Download or read book Buster Keaton s Silent Shorts written by James L. Neibaur and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2013-01-30 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the mid-1920s, Buster Keaton had established himself as one of the geniuses of cinema with such films as Sherlock, Jr., The Navigator, and his 1927 work The General, which was the highest ranked silent on the American Film Institute's survey of the 100 greatest films. Before Keaton ventured into longer works, however, he had honed his skills as an actor, writer, and director of short films produced in the early 1920s. In Buster Keaton’s Silent Shorts: 1920-1923, James L. Neibaur and Terri Niemi provide a film-by-film assessment of these brilliant two-reelers. The authors discuss the significance of each short—The High Sign, One Week, Convict 13, The Scarecrow, Neighbors, The Haunted House, Hard Luck, The Goat, The Playhouse, The Boat, The Paleface, Cops, My Wife’s Relations, The Blacksmith, Frozen North, Daydreams, The Electric House, The Balloonatic, and The Love Nest—to the Keaton filmography, as well as each film’s importance to cinema. Offering a clear and in-depth perspective on these 19 films, the authors explain what makes these shorts effective and why they’re funny. Buster Keaton’s Silent Shorts will enlighten both scholars and casual fans alike about the early work produced by one of cinema's most gifted comedians and filmmakers.
Download or read book Buster Keaton written by James Curtis and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 833 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **One of Literary Hub’s Five “Most Critically Acclaimed” Biographies of 2022** From acclaimed cultural and film historian James Curtis—a major biography, the first in more than two decades, of the legendary comedian and filmmaker who elevated physical comedy to the highest of arts and whose ingenious films remain as startling, innovative, modern—and irresistible—today as they were when they beguiled audiences almost a century ago. "It is brilliant—I was totally absorbed, couldn't stop reading it and was very sorry when it ended."—Kevin Brownlow It was James Agee who christened Buster Keaton “The Great Stone Face.” Keaton’s face, Agee wrote, "ranked almost with Lincoln’s as an early American archetype; it was haunting, handsome, almost beautiful, yet it was also irreducibly funny. Keaton was the only major comedian who kept sentiment almost entirely out of his work and . . . he brought pure physical comedy to its greatest heights.” Mel Brooks: “A lot of my daring came from Keaton.” Martin Scorsese, influenced by Keaton’s pictures in the making of Raging Bull: “The only person who had the right attitude about boxing in the movies for me,” Scorsese said, “was Buster Keaton.” Keaton’s deadpan stare in a porkpie hat was as recognizable as Charlie Chaplin’s tramp and Harold Lloyd’s straw boater and spectacles, and, with W. C. Fields, the four were each considered a comedy king--but Keaton was, and still is, considered to be the greatest of them all. His iconic look and acrobatic brilliance obscured the fact that behind the camera Keaton was one of our most gifted filmmakers. Through nineteen short comedies and twelve magnificent features, he distinguished himself with such seminal works as Sherlock Jr., The Navigator, Steamboat Bill, Jr., The Cameraman, and his masterpiece, The General. Now James Curtis, admired biographer of Preston Sturges (“definitive”—Variety), W. C. Fields (“by far the fullest, fairest and most touching account we have yet had. Or are likely to have”—Richard Schickel, front page of The New York Times Book Review), and Spencer Tracy (“monumental; definitive”—Kirkus Reviews), gives us the richest, most comprehensive life to date of the legendary actor, stunt artist, screenwriter, director—master.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Early Cinema written by Richard Abel and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2005 with total page 824 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One-volume reference work on the first twenty-five years of the cinema's international emergence from the early 1890s to the mid-1910s.
Download or read book The Man in the High Castle written by Philip K. Dick and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2011 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Slavery is back. America, 1962. Having lost a war, America finds itself under Nazi Germany and Japan occupation. A few Jews still live under assumed names. The 'I Ching' is prevalent in San Francisco. Science fiction meets serious ideas in this take on a possible alternate history.
Download or read book Cassell s Dictionary of Slang written by Jonathon Green and published by Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.. This book was released on 2005 with total page 1600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With its unparalleled coverage of English slang of all types (from 18th-century cant to contemporary gay slang), and its uncluttered editorial apparatus, Cassell's Dictionary of Slang was warmly received when its first edition appeared in 1998. 'Brilliant.' said Mark Lawson on BBC2's The Late Review; 'This is a terrific piece of work - learned, entertaining, funny, stimulating' said Jonathan Meades in The Evening Standard.But now the world's best single-volume dictionary of English slang is about to get even better. Jonathon Green has spent the last seven years on a vast project: to research in depth the English slang vocabulary and to hunt down and record written instances of the use of as many slang words as possible. This has entailed trawling through more than 4000 books - plus song lyrics, TV and movie scripts, and many newspapers and magazines - for relevant material. The research has thrown up some fascinating results
Download or read book The Sign of the Seahorse written by Graeme Base and published by Turtleback Books. This book was released on 1998 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inhabitants of a coral reef are threatened when a shady real estate deal started by the greedy Groper floods their area with poisonous waste.
Download or read book The Black Church written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The instant New York Times bestseller and companion book to the PBS series. “Absolutely brilliant . . . A necessary and moving work.” —Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again “Engaging. . . . In Gates’s telling, the Black church shines bright even as the nation itself moves uncertainly through the gloaming, seeking justice on earth—as it is in heaven.” —Jon Meacham, New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and The Black Box, and one of our most important voices on the African American experience, comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America. For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity—an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues. In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery’s formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn’t even past—Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion. But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community’s most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society’s darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear.
Download or read book Buster Keaton written by Buster Keaton and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2007 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sweeney collects interviews from the beginning of Buster Keatons career in the 1920s and concludes with his 1950s and 60s television work. The pieces here provide a critical perspective on Keatons acting and cinematic techniques.
Download or read book A Dictionary of the Underworld written by Eric Partridge and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-12 with total page 904 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1949 (this edition in 1968), this book is a dictionary of the past, exploring the language of the criminal and near-criminal worlds. It includes entries from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, as well as from Britain and America and offers a fascinating and unique study of language. The book provides an invaluable insight into social history, with the British vocabulary dating back to the 16th century and the American to the late 18th century. Each entry comes complete with the approximate date of origin, the etymology for each word, and a note of the milieu in which the expression arose.
Download or read book Music for the film of Buster Keaton written by and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Synonym Finder written by J. I. Rodale and published by Rodale Books. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 1368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1961 by the founder of Rodale Inc., The Synonym Finder continues to be a practical reference tool for every home and office. This thesaurus contains more than 1 million synonyms, arranged alphabetically, with separate subdivisions for the different parts of speech and meanings of the same word.
Download or read book Letterboxed written by Harper Cossar and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Selected Works of Eric Partridge written by Eric Partridge and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-14 with total page 2733 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This set reissues important selected works by Eric Partridge, covering the period from 1933 to 1968. Together, the books look at many and diverse aspects of language, focusing in particular on English. Included in the collection are a variety of insightful dictionaries and reference works that showcase some of Partridge’s best work. The books are creative, as well as practical, and will provide enjoyable reading for both scholars and the more general reader, who has an interest in language and linguistics.
Download or read book Nicolae High written by Jerry B. Jenkins and published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2012-12-14 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These latest volumes of the hot-selling Left Behind juvenile series continue the story of four kids left behind after the Rapture. With themes and events that parallel the adult series, these books carry Left Behind's important message to the younger generation. In #5 Nicolae High, Judd, Vicki, Lionel, and Ryan are back in school, and their teachers are encouraging everyone to talk about the disappearances. But they're forbidden to talk about the real reason—the Rapture!
Download or read book Modern Chinese History written by liping guo and published by liping guo. This book was released on with total page 3247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the winter of the eleventh year of King Zhuang of the Zhou Dynasty (686 BC), the land of Beiqiu in the State of Qi. After days of cloudy skies and chilly winds, the desolate mountain road was empty and deserted. It was already dusk when a flock of crows returned from the wilderness and disappeared into the deep forest beside the road. Suddenly the crows were startled and flew all over the sky. The forest steeply appeared countless halberds, gorges, spears, axes, in the dark clouds flashing hideous and bizarre light, straight to the end of the mountain road, a tall Palace forced over.
Download or read book Camera Man written by Dana Stevens and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They were calling it the Twentieth Century -- "She is a little animal, surely" -- "He's my son, and I'll break his neck any way I want to" -- "The locomotive of juveniles" -- A little hell-raising Huck Finn -- The boy who couldn't be damaged -- "Make me laugh, Keaton" -- Speed mania in the kingdom of shadows -- Pancakes at Childs -- Comique -- Roscoe -- Brooms -- Mabel at the wheel -- Famous players in famous plays -- Home, made -- Rice, shoes, and real estate -- The shadow stage -- Battle-scarred risibilities -- One for you, one for me -- The "darkie shuffle" -- The collapsing façade -- Grief slipped in -- The road through the mountain -- Not a drinker, a drunk -- Old times -- The coming thing in entertainment -- Coda: Eleanor.
Download or read book The Theater and Cinema of Buster Keaton written by Robert Knopf and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Famous for their stunts, gags, and images, Buster Keaton's silent films have enticed everyone from Hollywood movie fans to the surrealists, such as Dalí and Buñuel. Here Robert Knopf offers an unprecedented look at the wide-ranging appeal of Keaton's genius, considering his vaudeville roots and his ability to integrate this aesthetic into the techniques of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1920s. When young Buster was being hurled about the stage by his comically irate father in the family's vaudeville act, The Three Keatons, he was perfecting his acrobatic skills, timing, visual humor, and trademark "stone face." As Knopf demonstrates, such theatrics would serve Keaton well as a film director and star. By isolating elements of vaudeville within works that have previously been considered "classical," Knopf reevaluates Keaton's films and how they function. The book combines vivid visual descriptions and illustrations that enable us to see Keaton at work staging his memorable images and gags, such as a three-story wall collapsing on him (Steamboat Bill, Jr., 1928) and an avalanche of boulders chasing him down a mountainside (Seven Chances, 1925). Knopf explains how Keaton's stunts and gags served as fanciful departures from his films' storylines and how they nonetheless reinforced a strange sense of reality, that of a machine-like world with a mind of its own. In comparison to Chaplin and Lloyd, Keaton made more elaborate use of natural locations. The scene in The Navigator, for example, where Buster brandishes a swordfish to fend off another swordfish derives much of its power from actually being shot under water. Such "hyper-literalism" was but one element of Keaton's films that inspired the surrealists. Exploring Keaton's influence on Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel, Federico García Lorca, and Robert Desnos, Knopf suggests that Keaton's achievement extends beyond Hollywood into the avant-garde. The book concludes with an examination of Keaton's late-career performances in Gerald Potterton's The Railrodder and Samuel Beckett's Film, and locates his legacy in the work of Jackie Chan, Blue Man Group, and Bill Irwin.
