Oldcastle Books: 197 books

Pocket Essentials is a dynamic series of books that are concise, lively, and easy to read. Packed with facts as well as expert opinions, each book has all the key information you need to know about such popular topics as film, television, cult fiction, history, and more. From a topless Sophia Loren...

Just what is "independent" cinema? D. K. Holm, columnist for Kevin Smith's website and author of Robert Crumb and Quentin Tarantino, aims to define a term that can be difficult to distinguish from categories such as avant-garde, underground, experimental, or art films. By contrasting studio-era...

Since the late 1990s, a subtle, subversive element has been at work within the staid confines of the Hollywood dream factory. Young filmmakers like Spike Jonze, Wes Anderson, Michel Gondry, David O. Russell, Richard Linklater, and Sofia Coppola rode in on the coattails of the independent film movement...

With a reputation that is still rising as the world catches up with the prodigious outpouring of his imagination, and Hollywood repeatedly raiding his stories—Blade Runner, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly—Philip K. Dick remains an intriguing literary and cultural figure. At a time when most...

In 1983 visionary director John Cassavetes asked journalist Michael Ventura to write a unique film study—an on-set diary of the making of his film Love Streams. Cassavetes laid out his expectations. He wanted "a daring book, a tough book". In Ventura’s words, "All I had to do for...

From his hands-on filmmaking style to his writing and his composing—an indispensable guide to the ultimate cult auteur One of the most iconic directors of American cinema, John Carpenter has astonished audiences the world over with his tightly crafted horror, thriller, and science-fiction films....

The stylistic and bloody excesses of the films of Dario Argento are instantly recognizable—his films lock violent deaths in a twisted embrace with an almost sexual beauty. Narrative and logic are often lost in a constant bombardment of atmosphere, technical mastery, and provocative imagery. Setting...

A concise study of the work of the most celebrated Russian filmmaker since Eisenstein, and one of the most important directors to have emerged during the 1960s and 1970s Considering the whole of Tarkovsky's oeuvre, this book covers everything from the classic student film The Steamroller and the Violin,...

After nearly 1,000 books, half a dozen journals, two official inquiries, several million pages of declassified documents, dozens of TV documentaries, and hundreds of websites, is there anything left to say about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy? Hell, yes. The Kennedy assassination remains...

From Nanook of the North to Exit Through the Gift Shop, an overview of nonfiction film history from the early pioneers to the directors dominating the field todayAs one of the most fascinating areas of filmmaking, documentaries have broken down societal taboos, changed legislation, strengthened and...

Internationally renowned, David Lynch is America's premier purveyor of the surreal; an artist whose work in cinema and television has exposed the world to his highly personalized view of society. Examining Lynch's entire body of work—from the cult surrealism of his debut feature Eraserhead to his...

Emerging filmmakers need to know the basics of their art form: the language of the camera, and lenses, the different crew roles, the formats, the aspect ratios. They also need to know some bare-bones theory: what an auteur is, what montage is, what genres are. But, even more urgently, young filmmakers...

Pocket Essentials is a dynamic series of books that are concise, lively, and easy to read. Packed with facts as well as expert opinions, each book has all the key information you need to know about such popular topics as film, television, cult fiction, history, and more. This book is a guide to the...

"40 years ago as a graduate student I wrote a book about Spaghetti Westerns, called 10,000 Ways to Die. It’s an embarrassing tome when I look at it now: full of half-assed semiotics and other attenuated academic nonsense. In the intervening period I have had the interesting experience of being...