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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Films, cinema
Timely and ground-breaking, Love in Western Film and Television
discloses surprising, and often disturbing, information about the
complicated (and often conflicted) emotional frontiers found in
Western films released after the Second World War. Fourteen essays
by authors from around the world offer new insights to those
interested in the American character and the areas of culture,
gender, film, and American studies.
Until now, there hasn't been one single-volume authoritative
reference work on the history of women in film, highlighting nearly
every woman filmmaker from the dawn of cinema including Alice Guy
(France, 1896), Chantal Akerman (Belgium), Penny Marshall (U.S.),
and Sally Potter (U.K.). Every effort has been made to include
every kind of woman filmmaker: commercial and mainstream,
avant-garde, and minority, and to give a complete cross-section of
the work of these remarkable women. Scholars and students of film,
popular culture, Women's Studies, and International Studies, as
well as film buffs will learn much from this work. The Dictionary
covers the careers of nearly 200 women filmmakers, giving vital
statistics where available, listings of films directed by these
women, and selected bibliographies for further reading. This is a
one-volume, "one-stop" resource, a comprehensive, up-to-date guide
that is absolutely essential for any course offering an overview or
survey of women's cinema. It offers not only all available
statistics, but critical evaluations of the filmmakers' work as
well. In order to keep the length manageable, this volume focuses
on women who direct fictional narrative films, with occasional
forays into the area of the documentary and is limited to film
production rather than video production.
Since 2001, Trevor Lynch's witty, pugnacious, and profound film
essays and reviews have developed a wide following among cinephiles
and White Nationalists alike. Lynch deals frankly with the
anti-white bias and Jewish agenda of many mainstream films, but he
is even more interested in discerning positive racial messages and
values, sometimes in the most unlikely places. Trevor Lynch's White
Nationalist Guide to the Movies gathers together some of his best
essays and reviews covering 32 movies, including his startling
philosophical readings of Pulp Fiction, The Dark Knight Trilogy,
and Mishima; his racialist interpretations of The Lord of the Rings
and Gangs of New York; his masculinist readings of The Twilight
Saga and A History of Violence; his insights into the Jewish nature
of the superhero genre occasioned by Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy
movies; and his hilarious demolitions of The Matrix Trilogy, The
Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series, and the detritus of Quentin
Tarantino's long decline. Trevor Lynch's White Nationalist Guide to
the Movies establishes its author as a leading cultural theorist
and critic of the North American New Right. "Trevor Lynch provides
us with a highly literate, insightful, and even philosophical
perspective on film-one that will send you running to the video
rental store for a look at some very worthwhile movies-although he
is also quite willing to tell you what not to see. He sees movies
without the usual blinders. He is quite aware that because
Hollywood is controlled by Jews, one must typically analyze movies
for their propaganda value in the project of white dispossession.
Trevor Lynch's collection is a must read for anyone attempting to
understand the deep undercurrents of the contemporary culture of
the West." - Kevin MacDonald, author of The Culture of Critique,
from the Foreword "Hollywood has been deconstructing the white race
for nearly a century. Now Trevor Lynch is fighting back,
deconstructing Hollywood from a White Nationalist point of view.
But these essays are not just of interest to White Nationalists.
Lynch offers profound and original insights into more than 30
films, including Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, Quentin
Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy, and Martin
Scorsese's Gangs of New York. These essays combine a cultural and
philosophical sophistication beyond anything in film studies today
with a lucid, accessible, and entertaining prose style. Every
serious cineaste needs to read this book." - Edmund Connelly "The
Hollywood movie may be the greatest vehicle of deception ever
invented, and the passive white viewer is its primary target. Yet
White Nationalist philosopher and film critic Trevor Lynch
demonstrates that truth is to be found even in this unlikeliest of
places. If American audiences could learn the kind of critical
appreciation Mr. Lynch demonstrates for them, their seductive
enemies in Tinseltown wouldn't stand a chance." - F. Roger Devlin,
author of Alexandre Kojeve and the Outcome of Modern Thought
"Trevor Lynch's White Nationalist Guide to the Movies is not some
collection of vein-popping rants about Hollywood's political
agendas. It's a thoughtful and engaging examination of ideas in
popular films from a perspective you won't find in your local
newspaper or in Entertainment Weekly. Lynch has chosen films
that-in many cases-he actually enjoyed, and playfully teased out
the New Right themes that mainstream reviewers can only afford to
address with a careful measure of scorn. How many trees have been
felled to print all of the Marxist, feminist, minority-pandering
'critiques' of contemporary celluloid over the past fifty years?
Isn't it about time we read an explicitly white review of The
Fellowship of the Ring, or Traditionalist take on take on The Dark
Knight?" - Jack Donovan, author of The Way of Men
Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the
1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly
expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable,
high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
"The New York Times" bestseller that follows the making of five
films at a pivotal time in Hollywood history
In the mid-1960s, westerns, war movies, and blockbuster musicals
like "Mary Poppins" swept the box office. The Hollywood studio
system was astonishingly lucrative for the few who dominated the
business. That is, until the tastes of American moviegoers
radically- and unexpectedly-changed. By the Oscar ceremonies of
1968, a cultural revolution had hit Hollywood with the force of a
tsunami, and films like "Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Guess
Who's Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night," and box-office
bomb "Doctor Doolittle" signaled a change in Hollywood-and America.
And as an entire industry changed and struggled, careers were
suddenly made and ruined, studios grew and crumbled, and the
landscape of filmmaking was altered beyond all recognition.
These interviews cover the career to date of Neil Jordan (b. 1950),
easily the most renowned filmmaker working in contemporary Irish
cinema. Jordan began as a fiction writer, winning the distinguished
Guardian Fiction Prize for his very first book of short stories,
Night in Tunisia, in 1976. His film debut was made during the peak
of the Troubles in Ireland, and he addresses the sectarian violence
head-on in his first outing, Angel (1982). This film also marked
Jordan's long-time association with the actor Stephen Rea who has
appeared in nine of the director's films and is often seen as
Jordan's doppelganger. Angel was awarded the London Evening
Standard Most Promising Newcomer Award, the first of many
accolades. These include the London Critics Circle Award for Best
Film and Best Director for The Company of Wolves (1984), Best Film
at the BAFTAs, as well as an Academy Award for Best Screenwriter
for The Crying Game (1992), Best Film at the Venice Film Festival
for Michael Collins (1996), Best Director at the Berlin Film
Festival for The Butcher Boy (1997), and a BAFTA for Best
Screenplay for The End of the Affair (1999). The director continued
to publish works of fiction as well as writing the scripts for most
of his feature films, and in 2011 he produced a highly regarded
novel, Mistaken, set in Jordan's home turf of Dublin and featuring
characters who are duplicates of one another as well as mysterious
arrivals and departures at the home of the Irish author of Dracula,
Bram Stoker. The filmmaker has most recently produced, written, and
directed the television series The Borgias (starring Jeremy Irons)
and completed his fourteenth feature film, Byzantium, the story of
a mother and daughter vampire duo, recalling his earlier work on
Interview with the Vampire (1994). Carole Zucker, Charlotte,
Vermont, is professor of cinema at Concordia University in Montreal
and an instructor of acting workshops at the Flynn Center for
Education in Burlington, Vermont. Her previous books include The
Cinema of Neil Jordan: Dark Carnival and In the Company of Actors:
Reflections on the Craft of Acting.
Rock Hudson rose to stardom as the virile hero of adventure films,
and he then gained a flurry of female fans by starring in
melodramas, like Magnificent Obsession. He earned an Oscar
nomination for his role in Giant, starred in successful romantic
comedies, and had a productive television and stage career. This
book provides full information about his many performances and
charts his life and career up to his death from AIDS. Rock Hudson
was a movie giant, one of the biggest stars Hollywood ever
produced. He gained early fame as the romantic hero of adventure
films and melodramas such as Magnificent Obsession (1954). He then
tackled serious drama in Giant (1956), for which he earned an
Academy Award nomination. With the success of Pillow Talk (1959),
he entered a new genre for which he would become best known-the sex
comedy. He also had a successful stage and television career. This
book charts Rock Hudson's rise as a celebrity until his death from
AIDS. A biography opens the volume, followed by chapters which
chronicle his work in film, television, radio, and the stage. Each
chapter contains descriptions of Hudson's individual performances,
with entries providing cast and credit information, plot summaries,
excerpts from reviews, and critical commentary. The volume also
includes a listing of Hudson's awards and an annotated bibliography
of additional sources of information.
Mediating Memory in the Museum is a contribution to an emerging
field of research which is situated at the interface between memory
studies and museum studies. It highlights the role of museums in
the proliferation of the so-called memory boom as well as the
influence of memory discourses on international trends in museum
cultures. By looking at a range of museums in Germany, Britain,
France and Belgium, which address a diverse spectrum of topics such
as migration, difficult and dark heritage, war, slavery and the
GDR, Arnold-de Simine outlines the paradigm shifts in exhibiting
practices associated with the transformation of traditional history
museums and heritage sites into 'spaces of memory' over the past
thirty years. She probes the political and ethical claims of new
museums and maps the relevance of key concepts such as 'vicarious
trauma', 'secondary witnessing', 'empathic unsettlement',
'prosthetic memory' and 'reflective nostalgia' in the museum
landscape.
Pop music stars in many of the most exciting and successful British
films--from "Performance" to "Trainspotting," from "A Hard Day's
Night" to H"uman Traffic." Other films using pop music might be
more obscure but include many demonstrating a boldness and
imagination rarely matched in other areas of British cinema.
Pop artists (David Bowie, Cliff Richard, Spice Girls, Patsy Kensit,
Sex Pistols) could be said to be captured at their most iconic on
celluloid. And of course there are the rare but prized cameos from
a huge variety of other musicians and their songs in the most
unexpected of places. This book tells the story and records the
facts of the pop-film relationship decade by decade. It is the most
systematic guide to where and how pop appears in British
cinema.
"Pop in British Cinema" includes:
* Decade by decade commentary and systematic listings of films with
pop music
* Comprehensive referencing of all British feature films using
music from the 50s to the end of the century
* Illustrations and descriptions of the changing ways of using pop
in British film
* Listings of "band" movies and indexes to musicians, directors,
and film titles
For researchers and the curious alike this is an easy and
fascinating reference source. It represents both a first history of
pop music in British cinema and a mine of trivia questions for
music and film buffs of all descriptions.
The Frankenstein narrative is one of cinema's most durable, and
it is often utilized by the studio system and the most renegade
independents alike to reveal our deepest aspirations and greatest
anxieties. The films have concerned themselves with demarcations of
gender, race, and technology, and this new study aims to critique
the more traditional interpretations of both the narrative and its
sustained popularity. From James Whale's "Frankenstein" (1931)
through Kenneth Branagh's "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" (1994), the
story remains a nuanced and ultimately ambivalent one and is
discussed here in all of its myriad terms: aesthetic, cultural,
psychological, and mythic.
Beginning with an examination of the narrative's origins in the
myth of the birth of Dionysus from the thigh of Zeus, "The
Cinematic Rebirths of Frankenstein" goes on to consider each of the
filM's many incarnations, from the Universal horror films of the
thirties through the British Hammer series and beyond. Moving
easily between the scholarly and the popular, the book employs both
primary texts-including scripts, posters, and documentation of
production histories-and a rigorous, scholarly examination of the
many implications of this often-misunderstood subgenre of horror
cinema.
The 1980s. A time of fear: fear of the unknown, fear of your
neighbours, fear of drugs, fear of sex, fear of strangers, fear of
videos, and the very real fear that the world would end at any
moment in an awful, and very sudden, nuclear attack. However, in
those times of turmoil and worry, there was a comfort that soothed
the mind, and acted as a quiet balm: action movies. Video shops
were bursting at the seams with rampant gunfire, sex, drugs, rock,
roll, cars on fire, people on fire, guns, bombs, and people dressed
in army fatigues (and that was just the staff). Heroes were born
shrouded in fire and violent revenge, they were not only armed with
guns, but also red-hot quips, that served as a muscly arm around
the shoulder, and a wink that everything was going to be okay. So
thank you Arnold, Sylvester, Sigourney, Bruce, Eddie, Charles,
Patrick, Mel, Chuck and everyone else that made it happen. You
saved the world, in your own inimitable way. Join John Rain, the
author of the critically-acclaimed Thunderbook: The World of Bond
According to Smersh Pod, as he examines a choice selection of the
greatest action movies from the decade when the explosion was king.
Imaginary beasts have figured prominently in literary works ever
since the ancient world, when these myths were first formulated.
But the nineteenth century witnessed the rise of science, the
discovery of geological findings that challenged the biblical myth
of creation, and the birth of Darwin's theory of evolution. Since
then, monsters have evolved from supernatural creatures to natural
ones endowed with exceptional size, strength, or intelligence. This
book explores both literary and cinematic texts that are especially
explicit in their Darwinian portrayal of monstrous beasts, though
these creatures retain an archaic mythological quality. The myth of
Leviathan and Behemoth, for instance, is as central to Jaws as it
is to Moby-Dick; indeed, Jaws inherits the myth directly from
Moby-Dick, as does King Kong. These and other monster tales, such
as The Creature from the Black Lagoon and Grendel, keep the ancient
myth alive and relevant by recasting it in the context of
biological and cultural evolution. There is a pattern of
alternating bestialization and anthropomorphism in many monster
tales, suggesting that these images are being displayed in repeated
attempts to define who we are in relation to animals. Thus the more
beastly the monster, the more insistently we erect the old paradigm
of the Ladder of Being, placing ourselves on a higher and separate
rung; but the more human-like the creature, the more readily we
shift to the paradigm of the Tree of Life, in which all creatures
are more closely related. Since the matter of distinctions between
species also involves questions of race, the monster myth is often
conscripted to serve racist agendas. But more often than not, the
myth has ananti-racist subtext that undercuts the hierarchy. The
closing chapters of the volume consider the notion of artificial
evolution in works such as The Island of Dr. Moreau, and
human-machine interaction in Gravity's Rainbow. As fables of
identity, monster tales dramatize our anxieties and fears about our
own animal nature and provide a means of coming to terms with our
evolution.
How has America censored British films? In this original,
fascinating book, Anthony Slide answers this question, making full
use for the first time of the recently opened US Production Code
Administration files. Film by film from the 1930s through to the
1960s, he tells the inside story of the ongoing dialogue between
the British film making industry and the American censors. The book
shows graphically how the Production Code system operated,
revealing how the censors viewed moral issues, violence, bad
language and matters of decorum as well as revealing acute national
differences, such as American concern over the British
preoccupation with toilets. It also dispels myths, depicting chief
censor Joseph Breen and his staff as knowledgeable people who
sympathized with and admired the British film industry.
"How do East Asian cultural heritages in shape film? How are these
legacies being revived, or even re-created, by contemporary
filmmakers? This collection examines the dynamic interactions
between East Asian culture heritages - "traditional" elements
including martial arts, music, landscape, aesthetics, stage
performances, and legends - and cinemas in mainland China, Hong
Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea"--
Exploring research into mobile phone use as props to subjective
identity, Norman Taylor employs concepts from Michelle Foucault,
Gilles Deleuze and actor network theory to discuss the affect of
mechanisms of make-believe, from celebrity culture to
avatar-obsessed game players, and digital culture.
Newly revised and updated, "Film Lighting "is an indispensible
sourcebook for the aspiring and practicing cinematographer, based
on extensive interviews with leading cinematographers and gaffers
in the film industry.
Film lighting is a living, dynamic art influenced by new
technologies and the changing styles of leading cinematographers. A
combination of state-of-the-art technology and in-depth interviews
with industry experts, "Film Lighting "provides an inside look at
how cinematographers and film directors establish the visual
concept of the film and use the lighting to create a certain
atmosphere.
Kris Malkiewicz uses firsthand material from the experts he
interviewed while researching this book. Among these are leading
cinematographers Dion Beebe, Russell Carpenter, Caleb Deschanel,
Robert Elswit, Mauro Fiore, Adam Holender, Janusz Kaminski, Matthew
Libatique, Rodrigo Prieto, Harris Savides, Dante Spinotti, and
Vilmos Zsigmond. This updated version of "Film Lighting" fills a
growing need in the industry and will be a perennial, invaluable
resource.
From his early horror movies, including Scanners, Videodrome,
Rabid, and The Fly-with their exploding heads, mutating sex organs,
rampaging parasites, and scientists turning into insects-to his
inventive adaptations of books by William Burroughs (Naked Lunch),
Don DeLillo (Cosmopolis), and Bruce Wagner (Maps to the Stars),
Canadian director David Cronenberg (b. 1943) has consistently
dramatized the struggle between the aspirations of the mind and the
messy realities of the flesh. ""I think of human beings as a
strange mixture of the physical and the non-physical, and both of
these things have their say at every moment we're alive,"" says
Cronenberg. ""My films are some kind of strange metaphysical
passion play."" Moving deftly between genre and arthouse filmmaking
and between original screenplays and literary adaptations,
Cronenberg's work is thematically consistent and marked by a
rigorous intelligence, a keen sense of humor, and a fearless
engagement with the nature of human existence. He has been
exploring the most primal themes since the beginning of his career
and continues to probe them with growing maturity and depth.
Cronenberg's work has drawn the interest of some of the most
intelligent contemporary film critics, and the fifteen interviews
in this volume feature remarkably in-depth and insightful
conversations with such acclaimed writers as Amy Taubin, Gary
Indiana, David Breskin, Dennis Lim, Richard Porton, Gavin Smith,
and more. The pieces herein reveal Cronenberg to be one of the most
articulate and deeply philosophical directors now working, and they
comprise an essential companion to an endlessly provocative and
thoughtful body of work.
Since the earliest days of the nation, US citizenship has been
linked to military service. Even though blacks fought and died in
all American wars, their own freedom was usually restricted or
denied. In many ways, World War II exposed this contradiction. As
demand for manpower grew during the war, government officialsand
military leaders realized that the war could not be won without
black support. To generate African American enthusiasm, the federal
government turned to mass media. Several government films were
produced and distributed, movies that have remained largely
unexamined by scholars. Kathleen M. German delves into the dilemma
of race and the federal government's attempts to appeal to black
patriotism and pride even while postponing demands for equality and
integration until victory was achieved. German's study intersects
three disciplines: the history of the African American experience
in World War II, the theory of documentary film, and the study of
rhetoric. One of the main films of the war era, The Negro Soldier,
fractured the long tradition of degrading minstrel caricatures by
presenting a more dignifiedpublic image of African Americans. Along
with other government films, the narrative within The Negro Soldier
transformed the black volunteer into an able soldier. It included
African Americans in the national mythology by retelling American
history to recognize black participation. As German reveals,
through this new narrative with more dignified images, The Negro
Soldier and other films performed rhetorical work by advancing the
agenda of black citizenship.
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