This beautifully produced book, the first and most essential volume in a trilogy on American cinema before the coming of sound, is based entirely on evidence gathered at first hand and mostly illustrated by photographs from the author’s own collection. First published in 1979, this is by some way the best, most wide-ranging single-volume reference book on the cinema ever written. Plus there’s a bunch of cast and staff tips scattered throughout these pages making this a time capsule into history. One of the great landmarks, a meeting of two film cultures, two languages, two personalities – full of omissions and evasions, but richly suggestive, and a demonstration that criticism and creation can enter into a significant dialogue. A story of crime, professional rivalry, personal jealousy, and grand aspirations, The Prestige sets itself a difficult task.

This is as sharp, witty and lacerating as all his best pictures; Buñuel’s observing eye turned into an act of reflective writing on his own life. This book goes far beyond a simple art resource and offers a true visual/photographic history of the entire Ghostbusters series.There are tons of unique visuals including textures/renders from 3D modelers and paintings of the beats in the story.

It does not focus on one specific movie but you get to see the amazing quality and range of Syd Mead’s abilities. When this original paperback appeared in 1965, the first full-length study of Hitchcock in English, I wrote in my Observer review: “It is an important publication that sets an altogether new standard for critical books on the cinema in this country. No one else seems to get the point of film criticism as well as Rosenbaum, or to pursue it with such prickly independence. Like most people in the unique position of foreknowledge of what others have said, I have avoided the choices that now seem obvious in this survey. Yet if we analyze the film’s form and style, we find that it still aims to achieve particular effects on the spectator, and it still suggests a specific range of meaning.

Each section covers a different topic in the film and you’ll find a lot of split pages with screens from the film intermixed with concept art of that scene. Here’s the answer: the most radical, innovative and inventive tome of cinema study in the past quarter-century, boldly proposing a ‘figural’ approach that combines meaning with emotion, history with imagination. This conclusion was misunderstood in a remarkable variety of ways: I wasn’t saying that a complete approach to film could do without interpretation, nor that it wasn’t worth doing (just that it has become predictable).

A sui generis reimagining of film history – a poetic treatise, cultural delirium and phenomenological evocation of the mysterious, multiform rapture of watching. Or Dan Talbot’s eclectic Film: An Anthology (1966), a stirring alternative to Ernest Lindgren and Paul Rotha, which first introduced me to writings by Manny Farber, Parker Tyler, Gilbert Seldes and Erwin Panofsky. The Art of Pirates of the Caribbean offers a deeper look into the creation of all these movies and how they became blockbuster hits. Both essays tackle more general issues of continuity and change in Hollywood, try to dispute the idea of a “post-classical” Hollywood, and consider the role played by independent filmmaking.strikes just the right note of courteous provocation in its determination to reorient our view of popular cinema. Overflowing with riches, it’s something of a scandal that Mitry’s summa went untranslated until the 1990s while the canon was packed by scores of philosophers manqués. edited and translated by Timothy Barnard, Montreal: Caboose, 2010), but for copyright reasons is available only in Canada.