Music and Movies

Movies And The Meaning Of Life

A compelling collection of essays explores philosophical issues through the lens of popular Hollywood films, finding interesting topics in Fight Club, Being John Malkovich, American Beauty, and many other movies. Original.

Movies and Money

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. From the Hardcover edition.

Going to the Movies

Featuring insights ... analysis ... great films and filmmakers from “the most-sought-after screenwriting teacher in the world” (The Hollywood Reporter) . A life in film. An extraordinary career. An unforgettable story — from noted lecturer, teacher, and bestselling author Syd Field. What makes a great movie great? ... An actor legendary? ... A screenplay extraordinary or just ordinary? Syd Field has spent a lifetime seeking answers to these questions. His bestselling books on the art and craft of screenwriting have become the film industry’s gold standard. Now Syd Field tells his own remarkable story, sharing the insight and experience gleaned from an extraordinary career. Using classic movies from the past and present — from Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane to Andy and Larry Wachowski’s The Matrix — Field provides a guided tour of the basic elements common to all great films. Learn what makes La Grande Illusion a groundbreaking, timeless classic ... how Casablanca teaches one of the most important elements of creating memorable characters for the screen ... why Pulp Fiction might be one of the most influential films of our time. Discover the legendary filmmakers, films, and stars who shaped Field’s understanding of the medium.... Meet Jean Renoir, the great French director who steered his young Berkeley protégé away from medicine into film.... Watch a dazzling young Francis Ford Coppola as he directs his thesis film at UCLA.... Spend an amazing summer with Sam Peckinpah as he shares the screenwriting techniques behind his classic western The Wild Bunch . Rich in anecdote and insight, Going to the Movies will both entertain and inform, deepening every moviegoer’s appreciation of the magic behind the silver screen. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Movies And The Meaning Of Life

A compelling collection of essays explores philosophical issues through the lens of popular Hollywood films, finding interesting topics in Fight Club, Being John Malkovich, American Beauty, and many other movies. Original.

Movies And The Meaning Of Life

A compelling collection of essays explores philosophical issues through the lens of popular Hollywood films, finding interesting topics in Fight Club, Being John Malkovich, American Beauty, and many other movies. Original.

Movies And The Meaning Of Life

A compelling collection of essays explores philosophical issues through the lens of popular Hollywood films, finding interesting topics in Fight Club, Being John Malkovich, American Beauty, and many other movies. Original.

Movies And The Meaning Of Life

A compelling collection of essays explores philosophical issues through the lens of popular Hollywood films, finding interesting topics in Fight Club, Being John Malkovich, American Beauty, and many other movies. Original.

Hollywood Intellect

Hollywood Intellect takes off from the wide-spread hand-wringing over the fate or disappearance of so-called public intellectuals. An account of the title phenomenon, Hollywood Intellect challenges assumptions on which such discussions have rested. James D. Bloom argues that such assumptions are the result of misleading inattention to the intellectual work that mass culture performs. Much of America's influential intellectual work has come out of Hollywood, which has long helped shape America's intellectual agenda. Bloom shows how Hollywood movies often do intellectual work as ambitious as the intellectual work in "art films," poems and novels, museums and erudite quarterlies. Hollywood Intellect prompts its readers to reflect on the impact of a variety of Hollywood movies with some of the same assumptions, expectations, and questions customarily applied to literary writing. Hollywood Intellect also illustrates how, in examining the emergence of Hollywood and stardom in general as shapers of the public mind, some of our most renowned poets and novelists enriched our experience of mass entertainment and of elite culture. Drawing on a range of literary works and movies, as well as on the careers of both Hollywood and literarycelebrities, Bloom documents how Hollywood regulates curiosity, arbitrates civilization, construes and probes stardom, polices genre, and shapes our language.

A History of American Movies

In A History of American Movies: A Film-by-Film Look at the Art, Craft and Business of Cinema, Paul Monaco provides a survey of the narrative feature film from the 1920s to the present. The book focuses on 170 of the most highly regarded and recognized feature films selected by the Hollywood establishment: each Oscar winner for Best Picture, as well as those voted the greatest by members of the American Film Institute. By focusing on a select group of films that represent the epitome of these collaborations, Monaco provides an essential history of one of the modern world's most complex and successful cultural institutions: Hollywood. Divided into three sections, "Classic Hollywood, 1927-1948," "Hollywood In Transition, 1949-1974," and "The New Hollywood, 1975 To The Present," Monaco examines some of the most memorable works in cinematic history, including The General, Wings, Bringing Up Baby, Gone with the Wind, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, On the Waterfront,The Searchers, Psycho, West Side Story, The Godfather, Cabaret, Raging Bull, Rain Man, Toy Story, and Saving Private Ryan. This is the only book that thoroughly treats Hollywoodand the most significant movies that it has madesimultaneously as the coming together of an art, a craft, and a business. This approach provides unique insight into the workings of one of the most accomplished and successful art forms in human history: the Hollywood feature film.

Television at the Movies

The overview of television criticism, which this book provides, comes appropriately at a moment of change. Television is becoming dramatically different as a result of new and developing technologies such as cable, HDTV , satellite transmission and broadband distributions. By concentrating on the still-dominant notion of television, what the authors call “Classical Network Television,” they argue that it is as important to understand this model as it is to understand Classical Hollywood Cinema. The co-authors have a unique approach to the study of television, viewing its history and reception not only through important articles about the medium, but also through analyzing how Hollywood auteur cinema has commented on television over the decades, in films such as Tootsie, Network, The Last Picture Show, A Face in the Crowd, Rollerball, The King of Comedy and others. Not only does this reflect the pervasive use of cinema theory to discuss television, it also helps to emphasize the importance of clarifying the distinctions between the criticisms of the two media.   Television at the Movies  argues that the study of television is a crucial aspect of understanding our recent and contemporary culture, and it provides an illuminating point of entry for students and researchers in the field.