'Focus on African Films' offers pluralistic perspectives on filmmaking across Africa, highlighting the distinct thematic, stylistic, and socioeconomic circumstances of African film production.

One of Akira Kurosawa's most popular films, Yojimbo (1961) tells the story of a vagrant samurai who outsmarts two gangs warring to control a small town in mid-19th century Japan. This plot a lone hero who challenges both potent rivals struggling to control a place has proved remarkably adaptable. Recent film settings include the American southwest, New York, the coast of Ireland, Viking Iceland, and outer space. The rivals include drug dealers, police, witches, and seals, the hero a hit-man, a psychopath, a senior, an orphan. These films track the basic plot or veer off in unexpected directions. They provide an evening's delight or arouse enduring intellectual engagement with a wide variety of disciplines. Rhapsody on a Film by Kurosawa explores this cultural complex. Films discussed include American Beauty (1999), Donnie Darko (2001), The King of Masks (1996), Memento (2000), Ponette (1996), Requiem for a Dream (2000), Se7en (1995), and The Witches (1990). Other sections discuss possible origins of the plot in the work of Dashiell Hammett and Shakespeare, a Yojimbo hero who emerged in the final days of the Tokugawa Shogunate, and the relation of Yojimbo to Kurosawa's cinematic career. Rhapsody on a Film by Kurosawa is the author's first book.

This introduction to film appreciation uses examples from contemporary and popular American films to help students sharpen their powers of observation and establish habits of perceptive watching. The fifth edition adds 100 new photos and an expanded discussion of genre films, and reintroduces the ch

The leading authority on American film is back with the latest edition of his "indispensable" (Los Angeles Times) and bestselling movie and video guide. Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide 2004 is the best, biggest, and most up-to-date of its kind. The comprehensive 2004 guide includes: € Capsule reviews of more than 18,000 films, including more than 300 new entries € More than 13,000 listings of videocassettes and 8,000 DVD listings € Write-ups on every film series € A revised index of leading actors and actresses € Leonard Maltin's exclusive list of Fifty Films That Got Away: Movies You Really Ought to See ...and much, much more.