Totally Tenderly Tragically

Phillip Lopate has been obsessed with movies from the start. As an undergraduate at Columbia, he organized the school's first film society. Later, he even tried his own hand at filmmaking. But it was not until his ascent as a major essayist that Lopate found his truest and most lasting contribution to the medium. And, over the past twenty-five years, tackling subjects ranging from Visconti to Jerry Lewis, from the first New York Film Festival to the thirty-second, Phillip Lopate has made film his most cherished subject. Here, in one place, are the very best of these essays, a joy for anyone who loves movies.

This book collects the best of award-winning essayist Phillip Lopate's pans and praises, criticisms and ruminations of a variety of films, in a book that no cinema fan will want to miss.

Once derided as senseless entertainment, movies have gradually assumed a place among the arts. Raymond Haberski's provocative and insightful book traces the trajectory of this evolution throughout the twentieth century, from nickelodeon amusements to the age of the financial blockbuster. Haberski begins by looking at the barriers to film's acceptance as an art form, including the Chicago Motion Picture Commission hearings of 1918–1920, one of the most revealing confrontations over the use of censorship in the motion picture industry. He then examines how movies overcame the stigma attached to popular entertainment through such watershed events as the creation of the Museum of Modern Art's Film Library in the 1920s. The arguments between Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris's heralded a golden age of criticism, and Haberski focuses on the roles of Kael, Sarris, James Agee, Roger Ebert, and others, in the creation of "cinephilia." Described by Susan Sontag as "born of the conviction that cinema was an art unlike any other," this love of cinema centered on coffee houses, universities, art theaters, film festivals, and, of course, foreign films. The lively debates over the place of movies in American culture began to wane in the 1970s. Haberski places the blame on the loss of cultural authority and on the increasing irrelevance of the meaning of art. He concludes with a persuasive call for the re-emergence of a middle ground between art and entertainment, "something more complex, ambiguous, and vexing—something worth thought."

The author of Against Joie de Vivre presents a latest collection of essays on the more colorful threads of a life well lived, sharing provocative observations on topics ranging from the challenges of a Brooklyn childhood and the pleasures of baseball to movies and friendship.

Cinema and Colour: The Saturated Image is a major new critical study of the use of colour in cinema. Using the dialectic of colour and monochrome as a starting point, Paul Coates explores the symbolic meanings that colour bears in different cultures, and engages with a range of critical approaches to filmic colour, building on the work of such theorists as Sergei Eisenstein, Rudolf Arnheim and Stanley Cavell. Coates also provides close analyses of films by directors such as Antonioni, Bergman, Godard, Hitchcock, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Sirk, Kieslowski, Tarkovsky, Von Trier and Zhang Yimou. Coates' focus is on films that deliberately exploit the rich multiplicity of cultural meanings and associations ascribed to colour, including All That Heaven Allows, Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle, The Double Life of Véronique, The Flight of the Red Balloon, Red Desert, Schindler's List, Silent Light, Solaris, The Three Colours Trilogy and The Wizard of Oz.

This compendium of original essays offers invaluable insights intothe life and works of one of the most important and influentialdirectors in the history of cinema, exploring his major films,philosophy, politics, and connections to other critics anddirectors. Presents a compendium of original essays offering invaluableinsights into the life and works of one of the most important andinfluential filmmakers in the history of cinema Features contributions from an international cast of major filmtheorists and critics Provides readers with both an in-depth reading ofGodard’s major films and a sense of his evolution from theNew Wave to his later political periods Brings fresh insights into the great director’sbiography, including reflections on his personal philosophy,politics, and connections to other critics and filmmakers Explores many of the 80 features Godard made in nearly 60years, and includes coverage of his recent work in video

This book defends an account of ambiguity which illuminates the aesthetic possibilities of film and the nature of film criticism. Ambiguity typically describes the condition of multiple meanings. But we can find multiple meanings in what appears unambiguous to us. So, what makes ambiguity ambiguous? This study argues that a sense of uncertainty is vital to the concept. Ambiguity is what presses us to inquire into our puzzlement over a movie, to persistently ask “why is it as it is?” Notably, this account of the concept is also an account of its criticism. It recognises that a satisfying assessment of what is ambiguous involves both our reason and doubt; that is, reason and doubt can work together in our practice of reading. This book, then, considers ambiguity as a form of reasonable doubt, one that invites us to reflect on our critical efforts, rethinking the operation of film criticism.