Showing titles in History & Criticism

In this concise, crisply written guide, Patricia Aufderheide takes listeners along the diverse paths of documentary history and charts the lively, often fierce debates among filmmakers and scholars about the best ways to represent reality and to tell the truths worth telling.

For all the near-fanatic attention brought each year to the Academy Awards, the organization that dispenses those awards—the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—has yet to be understood. To date, no one has ever produced a thorough account of the Academy’s birth and its awkward adolescence, and the few reports on those periods from outside have always had a glancing, cursory quality. Yet the story of the Academy’s creation and development is a critical piece of Hollywood’s history. Now that story is finally being told.

In many ways, Kamal Haasan is unique. One of the greatest actors India has ever produced, he has usually gone further than just enacting a role to completely immersing himself in it. Kamal Haasan: A Cinematic Journey explores some 50 films out of the 245 Haasan has been associated with and analyses his cinematic journey from his beginnings as a child star all the way to his latest blockbusters.

From the Emmy Award-winning Squid Game to streaming sensations like The Glory and Crash Landing on You, Korean television has emerged onto the global pop culture scene as compelling television—but what exactly makes these shows so irresistibly bingeable? And what can we learn about our societies and ourselves from watching them? From stand-up comedian and media studies PhD Grace Jung comes a rollicking deep dive into the cultural significance of Korean television.

In A Good Bad Boy, Margaret Wappler attempts to understand who Perry was and why he was unique among his Hollywood peers. To do so, she uses an inventive hybrid narrative. She speaks with dozens who knew Perry personally and professionally. They share insightful anecdotes: how he kept connected to his Ohio upbringing; nearly blew his 90210 audition; tried to shed his heartthrob image by joining the HBO prison drama Oz; and in the last year of his life, sought to set up two of his newly divorced friends.

It was an explosion that reverberated across the country—and into the very heart of early-twentieth-century America. On the morning of October 1, 1910, the walls of the Los Angeles Times Building buckled as a thunderous detonation sent men, machinery, and mortar rocketing into the night air. When at last the wreckage had been sifted and the hospital triage units consulted, twenty-one people were declared dead and dozens more injured. But as it turned out, this was just a prelude to the devastation that was to come.

Serenity Found takes the contents of Finding Serenity even further, exploring not just the show but the events of the film as well, to create an anthology that's even more thought-provoking, fascinating, and far-thinking than its predecessor.

The CIA in Hollywood offers the first full-scale investigation of the relationship between the Agency and the film and television industries. Tricia Jenkins draws on numerous interviews with the CIA's public affairs staff, operations officers, and historians, as well as with Hollywood technical consultants, producers, and screenwriters who have worked with the Agency, to uncover the nature of the CIA's role in Hollywood.

Week after week, SNL has produced unforgettable sketches and provocative political satire, adapting to changing times while staying true to its original vision of performing timely topical humor. With essays that address issues ranging from race and gender to authorship and comedic performance, Saturday Night Live and American TV follows the history of this 36-time Emmy-winning show and its place in the shifting social and media landscape of American television.

Reality TV's influence is seismic: twenty-five years ago, the concept didn't exist. Yet today, it is one of the most powerful cultural forces on earth; a multi-billion-dollar machine. Despite that, it is often derided as "trash"; a cultural McDonalds not worthy of examination. The truth is that reality TV offers a profound insight into who we are as human beings, questioning the very nature of what we deem to be entertaining. Writer, broadcaster and reality TV-obsessive Jacques Peretti goes behind the scenes of a world that has entranced and consumed him for two decades.

i>39 Years of Short-Term Memory Loss is a seriously funny, offbeat, and irreverent memoir that chronicles the early days of Saturday Night Live and features some of its greatest personalities---Al Franken, Lorne Michaels, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Michael O'Donoghue, and Chris Farley.

Iconic actors, jealousy, tantrums, and a legendary producer’s struggle to transform the tempestuous, ill-fated union of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII to the big screen all factor into this dramatic, behind-the-scenes story of how the popular Broadway play Anne of the Thousand Days became the quintessential Anne Boleyn movie. Richard Burton and Geneviève Bujold lit up the screen in this tragic romance, but some of the most exciting scenes were those not caught on film and which centered on a real or imagined love triangle.

One of the most innovative comedic programs to air on television, Monty Python’s Flying Circus was a mix of the carnivalesque and the critical. The show has become famous for eschewing many of the conventions of situation comedy, the fully formed and coherent script, narrative closure, predictable characters, and the decorum associated with presentation.

No art form is as instantly and continuously gratifying as film. When the houselights go down and the lion roars, we settle in to be shocked, frightened, elated, moved, and thrilled. We expect magic. While we're being exhilarated and terrified, our minds are also processing data of all sorts - visual, linguistic, auditory, spatial - to collaborate in the construction of meaning. Thomas C. Foster's Reading the Silver Screen will show movie buffs, students of film, and even aspiring screenwriters and directors how to become accomplished readers of this great medium.

Jewel thievery, car chases, and romance on the French Riviera. Alfred Hitchcock's Oscar-winning film To Catch a Thief brought together Hollywood's two most glamorous stars, Grace Kelly and Cary Grant, in the most glamorous place on Earth, the French Riviera. It is a tale of jewel thievery, intrigue, false identity, covert investigation, and, most of all, romance.

The Joker is one of the most compelling antagonists in comic book and movie history. Listen in as Wisecrack breaks down all things the Joker from his origin story, recent film adaptations, and what elements go into creating a stellar performance of this diabolical clown in this curated collection, available for the first time in audio.

Since it first opened on Broadway in September 1964, Fiddler on the Roof has constantly been onstage somewhere, including five Broadway revivals, four productions on London's West End, and thousands of schools, army bases, and countries from Argentina to Japan. Barbara Isenberg interviewed the men and women behind the original production, the film, and significant revivals.

For 30 years Des Lynam has been the face of British sport. An unparalleled broadcaster, he has presented all the major sports events for the BBC and ITV. One of the most famous and best-loved men in the country, his popularity goes hand in hand with a slightly raffish reputation. For the first time this very private man tells his own story.

George R. R. Martin's New York Times best-selling epic fantasy book series, A Song of Ice and Fire, and the HBO television show adapted from it, have earned critical acclaim and inspired fanatic devotion. This book delves into the many philosophical questions that arise in this complex, character-driven series, including: Is it right for a "good" king to usurp the throne of a "bad" one and murder his family? How far should you go to protect your family and its secrets?

Do you watch movies with your eyes open? You buy your tickets and concessions, and you walk into the theater. Celluloid images flash at 24 frames per second, and the hypnotic sequence of moving pictures coaxes you to suspend disbelief and be entertained by the implausible. Unfortunately, many often suspend their beliefs as well, succumbing to subtle lessons in how to behave, think, and even perceive reality.