The Gospel According to Matthew: Pier Paolo Pasolini: Pocket Movie Guide: Pier Paolo Pasolini: Pocket Movie Guide

ROBINSON, JEREMY MARK

Religion & Spirituality

Crescent Moon Publishing

THE BEAST WALERIAN BOROWCZYK By Jeremy Robinson Walerian Borowczyk (1923-2006) is one of cinema's great talents. Quite simply, there is no filmmaker quite like 'Boro'. Borowczyk's films have an astonishing, magical quality. They reach a place very rare in contemporary cinema, and are quite unlike the films of any other auteur. Borowczyk's films create their own space, with imagery, sounds and music of a really exceptional power. La Bête (a.k.a. The Beast, The Beast in Heat and Death's Ecstasy, 1975) was Walerian Borowczyk's most controversial film, a mixture of French farce, surrealism, and a lot of sex (including bestiality). The story of La Bête involves an American heiress Lucy Broadhurst (Lisbeth Hummel) being brought to a French chateau with her aunt Virginia (Elisabeth Kaza) by the scheming owners (in particular the marquis, Pierre de l'Esperance [played by Guy Tréjan]), who need to marry her to the earthy, degenerate (and somewhat backward) son of the family Mathurin (Pierre Benedetti) in order to circumvent a will which'll keep the family home intact. That's the framing story, about grasping aristocrats, decadent morality, degenerate priests and sexually repressed young women. This part of the film's set in the 20th century, though it's not the conventional modern, urban world of most movies. La Bête takes place exclusively at the French chateau and its grounds (the film is in French, but there is English dialogue - Virginia, Lucy and their chauffeur speak English). The appendices include a note on fairy tales, and on other versions of Beauty and the Beast (including the Jean Cocteau movie, and the 1991 Walt Disney musical movie). This 3rd edition has been expanded and revised. Hardcover with a colour laminated cover. Fully illustrated, with over 120 stills from The Beast, and Walerian Borowczyk's movies, plus influences, a bibliography, filmography, appendices, quotes from Borowczyk and notes. 290pp. www.crmoon.com

The Beast: Walerian Borowczyk: An Erotic Fairy Tale

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

THE SACRED CINEMA OF ANDREI TARKOVSKY A major new study of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986), director of seven feature films, including Mirror, Andrei Roublyov, Solaris and The Sacrifice. This book explores every aspect of Andrei Tarkovsky's output in the most detailed fashion - including scripts, budget, production, shooting, editing, camera, sound, music, acting, themes, symbols, motifs, and spirituality. Tarkovsky's films are analyzed in depth, with scene-by-scene discussions. This is an important addition to film studies, the most painstaking study of Andrei Tarkovsky's work available. Andrei Tarkovsky is one of the most fascinating of filmmakers. He is supremely romantic, an old-fashioned, traditional artist - at home in the company Leonardo da Vinci, Pieter Brueghel, Aleksandr Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoievsky and Byzantine icon painters. Tarkovsky is a magician, no question, but argues for demystification (even while films celebrate mystery). His films are full of magical events, dreams, memory sequences, multiple viewpoints, multiple time zones and bizarre occurrences. As genre films, Andrei Tarkovsky's movies are some of the most accomplished in cinema. As science fiction films, Stalker and Solaris have no superiors, and very few peers. Only the greatest sci-fi films can match them: Metropolis, King Kong, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Tarkovsky happily and methodically rewrote the rules of the sci-fi genre: Stalker and Solaris are definitely not routine genre outings. They don't have the monsters, the aliens, the visual effects, the battles, the laser guns, the stunts and action set-pieces of regular science fiction movies. No one could deny that Andrei Roublyov is one of the greatest historical films to explore the Middle Ages, up there with The Seventh Seal, El Cid, The Navigator and Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'Life' trilogy. If you judge Andrei Roublyov in terms of historical accuracy, epic spectacle, serious themes, or cinematic poetry, it comes out at the top. Finally, in the religious film genre, The Sacrifice and Nostalghia are among the finest in cinema, the equals of the best of Ingmar Bergman, Luis Bunuel, Robert Bresson and Carl-Theodor Dreyer. Contains 150 illustrations, of Andrei Tarkovsky's films, Tarkovsky at work, his contemporaries, and his favourite painters. Bibliography, filmographies and notes. Illustrated. 696pp. ISBN 9781861710284. www.crmoon.com CONTENTS Acknowledgements 17 Abbreviations 19 Illustrations: Andrei Tarkovsky At Work 23 0 Introduction 33 P A R T O N E T H E A R T I S T 1 The Poetry of Cinema 55 2 Religion and Cinema 75 3 Andrei Tarkovsky and the Religious Film 105 4 The Film Image 123 5 The Mysteries of Space and Time 137 6 Symbols and Motifs 155 7 The Worlds of Andrei Tarkovsky 175 8 Sound and Music 187 9 Production 203 10 Andrei Tarkovsky and Painting 235 11 Philosophy and Religion in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Cinema 261 12 Structure and Narration 281 13 Childhood, Family and Character 293 14 Love, Gender and Sexuality 305 P A R T T W O T H E F I L M S 15 Ivan’s Childhood 317 16 The Passion According To Andrei Roublyov: Andrei Roublyov 335 17 Solaris 369 18 Beyond the Mirror: Mirror 401 19 Into the Wasteland: Faith and the Quest in Stalker 437 20 The Angel Under the Water: Nostalghia 467 21 The Ultimate Act: The Sacrifice 495 22 Critical Responses to Andrei Tarkovsky’s Cinema 525 Notes 553 Bibliography 575 Filmography 597 Illustrations 603

The Sacred Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky (Media, Feminism, Cultural Studies)

DESCRIPTION A book exploring the world of J.R.R. Tolkien in over 800 pages. Part one of this book focusses on J.R.R. Tolkien’s texts, principally those dealing with his ‘secondary world’ of Middle-earth. Part two explores the 2001-03 Hollywood movies of The Lord of the Rings, with a scene-by-scene analysis of the three films. Part of this book explores the influence of the Tolkien industry, in areas like computer gaming, merchandizing and cinema. EXTRACT FROM THE INTRODUCTION Philip Toynbee declared, in 1961, that Tolkien’s ‘childish books had passed into a merciful oblivion’, a wonderful statement, just a tad inaccurate. In 1997, The Lord of the Rings was voted the top book of the 20th century by readers in a British bookstore’s poll (Waterstone’s). 104 out of 105 stores and 25,000 readers put The Lord of the Rings at the (1984 was second). Around 100 million copies of The Lord of the Rings had been sold by the end of the twentieth century, and 60 million copies of The Hobbit, with sales of around 3 million per year of the two books combined. Readers just love reading Tolkien’s books. It’s that simple. You can’t force people to buy books or go see movies; there’s isn’t a magic formula (or ruling ring) to hypnotize readers and consumers (if there was, it’d be worth billions). And the Tolkien phenomenon began with readers. Back in 1937, 1954 and 1955, the publishers Allen &amp; Unwin did their bit, of course, with reviews, blurbs, advertizing and so on, promoting The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but it was readers who first started the phenomenon that has become truly global. Tolkien’s influence on literature has been considerable, too, and not just in the realm of fantasy, sci-fi, fairy tales and related genres. As fantasy author Terry Brooks said, Tolkien ‘was the premier fantasy writer of the last century, and all of us writing today owe him a huge debt.’ No other writer W.H. Auden reckoned had ‘created an imaginary world and a history in such detail’. Colin Wilson agreed that only a few writers have concocted a total universe, and that Tolkien’s was very impressive. Tolkien’s mythological writings may be the ‘largest body of invented mythology in the history of literature’, according to David Day (12). Invented, that is, by one person. It’s also ‘certainly the most complex and detailed invented world in all literature’ (13). JEREMY MARK ROBINSON Jeremy Robinson has written many critical studies, including Steven Spielberg, Arthur Rimbaud, Jean-Luc Godard, and The Sacred Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky, plus literary monographs on: J.R.R. Tolkien; Samuel Beckett; Thomas Hardy; André Gide; Robert Graves; and Lawrence Durrell.

J.r.r. Tolkien: The Books, the Films, the Whole Cultural Phenomenon, Including a Scene by Scene Analysis of the 2001-2003 Lord of the Rings Films

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Crescent Moon Pub

LAWRENCE DURRELL This book studies the works of Lawrence Durrell (February 27, 1912 - November 7, 1990), the great British writer. It explores all of Durrell's major works, including The Alexandria Quartet, The Black Book, the poetry, The Avignon Quintet and the Tunc-Nunquam books, many of lesser-known pieces, and reviews all of the Durrell criticism, and Durrell's literary friendships (with Henry Miller, T.S. Eliot, George Seferis, Richard Aldington, etc).  The response that Lawrence Durrell so often generates is negative: critics call him pretentious, baroque, overblown, high-flown, too intellectual, too metaphysical, overwritten, too rich, etc. The Avignon Quintet, his last major work, was received as 'lush', with 'fantastic characters, opulent landscapes', 'flamboyant... rich, easy style', prose that was 'ringingly evocative', 'an elaborate tapestry'.  For some critics, Durrell's books are 'accurate, moving and intensely readable' as a critic wrote of Bitter Lemons, while another critic sees Durrell's novels as 'so beautiful in surface and so uncertain below it'.  It was the 1950s novel Justine that really launched Durrell's career, for Justine was a large, complex work that promised much for the following instalments in The Alexandria Quartet. Durrell's reputation rests largely on the achievement of The Alexandria Quartet, and it is to the Quartet that critics generally refer when they discuss Durrell. And when Durrell's name appears in the index of a book of literary criticism, The Alexandria Quartet is usually being considered.  The text has been revised for this edition. 292pp.  Includes new illustrations, a full bibliography and notes.  www.crmoon.com

Lawrence Durrell: Between Love and Death, East and West

KURT JACKSON  A new book about the British landscape painter Kurt Jackson (b. 1961).   The text has been completely updated.   EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER 4:   One of Kurt Jackson’s appealing concepts is that the ocean is one of the last true wildernesses left on the planet. It’s an idea that I found very interesting when he explained it to me when we first met in St Just. I took it that he meant a spiritual as well as an ecological or natural wilderness. Jackson’s art can thus be seen as an art that is the border region between humanity and nature, between culture and nature, as well as literally tackling that area – the coast – which is neither land nor sea.   Note that Kurt Jackson is always facing outwards from the land, and looking towards the ocean, not painting with his back to the sea, and looking towards the land (and notice that the many boats and ships and helicopters and such in this area are left out of the paintings, too).   So Jackson’s Porth series, about Priest Cove, and all of his sea paintings, are very important in his art in articulating this idea of the ocean as the last wilderness. ‘Have you ever wondered what’s out there?’ is a question that Kurt Jackson asks (it’s the title of one of his major paintings, too – the centrepiece of the Porth series).   Jackson has repeated the question over a number of related works: the title of two 2004 pieces is The Last Wilderness In Western Europe? This was painted on Jura (in Scotland), and both pictures are consciously emptied of human marks – just empty moorland and a delicate blue sky. An earlier picture, part of the Cape series, was entitled Do You Ever Wonder What’s Out There? (1999) – an unusual composition in the Jackson oeuvre which puts the horizon very high, and focusses on the dark blue ocean flecked with white spray.   Kurt Jackson isn’t that interested in many of the connotations of the ocean – the moon, time, goddesses, rebirth (though moons do appear in his art from time to time). He’s not really interested in religious or pagan or magical symbols in that way. And he’s not that interested in shipping, fishing, and all things maritime, like J.M.W. Turner was.   But when Jackson asks a question like ‘have you ever wondered what’s out there?’, and considers the sea as one of the last wildernesses, that alters the interpretation of his sea paintings. It doesn’t apply to all of them, though: in plenty of paintings (and not only the smaller or more modest ones), Jackson is not thinking in terms of big themes. But when he titles a painting Have You Ever Wondered What’s Out There? (and writes the title in big letters across the painting), it’s clearly intended to resonate in the viewer at a deeper level.

Kurt Jackson: Painting-Sea-Sky-Light-Land-Cornwall

Arts & Photography

DETONATION BRITAIN: NUCLEAR WAR IN THE U.K.  An exploration of nuclear politics, the military machine and war scenarios, including how the United Kingdom would fare in a nuclear war. There are chapters on: nuclear politics • nukespeak and 'nuclear theology' • atomic bomb tests and 'accidents' • American bases in Britain  • the superpowers' military programmes and strategies • the cost of nuclear war • British civil defence • the Gulf War, 'infowar' and 'smart' technology • nuclear attack scenarios • and anti-war and peace initiatives.    EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER TWO: “HELL ON EARTH”  A NUCLEAR WAR 'WORST CASE' SCENARIO  Here's how you might die in a nuclear strike. Maximum capability is about one strategic warhead hitting a target every twenty seconds. Let's take a one megaton air-burst scenario. At ground zero, all buildings would be destroyed. Winds of 1,000 mph. There may be an 'echo' of the blast wave (the 'Mach' effect), resulting in double the over-pressure. The fireball will rise at  feet/ second, expanding to 6,000 feet diameter after ten seconds. The radioactive cloud would be 3 miles high in 30 seconds. All combustible stuff would ignite, some up to 8 miles away. Air heat rises to 10,000,000° C. Heat travels outwards at 186,000 miles per second. Flesh would melt. People would die in the suffocation from the firestorm. At 1.5 miles from ground zero over-pressure is 30 times than normal atmospheric pressure. From two to five miles away, most buildings would be flattened, within 15 or so seconds. Winds of 130 mph. Clothing would ignite. Radiation sickness is inevitable.  At three miles away you'll feel a flash of light (christened the pika-don at Hiroshima); then intense heat which chars to the bone (full-thickness burns); fifteen seconds later the windows would be blown in by the blast wave; and you'd be thrown about by the wind. First degree burns as far as 20 miles from detonation. The EMP (electromagnetic pulse) will disrupt computers, telephones, radios, radars and power supplies.  Most people would be permanently blinded by the brilliant light. There are about 200 radioactive elements in fall-out. Fall-out is second-stage radiation, contaminating water, the food chain, everything. Everywhere would be a 'Z Zone', a fall-out zone. Nice to know, too, that radiation is undetectable by the five senses. You may have a mortal dose and not know it. You'll know soon, though. You're in for a party, with radiation comin' at ya in four types: alpha, beta, gamma and neutron. Gamma rays can penetrate several inches of concrete. Uranium and plutonium isotopes are nice, affecting bones, the respiratory tract, the liver, kidneys and lymphnodes: radiation lasts up to thousands of years. Ionizing radiation'll give you nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, fever, delirium, exhaustion, haemorrhages, hair loss, ulcers, anaemia and leukemia.   Illustrated, bibliography and notes. ISBN 1861711735.  www.crmoon.com

Detonation Britain: Nuclear War In the U.K.

History

World

KEN RUSSELL: ENGLAND’S GREAT VISIONARY FILM DIRECTOR AND MUSIC LOVER By Jeremy Mark Robinson. Foreword by actress Sammi Davis (star of The Rainbow) A filmmaker like no other, Ken Russell remains one of cinema’s extraordinary talents, a creator of masterpieces such as The Devils, Tommy and The Music Lovers, and a body of work that flies from the pastoral, Romantic lyricism of Delius: Song of Summer and Elgar to the wild extremes of Lisztomania, Altered States and Mahler. Ken Russell is the greatest living filmmaker in Britain. Even though he died on November 27, 2011, he’s still somehow very much alive. After the death of Michael Powell in 1990, who else was there? As an image-maker, Russell is not only a total natural, he has very few peers among filmmakers – not only in Britain; but also around the globe. Russell’s inventiveness seems to know no bounds, and his films are cascades of images, so much that it can’t all be taken in on the first viewing of a picture. Russell does everything a great director and a great artist should do, and then he does so much more. Why do we love Ken Russell’s movies so much? For many reasons: the spirituality, such a rare commodity in recent British cinema: Russell’s films are not afraid of addressing spiritual issues. • The poetry. • The music – no other filmmaker of the same era in Britain has been such a tireless and enthusiastic promoter of music. • The dancing – no other British film director has included so much dance in their output (and very few directors anywhere!). • The British popular culture elements. • The English landscape. • The romance and romantic sensibility • His stories of artists and creativity. • His interviews and public persona, appearing on everything from websites and YouTube to silliness like British TV’s Big Brother. • His encouragement to young filmmakers and his teaching. Ken Russell has been dubbed ‘a fish and chips Fellini’, ‘the enfant terrible of British cinema’ and ‘the Wild Man of the BBC’. The two periods of ‘classic’ Ken Russell work would be the TV documentaries of the early-to-mid 1960s (with 1962’s Elgar as the highpoint that everyone remembers), and the feature films of the late 1960s to late 1970s (with Women in Love and Tommy being the high watermarks among audiences if not critics). Certainly, it’s with Women in Love that Ken Russell begins that extraordinary run of feature-length movies: Women in Love is followed by The Music Lovers (his favourite movie), which’s followed by The Devils, which’s followed by The Boy Friend, which’s followed by Savage Messiah, which’s followed by Mahler, which’s followed by Tommy, which’s followed by Lisztomania. That’s a run of eight amazing movies. You could add Valentino and Altered States. This book explores all of Ken Russell’s key movies and television productions, his themes and symbols, his filmic style and direction, and his use of music and visuals. Plus chapters on Russell’s unmade productions, a biography of the director, quotes by Russell, resources, video and DVD availability, and the fans on Russell. Fully illustrated. Bibliography and notes. ISBN 9781861712318. 808 pages. www.crmoon.com

Ken Russell: England's Great Visionary Film Director and Music Lover

Performing Arts

THE SACRED CINEMA OF ANDREI TARKOVSKY 
 A major new study of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986), director of seven feature films, including Mirror, Andrei Roublyov, Solaris and The Sacrifice. ?This book explores every aspect of Andrei Tarkovsky's output in the most detailed fashion - including scripts, budget, production, shooting, editing, camera, sound, music, acting, themes, symbols, motifs, and spirituality. Tarkovsky's films are analyzed in depth, with scene-by-scene discussions. This is an important addition to film studies, the most painstaking study of Andrei Tarkovsky's work available. Contains 150 illustrations, of Tarkovsky's films, Tarkovsky at work, his contemporaries, and his favourite painters. Andrei Tarkovsky is one of the most fascinating of filmmakers. He is supremely romantic, an old-fashioned, traditional artist - at home in the company Leonardo da Vinci, Pieter Brueghel, Aleksandr Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoievsky and Byzantine icon painters. Tarkovsky is a magician, no question, but argues for demystification (even while films celebrate mystery). His films are full of magical events, dreams, memory sequences, multiple viewpoints, multiple time zones and bizarre occurrences. As genre films, Andrei Tarkovsky's movies are some of the most accomplished in cinema. As science fiction films, Stalker and Solaris have no superiors, and very few peers. Only the greatest sci-fi films can match them: Metropolis, King Kong, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Tarkovsky happily and methodically rewrote the rules of the sci-fi genre: Stalker and Solaris are definitely not routine genre outings. They don't have the monsters, the aliens, the visual effects, the battles, the laser guns, the stunts and action set-pieces of regular science fiction movies. No one could deny that Andrei Roublyov is one of the greatest historical films to explore the Middle Ages, up there with The Seventh Seal, El Cid, The Navigator and Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'Life' trilogy. If you judge Andrei Roublyov in terms of historical accuracy, epic spectacle, serious themes, or cinematic poetry, it comes out at the top. Finally, in the religious film genre, The Sacrifice and Nostalghia are among the finest in cinema, the equals of the best of Ingmar Bergman, Luis Bunuel, Robert Bresson and Carl-Theodor Dreyer.

The Sacred Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky

Photography & Video

BLADE RUNNER AND THE FILMS OF PHILIP K. DICK   This book is about the films made from the fiction of Philip K. Dick, not a study of Dick's fiction, or Dick himself, or the relations between Dick's fiction and science fiction, or world literature.     Philip Kindred Dick (1928-1982) was a key figure in 20th century science fiction, famous for embracing drugs and the counter-culture in his work. Dick's fiction includes The Man In the High Castle, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, A Scanner Darkly, The Game Players of Titan, Clan of the Alphane Moon, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Valis, The Divine Invasion, Martian Time-Slip, The Minority Report, and We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. Dick's themes included perception and reality, drugs, state control, global capitalism, surveillance, and paranoia.     Four films are studied here: Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly (in a chapter by Thomas Christie). The other films based on Phil Dick's fiction include Confessions d'un Barjo (a French movie based on Confessions of a Crap Artist), a Canadian film, Screamers, based on Dick's Second Variety story, Paycheck, directed by John Woo, Next (Lee Tamahori, 2007), based on The Golden Man, and Impostor (Gary Fleder, 2002).     The more recent cycle of Philip Kindred Dick movies began with Minority Report and Impostor in 2002 - Paycheck and Next followed in 2003 and 2007, and The Owl In Daylight, a film about Dick (2009), and Radio Free Alemuth (2008). A sequel to Screamers was in production in 2008, again shooting in Canada, with Peter Weller starring.     A striking aspect of the films made from the fiction of Philip K. Dick is how many are very high budget movies (Paycheck, Minority Report, Blade Runner, Next and Total Recall), and just how many high profile filmmakers have been attracted to Dick's stories: Ridley Scott, Paul Verhoeven, John Woo and the most successful film director of recent times, Steven Spielberg. Those four directors together have generated billions globally. 

Blade Runner and the Films of Philip K. Dick

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