Charles L. P. Silet – författare

The work of Chester Himes is now undergoing a critical and popular reevaluation as it gradually comes back into print after years of neglect. His protest novels from the 1940s and early 1950s, his Harlem Domestic crime books, first published in France and later released in English in the United States, and his remarkable two-volume autobiography are now gaining a wider readership through their republication. Nonetheless, the critical writings on his work remain scattered and are often difficult to obtain. This collection of reviews and essays from both popular and academic sources traces the critical response to his work from 1946 to 1996 and thus sheds light on the critical reputation of one of the most distinguished but underrated African American authors.Himes has a wide international reputation, but this reference book focuses on those essays and reviews in the English language which provide a clearer assessment of his controversial literary standing in his native country, where his reputation has been most under debate. The book includes a balanced assessment of all his work, along with an interview with Himes's brother that offers some corrective commentary on his autobiography. The volume also provides a chronology, a checklist of his writings, and a bibliography.

Steven Spielberg has fashioned an enviable career as a writer, producer, and director of American motion pictures, winning Academy Awards for Best Direction (Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List), and for Best Film (Schindler's List). With David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg he founded Dreamworks SKG, already one of the most productive and respected studios in Hollywood. Despite Spielberg's notable successes, however, his films have not avoided controversy.The Films of Steven Spielberg provides for the first time a collection of critical writings by professional film critics about the director and his films, bringing together many articles and reviews scattered in often inaccessible specialist publications and professional journals. The opinions vary from complimentary to critical, but they definitely provide a well-rounded view of the films and the director. Twelve of Spielberg's major box office hits, including Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial, The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, are discussed in essays that vary in complexity ranging from the heavily theoretical to the more general. This collection of essays, compiled for both film students and professionals in the film industry, attests to the influence of Spielberg and the films that have earned him a significant place in the history of cinema as one of America's most innovative and culturally important filmmakers.

Steven Spielberg has fashioned an enviable career as a writer, producer, and director of American motion pictures, winning Academy Awards for Best Direction (Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List), and for Best Film (Schindler's List). With David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg he founded Dreamworks SKG, already one of the most productive and respected studios in Hollywood. Despite Spielberg's notable successes, however, his films have not avoided controversy.The Films of Steven Spielberg provides for the first time a collection of critical writings by professional film critics about the director and his films, bringing together many articles and reviews scattered in often inaccessible specialist publications and professional journals. The opinions vary from complimentary to critical, but they definitely provide a well-rounded view of the films and the director. Twelve of Spielberg's major box office hits, including Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial, The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, are discussed in essays that vary in complexity ranging from the heavily theoretical to the more general. This collection of essays, compiled for both film students and professionals in the film industry, attests to the influence of Spielberg and the films that have earned him a significant place in the history of cinema as one of America's most innovative and culturally important filmmakers.

Throughout his career Oliver Stone (b. 1946) has broken traditions and challenged audiences with a series of daring, angry, violent, and often confrontational films. Politically charged movies such as Nixon (1995), JFK (1991), and Wall Street (1987), and his Vietnam trilogy of Platoon (1986), Born on the 4th of July (1989), and Heaven and Earth (1993) provoke and enrage critics and audiences from all ideological walks. In a short time, Stone has established himself as one of the most admired and most reviled directors in American cinema. Ranging from 1981 to 1997, the fifteen conversations featured in Oliver Stone: Interviews reveal a man frustrated by what he sees as the hypocrisies of American politics, of conservatism, and of the Hollywood film industry. But the conflicts and tensions these issues generate spellbind him. In the interviews, Stone comes off as a man as brash, outspoken, confident, and complicated as his movies. His obsessions -- the 1960s, the ways in which Vietnam shaped the country, the nature of violence, and the role of the media in shaping it -- resurface again and again, no matter what film Stone is discussing. Though the subjects of Nixon, JFK, Born on the 4th of July, The Doors (1991), and Heaven and Earth are rooted in the turbulent 1960s, Stone as interviewee and filmmaker is firmly entrenched in the present. He fiercely discusses how the attitudes and political effects of the 1960s have defined later decades and generations, as he talks about his satire of the stock market (Wall Street, 1987) and media exposure (Natural Born Killers, 1994). Bolts of the director's raw wit and enthusiasm for the cinema shine through all of Stone's ferocious rage. Stone loves writing as well as directing. Whether discussing his screenplays written for other directors -- which include Scarface (1983), Midnight Express (1978), or Conan the Barbarian (1982, with director John Milius) -- or his own films, Stone emphasizes how crucial screenwriting is to making great movies. ""Directing is a natural extension of writing,"" he says in a 1987 interview with Michel Ciment. ""A director can always pull through with noise everywhere and his colleagues around. I don't think a good director can make a good film with a bad screenplay, but a bad director can deliver an acceptable film if he has a good screenplay. So for me, that's the number one priority."" Charles L. P. Silet is a professor of English at Iowa State University.