Best directors books according to redditors
We found 170 Reddit comments discussing the best directors books. We ranked the 78 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 170 Reddit comments discussing the best directors books. We ranked the 78 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Quotes from the book 'The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale' Which M Night commissioned while he was making Lady in the Water.
"If Lady in the Water came together, it would be like Dylan and Clapton and Springsteen and Eminem and Kanye West and Miles Davis and Bonnie Raitt and Joan Armatrading and Jerry Garcia and every musician you've ever loved joining George Harrison and belting out the opening chord of 'A Hard Day's Night' at the same time."
"If you're a Bob Dylan, a Michael Jordan, a Walt Disney - if you're M. Night Shyamalan -"
[on demanding execs read his scripts on their days off] "[Shyamalan] was comfortable getting in the middle of people's weekend. He felt that the reading of his script should not be considered work. It should add to the weekend's pleasure."
Yeah he's an arrogant douche.
Usin the green mod hat just to highlight this comment more.
Book, for reference. I own one :)
In the Blink of an Eye (Walter Murch)
Shot by Shot (Steven D. Katz)
Making Movies (Sidney Lumet)
Hitchcock/Truffaut (Francois Truffaut)
Something Like An Autobiography (Akira Kurosawa)
​
Those are all must reads, in my opinion. But this is just off the top of my head. I'm not next to my bookshelf at the moment, so this is the best I can do right now! =)
​
EDIT: Back with round two.
Seductive Cinema (James Card)
Orson Welles's Last Movie: The Making of the Other Side of the Wind (Josh Carp)
A Hundred Years of Japanese Film (Donald Richie)
All the Emperor's Men: Kurosawa's Pearl Harbor (Hiroshi Tasogawa)
Making Documentary Films and Videos (Barry Hampe)
The Haunted Screen (Lotte Eisner)
He literally wrote a book on his inspiration for his characters and never mentioned this.
> The idea in ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ was it was going to represent the church, [so] I thought it would be powerful to use the hands with stigmata and then you put eyes on it. But although I had the idea and knew how it was going to operate, when we saw it on the set with the makeup on actor Doug Jones, everybody froze and we went, ‘Oh my God, this is amazing.’
Those dumb fucking people finding symbolism where there is none by analyzing the art are annoying enough. Now we have artists retroactively creating symbolism to circle jerk with their npc friends.
I wonder what his woke symbolism for the harbinger of doom being female is.
Del Toro put this out in 2013. His sketches are phenomenal and it's interesting seeing the process that goes into his projects.
Last year I read Five Came Back, a book about Hollywood's involvement with WW2. One of the many things I learned was that George Stevens, the same guy who directed Shane and Giant, also made a documentary about the Allied liberation of Dachau. He was so disturbed by what he saw that he didn't speak about it for decades. The footage was used as evidence at the Nuremberg trials, and entered to the National Film Registry in 2008.
Here's just a short clip (NSFL). How anyone can deny the Holocaust after watching this is beyond me.
If he doesn't like Wacom, I'm guessing he is one designer that loves the artcraft of something material and not digital.
Books! Hardcover offcourse.
http://www.amazon.com/Saul-Bass-Life-Film-Design/dp/1856697525
http://www.amazon.com/Stanley-Kubrick-Archives-Alison-Castle/dp/3836508893
or other special books of people he likes.
Semi related, if you like this kind of behind the scenes stuff on Kubrick, get this book. amazon link. Just bought it and it's really great. Cheap af, 800+ page hardcover full of production photos and script notes and letters on his entire filmography.
This one is a bit more economically viable.
Here's a great series about all the Wes Anderson movies up to Moonrise Kingdom based on the book by Matt Zoller Seitz. I really love these videos and go back to re-watch them all the time.
The Wes Anderson Collection:
Chapter 1: Bottle Rocket
Chapter 2: Rushmore
Chapter 3: The Royal Tenenbaums
Chapter 4: The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
Chapter 5: The Darjeeling Limited
Chapter 6: Fantastic Mr. Fox
Chapter 7: Moonrise Kingdom
Starting Point 1979-1996
Turning Point 1997-2008
There's no third book unfortunately. I don't know if that means that his notes for the Wind Rises are too lacking or classified, or whether the notes for his final films will be published once he passes away.
Cars
Photography
Comic Books 1, 2
Apple
LEGO's
American Football
PostSecret
Video Games
Vinyl
Warhol
Outdoors
Star Wars
Motorcycles
The Dark Knight
Paris
Interior Design
World Atlas
Banksy
Wes Anderson
Tribal Cultures
Playboy
Girls
Libraries
The Cosmos
The Beetles
Travel
Preppy
Steve McQueen
The Moon
Theres a 15 part documentary on Hulu called The Story of Film: An Odyssey. It's excellent, and it will give you a very broad understanding of the history of film.
As for lists, one good way to start is to watch all of the movies on the [AFI 100] (http://www.afi.com/100Years/movies.aspx). That will give you a very broad picture of the history of American movies. Just set aside one day a week and watch one movie on the list every week.
Don't just watch them. Try to find out WHY each movie is revered as it is. After watching it, then read as much as you can about it. Read Roger Ebert's review, read it's entry on Filmsite.org, and start trying to contextualize each movie in its place in cinema history.
That will take you two years, but you'll have a much deeper appreciation than you do now.
After that, I suggest watching the BFI Sight and Sound Top 50. That will give you a more broad understanding of foreign film as well.
As for books I assign these to my class:
Film Art: An Introduction
This is the textbook that the department assigns. Its pretty broad and a decent overview.
Hitchcock In the 1960's Francois Truffaut interviewed Alfred Hitchcock and covered his entire filmography in detail. Fantastic, indispensable read.
What Is Cinema?
Andre Bazin was a french film critic, and the originator of Auteur theory. This is one of the original film theory books.
The American Cinema
Andrew Sarris is the American analog of Bazin. This is also a fundamental Film Theory book.
That should give you a solid start.
Sometimes called a director's notebook:
Google Image Search
Interesting--searching "director's notebook" or "director's notebooks" came up nearly empty-- the magic search string is "directors notebook" (no apostrophe.)
Edit: I realize a lot of these are for Twilight. If you dig deeper down the page there are a few others. Blue -ray DVD's sometimes have a section about the director's notebook.
Edit #2: More here
I'll add more as I find it. Good question.
Coppola's notebook for the Godfather-- YT link
A Page from Coppola's notebook (previously on Reddit)
Good Interview where Coppola gives some insight into his director's notebook
Guillermo del Toro's (Hellboy director) gives insight in this book -- Amazon link with 11 preview images-- some from his director's notebook
Excerpts from director's notebook --Pan's Labyrinth
Here you go. It's a huge book detailing the project, with the screenplay and other production notes.
I got this for xmas last year, and it's great. I've done a fair amount of critical thinking and writing on Anderson, but that book really focuses on his prior cinematic influences, many of which were an eye-opener for me.
Matt Zoller Seitz is a capable writer and his interpretive work is both well done and well documented. Nicely applied ecological criticism at its best, and mostly from first-hand sources.
Anderson is not a "quirky" film maker. He's a film maker who knows what he wants, and has a wealth of film history backing up his choices. His films are simultaneously completely original in their presentation of a unique vision... while also relying heavily on vocabulary and motifs from those that have gone before.
He stands on giant shoulders and then moves the camera forward (mostly in static composition and right down the center of frame).
https://www.amazon.com/Anderson-Collection-Matt-Zoller-Seitz/dp/081099741X
Vincent LoBrutto's biography does a good job of that. In terms of... peeking-into-the-early-mind thing for visionary directors, you should look into getting the two-disc "Alien" (Ridley Scott), the director's cut of "The Frighteners" (Peter Jackson), the two-disc "Seven" (David Fincher), the complete series boxset of "Spaced" (Edgar Wright), the book "Lynch on Lynch" (David Lynch), the two-disc "THX-1138" (George Lucas), "Pi" (Darren Aronofsky), the Criterion editions of "Cronos" (Guillermo del Toro) and "Videodrome" (David Cronenberg) and "Following" (Christopher Nolan), the 10th anniversary Blu-ray of "The Matrix" (The Wachowskis [if you're wondering why I singled this out as a Blu-ray, it's because it contains the commentary tracks of the original DVD release as well as the 10-disc boxset release, and the "Matrix Revisited" documentary that talks in-depth about the making of the film]), the three-disc "Oldboy" (Chan-wook Park), and the Blu-ray of "Taxi Driver" (Martin Scorsese [the Blu-ray because it has a phenomenal commentary track by Scorsese from an out-of-print Laserdisc]).
You may be wondering why there's a lack of David Lynch. "Eraserhead" has a great documentary/interview with him... but it's hard to find an affordable copy. Criterion is saving the day, however, and will be releasing their version in either November or December.
Have fun.
When he was in college, Wes Anderson made a documentary.
From a '97 Variety article:
>[Anderson and Owen Wilson] made their first film together in college after getting into a dispute with the landlord of the house they were renting.
>“We stopped paying rent and ended up moving out of the house in the middle of the night because he wouldn’t do repairs on the windows,” Anderson recalls. “We ended up resolving the conflict by making a 20-minute documentary about him. It was called ‘Karl Hendler Properties,’ which was the name of his company.” The $350 budget for the film was provided by Hendler.
That name, Karl Hendler, already sounds like a Anderson character. I could imagine Anderson being very good at taking a random "ordinary" person and examining their quirks and character in a documentary, just sort of letting them talk about their life and going about their day.
I also recall that the scene in "Bottle Rocket" where they do a "test" break-in at Anthony's house was inspired by their college living situation (apparently, the landlord wouldn't fix the wondows so Anderson and Wilson staged a break in to try and convince him to fix it).
Anderson also talks about the documentary briefly in that "Wes Anderson Collection" book:
>There was a public-access station in Houston, and I got to use their equipment. I made a documentary about my landlord Karl Hendler. I made it on commission from him in order to pay him some debts I owed him, but he didn’t like it.
>He didn’t like the documentary?
>No, but he was up-front about it. I don’t think he was mad. He just didn’t think it was going to be helpful to him.
>Do you still have it?
>I’m sure it’s somewhere, but I don’t currently have access to it.
Crazy to think that access to camera/editing equipment used to be so damn hard. Wes Anderson had to borrow from a Public Access station. Unless you went to film school, it'd be hard to get film shot/developed (and before digital video, no one would take something shot on VHS seriously). Nowadays, you could make a feature film with your smartphone, but back in the '80s/'90s, it was only really determined people who could dabble in filmmaking.
(note /u/sockpuppettherapy this post isn't really aimed at you in any way I'm just using your post as a launching point)
> There is no Roger Ebert of gaming
Speaking of Ebert as far as I'm aware he and Martin Scorsese are friends. Ebert still continues to review Scorsese's films and even wrote an entire book on him.
Is this a lack of proper objectivity? Is it a minor form of corruption as well? I agree that taking sexual favours for coverage would constitute a blatant breach of ethics but where does the line of corruption start? Is it writing about a friend? A close friend? A former lover? A current lover? A significant other? When does one cross the line from simply writing about someone they know through work to it becoming a conflict of interest? Is it only when sex is involved or does it start earlier? Is Ebert violating the ethics of journalism that people are trying to uphold here?
As that asshole who posted that thing, I...
A. Narcissistically think it's awesome that you're asking this question. Mostly because I asked this question, and I honestly enjoy film more because of it. I disagree completely with the idea that when one understands art more it's thus more difficult to enjoy it.
B. Literary theory is helpful with many films, especially the more standard ones. It becomes less helpful when we get into more avant garde cinema, but either way, I think it's a great jumping off point but one should preferably support the analysis that has been framed in Literary terms via Cinematic ones, because that's where the evidence to support your theory actually lies.
C. Here are my bullet points of advice, in the interest of economizing information:
Christian Metz will teach you about how film communicates information through non-verbal aesthetics. If you want to understand how to analyze film via a non-literary perspective, this is where to start.
Hugo Munsterberg is the father of most film theory. Oddly, he doesn't seem to like movies very much, but the book has some very relevant information on the interaction between film and spectator, that is essential (assuming a relatively modern approach at least. I suppose a formalist wouldn't care too much about the meaning of the film itself and thus the relationship wouldn't matter).
Slavoj Zizek has a lot of books on cinema, but also his documentary "The Perverts Guide to Cinema" is one of the most entertaining, as well as informative looks at film I've seen. It doesn't really address aesthetic elements as well as take a Lacanian look at why certain scenes provoke the reactions they do or what they mean, but I think that if one combines this psychological perspective with the understanding of how juxtaposition of elements conditions the viewer as evidenced by a lot of Soviet Film Theory, one can figure out the mechanism of how these meanings are being communicated. Also here's an interesting more structural take on Zizek that I've read.
I don't find it necessarily essential to my own views, but Sergei Eisenstein has a lot of really interesting work, and his books use a lot of synonymous examples in other art to illustrate how film works differently from theater and other narrative form. It also breaks down the Soviet Montage theory better than almost any other work.
Another essential book for many that I'm not a huge fan of yet I'd still say is pretty important to read is What Is Cinema by Andre Bazin
Dude loves movies and is pretty enlightening for many people I just disagree with a lot of his ideas of how film should best be made.
Andrew Sarris is a relatively important guy for understanding American film criticism. He and Pauline Kael warred for a while, and I think Pauline Kael is a blowhard ignoramous who never actually said anything relevant or informed about movies. People love her though, probably because she was an entertaining writer, and she was influential. But anyway, Sarris was the one who brought auteur theory, the dominant theory of understanding filmmaking today, to America from France.
An interesting look at directorial style and authorship is Martin Scorese's "A Personal Journey Through American Movies". It's not comprehensive or detailed, but it will not only show you some great classical era films to look up, but he has a unique idea of the director as filling one of four roles, storyteller, illusionist, smuggler and iconoclast. As a side note, I think Scorsese sees himself as a Smuggler, and attempts to be much more so in the wake of his reaching iconic status. For a much more challenging work of film criticism from a director that is still alive, check out Histoire(s) du Cinema by Jean-Luc Godard.
Finally I'd say Tom Gunning, who I actually met once and was fascinating to listen to, is pretty important. He's mostly focused on early film, and the development of how a film communicates narrative. He will illustrate some interesting things on spacial reasoning and editing and how logical information is communicated. For instance now in film you know which character is on the left by giving him some negative talk space in close up on the right, and when a character leaves frame on the right they enter the next from on the left if one wishes to maintain continuity of space, time and setting. Also his cinema of attractions theory is pretty interesting and explains exactly why people go watch Michael Bay movies, as well as elucidating the mentality of film-goers in the pre-Griffith era.
Also, look around the web. Some places like Slant.com, RogerEbert.com's essays and blogs sections, or Mubi.com occasionally have some really interesting stuff. Also there are random blogs around that do really enlightening work (like mine! shameless self promotion aside, if you want it I'll send it to you but I'm not gonna be that douche) that I sometimes stumble across.
Let me know if you have any questions or need clarification, and good luck!
"In a series of rewrite sessions with Southern - [Kubrick,] fuelled by industrial quantities of marijuana - even as sets were being constructed, General Quinlen, the book's villain, became General Jack D. Ripper" (39). This is from the book Masters of Cinema: Stanley Kubrick by Bill Crohn, which can also be found here: http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Cinema-Stanley-Bill-Krohn/dp/2866425723/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331103159&sr=8-1
It's new and cheaper edition
The Napoleon book was re-released at a lower price point:
http://www.amazon.com/Stanley-Kubricks-Napoleon-Greatest-Movie/dp/3836523353
Instead of multiple small books inside one box, everything is combined into one volume.
Not so much an academic book, but stunning to look at-
http://www.amazon.com/Stanley-Kubrick-Archives-Alison-Castle/dp/3836508893/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312966128&sr=1-1
Got it for Christmas a few years ago. Beautiful book.
http://www.puremovies.co.uk/author/peter-kramer/
https://www.uea.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.138319!Publications%20Mr%20Peter%20Kramer.pdf
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=peter+kramer
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stanley-Kubrick-Archives-Anniversary-Special/dp/3836508893/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416070674&sr=8-1&keywords=kubrick+archive
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stanley-Kubricks-Napoleon-Greatest-Movie/dp/3836523353/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416070738&sr=8-1&keywords=kubrick+napoleon
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Stanley-Kubricks-2001-Odyssey/dp/B00MDN82BQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416070753&sr=8-1&keywords=kubrick+2001+taschen
http://www.amazon.co.uk/catalogue-accompanying-exhibition-organised-Filmmuseum/dp/388799079X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416071201&sr=1-2&keywords=stanley+kubrick+catalogue
http://www.spacearchitect.org/pubs/AIAA-2010-6109.pdf
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Projecting-Tomorrow-Science-Fiction-Popular/dp/1780764103/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1416070674&sr=8-16&keywords=kubrick+archive
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Well-Meet-Again-Musical-Stanley/dp/0199767661/ref=sr_1_19?ie=UTF8&qid=1416070702&sr=8-19&keywords=kubrick+archive
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Music-Sound-Filmmakers-Cinema-Routledge/dp/0415898943/ref=sr_1_26?ie=UTF8&qid=1416070702&sr=8-26&keywords=kubrick+archive
http://www.equinoxpub.com/journals/index.php/JFM/article/view/10726
EDIT: three more, forthcoming:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Stanley-Kubricks-Barry-Lyndon/dp/1441198075/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1416070674&sr=8-6&keywords=kubrick+archive
http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-16352-1/plastic-reality
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stanley-Kubrick-Perspectives-Tatjana-Ljujic/dp/1908966424/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416071138&sr=1-1&keywords=stanley+kubrick+perspectives
Honestly? Read Jason Lewis's How to Teach Improvised Comedy to learn everything you need to know about developing exercises, drilling specifics, and side coaching. It's changed the way I coach completely.
https://www.amazon.com/Wes-Anderson-Collection-Isle-Dogs/dp/1419730096
Stanley Kubrick - LoBrutto
The Stanley Kubrick Archives - TASCHEN
KUBRICK - Ciment
Kubrick - Baxter
A Life In Pictures
Kubrick: Herr
I think overall this one by Vincent LoBrutto is your best bet
It's fucking enormous, BTW
If he's a fan of Wes Anderson, there's a book I was gifted by a friend for Christmas one year and I loved it https://www.amazon.com/Anderson-Collection-Matt-Zoller-Seitz/dp/081099741X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1479769976&sr=8-1&keywords=wes+anderson+book
Another interesting idea that my girlfriend did for me, she made a picture frame into a little drop box for ticket stubs you get at movie theaters. Fun way to keep a hold of them and document every movie you go to at a theater.
Highly recommend the [Cabinet of Curiosities] (https://www.amazon.com/Guillermo-del-Toro-Cabinet-Curiosities/dp/0062082841/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1504235597&sr=8-1&keywords=Guillermo+del+Toro+Cabinet+of+Curiosities) book of his works if you're a fan of his. Shows quite a fair few photos of the manor along with his artwork.
He's got this freaky life size realistic wax figure of H.P Lovecraft just hanging out in the library, the manor must be nuts.
I'm not proud to admit that outside of "The Iron Horse," and "Three Bad Men," I have not seen any of his silents. Looking at his filmography, I'm surprised to see the number of lost films, as well. I suppose this is more of a result of the film studio's lack of film preservation during those times.
Agreed on your take concerning Ford's non-westerns, as well. "The Quiet Man" is one of my favorite films of all time. Any time you pair John Wayne with Victor McLaglen and Ward Bond (and the usual Ford Players), you're in for a good time.
Btw if you haven't checked out Five Came Back, I highly recommend it. It really gives a great perspective of Ford's career (as well as Capra, Wyler, Stevens, Huston) during WW2. Fantastic read.
>the odd bit of Marxist literature.
This sort of thing?
The source does not go to a "Hollywood satire site". It goes to a book written by Groucho Marx.
They’re releasing an ‘art of’ style book for the film in August. Should have different art from the film in it.
>This is a sincere question.
Thank you for posing it.
>If Kubrick was such a box office mojo as your comment above suggested.
I wish I could expand on and support the statement you believe I suggested. Unfortunately, the information in my post above (how Kubrick planned his limited releases) is all I have to go on right now. (There are a ton of technical-related distribution decisions I could get into though like his choice to use mono sound).
I've read Stanley Kubrick: A Biography, The Making of Kubrick's 2001, and most of the interviews he's done, but very little is said about the numbers. Just before your comment, I ordered a copy of The Stanley Kubrick Archives, because I wanted to learn more. Wikipedia cites this book as a source for some of its budget / box office numbers, so I'm hopeful it will shed some light on this topic.
I don't think The Shining was a disaster. I don't believe the facts support calling it a disaster. I don't know enough about Full Metal Jacket to make the same argument.
>How is it that it only made 46 million?
I don't know.
>Isn't that pretty bad considering the budget was 30 million?
It looks better put into perspective, but it's certainly not great. $46 million puts it at rank #23 out of 238 theatrically released films in 1987. The numbers don't suggest to me that it was marketed poorly. Maybe it was, but maybe the film simply cost too much. I don't really know.
>And that's not factoring in what they (or Kubrick, as your comment suggests) spent on market. Or knew how to spend on marketing, so to speak.
There is a Kubrick interview where he goes into hollywood's tendency to overspend, stating that some films needed to gross 5x their production budget just to make a profit (his tone seemed to indicate he rejected this practice). I assume the limited release strategy was a way of reducing the P&A costs. Reducing the number of theaters a film plays in reduces the costs of both prints and advertising (less markets to advertise in). If the film is good enough, and plays long enough, word of mouth can take a small P&A budget very far. Unfortunately, it looks like FMJ had a sharp decline in theatre average and didn't play for very long so it must not have worked out. I don't know what the P&A budget was on FMJ, but wish I did.
A lady ate a can of tuna on the bus this morning and it smelled just awful. I got off the bus and the smell was in my hair. I sprayed myself with perfume and it will not go away. Not a good start to my day.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it! This book because I would love more Wes Anderson in my life. Thanks for the contest!
I need this because I am obsessed with reading screenplays
You should check this and this out.
As u/johnnyslick said, there's really only so much you can do teaching yourselves, and you are probably not the best judge of what good / bad technique is at this point. Getting an experienced and impartial coach is key. You'll have to spend some money on either a coach or taking classes, if they're offered near you.
I'll say this - not every coach is great, and even an experienced improviser may not be the best teacher. You may learn something from any coach, but a great coach has more impact.
A good coach knows how to teach -- if they work with an improv school with multiple levels, there is a curriculum, standards for what students should know at the end of level a/b/c/d etc. They can evaluate their students, correct them appropriately, encourage them as needed, deal with issues, etc.
Group coaching is different from individual coaching, but coaches can often give individual players take-home advice for specific things they're blocked about.
One of the best coaches at our organization, Jason Lewis, wrote a book on coaching improv. It's available as an e-book on Amazon. It doesn't go too much into any one particular theory of improv at all, but it is fantastic about communicating a theory of how to help improvisers improve with specific, repeated drills - derived from researching how other kinds of teams (sports, business, military, etc.) get better at their craft.
https://www.amazon.ca/How-Teach-Improvised-Comedy-Improvisors-ebook/dp/B01N3U3145
Yes, see as much good improv as you can. Even if it's just on video (there's many sets on YouTube; check out The Perfect Harold, a rather legendary set by Mike O'Brien's old team, The Reckoning, at iO Chicago; and the TJ and Dave movie, Trust Us, This Is All Made Up, on iTunes)
But training with intensity, and having a regular performance schedule, is key. If you can, go do the 5-week summer intensive at iO. Sign up for your local Fringe Festival. Try to get up in front of audiences as often as possible (and not always in a bar).
https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Heard-Voices-Shyamalan/dp/1592402135
Ahh, yes, The Birth of a Nation. Despite it's unavoidable stature, it wasn't necessarily the best movie from that year, or the best movie made up until that point, y'know? It's just where Hollywood got its start from. Put simply, if you try to do this by watching the 'official' classics, you're going to have a bad time.
I have found this book really useful so try to find it at a library or just buy it. (Despite the name, a good number of directors who only worked partially in America are represented in it.)
I'd also suggest not working forward chronologically because that'll take forever and, as I've learned from a similar project with a few of the mods here, you never know what'll be good and what'll still be crap a century later. Let somebody else do the recommending for you. Figure out which directors and genres interest you and then mix them all up, even I'd go a little crazy trying to only watch silents.
Also note that silent films in many cases are available on YouTube in excellent quality, everything from obscure stuff to what are considered the masterpieces of the period. This is better than trying to find and watch them on DVD in my experience.
I think there's a bit of bias towards milestone in technique movies from that long ago and the really great movies don't get talked about enough. von Sternberg's late period silents are still entertaining as fuck today. We can say the same of the more well-known Murnau, Lang, Chaplin, and Keaton. (In the last case, new restorations of his movies look like they could have be filmed yesterday.) All of these guys made great movies, and none of them made 'art' movies, whatever that means.
My guess is that once you're actually enjoying watching old movies the occasional milestone movie that doesn't feel so great won't feel like a waste of time.
Any new Malick film is an event in cinema. I'm looking forward to it, for sure.
By the way, my wife got me this book on Malick for Christmas. I'm reading it now and it's really good so far. In typical Malick fashion, it's not a traditional biography, but it's told in a series of interview excerpts from his collaborators. Really well done.
https://www.amazon.com/Terrence-Malick-Rehearsing-Carlo-Hintermann/dp/0571234569/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1486820563&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Guillermo-del-Toro-Cabinet-Curiosities/dp/0062082841
https://www.amazon.com/Anderson-Collection-Matt-Zoller-Seitz/dp/081099741X
I'd start with coffee table books. That's the closest I can think of.
I'm a fan of this beauty.
Five Came Back and Hit and Run
If you are a fan of Wes Anderson this one is pretty great.
https://www.amazon.com/Criterion-Designs-Collection/dp/160465936X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1500586225&sr=8-1&keywords=criterion+designs
https://www.amazon.com/Stanley-Kubrick-Archives-Alison-Castle/dp/3836508893/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1500586243&sr=8-8&keywords=kubrick+book
Kurosawa's book (http://www.amazon.com/Something-Like-Autobiography-Akira-Kurosawa/dp/0394714393) is pretty good. Scorsese by Ebert (http://www.amazon.com/Scorsese-Ebert-Roger/dp/0226182037) is pretty damn good.
it came out today! looks like it's already on back order through amazon though.
There's a book all about it. "The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale"
Amazon currently lists the Taschen book - pre-ordered - at $61.00.
The description suggests it's a new edition. Curious.
If you don't care as much about the size they made a smaller version in a reprint here
I would think some of these will end up in this - I've got mine pre-ordered :)
I'm reading the book Starting Point which gives a lot of really amazing insight into how Ghibli is the success that it is. Miyazaki is very idealistic as to how films should be and as to the experience that people receive from them. He has such strong intuition, vision and work ethic that he's able to make his ideals a reality.
In the book Miyazaki talks about how all films, even if they're lightweight or more common and popular, should be "filled with a purity of emotion". He says (written in 1988) "There are few barriers to entry into these films - they will invite anyone in - but the barriers to exit must be high and purifying. Films must also not be produced out of idle nervousness or boredom, or be used to recognize, emphasize, or amplify true vulgarity. And in that context, I must say that I hate Disney's works. The barrier to both the entry and exit of Disney films is too low and too wide. To me, they show nothing but contempt for the audience."
He has similarly critical views about pretty much all anime as well. It makes me think that even though he respects John Lasseter, he probably doesn't care for most Pixar films either.
Its amazing how all there are all these things about him that just combine perfectly to allow him to make the movies he does. I guess that's the mark of a genius, only Miyazaki could've been capable of making those films. It'll be a sad day for film and animation when Miyazaki is gone.
Is it this one?
Has anyone at all read Myazaki's book starting point? You should. He elaborately explains his views on a very wide variety of topics in there, and it's a great read.
Spoiler: He does have the opinion that is pictured in the comic.
Starting Point <= Link to Amazon
it's a fucking good book. for professionals. not fans.
I highly recommend getting this. And NOT the Kindle version
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0062082841?pc_redir=1407738072&amp;robot_redir=1
No problem, this is the one: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/081099741X/
Check out this and this book if you want to know more about his influences. He talks about them at great length.
I LOVE the Fantastic Mr. Fox release but I'm kind of irked it doesn't fit next to the others as it's in this nice thick cardboard casing.
BUT it goes well with this book I picked up, and then this one that starts it off!
Whatever you end up doing, I would recommend the book Starting Point which has a whole lot of Miyazaki interviews and writings relating to his work. It's a great book to read to get insight into his motivations and ideals. Perhaps look into the absence of villains within his work. The motivations for the antagonists are a lot more complex than those found in other animated films. Everyone has an agenda and it is most often not simply because they are teh-evil-dude-dat-wants-to-rule-da-world you find so often in Disney.
https://www.amazon.com/Anderson-Collection-Matt-Zoller-Seitz/dp/081099741X
might I recommend this then, it's written by a great critic.
Perhaps you don't know, but Miyazaki has written two books on exactly what you're asking about. Those would be a great place to start when researching Ghibli and Miyazaki's style.
Starting Point (1979-1996)
Turning Point (1997-2008)
I haven't read the second one, because it doesn't release in English for a few weeks, but I have read the first one. It would definitely help with any paper you would want to write on Ghibli/Miyazaki. I'll answer your questions myself in a different post, once I ponder my answers a bit.
No problem at all! In this case, I mostly learned it by reading a lot of essays and interviews and books, in this case especially ones on Kubrick and on cinematography. I don't remember specifically what stuff in particular, unfortunately. The best advice for watching EWS (or any film) in its intended format is to find a screening of it that's in 35mm--depending on where you're located, good bets are museums like MOMA in NYC, a local university, or arthouses and repertory theatres that might have a Kubrick retrospective or something.
As far as becoming well-versed in film, the first step is to watch everything you can get your hands on, even if you think it will be awful, and pay as much attention to the choices that are being made, how a camera is moving, what is in the frame and what isn't, lighting, color, dialogue, etc., even if you have no idea really what to be paying attention for. Anything you can think of or see onscreen, think about why that choice is being made and what the purpose of that choice is. And then after viewing something, look up some reviews of it (to find good critics, a good start is to go to Rotten Tomatoes, narrow down a movie's reviews to Top Critics, and then read the full reviews from there), positive and negative, and try to match what they're talking about to what you just saw and see if you can recognize what they're mentioning. And if you can't, just store the type of thing they're talking about and remember to think about it during the next movie you watch, and the next, and so on. Practicing this will build up your knowledge quite quickly, and it will become second nature to pick up on all kinds of things, and once that becomes habit and you don't have to pay as much attention consciously, you'll pick up on more and more subtle nuances. (If you want to have a starting point for films, you can go with a list like this, a list of 1000 movies that are "the best of all time" as a result of aggregating several different polls. Obviously, you never want to put too much stock in other people's opinions of what the best is, and it seems intimidatingly long, but like I said, it's just if you want a reference point. And they link to the polls they use, so if you want a smaller list to work with you, you can try one of those. This is helpful because again you'll discover what you like, so you might find one movie on that list by a director you love and then go off and watch everything else she ever did. And then you come back to the list. So it's not really about completing the list, just using it as another starting point for discovery.) Also, I recommend you keep at least a brief log of everything you watch, along with some notes about it--this will help you keep track of directors/screenwriters/cinematographers you like, as well as help you understand what you like and don't like about films better.
Once you start to feel comfortable with some of the basics, you can start seeking out books that discuss the film-making experience. With both movies and books, you'll discover your tastes as you go along, so it's best to start casting a broad net and reading books that cover a lot of topics, and then you might find that cinematography interests you most and then start reading books that are more specifically about that, and subscribing to specialty magazines like American Cinematographer, or you might find it all appealing and want to read books on all aspects of filmmaking.
That probably seems like a ton of info and fairly intimidating, but I basically started from nothing and basically just taught myself whatever I know by this method, no film school or anything certainly. Not saying I'm an expert on this stuff by any stretch of the imagination, but I've been able to become knowledgeable enough.
Some specific recommendations that I found immensely helpful that hopefully might be helpful to you too:
Current film critics: Dana Stevens (Slate), Stephanie Zacharek (Village Voice), Karina Longworth (freelance), Manohla Dargis (NYT), Wesley Morris (Grantland), A.O. Scott (NYT)
Kubrick:
The Stanley Kubrick Archives - A great book that also features Kubrick's drawings, personal notes, continuity photos, and interviews with him
Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made - A book on SK's uncompleted Napoleon film
The Kubrick Site - A really amazing online resource with a lot of links to essays and articles
Film magazines: Sight and Sound, Film Comment, American Cinematographer, Filmmaker, Little White Lies, Screen International
Books (if you only ever read one book on film, I'd make it Hitchcock/Truffaut--I learned more from it than from any other single source):
Hitchcock/Truffaut
What is Cinema?
Pictures at a Revolution
Negative Space
A Cinema of Loneliness
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls
The Age of Movies
Making Movies
Actually, I think Ermey told this story when they were compiling "The Stanley Kubrick Archives". I don't remember the particular source but I know it is on the IMDB page.
I read this one in film school and really liked it.
I checked the official script. Same line. "fallacy is wrong".
https://www.amazon.com/Four-Films-Interiors-Manhattan-Stardust/dp/0394712293/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1519107640&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=woody+allen+annie+hall#reader_0394712293
> https://www.amazon.com/Terrence-Malick-Rehearsing-Carlo-Hintermann/dp/0571234569/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1486820563&amp;sr=8-1
That book sounds very interesting. Does it elaborate much on Malick's 20 year gap between Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line? I always wondered why it took so long for Malick to make another film. I know he spent a lot of his time in France, worked on numerous screenplays and didn't completely isolate himself from the business, but it still fascinates me.
http://www.amazon.com/Guillermo-del-Toro-Cabinet-Curiosities/dp/0062082841/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1413561388&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=del+toro
https://www.amazon.com/How-Teach-Improvised-Comedy-Improvisors-ebook/dp/B01N3U3145/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1542219323&sr=1-2&keywords=improv+comedy+teach
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Not improvised Shakespeare per se but the author notes that he's done work for improvised Shakespeare like learning how to "quibble". Might provide some approaches.
I just came across a mention of this book in a "Top Books of 2014" list: Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War by Mark Harris. It t made me think of this thread, so I thought I'd pass it along. http://www.amazon.com/Five-Came-Back-Hollywood-Second/dp/1594204306
I picked up the Tachen book on Kubricks Napoleon film that never got made and the amount of research is incredible, and leaves you wishing the period was filmed and understood with as much appreciation by other directors. I figured John Adams got quite a bit wrong (being Irish-Canadian I'm not great on that period from an American perspective) but i suppose in the service of plot & condensing the story they had to make sacrifices.
The Kid Stays in the Picture Saw the documentary and liked it. Haven't read the book.
The Man Who Heard Voices If you're a fan of Shyamalan, you may like it.
If you saw Natural Born Killers then read Killer Instinct. A great book by the producer Jane Hamsher.
While obtaining Amazon links I came across these titles, which I haven't read. You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again and Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.
If you want fiction with a 'behind the scenes feel' I rec Time on My Hands and Wild Horses
edit: putting John Cater on my goodreads To Read list, thanks.
They didn't recommend any additional reading this episode for Martin Scorsese.
I'd recommend "Scorsese by Ebert" by Roger Ebert. It's not exactly a biography, but it's an excellent recap of his career.
Whoa whoa, Strangelove is a terrific film. I haven't seen Clockwork Orange, so I can't vouch for that one, but I took a class in college that focused on not just the excellent technique of Dr. Strangelove, but also its large cultural significance, coming in to mock the US government so soon after Hollywood was under creative control prohibiting anything critical of the US or sympathetic to the communists. It's easily one of the top 10 most culturally important films of the last century.
If you want to understand more about why Kubrick is hailed as one of the elite greatest directors of all time, check out some reading on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Cinema-Stanley-Bill-Krohn/dp/2866425723/
Stanley Kubrick: New perspectives might interest you.
https://www.amazon.com/Stanley-Kubrick-Perspectives-Tatjana-Ljujic/dp/1908966424
yea, but the amount of referential/contextual humor in that movie basically requires an alien species to have already had a k-12 education on human culture. The Big Lebowski would definitely have to be a University or Masters program class on human humor and interaction.