Bram Stoker

Christopher Frayling

Maurice Hindle

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille the aging Dr Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil lanes of London, they are all drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror and soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine.

Dracula

An expanded, fully illustrated, and up-to-date edition of the classic cultural history of vampires

Genesis and Resurrection from Count Dracula to Vampirella

Vampyres

La fusillade finale du Bon, la Brute et le Truand est, pour Quentin Tarantino, "une des meilleures séquences d'action de tous les temps". De ses personnages de Reservoir Dogs, il disait aussi : "Ils sont en uniforme... comme ces personnages que Leone habillait avec des cache-poussières." Voici, à hauteur d'homme et d'oeuvre, la biographie définitive de Sergio Leone, l'un des plus grands réalisateurs de l'histoire du cinéma. Grâce à une recherche monumentale qu'une existence complexe exigeait, et à l'analyse approfondie de ses films comme de quelques-uns de ses légendaires projets, Christopher Frayling porte sur l'auteur de Pour une poignée de dollars un regard précieux. Cette biographie (qui succède, dans la même collection, à celles de John Ford ou de Howard Hawks) est aussi l'exploration de la fascination de l'Amérique et de sa frontière, dépassant le seul cinéma de Leone comme son cinéma le dépassait lui-même. Un Sergio Leone attachant revit : son implication dans le cinéma italien, du Voleur de bicyclette, dans lequel il fait une apparition, aux péplums de la fin des années 1950, sa rencontre avec Clint Eastwood et Ennio Morricone, jusqu'à sa mort inattendue après un dernier chef-d'oeuvre, Il était une fois en Amérique, qu'il mit plus d'une décennie à réaliser. "Lorsque le cercueil est arrivé, raconte Frayling, Ennio Morricone a joué une version lente du thème d'Il était une fois dans l'Ouest. Fellini s'est alors levé et a dit : "J'ai le sentiment d'un collègue qui a travaillé joyeusement à quelque chose qui l'a rendu heureux : une présence et une voix, pleines d'amour pour le cinéma.""

Quelque chose à voir avec la mort

Sergio Leone

Groundbreaking 'spaghetti westerns' such as the 'Dollars' trilogy (starring Clint Eastwood as 'The Man With No Name'), and the magisterial Once Upon A Time In The West, made Sergio Leone one of the most popular directors in world cinema. Christopher Frayling's biography of Sergio Leone lovingly explores his body of work, and casts light upon the previously little-known details of his life. Sergio Leone was born into movies, his father a popular director of the silent era. Obsessed by the illusory worlds of cinema and theatre, captivated by the myths of the American West, young Sergio embarked on a fabulous career of his own. He made an icon out of the initially reluctant Clint Eastwood, and dallied with the Hollywood studio system, but always stuck to his guns: the gangster epic Once Upon A Time In America consumed 15 years of his life. But Leone's passion made for extraordinary cinema: a widely-adored collection of films, about which Christopher Frayling provides an unprecedented wealth of extensively-researched analysis and anecdotage. In this revealing biography Christopher Frayling, the widely-acclaimed author of The Yellow Peril explores the life of Sergio Leone, the world-renowned director of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, A Fist full of Dollars, Once Upon A Time in the West and Once Upon A Time in America.

Something to Do with Death

Uses history and popular culture to discuss how Chinaphobia arose in the West.

Dr. Fu Manchu & the Rise of Chinaphobia

The Yellow Peril

‘Craftsmanship has again become fashionable in high places, just as it did in the last few recessions.’ The concept of craftsmanship has never been as relevant and timely as it is today. Assailed on all sides by – among many other tendencies - flexible working, short-termism, portfolio careers, quick-fix training and the cult of celebrity, it has recently re-entered public debate with a new sense of urgency. Why? A bestseller in hardback, this series of linked essays by the man who ran the Royal College of Art for many years is now available in paperback, and explores the crafts in education, in history and literature, in the contemporary arts landscape, in the language, in the digital age, taking an unsentimental, hard-headed look at craftsmanship today. Only when the romantic cobwebs have been blown away, it argues, can the key importance of the crafts be fully understood.

Towards a New Bauhaus

On Craftsmanship

An illustrated exploration of the mid-twentieth-century filmmaker's "spaghetti westerns" considers his role in defining the genre, his visual style and elliptical storytelling methods, and his creation of such works as A Fistful of Dollars and Once Upon a Time in the West. 12,500 first printing.

The Westerns of Sergio Leone

Once Upon a Time in Italy

A Bedside Companion

Vampyre

A hundred years ago, the fictional evil genius called Dr Fu Manchu appeared, described as 'the yellow peril incarnate in one man'. Why did the idea that the Chinese were a threat to Western civilization develop at precisely the time when that country was in chaos, divided against itself, victim of successive famines and utterly incapable of being a 'peril' to anyone? In this gripping book, Sir Christopher Frayling assembles an astonishing diversity of evidence to show how deeply ingrained Chinaphobia became in the West - acutely relevant again in the new era of Chinese superpower. Along the way he talks to Edward Said, to the last Governor of Hong Kong, to movie stars and a host of others; he journeys through the opium dens of the 19th century with Dickens; takes us to the heart of popular culture in the music hall, pulp literature and the mass-market press; and shows how film amplifies our assumptions, demonstrating throughout how if we want to understand our deepest desires and fears we neglect the history of popular culture at our own peril. Christopher Frayling is a former rector of the Royal College of Art and a renowned cultural historian.

Dr Fu Manchu & The Rise of Chinaphobia

Ron Van der Meer

Helen Frayling

A Unique, Three-dimensional Tour Through the Creation of Art Over the Centuries--what Artists Do, how They Do It, and the Masterpieces They Have Given Us

The Art Pack

Mary Shelley's creation, Frankenstein, who emerged from a dream by a young woman who had just lost her first child, has transformed itself into a warning about the dangers of tampering with nature. The vampire started life as a sexual fantasy, and Bram Stoker's tale became a metaphor for dominance and dependence in sexual relationships. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, perhaps the most psychological of all horror stories, examines the beast in man and the dark side of human nature. And The Hound of the Baskervilles is a tale of conflict between rationalism and folklore, and the skills of Sherlock Holmes.

The Birth of Horror

Nightmare

Leading cultural historian and broadcaster Christopher Frayling reflects on gothic themes in literature, art and popular culture, through the lens of his friendship and correspondence with Angela Carter during her formative ‘Bath years’, during which she wrote most of her key works; The Bloody Chamber, The Sadeian Woman, The Passion of New Eve. Inside the Bloody Chamber collects Frayling’s articles, essays and lectures written since then on various aspects of the Gothic—several in hard-to-find places, many never published before, but all revised for this new book. The subjects match Angela’s interests, are mirrored in the stories within The Bloody Chamber—and mesh with his memories of their time together in Bath in the 1970s.

Aspects of Angela Carter

Inside the Bloody Chamber

A classic book on the production and cultural context of European Westerns

Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone

Spaghetti Westerns

This delightful compendium focuses on one of the best-loved poems in the English language, but in the process it takes the reader on an engaging romp through the literary, intellectual, and cultural world of the eighteenth century. It brings alive a host of engaging characters: Horace Walpole himself (one of the great letter writers of all time, wit, raconteur; the curmudgeonly Dr. Johnson (who nevertheless had “a very fine cat indeed”) and his sometimes recalcitrant biographer James Boswell; and a cast of “handsome cats,” including Selima and Zama. In February 1747, Selima the tabby fell into a Chinese blue and white porcelain tub in Walpole's house in London's Mayfair and never returned to dry land. The poem by Thomas Gray, “Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold-fishes,” was written as her mock epitaph. Here is the true history of the event, and a look at the sparkling social and cultural life of the period. It is beautifully illustrated with Richard Bentley's original series of designs for the poem, William Blake's wonderful watercolors of some fifty years later, and the unpublished color illustrations produced in the 1940s by the noted children's book illustrator Kathleen Hale, of Orlando the Marmalade Cat fame.

Horace Walpole's Cat

Jack Clayton's gothic masterpiece The Innocents, though not a commercial success on its release in 1961, has been hailed as one of the greatest psychological thrillers of all time. Dividing reviewers with its ambiguous depiction of ghosts, the film ignited a debate about the aesthetics of horror which still rages today. In this stimulating introduction to The Innocents, Sir Christopher Frayling traces the film from its genesis in the original novel The Turn of The Screw by Henry James, via contemporary critical contexts and William Archibald's 1950 stage adaptation of the same name, to the screenplay by William Archibald, Truman Capote and John Mortimer. Drawing on unpublished material from Jack Clayton's archive – including Capote's handwritten drafts for the film – and interviews with Deborah Kerr, Freddie Francis, and John Mortimer, Frayling explores how this classic ghost story came to life on screen. This special edition features original cover artwork by Matthew Young.

The Innocents

The French New Wave is one of the most important movements in the history of film. Its fresh energy and vision changed the cinematic landscape and it has had a seminal impact on pop culture. The poster artists tasked with selling these Nouvelle Vague films to the masses were at the forefront of a revolution in art, graphic design and photography. This volume is a visual celebration of their explosive and ground-breaking poster art.

A Revolution in Design

French New Wave

From Victor Frankenstein to Dr. Moreau to Doc Brown in Back to the Future, the scientist has been a puzzling, fascinating, and threatening presence in popular culture. From films we have learned that scientists are either evil maniacal geniuses or bumbling saviors of society. Mad, Bad and Dangerous? puts this dichotomy to the test, offering a wholly engaging yet not uncritical history of the cinematic portrayal of scientists. Christopher Frayling traces the genealogy of the scientist in film, showing how the scientist has often embodied the predominant anxieties of a particular historical moment. The fear of nuclear holocaust in the 1950s gave rise to a rash of radioactive-mutant horror movies, while the possible dangers of cloning and biotechnology in the 1990s manifested themselves in Jurassic Park. During these eras, the scientist's actions have been viewed through a lens of fascination and fear. In the past few decades, with increased public awareness of environmental issues and of the impact of technology on nature, the scientist has been transformed once again—into a villainous agent of money-hungry corporate powers. Mad, Bad and Dangerous? also examines biographical depictions of actual scientists, illuminating how they are often portrayed as social misfits willing to sacrifice everything to the interests of science. Drawing on such classic and familiar films as Frankenstein, Metropolis, and The Wizard of Oz, Frayling brings social and film history together to paint a much larger picture of the evolving value of science and technology to society. A fascinating study of American culture and film, Mad, Bad and Dangerous? resurrects the scientists of late night movies and drive-in theaters and gives them new life as cultural talismans.

The Scientist and the Cinema

Mad, Bad and Dangerous?

Cinéaste italien, Sergio Leone (1929-1989) se lance en 1964 dans l'élaboration de westerns et réalise Pour une, poignée de dollars, premier film d'une trilogie mythique qui marqua la naissance d'un genre, le western spaghetti. Le succès international de ce film révèle le nom de Sergio Leone et celui de ses collaborateurs, le musicien Ennio Morricone et l'acteur Clint Eastwood jusque-là inconnu. Film après film, son style s'affirme, son sens de l'humour et sa narration originale ne cessent. d'évoluer, mettant à l'épreuve les nerfs du spectateur avec ces mises en scène où le temps s'étire à l'infini sur des musiques désormais cultes. Richement documenté de photographies, d'affiches et d'interviews inédites, Il était une fois en Italie invite à un étonnant voyage dans l'Amérique de Leone aux côtés des plus grands noms du cinéma, qui ont tenu l'affiche et contribué au succès de ces westerns de légende.

les westerns de Sergio Leone

Il était une fois en Italie

Philip Kemp

Cinema: The Whole Story takes a close look at the key time periods, genres and key works in world cinema. It places the burgeoning world of cinema in the context of social and cultural developments that have taken place since its beginnings. Organized chronologically, the book traces the evolution of cinematic development, from the earliest days of film projection to the multiscreen cinemas and super-technology of today. Illustrated, in-depth text charts every genre of cinema, from the first silent films to epic blockbusters, CGI graphics and groundbreaking effects of the 21st century. Cinema: The Whole Story is an indispensable book for all those who love watching and reading about films and who want to understand more about the world of cinema.

Christopher Frayling

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