"Ladies and gentlemen: THIS IS CINERAMA." With these words, on September 30, 1952, the heavy red curtains in New York's Broadway Theatre opened on a panoramic Technicolor image of the Rockaways Playland Atom-Smasher Roller Coaster--and moviegoers were abruptly plunged into a new and revolutionary experience. The cinematic transformation heralded by this giddy ride was, however, neither as sudden nor as straightforward as it seemed. Widescreen Cinema leads us through the twists and turns and decades it took for film to change its shape and, along the way, shows how this fitful process reflects the vagaries of cultural history. Widescreen and wide-film processes had existed since the 1890s. Why, then, John Belton asks, did 35mm film become a standard? Why did a widescreen revolution fail in the 1920s but succeed in the 1950s? And why did movies shrink again in the 1960s, leaving us with the small screen multiplexes and mall cinemas that we know today? The answers, he discovers, have as much to do with popular notions of leisure time and entertainment as with technology. Beginning with film's progress from peepshow to projection in 1896 and focusing on crucial stages in film history, such as the advent of sound, Belton puts widescreen cinema into its proper cultural context. He shows how Cinerama, CinemaScope, Vista Vision, Todd-AO, and other widescreen processes marked significant changes in the conditions of spectatorship after World War 11 -and how the film industry itself sought to redefine those conditions. The technical, the economic, the social, the aesthetic -every aspect of the changes shaping and reshaping film comes under Belton's scrutiny as he reconstructs the complex history of widescreen cinema and relates this history to developments in mass-produced leisure-time entertainment in the twentieth century. Highly readable even at its most technical, this book illuminates a central episode in the evolution of cinema and, in doing so, reveals a great deal about the shifting fit between film and society.

Hello, Dolly!, Lawrence of Arabia, Sound of Music--200+ more. Enormous detail on CinemaScope, VistaVision, Cinerama, Todd-AO, Panavision, CinemaScope-55, Technirama, Thrillarama, Aromatama, Smell-O-Vision, stereophonic and special sound processes, even Soviet 70mm! Huge filmography, exhaustive credits. Much data never before published.

The Big Screen tells the enthralling story of the movies: their rise and spread, their remarkable influence over us, and the technology that made the screen—smaller now, but ever more ubiquitous—as important as the images it carries. The Big Screen is not another history of the movies. Rather, it is a wide-ranging narrative about the movies and their signal role in modern life. At first, film was a waking dream, the gift of appearance delivered for a nickel to huddled masses sitting in the dark. But soon, and abruptly, movies began transforming our societies and our perceptions of the world. The celebrated film authority David Thomson takes us around the globe, through time, and across many media—moving from Eadweard Muybridge to Steve Jobs, from Sunrise to I Love Lucy, from John Wayne to George Clooney, from television commercials to streaming video—to tell the complex, gripping, paradoxical story of the movies. He tracks the ways we were initially enchanted by movies as imitations of life—the stories, the stars, the look—and how we allowed them to show us how to live. At the same time, movies, offering a seductive escape from everyday reality and its responsibilities, have made it possible for us to evade life altogether. The entranced audience has become a model for powerless and anxiety-ridden citizens trying to pursue happiness and dodge terror by sitting quietly in a dark room. Does the big screen take us out into the world, or merely mesmerize us? That is Thomson's question in this grand adventure of a book. Books about the movies are often aimed at film buffs, but this passionate and provocative feat of storytelling is vital to anyone trying to make sense of the age of screens—the age that, more than ever, we are living in.

From a veteran culture writer and modern movie expert, a celebration and analysis of the movies of 1999—“a terrifically fun snapshot of American film culture on the brink of the Millennium….An absolute must for any movie-lover or pop-culture nut” (Gillian Flynn). In 1999, Hollywood as we know it exploded: Fight Club. The Matrix. Office Space. Election. The Blair Witch Project. The Sixth Sense. Being John Malkovich. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. American Beauty. The Virgin Suicides. Boys Don’t Cry. The Best Man. Three Kings. Magnolia. Those are just some of the landmark titles released in a dizzying movie year, one in which a group of daring filmmakers and performers pushed cinema to new limits—and took audiences along for the ride. Freed from the restraints of budget, technology, or even taste, they produced a slew of classics that took on every topic imaginable, from sex to violence to the end of the world. The result was a highly unruly, deeply influential set of films that would not only change filmmaking, but also give us our first glimpse of the coming twenty-first century. It was a watershed moment that also produced The Sopranos; Apple’s AirPort; Wi-Fi; and Netflix’s unlimited DVD rentals. “A spirited celebration of the year’s movies” (Kirkus Reviews), Best. Movie. Year. Ever. is the story of not just how these movies were made, but how they re-made our own vision of the world. It features more than 130 new and exclusive interviews with such directors and actors as Reese Witherspoon, Edward Norton, Steven Soderbergh, Sofia Coppola, David Fincher, Nia Long, Matthew Broderick, Taye Diggs, M. Night Shyamalan, David O. Russell, James Van Der Beek, Kirsten Dunst, the Blair Witch kids, the Office Space dudes, the guy who played Jar-Jar Binks, and dozens more. It’s “the complete portrait of what it was like to spend a year inside a movie theater at the best possible moment in time” (Chuck Klosterman).

When widescreen technology was introduced to filmmaking in 1953, it revolutionized the visual framework and aesthetic qualities of cinema. Many modern moviegoers are already familiar with the widescreen revolution, which recently made its way from the big screen to the home screen. What remains hidden, however, is the rich history of this technology and its origins. Letterboxed: The Evolution of Widescreen Cinema tracks the development of widescreen cinema from the early twentieth century to contemporary technologies such as video games and IMAX. Examining early filmmakers such as buster Keaton and D.W. Griffith and genre pioneers like Nicholas Ray and Douglas Sirk, Harper Cossar explains how directors use wider aspect ratios to enhance their creative visions. Whereas previous analyses of widescreen cinema have pointed out the format capacity to increase an audience's level of engagement during viewing, or have heralded it as an end to the era of montage by analyzing a few canonical films. Cossar's new assessment of widescreen technology offers deeper insights into the aesthetic implications of the format. Letterboxed examines the impact of widescreen cinema by broadening the scope of films included in the discussion and by focusing specifically on classical Hollywood genre films directed by recognized auteurs. By examining the differences between widescreen format and its predecessor, the Academy ration, Cossar distinguishes between the physical and stylistic ruptures prompted by widescreen technology. Not only did widescreen offer an alternative to the traditional aspect ratio of the screen, but it also introduced new methods of working within cinematic tropes to utilize space and action more effectively. Cossar examines films throughout the history of cinema, uncovering the trends and changes that result from the use of widescreen, and also discusses the flexibility of widescreen methods as applied in various film genres. He reviews existing scholarship and offers his own insights about the origins of this technology, its impact, and its more recent uses in both live-action and animated film.

Examining widescreen cinema as a worldwide aesthetic and industrial phenomenon, the essays in this volume situate the individual expressions of this new technology within the larger cultural and industrial practices that inform them. What Hollywood sought to market globally as CinemaScope, SuperScope, Techniscope, Technirama, and Panavision took indigenous form in a host of compatible anamorphic formats developed around the world. The book documents how the aesthetics of the first wave of American widescreen films underwent revision in Europe and Asia as filmmakers brought their own idiolect to the language of widescreen mise-en-scène, editing, and sound practices. The work of Otto Preminger, Anthony Mann, Samuel Fuller, Sam Peckinpah, Seijun Suzuki, Kihachi Okamoto, and Tai Kato, among others, is addressed.

For rock music and film buffs alike, this is the ultimate guide exploring the electrifying, entertaining, and often daring marriage of rock & roll and cinema. When the use of Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” turned 1955’s Blackboard Jungle into a teen sensation and a box-office smash, it proved the opening shot in a cinematic and cultural revolution. Starting with Elvis Presley and the teensploitation films of the ’50s and ’60s, in Rock on Film award-winning author and former Rolling Stone editor Fred Goodman takes readers on a wide-ranging journey through film and pop history. Along the way, he measures the transformative impact of the mid-’60s landmarks A Hard Day’s Night and Dont Look Back and how they seeded an almost unbelievably broad genre of films made by increasingly ambitious musicians and filmmakers across the past seven decades. From the carefree to the complex, the mindless to the mind-bending, rock films have staked out their own turf by simultaneously celebrating innocence and challenging artistic and social conventions. With an insightful round-up of fifty must-see rock films spanning crowd-pleasers, art-house favorites, underground gems, and undisputed classics, Rock on Film surveys the nearly seventy-year canon of a genre like no other. A series of original interviews with Cameron Crowe, Jim Jarmusch, Penelope Spheeris, Taylor Hackford, and John Waters illuminates how rock has influenced the work of some of the most divergent and thoughtful directors in movie history. Illustrated throughout by more than 150 full-color and black-and-white images, Rock on Film brings the history of music in the movies to vivid life.

"Those who tell stories rule society." Plato So who today are our principal storytellers? Not philosophers, but filmmakers. For those who know both the enormous entertainment potential and the culture-shaping power of film, this book will stir mind and imagination. For great stories freight world-sized ideas, ideas worthy of contemplation and conversation. Great cinema inspires wonder. But another philosopher, Aristotle, reminds us that wonder is the true source of philosophy. So perhaps Plato or Aristotle might have a shot at ruling society, even today--if they took an interest in film. These fourteen essays consider classic and current films together with several major philosophical themes, all within the context of Christian faith: (1) the human condition, (2) the human mind and the nature of knowing, (3) the moral life, and (4) faith and religion. Citizen Kane, Big Fish and Pretty Woman contribute to an in-depth consideration of the human condition. The Truman Show, The Matrix, Being John Malkovich and It's a Wonderful Life, among others, illuminate reflection on the human mind and the nature of knowing. Looking at the moral life, contributors interact with such notable films as Pleasantville, Bowling for Columbine, Mystic River and The Silence of the Lambs. The final section pursues the theme of faith and religion traced through a number of Hong Kong martial arts films, Contact, 2001: A Space Odyssey and U2's music documentary Rattle and Hum. A veritable film festival for all those who want to nurture the wonder of philosophical inquiry and the love of Christian theology through an engagement with the big ideas on the big screen.

With just thirteen feature films in half a century, Stanley Kubrick established himself as one of the most accomplished directors in motion picture history. Kubrick created a landmark and a benchmark with every film; working in almost every genre imaginable, including film noir, war movie, SF, horror, period drama, historical epic, love story and satire - yet transcended traditional genre boundaries with every shot. Examining every feature film, from the early shorts through to classics such as Paths of Glory, Dr Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and finally, Eyes Wide Shut, The Complete Kubrick provides a unique insight into understanding the work of cinema's most enigmatic, iconoclastic and gifted auteur.

An Eclectic Collection of Fiction That Inspired Film Memento, All About Eve, Rear Window, Rashomon, and 2001: A Space Odyssey are all well-known and much-loved movies, but what is perhaps a lesser-known fact is that all of them began their lives as short stories. Adaptations gathers together 35 pieces that have been the basis for films, many from giants of American literature (Hemingway, Fitzgerald) and many that have not been in print for decades (the stories that inspired Bringing Up Baby, Meet John Doe, and All About Eve). Categorized by genre, and featuring movies by master directors such as Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, Frank Capra, and John Ford, as well as relative newcomers such as Chris Eyre and Christopher Nolan, Adaptations offers insight into the process of turning a short story into a screenplay, one that, when successful, doesn’t take drastic liberties with the text upon which it is based, but doesn’t mirror its source material too closely either. The stories and movies featured in Adaptations include: •Philip K. Dick’s “The Minority Report,” which became the 2002 blockbuster directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise •“The Harvey Pekar Name Story” by reclusive graphic artist Harvey Pekar, whose life was the inspiration for American Splendor, winner of the 2003 Sundance Grand Jury Prize •Hagar Wilde’s “Bringing Up Baby,” the basis of the classic film Bringing Up Baby, anthologized here for the first time ever •“The Swimmer” by John Cheever, an example of a highly regarded story that many feared might prove unadaptable •The predecessor to the beloved holiday classic A Christmas Story, “Red Ryder Nails the Hammond Kid” by Jean Shepherd Whether you’re a fiction reader or a film buff, Adaptations is your behind-the-scenes look at the sometimes difficult, sometimes brilliantly successful process from the printed page to the big screen. From the Trade Paperback edition.