Night Film

Author: Marisha Pessl
Publisher: Bond Street Books
ISBN: 030736822X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 782

Book Description
On a damp October night, the body of young, beautiful Ashley Cordova is found in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. By all appearances her death is a suicide--but investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. Though much has been written about the dark and unsettling films of Ashley's father, Stanislas Cordova, very little is known about the man himself. As McGrath pieces together the mystery of Ashley's death, he is drawn deeper and deeper into the dark underbelly of New York City and the twisted world of Stanislas Cordova, and he begins to wonder--is he the next victim? In this novel, the dazzlingly inventive writer Marisha Pessl offers a breathtaking mystery that will hold you in suspense until the last page is turned.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Author: Marisha Pessl
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101218800
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 540

Book Description
The mesmerizing bestseller that combines the storytelling gifts of Donna Tartt and the suspense of Alfred Hitchcock—A New York Times Ten Best Book of the Year Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a darkly hilarious coming-of-age tale and a richly plotted suspense story, told with dazzling intelligence and wit. At the center of the novel is clever, deadpan Blue van Meer, who has a head full of literary, philosophical, scientific, and cinematic knowledge. But she could use some friends. Upon entering the elite St. Gallway School, she finds some—a clique of eccentrics known as the Bluebloods. One drowning and one hanging later, Blue finds herself puzzling out a byzantine murder mystery. Nabokov meets Donna Tartt (then invites the rest of the Western Canon to the party) in this novel—with visual aids drawn by the author—that has won over readers of all ages.

Somewhere in the Night

Author: Nicholas Christopher
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439137617
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Book Description
Film noir is more than a cinematic genre. It is an essential aspect of American culture. Along with the cowboy of the Wild West, the denizen of the film noir city is at the very center of our mythological iconography. Described as the style of an anxious victor, film noir began during the post-war period, a strange time of hope and optimism mixed with fear and even paranoia. The shadow of this rich and powerful cinematic style can now be seen in virtually every artistic medium. The spectacular success of recent neo-film noirs is only the tip of an iceberg. In the dead-on, nocturnal jazz of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, the chilled urban landscapes of Edward Hopper, and postwar literary fiction from Nelson Algren and William S. Burroughs to pulp masters like Horace McCoy, we find an unsettling recognition of the dark hollowness beneath the surface of the American Dream. Acclaimed novelist and poet Nicholas Christopher explores the cultural identity of film noir in a seamless, elegant, and enchanting work of literary prose. Examining virtually the entire catalogue of film noir, Christopher identifies the central motif as the urban labyrinth, a place infested with psychosis, anxiety, and existential dread in which the noir hero embarks on a dangerously illuminating quest. With acute sensitivity, he shows how technical devices such as lighting, voice over, and editing tempo are deployed to create the film noir world. Somewhere in the Night guides us through the architecture of this imaginary world, be it shot in New York or Los Angeles, relating its elements to the ancient cultural archetypes that prefigure it. Finally, Christopher builds an explanation of why film noir not only lives on but is currently enjoying a renaissance. Somewhere in the Night can be appreciated as a lucid introduction to a fundamental style of American culture, and also as a guide to film noir's heyday. Ultimately, though, as the work of a bold talent adeptly manipulating poetic cadence and metaphor, it is itself a superb aesthetic artifact.

More Than Night

Author: James Naremore
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520254023
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 403

Book Description
"Supplies the first study of film noir that achieves the sort of intellectual seriousness, depth of research, degree of critical insight, and level of writing that this group of films deserves."—Tom Gunning, Modernism and Modernity

House of Leaves

Author: Mark Z. Danielewski
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 0375420525
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 738

Book Description
“A novelistic mosaic that simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious.” —The New York Times Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children. Now this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and second and third appendices. The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.

Ever the Hunted

Author: Erin Summerill
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544868129
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 405

Book Description
In this epic fantasy adventure, a teen girl embarks on a quest to apprehend her father’s killer and finds magic, intrigue, and herself along the way. Seventeen year-old Britta Flannery is at ease only in the woods with her dagger and bow. She spends her days tracking criminals alongside her father, a legendary bounty hunter—that is, until her father is murdered. The alleged killer is none other than Cohen Mackay, her father’s former apprentice. The only friend she’s ever known. The boy she once loved who broke her heart. She must go on a dangerous quest in a world of warring kingdoms, mad kings, and dark magic to find the real killer. But Britta wields more power than she knows. And soon she will learn what has always made her different will make her a force to be reckoned with. “Britta’s fierce tale of love lost and family found, combined with the lush setting and intriguing world-building, make for an unforgettable read.”—Ally Condie, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of the Matched Trilogy “With a resourceful and cunning heroine, a compelling and nuanced romance, and a truly fascinating system of magic, Ever the Hunted ensnared me from the very first pages. Absolutely marvelous.”—Sarah J. Maas, New York Times bestselling author of the Throne of Glass books “A solid choice for fantasy readers who prefer a large helping of adventure with their romance.”—Kirkus Reviews

30 Days of Night: Beyond Barrow

Author: Steve Niles
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781600101557
Category : Barrow (Alaska)
Languages : en
Pages : 108

Book Description
Vampires visit Barrow to feed once again, but this time the citizens have banded together and a rich hunter comes to town to see real vampires and obtain proof of their existence.

Night Passages

Author: Elisabeth Bronfen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231147988
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 473

Book Description
In the beginning was the night. All light, shapes, language, and subjective consciousness, as well as the world and art depicting them, emerged from this formless chaos. In fantasy, we seek to return to this original darkness. Particularly in literature, visual representations, and film, the night resiliently resurfaces from the margins of the knowable, acting as a stage and state of mind in which exceptional perceptions, discoveries, and decisions play out. Elisabeth Bronfen follows nocturnal spaces in which extraordinary events unfold, enabling the irrational exploration of desire, transformation, ecstasy, transgression, spiritual illumination, and moral choice. She begins with classical myths depicting the creation of the world and moves through nocturnal scenes in Shakespeare and Milton, Gothic figurations, Hegel's romantic philosophy, and Freud's psychoanalysis. In modern times, she shows how literature and film, particularly film noir, transmit that piece of night the modern subject carries within. From Mozart's "Queen of the Night" to Virginia Woolf 's oscillation between day and night, life and death, and chaos and aesthetic form, Bronfen renders something visible, conceivable, and tellable from the dark realms of the unknown.

Night and Fog

Author: Sylvie Lindeperg
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 404

Book Description
Fran ois Truffaut called Night and Fog "the greatest film ever made." But when Alain Resnais finished his documentary, with its depiction of Nazi atrocities, the resistance of the French censors was fierce. A mere decade had passed since the end of the war, and the French public was unprepared to confront the horrors shown in the film--let alone the possibility of French complicity. In fact it would be through Night and Fog that many viewers first learned, as film critic Serge Daney put it, "that the worst had only just taken place." An engrossing account of the genesis, production, and legacy of Resnais's incomparable film, this book documents in extraordinary detail how a film that began as a cinematic spin-off of an educational exhibition on "resistance, liberation, and deportation" went on to become a significant step in the building of a collective consciousness of the tragedy of World War II. Sylvie Lindeperg frames her investigation with the story of historian Olga Wormser-Migot, who played an integral role in the research and writing of Night and Fog--and whose slight error on one point gave purchase to the film's detractors and revisionists and Holocaust deniers. Lindeperg follows the travails of Resnais, Wormser-Migot, and their collaborators in a pan-European search for footage, photographs, and other documentation. She uncovers creative use of liberation footage to stand in for daily life of the camps featured to such shocking effect in the film--a finding that raises hotly debated questions about reenactment and witnessing even as it enhances our understanding of the film's provenance and impact. A microhistory of a film that altered the culture it reflected, Night and Fog offers a unique interpretation of the interworking of biography, history, politics, and film in one epoch-making cultural moment.

Manila by Night: A Queer Film Classic

Author: Joel David
Publisher: arsenal pulp press
ISBN: 1551527081
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 145

Book Description
Manila by Night follows denizens of the city’s sordid yet exuberant underworld as they pursue their notions of life, love, and pleasure. In turn, this book follows the film’s equally arduous yet exhilarating journey through repression and censorship to a reluctanct release by the Marcos government as proof of its liberalism during the 1986 uprising.