Engineering Hollywood tells the story of the formation of the Hollywood studio system not as the product of a genius producer, but as an industry that brought together creative practices and myriad cutting-edge technologies in ways that had never been seen before. Using extensive archival research, this book examines the role of technicians, engineers, and trade organizations in creating a stable technological infrastructure on which the studio system rested for decades. Here, the studio system is seen as a technology-dependent business with connections to the larger American industrial world. By focusing on the role played by technology, we see a new map of the studio system beyond the backlots of Los Angeles and the front offices in New York. In this study, Hollywood includes the labs of industrial manufacturers, the sales routes of independent firms, the garages of tinkerers, and the clubhouses of technicians' societies. Rather than focusing on the technical improvements in any particular motion picture tool, this book centers on the larger systems and infrastructures for dealing with technology in this creative industry. Engineering Hollywood argues that the American industry was stabilized and able to dominate the motion picture field for decades through collaboration over technologies of everyday use. Hollywood's relationship to its essential technology was fundamentally one of interdependence and cooperation-with manufacturers, trade organizations, and the competing studios. As such, Hollywood could be defined as an industry by participation in a closed system of cooperation that allowed a select group of producers and manufacturers to dominate the motion picture business for decades.

Many of our favorite films began as plays--some as well known as Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," and some not so well known as "You've Got Mail"'s origin, a 1937 play "Parfumerie" by Miklos Laszlo. "Video Versions" identifies nearly 300 films and their theatrical origins, providing readers with an overview of the films and highlighting similarities and differences to the source plays. Perfect for teachers, students, and anyone interested in theater and film, it is the most complete resource available for video versions of plays.

Each entry provides: the original play's title, author, and year of publication; the name of the film, year of production, director and adapter; the main cast and the characters they play; running time and rating if available. Following a plot summary, a critical analysis provides the similarities and differences of the play and film, including character and plot changes, setting, missing or added scenes, special film techniques, and behind-the-scenes information such as who turned down or lost particular parts when the play was adapted to film. A short list of sources for further reading follows each entry. Information about contacting distributors--for obtaining the films--is included in the introduction and an extensive index completes the volume.

With reference to traditional film theory and frameworks drawn from fields such as screenwriting studies and anthropology, this book explores the challenges and opportunities for both practitioners and viewers offered by the 360-degree storytelling form. It focuses on cinematic virtual reality (CVR), a format that involves immersive, high quality, live action or computer-generated imagery (CGI) that can be viewed through head mounted display (HMD) goggles or via online platforms such as YouTube. This format has surged in popularity in recent years due to the release of affordable high quality omnidirectional (360-degree) cameras and consumer grade HMDs. The book interrogates four key concepts for this emerging medium: immersion, presence, embodiment and proximity through an analysis of innovative case studies and with reference to practitioner interviews. In doing so, it highlights the specificity of the format and provides a critical account of practitioner approaches to the concept development, writing and realisation of short narrative CVR works. The book concludes with an account of the author's practice-led research into the form, providing a valuable example of creative practice in the field of immersive media.

This volume explains how Star Trek allows viewers to comprehend significant aspects of Georg Hegel's concept the absolute, the driving force behind history. Gonzalez, with wit and wisdom, explains how Star Trek exhibits central elements of the absolute. He describes how themes and ethos central to the show display the concept beautifully. For instance, the show posits that people must possess the correct attitudes in order to bring about an ideal society: a commitment to social justice; an unyielding commitment to the truth; and a similar commitment to scientific, intellectual discovery. These characteristics serve as perfect embodiments of Hegel's conceptualization, and Gonzalez's analysis is sharp and exacting.

Certain films seem to encapsulate perfectly the often abstract ethical situations that confront the media, from truth-telling and sensationalism to corporate control and social responsibility. Using these movies--including "Ace in the Hole," "All the President's Men," "Network," and "Twelve Angry Men"--as texts, authors Howard Good and Michael Dillon demonstrate that, when properly framed and contextualized, movies can be a powerful lens through which to examine media practices.

Moreover, cinema can present human moral conduct for evaluation and analysis more effectively than a traditional case study can. By presenting ethical dilemmas and theories within a dramatic framework, "Media Ethics Goes to the Movies" offers a unique perspective on what it means for media professionals to be both technically competent and morally informed.

This book explores how photography and documentary film have participated in the representation of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and its aftermath. This in-depth analysis of professional and amateur photography and the work of Rwandan and international filmmakers offers an insight into not only the unique ability of images to engage with death, memory and the need for evidence, but also their helplessness and inadequacy when confronted with the enormity of the event. Focusing on a range of films and photographs, the book tests notions of truth, evidence, record and witnessing - so often associated with documentary practice - in the specific context of Rwanda and the wider representational framework of African conflict and suffering. Death, Image, Memory is an inquiry into the multiple memorial and evidentiary functions of images that transcends the usual investigations into whether photography and documentary film can reliably attest to the occurrence and truth of an event.

First published in 2002, Marek Haltof's seminal volume was the first comprehensive English-language study of Polish cinema, providing a much-needed survey of one of Europe's most distinguished-yet unjustly neglected-film cultures. Since then, seismic changes have reshaped Polish society, European politics, and the global film industry. This thoroughly revised and updated edition takes stock of these dramatic shifts to provide an essential account of Polish cinema from the nineteenth century to today, covering such renowned figures as Kieslowski, Skolimowski, and Wajda along with vastly expanded coverage of documentaries, animation, and television, all set against the backdrop of an ever-more transnational film culture.

Parody is the least appreciated of all film comedy genres and receives little serious attention, even among film fans. This study elevates parody to mainstream significance. A historical overview places the genre in context, and a number of basic parody components, which better define the genre and celebrate its value, are examined. Parody is differentiated from satire, and the two parody types, traditional and reaffirmation, are explained. Chapters study the most spoofed genre in American parody history, the Western; pantheon members of American Film Comedy such as The Marx Brothers, W. C. Fields, Mae West, and Laurel and Hardy; pivotal parody artists, Bob Hope and Woody Allen; Mel Brooks, whose name is often synonymous with parody; and finally, parody in the 1990s. Films discussed include Destry Rides Again (1939), The Road to Utopia (1945), My Favorite Brunette (1947), The Paleface (1948), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), Hot Shots Part Deux (1993) and Scream (1996).

This examination of parody will appeal to scholars and students of American film and film comedy, as well as those interested in the specific comedians discussed and the Western genre. Gehring's work will also find a place in American pop culture studies and sociological studies of the period from the 1920s to the 1990s. The book is carefully documented and includes a selected bibliography and filmography.

This book offers a new approach to film studies by showing how our brains use our interpretations of various other films in order to understand Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. Borrowing from behavioral psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, author Robert J. Belton seeks to explain differences of critical opinion as inevitable. The book begins by introducing the hermeneutic spiral, a cognitive processing model that categorizes responses to Vertigo's meaning, ranging from wide consensus to wild speculations of critical "outliers." Belton then provides an overview of the film, arguing that different interpreters literally see and attend to different things. The fourth chapter builds on this conclusion, arguing that because people see different things, one can force the production of new meanings by deliberately drawing attention to unusual comparisons. The latter chapters outline a number of such comparisons-including avant-garde films and the works of Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch-to shed new light on the meanings of Vertigo.

The novel and the film are two modes of representation based on different aesthetic tools, but both are capable of articulating narrative discourses. In "Spanish Film and the Postwar Novel," author Norberto Minguez-Arranz offers a comparative analysis of the methods and mechanisms with which the novel and the film build their stories. A theoretical framework that that puts into perspective such concepts as specificity, representation, and point of view gives way to a comparative study of five Spanish postwar novels and their respective film adaptations: "The Family of Pascual Duarte," "Time of Silence," "The Hive," "El Bosque Animado," and "Nuevas Amistades."

Revealing the existence of cinematic features of the novel and literary features of the cinema, the author examines the ways in which this interdependence has become a permanent aspect of both arts, with mutual influences and a great deal of nonexclusivity of properties. By using this particular time and place as his locus of analytical thought, Minguez-Arranz provides an invaluable examination of two of this century's major creative forms.

Reprojecting the City takes a radical new look at the cinematic city through a queer perspective from the global south. Placing centre-stage the intersection of dissident sexuality with capitalism, globalisation and urban development, it shows how recent Latin American films rework our understandings of urban space and disrupt 'Western' imaginations of city life and sexuality in the majority world. Fusing a queer perspective with a range of other critical approaches, Hoff takes current debates beyond the now well-trodden narratives of dependency and subalternity to a new space in which the so-called 'periphery' is relocated back to the centre of things. Latin American cinematic cities, emerge not merely as marginal spaces of prejudice, discrimination, exclusion and violence also ones of hope, empowerment and productive possibility firmly implicated in the global (re)production of sexualities and sexual discourses.

Examines portrayals of plants and landscapes in recent German novels and films, addressing the contemporary forms of racism, nationalism, and social and ecological injustice that they expose. Plants, Places, and Power is a study of plants and landscapes in and beyond contemporary German-language literature and film. Stories and images of plants and landscapes in cultural productions are key sites for exposing the violent legacies of German colonialism and Nazism and for addressing contemporary forms of racism, nationalism, social and ecological injustice, and gender inequity. The novels and films discussed in this book address these key political issues in contemporary Europe and propose alternative ways for people to live together on this planet by formulating more inclusive and sustainable concepts of belonging. The book has two main objectives: to offer new approaches to contemporary literature and film from an intersectional, ecological perspective, and to form a canon. All of the works focused on, from Mo Asumang's documentary film Roots Germania (2007) through Faraz Shariat's Futur Drei (2020) and from Yoko Tawada's novel Das nackte Auge (2004) to Sasa Stanisic's Herkunft (2019), are by female artists, artists of color, artists who have experienced forced displacement, and/or queer artists. In five chapters, Maria Stehle reads artworks in reference to ecological systems, develops forms of eco- and social criticism based on art, and intertwines ecological and critical thinking with questions of form, affect, and aesthetics.

Perturbatory narration is a heuristic concept, applicable both quantitatively and qualitatively to a specific type of complex narratives for which narratology has not yet found an appropriate classification. This new term refers to complex narrative strategies that produce intentionally disturbing effects such as surprise, confusion, doubt or disappointment - effects that interrupt or suspend immersion in the aesthetic reception process. The initial task, however, is to indicate what narrative conventions are, in fact, questioned, transgressed, or given new life by perturbatory narration. The key to our modeling lies in its combination of individual procedures of narrative strategies hitherto regarded as unrelated. Their interplay has not yet attracted scholarly attention. The essays in this volume present a wide range of contemporary films from Canada, the USA, Mexico, Argentina, Spain, France and Germany. The perturbatory narration concept enables to typify and systematize moments of disruption in fictional texts, combining narrative processes of deception, paradox and/or empuzzlement and to analyse these perturbing narrative strategies in very different filmic texts.

In 1888 the name Jack the Ripper entered public consciousness with the brutal murders of women in the East End of London. The murderer was never caught, yet film and television depicts a killer with a recognisable costume, motive and persona. This book examines the origins of the screen presentation of the four key elements associated with the murders - Jack the Ripper, the victims, the detective and Whitechapel. Nineteenth-century history, art and literature, psychoanalytical theories of Freud and Jung and feminist film theory are all used to deconstruct the representation of Jack the Ripper on screen.

Philosophy, Myth and Epic Cinema looks at the power of cinema in creating ideas that inspire our culture. Sylvie Magerstadt discusses the relationship between art, illusion and reality, a theme that has been part of philosophical debate for centuries. She argues that with the increase in use of digital technologies in modern cinema, this debate has entered a new phase. She discusses the notion of illusions as a system of stories and values that inspire a culture similar to other grand narratives, such as mythology or religion. Cinema thus becomes the postmodern "mythmaking machine" par excellence in a world that finds it increasingly difficult to create unifying concepts and positive illusions that can inspire and give hope. The author draws on the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Siegfried Kracauer, and Gilles Deleuze to demonstrate the relevance of continental philosophy to a reading of mainstream Hollywood cinema. The book argues that our longing for illusion is particularly strong in times of crisis, illustrated through an exploration of the recent revival of historic and epic myths in Hollywood cinema, including films such as Troy, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and Clash of the Titans.

This fascinating book begins with a new definition of the gangster film and a challenging exploration of the Hong Kong and Hollywood screen traditions.Illuminates the way gangster films deal with the ambiguities of modern life, correcting the notion that this genre is inconsequential sensationalism Contends that both American and Hong Kong gangster films are against-the-grain reactions to the central fable of modern democracies that promise immigrant (and other) outsiders that they can become social insiders Clarifies crucial and fascinating differences between American and Hong Kong approaches to enjoining the discussion of immigrant histories by placing them in counterpoint with each otherDraws on a range of American films, ranging from "Public Enemy" and "Scarface" to "Gangs of New York," "Goodfellas," and "The Godfather" Explores a number of Hong Kong's 21st century gangster films, including Andrew Lau's great trilogy, " Infernal Affairs, " and" Election "and" Election 2, " directed by Hong Kong auteur Johnnie To Concludes with an exclusive interview with "The Sopranos'" creator, David Chase

The sex goddess's seemingly endless power to influence and fascinate, to achieve in a sense her own self-reproduction through many decades of "re-makeovers" reveals her positioning in American culture as not only a lasting image but also as a potentially powerful and subversive force. The sex goddess is often thought by feminist film theorists to be little more than a projection of the male imaginary. However, this book makes a necessary correction to this trend by demonstrating how the actresses performing the role of sex goddess in fact use the feminine imaginary to create their own agency. Through their performance of "hyper" femininity, and with their seductive power, they exert control not only over their filmic narrative "targets of seduction" but their viewers as well. The ability to hold their objects of seduction in such thrall suggests that the image of the sex goddess possesses a power far more subversive than what has been previously explored; in fact, to date there has not yet been a critical study of the sex goddess in film. Cinema becomes a place where the sex goddess's designation as sex itself can further suggest her bodily signification as a whole discourse on sex outside of her cinematic representation, thus loading her body to be read almost entirely in terms of sex and its corresponding contemporary social thought. During the period of Classical Hollywood Cinema, the construct of the sex goddess warrants especial attention because of what this study can reveal in broad terms about cultural ideas of feminine sexuality, American cinema, and visual culture. In the first critical study of the sex goddess in film, Jessica Hope Jordan illustrates how Jean Harlow uses her sexualized body to "affect" and seduce viewers away from any primary identification with those characters and their plotlines that are supposed to lead the film, to identifying instead with the kind of sexual empowerment and self-possession her characters consistently display. Linking the idea of sexual empowerment to the filmic and public celebration of hyper-feminine sexuality, the book additionally covers previous feminist discussions of Mae West's performances as "feminist camp" to argue that West sought to both celebrate and embody for women viewers what she viewed as cultural ideals of femininity and women's sexuality. With Lana Turner and the "cinematic code," the book considers the many problems inherent in both the filmic and public celebration of hyper-feminine sexuality in relation to censorship and considers the effects of the Hays Code on hyper-feminine sexuality as depicted in film noir. The book also importantly presents the first critical discussion of the actress Jayne Mansfield, suggesting that her 1950s open acceptance, celebration, and public promotion of her feminine sexuality, both onscreen and off, makes her not only a precursor of the more sexually liberated 60s, but also, like the other actresses discussed here, a kind of prescient performance artist, even theorist, of feminine sexuality in particular, and cultural ideas about sexuality more generally. Beyond recouping her image as feminist, the book demonstrates how the kind of desire aroused by the sex goddess, a desire which remains endlessly suspended, works as a supreme example of the aesthetic apparatus of cinema itself. This is an important book for inclusion in all film, film history, film theory, gender and sexuality studies, women's studies, and American studies collections.