«Murray’s moment in the spotlight was fleeting. The introduction of talkies, a string of failed marriages, a serious career blunder, and a number of bitter legal battles left the former star in a state of poverty and mental instability that she would never overcome.
In this intriguing biography, Michael G. Ankerich traces Murray’s career from the footlights of Broadway to the klieg lights of Hollywood, recounting her impressive body of work on the stage and screen and charting her rapid ascent to fame and decline into obscurity.»
With Hollywood's Last Golden Age, Jonathan Kirshner leaves little doubt that he believes that '70s films represented the last golden age, and that there will likely be no additional golden ages in Hollywood’s future. He ends the book with an epitaph for the '70 films, "The American film culture had change. It wasn’t about anything anymore."
«In commercial cinema nature often does not exist at all; all one has is the most advantageous lighting and interiors for the purpose of quick shooting — everybody follows the plot and no one is bothered by the artificiality of a setting that is more or less right, nor by the disregard for detail and atmosphere. When the screen brings the real world to the audience, the world as it actually is, so that it can bee sen in depth and from all sides, evoking its very 'smell', allowing audiences to feel on their skin its moisture or its dryness — it seems that the cinema-goer has so lost the capacity simply to surrender to an immediate, emotional aesthetic impression, that he instantly has to check himself, and ask: 'Why? What for? What's the point?'»
"Bond, James Bond." Since Sean Connery uttered those immortal words in 1962, the most dashing secret agent in the history of cinema has been charming and thrilling audiences worldwide. This impeccably British character created by author Ian Fleming has starred in 23 EON-produced films, played by 6 different actors over five decades.
To celebrate 50 years of this innovative franchise, EON Productions opened their archives of photos, designs, storyboards, and production materials to editor Paul Duncan, who spent two years researching over one million images and 100 filing cabinets of documentation. The result is the most complete account of the making of the series, covering every James Bond film ever made, beginning with Dr. No (1962) and ending with Skyfall (2012), including the spoof Casino Royale (1967) and Never Say Never Again (1983).
«Marilyn & Me is an intimate story of a legend before her fall and a young photographer on his way to the top. Schiller’s original text and extraordinary photographs — over two thirds of which have never or rarely been published — take us back to that time, and to the surprising connection that allowed Marilyn to bond with a kid from Brooklyn, a kid with a lot of ambition but very little experience.»
«From technologies like magic lanterns (#1), the kinetoscope (#3), and the handheld camera (#78), to genres like slapstick (#21), poetic realism (#50), and queer cinema (#97), to system-level developments like the star system (#23), film schools (#38), and censorship (#48), to cultural phenomena like fan magazines (#31), television (#63), and feminist film theory (#86), the book blends the illuminating factuality of an encyclopedia with the strong point of view of a museum curator to reveal, beneath this changing flow of technologies and techniques, cinema’s deeper capacity for playing on universal emotions and engaging our timeless longing for escapism, entertainment, and self-expression.»
«Although early film buffs may be familiar with Jean Epstein’s films, including an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, not many Anglophones are acquainted with his poetic and provocative prose. Gathered in this wide-ranging collection are new translations into English of every major theoretical work on film theory Epstein ever published, as well a series of essays by other film makers and scholars of art history, French studies, and film, which provide incisive commentary and essential context for Epstein as both a director and a theoretician.»
«The chapter on "20 Seminal Films" would be where you'd expect to see a tired "hall of fame"-style enshrinement of such directors' work. But here "seminal" isn't just a code word for "most important": readers really do get a sense of how a particular film has left lasting ripples by means of its content, theme, technique, tone, or generic elements. Thus we have The Red Shoes side by side not only with Black Swan, but also with Suspiria. Freaks is juxtaposed with Stuck on You... and Buñuel's Viridiana... and Korine's Gummo, among others. But Thoret gets still more creative than this. One of those twenty films is Zapruder's JFK assassination footage, which is paired with De Palma and, most strikingly, The Deer Hunter. What's more, television series such as Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner and Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone are also credited with being seminal "films," which, culturally, they are.»
«Thirty directors are featured in "Film Noir, the Directors," including Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Ida Lupino and Otto Preminger, as well as the aforementioned Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston and Robert Aldrich. Each section is packed with black and white photos of some of the legendary stars of the genre, including Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Edward G. Robinson and Orson Welles, whose own noir directorial efforts are examined. This recently released effort has a textbook like look and feel to it and each profile includes a short biography of the director and a list of his or her noir films.»
«It is no accident that Henry Mancini became the first publicly successful and personally recognizable film composer in history — practically a brand name in pop culture. He was perfectly placed, by time and temperament, to be a bridge between the traditions of the big band period of World War II and the eclectic impatience of the baby boomer generation that followed, between the big formal orchestral film scores of Hollywood’s so-called Golden Years and a modern American minimalist approach.»
«Whatever happened to Darren Aronofsky’s Batman movie starring Clint Eastwood? Why were there so many scripts written over the years for Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’s fourth Indiana Jones movie? Why was Lara Croft’s journey to the big screen so tortuous, and what prevented Paul Verhoeven from filming what he calls "one of the greatest scripts ever written"? Why did Ridley Scott’s Crisis in the Hot Zone collapse days away from filming, and were the Beatles really set to star in Lord of the Rings? What does Neil Gaiman think of the attempts to adapt his comic book series The Sandman?»
O sumário detalhado de inúmeros e fascinantes projectos perdidos que estiveram nas cogitações das majors de Hollywood, recuperados neste livro que inclui entrevistas com os cineastas e argumentistas neles envolvidos.
«Geoff Dyer's latest book, Zona, is an unabashed love letter to the dead Russian film director Andrey Tarkovsky, written in the form of a passionate, 200-page, shot-by-shot celebration of Tarkovsky's 1979 masterpiece, STALKER. This is a fan's book, aimed at aficionados of Tarkovsky and Dyer. But it's also a good introduction to both.»
«If indeed we are approaching the end of cinema — it can be argued that the 2000s were the last decade of cinema as we knew it, before technology altered it beyond recognition and the movie theater was superseded by the computer screen — then this study is both a celebration of moviemaking and an elegy for a soon-to-be-lost art.»
Un film de Almodóvar: whether appearing in his stylish opening credits or on the suggestive poster that invariably accompanies each of his films, this announcement triggers a range of expectations.
Sexy and subversive, colorful and controversial, passionate and provocative, Pedro Almodóvar’s world is unlike any other director's. Thanks to his remarkably cohesive and consistent œuvre, the Manchegan maverick has become a reliable brand, his name a byword for the visual opulence, experimentation and eroticism of post-Franco Spanish cinema.
I stir the blood. I quicken the pulses. I encourage the imagination, I stimulate the young. I comfort and I solace the old and sorrowing...
I show more of travel than all the books penned by all the writers of the world. I preach sermons to congregations, greater than the combined flocks of the pulpits of all lands...
I am history, written for generations to come in a tongue that every race and sect and creed can understand. I preserve heroes for posterity. I give centuries more of life to the arts and sciences. I am man's greates and noblest invention.
I am the Motion Picture.
Arthur James, num panfleto distribuído pelas salas de exibição dos EUA durante a Primavera de 1916.
For over thirty years, audiences have been simultaneously captivated and appalled as the spaceship Nostromo is invaded and its crew stalked by a terrifying parasitic creature. From the gore of the infant alien bursting from Kane’s chest to the mounting claustrophobia as Ripley discovers the monster has followed her into the escape shuttle, Alien is a chilling masterpiece.
Now, Alien Vault: The Definitive Story of the Making of the Film opens a portal into the making of this legendary film, tracing its path from embryonic concept to fully fledged box office phenomenon.
A sequência do duche em PSICO constitui uma das sequências mais famosas da história do Cinema. No entanto, Alfred Hitchcock e a sua protagonista Janet Leigh foram cúmplices na fabricação de um persistente mito em torno da sua concretização.
Este e outros factos, muito deliciosos para apreciadores das histórias que a Sétima Arte nunca registou, podem ser conhecidos no livro «The Girl in Alfred Hitchcock's Shower», de Robert Graysmith (o jornalista que originou a personagem de Jake Gyllenhall em ZODIAC, de David Fincher).
Quando PSICO estreou em 1960, os críticos foram unânimes em declarar a cena do duche como a mais chocante de sempre num filme de terror. Utilizando uma montagem frenética (a sequência possui cerca de 70 planos, que duram entre um a dois segundos) associada à aguerrida e icónica banda sonora de Bernard Herrmann, Hitchcock criara uma brilhante ilusão de gore, violência e nudez — embora esta seja pouco visível.
Mas a maior ilusão de todas terá sido a sugestão de que a cena fora inteiramente filmada com Janet Leigh, algo que a própria actriz sempre confirmou nas conferências de imprensa aquando da estreia do filme. O tempo encarregou-se de provar que, à excepção dos grandes planos de Leigh, o corpo que vemos a ser "esfaqueado" por um maníaco Anthony Perkins pertenceu, na realidade, a uma modelo chamada Marli Renfro.
Foi a partir da curiosidade de Graysmith acerca do paradeiro desta "desconhecida stuntwoman" que The Girl in Alfred Hitchcock's Shower ganhou forma, revelando-se um cativante trabalho de pesquisa no qual o autor descobriu, entre outros pormenores, que Janet Leigh, para PSICO, tinha na verdade duas body doubles (a outra chamava-se Myra Davis e, ironicamente, conheceu um fim quase tão trágico como o da personagem do filme de Hitchcock).
Enquanto acalento a esperança de que surja uma edição portuguesa nas nossas livrarias, os mais "impacientes" podem recorrer à encomenda online neste endereço ou consultar esta interessante sinopse do livro.
Ideal para a descoberta de que Hitchcock, até na vida real, foi um mestre por excelência na ilusão cinematográfica...
À semelhança de títulos anteriormente publicados, observa-se a qualidade, detalhe e fantástica apreciação crítica do costume. Já para não falar da magnífica composição gráfica que «Movies of the 40s» ostenta:
Impossível resistir à observação da "montra" de um certo revendedor nacional online e não salientar três obras que, à primeira vista, possuem todos os ingredientes para uma proveitosa leitura "lúdico-pedagógica":
. PUZZLE FILMS: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema
Baseado em ensaios assinados por estudiosos de Cinema de todo o mundo, é uma investigação de filmes que ostentam uma narrativa complexa — de MEMENTO, OLDBOY e CORRE, LOLA, CORRE até à trilogia INFERNAL AFFAIRS e DISPONÍVEL PARA AMAR.
. CINEMA ANIME
Adequado para os fãs indefectíveis da anime, este livro oferece uma detalhada explanação acerca de uma das formas de cultura visual mais explosivas e emergentes do panorama internacional de produção audiovisual.
. INTRODUCTION TO JAPANESE HORROR FILM
Uma introdução literária ao mundo cinematográfico do horror japonês, dividida por áreas temáticas.
Uma trilogia literária de sonho, STORARO: WRITING WITH LIGHT é o projecto da vida de Vittorio Storaro, responsável pela fotografia, entre outros, de APOCALYPSE NOW (1979), O ÚLTIMO IMPERADOR (1987) ou DICK TRACY (1990).
Uma autêntica enciclopédia dedicada ao mistério da Luz e Cor. Composta por três livros e acompanhada de um DVD, Storaro explora o Cinema e a sua filosofia através de uma colecção de ensaios, pinturas inspiradoras, fotografias a cores do próprio autor e imagens de produção que documentam o trabalho deste artista visual.
Keyzer Soze é um personagem do filme de 1995, OS SUSPEITOS DO COSTUME.
Soze era o líder de uma secreta organização criminosa; a sua impiedosa personalidade e obscura influência granjeou-lhe um estatuto quase mítico entre agentes da lei e gangsters.
O seu papel no supreendente twist final do filme tornou-se num dos ícones da cultura popular dos anos 90.
