criticism film

Softcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, reprint, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 271 pages, paperback. Cultural criticism regarding the Weimar Republic. With many color and black-and-white illustrations throughout. Unmarked. Bright and clean; a tight copy. Examines intellectual life in the Weimar Republic, looks at paintings, caricatures, dance, architecture, and films, and discusses the Nazi rise to power.

Hardcover. Berghahn Books, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 193 pages, b&w illustrations. With six Academy Awards, four entries on the American Film Institute's list of 100 greatest American movies, and more titles on the National Historic Register of classic films deemed worthy of preservation than any other director, Billy Wilder counts as one of the most accomplished filmmakers ever to work in Hollywood. Yet how American is Billy Wilder, the Jewish emigre from Central Europe? This book underscores this complex issue, unpacking underlying contradictions where previous commentators routinely smoothed them out. Wilder emerges as an artist with roots in sensationalist journalism and the world of entertainment as well as with an awareness of literary culture and the avant-garde, features that lead to productive and often highly original confrontations between high and low. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Hyperion/Miramax, 1st, 1997, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 191 pages, b&w illustrations. Light waviness to some pages, otherwise clean copy. In an expert guide to the history of American film, enhanced by many wonderful full-color and black-and-white photographs and film stills, the acclaimed director takes a look at many American movies while exploring them from a both a professional and personal perspective. An academically trained filmmaker (NYU film school) who is among today's most innovative directors, Scorsese presents an engrossing, idiosyncratic memoir of his experiences with motion pictures, including recollections of his first boyhood journeys to movie theaters and the impressions the films made on him. In analyzing American film since the silent era, he especially highlights Westerns, musicals, and gangster movies, genres that originated in America. No markings.

Hardcover. Lexington, University Press of Kentucky, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, paper-covered boards, 172 pages. One of the most innovative films ever made, Sam Peckinpah's motion picture The Wild Bunch was released in 1969. From the outset, the film was considered controversial because of its powerful, graphic, and direct depiction of violence, but it was also praised for its lush photography, intricate camera work, and cutting-edge editing. Peckinpah's tale of an ill-fated, aging outlaw gang bound by a code of honor is often regarded as one of the most complex and impactful Westerns in American cinematic history. The issues dealt with in this groundbreaking film-violence, morality, friendship, and the legacy of American ambition and compromise-are just as relevant today as when the film first opened. To acknowledge the significance of The Wild Bunch, this collection brings together some of the leading Peckinpah scholars and critics to examine what many consider to be the director's greatest work. The book's nine essays cover an array of topics. Explored are the function of violence in the film and how its depiction is radically different from what is seen in other movies, the background of the film's production, the European response to the film's view of human nature, and the strong sense of the Texas/Mexico milieu surrounding the film's action. Clean copy.

Softcover. Hanover NH, Wesleyan University Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 542 pages. Now, Voyager, Stella Dallas, Leaver Her to Heaven, Imitation of Life, Mildred Pierce, Gilda ...these are only a few of the hundreds of "women's films" that poured out of Hollywood during the thirties, forties, and fifties. The films were widely disparate in subject, sentiment, and technique, they nonetheless shared one dual to provide the audience (of women, primarily) with temporary liberation into a screen dream--of romance, sexuality, luxury, suffering, or even wickedness--and then send it home reminded of, reassured by, and resigned to the fact that no matter what else she might do, a woman's most important job was...to be a woman. Now, with boundless knowledge and infectious enthusiasm, Jeanine Basinger illuminates the various surprising and subversive ways in which women's films delivered their message. Basinger examines dozens of films, exploring the seemingly intractable contradictions at the convoluted heart of the woman's genre--among them, the dilemma of the strong and glamorous woman who cedes her power when she feels it threatening her personal happiness, and the self-abnegating woman whose selflessness is not always as "noble" as it appears. Basinger looks at the stars who played these women and helps us understand the qualities--the right off-screen personae, the right on-screen attitudes, the right faces--that made them personify the woman's film and equipped them to make believable drama or comedy out of the crackpot plots, the conflicting ideas, and the exaggerations of real behavior that characterize these movies.

Hardcover. New York, McDowell, Obolensky, 1st, 1958, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Volume 1 - 432 pages. Illustrated with black & white photographs and drawings by Tomi Ungerer. Dust jacket worn with chipping and small tears along edges. Clean, tight copy. Volume 2 - 488 pages. Dust jacket with light rubbing and small closed tears along edges. Clean, tight copy.

Softcover. NY, Harper & Row/Icon Editions, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 176 pages. Series of essays with b&w photographs throughout. CONTENTS: Artpolitics; The Size of Non-Size; What is Content?--Photography as Culture; Filmgoing -Videogoing; The Decline and Fall of Pop; The Idea of a Twenty-First Century Museum; Utopia; Post-Modern Form. Front cover in black and white with black, white, and red lettering. In very good condition, some rubbing to both covers but clean pages and tight binding.

Hardcover. New York , Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 579 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket, many BW illus. The third book in a triology, prefaced by The Parade's Gone By ... (1968) and The War, the West and the Wilderness (1979). Offers a full and illustrated "exploration of a vital and now almost forgotten chapter of American moviemaking: the response of early producers and directors to the agonizing social problems of the decades before World War I. ... An essential work of silent-film history, certain to become a standard reference." Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. London, Taschen, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 352 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Adhesive residue on rear dust jacket, otherwise clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Color and black and white pictures throughout.

Hardcover. Lanham MD, Rowman & Littlefield , 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 314 pages. A fascinating history of motion pictures through the lens of the Academy Awards, the Best Picture winners, and the box-office contenders. In Best Pick: A Journey through Film History and the Academy Awards, John Dorney, Jessica Regan, and Tom Salinsky provide a captivating decade-by-decade exploration of the Oscars. For each decade, they examine the making of classic films, trends and innovations in cinema, behind-the-scenes scandals at the awards ceremony, and who won and why. Twenty films are reviewed in-depth, alongside ten detailed "making-of" accounts and capsule reviews of every single Best Picture winner in history. In addition, each Best Picture winner is carefully scrutinized to answer the ultimate question: "Did the Academy get it right?" Full of wonderful stories, cogent analysis, and fascinating insights, Best Pick is a witty and enthralling look at the people, politics, movies, and trends that have shaped our cinematic world. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 498 pages, index, B&W photos and illustrations culled from studio archives and privste collections, show the image of New York city in the world of film. Clean, bright copy in a dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Hill and Wang, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 208 pages, b&w photos. Translated & with additional material by David Robinson. Very good, clean. In a bright, unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Harper, 5th pr., 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 391 pages with index. In addition to being among the most celebrated of contemporary filmmakers, Quentin Tarantino is possibly the most joyously infectious movie lover alive. For years he has touted in interviews his eventual turn to writing books about films. Now, with Cinema Speculation, the time has come, and the results are everything his passionate fans--and all movie lovers--could have hoped for. Organized around key American films from the 1970s, all of which he first saw as a young moviegoer at the time, this book is as intellectually rigorous and insightful as it is rollicking and entertaining. At once film criticism, film theory, a feat of reporting, and wonderful personal history, it is all written in the singular voice recognizable immediately as QT's and with the rare perspective about cinema possible only from one of the greatest practitioners of the art form ever.

Softcover. Rochester NY, Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 199 pages, paperback. Fictions and the fictions of theory from acclaimed theorist of film. With a foreword by Annette Michelson. Mild rubbing and edgewear to wraps. Light bumping to spine. Previous owner's signature to front endpapers. Scarce. A clean and tight copy.

Softcover. NY, British Film Institute/Palgrave, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 119 pages, b&w photos, Cleo de 5 a 7, Agnes Varda's classic work of 1962 depicts, in near real time, ninety minutes in the life of Cleo, a young woman in Paris awaiting the results of medical tests that she fears will confirm a fatal condition. The film, whose visual beauty matches its evocation of early Fifth Republic Paris, was a major point of reference for the French New Wave despite the fact that Varda, the only major female French director of the period, never considered herself a member of the core Cahiers du Cinema group of critics turned filmmakers. Ungar provides a close reading of the film and situates it in its social, political and cinematic context, tracing Varda's early career as a student of art history and a photographer, the history of post-war French film, and the lengthy Algerian war to which Cleo's health concerns and ambitions to become a pop singer make her more or less oblivious. His study is the first to set a reading of Cleo's formal and technical complexity alongside an analysis of its status as a document of a specific historical moment.

Softcover. University Press of Mississippi, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 320 pages. Here is a collection of interviews that cover the period from 1967 through 1993. Many are translations of interviews that originally appeared in French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, or Swedish periodicals. Several are published here for the first time in any language. Giving attention to Sontag's education and the development of her aesthetic and moral temperament, they cover Sontag's rich career as a distinguished writer, filmmaker, dramatist, and cultural critic. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Jefferson NC, McFarland & Company, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 222 pages. The changes Cuba experienced following the collapse of the Soviet Union compelled Cuban filmmakers to rethink the values developed after the 1959 Castro revolution. Long-forgotten genres re-emerged, established auteurs incorporated new aesthetics into their films and an influx of foreign capital led to the repackaging of revolutionary ideology into more visually attractive narratives.Films such as Alice in Wondertown (1991), Strawberry and Chocolate (1993) and Juan of the Dead (2011) stirred controversy, criticized revolutionary discourse and helped establish new models that allowed post-Castro cinema to find global audiences on an unprecedented scale. This book offers a detailed analysis of key post-Cold War Cuban films. Recurrent sociopolitical tropes are examined to reveal how Cuban cinema reflects the turbulent changes in the island.

Hardcover. NY, Basic Books, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 337 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Essays by the New York City cultural critic; examines the work of artists, filmmakers and writers ranging from Anton Chekov to J. K. Rowling, including Stanley Kubrick, The Sopranos, Sex in the City, John Updike, Norman Mailer, and Barbara Kingsolver. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York , Taschen, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Two hardcover volumes in a slipcase. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Presents the most memorable movies of the 1990s into a list of 100 titles from around the world. Packed full of photos and film stills, this title features: four to ten pages for each film; list of Academy and film festival awards; bloopers, trivia, memorable lines, gossip; and actor, director, subject, and title indexes. NOTE: DUE TO SIZE AND WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Softcover. London, Hansom Books, 1st, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover magazine, stapled wrappers, 82 pages, b&w illustrations. Tape repair to rear cover otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Columbia University Press, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 203 pages, b&w photos. Bright, clean copy in dust jacket.

Softcover. Maryland, Scraecrow Press, rep, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 209 pages. Softcover with light wear to wrappers. Clean, tight copy. Some black and white photos in center.