Fun City Cinema

New York City and the Movies that Made It

Fun City Cinema
Matt Zoller Seitz, Jason Bailey
RRP:
NZ$ 65.00
Our Price:
NZ$ 50.37
Hardback
h276 x 229mm - 352pg
28 Oct 2021 US
International import eta 7-19 days
9781419747816
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
Fun City Cinema gives readers an in-depth look at how the rise, fall, and resurrection of New York City was captured and chronicled in ten iconic Gotham films across ten decades: The Jazz Singer (1927), King Kong (1933), The Naked City (1948), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Taxi Driver (1976), Wall Street (1987), Kids (1995), 25th Hour (2002), and Frances Ha (2012). A visual history of a great American city in flux, Fun City Cinema reveals how these classic films and legendary filmmakers took their inspiration from New York City' s grittiness and splendor, creating what we can now view as "accidental documentaries" of the city' s modes and moods. In addition to the extensively researched and reported text, the book includes both historical photographs and ephemera, as well as still-frames, behind-the-scenes photos, production materials from each film and original interviews with Noah Baumbach, Larry Clark, Greta Gerwig, Walter Hill, Jerry Schatzberg, Martin Scorsese, Susan Seidelman, Oliver Stone, and Jennifer Westfeldt. Extensive "Now Playing" sidebars spotlight a handful of each decade' s additional films of note.
"Fun City Cinema is a beautifully exhaustive, insightful, and engrossing study of New York City and the movies that reflected its political, economic, and cultural shifts over a century. Bailey writes eloquently not just about the importance and artistry of these films, but also how they helped shape our sense of the city in which they were set. This is a marvelous history of the Big Apple seen through the eyes of an incisive film critic who serves as a knowledgeable, ingratiating tour guide. "--Tim Grierson "author of This Is How You Make a Movie" "Fun City Cinema is an express train that makes local stops at long-forgotten stations, pausing long enough to conjure the ghosts out of their hiding places and up onto the streets where they stalk, strut, and drift through a city that is, on the surface always changing. Jason Bailey' s accomplishment is that he sees and feels his way through those changes to the city' s tough irreducible core. He could have called this book The Lights Above, the Grit Below. He' s in touch with both. "--Charles Taylor "author of Opening Wednesday at a Theater or Drive-In Near You: The Shadow Cinema of the American ' 70" "Fun City Cinema is my favorite sort of film book. Jason Bailey takes us on a tour through not just New York cinema, but the city that gave birth to it and the fantastic, absurd, glorious ways in which New York' s history is, all on its own, stranger than fiction. New York owes much to the cinema, and the cinema owes much back, and Fun City Cinema is a wild and gorgeous ride through that brilliant relationship. "--Alissa Wilkinson "film critic for Vox" "Fun City is an astonishing history of NYC told through the films that shot on the streets and the politics that shaped each era. From the glamor of early talkies to the grit of film noir to the dirty old New York of the 1970s. Page after page of fascinating behind the scenes tales of classics like Sweet Smell of Success, Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver, and Uncut Gems. It' s a book full of insightful prose and great photos that I found impossible to put down. "--Larry Karaszewski "co-writer of Ed Wood, The People vs. Larry Flint, and Dolemite Is My Name" "By collapsing the distance between the dream New York and the one we can see, this marvelous book illuminates a third New York: the one that lives forever in the movies. From the rise of the skyscraper to post-9/11 anxiety, from the age of grime and crime to the era of excessive gentrification, Fun City Cinema shows how movies have kept pace with the city' s myriad transformations, whether we' re talking ten decades ago, ten years ago, or ten minutes ago. "--Stephanie Zacharek "film critic for TIME" "You know the scene in The Man Who Would Be King when Sean Connery and Michael Caine glimpse the treasure room, waiting for them since the time of Alexander the Great? If New York is the room, this book is the treasure. "--Greil Marcus "author of Mystery Train and "Real Life Rock""
Jason Bailey is a film critic and historian. A graduate of the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at NYU' s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, his work has appeared at the New York Times, Vulture, Slate,VICE, Flavorwire, The Atlantic, Salon, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, The Playlist, The Dissolve, and Crooked Marquee. He lives in the Bronx with his wife and two daughters. Fun City Cinema is his fifth book. Matt Zoller Seitz is an editor-at-large for RogerEbert. com; the TV critic for New York magazine; the author of The Wes Anderson Collection, The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Oliver Stone Experience, and Mad Men Carousel; and the coauthor of The Sopranos Sessions. He is based in Cleveland, Ohio, and New York City.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9781419747816
Published: 28 Oct 2021
Published In: United States
Imprint: Abrams
Publisher: Abrams
Format: Hardback
Height: 276mm
Width: 229mm
Pages: 352

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