Showing titles in History & Criticism

Whether it is a director insisting on a final cut, a star demanding a bigger motor home, a producer holding the line on a budget, or a grip with a gripe, it seems that the world of moviemaking is nothing but Sturm und Drang. Shoot Out presents a raucous look at how movies get made and the players involved, from writers, producers, directors, and stars to agents and marketers. For film buffs, aspiring filmmakers, students, and anyone else intrigued by the inner workings of Hollywood, this is the quintessential take on the how, who, what, and why of the film business.

Rodando El padrino, ninguno de sus implicados pensó que se convertiría en el primer blockbusrer y en la película más taquillera de la historia en su estreno. Ni Mario Puzo pretendía escribir sobre la mafia, ni la mafia quería que se rodase, ni Francis Ford Coppola dirigirla, ni Paramount hacer otra película de mafiosos. Tampoco a Marlon Brando, ni a Al Pacino. Narrado como una trepidante película y basado en una rigurosa documentación histórica, este audiolibro nos muestra el poder empresarial en Hollywood, las luchas de poder en los pasillos de Paramount.

This is the first full-length biography of this mid-twentieth century multi-faceted star. One of the central tensions of Dale's life revolved around chasing the elusive work/family balance, making her story instantly relatable to women today. In addition to fame, Dale longed for a happy, stable, family life. Her roles of wife and mother became the foundation for her public persona: the smart, smiling, cheerful cowgirl. Unusual for the time were Dale Evans's attempts to control the trajectory of her career at a time when men dominated decision-making in the entertainment fields.

A history about the invention of the motion picture and the mysterious man behind it—detailing his life, work, disappearance and legacy. The year is 1888, and Louis Le Prince is finally testing his 'taker' or 'receiver' device for his family on their front lawn. The device is meant to capture 10 to 12 images per second on film, creating a reproduction of reality that can be replayed as many times as desired. In an otherwise separate and detached world, occurrences from one end of the globe could now be viewable with only a few days delay on the other side of the world. 

"Anatomía del crimen: Guía de la novela y el cine negros" es una completa guía del escritor de novela negra y, al mismo tiempo, teórico del género Mariano Sánchez Soler, quien ha diseccionado la narrativa criminal, sus orígenes, el salto a la literatura española y su relación con el cine nacional e internacional. Subjetivo, apasionado y visceral, su visión compone una guía completa de este tipo de novelas y películas.

Эльдар Александрович Рязанов—советский и российский кинорежиссёр, сценарист, актёр, поэт, драматург, телеведущий, педагог, продюсер. На страницах книги раскрывается внутренний мир известного режиссера. Эльдар Рязанов рассказывает о сути комедийного жанра, поднимает важные проблемы современного кинематографа и ТВ.

When it was finally released, Heaven's Gate failed so completely with reviewers and at the box office that it put legendary studio United Artists out of business and marked the end of Hollywood's auteur era. Or so the conventional wisdom goes. Charles Elton delves deeply into the making and aftermath of the movie and presents a surprisingly different view to that of Steven Bach, one of the executives responsible for Heaven's Gate, who wrote a scathing book about the film and solidified the widely held view that Cimino wounded the movie industry beyond repair. 

The Ultimate History of the '80s Teen Movie goes behind the scenes of a genre where cult hits mingled with studio blockbusters, where giants like Spielberg and Coppola rubbed shoulders with baby-faced first-timers, and where future superstars Sean, Demi, and Tom all got their big break. Music, comedy, and politics all play a part in the surprisingly complex history of the '80s teen movie. And while the films might have been aimed primarily at adolescents, the best tackle universal issues and remain relevant to all ages.

Authors 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 10 detailed 'making-of' accounts and capsule reviews of every single Best Picture winner in history. In addition, each Best Picture winner is carefully scrutinised to answer the ultimate question: 'did the Academy get it right?'

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were only three major television networks. And there was only one Harlan Ellison taking them all to task in a series of weekly essays he wrote for the countercultural, underground newspaper, the Los Angeles Free Press, a.k.a. “The Freep”. For nearly four years, he channel-surfed through the mire of ABC, CBS, and NBC, finding little of value but much to critique. No one offered a more astute analysis of the idiot box’s influence on American culture, or its effects on the intelligence and psyche of viewers. 

 For No Reason at All: The Changing Narrative of the First World War in American Film discusses a variety of Great War-themed films made from 1915 to the present, tracing the changing approaches to the conflict over time. 

Fascinante ensayo que recorre, no solo la representación del vudú en el cine, desde cintas emblemáticas como El corazón del ángel a La serpiente y el arco iris, sino también los propios orígenes, evolución, idiosincrasia y prácticas del vudú real, de la mano de uno de los mayores expertos en el tema. El texto principal está aderezado con críticas y ensayos sobre el tema de otros autores emblemáticos de la escena hispanohablante contemporánea.

This laugh-out-loud memoir takes listeners backstage and inside the writers' room of one of America's best-loved shows. With more than 17 million viewers and more than seventy Emmy nominations — including two wins for best comedy — Everybody Loves Raymond reigned supreme in television comedy for almost a decade. Phil Rosenthal was there at the beginning. United by a shared lifetime of family dysfunction, he and Ray Romano found endless material to keep the show fresh and funny for its entire run.

Concienzudo y divertido ensayo sobre el folk horror, los credos más antiguos que el cristianismo arraigados en diferentes áreas del continente europeo que fueron origen de varias de las películas más emblemáticas de terror de las pasadas décadas. Una colección de ensayos de autores expertos tanto en cultura popular como en cine y en diferentes ramas de la sociología, que no solo analizan películas de culto, sino sus conexiones con los cultos europeos a las diferentes entidades de la naturaleza.

This is a collection of twenty-three original interviews with stars of the silent screen, with biographical information and a filmography included for each. Interviewed are Lew Ayres, William Bakewell, Lina Basquette, Madge Bellamy, Eleanor Boardman, Ethlyne Clair, Junior Coghlan, Joyce Compton, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Dorothy Gulliver, Maxine Elliott Hicks, Dorothy Janis, George Lewis, Marion Mack, Patsy Ruth Miller, Lois Moran, Baby Marie Osborne, Muriel Ostriche, Eddie Quillan, Esther Ralston, Dorothy Revier, David Rollins, and Gladys Walton.

Hollywood’s Dream Factory is now a nightmare of woke restrictions, identity politics run amok, and freedom-snuffing rules and regulations. The Oscars are unwatchable, as are many films and television shows thanks to the woke revolution. Virtue Bombs breaks down where Hollywood went so wrong, illustrates the slow-motion disaster infiltrating the industry, and offers a glimmer of hope for a woke-free tomorrow. Award-winning film critic Christian Toto has all the receipts, showcasing Hollywood’s virtue-signaling follies and how it could get much worse before it gets better.

The Simpsons has been predicting major events with scary accuracy for over three decades, from Donald Trump's presidency to Disney buying 20th Century Fox. People just can't seem to get enough and are eager to know what it's going to predict next. This book goes behind the scenes of this adored cartoon series, and the family we've grown to love. Between Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and the rest of the Simpsons family, the show has stolen our hearts, and also left us amazed at how often The Simpsons predicts the future!

Academy Award-winning director Michael Curtiz—whose best-known films include Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Mildred Pierce, and White Christmas—was in many ways the anti-auteur. During his 27-year tenure at Warner Bros., he directed swashbuckling adventures, Westerns, musicals, war epics, romances, historical dramas, horror films, tearjerkers, melodramas, comedies, and film noir masterpieces. In the first biography of this colorful, instinctual artist, Alan K. Rode illuminates the life and work of one of the film industry's most complex figures.

In the decades following his death, many of those who knew James Dean best - actors, directors, friends, lovers (both men and women), photographers, and Hollywood columnists - shared stories of their first-person experiences with him in interviews and in the articles and autobiographies they...

¿Sabía que Akira Kurosawa, el director japonés más célebre y admirado, intentó quitarse la vida tras el fracaso comercial de Dodeskaden? ¿Que Martin Sheen sufrió un infarto durante el rodaje de Apocalypse Now, uno de los más infernales que se recuerdan? ¿Sabía que el principal creador del lenguaje cinematográfico era un fervoroso partidario del Ku Klux Klan? ¿Que en 1921 Fatty Arbuckle, uno de los cómicos más célebres de su tiempo, fue acusado de asesinar a la joven actriz Virginia Rappe?