Whether you’re a dedicated cinephile or just someone who loves big-screen blockbusters, The Hollywood H.I.P. List will allow you to predict the scenes and the dialogue of every movie you ever watch. That’s because the leading studios just can’t stop relying on such filmmaking clichés as: • The Swiss Family Armani • The Bulletproof Couch • The 2nd Law of Character Dynamics • Cinematic Geology 101 • The Magic of UltraSlime Inside you’ll find the Top 100 lame and ludicrous scenes that’ll make you groan audibly or laugh out loud. They’re the best of the worst, and all here for your enjoyment and enlightenment.

The "little black book" that's next to every studio executive's palm pilot--the real scoop on Hollywood's top 200 stars. Who's hot? Who's not? Who can green-light any project that they want? Who's begging for scraps? For years the film industry's elite have looked to James Ulmer's Hollywood Hot List to measure who was really worth a multimillion-dollar payday and who should be pasture-bound. Ulmer's star power rankings can change a star's salary--or even whether or not he or she gets a role. An actor's star power includes: -Bankability: How the actor's name alone guarantees a sale up front in today's global marketplace. -Career management: How well has the actor chosen roles to maximize career potential? -Willingness to travel and promote: How cooperative is the actor in promoting projects? -Professionalism: How reliable is the actor to work with, both on and off the set? -Inside Dirt: The truth about what it's like to work with the top 200 actors worldwide. -Box office bait: Who the actor has worked for and how much the project made. Ulmer's information is culled from those who work closely with the stars--their agents, co-stars, movie producers, directors, distributors, and personal assistants. The opinions of those in the know and the dollars a star can earn measure the true value of the actors in Hollywood. Find out who owns Tinseltown, who's just renting, and who's being evicted.

American motion pictures still dominate the world market with an impact that is difficult to measure. Their role in American culture has been a powerful one since the 1930s and is a hallmark of our culture today. Though much has been written about the film industry, there has been very little systematic attention paid to the ideology of its creative elite. How does the outlook of that elite impact on the portrayals of America that appear on the screen? How do their views interact with the demands of the market and the structure of the industry to determine the product that is seen by mass audiences? Hollywood's America is a marvellously rich and careful discussion of these questions. It combines a meticulous systematic content analysis of fifty years of top-grossing films with a history of the changing structure of the industry. To that mixture it adds an in-depth survey of Hollywood's creative elite, comparing them to other leadership groups. The result is a balanced discussion of unique breadth and depth on a subject of national importance.Placing the film industry in the context of American society as a whole, the authors point out that Hollywood's creative leadership impacts the larger society even as it is influenced by that society. The creators of films cannot remove themselves too far from the values of the audiences that they serve. However, the fact that films are made by a relatively small number of people, who, as the authors demonstrate, tend to share a common outlook, means that, over time, motion pictures have had an undeniable impact on the beliefs, lifestyles, and action of Americans.This study contributes to the debate over the role and influence of those who create and distribute the products of mass culture in the United States.The book also contains a devastating critique of the poststructuralist theories that currently dominate academic film criticism, demonstrating how they fail in their attempt to explain the political significance of motion pictures.

The Hollywood War Film offers readers a lively introduction to the theory, history, stars, and major films constituting this vital genre, from Hollywood's earliest days to the current moment Combines broad historical and theoretical coverage of the genre with in-depth analysis of specific films Includes chapters on All Quiet on the Western Front, World War II combat films, Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, Eastwood’s Iwo Jima films, and Iraq war films An ideal text for perennially popular courses on the war film genre

Written by two very sharp and successful assistants to Hollywood power players, this book contains 99 lessons packed with a combination of blunt truth, insider humor, and juicy secrets that explain the unwritten rules of how to get a foot in the door and make all the right moves.

Hollywood continues to reign supreme; from award-winning dramas to multimillion-dollar, special-effects-laden blockbusters, Tinseltown produces the films that audiences around the world go to the cinema to see. While the film industry has dramatically changed over the years – stars have come and gone, studios have risen and fallen, new technologies have emerged to challenge directors and entice audiences – Hollywood remains the centre of global media entertainment. The second volume of Directory of World Cinema: American Hollywood builds on its predecessor by exploring how the industry has evolved and expanded throughout its history. With new essays that discuss the importance of genre, adaptation, locations and technology in the production of film, this collection explores how Hollywood has looked to create, innovate, borrow and adapt new methods of filmmaking to capture the audience’s imaginations. Touching on classic films such as North by Northwest and Dirty Harry alongside CGI blockbusters like The Lord of the Rings and The Dark Knight as well as comedies such as When Harry Met Sally and Jerry Maguire, this landmark book charts the changing tastes of cinema-goers and the diverse range of offerings from Hollywood. User-friendly and concise, yet dense and wide-ranging, Directory of World Cinema: American Hollywood 2 demonstrates that Hollywood, despite its challenges from independent filmmakers and foreign directors, remains the undisputed king of moviemaking in the twenty-first century.

This is a clear and engrossing account of how popular films in America just after the close of the Second World War played out America's mood at that crucial time. It is also a revisionist challenge to received scholarly understanding of this mood, which has tended to be seen as characterized by an abiding pessimism most clearly manifested in the films noir of the period. Chopra-Gant makes here an important contribution to film genre, which proposes that the 'noir and Zeitgeist' reading is based on the retrospective promotion of selected movies. He turns to the top box office successes of the period, including "Best Years of our Lives", "The Jolson Story" and "Two Years Before the Mast", finding that these films emphasise rather the triumph of American beliefs in democracy, classlessness and individualism. They deploy positive, performative masculinities and the pleasures of male friendships and celebrate the traditional American family, while recognising the problems of 'momism' and absent fathers.

Except for accounts of journalists, dissident employees, and an occasional congressional committee focusing on crime and unethical practices, we have known very little about how television programs are produced. The Hollywood TV Producer, originally published in 1971, was the first serious examination of constraints, conflicts, and rewards in the daily lives of television producers. Its insights were important at the time and have not been challenged. Using as her framework the social system of mass communications, Muriel G. Cantor shows how producers select stories for television series and how movies end up in prime time. In order to get a comprehensive look at the inner workings of the TV industry and its producers, the author interviewed eighty producers in Hollywood over a two-season period. She probed to discover how the people producers work for and where they work influences their decision-making. As Cantor shows, critics of television who suggest that to remain in production, a producer must first please the business organization that finances his or her operations, are largely correct. Cantor shows that content is determined by a combination of artistic and professional factors, as well as social, economic, and political norms that have developed over time in the industry.

Pity the "extras." Mostly overlooked and forgotten. Especially those in the major Hollywood films 1913 to 1945--right through the dream factory's golden era. The struggles of extras to unionize were followed by internal struggles as the extras fought for a voice within that union. There were just too few jobs for far too many extras, some of whom were lured to Hollywood by what seemed to be rags-to-riches tales of stardom (but which were likely little more than industry publicity plants). Once lured to the film capital the reality was much different: low pay, little or no work, ripoffs from private employment agencies, and sexual harassment of the women, likely very much underreported. Some extras had special skills or language abilities, some had wardrobes replete with many period costumes.

Since the earliest days of cinema the law has influenced the conditions in which Hollywood films are made, sold, circulated or presented – from the talent contracts that enable a film to go into production, to the copyright laws that govern its distribution and the censorship laws that may block exhibition. Equally, Hollywood has left its own impression on the American legal system by lobbying to expand the duration of copyright, providing a highly visible stage for contract disputes and representing the legal system on screen. In this comprehensive collection, international experts offer chapters on key topics, including copyright, trademark, piracy, antitrust, censorship, international exhibition, contracts, labour and tax. Drawing on historical and contemporary case studies, Hollywood and the Law provides readers with a wide range of perspectives on how legal frameworks shape the culture and commerce of popular film.