Results by title
99 books match the query 'Motion picture producers and directors' and 4 start with e
Elaine May
Elizabeth Alsop
University of Illinois Press, 2025
A master of subverting tropes with surgical precision, Elaine May forged a career in 1970s Hollywood with films like The Heartbreak Kid and Mikey and Nicky. Elizabeth Alsop explores the director’s non-conformist and uncompromising vision while looking at May’s films against trends in classic and post-classical Hollywood. Shaped by her background and success in the theater, May brought the biting humor of her improv comedy to her filmmaking. But unfriendly media and a system hostile to both her methods and sensibility consigned her to “director’s jail” after the failure of Ishtar. As Alsop moves through the filmmaker’s four movies, she tracks May’s inventive treatment of favorite themes like hapless male characters and the inanities of American culture. She also considers May’s work in relation to her multifaceted career as a writer and performer.
A compelling reconsideration of an iconoclast and original, Elaine May reveals how a surprisingly radical auteur created her trademark cinema of discomfort.
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Escape Artist
The Life and Films of John SturgesGlenn Lovell
University of Wisconsin Press, 2008
Escape Artist—based on Glenn Lovell’s extensive interviews with John Sturges, his wife and children, and numerous stars including Clint Eastwood, Robert Duvall, and Jane Russell—is the first biography of the director of such acclaimed films as The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, and Bad Day at Black Rock. Lovell examines Sturges’s childhood in California during the Great Depression; his apprenticeship in the editing department of RKO Pictures, where he worked on such films as Gunga Din and Of Human Bondage; his service in the Army Air Corps in World War II; and his emergence as one of the first independent producer-directors in Hollywood.
Chronicling the filmmaker’s relationships with such luminaries as Spencer Tracy, James Garner, Yul Brynner, and Frank Sinatra, Escape Artist interweaves biography with critical analyses of Sturges’s hits and misses. Along the way, Lovell addresses the reasons why Sturges has been overlooked in the ongoing discussion of postwar Hollywood and explores the director’s focus on masculinity, machismo, and male-bonding in big-budget, ensemble action films. Lovell also examines Sturges’s aesthetic sensibility, his talent for composing widescreen images, and his uncanny ability to judge raw talent—including that of Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn, all of whom began their careers in Sturges’s movies.
This long overdue study of a major Hollywood director will find a welcome home in the libraries of film scholars, action movie buffs, and anyone interested in the popular culture of the twentieth century.
Best Books for Special Interests, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Association
Best Books for Special Interests, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Association
"Pick up a copy of film critic and scholar Glenn Lovell's terrific new Sturges biography, Escape Artist. . . . I can't urge you enough to check out this interview-rich, aesthetically and culturally perceptive look at the filmmaker and his work."—Bob Strauss, Los Angeles Daily News
“Lovell’s list of interviewees reads like a who’s who of Hollywood and they obviously provided rich source material for this full-scale biography and career survey.”— Leonard Maltin
“This long overdue study of a major Hollywood director will find a welcome home in the libraries of film scholars, action movie buffs, and anyone interested in the popular culture of the twentieth century.”—Turner Classic Movies (TCM.com)
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Establishing Shots
An Oral History of the Winnipeg Film GroupKevin Nikkel
University of Manitoba Press, 2023
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Ethnic Eye
Latino Media ArtsChon Noriega
University of Minnesota Press, 1996
The first in-depth treatment of Latino film and video.
This groundbreaking volume is the first to examine the range of Latino media arts, from independent feature production to documentary to experimental video. The essays explore the work of Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban American, and Latino film and video artists and address avant-garde practices, queer media, and performance art as well as more conventional film and video representations.
Contributors to The Ethnic Eye provide close readings of a wide variety of films and videos, including Stand and Deliver, American Me, Bedhead, El Mariachi, Carmelita Tropicana, Improper Conduct, Welcome to America’s Finest Tourist Plantation, Border Brujo, Mérida Proscrita, and Spitfire. The essays are unified by a concern with the creation of a common ground for Latino media arts, one that is pan-ethnic rather than narrowly transcribed by race, ethnicity, or national heritage. The volume also provides the first in-depth treatment of such artists as Robert Rodriquez, Ela Troyano, Raphael Montañez Ortiz, and Frances Salomé España. Eclectic in the range of media artists and works considered, The Ethnic Eye is unique in its inclusion of site-specific public art, as well as performance-based works. Contributors: Marcos Becquer; Charles Ramírez Berg, U of Texas; C. Ondine Chavoya; Marvin D’Lugo, Clark U; Claire F. Fox, Stanford U; Ilene S. Goldman; Carmen Huaco-Nuzum, U of California, Davis; Lillian Jiménez; Alisa Lebow; Scott MacDonald, Utica College; José Esteban Muñoz, New York U; Frances Negrón-Muntaner; Kathleen Newman, U of Iowa; Christopher Ortiz.[more]