Its The Pictures That Got Small

Download or read book It's the Pictures That Got Small written by Christine Becker and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An original study of Hollywood film stars and 1950s television

Download or read book "It's the Pictures That Got Small" written by Charles Brackett and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-16 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Brackett’s diaries read like a funnier, better-paced version of Barton Fink.” —Newsweek Screenwriter Charles Brackett is best remembered as the writing partner of director Billy Wilder, who once referred to the pair as “the happiest couple in Hollywood,” collaborating on such classics as The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard. He was also a perceptive chronicler of the entertainment industry, and in this annotated collection of writings from dozens of Brackett’s unpublished diaries, film historian Anthony Slide clarifies Brackett's critical contribution to Wilder’s films and enriches our knowledge of Wilder’s achievements in writing, direction, and style. Brackett’s diaries re-create the initial meetings of the talent responsible for Ninotchka, Hold Back the Dawn, Ball of Fire, The Major and the Minor, Five Graves to Cairo, The Lost Weekend, and Sunset Boulevard, recounting the breakthroughs and the breakdowns that ultimately forced these collaborators to part ways. In addition to a portrait of Wilder, this is rare view of a producer who was a president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Screen Writers Guild, a New Yorker drama critic, and a member of the Algonquin Round Table. With insight into the dealings of Paramount, Universal, MGM, and RKO, and legendary figures such as Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Edna Ferber, and Dorothy Parker, this book reveals the political and creative intrigue at the heart of Hollywood’s most significant films. “A fascinating look at Hollywood in its classic period, and a unique and indispensable must-have for any movie buff.” —Chicago Tribune “This feels as close as we can get to being in the presence of Wilder’s genius, and he emerges as the cruelest as well as the wittiest of men.” —The Guardian “Not only rare insight into their often-stormy partnership but also an insider’s view of Hollywood during that era.” —Los Angeles Times “Very entertaining.” —Library Journal

Download or read book Television at the Movies written by Jon Nelson Wagner and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2008-05-19 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The overview of television criticism, which this book provides, comes appropriately at a moment of change. Television is becoming dramatically different as a result of new and developing technologies such as cable, HDTV, satellite transmission and broadband distributions. By concentrating on the still-dominant notion of television, what the authors call "Classical Network Television," they argue that it is as important to understand this model as it is to understand Classical Hollywood Cinema. The co-authors have a unique approach to the study of television, viewing its history and reception not only through important articles about the medium, but also through analyzing how Hollywood auteur cinema has commented on television over the decades, in films such as Tootsie, Network, The Last Picture Show, A Face in the Crowd, Rollerball, The King of Comedy and others. Not only does this reflect the pervasive use of cinema theory to discuss television, it also helps to emphasize the importance of clarifying the distinctions between the criticisms of the two media. Television at the Movies argues that the study of television is a crucial aspect of understanding our recent and contemporary culture, and it provides an illuminating point of entry for students and researchers in the field.

Download or read book Shot on Location written by R. Barton Palmer and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-18 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early days of filmmaking, before many of Hollywood’s elaborate sets and soundstages had been built, it was common for movies to be shot on location. Decades later, Hollywood filmmakers rediscovered the practice of using real locations and documentary footage in their narrative features. Why did this happen? What caused this sudden change? Renowned film scholar R. Barton Palmer answers this question in Shot on Location by exploring the historical, ideological, economic, and technological developments that led Hollywood to head back outside in order to capture footage of real places. His groundbreaking research reveals that wartime newsreels had a massive influence on postwar Hollywood film, although there are key distinctions to be made between these movies and their closest contemporaries, Italian neorealist films. Considering how these practices were used in everything from war movies like Twelve O’Clock High to westerns like The Searchers, Palmer explores how the blurring of the formal boundaries between cinematic journalism and fiction lent a “reality effect” to otherwise implausible stories. Shot on Location describes how the period’s greatest directors, from Alfred Hitchcock to Billy Wilder, increasingly moved beyond the confines of the studio. At the same time, the book acknowledges the collaborative nature of moviemaking, identifying key roles that screenwriters, art designers, location scouts, and editors played in incorporating actual geographical locales and social milieus within a fictional framework. Palmer thus offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how Hollywood transformed the way we view real spaces.

Download or read book Reform Cinema in Iran written by Blake Atwood and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-08 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is nearly impossible to separate contemporary Iranian cinema from the Islamic revolution that transformed film production in the country in the late 1970s. As the aims of the revolution shifted and hardened once Khomeini took power and as an eight-year war with Iraq dragged on, Iranian filmmakers confronted new restrictions. In the 1990s, however, the Reformist Movement, led by Mohammad Khatami, and the film industry, developed an unlikely partnership that moved audiences away from revolutionary ideas and toward a discourse of reform. In Reform Cinema in Iran, Blake Atwood examines how new industrial and aesthetic practices created a distinct cultural and political style in Iranian film between 1989 and 2007. Atwood analyzes a range of popular, art, and documentary films. He provides new readings of internationally recognized films such as Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry (1997) and Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Time for Love (1990), as well as those by Rakhshan Bani, Masud Kiami, and other key Iranian directors. At the same time, he also considers how filmmakers and the film industry were affected by larger political and religious trends that took shape during Mohammad Khatami's presidency (1997-2005). Atwood analyzes political speeches, religious sermons, and newspaper editorials and pays close attention to technological developments, particularly the rise of video, to determine their role in democratizing filmmaking and realizing the goals of political reform. He concludes with a look at the legacy of reform cinema, including films produced under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose neoconservative discourse rejected the policies of reform that preceded him.

Download or read book Silent Cinema written by Lawrence Napper and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the spectacular success of The Artist (2011) there has been a resurgence of interest in silent cinema, and particularly in the lush and passionate screen dramas of the 1920s. This book offers an introduction to the cinema of this extraordinary period, outlining the development of the form between the end of the First World War and the introduction of synchronized sound at the end of the 1920s. Lawrence Napper addresses the relationship between film aesthetics and the industrial and political contexts of film production through a series of case studies of "national" cinemas. It also focuses on film-going as the most popular leisure activity of the age. Topics such as the star system, cinema buildings, musical accompaniments, film fashions, and fan cultures are addressed—all the elements that ensured that the experience of the pictures was "big." The international dominance of Hollywood is outlined, as are the different responses to that dominance in Britain, Germany, and the USSR. Case studies seek to move beyond the familiar silent canon, and include The Oyster Princess (1919), It (1927), Shooting Stars (1927), and The Girl with the Hatbox (1927).

Download or read book What You See Is What You Hear written by Dario Martinelli and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What You See Is What You Hear develops a unique model of analysis that helps students and advanced scholars alike to look at audiovisual texts from a fresh perspective. Adopting an engaging writing style, the author draws an accessible picture of the field, offering several analytical tools, historical background, and numerous case studies. Divided into five main sections, the monograph covers problems of definitions, history, and most of all analysis. The first part raises the main problems related to audiovisuality, including taxonomical and historical questions. The second part provides the bases for the understanding of audiovisual creative communication as a whole, introducing a novel theoretical model for its analysis. The next three part focus elaborate on the model in all its constituents and with plenty of case studies taken from the field of cinema, TV, music videos, advertising and other forms of audiovisuality. Methodologically, the book is informed by different paradigms of film and media studies, multimodality studies, structuralism, narratology, “auteur theory” in the broad sense, communication studies, semiotics, and the so-called “Numanities.” What You See Is What You Hear enables readers to better understand how to analyze the structure and content of diverse audiovisual texts, to discuss their different idioms, and to approach them with curiosity and critical spirit.