{"title":"Stuart Klawans","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"crooked-but-never-common-book-stuart-klawans-9780231207294","title":"Crooked, but Never Common","description":"In a burst of creativity unmatched in Hollywood history, Preston Sturges directed a string of all-time classic comedies from 1939 through 1948—The Great McGinty, The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels, The Palm Beach Story, and The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek among them—all from screenplays he alone had written. Cynical and sophisticated, romantic and sexually frank, crazily breakneck and endlessly witty, his movies continue to influence filmmakers and remain popular to this day. Yet despite this acclaim, Sturges’s achievements remain underappreciated: he is too often categorized as a dialogue writer and plot engineer more than a director, or belittled as an irresponsible spinner of laughs.  In Crooked, but Never Common, Stuart Klawans combines a critic’s insight and a fan’s enthusiasm to offer deeper ways to think about and enjoy Sturges’s work. He provides an in-depth appreciation of all ten of the writer-director’s major movies, presenting Sturges as a filmmaker whose work balanced slapstick and social critique, American and European traditions, and cynicism and affection for his characters. Tugging at loose threads—discontinuities, puzzles, and allusions that have dangled in plain sight—and putting the films into a broader cultural context, Klawans reveals structures, motives, and meanings underlying the uproarious pleasures of Sturges’s movies. In this new light, Sturges emerges at last as one of the truly great filmmakers—and funnier than ever.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49746965332241,"sku":"NGR9780231207294","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51464687321361,"sku":"CIN0231207298G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51882773872913,"sku":"GOR014444217","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231207298.jpg?v=1751101348"},{"product_id":"film-follies-book-stuart-klawans-9780304700547","title":"Film Follies","description":"Outlining a history of film going too far, of seeming madness and wasteful extravagance, this text examines films that are cinematic landmarks and monuments to directors' hubris, from Griffiths' \"Intolerance\" to Coppola's \"Apocalypse Now\" and Carax's \"Les Amants du Pont-Neuf\". The text explores the changing conditons of the industry under which figures such as L'Herbier and Lang, von Sternberg and Ophuls got their hands on the full apparatus of studio production, while behaving as individual artists. It questions the shape of film history from the viewpoint of these pictures and relates the notion that a failed work of art may be more glorious than a success.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50558707138833,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50558707269905,"sku":"GOR002326340","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0304700541.jpg?v=1751441682"},{"product_id":"left-in-the-dark-book-stuart-klawans-9781560253655","title":"Left in the Dark","description":"Here is the best of funny, sharp, and revelatory film writing for The Nation, brought together with new pieces written especially for this book and a selection of reviews and essays for the New York Times, the Village Voice, Film Comment, and other journals.  A friend of independent filmmaking (but not of its pretensions), an enemy of big-budget productions (except when they're entertaining), Klawans writes under his own version of the banner \"From Each According to His Abilities, to Each According to His Needs. \" Klawans explains how to approach a masterpiece by Abbas Kiarostami as if it were a strange dog; why David Lynch would disappoint a visiting Martian; and what The Rage: Carrie 2 tells us about rage and Carrie.  All this, plus insight into the quieter refinements of Moulin Rouge, the correct Talmudic interpretation of Natural Born Killers, and the reasons why they were never wrong, the Old Masters (Renoir, Dreyer, Sembene, and early 1930s Warner Brothers).  At a time when too many film writers encourage cynicism and despair, Klawans finds vitality in the moviesespecially those that record brute fact while aspiring toward a heaven of personal expression. Read him, and discover the fun of being Left in the Dark.  \"Mr.  Klawans is one of the most incisive, provocative and best-informed film critics in America. \"Vincent Canby \"The genuine heir to James Agee and Manny Farber...dazzling to read. \"Phillip Lopate","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50764348227857,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50764349636881,"sku":"CIN1560253657G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52811333402897,"sku":"GOR014625983","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1560253657.jpg?v=1751118309"},{"product_id":"my-strange-love-book-stuart-klawans-9798899760600","title":"My Strange Love","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53638650331409,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53638650822929,"sku":"NLS9798899760600","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9798899760600.jpg?v=1781008761"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-stuart-klawans.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}