Considered one of the finest performers in world cinema, Japanese actor Takashi Shimura (1905-1982) appeared in more than 300 stage, film and television roles during his five-decade career.
Devoted to his craft--sometimes to the detriment of his reputation--cinematographer John Alton (1901-1996) was sought after by such directors as Vincente Minnelli, Richard Brooks and Anthony Mann but was disdained by others of comparable talent.
When people hear the term "e;role-playing games,"e; they tend to think of two things: a group of friends sitting around a table playing Dungeons & Dragons or video games with exciting graphics.
From the first, brief moving images of female nudes in the 1880s to the present, the motion picture camera made the female body a battleground in what we now call the culture wars.
This updated and expanded edition gives critical analyses of 23 Latin American films from the last 20 years, including the addition of four films from Bolivia.
Beloved, controversial, influential, the creator of such fascinating and award-winning films as My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting, Elephant, and Milk, Gus Van Sant stands among the great international directors, equally at home in Hollywood and the avant-garde.
Charlie Chaplin's A Woman of Paris (1923) was a groundbreaking film which was neither a simple recycling of Peggy Hopkins Joyce's story, nor quickly forgotten.
A chronological listing of the creative output and other antics of the members of the British comedy group Monty Python, both as a group and individually.
This detailed chronological analysis of British World War II movies from 1939 until the present explores how films projected recognizable stereotypes of British national character and how the times in which a film was made shaped its perspectives.
Twenty-first century American television series such as Revolution, Falling Skies, The Last Ship and The Walking Dead have depicted a variety of doomsday scenarios--nuclear cataclysm, rogue artificial intelligence, pandemic, alien invasion or zombie uprising.
With no formal training as an actor, Welsh-born Ray Milland (1907-1986), a former trooper in the British Army's Household Cavalry, enjoyed a half-century career working alongside some of the great directors and stars from the Golden Age of cinema.
In sharp contrast to many 1960s science fiction films, with idealized views of space exploration, Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) terrified audiences, depicting a harrowing and doomed deep-space mission.
This book uses a black/white interracial lens to examine the lives and careers of eight prominent American-born actresses from the silent age through the studio era, New Hollywood, and into the present century: Josephine Baker, Nina Mae McKinney, Fredi Washington, Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, Lonette McKee, Jennifer Beals and Halle Berry.
Profiling World War II veterans who became famous Hollywood personalities, this book presents biographical chapters on celebrities like Audie Murphy, "e;America's number one soldier"e;; Clark Gable, the "e;King of Hollywood"e;; Jimmy Stewart, combat pilot; Gene Autry, the "e;singing cowboy,"e; who flew the infamous Hump; the amorous Mickey Rooney; Jackie Coogan, "e;the Kid"e; who crashed gliders in the jungle; James Arness, who acquired his Gunsmoke limp in the mountains of Italy; Tony Bennett, who discovered his voice during the Battle of the Bulge; and Lee Marvin, a Marine NCO who invaded 29 islands.
Set in the American Southwest, "e;desert terror"e; films combine elements from horror, film noir and road movies to tell stories of isolation and violence.
Arctic cinemas represent a noteworthy new subfield of film studies, and in the current era of unprecedented global warming, interest in the Arctic region and its cinematic portrayals has never been greater.
Oscar-winning actor, translator of Bertolt Brecht's Galileo, and director of the iconoclastic The Night of the Hunter, Charles Laughton's name alone commanded box office and theatre acclaim.
