Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies

Author: Michael Adams
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061966312
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 357

Book Description
"Michael Adams's book is great fun! No one intends to make a truly bad movie, but when they do, Michael Adams will be there to watch it...and make it entertaining!" —John Landis, director of Trading Places and The Blues Brothers In Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies, film critic Michael Adams embarks on a year-long odyssey to discover the worst movie ever made, which Mystery Science Theater 3000 star, writer, and director Kevin Murphy calls "disturbingly comprehensive, joyously critical, and the best of its kind." From all-time cult classics such as Reefer Madness and Plan 9 from Outer Space to new entries to the pantheon such as Gigli and Baby Geniuses, no genre, star, or director is safe from Adams’s acerbic wit and hilarious observations. In the vein of A.J. Jacobs’s New York Times bestselling book The Know-It-All, and with the snarky sarcasm of television’s Mystery Science Theater 3000 and The Soup, Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies leaves no stone unturned. With a foreword by cult director George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead).

Showgirls, Teen Wolves and Astro Zombies

Author: Michael Adams
Publisher: Pier 9
ISBN: 9781741967371
Category : Motion pictures
Languages : en
Pages : 327

Book Description
With another year drawing to close, film critic Michael Adams found himself making an unusual New Year's resolution: in the next 12 months, he would find the answer to the question: 'What is the worst movie ever made?' He would do so by watching at least one terrible film per day. For a year. That's 365 bad movies in 365 days. No fast-forwarding. No pressing the stop button.This is comic-quest memoir mixed with 'extreme' movie criticism and laced with film trivia and celebrity interviews. As the months go by, Michael becomes hopelessly addicted, knowing that the bad movie he views today will only be supplanted by a worse one tomorrow.

The Werewolf Filmography

Author: Bryan Senn
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786479108
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Book Description
From the horrific to the heroic, cinematic werewolves are metaphors for our savage nature, symbolizing the secret, bestial side of humanity that hides beneath our civilized veneer. Examining acknowledged classics like The Wolf Man (1941) and The Howling (1981), as well as overlooked gems like Dog Soldiers (2011), this comprehensive filmography covers the highs and lows of the genre. Information is provided on production, cast and filmmakers, along with critical discussion of the tropes and underlying themes that make the werewolf a terrifying but fascinating figure.

They'll Never Hold Me

Author: Michael Adams
Publisher: Affirm Press
ISBN: 1923135511
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 405

Book Description
In 1959, Australians thrilled to every move made by a new criminal underdog, a Ned Kelly for the rock 'n' roll era. Kevin John Simmonds was a charismatic crook whose brazen crime spree had scored him a lengthy prison sentence. But as he was led from court, he boasted, 'They'll never hold me.' Two months later, Simmo made good on his promise, staging a daring escape from Long Bay Gaol. When his bid for freedom took a deadly turn, legendary Detective Ray 'the Gunner' Kelly took charge of the search, putting the fugitive in the crosshairs of the biggest armed manhunt in Australian history. They'll Never Hold Me is the true story of an antihero with a code of honour who captured the public's hearts and minds even as he enraged the cops and the establishment. Brilliantly researched and written by Michael Adams, of the Forgotten Australia podcast, this never-before-told tale takes us beyond the public adventures that made Simmo into Public Enemy No. 1 to reveal the haunting tragedies he was trying to outrun - and the terrible fate that even he might not escape.

Cult Cinema

Author: Ernest Mathijs
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405173734
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Book Description
Cult Cinema: an Introduction presents the first in-depth academic examination of all aspects of the field of cult cinema, including audiences, genres, and theoretical perspectives. Represents the first exhaustive introduction to cult cinema Offers a scholarly treatment of a hotly contested topic at the center of current academic debate Covers audience reactions, aesthetics, genres, theories of cult cinema, as well as historical insights into the topic

Australia's Sweetheart

Author: Michael Adams
Publisher: Hachette Australia
ISBN: 0733640303
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
This is the fascinating story of Mary Maguire, a 1930s Australian ingenue who sailed for Hollywood and a fabulous life, only to have her career cut short by scandal and tragedy. Packed with celebrity, history and gossip, AUSTRALIA'S SWEETHEART is perfect for readers of SHEILA and THE RIVIERA SET. Mary Maguire was Australia's first teenage movie star and she captivated Hollywood in the mid 1930s. Mary lived on three continents and was celebrated in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Los Angeles and London. Her life was lived in parallel with seminal incidents of the twentieth century: the Spanish Flu; the Great Depression; the Bodyline series; Australia's early radio, talkies and aviation; Hollywood's Golden Era; the British aristocracy's embrace of European fascism; London's Blitz; and post-war American culture and politics. Mary knew everyone, from Douglas Jardine, Don Bradman, Errol Flynn and Ronald Reagan, to William Randolph Hearst, Maureen O'Sullivan, Judy Garland and Queen Elizabeth II. AUSTRALIA'S SWEETHEART in an irresistible never-before-told story that captures the glamour of Hollywood and the turbulent times of the twentieth century, with a young woman at its centre. If you loved THE AMAZING MRS LIVESEY, Robert Wainwright's SHEILA and MISS MURIEL MATTERS, you will adore AUSTRALIA'S SWEETHEART.

The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema

Author: Ernest Mathijs
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317362233
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 1002

Book Description
The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema offers an overview of the field of cult cinema – films at the margin of popular culture and art that have received exceptional cultural visibility and status mostly because they break rules, offend, and challenge understandings of achievement (some are so bad they’re good, others so good they remain inaccessible). Cult cinema is no longer only comprised of the midnight movie or the extreme genre film. Its range has widened and the issues it broaches have become battlegrounds in cultural debates that typify the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Sections are introduced with the major theoretical frameworks, philosophical inspirations, and methodologies for studying cult films, with individual chapters excavating the most salient criticism of how the field impacts cultural discourse at large. Case studies include the worst films ever; exploitation films; genre cinema; multiple media formats cult cinema is expressed through; issues of cultural, national, and gender representations; elements of the production culture of cult cinema; and, throughout, aspects of the aesthetics of cult cinema – its genre, style, look, impact, and ability to yank viewers out of their comfort zones. The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema goes beyond the traditional scope of Anglophone and North American cinema by including case studies of East and South Asia, continental Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America, making it an innovative and important resource for researchers and students alike.

B Is for Bad Cinema

Author: Claire Perkins
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 143844995X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Book Description
Considers films that lurk on the boundaries of acceptability in taste, style, and politics. B Is for Bad Cinema continues and extends, but does not limit itself to, the trends in film scholarship that have made cult and exploitation films and other low genres increasingly acceptable objects for critical analysis. Springing from discussions of taste and value in film, these original essays mark out the broad contours of badthat is, aesthetically, morally, or commercially disreputablecinema. While some of the essays share a kinship with recent discussions of B movies and cult films, they do not describe a single aesthetic category or represent a single methodology or critical agenda, but variously approach bad cinema in terms of aesthetics, politics, and cultural value. The volume covers a range of issues, from the aesthetic and industrial mechanics of low-budget production through the terrain of audience responses and cinematic affect, and on to the broader moral and ethical implications of the material. As a result, B Is for Bad Cinema takes an interest in a variety of film examplesoverblown Hollywood blockbusters, faux pornographic works, and European art house filmsto consider those that lurk on the boundaries of acceptability.

Zen Filmmaking

Author: Scott Shaw
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781949251081
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Book Description
Developed by Scott Shaw, the primary premise of Zen Filmmaking is that no screenplay should be used in the creation of a film. There are no rules and no definitions. The spontaneous creative energy of the filmmaker is the only defining factor. This allows for a spiritually pure source of immediate inspiration to be the only guide in the filmmaking process. Thereby, leading the practitioner towards Cinematic Enlightenment. Within the pages of this book, Scott Shaw leads the reader through all of the elements of Zen Filmmaking-allowing one to emerge as a competent independent filmmaker, possessing all of the necessary skills to create a feature film, documentary, or music video in the easiest, most expedient, and enlightened manner possible. This book also takes the reader behind-the-scenes on several of Scott Shaw's feature films. This provides a unique insight into the filmmaking process while illustrating how to bypass many of the obstacles of filmmaking.

The Last Girl

Author: Stephan Collishaw
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466862009
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Book Description
For a full hour I sat at my desk and stared up at the two photographs. One by one I smoked a packet of twenty Prima cigarettes.... The earth, I felt, was beginning to shift, and the long dead were stirring. In the closing days of the twentieth century, an elderly writer wanders the streets of Vilnius, Lithuania, possessed by the need to photograph the young mothers of the city. In their faces and the faces of their children he sees the reflection of a secret that haunts him. A secret he has spent years trying to bury. In a decaying back street of the city a woman struggles to raise her family. As her son dreams of a better life she is torn between Vilnius' twilight world of prostitution and her determination of securing hope for her children. She too is haunted by memories that rob her of sleep. In Vilnius the rubble of the Jewish ghetto lies side by side with the fallen statues of communist heroes. Through this tangled debris of past and present the story of the writer's great love and his even greater betrayal begins to coil its way to the surface and demands to be told, in The Last Girl by Stephan Collishaw.