FABER AND FABER

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.

Inspired by Dostoyevsky’s short story, The Double tells the story of Simon, a timid man, scratching out an isolated existence in an indifferent world. He is overlooked at work, scorned by his mother, and ignored by the woman of his dreams. He feels powerless to change any of these things. The arrival of a new co-worker, James, serves to upset the balance. James is both Simon’s exact physical double and his opposite – confident, charismatic and good with women. To Simon’s horror, James slowly starts taking over his life.

The Grand Budapest Hotel recounts the adventures of Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes), a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars, and Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori), the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend. Acting as a kind of father-figure, M. Gustave leads the resourceful Zero on a journey that involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting; the battle for an enormous family fortune; a desperate chase on motorcycles, trains, sledges and skis; and the sweetest confection of a love affair – all against the back-drop of a suddenly and dramatically changing Continent.

All drama takes the form of one of 36 situations. That was Georges Polti’s theory about theatre, which he put forward in his book 36 Dramatic Situations, published in French in the mid-19th century.

A century and a half later, Mike Figgis was struggling with a film treatment. He couldn’t get it right. But when he turned to Polti’s book, the sample situations helped clarify his ideas and broaden the landscape of his creativity.
He saw just how useful this sort of a framework could be for writers, and decided to rework Polti’s theory for a modern, film-focused audience.

In this indispensable guide to digital film-making, leading film-maker Mike Figgis offers the reader a step-by-step tutorial in how to use digital technology so as to get the best from it.

Mike Figgis, with experience from films such as Miss Julie and Leaving Las Vegas – for which he received two Oscar nominations – is an authoritative and insightful guide through the details of film-making. He outlines the equipment and its uses, and provides an authoritative guide to the shooting process – from working with actors to lighting, framing, and camera movement. He further dispenses wisdom on the editing process and the use of sound and music, all the while establishing a sound aesthetic basis for the digital format.

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.

In this revelatory career-length biography, produced through many hours of interviews with Danny Boyle, he talks frankly about the secrets behind the opening ceremony of the London Olympic Games as well as the struggles, joys and incredible perseverance needed to direct such well-loved films as Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, 28 Days Later and Shallow Grave.

Marlon Brando will never cease to fascinate us: for his triumphs as an actor (On the Waterfront, The Godfather, Last Tango in Paris), as well as his disasters; for the power of the screen portrayals he gave, and for his turbulent, tumultuous personal life. Seamlessly intertwining the man and the work, Kanfer takes us through Brando’s troubled childhood, to his arrival in New York in the 1940s, where he studied with the legendary Stella Adler, and at the age of twenty-three became the toast of Broadway in A Streetcar Named Desire. Kanfer expertly examines each of Brando’s films – from The Men in 1950 to The Score in 2001 – making clear the evolution of Brando’s singular genius, while also shedding light on the cultural evolution of Hollywood itself.

The European Film Academy was founded in 1988 as a cinematic brotherhood that would bring together film-makers from across the East- West divide. This volume features articles and interviews with leading directors, writers, producers, actors, cinematographers, critics, directors of festivals and cinema institutions – as well as audience members from across the wide swathe of Europe – in which they discuss the question: What is a European film? The volume also contains a Foreword by British critic Derek Malcolm.

Pedro Almodóvar’s influence on European popular culture has been immense. From a small village in rural Spain to international acclaim for his many wonderfully vivid and outrageous films, Almodóvar On Almodóvar tells the story of the man and his films.