The enormously puzzling TV series The Prisoner has developed a rapt cult following, and has often been described as “surreal” or “Kafkaesque.” In I Am (Not) a Number, Cox takes an opposing view. While the series has surreal elements, he believes it provides the answers to all the questions which have confounded viewers: who is Number 6? Who runs The Village? Who—or what—is Number 1? According to Cox, the key is to view the series in the order in which the episodes were made, not in the order of the UK or US television screenings. In this book he does exactly that, and provides an entirely original and controversial “explanation” for what is perhaps the best, and certainly the most perplexing, TV series of all time.

I Am (Not) a Number: Decoding The Prisoner

Humor & Entertainment

Cox, Alex

Television

Kamera Books

"Forty years ago as a graduate student I wrote a book about Spaghetti Westerns, called 10,000 Ways to Die. It's an embarrassing tome: full of half-assed semiotics and other attenuated academic nonsense. Thirty years later I wrote an entirely new book with the same title, about the same subject, from a different perspective—that of a working film director. What interested me was what the filmmakers intended, how they did that shot, how the director felt when his film was recut by the distributor, and he was creatively and financially screwed. Now I have prepared a new edition of the 10,000 Ways to Die. It reflects my changing thoughts about the Italian Western, which I still greatly admire. It includes corrections, additions, and new sections on films I changed my mind about, or hadn't seen—including Lina Wertmuller's Belle Star—the only Italian Western directed by a woman." —Alex Cox

10,000 Ways to Die: A Director's Take on the Italian Western

Movies

No other film studio, animation or otherwise, comes close to matching Japane's Studio Ghibli for pure cinematic experience. This book examines all their major works including Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Grave of the Fireflies, My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Only Yesterday, Porco Rosso, Pom Poko, Whisper of the Heart, Princess Mononoke and Howl's Moving Castle, as well as the critically acclaimed Spirited Away and The Tale of Princess Kaguya. Odell and Le Blanc's informed analysis also considers Studio Ghibli features such as Hayao Miyazaki's Oscar-nominated final masterpiece The Wind Rises and the studio's most recent release When Marnie Was There.

Studio Ghibli: The Films of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata

Odell, Colin

Le Blanc, Michelle

Review\n'An ideal intro to the austere auteur' - Total Film\n'A thorough and compelling overview that provides newcomers with an idea of what exactly Tarkovsky means to film history' - Flux Magazine\n"An excellent monograph on the great Russian director. . . . Sean Martin is not only conscientious and scrupulous in his use of sources – he is nuanced and insightful when it comes to the work. . . . Martin’s book is an ideal starting point for learning about Tarkovsky beyond the films." Compulsive Reader\nAndrei Tarkovsky is the most celebrated Russian filmmaker since Eisenstein, and one of the most important directors to have emerged during the 1960s and 70s. 
Although he made only seven features, each one was a major landmark in cinema, the most well-known of them being the mediaeval epic Andrei Rublev - widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time - and the autobiographical Mirror, set during the Russia of Stalin's purges in the 1930s and the years of stagnation under Brezhnev. Both films landed Tarkovsky in considerable trouble with the authorities, and he gained a reputation for being a tortured - and ultimately martyred - filmmaker. Despite the harshness of the conditions under which he worked, Tarkovsky built up a remarkable body of work. 
He burst upon the international scene in 1962 with his debut feature Ivan's Childhood, which won the Golden Lion at Venice and immediately established him as a major filmmaker. During the 1970s, he made two classic ventures into science-fiction, Solaris, regarded at the time as being the Soviet reply to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and later remade by Steven Soderbergh, and Stalker, which was thought to have predicted the Chernobyl disaster. Harassed at home, Tarkovsky went into exile and made his last two films in the West, where he also published his classic work of film and artistic theory, Sculpting in Time. Since his death in Paris in 1986, his reputation continued - and continues - to grow. 
Sean Martin considers the whole of Tarkovsky's oeuvre, from the classic student film The Steamroller and the Violin, across the full-length films, to the later stage works and Tarkovsky's writings, paintings and photographs. Martin also seeks to demystify Tarkovsky as a 'difficult' director, whilst also celebrating his radical aesthetic of long takes and tracking shots, which Tarkovsky was to dub 'imprinted' or 'sculpted' time, and to make a case for Tarkovsky's position not just as an important filmmaker, but also as an artist who speaks directly about the most important spiritual issues of our time.

Andrei Tarkovsky

Arts & Photography

Martin, Sean

History & Criticism

Updated and expanded edition Over the decades, gay cinema has reflected the community's journey from persecution to emancipation to acceptance. Politicized dramas like Victim in the 60s, The Naked Civil Servant in the 70s, and the AIDS cinema of the 80s have given way in recent years to films which celebrate a vast array of gay lifestyles. Gay films have undergone a major shift, from the fringe to the mainstream and 2005's Academy Awards were dubbed ''the Gay Oscars'' with gongs going to Brokeback Mountain, Capote and Transamerica. Producers began clamoring to back gay-themed movies, including I Love You Phillip Morris with Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor, Gus Van Sant's Milk, starring Sean Penn, the feel-good British movie Pride and The Imitation Game with Benedict Cumberbatch. And recent additions such as Call Me By Your Name, Moonlight, Love, Simon, Carol and Rocketman have continued to receive widespread acclaim. Out at the Movies looks back, decade by decade, at the history of gay cinema, celebrating films which have defined the genre. Indie films, the avant-garde, sex on screen, bad guys, lesbian lovers, transgender films, camp comedies, musicals and gay rom-coms - all are featured here. As well as highlighting key movements and triumphs in gay cinema, the author includes information on gay filmmakers and actors, and their influence within the industry. Interspersed throughout are some of the most iconic scenes from gay cinema and the most memorable dialogue.

Out at the Movies: A History of Gay Cinema

Davies, Steven Paul

Photography & Video

Silver Light

Literature & Fiction

THOMSON, David

Literary

Review\n"This is a work whose power is incremental, whose shadow-America is elaborated step by step. The closest comparison I can think of are the fabulations of Steve Erickson—also obsessed with Hollywood and the myths its country makes about itself. .. . If it only tells us about Hollywood and its dreams, that’s because they’re our dreams too." —Strange Horizons\n"A dazzling work of narrative invention." —Village Voice\n"If The Biographical Dictionary of Film allows David Thomson to flex his scholarly muscles then Suspects provides the English-born author a vehicle for his passionate admiration of the stories America tells about itself." —Pop Matters\nA new edition of this landmark metafictional novel brings acclaimed film critic and writer David Thomson to a new generation of readers\nNoah Cross, Norma Desmond, Norman Bates, Harry Lime - these are a few of nearly a hundred names that inhabit the mind of the narrator as he starts to compose short biographies of some of the most famous characters in the history of film noir. He sketches in whole lives, lives as intense as the dreams put up on the screen. 
Then these characters start to meet each other outside the films as if they were real people with real needs and passions. The book is becoming a novel. The names and faces are familiar to us - Jake Gittes from Chinatown, Laura Hunt and Waldo Lydecker from Laura, Rick and Ilsa from Casablanca - but is it true that Noah Cross and Norma Desmond were lovers in the twenties, that she and Joe Gillis had a son who grew up to be Julian Kay in American Gigolo? 
For the narrator is not merely the author. Married to the sister of Laura Hunt, he has a mission to carry out, a lost family link to find, a thread to pull so that nearly all these disparate characters come together to form a kind of society. 
Suspects is the most inspired of commentaries on film noir and the forms of Hollywood story-telling. It is in its way a biographical dictionary, but it is also a dazzlingly original work of fiction, so full of America, of an old man's dread of loss and failure, and of a simultaneous love and rage for these movies that you may find its impossible world as real and as touching as any you have ever inhabited. 
Ultimately an examination on how movies affect the way we think and how film not only shapes our perceptions and our memories but in some ways comes to stand in for them, Suspects can be read as an unsettling examination of identity and the construction of self through the medium of narratives, or simply as a fascinating take on movie fandom. Either way, it's fabulous.

Suspects

In 1985, with the acclaimed Suspects, and then in 1990 with the exhilarating Silver Light, David Thomson delivered unprecedented fictions in which the characters were figures from film noir and the Western. Now a trilogy is completed with Connecticut. Why Connecticut? Because that lovely, liberal state has been set aside as the resting place for every disturbed person in the nation! At first, this seems like an opportunity for meeting up with the merry ghosts of Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, William Powell and Margaret Sullavan. We get glimpses of Bringing Up Baby, My Man Godfrey and The Lady Eve. But then the wild comedy darkens as we realize that Connecticut itself is on the edge of a demented and cruel war that challenges all its inmates to keep seeing the comic side of mishap and madness. The trilogy is revealed not just as a set of dazzling stories. But a commentary on how far we have all been steered towards delightful but dangerous fantasies by the movies. Aren

Connecticut

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Thrillers & Suspense

Part analysis and part workbook, this resource will help screenwriters and creative professionals to understand the social construct of racism and how it affects the black experience, in order for them to be able to write an authentic black character. As a screenwriter you always want to have characters with real depth and authenticity, but too often black characters fall victim to superficial tropes and negative stereotyping. This book begins by asking the reader if they can write a black character. It then asks the reader questions about their knowledge and understanding of race and racism. Exploring the popular representation of law and order, healthcare and celebrity in the entertainment industry and comparing this with the reality of these institutions, Lubimbi opens up the discussion and offers solutions to problems surrounding race, representation and stereotyping.

Race and Entertainment: Reflections on Racism in Film, TV and the Media

Business & Money

Lubimbi, Thandi

Industries

The animations of Japan's Studio Ghibli are among the most respected in the movie industry. Their films rank alongside the most popular non-English language films ever made, with each new eagerly anticipated release a guaranteed box office hit. Yet this highly profitable studio has remained fiercely independent, producing a stream of imaginative and individual animations. The studio's founders, the late Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki, have created timeless masterpieces. Although their films are distinctly Japanese, their themes are universal: humanity, community and a love for the environment. No other film studio, animation or otherwise, comes close to matching Ghibli for pure cinematic experience. Studio Ghibli examines all their major works including Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Grave of the Fireflies, My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Only Yesterday, Porco Rosso, Pom Poko, Whisper of the Heart, Princess Mononoke and Howl's Moving Castle, as well as the critically accla

Graphic Design

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Kamera Books publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Kamera Books

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Kamera Books publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

I Am (Not) a Number: Decoding The Prisoner

10,000 Ways to Die: A Director's Take on the Italian Western

Studio Ghibli: The Films of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata

Andrei Tarkovsky

Out at the Movies: A History of Gay Cinema

Silver Light

Suspects

Connecticut

Race and Entertainment: Reflections on Racism in Film, TV and the Media

Studio Ghibli: The Films of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata