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Criticism, Theory & History
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and Media > Film
Criticism
 Rebels
on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood
Studio System
Sharon Waxman
The 1990s saw a shock wave of dynamic new directing talent that took the Hollywood
studio system by storm. At the forefront of that movement were six innovative
and daring directors -- Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, David Fincher,
Paul Thomas Anderson, David O. Russell, and Spike Jonze -- whose films re-invigorated
the cinematic landscape. In Rebels on the Backlot, Sharon Waxman
weaves a fascinating tapestry out of the careers of these talented filmmakers.
Hardcover, 386 pp. $36.95.
 Action
and Adventure Cinema
Yvonne Tasker
A wide variety of respected scholars have contributed to Action
and Adventure
Cinema. Themes explored in this anthology include genre and definitions;
early action, sensation and melodrama; authorship; national and transnational
action adventure traditions; action aesthetics; spectacle and narrative; stars
and bodies; class;
gender; and race and ethnicity. Softcover, 414 pp. $36.95.
The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood
David Thomson
In The Whole Equation, David Thomson takes us from D.W. Griffith,
Charlie Chaplin, and the first movies of mass appeal to Louis B. Mayer, who understood
what movies meant to America -- and reaped the profits. From Capra to Kidman
and Hitchcock to Nicholson, Thomson examines the passion, vanity, calculation,
and gossip of Hollywood and the films it has given us. This one-volume history
is a brilliant and illuminating overview of "the wonder in the dark" --
and the staggering impact movies have had on American culture. Softcover, 402
pp. $21.00.
 A
House Made of Light: Essays on the Art of Film
George Toles
Professor, screenwriter, and one of the best film critics working today, George
Toles offers his far-ranging ideas on cinema, in this marvelous compendium of
critical essays. Divided into three parts (with a special section on Hitchcock) A
House Made of Light, features chapters about Fargo, Leolo, Psycho,
and several other cinema classics. This book will be a welcome addition to the
library of any serious student of film. Softcover, 363 pp. $37.95.
 Technology
and Culture: The Film Reader
Andrew Utterson
Technology and Culture: The Film Reader brings
together key theoretical texts from more than a century of
writing on film and technology.
It begins by exploring the intertwined technologies of cinematic
representation, reproduction, distribution and reception, before
locating the technological
history of cinema as one component of an increasingly complex
technological culture. Softcover, 152 pp. $39.95.
 Color:
The Film Reader
Angela Dalle Vacche & Brian Price
With examples from Hollywood and the avant-garde, from the European art film
and animation, Color, the Film Reader offers a wide range
of approaches to understanding the role of color in film. It highlights the
intersection of cinema with art history, theories of femininity, science, politics,
and philosophy. Color, the Film Reader includes seminal essays by Bazin, Eisenstein,
Arnheim, Rohmer, Batchelor, Oshima, and Brakhage. It also includes essays on
filmmakers who excel in their use of color, including Alfred Hitchcock, Paul
Thomas Anderson, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni,
Derek Jarman, Rouben Mamoulian and Douglas Sirk. Softcover, 214 pp. $41.50.
 Films
and Friends: Starting and Maintaining a Movie Group
Maryanne Vandervelde
If you've always wanted to be in a film club but didn't know how to get started,
choose films, and keep discussions going, this is the book for you. Here, Maryanne
Vandervelde offers advice on how to deal with problems that might arise, including
unforeseen pitfalls, uncooperative discussants, and scheduling conflicts. Fun
and informative, Films and Friends is a warm and entertaining
guide full of everything you need to know about starting and maintaining a movie
group. Softcover, 196 pp. $18.95.
 Freedom
and Entertainment: Rating the Movies in an Age of New Media
Stephen Vaughn
Freedom and Entertainment is the first book to offer a behind-the-scenes account
of the motion picture rating system and the MPAA under Jack Valenti's leadership.
This book is based on the private papers and oral history of Richard D. Heffner,
who headed the classification and rating administration for two decades. The
story chronicles the often tense working relationship between Heffner and Valenti,
and the sometimes bruising encounters Heffner had with Hollywood heavyweights
such as Clint Eastwood, Oliver Stone, Michael Douglas, George C. Scott, Lew Wasserman,
Arthur Krim, Jerry Weintraub and many others. Softcover, 336 pp. $33.95.
 Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness
Hernan Vera and Andrew M. Gordon
This collaboration by a sociologist and a film critic, using the new perspective
of "white studies," offers a bold critique of almost a century's worth
of American film. Screen Saviors studies the way in which the social relations
that we call "race" are fictionalized and pictured in the movies. Softcover,
202 pp. $37.95.
 The
West in Early Cinema: After the Beginning
Nanna Verhoeff
In The West in Early Cinema, Nanna Verhoeff investigates the emergence
of the western genre during the first two decades of cinema (1895-1915). She
analyzes many unknown and forgotten films from international archives and traces
the relationships between films about the American West, their surrounding films,
and other popular media such as photography, painting, (pulp) literature, Wild
West Shows and popular ethnography. Softcover,
459 pp. $45.95.
 Theorising
National Cinema
Valentina Vitali & Paul Willemen
Theorising National Cinema is a major contribution to work on national cinemas,
by many of the leading scholars in the field. It addresses the knotty and complex
relationship between cinema and national identity, showing that the nationality
of a cinema production company, and of the films it made, have not always been
seen as pertinent. Softcover, 326 pp. $36.95.
 Film
as a Subversive Art
Amos Vogel
Accompanied by over 300 rare film stills, Film as a Subversive Art analyzes
how aesthetic, sexual, and ideological subversives use one of the most powerful
art forms of our day to exchange or manipulate our conscious and unconscious,
demystify visual taboos, destroy dated cinematic forms, and undermine existing
value systems and institutions. This subversion of form, as well as of content,
is placed within the context of the contemporary world view of science, philosophy,
and modern art, and is illuminated by a detailed examination of over 500 films,
including many banned, rarely seen, or never released works. Softcover, 335 pp.
$30.00.
 Trauma
Cinema: Documenting Incest and the Holocaust
Janet Walker
Trauma Cinema focuses on a new breed of documentary films and
videos that adopt catastrophe as their subject matter and trauma as their aesthetic.
Incorporating oral testimony, home-movie footage, and documentary reenactment,
these documentaries express the havoc trauma wrecks on history and memory. By
demonstarting that the past does not come down to us purely though eye witness
accounts and tangible artifacts, Janet Walker exposes the frailty of memory in
the face of disquieting events.Softcover, 251 pp. $34.95.
 Exiles
in Hollywood
David Wallace
Fleeing Nazi persecution, many of Europe's creative talents, including screen
legend Greta Garbo and composer Igor Stravinsky were "driven into paradise," settling
in Los Angeles. David Wallace tells the dramatic stories of these brilliant refugees.
His profiles include Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, Jean Renoir, Aldous Huxley, Greta
Garbo, Hedy Lamarr, and many more. Softcover, 246 pp. $29.95.
 The
Philosophy of Film
Thomas E. Wartenberg & Angela Curran
The Philosophy of Film draws readings from philosophy,
film studies, and film criticism. Organized around a series of philosophic
questions
about
film, it offers an accessible and engaging overview of the discipline.
Readings from contrasting angles and points of view discuss the value
of film theory, the nature of film narration, the debate on whether
films can be socially critical, and the question of what we can learn
from a
film. Softcover, 308 pp. $48.95.
 Museum
Movies: The Museum of Modern Art and the Birth of Art Cinema
Haidee Wasson
Established in 1935 as the first North American film archive and museum, the
Museum of Modern Art's Film Library pioneered an expansive moving image network,
comprising old, new, popular, abstract, animated, American, and European films.
This rich cultural history of the Film Library's legacy is also the fascinating
story of film's transformation from a passing amusement to an enduring art form.
Softcover, 314 pp. $34.95.
 Film and Authorship
Virginia Wright Wexman
During the 1960's when cinema first entered the acadamy as a
serious object of study, the primary focus was on "auteurism" --
film authorship. Spanning approaches including poststructuralism,
feminism, queer theory, postcolonialism, and cultural studies, the
essays in this collection ask, what does auteurship look like today
in light of all these developments? Includes an extensive bibliography.
Softcover, 270 pp. $36.50.
 The
Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema
Linda Ruth Williams
A bold and original study, this is the first book to examine in detail a new
genre which evolved since the 1980s in tandem with shifts in the culture of sexuality
and the rise of video. The book traces the erotic thriller's
exploitation of pornography and noir, discusses mainstream stars (such as Michael
Douglas and Sharon Stone) alongside genre-branded direct-to-video stars, charts
the work of key producers and directors, and reads home viewing as a distinct
form of spectatorial pleasure. Softcover, 466 pp. $39.95.
 The
Moral Premise: Harnessing Virtue & Vice for Box Office Success
Stanley D. Williams
Movies from The Incredibles to Braveheart understand
and embrace the importance of The Moral Premise. This book explains how the Moral
Premise -- a statement of truth about the protagonist's physical and psychological
predicament -- is a fundamental part of every successful movie's structure. It
is also a book about how you, a filmmaker or writer, can use the Moral Premise
to create great motion pictures that resonate with your audience. Softcover,
196 pp. $32.95.
 Cinema's Missing Children
Emma Wilson
Through close analysis of film, television and photographic images, and via
intense engagement with difficult emotions, Cinema's Missing Children is
the first major study of an area of increasingly cultural importance: the child
at risk from abduction, abuse, or illness. This study makes the case for film
as a reflection on reality and as a space for revealing personal and cultural
anxieties. Softcover, 181 pp. $34.95.
 Secret
Cinema: Gnostic Vision in Film
Eric G. Wilson
Recent commercial Gnostic films are meditations on the conundrums of the post-modern
age and the timeless soul. Eric Wilson's Secret Cinema establishes
the theoretical foundations and implications of the genre of Gnostic cinema.
The book discusses the functions of genre, the relationships between cinema and
psychology, the connections between the moving image and sacred power, the role
of the cinematographic apparatus, and the romance of film. It is attuned to material
attractions of the movies, those gorgeous lights and lurid shadows, but also
the film's spiritual invitations, the gaps between the pictures, the empty spaces
at the heart of life. Softcover, 174 pp. $24.95.
 Wayne
Winner's Arthouse Cinema #1
Wayne Winner
Absolutely unique, this book is a collection of hilarious graphic art summaries
of more than 30 classics of arthouse cinema. Featuring eccentric renditions of The
Wicker Man, Blow Up, Blue Velvet, Le
Samourai, The Birds, Solaris, and
others, this book is certain to amuse even the most jaded movie snob. Softcover,
140 pp. $21.00.
 Paris
Hollywood: Writing on Film
Peter Wollen
In this new collection of writings on film, esteemed critic/theorist/filmmaker
Peter Wollen vents his opinion on a variety of fascinating issues. Included
are essays about Blade Runner, Riff-Raff Realism, Architecture and Film,
Jean-Luc Godard, Speed and the Cinema, John Ford, as well as many other topics.
This eclectic book is both engrossing and intelligent. Softcover, 314 pp. $29.00.
 Personal
Views
Robin Wood
This is the second in a series of Robin Wood's early books, so important in the
history of film studies, to be reprinted as part of the Contemporary Approaches
to Film and Television series. It is particularly satisfying that Personal
Views has followed the influential work on Howard Hawks, because this
is the only book on cinema by Wood never to have been published in the US. Published
originally in 1976 by a small art gallery in London, England, the book received
only limited distribution. The original collection of eleven essays is here augmented
by three additional pieces in the spirit of the work. Softcover, 423 pp. $36.00.
 Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan . . . and Beyond
Robin Wood
"It is difficult to imagine the field of film studies without
Robin Wood's contribution." -- Christopher Sharrett,
Seton Hall University. Indeed, Robin Wood is one of the most important
voices in contemporary film scholarship. In this revised and expanded
edition of his seminal text, he adds provocative essays about teen
comedies, Day of the Dead, David Fincher and several other
subjects to this remarkable book of Hollywood film criticism. Softcover,
363 pp. $36.95.
 Chaplin
and Agee: The Untold Story of the Tramp, the Writer, and the Lost Screenplay
John Wranovics
Chaplin and Agee charts the friendship between James Agee and Charles Chaplin.
Here, in print for the first time is Agee's amazing screenplay, The Tramp's
New World, lost until recently. Chaplin and Agee also features many
previously unpublished letters and photographs. As the story moves between Hollywood
and Greenwich Village, these two figures come to life, revealing the untold story
of the great bond between two influential twentieth-century artists. Hardcover,
256 pp. $35.95.
 Thomas
Hardy on Screen
T.R. Wright
The novels of Thomas Hardy have inspired some of the most absorbing adaptations
of fiction for the big screen. The essays collected here offer a fascinating
illustrated history of the interpretation and recreation of Hardy's work, from
the silent era to television. Softcover, 216 pp. $34.95.
|
 The
Cinema Dreams its Rivals
Paul Young
Paul Young looks at the American cinema's imaginative constructions of three
electronic media -- radio, television, and the Internet -- at the times when
these media seemed to hold limitless possibilities. In doing so, he demonstrates
that Hollywood is indelibly marked by the advent of each new medium, from the
inclusion of sound in motion pictures to the use of digital graphics. But conversely,
Young argues, the identities of the new media are themselves changed as Hollywood
turns them to its own purposes and its own dreams. Softcover, 311 pp. $35.00.
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