Download or read book Hollywood Ambitions written by Marsha Gordon and published by Wesleyan. This book was released on 2008 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Working with a varied and untraditional cast of characters—Wyatt Earp, Jack London, Clara Bow, Gertrude Stein, and Ida Lupino—author Marsha Orgeron examines the Hollywood ambitions of a fading western legend, a successful popular author, a poor Brooklyn girl turned flapper icon, a self-proclaimed avant-garde genius, and a frustrated actress on her way to becoming a director. Investigating their separate involvements with the expanding film industry, Orgeron illustrates the implications of film celebrity during the era in which cinema’s impact was first felt. The aspirations of these individuals demonstrate the unifying role that the American motion picture capital played in shaping cultural notions of reputation, success, glamour, and visibility. Through extensive and unprecedented primary research and illuminating analyses of films, texts, and personal writings, each chapter provides new insight into its subject’s dealings in the mythic city. Hollywood Ambitions affords a unique understanding of the tremendous diversity of the Hollywood experience and its allure in the first half of the cinematic century.

Download or read book Hollywood Faith written by Gerardo Marti and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Christianity, as with most religions, attaining holiness and a higher spirituality while simultaneously pursuing worldly ideals such as fame and fortune is nearly impossible. This book looks at religion among the creative class. It is suitable for those who wants to understand how religion adapts to social change.

Download or read book Hattie McDaniel written by Jill Watts and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2007-02-06 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hattie McDaniel is best known for her performance as Mammy, the sassy foil to Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind. Though the role called for yet another wide–grinned, subservient black domestic, McDaniel transformed her character into one who was loyal yet subversive, devoted yet bossy. Her powerful performance would win her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and catapult the hopes of Black Hollywood that the entertainment industry ––after decades of stereotypical characters–– was finally ready to write more multidimensional, fully realized roles for blacks. But racism was so entrenched in Hollywood that despite pleas by organizations such as the NAACP and SAG ––and the very examples that Black service men were setting as they fought against Hitler in WWII–– roles for blacks continued to denigrate the African American experience. So rather than see her stature increase in Hollywood, as did other Oscar–winning actresses, Hattie McDaniel, continued to play servants. And rather than see her popularity increase, her audience turned against her as an increasingly politicized black community criticized her and her peers for accepting degrading roles. "I'd rather play a maid then be a maid," Hattie McDaniel answered her critics but her flip response belied a woman who was herself emotionally conflicted about the roles she accepted but who tried to imbue each Mammy character with dignity and nuance.

Download or read book Film Form and Culture written by Robert P. Kolker and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-03-29 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fifth edition of Film, Form, and Culture offers a lively introduction to both the formal and cultural aspects of film. With extensive analysis of films past and present, this textbook explores how films are constructed from part to whole: from the smallest unit of the shot to the way shots are edited together to create narrative. Robert P. Kolker and Marsha Gordon demystify the technical aspects of filmmaking and demonstrate how fiction and nonfiction films engage with culture. Over 265 images provide a visual index to the films and issues being discussed. This new edition includes: an expanded examination of digital filmmaking and distribution in the age of streaming; attention to superhero films throughout; a significantly longer chapter on global cinema with new or enlarged sections on a variety of national cinemas (including cinema from Nigeria, Senegal, Burkina Faso, South Korea, Japan, India, Belgium, and Iran); new or expanded discussions of directors, including Alice Guy-Blaché, Lois Weber, Oscar Micheaux, Agnès Varda, Spike Lee, Julie Dash, Jafar Panahi, Ava DuVernay, Jane Campion, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne and Penny Lane; and new, in-depth explorations of films, including Within Our Gates (1919), Black Girl (1966), Creed (2015), Moonlight (2016), Wonder Woman (2017), Get Out (2017), Black Panther (2018), Parasite (2019), Da 5 Bloods (2020), The French Dispatch (2021), The Power of the Dog (2021), RRR (2022), and Tár (2022). This textbook is an invaluable and exciting resource for students beginning film studies at undergraduate level. Additional resources for students and teachers can be found on the eResource, which includes case studies, discussion questions, and links to useful websites.

Download or read book Hollywood and the Culture Elite written by Peter Decherney and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2005-04-06 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Americans flocked to the movies during the first part of the twentieth century, the guardians of culture grew worried about their diminishing influence on American art, education, and American identity itself. Meanwhile, Hollywood studio heads were eager to stabilize their industry, solidify their place in mainstream society, and expand their new but tenuous hold on American popular culture. Peter Decherney explores how these needs coalesced and led to the development of a symbiotic relationship between the film industry and America's stewards of high culture. Formed during Hollywood's Golden Age (1915-1960), this unlikely partnership ultimately insured prominent places in American culture for both the movie industry and elite cultural institutions. It redefined Hollywood as an ideal American industry; it made movies an art form instead of simply entertainment for the masses; and it made moviegoing a vital civic institution. For their part, museums and universities used films to maintain their position as quintessential American institutions. As the book delves into the ties between Hollywood bigwigs and various cultural leaders, an intriguing cast of characters emerges, including the poet Vachel Lindsay, film producers Adolph Zukor and Joseph Kennedy, Hollywood flak and censor extraordinaire Will Hays, and philanthropist turned politician Nelson Rockefeller. Decherney considers how Columbia University's film studies program helped integrate Jewish students into American culture while also professionalizing screenwriting. He examines MoMA's career-savvy film curator Iris Barry, a British feminist once dedicated to stemming the tide of U.S. cultural imperialism, who ultimately worked with Hollywood and the U.S. government to fight fascism and communism and promote American values abroad. Other chapters explore Vachel Lindsay's progressive vision of movies as reinvigorating the public sphere through film libraries and museums; the promotion of movie connoisseurship at Harvard and other universities; and how the heir of a railroad magnate bankrolled the American avant-garde film movement. Amid ethnic diversity, the rise of mass entertainment, world war, and the global spread of American culture, Hollywood and cultural institutions worked together to insure their own survival and profitability and to provide a coherent, though shifting, American identity.

Download or read book Red Carpet written by Erich Schwartzel and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is a fascinating book. It will educate you. Schwartzel has done some extraordinary reporting." — The New York Times Book Review “In this highly entertaining but deeply disturbing book, Erich Schwartzel demonstrates the extent of our cultural thrall to China. His depiction of the craven characters, American and Chinese, who have enabled this situation represents a significant feat of investigative journalism. His narrative is about not merely the movie business, but the new world order.” —Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree and The Noonday Demon An eye-opening and deeply reported narrative that details the surprising role of the movie business in the high-stakes contest between the U.S. and China From trade to technology to military might, competition between the United States and China dominates the foreign policy landscape. But this battle for global influence is also playing out in a strange and unexpected arena: the movies. The film industry, Wall Street Journal reporter Erich Schwartzel explains, is the latest battleground in the tense and complex rivalry between these two world powers. In recent decades, as China has grown into a giant of the international economy, it has become a crucial source of revenue for the American film industry. Hollywood studios are now bending over backward to make movies that will appeal to China’s citizens—and gain approval from severe Communist Party censors. At the same time, and with America’s unwitting help, China has built its own film industry into an essential arm of its plan to export its national agenda to the rest of the world. The competition between these two movie businesses is a Cold War for this century, a clash that determines whether democratic or authoritarian values will be broadcast most powerfully around the world. Red Carpet is packed with memorable characters who have—knowingly or otherwise—played key roles in this tangled industry web: not only A-list stars like Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, and Richard Gere but also eccentric Chinese billionaires, zany expatriate filmmakers, and starlets who disappear from public life without explanation or trace. Schwartzel combines original reporting, political history, and show-biz intrigue in an exhilarating tour of global entertainment, from propaganda film sets in Beijing to the boardrooms of Hollywood studios to the living rooms in Kenya where families decide whether to watch an American or Chinese movie. Alarming, occasionally absurd, and wildly entertaining, Red Carpet will not only alter the way we watch movies but also offer essential new perspective on the power struggle of this century.

Download or read book The Hollywood Commandments written by DeVon Franklin and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DeVon Franklin, New York Times bestselling author of The Wait and prominent Hollywood producer, reveals that secular and spiritual success are not opposites. To have one, you need the other. Are you tired of living a life paralyzed by fear? Are you anxious to break free of the “beware mentality” that has kept generations of well-meaning people living beneath the fullness of their calling? You’re unfulfilled because you’ve been convinced that you would lose your faith if you pursued the secular ambitions God has put in your heart. However, until you pursue those ambitions you will miss out on the fullness of God and the success you were created to have. For too long there’s been a line drawn between the spiritual and the secular, and we have been conditioned to believe that if we cross this line in either direction, we will have gone too far. It’s time to break down this barrier so you are free to go further than any believer has gone before. The Success Commandments combines spiritual teachings with secular strategies to help you achieve unprecedented success and live the life you were destined to live.

Download or read book Canada s Hollywood written by Ted Magder and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The development of the feature film industry in Canada has been uncertain and difficult, with problems usually attributed to the country's small population and US domination of the movie industry. Ted Magder goes beyond these obvious influences in his examination of Canada's state policies as they affected the production of Canadian feature films from the First World War to the present. He presents a study focusing on the interplay between government policy and the dynamics of the industry, and undertakes an examination of cultural dependency in Canada. State policies, Magder points out, are related to domestic forces that impinge upon and set limits to policy decisions and their implementation." "In the immediate postwar period, the tone for much of Canada's cultural policies was set by the National Film Board and the recommendations of the Massey Commission. Members of both organizations expressed distaste for films designed to entertain and deemed feature filmmaking unworthy of support. A change of heart took place in the watershed year of 1967 with the passing of the Canadian Film Development Corporation Act, when Canadians finally entered the business of feature film production. Magder considers how this came to pass, what had changed within the industry itself to make feature film production viable, and why the state changed its position from one of neglect to one of support. In the last five chapters, he examines the contradictions and limitations that have bedevilled Canadian feature film production over the last two decades." "In his conclusion, Magder proposes that both the notion of cultural dependency and the goal of public support for cultural production to express national identity need to be re-examined."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Download or read book Ambition written by Ellie Rubin and published by BPS Books. This book was released on 2008-04-18 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this practical, provocative, and proven book, Rubin shows how to turn raw ambition into managed success through the seven rules of ambition. She emphasizes that everyone must define ambition on his or her own terms.

Download or read book The Hollywood Renaissance written by Yannis Tzioumakis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-06-28 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In December 1967, Time magazine put Bonnie and Clyde on its cover and proudly declared that Hollywood cinema was undergoing a 'renaissance'. For the next few years, a wide range of formally and thematically challenging films were produced at the very centre of the American film industry, often (but by no means always) combining success at the box office with huge critical acclaim, both then and later. This collection brings together acknowledged experts on American cinema to examine thirteen key films from the years 1966 to 1974, starting with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a major studio release which was in effect exempted from Hollywood's Production Code and thus helped to liberate American filmmaking from (self-)censorship. Long-standing taboos to do with sex, violence, race relations, drugs, politics, religion and much else could now be broken, often in conjunction with extensive stylistic experimentation. Whereas most previous scholarship has examined these developments through the prism of auteurism, with its tight focus on film directors and their oeuvres, the contributors to this collection also carefully examine production histories and processes. In doing so they pay particular attention to the economic underpinnings and collaborative nature of filmmaking, the influence of European art cinema as well as of exploitation, experimental and underground films, and the connections between cinema and other media (notably publishing, music and theatre). Several chapters show how the innovations of the Hollywood Renaissance relate to further changes in American cinema from the mid-1970s onwards.

Download or read book Hollywood in Berlin written by Thomas J. Saunders and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-12-22 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The setting is 1920s Berlin, cultural heart of Europe and the era's only serious cinematic rival to Hollywood. In his engaging study, Thomas Saunders explores an outstanding example of one of the most important cultural developments of this century: global Americanization through the motion picture. The invasion of Germany by American films, which began in 1921 with overlapping waves of sensationalist serials, slapstick shorts, society pictures, and historical epics, initiated a decade of cultural collision and accommodation. On the one hand it fueled an impassioned debate about the properties of cinema and the specter of wholesale Americanization. On the other hand it spawned unprecedented levels of cooperation and exchange. In Berlin, American motion pictures not only entertained all social classes and film tastes but also served as a vehicle for American values and a source of sharp economic competition. Hollywood in Berlin correlates the changing forms of Hollywood's contributions to Weimar culture and the discourses that framed and interpreted them, restoring historical contours to a leading aspect of cultural interchange in this century. At the same time, the book successfully embeds Weimar cinema in its contemporary international setting.

Download or read book Such Mad Fun written by Robin R Cutler and published by . This book was released on 2016-07-21 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Orphaned at fifteen, Jane Hall was a "literary prodigy" according to the press. Follow the adventures of this ambitious young tomboy from an Arizona mining town as she becomes a Depression-era debutante, a successful author of magazine fiction, and a screenwriter at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Hollywood's most glamorous studio in the 1930s. A true story

Download or read book Film and Genocide written by Kristi M. Wilson and published by University of Wisconsin Pres. This book was released on 2012-01-04 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Film and Genocide brings together scholars of film and of genocide to discuss film representations, both fictional and documentary, of the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, and genocides in Chile, Australia, Rwanda, and the United States. Since 1955, when Alain Resnais created his experimental documentary Night and Fog about the Nazis’ mass killings of Jews and other ostracized groups, filmmakers have struggled with using this medium to tell such difficult stories, to re-create the sociopolitical contexts of genocide, and to urge awareness and action among viewers. This volume looks at such issues as realism versus fiction, the challenge of depicting atrocities in a manner palatable to spectators and film distributors, the Holocaust film as a model for films about other genocides, and the role of new technologies in disseminating films about genocide. Film and Genocide also includes interviews with three film directors, who discuss their experiences in working with deeply disturbing images and bringing hidden stories to life: Irek Dobrowolski, director of The Portraitist (2005) a documentary about Wilhelm Brasse, an Auschwitz-Birkenau prisoner ordered to take more than 40,000 photos at the camp; Nick Hughes, director of 100 Days (2005) a dramatic film about the Rwandan mass killings; and Greg Barker, director of Ghosts of Rwanda (2004), a television documentary for Frontline.

Download or read book Focus On 100 Most Popular English language Film Directors written by Wikipedia contributors and published by e-artnow sro. This book was released on with total page 1455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Liberating Hollywood written by Maya Montañez Smukler and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-14 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2018 Richard Wall Memorial Award​ from the Theater Library Association Liberating Hollywood examines the professional experiences and creative output of women filmmakers during a unique moment in history when the social justice movements that defined the 1960s and 1970s challenged the enduring culture of sexism and racism in the U.S. film industry. Throughout the 1970s feminist reform efforts resulted in a noticeable rise in the number of women directors, yet at the same time the institutionalized sexism of Hollywood continued to create obstacles to closing the gender gap. Maya Montañez Smukler reveals that during this era there were an estimated sixteen women making independent and studio films: Penny Allen, Karen Arthur, Anne Bancroft, Joan Darling, Lee Grant, Barbara Loden, Elaine May, Barbara Peeters, Joan Rivers, Stephanie Rothman, Beverly Sebastian, Joan Micklin Silver, Joan Tewkesbury, Jane Wagner, Nancy Walker, and Claudia Weill. Drawing on interviews conducted by the author, Liberating Hollywood is the first study of women directors within the intersection of second wave feminism, civil rights legislation, and Hollywood to investigate the remarkable careers of these filmmakers during one of the most mythologized periods in American film history.

Download or read book Uncle Mame written by Eric Myers and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2009-04-20 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under his pseudonyms of Patrick Dennis and Virginia Rowans, Edward Everett (Pat) Tanner III was the author of sixteen novels—most of them best sellers—including the now-classic Little Me and Auntie Mame. Tanner made millions, became the toast of Manhattan society, and had his works adapted into wildly successful plays, musicals, TV shows, and films. But he also spent every cent he made, worked incognito as a butler to the wealthy, and constructed a persona so elaborate that not even his wife and children ever quite knew the real Pat. Based on extensive interviews with coworkers, friends, and relatives, Uncle Mame is a revealing, intimate portrait of the man who brought camp to the American mainstream and even in his lowest moments personified—even in his lowest moments— the glamour and wit he captured on the page.

Download or read book Filming Difference written by Daniel Bernardi and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2009-05-01 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addressing representation and identity in a variety of production styles and genres, including experimental film and documentary, independent and mainstream film, and television drama, Filming Difference poses fundamental questions about the ways in which the art and craft of filmmaking force creative people to confront stereotypes and examine their own identities while representing the complexities of their subjects. Selections range from C. A. Griffith’s “Del Otro Lado: Border Crossings, Disappearing Souls, and Other Transgressions” and Celine Perreñas Shimizu’s “Pain and Pleasure in the Flesh of Machiko Saito’s Experimental Movies” to Christopher Bradley’s “I Saw You Naked: ‘Hard’ Acting in ‘Gay’ Movies,” along with Kevin Sandler’s interview with Paris Barclay, Yuri Makino’s interview with Chris Eyre, and many other perspectives on the implications of film production, writing, producing, and acting. Technical aspects of the craft are considered as well, including how contributors to filmmaking plan and design films and episodic television that feature difference, and how the tools of cinema—such as cinematography and lighting—influence portrayals of gender, race, and sexuality. The struggle between economic pressures and the desire to produce thought-provoking, socially conscious stories forms another core issue raised in Filming Difference. Speaking with critical rigor and creative experience, the contributors to this collection communicate the power of their media.