The pantheon of big-budget, commercially successful films encompasses a range of genres, including biblical films, war films, romances, comic-book adaptations, animated features, and historical epics. In Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History authors Sheldon Hall and Steve Neale discuss the characteristics, history, and modes of distribution and exhibition that unite big-budget pictures, from their beginnings in the late nineteenth century to the present. Moving chronologically, the authors examine the roots of today's blockbuster in the "feature," "special," "superspecial," "roadshow," "epic," and "spectacle" of earlier eras, with special attention to the characteristics of each type of picture. 
In the first section, Hall and Neale consider the beginnings of features, specials, and superspecials in American cinema, as the terms came to define not the length of a film but its marketable stars or larger budget. The second section investigates roadshowing as a means of distributing specials and the changes to the roadshow that resulted from the introduction of synchronized sound in the 1920s. In the third section, the authors examine the phenomenon of epics and spectacles that arose from films like Gone with the Wind, Samson and Deliliah, and Spartacus and continues to evolve today in films like Spider-Man and Pearl Harbor. In this section, Hall and Neale consider advances in visual and sound technology and the effects and costs they introduced to the industry.
Scholars of film and television studies as well as readers interested in the history of American moviemaking will enjoy Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters.

Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History (Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Studies)

Humor & Entertainment

Hall, Sheldon

Neale, Steve

Movies

Wayne State University Press

Examining widescreen cinema as a worldwide aesthetic and industrial phenomenon, the essays in this volume situate the individual expressions of this new technology within the larger cultural and industrial practices that inform them. What Hollywood sought to market globally as CinemaScope, SuperScope, Techniscope, Technirama, and Panavision took indigenous form in a host of compatible anamorphic formats developed around the world. The book documents how the aesthetics of the first wave of American widescreen films underwent revision in Europe and Asia as filmmakers brought their own idiolect to the language of widescreen mise-en-scène, editing, and sound practices. The work of Otto Preminger, Anthony Mann, Samuel Fuller, Sam Peckinpah, Seijun Suzuki, Kihachi Okamoto, and Tai Kato, among others, is addressed.

Widescreen Worldwide

Belton,John

Neale, Steven

John Libbey Publishing

Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. Very Good, A very good, clean and sound copy with dust jacket. Zulu: with some guts behind it: the making of the epic movie. 431 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. (some col.) ; 25 cm.. . Includes bibliographical references (p. [415]-419) and index.. .

Zulu With Some Guts Behind It: The Making of the Epic Movie

Tomahawk

THE EPIC BOOK ABOUT THE EPIC MOVIE – NOW IT’S BACK!
One of the best-loved and most enduringly popular British films ever made, Zulu tells the epic story of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift of 1879, in which barely 150 soldiers of the British Army in South Africa fought for twelve hours to defend an isolated mission station against an attack by 4,000 highly disciplined Zulu warriors. Here is the full story of its making, based on years of original research and dozens of interviews with cast and crew members and their families.
In this fully revised and expanded Second Edition of Sheldon Hall’s highly acclaimed, sell-out book you will find additional material including a first-hand account of the film’s shooting and post-production by the personal assistant to the producers; never-before-seen insider information on the financing of the production; a critical account of the film itself; and over a hundred new illustrations, some never before published, including a new colour section.
Carried over from the First Edition are the full original main text, including extracts from the screenplay and script notes; letters and production documents; biographies of all the principal actors and filmmakers; screenwriter John Prebble’s original magazine article on Rorke’s Drift; and hundreds of rare and unusual images.

Zulu - With Some Guts Behind It - The Making of the Epic Movie: EXPANDED AND REVISED 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Tomahawk Press

Since broadcast television first emerged as a serious alternative to the cinema, more people have seen films on TV than by any other means. Feature films originally made for the big screen were initially withheld from TV by the film industry in the competition for audiences. Struggles between film and television interests settled into a truce in the mid-1960s, since when thousands of films have been shown on British terrestrial television each year. They assumed particular importance in the 1970s and 1980s, when cinema blockbusters became major TV events and themed seasons gave viewers access to many older movies. This book provides a comprehensive history and analysis of the ways in which cinema films have figured in TV programming in the UK and the role that British television has played in changing the consumption of film entertainment.

Armchair Cinema: A History of Feature Films on British Television, 1929-1981

History

Edinburgh University Press