Thanks for the Truffaut recommendations!


Was it Stephen Thrower's book Beyond Terror?

I think so. It was a British book.

Tag Gallagher had made the new revised edition of his John Ford book available for download for free.

I've just finished it and it's probably the best book on a single director I've read.

I've read the original edition - very good - how much has he revised it, do you know?...

I'm not sure. I read the original (or parts of it) about 15 years ago and can't remember clearly enough. I do know I read a lot of stuff in the new edition for what seemed to be the first time, and that it has a load of color film stills which the original did not have.

Available at the end of October is No Borders, No Limits: Nikkatsu Action Cinema by Mark Schilling, currently Japan correspondent for Variety. This looks to be an interesting glimpse of this genre of Japanese films.

According to the publisher this is from a monograph written for a 2005 European retrospective of Nikkatsu Action films. Book contains rare posters and stills, a detailed history of the Nikkatsu studio, profiles of and interviews with leading directors and stars and reviews of dozens of films.

Schilling is also a reviewer for The Japan Times (whom I consistently disagree with, but hey) and is touring a retrospective with the same title as his book, which looks pretty interesting (focusing on Hasebe, Masuda, and Kurahara). I haven't enjoyed much of the Hasebe Yasuhara I've seen, except for maybe the Stray Cat Rock Sex Hunter, which was pretty wild (though I doubt I'd sit for it again.) Don't know much about either of the other director's 60s work, but I do have the opinion that Masuda Toshio was responsible for some really bad stuff after the 70s. I've wanted to sit down with his Shadow Hunters for some time, though, as I keep hoping to see more good Tamba films, which are scarce.

Schilling's other books are rather light on content. The description for this one makes it sound like it will be more of the same: capsule reviews that say very little and interviews that repeat what can be found elsewhere. It's nice to see someone covering a topic like this, but Schilling's approach doesn't do anything for me.

I've browsed through the 14 pages of this thread and saw no mention of these, so anyone read all or some of the entries in the History of American Cinema series (pub. by Scribner)? I have the first entry, the Charles Musser, but have not read it yet. It looks like a great series (and quite long).

Anyone read Making Waves: New Wave, Neorealism, and the New Cinemas of the 1960s by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith? I wonder if the book is an improvement over Peter Cowie's similarly themed book Revolution!: The Explosion of World Cinema in the Sixties?

Screening Modernism: European Art Cinema, 1950-1980 by András Bálint Kovács looks promising as well.

Any recommendations here regarding books on Francis Ford Coppola's life and films?

Dylan,

I believe that I read "Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life" by Michael Schumacher a few years ago. It is a very long book covering Coppola's whole life (I think up to Godfather III; I don't remember it covering "Jack" and "Rainmaker") Although it goes into things about the films like characterization and themes, I don't think it's long in the way of critical analysis. I don't remember it being a very gossipy book either.

That said, it does offer some interesting insight into his many different phases. Some good stuff concerning American Zoetrope and its many incarnations and his Tulsa/"Silverfish" period (my favorite; I'm biased as I grew up in Tulsa). What I remember most though, is some stories regarding his late son Gio. I remember tearing up at two points during the book; once when they recount Gio writing his father a letter requesting that he become his apprentice (at a relatively young age) in the Italian tradition, and then during the story of his horrible death.

Hey,

Thank you for the recommendation! I just picked up the revised 1999 edition (which covers his career up to The Rainmaker) at the library and I've treaded a little bit into it and it's utterly magnificent, exactly the kind of book I was hoping to find on the man. Should be an excellent read. Thanks again.

I've yet to finish it, but I can already thoroughly recommend Terence Dobson's The Film Work of Norman McLaren, an exhaustive study of the life and work that is also a perfect companion-piece to the marvellous seven-disc collection of just about every surviving scrap of footage he ever shot. (It's a wonderful luxury to be able to read about, say, a home movie that McLaren shot in 1941 and then actually have that very same film to hand!)

And like all the best film books, its immediate effect was to make me want to watch the films over again - which is why I'm savouring it slowly and working my way through the discs at a rate of about half an hour a day. (At 15 hours total, it's still going to take me a month!)

I'd just like to recommend Kristin Thompson's The Frodo Franchise, an entertaining look at the financing and marketing of the LOTR films. Very little actual making of or analysis of the films themselves, but there is much of interest. It covers how the films went from Miramax to New Line, how they were financed, marketing, official and fan websites, video games, and the effect the films had on New Zealand and independent film distributors.

Is Hames' book The Czechoslovak New Wave the essential book for that particular era in film? I am just starting to see some Czech New Wave films and really want to read up on that era.

Few film books are definitive, but this one is. I'm pretty well read when it comes to English-language literature on Czech cinema, and I can't think of any other book that comes anywhere close to the scope of Hames's work.

He's been researching this subject for over 30 years - and it shows.

Another good one I'd highly recommend tracking down is On the Edge: The Life and Times of Francis Coppola by Michael Goodwin and Naomi Wise. It's not up-to-date (it came out in 1989) but it is well-written and exhaustively researched. Definitely worth checking out.

I recently finished reading Geoffrey O’Brien’s The Phantom Empire: Movies in the Mind of the 20th Century, and can’t recall if anybody had already mentioned it in this thread. I found it to be a fascinating read, both erudite and earthy. It’s less a book about the movies or film theory than it is an examination of the act of watching film and how this act has impacted 20th century psychology. And yet, this is almost more of a prose poem than anything else. O’Brien spends more time investigating high schlock and horror and costume epics than what others might consider the canon of great directors, but that’s how he comes to his conclusions that film history has “charted the evolution of tiny mutations, as if everybody set out to make exactly the same movie – like monks copying out the writings of Origen and Athanasius – and failed in revealing ways”. There are lots of interesting ideas to ponder over on nearly every page of this book. It could well infuriate some readers, as it is free-flowing and at times rather dense. But it’s unique, and manages to make fleeting or in-depth reference to literally hundreds of movies.

I went to the BFI yesterday to see GN-S make a presentation about this book-he seemed to me to make an interesting topic seem rather boring-and he didnt seem to know what to say next on a couple of occasions-and his "talk" made use of more frequent clips as he went on without him saying very much at all ! I am sure he knows his stuff but I came away not wanting to read the book ! I think I will just stick with Cowie's book which I quite enjoyed and which covered a fair amount of stuff in quite a light way.

American Movie Critics (edited by Phillip Lopate) has been out in paperback for a month or so, and it's an excellent compilation with great essays from Ellison, Baldwin, Sontag, Mekas, Arnheim, Farber, Hoberman and many others. The paperback has been updated to include Nathan Lee's excellent review of Zodiac and Bordwell's blog entry on New Media & Old Storytelling.

There is a new biography of Jean Seberg by Garry McGee, Jean Seberg – Breathless. Haven't seen any reviews of it, but there is an interview with him here.

I like the cover.

First one his book on Preminger, The World and Its Double: The life and Work of Otto Preminger.
Not yet in my hands but comes with a glowing recommendation from a reliable cohort, and Premingerian supreme.

And published last year Defining Moments in Movies (its US title, outside the States it's called Little Black Book (Movies).

This is an oddly composed compilation of important moments in both movies and the industry and its history from a huge range of contributors ranging from David E to JP Coursodon, Blake Lucas, Chris and a number of a_film_by regulars, to Rosenbaum, Adrian Martin and others. Not every entry is great but it becomes a compuslively "dippy" read, and I am finding it extremely inspirational in terms of diving into the now totally shambolic mess of a library to pull things out that I want to see again.

I remember not being that interested in reading Pictures At A Revolution, the latest book by Mark Harris that looks at the five best picture nominees from 1967 and uses them to examine the era, simply because I wasn't really a fan of the films (even, gasp!, Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate), but after listening to this interview I've gotten very interested in reading a copy!