Showing titles in History & Criticism

Years before synchronized sound became the norm, projected moving images were shown to musical accompaniment, whether performed by a lone piano player or a hundred-piece orchestra. Today film music has become its own industry, indispensable to the marketability of movies around the world. Film Music: A Very Short Introduction is a compact, lucid, and thoroughly engaging overview written by one of the leading authorities on the subject. 

From King Kong to Candyman, the boundary-pushing genre of horror film has always been a site for provocative explorations of race in American popular culture. This book offers a comprehensive chronological survey of Black horror from the 1890s to present day. In this second edition, Robin R. Means Coleman expands upon the history of notable characterizations of Blackness in horror cinema, with new chapters spanning the 1960s, 2000s, and 2010s to the present, and examines key levels of Black participation on screen and behind the camera. The book addresses a full range of Black horror films.

Based on exclusive interviews with the surviving cast and crew, friends and families of the stars, and other Hollywood insiders, Killin' Generals is a riveting must-listen for film buffs, military fans, and anyone who loves a down-and-dirty adventure tale. Detailed, insightful, and gossipy, Epstein's homage spotlights the movie's endless barrage of cinematic gold.

Transforming Harry: The Adaptation of Harry Potter in the Transmedia Age is an edited volume of eight essays that look at how the cinematic versions of the seven Harry Potter novels represent an unprecedented cultural event in the history of cinematic adaptation.  

An exclusive look behind the scenes of the Academy Awards as top stars and filmmakers discuss their Oscar wins and tell never-before-told tales of Hollywood's biggest night, in a collection of original interviews with Turner Classic Movies host and entertainment media journalist Dave Karger. For...

The inside story of how A League of Their Own—one of the most beloved baseball movies of all time—developed from an unheralded piece of American history into a perennial cinematic favorite. Featuring exclusive interviews and behind the scenes memories from the original cast and creators.No...

Pop culture and parody author Valerie Estelle Frankel examines the sources and predicts a Game of Thrones ending for each one. What will the Ragnarok ending look like? Or the Narnia ending? Who will live, who will die, and how goofy can the war of ice and fire possibly get?

Kino PRL-u. Możemy się zżymać na papierowe dialogi i natrętną propagandę, ale był to jedyny czas w historii polskiej kinematografii, kiedy zachodni recenzenci czekali na nowe obrazy z Polski. Scenariusze znad Wisły (jak np. „Kanał” Stawińskiego) podbijały serca włodarzy Hollywoodu, a termin „polska szkoła filmowa” został wpisany na stałe do światowego słownika popkultury. Polscy reżyserzy zażywali sławy porównywalnej z popularnością Antonioniego i Kurosawy, a polscy aktorzy stawali się gwiazdami festiwali filmowych.

Black Panther is one of the most financially successful and culturally impactful films to emerge from the American film industry in recent years. When it was released in 2018 it broke numerous records and resonated with audiences all around the world. In Black Panther: Interrogating a Cultural Phenomenon, author Terence McSweeney explores the film from a diverse range of perspectives, seeing it as not only a comic book adaptation and a superhero film, but also a dynamic contribution to the discourse of both African and African American studies.

Discover the Epic Story of Cinema—From Flickering Frames to Streaming Screens. In The Global History of Film, acclaimed author Oliver Greyson delivers an engaging and comprehensive narrative of the world’s most captivating art form. Spanning over a century, this book traces the evolution of cinema from its earliest experiments in light and motion to the groundbreaking films of today.

It was an explosion that reverberated across the country—and into the very heart of early-twentieth-century America. On the morning of October 1, 1910, the walls of the Los Angeles Times Building buckled as a thunderous detonation sent men, machinery, and mortar rocketing into the night air...

“Whatever you have read or heard about me through articles or gossip, forget it. I am nothing like that Warren Beatty. I am nothing like what you have read.” —Warren Beatty Warren Beatty guarded his privacy even before he became a movie star, when he burst onto the screen in 1961 as the...

"The meaning of life is the most urgent of questions", said the existentialist thinker Albert Camus. And no less a philosopher than Woody Allen has wondered: "How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world, given my waist and shirt size?" The essays in Movies and the Meaning of Life look at popular and cult movies, examining their assumptions and insights on meaning-of-life questions....

It's one of the greatest movie romances of all time. Yet the friction and controversy surrounding The Way We Were was so enormous, the movie was nearly never made at all. Drawing on Laurents's and Pollack's unpublished writings, as well as interviews with Streisand, Redford, and other key players, this is the definitive account of a film that changed the rules of moviemaking and defined romance ever since.

“An illuminating TV show biography” (Kirkus Reviews), the ultimate inside story of 60 Minutes—the program that has tracked and shaped the biggest moments in post-war American history. From its almost accidental birth in 1968, 60 Minutes has set the standard for broadcast journalism. The...

Since the 1920s, fashion has played a central role in Hollywood. As the movie-going population consisted largely of women, studios made a concerted effort to attract a female audience by foregrounding fashion. Designers from a variety of backgrounds, including haute couture and art design, were offered long-term contracts to work on multiple movies. Though their work typically went uncredited, they were charged with creating an image for each star that would help define an actor both on- and off-screen.

Being a Fan of Disney: The Book is about my fandom, my incredible luck in being able to teach a class and host a podcast about Disney fandom, and how Disney influences our lives. I share stories about growing up a fan of Disney, returning to the parks after a long hiatus, meeting and making friends through teaching the class and hosting Being a Fan of Disney: The Podcast, and other tales.

Ignoring the systemic racial inequalities in film is losing the industry $10 billion a year. Yet, parity, diversity, and inclusion are fundamental issues that the Oscar Awards are only just beginning to address. In this book, award-winning writer, broadcaster, model, and fashion designer, Ben Arogundade, provides a manual for deconstructing everything you thought you knew about Hollywood - documenting the stories and struggles of black artists within the movie industry that have so far been left out of the canon.

1974 was a busy year for Mel Brooks. Although still recovering after a series of failed projects threatened his career, he pulled off a one-two punch that saw the release of two of the most beloved American comedies ever made: Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. Although both films are well-known, the stories beyond the making of each movie are less so. How did they come to be, and how did the era's culture and politics not only permit them to be made, but help them to become enduring comedy classics?

A presence in Third Reich cinema, Adolf Hitler also personally financed, ordered, and censored films and newsreels and engaged in complex relationships with their stars and directors. Here, Bill Niven offers a powerful argument for reconsidering Hitler's fascination with film as a means to further the Nazi agenda. In this first English-language work to fully explore Hitler's influence on and relationship with film in Nazi Germany, the author calls on a broad array of archival sources. Niven also explores Hitler's representation in Third Reich cinema, personally and through films focusing on historical figures with whom he was associated