Livres

Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood

Released in 1942, the film won 4 Oscars, including Best Picture and featured unforgettable performances by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.
The book offers a rich account of the film’s origins, the myths and realities behind its production, and the reasons it remains so revered today.

Through extensive research and interviews with film-makers, Noah Isenberg explores he ways in which the film continues to dazzle audiences and saturate popular culture 75 years after its release.

John Boorman is one of the cinema’s authentic visionaries, drawn to myths and dreams. The undisputed heir to David Lean, his films, such as Point Blank, Deliverance and Excalibur, exhibit a continual search for the truth that only art can convey.

In Conclusions Boorman summarises what he has learned about the craft of film-making, and wishes to pass on to the next generation of film-makers. Into this tapestry of cinematic memories, he also weaves the story of his kith and kin, including the death of his cherished elder daughter, and an evocation of the forest of trees that he has planted as his final legacy.

A rare, intimate portrait of Hollywood’s reigning ‘blockbuster auteur’ whose deeply personal billion-dollar movies have established him as the most successful director to come out of the British Isles since Alfred Hitchcock.
More than just the tinkerings of a glass watchmaker, Christopher Nolan’s films have an unerring grasp of the way time makes us feel. Time steals people away in his films, and he takes careful note of the theft. Time is Nolan’s great antagonist, his lifelong nemesis. He seems almost to take it personally.

A message from the Captain:
‘On behalf of myself and the entire Ayoade team, welcome to Ayoade on Top. At last, the definitive book about perhaps the best cabin-crew dramedy ever filmed: View from the Top, starring Gwyneth Paltrow.’

Buckle up for the flight of your life.

‘The most profoundly silly book on film I’ve ever read and somehow one of the most insightful too.’ Edgar Wright

‘A brilliant satire of film, academia, commerce and Richard Ayoade . . . The funniest book I’ve ever read.’ Jesse Eisenberg

‘I haven’t laughed this much reading a book in a long time. The man is a national treasure.’ Big Issue

The Pixels of Paul Cezanne is a collection of essays by Wim Wenders in which he presents his observations and reflections on the fellow artists who have influenced, shaped, and inspired him.

“How are they doing it?” is the key question that Wenders asks as he looks at the dance work of Pina Bausch, the paintings of Cezanne, Edward Hopper, and Andrew Wyeth, as well as the films of Ingmar Bergman, Michelanelo Antonioni, Ozu, Anthony Mann, Douglas Sirk, and Sam Fuller.

Wes Anderson startled audiences with his stop-motion animated film of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox.
He now displays his unique wit and playful visual sense in an action-filled saga of Samurai dogs.

This edition of Herzog on Herzog presents a completely new set of interviews in which Werner Herzog discusses his career from its very beginnings to his most recent productions.

Herzog was once hailed by Francois Truffaut as the most important director alive. Famous for his frequent collaborations with mercurial actor Klaus Kinski – including the epics Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, and the terrifying Nosferatu – and more recently with documentaries such as Grizzly Man, Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Into the Abyss, Herzog has built a body of work that is one of the most vital in post-war German cinema.

Terrence Malick’s debut film, Badlands, announced the arrival of a unique talent. In the 40 years since that debut, Malick has only made 5 films, but they are distinctive in their beauty.

This book is not meant to be a biography of Terrence Malick. The purpose behind the book is to introduce readers to the extraordinary universe of his film-making and to aid them in understanding his work. And to do this through the words of his closest collaborators – cinematographers, set designers, costumers, cameramen, directors, producers, and actors such as Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek and Jessica Chastain.

Based on the famous series of dialogues between Francois Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock from the 1960s, the book moves chronologically through Hitchcock’s films to discuss his career, techniques, and effects he achieved. It changed the way Hitchcock was perceived, as a popular director of suspense films – such as Psycho and The Birds – and revealed to moviegoers and critics, the depth of Hitchcock’s perception and his mastery of the art form.

As a result of the changed perceptions about Hitchcock, his masterpiece, Vertigo, hit the No 1 slot in Sight & Sound’s recent poll of film-makers and critics, displacing Citizen Kane as the Best Film of all time.

You SLUG the guy.
You KISS the dame.
You TOTAL the car.

That’s movies. And I love ’em.

Gordy LaSure’s passionate about film. He eats film, he drinks film, and sometimes he’ll even watch a film. But most of all he loves talking about film, and how they’d be a shit-ton better if only people would pull their asses out of their ears and listen to Gordy LaSure.

The voyage of this book can be categorised as an attempt to understand How In Hell Film Works. Why are some films bad, and some films terrible? How come just a handful of films (Titanic, Porky’s, Dirty Harry) are any good at all? Gordy’ll tell you How and Why, and he’ll give you a shot of Wherefore on the side. And he doesn’t shoot from the hip; he shoots from the gut.

Sally Potter has been renowned for her rapport with actors, and for the luminous performances she works with them to produce. Now she strips bare the art and craft of directing actors for the camera, from casting a film to the moment of first screening when the work goes public.