Film Art: An Introduction

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The film must present us just enough of the story to keep us engaged, while holding back the answers to the puzzles—and sometimes, like a magician, distracting us from what is really going on. Stars back then embodied vital social contradictions – one doubts whether the featureless pretty people of contemporary celebrity would repay so subtle and scrupulous a treatment. Journalist-critic heroes play out, on a weekly or even daily basis, the tension between the pressure to publish an instant response and the background resource of a lifetime’s reflection.

Inside you’ll also find a bunch of raw sketches for character designs and rough storyboards for action sequences. Wiseman received permission to film at Philadelphia’s Northeast High School, and he acted as sound recordist while his cameraman shot footage in the hallways, classrooms, cafeteria, and auditorium of the institution. Apart from conveying what it felt like to be at the top of the game (and sliding to the bottom in the second, equally fascinating volume, Million Dollar Movie), it also provides dozens of shrewd judgements on film-makers who are only now being discovered.

They are at least reading copies, complete and in reasonable condition, but usually secondhand; frequently they are superior examples. Later chapters share photos of rare merchandise from the Ghostbusters series and the overall fandom.

The fullpage paintings are also glorious and you’ll see a lot of side-by-side comparisons with film stills and the initial production designs.The Movie Art of Syd Mead: Visual Futurist touches the entirety of Syd’s career looking into his work on many futuristic productions like Star Trek, Blade Runner, TRON, and Aliens(among many others). This long-unfindable book (now revived in a new edition) brings together essays that can stand alongside those of Borges, Barthes and just about anyone who helped shape it. In June 1999, I was invited by the Cultural Office of Munich to present a series of lectures at the splendid Arri Kino.