The Best Books About Film

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bigP
Joined: Thu Mar 20, 2008 10:59 am
Location: Reading, UK

Re: The Best Books About Film

#776 Post by bigP » Mon Mar 19, 2012 2:27 pm

thirtyframesasecond wrote:Am I to assume if I go to either the Oxford St/Picadilly store, I'll be in luck?

I saw the Renoir for the same in an indie music store in Brighton the other week but couldn't face lugging it round with me. I'd love all these.
bigP wrote:Just a head's up to UK forum members, HMV have a random selection of Taschen books going realatively cheap in store. I picked up Michaelangelo Antonioni: The Complete Films for £2, Jean Renoir: The Complete Films for £5, Alfred Hitchcock: The Complete Films for £7 and Japanese Cinema for £5. All are hardback except for the Antonioni book, and all are of Taschen's usual excellent aesthetic quality. There were a handful more such as a Stanley Kubrick: The Complete films for £7 and "the best films of the..." series each for £7.
I have no idea. I know they had this selection in the Reading HMV and can confirm the Antonioni, the Kubrick and the Hitchcock were in the Oxford HMV as a friend picked them up last week (which led me to visit my local store), so I'd assume that either of the mentioned London stores should stock them too. It was a bit of a scavenger hunt - the Reading store had them scattered around all over the place. A pile of Renoir's were under the checkout area, some Hitchcock's were in the hard-back best-seller book section and the rest were piled messily underneath several display units that were showcasing novels, biographies etc. As per HMV protocol, there was no rhyme or reason to their display so I may have missed more.

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thirtyframesasecond
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 1:48 pm

Re: The Best Books About Film

#777 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Mon Mar 19, 2012 3:33 pm

I have no idea. I know they had this selection in the Reading HMV and can confirm the Antonioni, the Kubrick and the Hitchcock were in the Oxford HMV as a friend picked them up last week (which led me to visit my local store), so I'd assume that either of the mentioned London stores should stock them too.
Thanks. I'll be passing tomorrow anyway so will have a look. Hopefully in the bigger stores, their book selection should be a bit more organised. I'm a sucker for coffee table books if they're good, so could quite easily go nuts on this selection.

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tojoed
Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2008 11:47 am
Location: Cambridge, England

Re: The Best Books About Film

#778 Post by tojoed » Tue Mar 20, 2012 9:38 am

^ You need to go to Fopp (owned by HMV) on the corner of Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue. You should find them there.

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thirtyframesasecond
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 1:48 pm

Re: The Best Books About Film

#779 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Tue Mar 20, 2012 10:02 am

tojoed wrote:You need to go to Fopp (owned by HMV) on the corner of Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue. You should find them there.
Thanks - and thanks to BigP - the Oxford St HMV had loads, got the Kubrick, Hitchcock, Renoir and Antonioni for under £20.

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Gregory
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm

Re: The Best Books About Film

#780 Post by Gregory » Tue Mar 20, 2012 2:19 pm

Jean-Luc Garbo wrote:[Today] through Thursday, Indiana University Press will have a 50% off spring sale. Film books page here. They're the ones who published that Bresson anthology and Eros Plus Massacre.
Thanks! I couldn't resist the expanded Bresson because $20 is such a steal for a new book of that size. Polish Cinema Now is even more of a steal for $20, with a book and two DVDs included. It was still sitting in my cart from 2010, so I'm glad I finally ordered that one.

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zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: The Best Books About Film

#781 Post by zedz » Thu Mar 22, 2012 4:02 pm

I stocked up during their last sale, so those two titles are exactly what I went for.

Polish Cinema Now! is probably worth a blind buy for anybody at all interested in international cinema, for the sake of its DVDs alone: about six hours' worth of films (21 titles)! At that price you could consider the accompanying book a glorified (albeit weirdly flimsy) digipack and still come out ahead.

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MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
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Re: The Best Books About Film

#782 Post by MichaelB » Fri Mar 23, 2012 8:18 am

Polish Cinema Now! also hasn't been selling too well, which is presumably why it's going cheap.

Obviously I'm biased, but I found the chapters that I didn't write myself to be absolutely fascinating when I finally got a chance to read them - really detailed insider accounts of how Polish cinema coped with the post-1989 upheavals from multiple perspectives. I found it particularly valuable for the coverage of the traumatic 1990-2005 period between the fall of Communism and the pivotal creation of the Polish Film Institute, because it's surprisingly hard to get hold of films from then in English-friendly form, whereas almost any halfway decent Polish film made since then is easy to find.

And the quality threshold of the films on the DVDs is sky-high: Polish cinema is peculiarly well suited to short-film compilations like this because of its long and immensely distinguished track record in documentary and animation, both of which are well represented here.

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Jean-Luc Garbo
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Re: The Best Books About Film

#783 Post by Jean-Luc Garbo » Fri Mar 23, 2012 10:44 am

MichaelB wrote:Polish Cinema Now! also hasn't been selling too well, which is presumably why it's going cheap.
Indiana UP has the normal price listed, but the sale price of $20 was a bargain. I wouldn't have purchased it if it weren't for Gregory's post reminding me and the earlier review link that Michael posted convincing me to buy it. Second Run's recent box set also awoke my dormant interest in Polish film history so this book sale arrived at the right time.

Zaki
Joined: Sat Oct 23, 2010 11:36 am

Re: The Best Books About Film

#784 Post by Zaki » Sat Apr 21, 2012 9:57 pm

Columbia University Press has a 50% off all titles ("Spring Sale"). Code is SALE. For those interested in their film (or other books), that's surely a good deal.

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Jean-Luc Garbo
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Re: The Best Books About Film

#785 Post by Jean-Luc Garbo » Sun Apr 22, 2012 1:06 am

They published new books from Michel Chion and Antoine de Baecque if anyone needs them.

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Mr Sausage
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:02 pm
Location: Canada

Re: The Best Books About Film

#786 Post by Mr Sausage » Sun Apr 22, 2012 1:22 am

Just from a cursory glance, they've published a number of interesting books on horror cinema, for those participating in the Horror List project (or just those interested in the genre).

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Jean-Luc Garbo
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Re: The Best Books About Film

#787 Post by Jean-Luc Garbo » Mon Apr 30, 2012 10:33 am

Also, there are four Peter Hames books available during the Columbia sale: The Czechoslovak New Wave, Czech and Slovak Cinema: Theme and Tradition, The Cinema of Central Europe and The Cinema of Jan Svankmajer: Dark Alchemy. The first two he wrote (I'm not sure how much overlap is in either text, but both look quite good) and the second two he edited as collections of others' essays.

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MichaelB
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Re: The Best Books About Film

#788 Post by MichaelB » Mon Apr 30, 2012 11:22 am

Jean-Luc Garbo wrote:Also, there are four Peter Hames books available during the Columbia sale: The Czechoslovak New Wave, Czech and Slovak Cinema: Theme and Tradition, The Cinema of Central Europe and The Cinema of Jan Svankmajer: Dark Alchemy. The first two he wrote (I'm not sure how much overlap is in either text, but both look quite good) and the second two he edited as collections of others' essays.
I have all four, and they're all warmly recommended.

As for the "overlap" question, there's unavoidably some, but both books have their own distinct identity. Basically, The Czechoslovak New Wave is an unmatchably exhaustive account of Czechoslovak cinema of the 1960s, accompanied by a sketchier history of Czech cinema as a whole, whereas Czech and Slovak Cinema attempts a wider-ranging historical overview of an entire century's worth of the region's cinema. Which means that although it's much less detailed when it comes to the 1960s (at least by comparison), it includes lots of material on subjects either barely touched on or ignored altogether by the older book - animation, for instance, or popular genre filmmaking, or specifically Slovak cinema.

As for the anthologies, the Švankmajer book is easily the best single-volume survey of his film work (there's no obvious rival that I can see), whereas The Cinema of Central Europe is a collection of academic essays about individual key titles in Czech, Slovak, Polish and Hungarian film history.

If I had to buy just one, it would be The Czechoslovak New Wave.

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Jean-Luc Garbo
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Re: The Best Books About Film

#789 Post by Jean-Luc Garbo » Mon Apr 30, 2012 12:37 pm

Thanks for commenting on the two books, Michael. I may just get Czech and Slovak Cinema now. Incidentally, there's a preview of the book's introduction and first four chapters on Google.

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domino harvey
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Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: The Best Books About Film

#790 Post by domino harvey » Wed Jun 27, 2012 6:20 pm

Booklength English-language study of Lukas Moodysson's Fucking Åmål coming out next week from University of Washington Press!

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Jean-Luc Garbo
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Re: The Best Books About Film

#791 Post by Jean-Luc Garbo » Tue Aug 07, 2012 6:35 pm

Has anyone read Hollywood Lighting from the Silent Era to Film Noir by Patrick Keating? I've wanted to pick up this one for awhile now.
Last edited by Jean-Luc Garbo on Fri Aug 24, 2012 9:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Mr. Ned
Joined: Sun Apr 05, 2009 6:58 pm

Re: The Best Books About Film

#792 Post by Mr. Ned » Tue Aug 07, 2012 8:18 pm

The latest issue of Film Comment has an obituary for Amos Vogel, whose book Film as a Subversive Art is mentioned as an essential read. I've stalked around looking for a copy to peruse with no luck, and used copies go for more than I'm willing to spend at the moment (~$65 on amazon's marketplace). Could anyone on the board give some insight on the book and its contents -- on whether or not this is a book to seek out and add to the personal library?

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YnEoS
Joined: Fri Oct 08, 2010 10:30 am

Re: The Best Books About Film

#793 Post by YnEoS » Sat Aug 18, 2012 9:36 pm

Are there any good books written on the history of the action film, or history of action scenes in films? I'm specifically looking for something on American action cinema, but any sort would be welcome (though I already have quite a few on HK action cinema).

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Forrest Taft
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2007 8:34 pm
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Re: The Best Books About Film

#794 Post by Forrest Taft » Sun Aug 19, 2012 5:57 am

I just ordered Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie by Eric Lichtenfeld. As I haven't read it yet, I obviously don't know if it's any good, but I ordered it based on a recommendation.

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Gregory
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm

Re: The Best Books About Film

#795 Post by Gregory » Sun Aug 19, 2012 4:32 pm

Mr. Ned wrote:The latest issue of Film Comment has an obituary for Amos Vogel, whose book Film as a Subversive Art is mentioned as an essential read. I've stalked around looking for a copy to peruse with no luck, and used copies go for more than I'm willing to spend at the moment (~$65 on amazon's marketplace). Could anyone on the board give some insight on the book and its contents -- on whether or not this is a book to seek out and add to the personal library?
I have the book and like it a lot. It's an impressive synthesis of a pretty vast array of films, and he obviously had good access to screenings of a lot of lesser-known works, including many from Latin America and Eastern Europe. Following some brief treatment of some silents, the book's main focus is on the global cinema of the 1960s and early '70s, much of it more familiar now in the era of BFI/Second Run/MoC/Edition Filmmuseum/Eclipse etc. but many still incredibly difficult to see or to find other writing in English about. It's excellent criticism, engaged with social and political themes that Vogel explores in short introductory essays on broader subjects (listed in the TOC below; the titles may make them sound drier than they are), which are then illustrated with hundreds of capsule reviews and bold b&w film stills.
Here, the table of contents and an index of films discussed will give you a good idea of what's in the book.
Oddly, checking Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca, I find a few U.S.-based sellers there that have it priced far lower on those sites than anyone at U.S. Amazon (now up to $100 there).

dodo
Joined: Wed Aug 22, 2012 8:01 am

Re: The Best Books About Film

#796 Post by dodo » Fri Aug 24, 2012 9:57 am

New improved edition of ”Muchas gracias senor lobo” book is almost ready. I have the old black and white one and I will buy the new one also. It looks really good.

rattlebag
Joined: Sun Jul 08, 2012 4:16 pm

Re: The Best Books About Film

#797 Post by rattlebag » Tue Sep 11, 2012 4:31 pm

bigP wrote:Just a head's up to UK forum members, HMV have a random selection of Taschen books going realatively cheap in store. I picked up Michaelangelo Antonioni: The Complete Films for £2, Jean Renoir: The Complete Films for £5, Alfred Hitchcock: The Complete Films for £7 and Japanese Cinema for £5. All are hardback except for the Antonioni book, and all are of Taschen's usual excellent aesthetic quality. There were a handful more such as a Stanley Kubrick: The Complete films for £7 and "the best films of the..." series each for £7.
The Renoir is sitting in bulk in the Leeds store for anyone local.

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Black Hat
Joined: Thu Nov 24, 2011 5:34 pm
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Re: The Best Books About Film

#798 Post by Black Hat » Wed Nov 21, 2012 5:33 pm

Any recommendations for books about cinematography/lighting?

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Matt
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:58 pm

Re: The Best Books About Film

#799 Post by Matt » Wed Nov 21, 2012 7:25 pm

John Alton's Painting with Light is an absolute classic, as is the interview collection Masters of Light: Conversations with Contemporary Cinematographers, which is coming out in a new edition. Mascelli's The Five C's of Cinematography: Motion Picture Filming Techniques is a widely-adopted textbook on the subject if you want nuts and bolts.

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Jean-Luc Garbo
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Re: The Best Books About Film

#800 Post by Jean-Luc Garbo » Wed Nov 21, 2012 7:54 pm

A Man With A Camera by Nestor Almendros.

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