Showing titles in History & Criticism

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE A book that explores the great American novelist and playwright Edna Ferber, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Ficton, whose work was made into many Academy Award-winning movies; the writing of her controversial, international best-selling novel...

Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (April 16, 1889 to December 25, 1977), born in London, was an English actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered one of the film industry's most important figures. His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977.

Only one performance style has dominated the lexicon of the casual moviegoer: "Method acting." The first reception-based analysis of film acting, Imagining the Method investigates how popular understandings of the so-called Method—what its author Justin Rawlins calls "methodness"—created an exclusive brand for white, male actors while associating such actors with rebellion and marginalization. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book maps the forces giving shape to methodness and policing its boundaries.

Until now, Hollywood's political history has been dominated by a steady stream of films and memoirs decrying the nightmare of the Red Scare and how it victimized political innocents. But Ronald and Allis Radosh tell for the first time the “backstory” behind this myth. They show how the Soviet Comintern targeted the film capital in the late 1920s, taking us inside the cells and discussion groups that Communist Party members formed, the guilds and unions they tried to take over, and the studios they aimed to influence.

Everyone’s a critic, especially in the digital age—but no one takes on the movies like multiple award-winning author Harlan Ellison. Renowned both for fiction (A Boy and His Dog) and pop-culture commentary (The Glass Teat), Ellison offers in this collection twenty-five years’ worth of essays and film criticism.

Ignoring the systemic racial inequalities in film is losing the industry $10 billion a year. Yet, parity, diversity, and inclusion are fundamental issues that the Oscar Awards are only just beginning to address. In this book, award-winning writer, broadcaster, model, and fashion designer, Ben Arogundade, provides a manual for deconstructing everything you thought you knew about Hollywood - documenting the stories and struggles of black artists within the movie industry that have so far been left out of the canon.

The brutalized body of 14-year-old Emmett Till was published in Jet magazine at the insistence of his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley. Mamie wanted the horrific photograph of her son’s lynched body to be displayed for the world to see, to expose America to its own barbaric acts of racial terror. As such, Emmett’s death and Mamie’s actions afterwards would ignite a crucial moment in the civil rights movement, changing the course of history forever.

A presence in Third Reich cinema, Adolf Hitler also personally financed, ordered, and censored films and newsreels and engaged in complex relationships with their stars and directors. Here, Bill Niven offers a powerful argument for reconsidering Hitler's fascination with film as a means to further the Nazi agenda. In this first English-language work to fully explore Hitler's influence on and relationship with film in Nazi Germany, the author calls on a broad array of archival sources. Niven also explores Hitler's representation in Third Reich cinema, personally and through films focusing on historical figures with whom he was associated

It was an explosion that reverberated across the country—and into the very heart of early-twentieth-century America. On the morning of October 1, 1910, the walls of the Los Angeles Times Building buckled as a thunderous detonation sent men, machinery, and mortar rocketing into the night air...

Iconic actors, jealousy, tantrums, and a legendary producer’s struggle to transform the tempestuous, ill-fated union of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII to the big screen all factor into this dramatic, behind-the-scenes story of how the popular Broadway play Anne of the Thousand Days became the quintessential Anne Boleyn movie. Richard Burton and Geneviève Bujold lit up the screen in this tragic romance, but some of the most exciting scenes were those not caught on film and which centered on a real or imagined love triangle.

In 1947, the Cold War came to Hollywood. Over nine tumultuous days in October, the House Un-American Activities Committee held a notorious round of hearings into alleged Communist subversion in the movie industry. The blowback was profound: the major studios pledged to never again employ a known Communist or unrepentant fellow traveler. The declaration marked the onset of the blacklist era, a time when political allegiances, real or suspected, determined employment opportunities in the entertainment industry. Hundreds of artists were shown the dooror had it shut in their faces.

Mais, loin d'être de simples contes de fée, ces dessins animés mythiques nous invitent à nous questionner sur notre rapport à la Nature, à l'animal et sur notre propre place sur Terre.

Aparentemente da noite para o dia, o programa de TV mais popular da história da América Latina havia desaparecido de todas as redes a cabo e de streaming, e ninguém sabia o motivo. Seu desaparecimento trouxe à tona questões sobre a história confusa do programa. Nesta série, investigamos os problemas políticos, cômicos e interpessoais do programa, juntamente com a experiência de assistir a um programa que definiu gerações da televisão latino-americana. Separamos a nostalgia dos danos reais causados por Chaves para reformular o que significa amar uma obra de arte complicada.

The former special advisor and press secretary to President Ronald Reagan shares a “sentimental but often revealing…enjoyable walk down Memory Lane” (Kirkus Reviews)—told through the movies he watched with the Reagans every week at Camp David. Over the course of eight years, Mark...

Pop culture and parody author Valerie Estelle Frankel examines the sources and predicts a Game of Thrones ending for each one. What will the Ragnarok ending look like? Or the Narnia ending? Who will live, who will die, and how goofy can the war of ice and fire possibly get?

The Camera Lies unpacks Hitchcock's legacy both as a director who continuously taught audiences to distrust appearance and as a man with an uncanny insight into the human capacity for deceit and misinterpretation.

Zanim powstała Lista Schindlera, był człowiek, który przez 46 lat walczył, by świat usłyszał prawdę. Leopold „Poldek” Page — ocalały z Holokaustu — nie pozwolił zapomnieć o odwadze, która ocaliła życie 1300 Żydów. To opowieść o spotkaniu, które zmieniło bieg historii. O cichym bohaterze, który przekazał dalej największe świadectwo XX wieku.

Transforming Harry: The Adaptation of Harry Potter in the Transmedia Age is an edited volume of eight essays that look at how the cinematic versions of the seven Harry Potter novels represent an unprecedented cultural event in the history of cinematic adaptation.

Mention The Phantom of the Opera at a dinner party, and each guest will have his or her own vivid, almost visceral, recollection of the tale of a disfigured musical genius and his unrequited love for a beautiful, young singer. Someone will undoubtedly pantomime the famous scene from the silent era film in which Mary Philbin (as Christine Daae) sneaks up behind the Phantom, while he is playing the organ in his subterranean lair, and unmasks the great Lon Chaney, revealing his horribly disfigured face to the audience and her.

The day-by-day inside story of the making of Tombstone (1993) as told to the author by those who were there--actors, extras, crew members, Buckaroos, historians and everyone in between. Historical context that inspired Kevin Jarre's screenplay is included. Production designers, cameramen, costume designers, composers, illustrators, screenwriter, journalists, set dressers, prop masters, medics, stuntmen and many others share their recollections--many never-before-told--of filming this epic Western.