J.G. Ballard attracted avid readers with the publication of his first novel, The Drowned World (1962), a story of global warming long before the topic was hot, but the general public knows him best for Empire of the Sun. Steven Spielberg turned Ballard’s mostly autobiographical novel into the 1987 film that introduced Christian Bale, standing in for the author as an adolescent....

  It’s tempting to suspect that Abraham Lincoln was D.W. Griffith’s mea culpa for The Birth of a Nation—except Griffith probably never thought he did anything wrong. Abraham Lincoln (1930), Griffith’s last significant film, has been issued by Kino Lorber on Blu-ray in the most complete version to surface since it played in movie houses, intact except for the soundtrack of t...

 The Civil War marked one of the sharpest turning points in America’s story, and none of its leading figures looms higher in memory than Abraham Lincoln

Every mastermind grew up admiring a mastermind. For J.J. Abrams, who conceived the convolutions of the culty “Lost” series and revived Star Trek for the 21st century, Steven Spielberg was the model mastermind, a director who found the uncanny among ordinary people and with a sharp feel for the roller coaster thrill of cinema...

Movie writer Ray Morton�s life changed that night in 1977 when he saw Steven Spielberg�s first science-fiction feature. In Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg�s Classic Film (published by Applause Books), Morton explains that the technically ambitious movie awakened him to cinema�s artistic potential. It was a powerful experience for a teenager. For many adults, CE...