"Between 1995 and 1999, Patton Oswalt lived with an unshakable addiction. It wasn't drugs, alcohol or sex: it was film. After moving to L.A., Oswalt became a huge film buff (or as he calls it, a sprocket fiend), absorbing classics, cult hits, and new releases at the New Beverly Cinema. Silver screen celluloid became Patton's life schoolbook, informing his notion of acting, writing, comedy, and relationships. Set in the nascent days of L.A.'s alternative comedy scene, Oswalt's memoir chronicles his journey from fledgling stand-up comedian to self-assured sitcom actor, with the colorful New Beverly collective and a cast of now-notable young comedians supporting him all along the way"--

Illustrating the cultural significance of film and its power as a vehicle for social change, this book reveals the intricacies of the cultural movement and explores its connections to other art forms such as photography, drama, and literature.

In the twilight days of silent film, Isabel Maher renounces the glitter and glamour of Hollywood to pursue a life as a wife and mother, as her three children struggle against the lives she has scripted for them--Joe, a Jesuit priest; Rita, who runs off with a gangster who turns state's evidence; and Gemma, angry and ambitious, who pursues fame as a photographer. Reprint.

Only book that focuses on psychoanalysis and European Cinema As well as more academic essays the book contains transcriptions of informal discussions between experts and live audiences

Musicals adapted to the big screen--from West Side Story to The Phantom of the Opera--have enjoyed a staggering amount of success since the 1940s, and this guide is especially tailored to library patrons looking for help selecting the right flick to watch. The book is organized by decade, allowing readers to learn about the nuances of each era of musical movie production, and a description is paired with each film along with an explanation of why it is worth viewing. Watching musicals and learning their history by way of libraries and archives where such films are preserved and made available is heavily emphasized.

The Anthem Handbook of Screen Theory offers a unique and progressive survey of screen theory and how it can be applied to a range of moving-image texts and sociocultural contexts. Focusing on the “handbook” angle, the book includes only original essays from established authors in the field and new scholars on the cutting edge of helping screen theory evolve for the twenty-first-century vistas of new media, social shifts and geopolitical change. This method guarantees a strong foundation and clarity for the canon of film theory, while also situating it as part of a larger genealogy of art theories and critical thought, and reveals the relevance and utility of film theories and concepts to a wide array of expressive practices and specified arguments. The Anthem Handbook of Screen Theory is at once inclusive, applicable and a chance for writers to innovate and really play with where they think the field is, can and should be heading.

One of the most visually striking traditions in cinema, for too long Expressionism has been a neglected critical category of research in film history and aesthetics. The fifteen essays in this anthology remedies this by revisiting key German films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922), and also provide original critical research into more obscure titles like Nerven (1919) and The Phantom Carriage (1921), films that were produced in the silent and early sound era in countries ranging from France, Sweden and Hungary, to the United States and Mexico.An innovative and wide-ranging collection, Expressionism in the Cinema re-canonizes the classical Expressionist aesthetic, extending the critical and historical discussion beyond pre-existing scholarship into comparative and interdisciplinary areas of film research that reach across national boundaries.

This book depicts the life of Conrad Veidt (1893-1943), the defining German actor of Expressionist cinema in the 1920s. His legendary performance in Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1919/20) earned him the epithet "Demon of the Screen" and made Veidt an international star. To this day, Veidt is considered an icon of early horror film. He showed his acting range in more than a hundred films, among them masterpieces such as The Indian Tomb (1921), Orlac's Hands (1924), The Man Who Laughs (1928), The Thief of Bagdad (1940), and Casablanca (1942). Conrad Veidt used his acting career to become socially and politically involved, starting with the film Anders als die Anderen, the first film to advocate homosexual rights, in 1919. After the Nazis came to power, he left Germany to protest anti-Semitism and Nazi rule. Along with his biography, this book provides insights into the development of filmmaking from its beginnings through the 1940s, an epoch of cinematic art marked by technical innovations like sound and color film and by world-shaking events, including two world wars.

This compilation of essential information on 100 superheroes from comic book issues, various print and online references, and scholarly analyses provides readers all of the relevant material on superheroes in one place. The American Superhero: Encyclopedia of Caped Crusaders in History covers the history of superheroes and superheroines in America from approximately 1938–2010 in an intentionally inclusive manner. The book features a chronology of important dates in superhero history, five thematic essays covering the overall history of superheroes, and 100 A–Z entries on various superheroes. Complementing the entries are sidebars of important figures or events and a glossary of terms in superhero research. Designed for anyone beginning to research superheroes and superheroines, The American Superhero contains a wide variety of facts, figures, and features about caped crusaders and shows their importance in American history. Further, it collects and verifies information that otherwise would require hours of looking through multiple books and websites to find.