Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in History & Criticism

I was a “Monster Kid” and “The Weird Kid, The Horror Movie Kid.” I found out early…horror is always personal. Now I make horror for a living. It shouldn’t just be WATCHED. Horror should be ENJOYED. This isn’t some stuffy analysis telling you what’s good or bad. Instead, it’s a tour of the 1930s through the 1980s—a personal account of how the best and worst of this era gave us so many memories and experiences that impacted our own lives. It’s fun…just how horror should always be.

Audible is your year round badge to South By Southwest! While the 2021 Festival was entirely online, this year’s keynote speakers and panel sessions brought today's creators and innovators together for inspiring conversations.

Here, for the first time, is the complete history of Saturday Night Fever. From the New York magazine article that inspired the film—"Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night" by Nik Cohn—to the on-and-off-set dramas of Travolta, director John Badham, and producer Robert Stigwood, this deep dive into the making of a movie classic also includes special interviews with actors Donna Pescow and Joseph Cali, among others. It explores the huge impact of the film on the industry—including a "Death to Disco" backlash—as well as on American culture itself.

In 1993, Fox debuted a strange new television show called The X-Files. Little did anyone suspect that the series would become one of the network's biggest hits - and change the landscape of television in the process. Now, on the occasion of the show's 25th anniversary, TV critics Zack Handlen and Todd VanDerWerff unpack exactly what made this haunting show so groundbreaking. Witty and insightful reviews of every episode of the series, revised and updated from the authors' popular A.V. Club recaps, leave no mystery unsolved and no monster unexplained.

Esta contundente obra se consolida como el análisis definitivo de la serie Twin Peaks tanto en sus temporadas iniciales en los años 90 como en la rotunda y más reciente tercera temporada. Mucho más allá de la recolección de datos o anécdotas, "Universo Twin Peaks" nos lleva de la mano a través de las cortinas rojas de los entresijos tanto de la serie en sí como de sus ramificaciones más alejadas y lyncheanas. Imprescindible para cualquier aficionado a la serie y a lo audiovisual en general.

A Nightmare on Elm Street. Halloween. Night of the Living Dead. These films have been indelibly stamped on moviegoers' psyches and are now considered seminal works of horror. Guiding readers along the twisted paths between audience, auteur, and cultural history, author Kendall R. Phillips reveals the macabre visions of these films' directors in Dark Directions: Romero, Craven, Carpenter, and the Modern Horror Film.

As any actor, producer, director, or screenwriter can attest, working in the movie business isn't easy. After Jack Nicholson filmed his first screen test for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, studio mogul Louis B. Mayer politely told him afterwards: "I don't know what we can use you for, but if we ever do need you, we'll need you real bad.” In the late 1960s, Paul, John, George, and Ringo–better known as The Beatles–were set to star in a movie version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy novel, The Lord of the Rings, until Tolkien objected over the loudness of their music.

It's one of the greatest movie romances of all time. Yet the friction and controversy surrounding The Way We Were was so enormous, the movie was nearly never made at all. Drawing on Laurents's and Pollack's unpublished writings, as well as interviews with Streisand, Redford, and other key players, this is the definitive account of a film that changed the rules of moviemaking and defined romance ever since.

When a major Hollywood studio released Five Fingers of Death to thrill-seeking Times Square moviegoers on March 21, 1973, only a handful of Black and Asian American audience members knew the difference between an Iron Fist and an Eagle's Claw. That changed overnight as kung fu movies kicked off a craze that would earn millions at the box office, send TV ratings soaring, sell hundreds of thousands of video tapes, influence the birth of hip hop, reshape the style of action we see in movies today, and introduce America to some of the biggest non-White stars.

When it comes to superheroes of the silver screen, nobody knows more than the masterminds behind the wildly popular Comicstorian YouTube channel. This definitive guide to comic book films divulges behind-the-scenes secrets and the hidden history behind these must-see movies including how, after very rocky beginnings, they shot to the top with DC and Marvel as two of the most important franchises in the industry.

"The meaning of life is the most urgent of questions", said the existentialist thinker Albert Camus. And no less a philosopher than Woody Allen has wondered: "How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world, given my waist and shirt size?" The essays in Movies and the Meaning of Life look at popular and cult movies, examining their assumptions and insights on meaning-of-life questions....

Fifty Years of 60 Minutes shares the secret of what's made the program exceptional for all these years and how it has maintained such high quality to this day: why founder Don Hewitt believed "hearing" a story is more important than seeing it (and thus why he closed his eyes in the screening room), why competition was encouraged to preserve a sense of urgency, why the "small picture" is the best way to illuminate a larger one, and why the most memorable stories are almost always those with a human being at the center.

Since it first opened on Broadway in September 1964, Fiddler on the Roof has constantly been onstage somewhere, including five Broadway revivals, four productions on London's West End, and thousands of schools, army bases, and countries from Argentina to Japan. Barbara Isenberg interviewed the men and women behind the original production, the film, and significant revivals.

Andy Griffith and Don Knotts met on Broadway in the 1950s. When Andy went to Hollywood to film a TV pilot about a small-town sheriff, Don called to ask if the sheriff could use a deputy. The comedic synergy between Sheriff Andy Taylor and Deputy Barney Fife ignited The Andy Griffith Show, elevating a folksy sitcom into a timeless study of human friendship, as potent off the screen as on.

Movie fans and spiritual seekers, unite! In Cinema Nirvana, veteran meditation teacher and film critic Dean Sluyter illuminates the hidden enlightenment teachings of Casablanca, Jaws, The Graduate, The Godfather, Memento, Easy Rider, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Big Sleep, Fistful of Dollars, and half a dozen more classic films, revealing spiritual wisdom in everything from 007's secret weapons to the colors of the Seven Dwarfs' eyes. So grab your popcorn, sit back, and prepare to have your mind opened. Cinema Nirvana is a funny but wise, practical but wildly entertaining guide to finding enlightenment...one movie at a time.

Hollywood was born just over a century ago, at a time of huge forward motion for women's rights. With no rules in place to stop them, there were women who forged ahead in many areas of filmmaking. Yet, despite the work of early pioneers like Dorothy Arzner, Mabel Normand, Mary Pickford and Alice Guy-Blaché, it soon came to embody the same old sexist standards. Women found themselves fighting a system that fed on their talent, creativity and beauty but refused to pay them the same respect as their male contemporaries - until now....

Ever since horror leapt from popular fiction to the silver screen in the late 1890s, viewers have experienced fear and pleasure in exquisite combination. Wheeler Winston Dixon's A History of Horror is the only book to offer a comprehensive survey of this ever-popular film genre. Arranged by decades, with outliers and franchise films overlapping some years, this one-stop sourcebook unearths the historical origins of characters such as Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman and their various incarnations in film from the silent era to comedic sequels.

If you're the kind of fan who cheers every single time you watch Rocky beat Drago, or remembers who said "Be the ball, Danny" and "If you build it, he will come," this is the book for you. Movies with Balls celebrates and analyzes more than two dozen of the greatest sports films of all time, with expert play-by-play and color commentary on the movies themselves and the athleticism they portray.

"Ist das Kunst oder kann das weg?", fragt man sich bei so manchem - vermeintlichen - cineastischen Meisterwerk. Ein Panel aus Filmnerds, bestehend aus Grimme-Preisträger und "Bernd das Brot" Erfinder Tommy Krappweis, den Machern des Hoaxilla Podcasts Alexa und Alexander Waschkau und Barbara Landsteiner von Storytel diskutiert über Kultfilme … und solche, die es gerne wären. Im Zaum gehalten werden die Teilnehmer von dem Kinoexperten und Radiomoderator Florian Schmidt, der nicht nur interessante Fakten besteuert, sondern ab und zu auch noch einen weiteren Gast einlädt.

Packed with behind-the-scenes anecdotes, cultural insights, and debates about violence in the media, this is an explosive no-holds-barred report from the front lines of Hollywood mythmaking. A must-listen for Rambo fans, movies buffs, and anyone interested in American culture.