The Cinema of Christopher Nolan

The Cinema of Christopher Nolan
Author: Jacqueline Furby
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 561
Release: 2015-08-04
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 023185076X

Over the past fifteen years, writer, producer and director Christopher Nolan has emerged from the margins of independent British cinema to become one of the most commercially successful directors in Hollywood. From Following (1998) to Interstellar (2014), Christopher Nolan's films explore philosophical concerns by experimenting with nonlinear storytelling while also working within classical Hollywood narrative and genre frameworks. Contextualizing and closely reading each of his films, this collection examines the director's play with memory, time, trauma, masculinity, and identity, and considers the function of music and video games and the effect of IMAX on his work.

The Nolan Variations

The Nolan Variations
Author: Tom Shone
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2020-11-03
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0525655328

An in-depth look at Christopher Nolan, considered to be the most profound, commercially successful director at work today, written with his full cooperation. A rare, revelatory portrait, "as close as you're ever going to get to the Escher drawing that is Christopher Nolan's remarkable brain" (Sam Mendes). In chapters structured by themes and motifs ("Time"; "Chaos"; "Dreams"), Shone offers an unprecedented intimate view of the director. Shone explores Nolan's thoughts on his influences, his vision, his enigmatic childhood past--and his movies, from plots and emotion to identity and perception, including his latest blockbuster, the action-thriller/spy-fi Tenet ("Big, brashly beautiful, grandiosely enjoyable"--Variety). Filled with the director's never-before-seen photographs, storyboards, and scene sketches, here is Nolan on the evolution of his pictures, and the writers, artists, directors, and thinkers who have inspired and informed his films. "Fabulous: intelligent, illuminating, rigorous, and highly readable. The very model of what a filmmaking study should be. Essential reading for anyone who cares about Nolan or about film for that matter."--Neal Gabler, author of An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood and Walt Disney, The Biography

The Philosophy of Christopher Nolan

The Philosophy of Christopher Nolan
Author: Jason T. Eberl
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2017-06-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1498513530

As a director, writer, and producer, Christopher Nolan has substantially impacted contemporary cinema through avant garde films, such as Following and Memento, and his contribution to wider pop culture with his Dark Knight trilogy. His latest film, Interstellar, delivered the same visual qualities and complex, thought-provoking plotlines his audience anticipates. The Philosophy of Christopher Nolan collects sixteen essays, written by professional philosophers and film theorists, discussing themes such as self-identity and self-destruction, moral choice and moral doubt, the nature of truth and its value, whether we can trust our perceptions of what’s “real,” the political psychology of heroes and villains, and what it means to be a “viewer” of Nolan’s films. Whether his protagonists are squashing themselves like a bug, struggling to create an identity and moral purpose for themselves, suffering from their own duplicitous plots, donning a mask that both strikes fear and reveals their true nature, or having to weigh the lives of those they love against the greater good, there are no simple solutions to the questions Nolan’s films provoke; exploring these questions yields its own reward.

Christopher Nolan

Christopher Nolan
Author: Darren Mooney
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2018-10-10
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1476634610

Christopher Nolan is one of the defining directors of the 21st century. Few of his contemporaries can compete in terms of critical and commercial success, let alone cultural impact. His films have a rare ability to transcend audience expectations, appealing to both casual moviegoers and dyed-in-the-wool cineastes. Nolan's work ranges from gritty crime thrillers (Memento, Insomnia) to spectacular blockbusters (the Dark Knight trilogy, Inception). They have taken audiences from the depths of space (Interstellar) to the harsh realities of war (Dunkirk). And they have pushed the boundaries of the possible in modern movie making. This critical history covers his complete filmography, tracing his career from film student to indie darling to Oscar-nominated auteur.

The Traumatic Screen

The Traumatic Screen
Author: Stuart Joy
Publisher: Intellect (UK)
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre: Motion picture producers and directors
ISBN: 9781789382020

Christopher Nolan occupies a rare realm within the Hollywood mainstream, creating complex, original films that achieve both critical acclaim and commercial success. In The Traumatic Screen, Stuart Joy builds on contemporary applications of psychoanalytic film theory to consider the function and presentation of trauma across Nolan's work, arguing that the complexity, thematic consistency, and fragmentary nature of his films mimic the structural operation of trauma. From 1997's Doodlebug to 2017's Dunkirk, Nolan's films highlight cinema's ability to probe the nature of human consciousness while commenting on the relationship between spectator and screen. Joy examines Nolan's treatment of trauma--both individual and collective--through the formal construction, mise-en-scène, and repeated themes of his films. The argument presented is based on close textual analysis and a methodological framework that incorporates the works of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. The first in-depth, overtly psychoanalytic understanding of trauma in the context of the director's filmography, this book builds on and challenges existing scholarship in a bold new interpretation of the Nolan canon.

The Secrets of Tenet

The Secrets of Tenet
Author: James Mottram
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2020-09-08
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1647220602

Behind-the-scenes photos and conceptual art from Christopher Nolan's time-bending espionage thriller Tenet. Also looks at Nolan's process and creative vision; actors share their experiences working with Nolan.

The Fictional Christopher Nolan

The Fictional Christopher Nolan
Author: Todd McGowan
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2012-09-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0292737823

From Memento and Insomnia to the Batman films, The Prestige, and Inception, lies play a central role in every Christopher Nolan film. Characters in the films constantly find themselves deceived by others and are often caught up in a vast web of deceit that transcends any individual lies. The formal structure of a typical Nolan film deceives spectators about the events that occur and the motivations of the characters. While Nolan's films do not abandon the idea of truth altogether, they show us how truth must emerge out of the lie if it is not to lead us entirely astray. The Fictional Christopher Nolan discovers in Nolan's films an exploration of the role that fiction plays in leading to truth. Through close readings of all the films through Inception, Todd McGowan demonstrates that the fiction or the lie comes before the truth, and this priority forces us to reassess our ways of thinking about the nature of truth. Indeed, McGowan argues that Nolan's films reveal the ethical and political importance of creating fictions and even of lying. While other filmmakers have tried to discover truth through the cinema, Nolan is the first filmmaker to devote himself entirely to the fictionality of the medium, and McGowan discloses how Nolan uses its tendency to deceive as the basis for a new kind of philosophical filmmaking. He shows how Nolan's insistence on the priority of the fiction aligns his films with Hegel's philosophy and understands Nolan as a thoroughly Hegelian filmmaker.

Inception

Inception
Author: Christopher Nolan
Publisher: Insight Editions
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2010-08-17
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1608870154

A man, highly skilled in entering people's dreams to extract secret information, is offered a chance to implant an idea in another man's head, a practice known as inception.

Batman Begins

Batman Begins
Author: Christopher Nolan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 56
Release: 2005
Genre: Batman (Fictitious character)
ISBN: 9781904720584

Extensive reading improves fluency and there is a real need in the ELT classroom for motivating, contemporary graded material that will instantly appeal to students. Batman Begins is based on the 2005 blockbuster movie and will be immediately recognisable to teens of all nationalities.