Books by Steven Rybin

Michael Mann first made his mark as a writer for such television programs as Starsky and Hutch, Police Story, and Vegas. In 1981 he made his feature film directing debut with the James Caan thriller Thief, and in the 1980s he served as a writer and executive producer for the groundbreaking programs Miami Vice and Crime Story. Though he has delved into other genres, Mann's career as a writer, producer, and director has consistently focused on criminal activity, from small-time hoods and professional thieves to corporate manipulators and serial killers.In Michael Mann: Crime Auteur, Steven Rybin looks at the television programs and films that Mann has stamped with his personal signature. This book closely examines the themes and techniques used in films such as Manhunter, Heat, The Insider, and Collateral and connects these elements to his work on the non-genre films The Last of the Mohicans and Ali. A revised and significantly expanded edition of The Cinema of Michael Mann (2007), this book includes new chapters on Public Enemies and the big screen version of Miami Vice, as well as Mann's work on the shows Crime Story and Luck. Covering Mann's entire career, this book will be of interest to fans of the writer/director's body of work as well as to scholars of both film and television.

As the director of Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, and The New World, Terrence Malick has created a remarkable body of work that enables imaginative acts of philosophical interpretation. Steven Rybins Terrence Malick and the Thought of Film looks closely at the dialogue between Malicks films and our powers of thinking, showing how his work casts the philosophy of thinkers such as Stanley Cavell, Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Andre Bazin, Edgar Morin, and Immanuel Kant in new cinematic light. With a special focus on how the voices of Malicks characters move us to thought, Terrence Malick and the Thought of Film offers new readings of his films and places Malicks work in the context of recent debates in the interdisciplinary field of film and philosophy. Rybin also provides a postscript on Malicks recently-released fifth film, The Tree of Life.

Few other contemporary Hollywood filmmakers fit the category of 'genre stylist' as well as Michael Mann, the director of such films as Heat, The Insider, Ali, Collateral, Manhunter, Thief, and Miami Vice. Mann's film style marks him as a director who chooses the iconographic backdrop of a genre as a canvas upon which he and his collaborators can craft a unique cinematic vision. The Cinema of Michael Mann traces the innovative and under-explored stylistic contours of Mann's work, the director's inflection upon and innovation within preexisting genre frameworks, and the relationship of both style and genre to issues of authorship and film criticism. Steven Rybin's critical study of Mann's cinema, and the importance of the filmmaker's themes to our contemporary world, is valuable for both film scholars and cinephiles alike.