Film

For more than forty years, generations of movie lovers have relied upon Leonard Maltin to help them decide what to watch. Comprehensive, trustworthy, and the most established guide on the market, "Leonard Maltin's 2012 Movie Guide" includes: more than 10,000 DVD and 14,000 video listings; an updated index of leading performers and an index of leading directors; old and new theatrical and video releases rated **** to BOMB; reviews of little-known sleepers, foreign films, rarities, and camp classics; all-new personal recommendations ... read more

A new way of teaching digital story-tellilng in schools - a guide for teachers that shows how to bring together film appreciation and film and video production in the secondary school classroom.

From BLACKBOARD JUNGLE to QUADROPHENIA, from 8 MILE to ABBA: THE MOVIE, no one has seriously looked at the strange phenomenon that is the rock 'n' roll movie. Garry Mulholland turns his focus away from classic records to the best, the worst, the weird and the completely deranged from the world of the rock movie. Part serious critical appreciation, part celebration of B-movie trash, Garry Mulholland's inclusive approach is the key to his success. He is as comfortable deconstructing the likes of PERFORMANCE, GIMME SHELTER or JUBILEE ... read more

The age of cinema began in Paris in 1895. Within a year New Zealanders saw their first films and in fewer than five they were making their own. In the years since, New Zealand has produced almost every conceivable type of film, from home movies to arthouse flicks to Oscar-winning wide-screen epics, building a rich and varied screen culture and launching the careers of hundreds of directors, actors and behind-the-scenes professionals. New Zealand Film: An Illustrated History is the first book to provide a comprehensive overview o... read more

Woody Allen (USA, b. 1935) has been a major comic director since the 1970s. Writer, director and actor, his self-portrayal as a neurotic, intellectual, sex-obsessed, Jewish New Yorker seeking comfort in psychoanalysis brought him immense popular success and acknowledged status as a writer ("Manhattan", 1979; and "Deconstructing Harry", 1997). In the 2000s, he left New York to work in Europe, winning over a new audience with fresh inspiration and young actors, including Scarlett Johansson in "Match Point" (2005) and "Vicky Cristina ... read more

Pedro Almodovar (Spain, b. 1951) single-handedly represents the revival of Spanish cinema as part of the cultural flowering of the Movida Madrilena in the 1980s. New York was first to hail the unbridled imagination of this provocative director, whose films are filled with transsexuals, neurotics ("Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown", 1988) and even drug-addicted nuns ("The Law of Desire", 1987). In his maturity, Almodovar has continued to draw inspiration from his underprivileged childhood in a remote corner of La Mancha, ma... read more

Tim Burton (USA, b. 1958) is the youngest of Hollywood's most successful directors. He has the knack of making films with a very broad appeal, taking the silliness out of the representation of children, while remaining in touch with the child within himself and his audiences. Burton emerged as a director and storyteller after working as an animator for Disney. His meeting with Johnny Depp enabled him to give physical form to the heroes of his imaginary worlds, where fear is mixed with laughter, strange is normal and those who are n... read more

Francis Ford Coppola (USA, b. 1939) is the oldest of the generation of 'movie brats', including Scorsese and Spielberg, who breathed new life into the Hollywood of the 1970s. He revived the glory of the studio age with the legendary "Godfather" saga (1972-90), explored the soul of America at war in Vietnam with "Apocalypse Now" (1979) and has directed some of the greatest actors, including Brando, Pacino and De Niro. Having outgrown the role of director decreed by the major studios, he is now an independent producer and continues t... read more

David Lynch (USA, b. 1946) is perhaps the best known of all cult directors, whose Mulholland Drive marks cinema's arrival to the 21st century. His career began more than 30 years ago, with the groundbreaking, mystifying "Eraserhead" (1977). With "Blue Velvet" (1986), "Wild at Heart" (1990) and "Lost Highway" (1997) Lynch breathed new life into the sensory experiences of film audiences and disrupted narrative logic to mysterious and mystifying effect. In the early 1990s, he invented a new TV series genre with "Twin Peaks". Although ... read more

Martin Scorsese (USA, b. 1942) is among the most prolific of American directors, having made more than 25 features in a 40-year career that has seen him garner all the highest honours the film world can bestow. Since the success of "Taxi Driver" in 1976, which also marked the start of his long collaboration with Robert De Niro, he has continued to draw endless inspiration from his Italian-American roots in films such as "Goodfellas" (1990) and "Casino" (1995). A cinephile director with a strong spirit of independence, he has manage... read more

Federico Fellini (Italy, 1920-1993) is a major figure in the history of cinema, who created his own highly personal and baroque cinematic language. He had his first major success in 1954 with "La Strada", in which his wife and favourite actress Giulietta Masina plays the unforgettable Gelsomina, an innocent clown who falls prey to the violence of the post-war period. With "La Dolce Vita of 1960", Fellini turned his attention to modern life and the scene in which Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg embrace in the Trevi fountain ha... read more

Ingmar Bergman (Sweden, 1918-2007) is, in the world of cinema, a giant whose stature is comparable to that of Beethoven or Dostoyevsky. He made around fifty feature films that caught the spirit of his times, while endlessly reworking his private obsessions and anguish in the face of a silent God. In Summer with Monika (1953), Harriet Andersson plays a scandalously unconventional and sensual young woman, a breath of freedom epitomizing a new modernity in film. The 1960s saw Bergman in experimental mode with Persona (1966), one of th... read more

Welles began his direting career in 1940, at the age of twenty-five, with Citizen Kane, an undisputed, ground-breaking masterpiece of cinema history. Welles' satture as a baroque, impetuous and profoundly free artist made the sudios uncomfortable. He had control of every detail on the twelve feature films he was able to make, including Lady from Shanghai with Rita Hayworth (1947), Touch of Evil with Charlton Heston (1958), adaptations of Shakespeare's plays including Macbeth (1948), Othello (1952) and Kafka's The Trial (1962). Orso... read more

Charles Chaplin's Little Tramp is the supreme icon of motion pictures - still recognized and loved throughout the world, more than 90 years since he first burst on the screen. The shabby little figure - with derby hat, too-tight jacket, oversized boots and pants, dandified bow tie, and swagger cane - seemed to symbolize the hopes and fears, defeats and optimism of all humanity. Chaplin's own biography was a rags-to-riches story that saw the product of a destitute childhood in Victorian London become one of Hollywood's first million... read more

Jaw-dropping tales of legendary excess and bad behaviour from the British stars of the 1950s and 60s, from the author of the bestselling Hellraisers and Hollywood Hellraisers. Expanding on the winning formula that made Hellraisers such a success, this book explores the rise and camaraderie of that entire generation of hard-living, boozing actors who ripped apart the staid British theatre and film industry in a trail-blazing ten year period from the mid-50s to the mid-60s. It features actors like Richard Harris, Sean Connery, Alan ... read more

Everyone undergoes some kind of teenage trauma, and a fundamental way of coping, or rite of passage, is the teen movie. Yet until now there has been no book that explores this successful movie sub-genre with any depth. Step forward Garry Mulholland, who, taking his cue from his previous, hugely acclaimed pop culture list books (This is Uncool and Fear of Music) , seeks to create a pantheon of the very finest teen movies, or in Garry Mulholland's words: 'I'll be doing what film critics have been loathe to do since the 1950s, and tak... read more

On the 8th of October 1934, long before the wider world knew him from his Letter from America broadcasts, Alistair Cooke sat down at a BBC microphone to give his first radio talk. His subject was cinema. Cooke began film reviewing in the 1920s as a Cambridge undergraduate, and continued to broadcast on cinema from New York. Under his watchful gaze, Hollywood reached its Golden Age, only to be tarnished by television; he clocked every new technological development, from the arrival of talkies to the video cassette. Since then, Alist... read more

This is the definitive history of "Star Wars" no fan should be without Celebrate four amazing decades of everything "Star Wars"; decade by decade, year-by-year, month-by-month. Everything is covered, from the influences and creation of all six "Star Wars" movies, to the toys, books and video games that have shaped the "Star Wars" dynasty. The month-by-month format is brought to life by images from the movies, TV series, comic books and more. Presented in a stylish slipcase, the book includes two exclusive prints in a card wallet ma... read more