselves the chance to explain a very elusive phenomenon: the glancing beauty of the Hollywood film.While the greatness of the classic Hollywood film is, for many of us, settled business, there are also a great number who have difficulty understanding why these films - which can often seem dated and unrealistic compared to modern fare - are taken as seriously as they are. Although we tend to accord our highest praise to films with strong and often didactic messages, Hollywood is resolutely unserious in its goals, and closer perhaps to music than to literature in this regard. Thus, in order to appreciate classic American movies, we have to understand them as the result of a style of filmmaking that justifies itself not through ideas or social relevance, but through the grace and beauty of its form.The beauty of the Hollywood film challenges our notion of film as the poorer cousin of the high arts, or as worthwhile only when it serves a social purpose. In his effort to answer the many questions that classic American cinema suggests, author John Fawell considers previous criticism of Hollywood, but also draws from a huge fund of recorded interviews with the directors, writers, cinematographers, set designers, producers, and actors who were a part of the studio process, in order to give the filmmakers themselves the chance to explain a very elusive phenomenon: the glancing beauty of the Hollywood film. The films of certain great auteurs, including Charlie Chaplin, Ernst Lubitsch, Preston Sturges, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, John Ford, and Orson Welles, receive particular attention here, but this book is organized by ideas rather than films or artists, and it draws from a wide array of Hollywood films, both successes and failures, to make its points.

Music, Movies, Meanings, and Markets

Music, Movies, Meanings, and Markets: Cinemajazzamatazz focuses on (macro)marketing-related aspects of film music in general and on the cinemusical role of jazz in particular. After a review of other work on music in motion pictures, the book explores and illustrates the ways in which on-screen jazz performances contribute to the development of dramatic meanings in various films, many of which address the art-versus-commerce theme as a central concern.