Richard Linklater
Author: David T. Johnson
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2012-03-30
Total Pages: 203
ISBN-13: 0252036921
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis title provides an incisive analysis of popular American filmmaker, Richard Linklater.
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Pedro Almodóvar
Author: Marvin D'Lugo
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2023-02-03
Total Pages: 194
ISBN-13: 0252054717
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPerhaps the best-known Spanish filmmaker to international audiences, Pedro Almodóvar gained the widespread attention of English-speaking critics and fans with the Oscar-nominated Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and the celebrated dark comedy Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!. Marvin D'Lugo offers a concise, informed, and insightful commentary on a preeminent force in modern cinema. D'Lugo follows Almodóvar's career chronologically, tracing the director's works and their increasing complexity in terms of theme and the Spanish film tradition. Drawing on a wide range of critical sources, D'Lugo explores Almodóvar's use of melodrama and Hollywood genre film, his self-invention as a filmmaker, and his on-screen sexual politics. D'Lugo also discusses what he calls "geocultural positioning," that is, Almodóvar's paradoxical ability to use his marginal positions—in terms of his class, geographical origin, and identity—to develop an expressive language that is emotionally recognizable by audiences worldwide. Two fascinating interviews with the director round out the volume. An exciting consideration of an arthouse giant, Pedro Almodóvar mixes original interpretations into an analysis sure to reward film students and specialists alike.
Spike Lee
Author: Todd McGowan
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2014-02-15
Total Pages: 185
ISBN-13: 0252095405
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSince the release of Do the Right Thing in 1989, Spike Lee has established himself as a cinematic icon. Lee's mostly independent films garner popular audiences while at the same time engaging in substantial political and social commentary. He is arguably the most accomplished African American filmmaker in cinematic history, and his breakthrough paved the way for the success of many other African Americans in film. In this first single-author scholarly examination of Spike Lee's oeuvre, Todd McGowan shows how Lee's films, from She's Gotta Have It through Red Hook Summer, address crucial social issues such as racism, paranoia, and economic exploitation in a formally inventive manner. McGowan argues that Lee uses excess in his films to intervene in issues of philosophy, politics, and art. McGowan contends that it is impossible to watch a Spike Lee film in the way that one watches a typical Hollywood film. By forcing observers to recognize their unconscious enjoyment of violence, paranoia, racism, sexism, and oppression, Lee's films prod spectators to see differently and to confront their own excess. In the process, his films reveal what is at stake in desire, interpersonal relations, work, and artistic creation itself.
Fifty Contemporary Film Directors
Author: Yvonne Tasker
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2010-10-04
Total Pages: 708
ISBN-13: 1136919457
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFifty Contemporary Film Directors examines the work of some of today’s most popular and influential cinematic figures. It provides an accessible overview of each director’s contribution to cinema, incorporating a discussion of their career, major works and impact. Revised throughout and with twelve new entries, this second edition is an up-to-date introduction to some of the most prominent film makers of the present day. The directors, from differing backgrounds and working across a range of genres, include: Martin Scorsese Steven Spielberg Sofia Coppola Julie Dash Shane Meadow Michael Moore Peter Jackson Guillermo Del Toro Tim Burton Jackie Chan Ang Lee Pedro Almodóvar. With further reading and a filmography accompanying each entry, this comprehensive guide is indispensable to all those studying contemporary film and will appeal to anyone interested in the key individuals behind modern cinema’s greatest achievements.
Terrence Malick
Author: Lloyd Michaels
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2009
Total Pages: 144
ISBN-13: 0252075757
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFor a director who has made only four feature films over three decades, Terrence Malick has sustained an extraordinary critical reputation as one of America’s most original and independent filmmakers. In this book, Lloyd Michaels analyzes each of Malick’s four features in depth, emphasizing both repetitive formal techniques such as voiceover and long lens cinematography as well as recurrent themes drawn from the director’s academic training in modern philosophy and American literature. Michaels explores Malick’s synthesis of the romance of mythic American experience and the aesthetics of European art film. He performs close cinematic analysis of paradigmatic moments in Malick’s films: the billboard sequence in Badlands, the opening credits in Days of Heaven, the philosophical colloquies between Witt and Welsh in The Thin Red Line, and the epilogue in The New World. This richly detailed study also includes the only two published interviews with Malick, both in 1975 following the release of his first feature film.
Jane Campion
Author: Kathleen McHugh
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2007-05
Total Pages: 208
ISBN-13: 0252074475
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Alejandro González Iñárritu
Author: Celestino Deleyto
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2010-10-01
Total Pages: 176
ISBN-13: 025209011X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis in-depth study of Mexican film director Alejandro González Iñárritu explores his role in moving Mexican filmmaking from a traditional nationalist agenda towards a more global focus. Working in the United States and in Mexico, Iñárritu crosses national borders while his movies break the barriers of distribution, production, narration, and style. His features also experiment with transnational identity as characters emigrate and settings change. In studying the international scope of Iñárritu's influential films Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel, Celestino Deleyto and María del Mar Azcona trace common themes such as human suffering and redemption, chance, and accidental encounters. The authors also analyze the director's powerful visual style and his consistent use of multiple characters and a fragmented narrative structure. The book concludes with a new interview with Iñárritu that touches on the themes and subject matter of his chief works.
The Wallflower Critical Guide to Contemporary North American Directors
Author: Yoram Allon
Publisher: London : Wallflower
Published: 2000
Total Pages: 572
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA guide to North American film directors arranged in alphabetical order.
Neil Jordan
Author: Maria Pramaggiore
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 218
ISBN-13: 0252075307
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBest known for his enormously successful independent film The Crying Game, Irish director Neil Jordan has made sixteen feature films since 1982. Even after achieving commercial success and critical acclaim with such films as Interview with the Vampire and The Butcher Boy, Jordan remains a curiously elusive figure in the era of the celebrity filmmaker. Maria Pramaggiore addresses this conundrum by examining Jordan's distinctive style across a surprisingly broad range of genres and production contexts, including horror and gangster films, Irish-themed movies, and Hollywood remakes. Despite the striking diversity of Jordan's films, the director consistently returns to gothic themes of loss, violence, and madness. In her sophisticated examination of Mona Lisa, Michael Collins, and The Good Thief, Pramaggiore shows how Jordan presents these dark narratives with a uniquely Irish and postmodern sense of irony. This illuminating analysis of one of the cinema's most important artists will be of keen interest to movie enthusiasts as well as students and scholars of contemporary film."
Wong Kar-wai
Author: Peter Brunette
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2005-03-22
Total Pages: 175
ISBN-13: 0252095472
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCalled the leading heir to the great directors of post-WWII Europe and lavished with awards, Wong Kar-wai has redefined perceptions of Hong Kong's film industry. Wong's visual brilliance and emphasis on atmosphere over action have set him apart from peers while earning him an admiring international audience. In the Mood for Love regularly appears on lists of the twenty-first century's greatest films while critics and filmgoers recognize works like Chungking Express and Happy Together as modern classics. Peter Brunette describes the ways in which Wong's supremely haunting visual films create a new form of cinema by telling a story with stunning, suggestive visual images and audio tracks rather than character, dialogue, and plot. As he shows, Wong's early background in genre film offers fascinating insights on his more studied later works. He also delves into Wong's perennial themes of time, love, and loss and examines the political implications of his films, especially concerning the handover of former British colony Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China.
