Film Posters of the Russian Avant-Garde (Jumbo)

Customer Reviews:

With art this grand, maybe communism wasn't such a bad idea.......2006-08-18

If you're a graphic designer, you only need browse this excellent book for a moment or two to realize that Russian artists in the 1920's and 30's knew more about how to make a great poster than any American has ever known before or since.

Every poster designer and film buff loves American designer Saul Bass and I'm no exception, but Bass borrowed a lot from these early Russian designers like Rodchenko, and its no wonder--they were an incredible wellspring of creativity. Open any single page in this collection and you'll find a hundred great ideas regarding use of color, perspective, and mixing photography with illustration. Every designer should have this book at hand for reference. Unfortunately many of these early films have been lost or destroyed over time, but one wonders if the best part hasn't been saved--these glorious posters. I can't say enough good things about this book.

Fun and informative.......2001-12-04

I'm not a collector of Russian/Soviet film posters, so all the liner notes could be complete bullocks, but the book is brilliantly large and appears to really want to give the straight story (for instance it gives the title that the artists gave the posters not the movie title associated w/ it). I've only seen a few of the movies it covers so I bought it solely for the art. If you're a fan of the clean Bauhaus style this book is for you.

A superlative survey of pre-Communist Russian graphics........1998-07-14

Susan Pack's overview of the Russian avant-garde film poster, is a visual delight, and a welcome addition to the library of anyone interested in graphic design. This book is a handsome collection of pre-Communist posters from such notable graphic artists as the Stenberg brothers, and Alexander Rodchenko, as well as many other lesser known, yet talented artisans. Anyone familiar with Russian graphics of this period are in for a treat, and those seeing them for the first time will soon become addicted to their graphic impact, and innovative type treatments. A friend I've shown it to has warned me to keep an eye on it, lest it mysteriously disappear!

Book Description

The first comprehensive examination of the cinematographer's art, Making Pictures presents incisive analyses of 100 visually stunning films-radical classics like Battleship Potemkin (1925), Jules et Jim (1965), and The Elephant Man (1980)-along with a complete technical and creative history of the cameraperson's unique craft. Illustrated with 500 images in both color and black-and-white, it features a wealth of location shots and expository stills. Contributions by such seminal figures as director Bernardo Bertolucci, actor Marcello Mastroianni, and Ingmar Bergman's long-term collaborator, cinematographer Sven Nykvist, make this a unique study.

This remarkable book examines 100 European films that represent the art of cinematography at its best; they were specially chosen by a panel of cinematographers to represent either technical or creative mastery by the cameraman. This book will be an essential reference for all film students and cinematographers.

Customer Reviews:

An Inspirational Book.......2006-04-17

This is such an inspirational book, and a must for any aspiring cinematographer and those with a real interest in cinema. It covers the history of Europeon cinematography and is wonderfully illustrated. At the beginning there are pieces from Jack Cardiff, Sven Nykvist, Guiseppe Rotunno and Bernardo Bertolucci.
One of the things I liked best about this book are the pieces on the 100 different top rated films. For each film we are given the story and this is told with the emphasis on how the film was shot, how light was used and how effects were created. It outlines each cinematographers approach. It made me want to watch all 100 of these films.
At the end there is a large section on 'Tools of the Trade' describing many different camera systems, lighting and filters and the history of many great camera companies, among others Panavision, Auri, Kodak, Fuji and Aaton. This is a truly fascinating book. Christie Barraclough

A "must have" book.......2006-01-26

Sometimes, seeing a movie is not enough for photographers. Sometimes it is better to freeze everything around us, and take the time one wants to admire a beautiful composition, or lighting or an unforgettable face. This is what I found in this book. As if it wasn't enough, it has the most interesting information about the cinematographers who achieved all this in the most sublime stage of cinematic art. I encourage all of you, interested or practicing photography to buy this book, You will never regret it.

A must buy for Cinematographers!.......2005-05-28

An extraordinary book on many levels. It examines in surprisingly great detail the cinematography on over 100 films by Bergman, Fellini, Kubrick, Lean to name a just a few. The gorgeous accompanying stills from the films and also of the DP's setting up shots sealed the deal for me.

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The Closing Of The Trilogy
A heavenly conclusion to Dante's towering masterpiece
Paradiso is paradise!

Paradiso (Bantam Classics)
Dante Alighieri
Manufacturer: Bantam Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0553212044
Release Date: 1986-01-01

Book Description

This brilliant new verse translation by Allen Mandelbaum captures the consummate beauty of the third and last part of Dante's Divine Comedy. The Paradiso is a luminous poem of love and light, of optics, angelology, polemics, prayer, prophecy, and transcendent experience. As Dante ascends to the Celestial Rose, in the tenth and final heaven, all the spectacle and splendor of a great poet's vision now becomes accessible to the modern reader in this highly acclaimed, superb dual language edition. With extensive notes and commentary.

Customer Reviews:

The Closing Of The Trilogy.......2005-06-28

As with the other two books of the Divine Comedy, Paradiso could be a stand alone work of literature in its own right. The Grande Finale of Dante's massive poem ends with a flourish and upholds the tradition of masterful writing set forth by Inferno and Purgatorio.

This book should only truly be read upon completing Inferno and Purgatorio as many of the asides and relationships were first developed there. Allen Mandelbaum does a wonderful job of translating the poem but of also providing the reader with numerous notes and explanations on certain phrases or objects within the Cantos. This version is by far the easiest and most complete and can be enjoyed by both the casual and experienced reader.

A heavenly conclusion to Dante's towering masterpiece.......2004-11-18

As a whole, Dante's COMEDY (a title later amended by the Church to DIVINE COMEDY) is arguably the greatest work in the history of World Literature. As an artist, his only competitor might well be Shakespeare. Despite all that, I will confess that the PARADISE is not a terribly easy book to read. INFERNO in particular but also PURGATORY is filled with a host of extraordinary scenes with unquestionable universal appeal. The highpoints of INFERNO have become part of the intellectual furniture of Western literature, not least because one reads it with rapt attention and a sense that one is dealing almost with a contemporary rather than a person writing seven hundred years ago. PURGATORY lacks some of this universal appeal, but nonetheless features a host of marvelous moments and extremely human details.

Unlike INFERNO and PURGATORY, however, PARADISE is rather narrower and specialized in its appeal. It is not merely that it assumes that the reader is a devout Catholic; one must be a devout Catholic of the early 14th century, sharing completely the view of the universe accepted at that time. I think I have an unusually complete understanding of the cosmological views of the late medieval period, but while this meant I was able to read this work with some familiarity of the details, it also guaranteed that much of my interest was merely academic.

There is an expression that "You do not judge Dante; Dante judges you." This is undoubtedly true, but it it definitely true that this final book is going to strain the interest of most readers, even if you know enough about the intellectual worldview behind his work. In fairness to Dante, the work was nearly impossible to pull off. That he managed to do so nonetheless is nothing short of a minor miracle. For one thing, most of what made the many remarkable characters of INFERNO so fascinating was the struggle that existed in their lives. But in PARADISE there is no conflict, no struggle, no "agon." Instead, it is a realm of perfect bliss, with few qualities apart from love, happiness, and praising God through singing and dancing. These are some pretty stiff limitations that any writer would struggle with. That Dante managed something remarkable despite this is fairly amazing.

Also, there is a major theological limitation placed upon the work. At this particular point in the history of Christian thought, the assumption was that after death humans would be without a body (though they would be reunited with their body at the final judgment). So all of the denizens of heaven were disembodied spirits (though Beatrice does seem to possess a body, but that is a detail that we'll pass over). Dante represents all of the souls he meets in heaven as brilliant shapes of light. In fact, everything in heaven is represented as brilliant shapes of light.

C. S. Lewis remarked that PARADISE was the first Sci-Fi novel, and while he intended this hyperbolically, there is nonetheless a great deal of truth in it. Dante's imaginative depiction of the physics of the superlunary realm is a truly enormous achievement. I won't go into all of the details of medieval physics, but given the assumptions of Aristotelian science, the way his body reacts in the heavens is not merely consistent with the science but pretty much necessitated by it. For instance, moving on the assumption that things above the orbit of the moon have an ineluctable attraction to God, whenever Beatrice wants to take Dante from one sphere to another she merely gazes upon the divine beauty and they are transported as quickly as, as Dante puts it, a bolt from a crossbow. It is a wonderful touch, only one among many found in the book.

What I love most about this work, however, is the way that it expands and completes the work as a whole. On one level, the COMEDY is essentially a tour of the entire known cosmos excluding the surface of the earth. He begins by descending into hell, travels all the way down through the circles of hell to the gravitational center of the earth where Satan is encased in ice, and then ascends literally up Satan's legs (which are on the opposite magnetic pole from his torso) to the Southern hemisphere (contrary to popular myth, all educated medievals were perfectly aware that the earth was round), to the base of the seven-storied Mount Purgatory, up it to its top and the Garden of Eden, and from thence to the various spheres of the heavens until he gazes directly upon God. No, PARADISE is not as fascinating to read as INFERNO, but the paradox is that the COMEDY as a whole is far more fascinating than INFERNO on its own. Therefore, anyone who fails to go on from INFERNO to read both PURGATORY and PARADISE is not only going to shortchange themselves: they are going to neglect completing one of the genuine masterpieces in the history of literature.

As with the first two volumes, Mandelbaum's translation is both remarkably faithful to the original and magnificently poetic. There are many excellent translations of this masterpiece, but I would probably recommend Mandelbaum's over any other complete translation to someone desiring to experience this masterpiece in translation.

Paradiso is paradise!.......2001-04-26

Paradiso is another good book in the Divine Comedy trilogy. However most people never get past Inferno. The first two are good, and Paradiso most definetly holds up to its counterparts. I would also like to add that Allen Mandelbaum does an excellent job translating the Divine Comedy, as well as the Aeneid of Virgil. Paradiso, translated by Mandelbaum is easy to read, and very poetic. I am sure it is just how Dante himself would have written it, had he written the Divine Comedy in english.

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Joyless Streets
Patrice Petro
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0691008302

Book Description

Patrice Petro challenges the conventional assessment of German film history, which sees classical films as responding solely to male anxieties and fears. Exploring the address made to women in melodramatic films and in popular illustrated magazines, she shows that Weimar Germany had a commercially viable female audience, fascinated with looking at images that called traditional representations of gender into question.

Book Description

British art and architecture of the 1950s are little known but extraordinarily topical today. Of particular relevance are the activities of the Independent Group, a loosely structured organization whose members included artists Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi, and Magda Cordell, photographer Nigel Henderson, critics Reyner Banham and Lawrence Alloway, and architects Alison and Peter Smithson, James Stirling, and Colin St. John Wilson, who sought the essence of the everyday through a sensitivity to the hardships and charm of life in the raw. "As Found" encounters the transdisciplinary relationship between the constructed environment as it is visually perceived and verbally expressed.
Edited by Claude Lichtenstein & Thomas Schregenberger. Artists include: Magda Cordell, Richard Hamilton, Nigel Henderson and Eduardo Paolozzi. Architects include: Alison & Peter Smithson, James Stirling and Colin St. John Wilson.

6.5 x 9.5 in.
3000 illustrations

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a great textbook

Spaghetti Western 101 - A "Must Have" for genre aficionados

Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone (Cinema and Society)
Christopher Frayling
Manufacturer: I. B. Tauris
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Once Upon a Time in Italy: The Westerns of Sergio Leone

Once Upon a Time in the Italian West: The Filmgoers' Guide to Spaghetti Westerns

Spaghetti Westerns: the Good, the Bad And the Violent: A Comprehensive Illustrated Filmography of 558...

Day of Anger (Spaghetti Western Collection Vol. 3)

Django Kill - If You Live, Shoot!

ASIN: 1845112075

Book Description

Spaghetti Westerns is the major critical exploration of the European Western. Christopher Frayling approaches the Westerns produced at Cinecitta Studios in Rome from a variety of perspectives, placing them in the Italian, social, political, industrial and cinematic contexts from which they evolved. Over 400 Spaghetti Westerns were produced during their 1960s peak period; Frayling deals with the most interesting examples, giving special attention to the films of Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood.

Customer Reviews:

a great textbook.......2005-09-23

As the prior reviewer says this is "Spaghetti Western 101." It would be a good text for a film class focusing on the genre. It reviews the history of the western in Italy, the pertinent biographical information on the most prominent artists, and gives an overview of the artistic and thematic concerns of the films. It's great for its analysis of Sergio Leone's work, and analysis of his ouevre in comparison to the westerns that had come before and those that would follow. It's limited number of color pictures, and its scholarly focus seem to make it less than ideal as a reference for the casual fan.

Spaghetti Western 101 - A "Must Have" for genre aficionados.......1998-05-13

I have very incidentally came across to this book when there was no internet, or any of these technological virtual capabilities. It was the spring of 1986, when a friend of mine called me up and said "there's something I saw in the bookshop at the film theatre, which is just for you. You must not miss it". It was the Istanbul Film Festival days, and the `thing' I must not miss was a book, called `Spaghetti Westerns - Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone' by Christopher Frayling. I went and saw the book on the shelf. I was stunned when I turned the cover page to see what's inside. There it was a two page wide picture of Lee Van Cleef, in `Colonel Mortimer' costumes. That famous artistic Van Cleef pose, looking out deadly with his Angel Eyes, waiting for Indio for `La Resa Dei Conti'. As soon as I saw that picture, even without reading the book, I said to myself this guy must have the same feelings as I have towards Leone's movies. Eversince then I have been reading that huge 284 pages book with full of interesting details and analysis. Every time I read it, I feel as if I am learning new things. I still refer that book quite often. He has also done television documentaries on Leone and Morricone for BBC. Christopher Frayling is very well known academician in the UK. He is the rector and the provost of famous Royal College of Art in London. I personally had the chance to meet with him, and had in-depth interviews on Sergio Leone. . There's no doubt that he is one of the most knowledgable people on Leone. He has also just finished a bulky book on Sergio Leone's biography. He is planning the release around the fall of 98. He has years of deep experience about the Spaghetti Western genre. This book is the second edition to the first one, and a "must have" for all spaghetti western genre with lots of interesting details, profound analysis, and stills. I believe that it satisfies both theoratical scholars as well as film buffs. It is a book that sc! ientifically, and emotionally justifies the quality of Spaghetti Western film genre, which has been humilitated and overlooked by many film critics as ersatz film genre. Get the book, read it, read it once more, and then evaluate the genre afterwards. A lot of vista is waiting for those who hadn't read it yet. The book also contains details on the cut scenes of Leone's westerns, as well as their box office revenues. The section I must enjoy is the one on the influence of Spaghetti Westerns on American Western films. And, a last recommendation is: reserve one of the best spots of your library, which can be easily accessable for your future references. Get this book quickly, and wait for the soon-to-be-published "la grande finale": "SOMETHING TO DO WITH DEATH - The Life and Films of Sergio Leone"

Book Description

Russian painter Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935), unlike other prominent Soviet artists, has not often been considered in discussions of the contributions of the avant-garde to photography and film. Yet a close examination of theoretical and practical aspects of Malevich's oeuvre not only places him fully in the Soviet post-abstract discourse on these media but also, as Margarita Tupitsyn argues in this engaging book, alters the accepted view of his post-Suprematist period. Exploring Malevich's involvement with film for the first time, Tupitsyn draws on little known writings about cinema by the artist himself, newly accessible works, and many previously unpublished photographs and documents. Malevich's influence on twentieth-century art extends far more widely than has been claimed for him before, the author concludes. The book begins with a reevaluation of Malevich's most famous painting, Black Square, a work whose meaning and function was in constant flux. Through Black Square Malevich began to cross the bridge from the painting medium to mechanically generated production, ultimately influencing the postrevolutionary phase of his Suprematism and leading to his abandonment of abstraction in the late 1920s. Tupitsyn discusses in detail Malevich's writing about the cinema, the cinematic qualities of some of his works, the work of other contemporary artists with bonds to cinematography, and the significant impact of Malevich's thought and work on Russian, European, and American artists of the 1920s and 1930s as well as the postwar period.

Gender and Sexuality in Weimar Modernity: Film, Literature, and "New Objectivity"

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Gender and Sexuality in Weimar Modernity: Film, Literature, and "New Objectivity"
Richard W. McCormick
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0312292988

Book Description

Richard McCormick takes a fresh look at the crisis of gender in Weimar Germany through an analysis of selected cultural texts, both literary and film, characterized under the label "New Objectivity". The New Objectivity was marked by a sober, unsentimental embrace of urban modernity, in contrast to Expressionism's horror of technology and belief in "auratic" art. This sensibility was gendered as well as contradictory: while associated with male intellectuals, New Objectivity was best symbolized by the New Woman they feared (and desired). Moving skillfully from Caligari to Dietrich, McCormick traces the crisis of gender identities, both male and female, and reveals how a variety of narratives of the time displaced an assortment of social anxieties onto sexual relations.

Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933-1945 (Cinema and Society)

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Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933-1945 (Cinema and Society)
David Welch
Manufacturer: I. B. Tauris
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1860645208

Book Description

This is the most comprehensive analysis to date of Nazi film propaganda in its political, social, and economic contexts, from the pre-war cinema as it fell under the control of the Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, through to the end of the Second World War. David Welch studies more than one hundred films of all types, identifying those aspects of Nazi ideology that were concealed in the framework of popular entertainment.

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European Film Noir

Manufacturer: Manchester University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0719067901
Release Date: 2007-07-24

Book Description

European Film Noir is the first book to bring together specialist discussions of film noir in specific European national cinemas. Written by leading scholars, this groundbreaking study provides an authoritative understanding of an important aspect of European cinema and of film noir itself, for too long considered as a solely American form.

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