History & Criticism

The animations of Japan's Studio Ghibli are among the most respected in the movie industry. Their films rank alongside the most popular non-English language films ever made, with each new release a guaranteed box office hit. Yet this highly profitable...

It's the late 1970s and 20-something Christopher Fowler is a film freak, obsessively watching lousy films in run-down fleapit cinemas. He longs to be a famous screenwriter and put his dreams on the big screen. And so he heads for Wardour Street,...

The name Alfred Hitchcock is synonymous with suspense-that is to say, masterful, spine-tingling, thrilling, shocking, excruciating, eye-boggling suspense. With triumphs such as Rebecca, Vertigo, Rear Window, and Psycho, Hitchcock (1899-1980) fashioned a...

Published for the first time in the UK, Syd Field, acclaimed writer and director, tells you step-by-step how to identify and fix common screenwriting problems, providing the professional secrets that make films brilliant - secrets that can make your...

Explore the physics behind the world of Star Wars, with engaging topics and accessible information that shows how we're closer than ever before to creating technology from the galaxy far, far away-perfect for every Star Wars fan!Ever wish you could have...

As featured in Fangoria, Movieweb, ComingSoon, Queerty, Rue Morgue, Yahoo News, Bloody Disgusting, and more!In 1983, Robert Hiltzik's Sleepaway Camp was quickly disregarded by film reviewers. Variety called it a "tired version of teen oriented horror...

'This extraordinary tale of rivalry and celluloid . . . has fascinated cineastes for years.' Kathryn Hughes, Sunday Times'Illuminating and thrilling.' The Spectator'Absorbing, forensic and jaw-dropping.' Total FilmIn 1888, Louis Le Prince shot the...

Fargo - that bloody tale of greed, kidnapping and murder set in the freezing tundra of Minnesota - was the Coen brothers' break-out film, scooping two Oscars and a towering snowdrift of critical and commercial acclaim. On the 25th anniversary of its...

In early 1930's era Italy, bounty hunters and high flyers of all sorts rule the skies. The most cunning and skilled of these pilots is Porco Rosso, a man cursed with the head of a pig after watching the spirits of the pilots killed in the last air battle...

For this was the summer when, after the hiatus of the Second World War, French critics were again given the opportunity to view films from Hollywood. The films they saw, including The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity. Laura, Murder, My Sweet, and The...

Often hailed as the 'best' James Bond film, From Russia With Love (1963) is celebrated for its direction by Terence Young, memorable performances from Sean Connery in his second outing as 007, Pedro Armendariz as Kerim, Lotte Lenya as the lesbian villain...

Peter Weir's haunting and allusive Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), set in 1900, tells the story of the mysterious disappearance of three schoolgirls and their teacher on a trip to a local geological formation. The film is widely hailed as a classic of new...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781909526068Author Tony NourmandFormat HardbackPage Count 320Imprint Reel Art PressPublisher Reel Art PressWeight(grams) 2232g

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780142181539Author Caseen GainesFormat PaperbackPage Count 288Imprint PlumePublisher Penguin Putnam IncWeight(grams) 245g

Rosemary's Baby is one of the greatest movies of the late 1960s and one of the best of all horror movies, an outstanding modern Gothic tale. An art-house fable and an elegant popular entertainment, it finds its home on the cusp between a cinema of...

What is the relationship between a cinematic grid of color and that most visceral of negative affects, disgust? How might anxiety be a matter of an interrupted horizontal line, or grief a figure of blazing light?Offering a bold corrective to the emphasis...

Spirited Away, directed by the veteran anime film-maker Hayao Miyazaki, is Japan's most successful film, and one of the top-grossing 'foreign language' films ever released. Set in modern Japan, the film is a wildly imaginative fantasy, at once personal...

At a moment when superheroes dominate pop culture, Gary Bettinson takes us back to the first comic book blockbuster. Superman: The Movie - The 40th Anniversary Interviews is a revealing behind-the-scenes portrait of the personalities and expertise that...

The Queer Art of Failure is about finding alternatives-to conventional understandings of success in a heteronormative, capitalist society; to academic disciplines that confirm what is already known according to approved methods of knowing; and to...

The theorists of art and film commonly depict the modern audience as aesthetically and politically passive. In response, both artists and thinkers have sought to transform the spectator into an active agent and the spectacle into a communal performance...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780593319291Author David ThomsonFormat HardbackPage Count 288Imprint Alfred A. KnopfPublisher Alfred A. KnopfWeight(grams) 459gDimensions(mm) 216mm * 153mm...

Kenji Mizoguchi's masterpiece Sansho Dayu (1954) retells a classic Japanese folktale about an eleventh-century feudal official forced into exile by his political enemies. In his absence, his children fall under the corrupting influence of the malevolent...

George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead is a cult classic that has resonated with audiences and independent filmmakers ever since its release in 1968. It redefined horror cinema and launched the modern zombie genre that continues with films and...

The director and cowriter of some of the world's most iconic films-including Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd., Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment-Billy Wilder earned acclaim as American cinema's greatest social satirist. Though an influential fixture in...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SALTIRE SOCIETY NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDLooking can be an act of empathy or aggression. It can provoke desire or express it. And from the blurry, edgeless world we inhabit as infants to the landscape of screens we grow into,...

G.W. Pabst's 1929 silent classic Pandora's Box (Die Buchse der Pandora), stars Hollywood icon Louise Brooks as the enigmatic heroine whose erotic charms lead to disaster for the men drawn into her web. Despite failing commercially upon release, it has...

On the face of it, Gabriel Axel's Babette's Feast (1989) is a film in which the eyes - and mouths - of religious zealots are opened to the glories of the sensual world. It is a critique of what Nietzsche called life-denying religion in favour of...

Ponyo, loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, is a hand-drawn feature-length film. This ART OF book includes not only cell artwork, but also striking watercolour and pastel concept sketches and layout pages. The book also has...

Winner of the the 2021 Best Edited Collection Award from BAFTSSWinner of the 2021 British Fantasy Award in Best Non-Fiction Finalist for the 2020 Bram Stoker Award (R) for Superior Achievement in Non-FictionRunner-Up for Book of the Year in the 19th...

John Carpenter's producing partner Debra Hill hired photographer Kim Gottlieb-Walker to be the unit photographer on Halloween, and Kim soon became part of Carpenter's filmmaking family, shooting stills on the sets of some of his most iconic films:...

George A. Romero's classic 1968 film, "Night of the Living Dead", introduced a new era of gutmunching cinematic mayhem and inspired legions of directors and writers, among them Quentin Tarantino and George Lucas. John A. Russo co-wrote the...

Comprehensive, authoritative, and unique, The Oxford Guide to Film Studies is the up-to-date critical volume on the theories, debates, and approaches to the study of film. A host of international experts provide an overview of the main disciplinary...

Perhaps the best-known Spanish filmmaker to international audiences, Pedro Almodovar gained the widespread attention of English-speaking critics and fans with the Oscar-nominated Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and the celebrated dark comedy...

The definitive guide to the decade when swinging London was the film capital of the world After The Beatles stormed America, every Hollywood and European production company descended on London to be part of the new swinging scene... and they didn't leave...

Set in Hong Kong, Singapore and Cambodia in the 1960s, Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love (2000) is a film that luxuriates in the feeling of being in love - without ever turning into a love story. Its central characters, Mr Chow and Mrs Chan, are...

Hailed as possibly the most comprehensive oral history of Superman to be committed to print, Voices From Krypton combines over 85 years of Superman's legacy into a sweeping tale of how the champion of the oppressed became one of the world's most...

In almost all critical writings on the horror film, woman is conceptualised only as victim. In The Monstrous-Feminine Barbara Creed challenges this patriarchal view by arguing that the prototype of all definitions of the monstrous is the female...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781681372747Author Salka ViertelFormat PaperbackPage Count 368Imprint The New York Review of Books, IncPublisher The New York Review of Books,...

Casting aside the traditional conception of film as an outgrowth of photography, theater, and the novel, the essays in this volume reassess the relationship between the emergence of film and the broader culture of modernity. Contributors, leading...

Often typecast as a menacing figure, Peter Lorre achieved Hollywood fame first as a featured player and later as a character actor, trademarking his screen performances with a delicately strung balance between good and evil. His portrayal of the child...