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"Immensely
readable and comprehensive."
Film & History
When
Steven Soderbergh exploded onto movie screens with sex, lies,
and videotape in 1989, it represented more than the arrival
of an important new director—it heralded the arrival of an
entire generation of important new directors. Quentin Tarantino
(Pulp Fiction), Kevin Smith (Dogma), David Fincher
(Fight Club), M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense),
Ben Stiller (Reality Bites), Michael Bay (Pearl Harbor),
and dozens of others are all members of Generation X, the much
talked about but much misunderstood successors to baby boomers.
This book is a critical study of the films directed by Gen Xers
and how those directors have been influenced by their
generational identity. While Generation X as a whole sometimes
seems to lack direction, its filmmakers have devoted their
careers to making powerful statements about contemporary society
and their generation's role in it.
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Finalist,
Theatre Library Association Award
As
a screenwriter, novelist, and political activist, Dalton
Trumbo stands among the key American literary figures of the
20th century—he wrote the classic antiwar novel Johnny
Got His Gun, and his credits for Spartacus and
Exodus broke the anticommunist blacklist that infected
the movie industry for more than a decade. By defining
connections between Trumbo's most highly acclaimed films and
his important but lesser-known movies, the author identifies
how for nearly four decades Trumbo used the archetype of the
rebel hero to inject social consciousness into mainstream
films. This critical survey—the first book-length work on
Trumbo's screenwriting career—examines the scores of films
on which Trumbo worked and explores the techniques that made
him, at the time he was blacklisted in 1947, Hollywood's
highest-paid writer. An extensive filmography is included.
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