News Blog @ Wellington City Libraries

We’ve got you covered for post-film festival reading with these examinations of cinema. Slasher flicks, Italian neorealism, David Lynch, the evolution of film, and gain a deeper understanding of “the Dude.”

The complete filmmaker’s guide to film festivals : your all access pass to launching your film on the festival circuit / Rona Edwards & Monika Skerbelis.
“The first step-by-step “How To” guide to film festivals, offering filmmakers a bird’s eye view of what it takes to have a successful festival experience. Practical, hands-on information with examples and exercises to help the filmmaker include:Targeting the right festivals; Creating a press kit; Promoting and branding your film; Promoting and branding yourself; Filling out entry forms; Creating a logline; And much more.” – (adapted from Amazon.com summary)

100 ideas that changed film / David Parkinson.
“This inspiring book chronicles the most influential ideas that have shaped film since its inception. Entertaining and intelligent, it is both a concise history and a fascinating resource. Each idea is presented through informed text and arresting visuals paying homage to the medium’s great classics. We learn why and how the ideas first evolved and what their impact has been up to the present day.” – (adapted from Amazon.com summary)

Conversations at the American Film Institute with the great moviemakers : the next generation / [edited and with an introduction by] George Stevens, Jr.
“Collects American Film Institute conversations with filmmakers from the 1950s to today, including Steven Spielberg, Nora Ephron, and George Lucas.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

A complete guide to special effects makeup / [by Tokyo SFX Makeup Workshop ; editor, Yuko Sasaki].
“Acclaimed as the best book ever published on the subject, A Complete Guide to Special Effects Makeup covers everything from basic facial makeup styles, simple scars and gashes, to masks, molds and cast-making; everything you need to know to create vampires, zombies and other fantastical characters. With clear step by step instructions and hundreds of color photos, it includes stunning conceptual pieces from many of the contributing artists and a section on manga/cosplay hair and makeup. Bound to thrill anyone interested in creating realistic and unique makeup effects!” – (adapted from Amazon.com summary)

The slasher movie book / J.A. Kerswell.
“The slasher movie is the most reviled but successful of horror’s subgenres. Taking its cue from Hitchcock, grind-house movies, and the gory Italian giallo thrillers of the 1970s, slasher movies brought a new high in cinematic violence and suspense to mainstream cinema. The Slasher Movie Book details the subgenre’s surprising beginnings, revels in its g(l)ory days, and discusses its recent resurgence. Packed with reviews of the best (and worst) slasher movies and illustrated with an extensive collection of distinctive and often graphic color poster artwork from around the world.” – (adapted from Amazon.com summary)

Horror cinema / Jonathan Penner, Steven Jay Schneider, Paul Duncan (ed.).
“Horror is both the most perennially popular and geographically diverse of all film genres; arguably, every country that makes movies makes horror movies of one kind or another. Depicting deep-rooted, even archetypal fears, while at the same time exploiting socially and culturally specific anxieties, cinematic horror is at once timeless and utterly of its time and place. This exciting visual history, which includes unique images from the David Del Valle archive, examines the genre in thematic, historical, and aesthetic terms.” – (adapted from Amazon.com summary)

André Bazin and Italian neorealism / edited by Bert Cardullo.
“Complementing an earlier work (Andre Bazin and Italian Cinema, this volume presents a collection of Bazin’s writings on neorealism in English for the first time. Editor Cardullo (Izmir U. of Economics, Turkey) provides introductory and contextual essays and writes: “[This book] is aimed, as Bazin would want, not only at scholars, teachers, and critics of film but also at educated or cultivated moviegoers and students of the cinema at all levels.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)

Authorship and the films of David Lynch : aesthetic receptions in contemporary Hollywood / Antony Todd.
“This important new contribution to studies on authorship and film explores the ways in which shared and disputed opinions on aesthetic quality, originality, and authorial essence have shaped receptions of Lynch’s films. It is also the first book to approach David Lynch as a figure composed through language, history, and text. Tracing the development of Lynch’s career from cult obscurity with Eraserhead, to star auteur through the release of Blue Velvet, and TV phenomenon Twin Peaks, Antony Todd examines how his idiosyncratic style introduced the term “Lynchian” to the colloquial speech of new Hollywood and helped establish Lynch as the leading light among contemporary American auteurs.” – (adapted from Amazon.com summary)

The Big Lebowski and philosophy : keeping your mind limber with abiding wisdom / edited by Peter S. Fosl.
“Explores many of The Big Lebowski’s key themes, such as nihilism, war and politics, money and materialism, idealism and morality, history, and more. Gives you new perspective on the movie’s characters–the Dude, the Big Lebowski, Walter Sobchak, Donny, Maude Lebowski, Bunny Lebowski, and others. Helps you appreciate the Coen Brothers classic even more with the insights of Aristotle, Epicurus, Kant, Derrida, and other philosophical heavyweights.” – (adapted from Publisher’s description)

The Rocky horror picture show / Dave Thompson.
“The Rocky Horror Picture Show is simultaneously one of the iconographic touchstones of 1970s cinema, and a timeless romp that appeals equally to every fresh generation. Created with a sharp eye for cult and context alike, Rocky Horror leaped effortlessly from stage to celluloid, losing none of its immediacy and spontaneity in the process and maybe gathering more. Dave Thompson goes deep inside the phenomenon to trace the story and the strangeness that is The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” – (adapted from Amazon.com summary)