The Best Books About Film
- therewillbeblus
- Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm
Re: The Best Books About Film
Cool, I'll check it out, thanks for the directional advice - any idea how long the sale is going for?
- senseabove
- Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2015 3:07 am
Re: The Best Books About Film
Weird they don't mention it on the site... According to the email they sent out:
Don't wait! The sale ends on January 7 at 10:00am EST.
- therewillbeblus
- Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm
Re: The Best Books About Film
Much appreciated- just trying to figure out how many films of hers I can get in before making the call, though from the descriptions I have a feeling it'll only take one
- bottlesofsmoke
- Joined: Fri Jan 08, 2021 12:26 pm
Re: The Best Books About Film
Does anyone have any recommendations of what the best book on Jean-Luc Godard might be? Preferably one that focuses on the movies, though I'm not at all averse to biographical details, either. My usual process is to watch the movies along with the book as I read, so they are fresh in my mind as I read each section. I don't know how far into Godard's filmography I'm going to go watching each movie, but I'd at least want to do through the early seventies, so a book that focuses on that period would be fine. I've seen most of his big movies but never made the deep dive like I have with some other directors.
- domino harvey
- Dot Com Dom
- Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm
Re: The Best Books About Film
Morrey’s book in the French Film Directors series would prob be your best bet
- bottlesofsmoke
- Joined: Fri Jan 08, 2021 12:26 pm
Re: The Best Books About Film
Many thanks! Ordered. Reading this forum has actually helped me understand what I may have been missing with some Godard in the past, I'm hoping this time through even more of it connects with me.
- domino harvey
- Dot Com Dom
- Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm
Re: The Best Books About Film
Yep!
Hope you enjoy it bottlesofsmoke
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- Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2009 4:29 am
Re: The Best Books About Film
He gave four stars to DRACULA (which seems to be the one Hammer film critics permit themselves to like - Halliwell gave it three stars) and three to THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT. All the other films got two stars or less.Dr Amicus wrote: ↑Mon Jan 13, 2020 11:46 amThere is a preview of the Maxford on Google Books here.
I didn't mean to imply any correlation between the two Maxford books, apart from that based on the capsule reviews in the earlier book he didn't give the impression that he actually liked the films (on a, IIRC, Halliwell-esque range of 0 to 4 stars, only a tiny number of core films got 2 of more). It's 20 years since I read it, and my memory of it is as a perfectly decent introduction to Hammer but little more than that. Which, to be fair, at the time of its release probably made it a lot more notable than it would be now.
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- Joined: Thu Sep 19, 2013 8:05 am
Gay/queer film history outside Hollywood/the English speaking world
Hi there. I hope someone on this forum might be able to help me find resources for queer history on film, specifically outside Hollywood.
I have already read FRENCH QUEER CINEMA by Nick Rees-Roberts, which I love. Any tips of further books to read would be most welcome.
I have already read FRENCH QUEER CINEMA by Nick Rees-Roberts, which I love. Any tips of further books to read would be most welcome.
- therewillbeblus
- Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm
Re: The Best Books About Film
It's not among the books on any key lists from a google search until page three, but I remember loving No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive by Lee Edelman. I haven't read it since college, but his angle of exploration was interesting as were the many examples used in the book. Here is a synopsis that immediately recalls why I loved it so much:
In this searing polemic, Lee Edelman outlines a radically uncompromising new ethics of queer theory. His main target is the all-pervasive figure of the child, which he reads as the linchpin of our universal politics of “reproductive futurism.” Edelman argues that the child, understood as innocence in need of protection, represents the possibility of the future against which the queer is positioned as the embodiment of a relentlessly narcissistic, antisocial, and future-negating drive. He boldly insists that the efficacy of queerness lies in its very willingness to embrace this refusal of the social and political order. In No Future, Edelman urges queers to abandon the stance of accommodation and accede to their status as figures for the force of a negativity that he links with irony, jouissance, and, ultimately, the death drive itself.
Closely engaging with literary texts, Edelman makes a compelling case for imagining Scrooge without Tiny Tim and Silas Marner without little Eppie. Looking to Alfred Hitchcock’s films, he embraces two of the director’s most notorious creations: the sadistic Leonard of North by Northwest, who steps on the hand that holds the couple precariously above the abyss, and the terrifying title figures of The Birds, with their predilection for children. Edelman enlarges the reach of contemporary psychoanalytic theory as he brings it to bear not only on works of literature and film but also on such current political flashpoints as gay marriage and gay parenting. Throwing down the theoretical gauntlet, No Future reimagines queerness with a passion certain to spark an equally impassioned debate among its readers.
- Wigs by Leonard
- Joined: Fri Dec 04, 2020 3:52 pm
Re: The Best Books About Film
I always recommend The Celluloid Closet by Vito Russo, if you haven't read it. It is predominantly Hollywood-focused, and only covers up to 1987, but there's some good coverage of early works in Germany in the 20s, Madchen in Uniform and Anders al die Andern and the like.
I've found the Queer Film Classics series of books to be quite wonderful. They're pocket-sized monographs, 150-300 pages, each on a particular film (I think BFI used to do a similar series, without the queer emphasis). My favorite two are on Paris Is Burning and Word Is Out, but Death in Venice is also a great queer-focused overview of Visconti, and Scorpio Rising is able to examine the film nearly shot-by-shot, and does what I presume is an admirable job sorting the rumored from the confirmable (no easy feat!). It also has some great anecdotes of the author's visiting Anger in his New York apartment.
The one entry I can only recommend with reservations is Thomas Waugh and Jason Garrison's volume on Montreal Main, which is an entirely unveiled apologia for hebephilia at the same time as it analyzes as exhaustively as anyone ever has the film in question - which I remained unconvinced was itself as baldly an apologia for same as its authors seemed inclined to argue.
I've found the Queer Film Classics series of books to be quite wonderful. They're pocket-sized monographs, 150-300 pages, each on a particular film (I think BFI used to do a similar series, without the queer emphasis). My favorite two are on Paris Is Burning and Word Is Out, but Death in Venice is also a great queer-focused overview of Visconti, and Scorpio Rising is able to examine the film nearly shot-by-shot, and does what I presume is an admirable job sorting the rumored from the confirmable (no easy feat!). It also has some great anecdotes of the author's visiting Anger in his New York apartment.
The one entry I can only recommend with reservations is Thomas Waugh and Jason Garrison's volume on Montreal Main, which is an entirely unveiled apologia for hebephilia at the same time as it analyzes as exhaustively as anyone ever has the film in question - which I remained unconvinced was itself as baldly an apologia for same as its authors seemed inclined to argue.
- Dr Amicus
- Joined: Thu Feb 15, 2007 10:20 am
- Location: Guernsey
Re: The Best Books About Film
Stephen Bourne's Brief Encounters is a not bad overview with respect to British Cinema - at least, up to about the mid 90s. Worth borrowing from a library, but probably not paying the inflated prices on Amazon at the moment.
- senseabove
- Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2015 3:07 am
Re: The Best Books About Film
I'll second that Queer Film Classics book on Paris is Burning. For such a slim book, it really does a tremendous job of putting the movie in context.
Not exactly obscure, but B. Ruby Rich's New Queer Cinema is worth mentioning for the foundational titular essay on the 90s queer indie film enclave, of course, but other chapters (in the 2013 "Director's Cut" edition—not sure if there's a previous version) cover other big non-Hollywood names of queer cinema—Jarman, Weerasethakul, Ozon, etc.—and there's a section with several essays on queer Latin American film.
Not exactly obscure, but B. Ruby Rich's New Queer Cinema is worth mentioning for the foundational titular essay on the 90s queer indie film enclave, of course, but other chapters (in the 2013 "Director's Cut" edition—not sure if there's a previous version) cover other big non-Hollywood names of queer cinema—Jarman, Weerasethakul, Ozon, etc.—and there's a section with several essays on queer Latin American film.
- ianthemovie
- Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2009 10:51 am
- Location: Boston, MA
- Contact:
Re: The Best Books About Film
I was going to recommend the B. Ruby Rich book as well. If you define "outside Hollywood" as including American independent cinema, just about that entire book would qualify, since it's specifically about queer indie and art film. Richard Dyer has written extensively (and in my opinion very perceptively) on gay and lesbian cinema/spectatorship/fan culture, mainly within a classic Hollywood context, but also occasionally in relation to avant-garde filmmakers like Jean Genet and Andy Warhol. For my money no one writes more lucidly and elegantly about gender and sexuality on film than the late Robin Wood, especially in Sexual Politics and Narrative Film, where he discusses many European and Asian classics alongside American films. There is a book by Anne Duggan about queerness in Jacques Demy's films but I haven't read it. It occurs to me that Dyer and D. A. Miller (both major queer theorists) have written monographs on Fellini films (La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2) for the BFI Film Classics series, though I don't know if these can properly be called queer readings of Fellini. Dyer's book on La Dolce Vita does briefly discuss that film's representation of homosexuality. The queer theorist Leo Bersani has a BFI volume in Derek Jarman's Caravaggio. Alexander Doty does queer readings of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Red Shoes in his book Flaming Classics. Judith Halberstam's Female Masculinity discusses butch lesbianism in a range of indie, art-house, and Hollywood films.
I haven't read the Queer Film Classics volumes on Death in Venice, Scorpio Rising, or Paris Is Burning, but I have found some of the other titles in this series to be somewhat disappointing. The one on Boys in the Sand was sloppily written in spots. Edelman (with whom I briefly studied in grad school) and his contemporaries like D. A. Miller can be tremendous fun to read though they write mostly on classic Hollywood.
I haven't read the Queer Film Classics volumes on Death in Venice, Scorpio Rising, or Paris Is Burning, but I have found some of the other titles in this series to be somewhat disappointing. The one on Boys in the Sand was sloppily written in spots. Edelman (with whom I briefly studied in grad school) and his contemporaries like D. A. Miller can be tremendous fun to read though they write mostly on classic Hollywood.
- Maltic
- Joined: Sat Oct 10, 2020 1:36 am
Re: The Best Books About Film
It seems Marwood has his work cut out for him, but I would add Michael Koresky's book on Terence Davies
- Mr Sausage
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:02 pm
- Location: Canada
Re: The Best Books About Film
Good news for Imamura fans: the Coleman and Desser edited essay collection, Killers, Clients, and Kindred Spirits, is finally affordable. One of the best books I read last year. Posted more about it here.
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- Joined: Fri May 18, 2018 3:07 pm
Re: The Best Books About Film
Currently in the midst of John Boorman's absolutely fantastic and very aptly-titled Conclusions, which both complements some of the anecodtes from his earlier memoir and elaborates on other films he made in the proceeding years, his family life, and his theory on directing. Curiously, he is very effusive in his praise for many people, such as cinematographers he repeatedly worked with, and the late producer Robert Chartoff (he discusses turning down Rocky, telling Chartoff in a letter that he found it to be unbearably "sentimental", and Chartoff framed that correspondence after the film became an unbelievable success), but he never mentions Neil Jordan by name, although he briefly discusses Broken Dreams, a script that both of them tweaked on and off for decades, with both being attached to direct it at various times. I believe Boorman was supposed to film it immediately after Interview with the Vampire, as both movies were to star River Phoenix. I don't know if they had some kind of falling out, but Jordan is distinctly persona non grata in it. It's a very, very meandering book, but in an incredibly charming way. Boorman leaps through anecdotes about his friendship with John Hurt, the death of one of his daughters, and working on television projects within a matter of a handful of pages, but it doesn't feel incomplete or slapdash.
- domino harvey
- Dot Com Dom
- Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm
Re: The Best Books About Film
Eddie Muller's long out of print Dark City is being released in an expanded edition by TCM in July
- soundchaser
- Leave Her to Beaver
- Joined: Sun Aug 28, 2016 12:32 am
Re: The Best Books About Film
Palgrave Macmillan is having a $14.99 sale on eBooks and softcovers under $100 until May 11th, for those who (like me) wanted to pick up the film restoration book mentioned in the Wong Kar-Wai thread.
- DeprongMori
- Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2014 1:59 am
- Location: San Francisco
Re: The Best Books About Film
FWIW, the title mentioned in the WKW thread was Film Restoration: The Culture and Science of Audiovisual Heritage by L. Enticknap. Only the e-book seems to be available for $14.99, even if you add the STUDY21 discount code at checkout.
- soundchaser
- Leave Her to Beaver
- Joined: Sun Aug 28, 2016 12:32 am
Re: The Best Books About Film
Yes, apparently it's selected softcovers only, and I misread the fine print. Well, hopefully someone will find something good anyway!
- Cinephile1
- Joined: Wed Oct 31, 2018 2:10 pm
Re: The Best Books About Film
The greatest and most important books about cinema as an artform are listed herein. These books, authored by the person whom I consider as the most important theoretician and scholar of cinema as an artform, have completely changed the way in which I view the medium.
Last edited by Cinephile1 on Thu Jan 12, 2023 6:16 pm, edited 246 times in total.
- soundchaser
- Leave Her to Beaver
- Joined: Sun Aug 28, 2016 12:32 am
Re: The Best Books About Film
Could you put line breaks between those so they're easier to read? And maybe sell one or two of them up if you think they're worth looking at!
- Cinephile1
- Joined: Wed Oct 31, 2018 2:10 pm
Re: The Best Books About Film
Done! Hoping that it is fine now. I consider these to be the greatest and most important books about cinema as an artform (and their author to be the most important theoretician and scholar of cinema as an artform), books that have completely changed the way in which I view the medium.soundchaser wrote: ↑Mon Jun 07, 2021 10:45 amCould you put line breaks between those so they're easier to read? And maybe sell one or two of them up if you think they're worth looking at!