Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
45
result(s) for
"Motion pictures-Production and direction-United States"
Sort by:
Main Street movies : the history of local film in the United States
Prior to the advent of the home movie camer and the ubiquitousness of the camera phone, there was the local film. This cultural phenomenon, produced across the country from the 1890s to the 1950s, gave ordinary people a chance to be on the silver screen without leaving their hometowns. Through these movies, residents could see themselves in the same theaters where they saw major Hollywood motion pictures. Traveing filmmakers plied their trade in small towns and cities, where these films were received by locals as being part of the larger cinema experience. With access to the rare film clips under discussion, Main Street Movies documents the diversity and longevity of local film production and examines how itinerant filmmakers responded to industry changes to keep sponsors and audiences satisfied. From town-pride films in the 1910s to Hollywood knockoffs in the 1930s, local films captured not just images of local people and places but also ideas about the function and meaning of cinema that continue to resonate today.
Book
Classic Hollywood
Studies of \"Classic Hollywood\" typically treat Hollywood films released from 1930 to 1960 as a single interpretive mass. Veronica Pravadelli complicates this idea. Focusing on dominant tendencies in box office hits and Oscar-recognized classics, she breaks down the so-called classic period into six distinct phases that follow Hollywood's amazingly diverse offerings from the emancipated females of the \"Transition Era\" and the traditional men and women of the conservative 1930s that replaced it to the fantastical Fifties movie musicals that arose after anti-classic genres like film noir and women's films. Pravadelli sets her analysis apart by paying particular attention to the gendered desires and identities exemplified in the films. Availing herself of the significant advances in film theory and modernity studies that have taken place since similar surveys first saw publication, she views Hollywood through strategies as varied as close textural analysis, feminism, psychoanalysis, film style and study of cinematic imagery, revealing the inconsistencies and antithetical traits lurking beneath Classic Hollywood's supposed transparency.
eBook
The first Star trek movie : bringing the franchise to the big screen, 1969-1980
\"The history of Star Trek's resurrection, between the 1969 cancellation of the original series and the 1979 release of Star Trek-The Motion Picture, has become legend. Like many legends, it tends to get printed instead of the facts. Drawing on hundreds of contemporary news articles and primary sources not seen in decades, this book tells the true story of the first Star Trek reboot. After several attempts to revive the franchise, Robert Wise's ST-TMP was released on a wave of prestige promotion, hype, and public frenzy unheard for a film based on a television show. Controversy surrounded its troubled production and $44M budget, earning it a reputation at the time as the most expensive movie ever made. After a black-tie premiere in Washington, D.C., its opening in 856 North American theaters broke multiple box-office records-a harbinger of the modern blockbuster era. Despite instant financial success, the film was panned by both critics and the public, leaving this enterprise nowhere to boldly go but down\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
George Cukor
A critical analysis of the films and career of George Cukor. George Cukor: Hollywood Master is the first book to focus on the career of director George Cukor, one of classic Hollywood's most important figures, with films such as The Women , Adam's Rib , Born Yesterday , Gaslight , and A Star is Born to his credit. The various essays in this volume, all written by prominent experts in the field, offer critical discussions of every feature film Cukor directed and include a rich trove of valuable information about their production histories. This is the first book devoted to one of the most beloved figures from the American cinema's golden age.
eBook
Memory and imagination in film : Scorsese, Lynch, Jarmusch, Van Sant
\"Lombardo expands upon the intuitions of Baudelaire, proposing a new understanding of cinephilia as the interplay of the memory and the imagination of both filmmakers and spectators. Works by Scorsese, Lynch, Jarmusch and Van Sant are presented as imaginative uses of the history of cinema, as well as the histories of painting, music, literature and photography. Quotations, allusions, and more complex stylistic devices combine to become conscious or unconscious re-elaborations of works from the past and the present. The question of spectators' participation is discussed at length, alongside detailed analysis that aims to disentangle the various elements within specific film sequences\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
More Than Meets the Eye
A rare look at the role of special effects in creating
fictional worlds and transmedia franchises From comic book
universes crowded with soaring superheroes and shattering
skyscrapers to cosmic empires set in far-off galaxies, today's
fantasy blockbusters depend on visual effects. Bringing science
fiction from the studio to your screen, through film, television,
or video games, these special effects power our entertainment
industry. More Than Meets the Eye delves into the world of
fantastic media franchises to trace the ways in which special
effects over the last 50 years have become central not just to
transmedia storytelling but to worldbuilding, performance, and
genre in contemporary blockbuster entertainment. More Than Meets
the Eye maps the ways in which special effects build consistent
storyworlds and transform genres while traveling from one media
platform to the next. Examining high-profile franchises in which
special effects have played a constitutive role such as Star Trek,
Star Wars, The Matrix, and The Lord of the Rings, as well as more
contemporary franchises like Pirates of the Caribbean and Harry
Potter, Bob Rehak analyzes the ways in which production practices
developed alongside the cultural work of industry professionals. By
studying social and cultural factors such as fan interaction, this
book provides a context for understanding just how much
multiplatform storytelling has come to define these megahit
franchises. More Than Meets the Eye explores the larger history of
how physical and optical effects in postwar Hollywood laid the
foundation for modern transmedia franchises and argues that special
effects are not simply an adjunct to blockbuster filmmaking, but
central agents of an entire mode of production.
eBook
Conversations at the American Film Institute with the great moviemakers : the next generation
A companion volume to George Stevens, Jr.'s, much admired book of American Film Institute seminars with the great pioneering moviemakers (\"Invaluable\"--Martin Scorsese). Those represented here--directors, producers, writers, actors, cameramen, composers, editors--are men and women working in pictures, beginning in 1950, when the studio system was collapsing and people could no longer depend on, or were bound by, the structure of studio life to make movies. Here also are those who began to work long after the studio days were over--Robert Altman, David Lynch, Steven Spielberg, among them--who talk about how they came to make movies on their own. Some--like Peter Bogdanovich, Nora Ephron, Sydney Pollack, François Truffaut--talk about how they were influenced by the iconic pictures of the great pioneer filmmakers. Others talk about how they set out to forge their own paths--John Sayles, Roger Corman, George Lucas, et al. In this series of conversations held at the American Film Institute, all aspects of their work are discussed. Here is Arthur Penn, who began in the early 1950s in New York with live TV, directing people like Kim Stanley and such live shows as Playhouse 90, and on Broadway, directing Two for the Seesaw and The Miracle Worker, before going on to Hollywood and directing Mickey One and Bonnie and Clyde, among other pictures, talking about working within the system. (\"When we finished Bonnie and Clyde,\" says Penn, \"the film was characterized rather elegantly by one of the leading Warner executives as a 'piece of shit' ... It wasn't until the picture had an identity and a life of its own that the studio acknowledged it was a legitimate child of the Warner Bros. operation.\") Here in conversation is Sidney Poitier, who grew up on an island without paved roads, stores, or telephones, and who was later taught English without a Caribbean accent by a Jewish waiter, talking about working as a janitor at the American Negro Theater in exchange for acting lessons and about Hollywood: It \"never really had much of a conscience ... This town never was infected by that kind of goodness.\" Here, too, is Meryl Streep, America's premier actress, who began her career in Julia in 1977, and thirty odd years later, at sixty, was staring in The Iron Lady, defying all the rules about \"term limits\" and a filmmaking climate tyrannized by the male adolescent demographic ... Streep on making her first picture, and how Jane Fonda took her under her wing (\"That little line on the floor,\" Fonda warned Streep, \"don't look at it, that's where your toes are supposed to be. And that's how you'll be in the movie. If they're not there, you won't be in the movie\"). Streep on the characters she chooses to play: \"I like to defend characters that would otherwise be misconstrued or misunderstood.\" The Next Generation is a fascinating revelation of the art of making pictures.
Book
Directing
When a film is acclaimed, the director usually gets the lion's share of the credit. Yet the movie director's job-especially the collaborations and compromises it involves-remains little understood.The latest volume in theBehind the Silver Screenseries, this collection provides the first comprehensive overview of how directing, as both an art and profession, has evolved in tandem with changing film industry practices. Each chapter is written by an expert on a different period of Hollywood, from the silent film era to today's digital filmmaking, providing in-depth examinations of key trends like the emergence of independent production after World War II and the rise of auteurism in the 1970s. Challenging the myth of the lone director, these studies demonstrate how directors work with a multitude of other talented creative professionals, including actors, writers, producers, editors, and cinematographers.Directingexamines a diverse range of classic and contemporary directors, including Orson Welles, Tim Burton, Cecil B. DeMille, Steven Soderbergh, Spike Lee, and Ida Lupino, offering a rich composite picture of how they have negotiated industry constraints, utilized new technologies, and harnessed the creative contributions of their many collaborators throughout a century of Hollywood filmmaking.
eBook
A hidden history of film style : cinematographers, directors, and the collaborative process
\"The image that appears on the movie screen is the direct and tangible result of the joint efforts of the director and the cinematographer. A Hidden History of Film Style is the first study to focus on the collaborations between directors and cinematographers, a partnership that has played a crucial role in American cinema since the early years of the silent era. Christopher Beach argues that an understanding of the complex director-cinematographer collaboration offers an important model that challenges the pervasive conventional concept of director as auteur. Drawing upon oral histories, early industry trade journals, and other primary materials, Beach examines key innovations like deep focus, color, and digital cinematography, and in doing so produces an exceptionally clear history of the craft. Through analysis of several key collaborations in American cinema from the silent era to the late twentieth century--such as those of D. W. Griffith and Billy Bitzer, William Wyler and Gregg Toland, and Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Burks--this pivotal book underlines the importance of cinematographers to both the development of cinematic technique and the expression of visual style in film\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
The Comic Book Film Adaptation
In the summer of 2000X-Mensurpassed all box office expectations and ushered in an era of unprecedented production of comic book film adaptations. This trend, now in its second decade, has blossomed into Hollywood's leading genre. From superheroes to Spartan warriors,The Comic Book Film Adaptationoffers the first dedicated study to examine how comic books moved from the fringes of popular culture to the center of mainstream film production.
Through in-depth analysis, industry interviews, and audience research, this book charts the cause-and-effect of this influential trend. It considers the cultural traumas, business demands, and digital possibilities that Hollywood faced at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The industry managed to meet these challenges by exploiting comics and their existing audiences. However, studios were caught off-guard when these comic book fans, empowered by digital media, began to influence the success of these adaptations. Nonetheless, filmmakers soon developed strategies to take advantage of this intense fanbase, while codifying the trend into a more lucrative genre, the comic book movie, which appealed to an even wider audience. Central to this vibrant trend is a comic aesthetic in which filmmakers utilize digital filmmaking technologies to engage with the language and conventions of comics like never before.
The Comic Book Film Adaptationexplores this unique moment in which cinema is stimulated, challenged, and enriched by the once-dismissed medium of comics.
eBook