What's celebrated as the "worst movie ever," film writer Adam Nayman explores the 1995 Paul Verhoeven film that won the Razzie and perhaps ended its star's career. He argues that Showgirls is not so bad it's good, it's so good it's mistaken for bad.
...this book tries to plot some Grand Unified Theory of Coen-ness in a definitive exploration of the Coen brothers' oeuvre. TheBookseller
David Fincher: Mind Games is the definitive critical and visual survey of the Academy Award- and Golden Globe-nominated works of director David Fincher. From feature films Alien 3, Se7en, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, and Mank through his MTV clips for Madonna and the Rolling Stones and the Netflix series House of Cards and Mindhunter, each chapter weaves production history with original critical analysis, as well as with behind the scenes photography, still-frames, and original illustrations from Little White Lies' international team of artists and graphic designers. Mind Games also features interviews with Fincher's frequent collaborators, including Jeff Cronenweth, Angus Wall, Laray Mayfield, Holt McCallany, Howard Shore and Erik Messerschmidt. Grouping Fincher's work around themes of procedure, imprisonment, paranoia, prestige and relationship dynamics, Mind Games is styled as an investigation into a filmmaker obsessed with investigation, and the design will shift to echo case files within a larger psychological profile.
Paul Thomas Anderson has been described as a true auteur and among the foremost filmmaking talents of his generation. His films have received 25 Academy Award nominations, and he has worked closely with the finest actors of our time, including Daniel Day Lewis, Joaquin Phoenix, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. In Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks, Anderson's entire oeuvre--from Boogie Nights (1997), There Will Be Blood (2007), and The Master (2012) to his music videos for Radiohead to his early short films--is examined in illustrated detail for the first time. Anderson's influences, his style, and the recurring themes of reinvention, alienation, destiny, and ambition that course through his movies are analyzed and supplemented by firsthand interviews with Anderson's closest collaborators and illuminated by film stills, archival photos, original illustrations, and a vibrant, engaging design aesthetic. Masterworks is a tribute to the dreamers, drifters, and evil dentists who populate his world.