The Film Book: A Complete Guide to the World of Cinema

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Infuriating and stimulating by turns, this is an idiosyncratic inclusion. It leaves out Phyllis Calvert and includes Audie Murphy, which enrages me, but I read it from cover to cover. Above all, she must learn to rule and to understand that she has been given the power to remake society. She must fight - for herself, for her husband, and for all her new subjects who look to her for guidance and grace. For she will never be just Charlotte again. She must instead fulfil her destiny... as Queen. The only reason I list this edition instead of 2009’s Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings is that the smaller collection is the one I spent years marveling at, puzzling over and taking comfort from as from a favourite food. There are so many books on screenwriting out there and so few of them actually matter. If you want to read about the industry and the way to craft stories, you want to read the best advice out there. Judging from this survey few, if any, colleagues seem to share my enthusiasm for Ray’s attempts to break out of the cul-de-sacs of postmodern film theory, but I find his use of surrealist randomising and brainstorming games to generate new perspectives on classic Hollywood and other material stimulating, imaginative, informative and very entertaining, both here and in his more recent The ABCs of Classic Hollywood.

In recent decades there has been no more cogent a rethinking of the physical and psychological experience of film as it evolved, both as a technology and as an artform. I want to read it again, soon. After three decades of use, it’s an old companion, rather taken for granted and occasionally irritatingly prejudiced (eg on Ford), as well as funny and endlessly suggestive about avenues to explore; but whatever reservations it inspires (and expresses) it’s a grand example of appreciative, impassioned, intelligent, encyclopaedic criticism that shaped a generation or two of film watchers. F ocusing on Key Themes: Economy in storytelling is also about ensuring that the central themes and messages of the story are clear and not diluted by too many diverging ideas or motifs.

The greatest American film reviewer of the 1940s is a neglected figure these days, no doubt as his lofty humanist standards are out of tune with our own cynical resignation to ‘entertainment’. Ever the disappointed idealist, Agee offered grudging praise to such compromised efforts as Meet Me in St. Louis and Double Indemnity in long, delicately cadenced sentences that would never survive the copy editor now. Yet he was equally a master of the short demolition job (Princess O’Rourke: “An unobtrusive raising of the window, and the less said the better”), while his clairvoyant appreciation of Zéro de conduite almost single-handedly put Jean Vigo on the map in the English-speaking world. Though he could get it wrong (as in his cranky dismissal of Citizen Kane), Agee’s intense moral engagement with cinema sets him far above critics who merely get it right. I get caught so much in the writer's chair that I forget there's a world outside of screenplays. If you're new to Hollywood or aspiring to visit and work here, this book gives you all the details on the how and why of every job in town. It walks you through the titles and why they matter. Frank Kermode defined the ‘classic’ in literature as a work that can be endlessly re-interpreted, according to the needs and interests of successive generations. These are the books that I find myself returning to again and again, usually finding new information and insights that I hadn’t previously noticed.

An exhaustive and fascinating account of how the Japanese film industry was mobilised during the war years.Covering every national school of film-making from Hollywood to Bollywood, this book has something for everyone. "Top 10" and "What to Watch" sections will inspire your next movie night. Test your knowledge with the essential trivia section - how much do you know about Oscar winners, biggest flops, banned films, and more?

This is as sharp, witty and lacerating as all his best pictures; Buñuel’s observing eye turned into an act of reflective writing on his own life. We often spend so much time focusing on the Hollywood perspective that we forget other directors out there doing amazing things. Kurosawa's autobiography lets you into the master's mind. You can see the decisions he made, how painting influences him, and why and how he left an indelible mark on filmmaking.

The wolves are circling and a young king will face his greatest challenge in the explosive finale of the bestselling King of Scars Duology! See the Grishaverse come to life on screen with Shadow and Bone, now a Netflix original series. I loved his willingness to find excitement in unexpected places, to do justice to merit when he found it and to write in such a strongly personal voice. This depressed the hell out of me, but it’s a great read. Louise Brooks was one of the few actresses with absolute integrity. This may have something to do with why she also had the most vivid screen presence. Impactful Storytelling: Ultimately, the goal is to tell a story that is impactful and engaging. By being economical, writers can create a narrative that maintains the audience's interest and delivers a powerful message or experience in a concise manner.

The great American novelist turned his attention to a Hollywood he knew well for this collection of short stories about a washed-up screenwriter, which retain their relevance and punch to this day. My favourite Kael collection because the period it covers (1973-75) coincides with so many of her true passions.

I found this browsing for second-hand film books in Paris at the very moment I was first trying to figure out how the film industry worked. Bachlin was a Marxist, and this was the first rigorous analysis of the industry I’d discovered that made real sense to me. It seems symptomatic that the book has never been translated into English – neither has the film writing of the Italian Marxist Umberto Barbaro (which I read in the translation published in Cuba by the ICAIC). As a film writer, my knee-jerk position is to use the word ‘studio’ as shorthand for greed, enervated groupthink, imaginative inertia, capitalism, western imperialism, evil itself. Sometimes, especially after you’ve just stumbled out of the remake of Clash of the Titans, that seems an intellectually responsible position. Mostly though, as this fastidiously researched and elegantly argued rebuff to auteurism shows, it’s not: the complex mesh of marketing, production and management enabled as much as it retarded the creation of the best US cinema of the mid-century.