This book is a thought-provoking study that expands on film scholarship on noir and feminist scholarship on postfeminism, subjectivity, and representation to provide an inclusive, sophisticated, and up-to-date analysis of the femme fatale , fille fatale , and homme fatal from the classic era through to recent postmillennial neo-noir .

The term "cult film star" has been employed, and used as a common-sense term, in publicity and popular journalistic writing for at least the last twenty-five years. However, what makes cult film stars or actors distinct or different from other film stars has rarely been addressed, with the cult star label often being attributed to particular stars or actors in an imprecise way. This edited collection provides a much-needed overview of the variety of processes through which film stars and actors become associated with the cult label. It brings together chapters from an international group of scholars which focus on a wide range of cult stars and actors, from Montgomery Clift and Bill Murray to Ruth Gordon and Ingrid Pitt. The collection makes important, previously under-explored, connections between two key disciplines within film and media studies: stardom/celebrity studies and cult film studies.

What does it mean to regard cinema as technology? How do special effects change our experience of contemporary film? How important is the Internet to the film industry and film fans? "CineTech" explores these debates and examines the important intersection between film and new media. Providing a comprehensive introduction to the digital practices used in film, this book moves from historical perspectives to up-to-date analysis. Applying these debates through specific case studies, examples are drawn from recent Hollywood blockbusters such as the "Star Wars" prequels and the "Matrix" trilogy. Case studies, exercises, and suggestions for further study make this an ideal resource for courses and student assignments in both film and media studies.

Despite the recent explosion of scholarly interest in "star studies," Brazilian film has received comparatively little attention. As this volume demonstrates, however, the richness of Brazilian stardom extends well beyond the ubiquitous Carmen Miranda. Among the studies assembled here are fascinating explorations of figures such as Eliane Lage (the star attraction of Sao Paulo's Vera Cruz studios), cult horror movie auteur Coffin Joe, and Lazaro Ramos, the most visible Afro-Brazilian actor today. At the same time, contributors interrogate the inner workings of the star system in Brazil, from the pioneering efforts of silent-era actresses to the recent advent of the non-professional movie star.

This study of Erich von Stroheim, Ernst Lubitsch, and Billy Wilder focuses on what the common ethical themes in their Hollywood films unveil about the cultural and intellectual heritage of these German and Austrian emigres and their influence on American culture. Aware of the influential power of their films, these filmmakers strove to raise the intellectual standard and the positive educational value of the American film. Brief individual biographies describe their heritage, major influences, and goals and draw connections among the three filmmakers in their preference for German and Austrian literature, which focuses on social criticism, ethics, and the problem of identity. Detailed analyses of their individual styles of filmmaking and readings of selected films reveal how they put their philosophies into practice and to what extent they influenced one another. Films analyzed include "The Merry Widow, " "The Wedding March," "Heaven can Wait, To Be or Not To Be, Sunset Boulevard, "and "The Fortune Cookie "among others. By delineating their contributions to the development of modern film, this research explores the filmmakers impact on film and cultural history.

The convergence of social and philosophical inquiry film-history in this study of Lubitsch, Wilder, and von Stroheim will appeal to scholars of film, of German literature and culture, and of American cultural history. Separate chapters discuss each filmmaker and his movies. A glossary of technical terms and a selected filmography are included.

Marx and the Moving Image approaches cinema from a Marxist perspective. It argues that the supposed 'end of history', marked by the comprehensive triumph of capitalism and the 'end of cinema', calls for revisiting Marx's writings in order to analyse film theories, histories and practices.

At the heart of Christian theology lies a paradox unintelligible to other religions and to secular humanism: that in the person of Jesus, God became man, and suffered on the cross to effect humanity's salvation. In his dual nature as mortal and divinity, and unlike the impassable God of other monotheisms, Christ thus became accessible to artistic representation. Hence the figure of Jesus has haunted and compelled the imagination of artists and writers for 2,000 years. This was never more so than in the 20th Century, in a supposedly secular age, when the Jesus of popular fiction and film became perhaps more familiar than the Christ of the New Testament. In Re-Writing Jesus: Christ in 20th Century Fiction and Film Graham Holderness explores how writers and film-makers have sought to recreate Christ in work as diverse as Anthony Burgess's Man of Nazareth and Jim Crace's Quarantine, to Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ and Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. These works are set within a longer and broader history of 'Jesus novels' and 'Jesus films', a lineage traced back to Ernest Renan and George Moore, and explored both for their reflections of contemporary Christological debates, and their positive contributions to Christian theology. In its final chapter, the book draws on the insights of this tradition of Christological representation to creatively construct a new life of Christ, an original work of theological fiction that both subsumes the history of the form, and offers a startlingly new perspective on the biography of Christ.

Quart here extends her previous writings on what she terms the best narrative cinema: women-centered cinema' and feminist filmmaking. Quart addresses American, Western European, and Eastern European directors, closing with Third World examples. Arguing that independent filmmaking best serves the quest for a woman's voice and vision, Quart chronicles the survival of women directors. She traces a heritage of women directors inside the Hollywood system and beyond. . . . This excellent study . . . is] recommended for undergraduates in film and women's studies. "Choice"

The current level of activity among women directors is unequalled in the history of feature films. This unprecedented study examines major contemporary women directors of narrative feature film--their themes, their art, and the circumstances under which they work. Quart contends that women are creating a film language and film sensibility that are unique, strong, and--until now--unexplored. Her discussion centers on the ties between women directors, rather than on a survey of women who direct films. Beginning with the antecedents to today's burgeoning number of women directors, the study progresses to American women directors. Subsequent chapters focus on womenn directors in Western Europe and Eastern Europe, with some attention as well to Asia and Latin America.

Hollywood Remakes, Deleuze and the Grandfather Paradox explores the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze using the framework of Hollywood's current obsession with remaking and rebooting classic and foreign films. Through an analysis of cinematic repetition and difference, the book approaches remakes from a range of philosophical perspectives.

Fully updated and expanded throughout, this second edition of Film Theory: The Basics provides an accessible introduction to the key theorists, concepts, and debates that have shaped the study of moving images. The book examines film theory from its emergence in the early twentieth century to its study in the present day, and explores why film has drawn special attention as a medium, as a form of representation, and as a focal point in the rise of modern visual culture. It also emphasizes how film theory has developed as a historically contingent discourse, one that has evolved and changed in conjunction with different social, political, and intellectual factors. This second edition offers a detailed account of new theoretical directions at the forefront of film studies in the twenty-first century, and draws additional attention to how theory engages with today's most pressing questions about digital technologies, the environment, and racial justice. Complete with questions for discussion and a glossary of both key terms and key theorists, this book in an invaluable resource for those new to film theory and for anyone else interested in the history and significance of critical thinking in relation to the moving image.

Scott MacGillivray is the author of The Soundies Book (with Ted Okuda), Gloria Jean: A Little Bit of Heaven (with Jan MacGillivray), and Castle Films: A Hobbyist's Guide.

Scott MacGillivray's "Laurel & Hardy: From the Forties Forward" was the first book to fully chronicle the later careers of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, and everything that followed, from theatrical reissues to home videos. If you enjoyed the book the first time, you'll like this new edition even more. The author has expanded the original text by more than 50 percent, to include new insights, new information, and new discoveries in Laurel & Hardy history, never before published. (Which Laurel & Hardy comedy of the 1940s was withheld from release for almost four years? Which "forties" movie was their all-time biggest hit? Which movie was almost shut down by federal intervention?) You'll read much more about Stan and Ollie's unrealized projects, including five more feature films, two TV series, and two Broadway shows. A must-read for Stan and Ollie's fans everywhere, "Laurel & Hardy: From the Forties Forward" is better than ever

Praise for the first edition of "Laurel & Hardy: From the Forties Forward."..

"What a marvelous book I read it straight through, getting happier by the minute to think that more and more material is being set into history about the boys. The writing is so lucid - and that in this day of film books that aren't is high praise. Really wonderful "
- JOHN McCABE, Laurel & Hardy's authorized biographer

"Scott MacGillivray has accomplished something that most historians can only dream of doing: overturning the conventional wisdom... he rewrites the book on the movie-comedy team."
- BOSTON HERALD

"All the world's admirers of Laurel & Hardy will now forever be indebted to Scott MacGillivray for providing so much new information about two of the world's most beloved figures."
- STEVE ALLEN

"Displays a knowledge and affection for its subject that one would be hard pressed to find in most academic texts."
- CLASSIC IMAGES

"To write a book about screen performers as well covered as these two and still present a wealth of heretofore unpublished information is quite an accomplishment."
- FILM QUARTERLY

"MacGillivray takes great pains to provide the context necessary to reassess these films after so many years of knee-jerk dismissal and neglect... His book will remain the definitive study of the late years of the Laurel and Hardy phenomenon."
- ARNE FOGEL, Minnesota Public Radio

Film and Female Consciousness analyses three contemporary films that offer complex and original representations of women's thoughtfulness and individuality: In the Cut (2003), Lost in Translation (2003) and Morvern Callar (2002). Lucy Bolton compares these recent works with well-known and influential films that offer more familiar treatments of female subjectivity: Klute (1971), The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Marnie (1964). Considering each of the older, celebrated films alongside the recent, unconventional works illustrates how contemporary filmmaking techniques and critical practices can work together to create provocative depictions of on-screen female consciousness. Bolton's approach demonstrates how the encounter between the philosophy of Luce Irigaray and cinema can yield a fuller understanding of the fundamental relationship between film and philosophy. Furthermore, the book explores the implications of this approach for filmmakers and spectators, and suggests Irigarayan models of authorship and spectatorship that reinvigorate the notion of women's cinema.

"Women on the Edge re-envisions women's cinema as contemporary political practices by exploring the works of twelve filmmakers. Moving on from the 1970s feminist adage that the personal is political, Sharon Lin Tay argues that contemporary women's cinema must exceed the personal to be politically relevant and ethically cogent"--Provided by publisher.

Many studies of fictions of city life take the flneur as the characteristic metropolitan type and streets and plazas as definitive urban spaces. Looking at novels and films set in London and Paris from L'Assommoir to Nil By Mouth, this book shows that mass housing is equally central to images of the modern city.

The swelling flows of migration from Africa towards Europe have aroused interest not only in the socio-political consequences of the migrants' insistent appeals to 'fortress Europe' but also in the artistic integration of African migrants into the cultural world of Europe. While in recent years the creative output of Africans living in Europe has received attention from the media and in academia, little critical consideration has been given to African migrants' modes of narration and the manner in which these modes give expression to, or are an expression of, their creators' transcultural realities. "Transcultural Modernities: Narrating Africa in Europe" responds to this need for reflection by examining the manner in which migrants compose and negotiate their Euro-African affiliations in their narratives. The book brings together scholars in the fields of literary and art criticism, cultural studies, and anthropology for an extensive interdisciplinary exchange on the specific modes of narration displayed in Euro-African literatures, the visual arts, and cinema, as well as offering ethnographic case studies. The result is a wide range of reflections on how African artists, writers, and ordinary people living in Europe experience and explore their transcultural and/or postcolonial environments, and how their experiences and explorations in turn contribute to the construction of modern Euro-African life-worlds.

The "organic" is by now a venerable concept within aesthetics, architecture, and art history, but what might such a term mean within the spatialities and temporalities of film? By way of an answer, this concise and innovative study locates organicity in the work of Bela Tarr, the renowned Hungarian filmmaker and pioneer of the "slow cinema" movement. Through a wholly original analysis of the long take and other signature features of Tarr's work, author Thorsten Botz-Bornstein establishes compelling links between the seemingly remote spheres of film and architecture, revealing shared organic principles that emphasize the transcendence of boundaries.

This volume gets to the heart of what films mean to people on personal, political and commercial levels. Exploring value judgements that underpin social, academic and institutional practices, it examines the diverse forms of worth attributed to a range of international films in relation to taste, passion, morality and aesthetics.

A celebration of contemporary comedy which focuses on the trend for discomfort and the extreme, this title covers major hits of recent years from Borat, Little Britain and The Office.

Film noir may seem a familiar term to many, with its use of a complex narrative structure, flashbacks and voiceover narration, and with such archetypal characterisations as the femme fatale and private eye. But this introduction is not so much an account of what film noir is, but more an interrogation of the ways in which the term came to be applied to a particular group of American films of the 1940s and 1950s.Ian Brookes asks: 'What is film noir?' With this sharply focused question active throughout the book, students will benefit from an introductory text designed to provide a sophisticated treatment of the problems inherent in the category. This will be the first critical introduction to film noir which takes into account the complexity of the term and the difficulties of straightforward definition and classification.

This book is an original volume of essays that sheds new and critical light on current and emerging filmmaking trends and practices in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea. A timely and important contribution to existing scholarship in the field.

The aesthetics of frame theory form the basis of "Framing Shakespeare on Film." This groundbreaking work expands on the discussion of film constructivists in its claim that the spectacle of Shakespeare on film is a problem-solving activity.
Kathy Howlett demonstrates convincingly how viewers' expectations for understanding Shakespeare on film can be manipulated by the director's cinematic technique. Emphasizing that the successful film can transform Shakespeare's text while remaining rooted in Shakespearean conceptions, Howlett raises the question of how directors and audiences understand the genre of Shakespeare on film and reveals how the medium alters the patterns through which the audience views Shakespeare.