Standard Hollywood narrative movies prescribe linear narratives that cue the viewer to expect predictable outcomes and adopt a closed state of mind. There are, however, a small number of movies that, through the presentation of alternate narrative paths, open the mind to thoughts of choice and possibility. Through the study of several key movies for which this concept is central, such as Sliding Doors, Run Lola Run, Inglourious Basterds, and Rashomon, Nitzan Ben Shaul examines the causes and implications of optional thinking and how these movies allow for more open and creative possibilities. This book examines the methods by which standard narrative movies close down thinking processes and deliver easy pleasures to the viewer whilst demonstrating that this is not the only possibility and that optional thinking can be both stimulating and rewarding.

Most serious film books during the last twenty years have focused on theoretical issues, film history, or film analyses, leaving production to the side. This text, however, designed for beginning film production courses, fills that void, opening the production process to pertinent, argumentative notions and incorporating material from Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Lyotard, and Derrida, among others. Although Geuens covers screenwriting, lighting, staging, and framing, among other production issues, he avoids the strictly vocational or "professional" approach to film teaching currently applied to most production courses.

Geuens reevaluates what cinema could be, to revive its full powers and attend to the mystery of the creative process. To counter Hollywood's normative machinery, he suggests taking back from the professionals important notions they have arrogated for themselves but rarely act upon: artistry, passion, and engagement.

These essays trace the "femme fatale" across literature, visual culture and cinema, exploring the ways in which fatal femininity has been imagined in different cultural contexts and historical epochs, and moving from mythical women such as Eve, Medusa and the Sirens via historical figures such as Mata Hari to fatal women in contemporary cinema.

Stars and Masculinities in Contemporary Italian Cinema is the first book to explore contemporary male stars and cinematic constructions of masculinity in Italy. Uniting star analysis with a detailed consideration of the masculinities that are dominating current Italian cinema, the study addresses the supposed crisis of masculinity.

When a work of art shows an interest in its own status as a work of art-either by reference to itself or to other works-we have become accustomed to calling this move "meta." While scholars and critics have, for decades, acknowledged reflexivity in films, it is only in Metacinema, for the first time, that a group of leading and emerging film theorists join to enthusiastically debate the meanings and implications of the meta for cinema. In new essays on generative films, including Rear Window, 8 1/2, Holy Motors, Funny Games, Fight Club, and Clouds of Sils Maria, contributors chart, explore, and advance the ways in which metacinema is at once a mode of filmmaking and a heuristic for studying cinematic attributes. What results is not just an engagement with certain practices and concepts in widespread use in the movies (from Hollywood to global cinema, from documentary to the experimental and avant-garde), but also the development of a veritable and vital new genre of film studies. With more and more films expressing reflexivity, recursion, reference to other films, mise-en-abime, seriality, and exhibiting related intertextual and intermedial traits, the time is overdue for the kind of capacious yet nuanced critical study found in Metacinema.

Contrary to the assumption that Western and Eastern European economies and cinemas were very different from each other, they actually had much in common. After the Second World War both the East and the West adopted a mixed system, containing elements of both socialism and capitalism, and from the 1980s on the whole of Europe, albeit at an uneven speed, followed the neoliberal agenda. This book examines how the economic systems of the East and West impacted labor by focusing on the representation of work in European cinema. Using a Marxist perspective, it compares the situation of workers in Western and Eastern Europe as represented in both auteurist and popular films, including those of Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson, Jean-Luc Godard, Andrzej Wajda, DusanMakavejev, Jerzy Skolimowski, the Dardenne Brothers, Ulrich Seidl and many others.

Covering over 100 feature films in critical depth and detail, this reader provides an excellent introduction to American genre filmmaking since 1990. These previously unpublished essays by prominent film scholars each address a different film genre -- from science fiction to romance to '90s noir -- as well as the ways in which genre filmmaking as a whole has been changed by the new technologies and market forces that are shaping the future of cinema.

One of the peculiar aspects of recent American genre filmmaking is its apparent facelessness, its desire to subsume itself into the larger framework of genre cinema, and not to identify each film as a unique exemplar. What this book argues, among other things, is that the implicit message in contemporary genre films is rarely that which is signified by a film's external or even internal narrative structure. What drives the thematic and structural concerns of recent genre cinema is the recovery of initial investment, made all the more pressing by the fact that each film released theatrically now represents an investment of many millions of dollars.

Genre and Hollywood provides a comprehensive introduction to the study of genre. In this important new book, Steve Neale discusses all the major concepts, theories and accounts of Hollywood and genre, as well as the key genres which theorists have written about, from horror to the Western. He also puts forward new arguments about the importance of genre in understanding Hollywood cinema.
Neale takes issue with much genre criticism and genre theory, which has provided only a partial and misleading account of Hollywood's output. He calls for broader and more flexible conceptions of genre and genres, for more attention to be paid to the discourses and practices of Hollywood itself, for the nature and range of Hollywood's films to be looked at in more detail, and for any assessment of the social and cultural significance of Hollywood's genres to take account of industrial factors.
In detailed, revisionist accounts of two major genres - film noir and melodrama - Neale argues that genre remains an important and productive means of thinking about both New and old Hollywood, its history, its audiences and its films.

British Literature of the Blitz interrogates the patriotic, utopian ideal of the People's War by analyzing conflicted representations of class and gender in literature and film. Its subtitle - Fighting the People's War - describes how British citizens both united to fight Nazi Germany and questioned the nationalist ideology binding them together.

Literature and Film, Dispositioned looks to twentieth-century literature's encounter with film as a means to thinking about the locations of thought in literature and literature's location in the world. It includes readings of works by James Joyce, Henry James, and Samuel Beckett, whose Film (1965) forms a concluding focus.

This book breaks new ground in providing an in-depth critical assessment of cyborg cinema, arguing that it remains one of the most intriguing and provocative cycles to have emerged in contemporary screen culture. Tracing the cinematic cyborg's transition over the last two decades and evaluating the theoretical significance attributed to this figure, it asks what relevance the cyborg continues to have in terms of understanding human identity, as well as our relationship to technology and to one another.

With a political agenda foregrounding collaborative practice to promote ethical relations, these individually and joint written essays and interviews discuss dances often with visual art, theatre, film and music, drawing on continental philosophy to explore notions of space, time, identity, sensation, memory and ethics.

September 11th, 2001 remains a focal point of American consciousness, a site demanding ongoing excavation, a site at which to mark before and after "everything" changed. In ways both real and intangible the entire sequence of events of that day continues to resonate in an endlessly proliferating aftermath of meanings that continue to evolve. Presenting a collection of analyses by an international body of scholars that examines America's recent history, this book focuses on popular culture as a profound discursive site of anxiety and discussion about 9/11 and demystifies the day's events in order to contextualize them into a historically grounded series of narratives that recognizes the complex relations of a globalized world. Essays in Reframing 9/11 share a collective drive to encourage new and original approaches for understanding the issues both within and beyond the official political rhetoric of the events of the "The Global War on Terror" and issues of national security. >

After decades of neglect, the screenplay is finally being recognized as a form that deserves serious critical analysis. This book for the first time combines detailed study of the theory and practice of screenwriting with new approaches to criticism and original studies of individual texts.

In the wake of the remarkable success of Film Noir Reader, this new collection further explores a genre of limitless fascination -- and one that continues to inspire and galvanise the latest generation of film-makers. Again heavily illustrated, with close to 150 stills, Film Noir Reader 2 is organised much like the earlier volume. It begins with 'More Seminal Essays', including a New York Times attack on crime pictures, written more than half a century ago, before the French had even given the genre its name; a look at its early development by the noted French director Claude Chabrol; and an analysis, by the American critic Stephen Farber, of how film noir reflects the violence and 'Bitch Goddess' values of contemporary society.

The Star Trek franchise reflects, conveys, and comments upon the key philosophical tensions of the modern era. This book details the manner in which these tensions and controversies are manifested in Star Trek across its iterations, arguing that Star Trek offers an indispensable contribution to our understanding of politics in the modern era.

There's a Body in the Window Seat! is a detailed history of one of the most beloved American murder-mysteries and comedies, Arsenic and Old Lace. Actor, director, and playwright Charles Dennis investigates the mystery behind the play: how did a true-life crime in Connecticut turn into a comedy? And who are the real writers that deserve credit for its long-lasting success? Dennis brings an insider's view to Joseph Kesselring's attempts to write Arsenic and Old Lace and how producers had to step in to save the play from his heavy hand. He also follows the actors, both on the stage and on the screen, as they handle the demands of the roles and behind-the-scenes relationships. Why didn't Boris Karloff recreate his stage role, even though Jean Adair and John Alexander did? Why did Cary Grant hate his performance in Arsenic-was it because Frank Capra deceived him or because of costume designer Orry Kelly? And why did the movie never receive Academy Award consideration? Learn the answers to these intriguing questions and more in There's a Body in the Window Seat!

This book examines eleven horror films in-depth and their relationships to Romantic Gothic literary conventions--mainly, but not solely, found in works dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. To illustrate the use of these conventions in film, Michael Sevastakis analyzes shots from scenes and sequences of all films discussed. Due to the large quantity of horror films produced during this period, the films in this book have been selected on the basis of their supernatural and preternatural content, and upon four conventions predicated on fictional literary models dealing with the villain-hero as "Necrophile," "Modern Prometheus," "Symbol of Destiny," and "Tormented Hero." These four sections comprise eleven chapters; in addition, there is an introduction and conclusion. Some of the movies that are discussed include Tod Browning's Dracula (1931), and Devil Doll (1936), Karl Freund's The Mummy (1932), and Mad Love (1935), James Whale's Frankenstein (1931), and The Invisible Man (1933), Erle Kenton's Island of Lost Souls (1933), Ruben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932), abd Lambert Hillyer's Dracula's Daughter (1936).

Film, Memory and the Legacy of the Spanish Civil War reconstructs the legacy of the Spanish Civil War through an investigation of the anti-Franco guerrilla of the 1940s and 1950s. The book explores the memory of Spanish resistance fighters and their civilian supporters, concentrating on their cinematic representations in films and documentaries released between 1953 and 2010. This research fits within the emerging comparative field of Memory Studies, which has grown considerably in the last two decades. Along those lines, the efforts of civil society to understand and come to terms with the past have gathered momentum in twenty-first century Spain. One visible outcome of this determination has been the recovery of corpses from unmarked graves, which has been accompanied by a renewed interest in the cultural, historical, legal and archaeological traces of the millions who suffered under Franco's protracted dictatorship. This book sheds light especially on the silent roles played by women and children in the struggle against fascism.

Byronic Heroes in Nineteenth-Century Women's Writing and Screen Adaptation charts a new chapter in the changing fortunes of a unique cultural phenomenon. This book examines the afterlives of the Byronic hero through the work of nineteenth-century women writers and screen adaptations of their fiction. It is a timely reassessment of Byron's enduring legacy during the nineteenth century and beyond, focusing on the charged and unstable literary dialogues between Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot and a Romantic icon whose presence takes centre stage in recent screen adaptations of their most celebrated novels. The broad interdisciplinary lens employed in this book concentrates on the conflicted rewritings of Byron's poetry, his 'heroic' protagonists, and the cult of Byronism in nineteenth-century novels from Pride and Prejudice to Middlemarch, and extends outwards to the reappearance of Byronic heroes on film and in television series over the last two decades.

Petrocinema presents a collection of essays concerning the close relationship between the oil industry and modern media-especially film. Since the early 1920s, oil extracting companies such as Standard Oil, Royal Dutch/Shell, ConocoPhillips, or Statoil have been producing and circulating moving images for various purposes including research and training, safety, process observation, or promotion. Such industrial and sponsored films include documentaries, educationals, and commercials that formed part of a larger cultural project to transform the image of oil exploitation, creating media interfaces that would allow corporations to coordinate their goals with broader cultural and societal concerns. Falling outside of the domain of conventional cinema, such films firmly belong to an emerging canon of sponsored and educational film and media that has developed over the past decade. Contributing to this burgeoning field of sponsored and educational film scholarship, chapters in this book bear on the intersecting cultural histories of oil extraction and media history by looking closely at moving image imaginaries of the oil industry, from the earliest origins or "spills" in the 20th century to today's post industrial "petromelancholia."

The Postfeminist Biopic explores the influence of postfeminist culture on cinematic representations of female biographies. While earlier research has described the subgenres of the classical female biopic and the feminist biopic, Polaschek proposes a third subgenre, the postfeminist biopic, which has appeared as part of a broader trend of reviving and reconfiguring classical genre forms aimed at women. The book explores the conventions of the postfeminist biopic through a close analysis of four films that represent the lives of women who are established members of the second-wave feminist canon: Sylvia (Christine Jeffs, 2003), which depicts the life of the American poet Sylvia Plath; Frida (Julie Taymor, 2002), about the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo; The Hours (Stephen Daldry, 2002), which includes a biographical narrative about the English novelist and critic Virginia Woolf; and Becoming Jane (Julian Jarrold, 2006), a fictionalized interpretation of the coming of age of the English novelist Jane Austen.

How are Buddhists and Buddhism represented in contemporary films? Are these mediated sources accurate representations of the Buddhist tradition? What kinds of Buddhisms and Buddhists are missing in these films and why?"Silver Screen Buddha" is the first book to explore the representation of Buddhism, race, and gender in contemporary films directed by both Asian and non-Asian directors. It examines the cinematic encounter with Buddhism that has flourished in Asia and in the West in the past century - from images of Shangri-La in Frank Capra's 1937 "Lost Horizon" to Kim Ki-Duk's 2003 international box office success, "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter....and Spring." The book helps readers see that representations of Buddhism in Asia and in the West are often fraught with political, gendered, and racist undertones that are missed and overlooked by viewers. "Silver Screen Buddha" also draws significant attention to the ordinary lay Buddhism that is often overlooked in popular film. Readers are introduced to some of the key Buddhist texts and doctrines that are implied in Buddhist films yet not explicitly explained, helping them to ascertain the difference between a fictionalized, commodified, and exoticized Buddhism and a more realistic representation of the tradition that includes the laity and, in particular, women and Asian/Asian Americans. The book also engages in a reimagining of Buddhism that expands the popular understanding of Buddhism as the realm of meditating monks and nuns to include an everyday lay Buddhism.