Directors Books

If you're new to Sayles' movies or a long time fan, this book is a must. Gavin Smith asks probing and significant questions and Sayles provides insights about himself that are refreshingly matter of fact. The book is organized chronologically and examines each of Sayles' films. I have only seen Eight Men Out and Lone Star as of now but after this book I'm trying to see as many as I can. I've seen Lone Star twice and I'm going to buy the video. I rank it as one of my 10 all-time favorite movies because it is brilliant on so many levels.

Bergman outlines in the introduction of the work, the six separate scenes of the marriage. The apparently perfectly adjusted and happy bourgeois couple with two - children go from unease with each other, to the husband's leaving his wife for another woman, to in the final scene an illicit reunion in which they reunite briefly while their respective new spouses are away.
Bergman 's dialogue is riveting.It holds the attention throughout.
However the kind of experiences involved go well beyond anything I have personal knowledge of. In a way there is just too much mature, sophisticated reevaluation and interpretation of the relationship.
Nonetheless there are many brilliant passages and much insight into the impossible complexity of human relationships.

If you ever wondered what goes on in the mind of the screenwriter who gave us TAXI DRIVER and RAGING BULL (as well as directing such films as the remake of CAT PEOPLE and the literary biopic MISHIMA), then look no further than this absolutely wonderful collection of interviews with Paul Schrader. Covering everything from his thematic obsessions to his writing and directing methods (as well as including a selection of critical writings by Schrader from his pre-filmmaking days as a critic), Kevin Jackson has done a wonderful job with this book - my personal favorite in the great Faber & Faber series (which also includes CRONENBERG ON CRONENBERG and SCORSESE ON SCORSESE). Must reading!

The Buntus Cainte books and tapes are an easy way to learn some basic Irish vocabulary and simple sentences. The series is designed to be "first steps in spoken Irish," and the steps are easy to follow. The tapes and pictures are helpful and make the course fun, for adults as well as children.

This book is very informative, insightful & wise. Just what I needed to further my knowledge and skill!

I know David Kahn and when he gave me this book to read for my script analysis class, it opened my eyes one how a play writen and why the writer made the choices he made. This book helps you take new scripts and break them down so they can be produced for stage or film. This book is great for actors when they first pick up a script to their rehearsals. It helps for directors when they discover the event chain of the play and character chain of the play. For set desginers when they discover the world of the play of the character. Also it helps for writing because you can see examples of these things in the workings of a completed play. This great book because it's easy reading. Another great tool for those in theatre.

In 1928, Margaret Mitchell began writing a passionate story about a woman who dare to stand up to the old traditions and ways, a woman who is wild and carefree, a woman who changed through the war. It is a tale of unrequited love, of a man who desires this woman with all his heart but who can never obtain her. He is Rhett Butler and she is Scarlett O'Hara and this is Gone with the Wind. Read it and you'll see why Margaret Mitchell is regarded as the best writer of all time and why Gone with the Wind is the best selling novel with more than 40 million copies and made into a 8 Academy Award winning movie, Gone with the Wind is truly amazing.

Read this years ago, then read it again. I was surprised how much of the book I incorporated in my approach to directing.

Ronald Bergan shows that although Eisenstein was committed to the Bolshevik cause and contributed to its development, his films must, in no way, simply be dismissed as propaganda. Eisenstein pioneering visual techniques, explorations in montage and lyrical representations have earned him an indisputable position as among film makers.
The culminating scenes in `Strike!', for instance, are built on an alternating sequence of shots that show soldiers chasing and shooting the strikers while a butcher is slitting the throat of farm animals in the slaughterhouse. This allegorical interpretation of the Czar as a butcher wa not fully understood by a large portion of the viewing public, as Eisenstein himself witnessed when the film was shown in the rural areas throughout the country. Indeed, many farmers were unable to grasp the metaphor of the slaughtered beasts as an association of the Czar as a criminal, a butcher, a murderer of innocents because for farmers the killing of an animal did not constitute a crime.

The rally to arms in `Alexander Nevsky' culminated in the battle on ice scene (which runs for almost a third of the film). The scene, which Eisenstein duly prepared with the aid of sketches, appears as if inspired by the paintings of the Italian renaissance artist P. Uccello, as both show the violent clash of armor, horses, arrows, spears and iron.

This book offers a short biography of Leone and a history of the Western before getting into its main purpose: a concise synopsis and analysis of each of Leone's 7 films. As this book is only 90 pages long, the discussions of the movies are necessarily brief, so if you want a more complete study on either the movies or Leone himself, there are other, more in-depth books.

But for the price, "Sergio Leone" can't be beat in sparking the reader's interest in films of Leone.