Martin Flanagan uses Bakhtins notions of dialogism, chronotope and polyphony to address fundamental questions about film form and reception, focusing particularly on the way cinematic narrative utilizes time and space in its very construction.

"A fascinating one-volume reference source that identifies and describes the key characters (and their performers) from some of the more memorable films between 1915 and 1983." Reference Books Bulletin

One of the most versatile Hollywood filmmmakers, Robert Wise had a number of renowned films under his directorial belt, including The Day The Earth Stood Still, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Nonetheless, Wise remains a rarely studied Hollywood figure--while many filmgoers know and love his films, few recognize his name. This book, the first in-depth analysis of Wise's cinematic achievement, uncovers the elements linking the director's diverse cinematic subjects and examines in detail the manifold ways in which Wise explored the tensions between individuals and their societies. His films are seen from a new and more complex perspective, one which will heighten the viewer's appreciation for the range and depth of Wise's overall body of work.

Over the past decade, Japan has become a key player on the contemporary horror scene, producing some of the most influential and critically respected genre movies of recent years and helping to spark off the worldwide interest in Asian horror. Whether it's the subtle chills of Ring, the graphic brutality of Audition or the zombie-fuelled mayhem of Versus, Japanese horror has had a major impact throughout the world, leading to high profile remakes and sending its most talented directors to Hollywood. Flowers from Hell is the most in-depth look at the vibrant and challenging world of modern Japanese horror so far, covering the best directors, the most important films and the most popular themes of the past 25 years. From its origins in the mid-80s to the multi-million dollar franchises of today, Flowers from Hell traces the evolution of this consistently inventive and influential horror phenomenon. * Films featured include: - * The Ring series *Audition *Battle Royale *Juon/The Gru

Stephen Frears has a career approaching over half-a-century, directing films of astonishing variety, beauty, and daring, and yet many often have trouble remembering his name. The Ironic Filmmaking of Stephen Frears celebrates this great filmmaker, beginning with a short biography of Frears, general observations on unifying themes and styles in his oeuvre, and the characterization of his manner of directing. By focusing on 10 key films, Lesley Brill finds coherence in Frears' characteristic irony and in his concentration on many kinds of love. In movies such as My Beautiful Laundrette, Dangerous Liaisons, High Fidelity, The Queen, Philomena, and many others, Frears portrays widely varied situations and characters with a combination of insight, skepticism, and sympathy. He has the passionate, unjudgmental focus of an artist who stands simultaneously at a distance from his subjects and within their worlds. Through Frears' work is widely admired, Brill argues that he has attracted little scholarly writing because of a combination of the diffidence of his self-presentation and the difficulty of explicating the complex ideas and characters of his films. The Ironic Filmmaking of Stephen Frears is meant to inspire others to further examine his films individually and his career as a whole.

This book presents an analysis of Lieutenant Columbo's investigative method of rhetorical inquiry as seen in the television police procedural Columbo (1968-2003). With a barrage of questions about minute details and feigned ignorance, the iconic detective enacts a persona of 'antipotency' (counter authoritativeness) to affect the villains' underestimation of his attention to inconsistencies, abductive reasoning, and rhetorical efficacy. In a predominantly dialogue-based investigation, Columbo exhausts his suspects by asking a battery of questions concerning all minor details of the case, which evolves into an aggravating tedious provocation for the killer trying to maintain innocence. Based on the Ancient Greek ideal of Sophrosyne (temperance, restraint) and the Socratic method of questioning to discover truths, the Lieutenant models effective rhetorical inquiry with resistant responders: shy, secretive, anxious, emotionally-disconnected, angry, arrogant, jealous, and, in this case, murderous conversants. While designed to be critical and theoretical, this text strives to be accessible to interdisciplinary readers, practical in application, and amusing for Columbo buffs.

The cinema was the most popular form of entertainment during the Second World War. Film was a critically important medium for influencing opinion. Films, such as In Which We Serve and One of Our Aircraft is Missing, shaped the British people's perceptions of the conflict. British War Films, 1939-45 is an account of the feature films produced during the war, rather than government documentaries and official propaganda, making the book an important index of British morale and values at a time of desperate national crisis.

The muscle-bound male body is a perennial feature of classically-inflected action cinema. This book reassesses these films as a cinematic form, focusing on the depiction of heroic masculinity. In particular, Hercules in his many incarnations has greatly influenced popular cultural interpretations of manliness and the exaggerated male form.

Exploring the dead/alive figure in such films as" The Ring," "American Beauty," ""and" The Elephant Man," Vincent Hausmann charts the spectacular reduction of psychic life and assesses calls for shoring up psychic/social spaces that transfer bodily drives to language. Drawing on expansive histories of cinema--including its relation to scientific/medical visual culture's tracking of the human/animal body, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and sexuality studies, the book demonstrates that conceptions of psychic (re)animation remain interwoven with notions of cinematic motion, and emerge, embedded, in narratives of relations among analog and digital arts/technologies.

It is often suggested that there are 'secrets' to comedy or that it is 'lightning in a bottle', but the craft of comedy writing can be taught. While comedic tastes change, over time and from person to person, the core underpinning still depends on the comedic geniuses that have paved the way. Great comedy is built upon a strong foundation. In Writing the Comedy Movie, Marc Blake lays out - in an entertainingly readable style - the nuts and bolts of comedy screenwriting. His objective is to clarify the 'rules' of comedy: to contextualize comedy staples such as the double act, slapstick, gross-out, rom com, screwball, satire and parody and to introduce new ones such as the bromance or stoner comedy. He explains the underlying principles of comedy and comedy writing for the screen, along with providing analysis of leading examples of each subgenre.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (David Hand, 1937) occupies a central place within the history of global animation. Based on the German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, the film was the first feature-length animated film produced by the Disney Studio and served to announce the animated cartoon as an industrial art form. Yet Disney's landmark version not only set in motion the Golden Age of the Hollywood cartoon, but has continued to stand as an international sensation, prompting multiple revisions and remakes within a variety of national filmmaking contexts. This book explores the enduring qualities that have marked Snow White's influence and legacy, providing a collection of original chapters that reflect upon its pioneering use of technology and contributions to animation's visual style, the film's reception within an American context, and its status as a global cultural phenomenon.

Why does oppression by censorship affect the film industry far more frequently than any other mass media? Silencing Cinema brings together the key issues and authors to examine instances of film censorship throughout the world. Including essays by some of today's leading film historians, the book offers groundbreaking historical research on film censorship in major film production countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia/Soviet Union, India, China, and Nigeria, among others. The contributors explore such innovative themes and topics as film censorship and authorship, genre, language, religion, audiences, political economy, international policy, and colonialism. This exciting collection is thoroughly unique in its broad geographical scope and its comprehensive look at film censorship.

Since her film debut in 1930, Maureen O'Sullivan has consistently proven herself to be one of the most talented and versatile performers in the entertainment media. Her career has spanned 60 years, over which time she has appeared on stage and screen, on television and radio, and has even been a published author of a few short stories. This bio-bibliography explores every facet of O'Sullivan's distinguished career and illustrates the surprising depth and range that she exhibited and still continues to display in her fascinating career. Billips traces the entirety of the actress's professional life, from her film career at Fox in Song O' My Heart in 1930, including her six other films for the Fox studio, to her piece for RKO and Patrician/UA, to her portrayal of Jane in the Tarzan films of the early 1930s to her most recent appearance in 1987's Stranded, revealing an enormous talent. O'Sullivan's contributions to the performing arts have yet to be fully appreciated. Through separate chapters, focusing on different aspects of O'Sullivan's life, the book provides an impressive picture of the actress's multifaceted career. The biographical section primarily discusses her films and the characters she portrayed, while a career chronology offers an overview of her entire professional life, with credits in the various media serving to illustrate her constant activities. Four separate chapters chronicle O'Sullivan's film, radio, television, and stage appearances, with full cast and credits included for each entry, and cross references incorporated to lead the reader to other pertinent material in the book. A bibliographic section follows with film reviews, theater reviews, books and articles, and fan magazine stories each given their own chapters. An appendix reproduces in their entirety two short stories published by Maureen O'Sullivan in the Ladies' Home Journal, and an index concludes the work. This important reference tool will be a welcome resource for film fans and collectors and for courses in film history. It will also be a valuable addition to public, college, and university libraries.

Hollywood movies often portray gay people as being in some sense monstrous. This volume focuses on several filmmakers who have used the trope of the homosexual as monster in a way that subverts traditional cinema. Their movies reveal that the monster can be powerful and attractive, thereby showing gay people a way to claim power from being thought of as outcasts and obviating the notion of fitting in. This study will appeal to film scholars and to those interested in the portrayal of homosexuals in the media.

Largely forgotten over the years, the seminal work of French poet, novelist and camp survivor Jean Cayrol has experienced a revival in the French-speaking world since his death in 2005. His concept of a concentrationary art-the need for an urgent and constant aesthetic resistance to the continuing effects of the concentrationary universe-proved to be a major influence for Hannah Arendt and other writers and theorists across a number of disciplines. Concentrationary Art presents the first translation into English of Jean Cayrol's key essays on the subject, as well as the first book-length study of how we might situate and elaborate his concept of a Lazarean aesthetic in cultural theory, literature, cinema, music and contemporary art.

"All students of the Great Man's'career will have to rely on this work. . . . Perhaps Gehring's greatest contributio here is his discussion of 23 sketches that Fields copyrighted that are now in the Library of Congress." Choice

Guillermo del Toro is a complete and intimate study of the life and work of one of modern cinema's most truly unique directors, whose distinct aesthetic and imagination are unmatched in contemporary film. Widely regarded as one of the most imaginative directors working in cinema today, Guillermo del Toro has built up a body of work that has enthralled movie fans with its dark beauty and edge-of-the-seat set pieces. In this book, acclaimed author Ian Nathan charts the progression of a career that has produced some of contemporary cinema's most revered scenes and idiosyncratic characters. This detailed examination looks at how the strands of del Toro's career have woven together to create one of modern cinema's most ground-breaking bodies of work. Delving deep into del Toro's psyche, the book starts by examining his beginnings in Mexico, the creative but isolated child surrounded by ornate catholicism and monster magazines, filming stop motion battles between his toys on a Super-8 film camera. It follows him to film school, where we learn of his influences, from Kafka to Bunuel, and explores his 1993 debut Cronos, the independent horror debut which draws on the religious and occult themes which would recur throughout del Toro's work. It goes on to cover his development as a director with 1997's Mimic, his blockbuster success with the Hellboy films and goes on to study the films which have cemented his status as a legendary auteur, Oscar award winners Pan's Labrynth and The Shape of Water, as well as his sci-fi masterpiece Pacific Rim, as well as looking at his exciting upcoming projects Nightmare Alley and Pinocchio. An enlightening look into the mind of an auteur blessed with a singular creative vision, Guillermo del Toro analyses the processes, themes and narratives that have come to be recognised as distinctly del Toro, from practical effects to an obsession with folklore and paganism. It looks into the narrative techniques, stylistic flourishes and creative decisions which have made him a true master of modern cinema. Presented in a slipcase with 8-page gatefold section, with scores of illuminating photographs of the director at work on set as well as iconic stills from his films and examples of his influences, this stunning package will delight all Guillermo del Toro devotees and movie lovers in general. Unauthorised and Unofficial.

From Mean Girl to BFF, Girlfriends and Postfeminist Sisterhood explores female sociality in postfeminist popular culture. Focusing on a range of media forms, including film, magazines, conduct books, TV and digital networking sites, Alison Winch reveals the ways in which friendships are increasingly encouraged to be strategic. Girlfriendship is examined as an affective social relation where slut-shamers, frenemies and bridezillas bond by controlling each other's body image through a 'girlfriend gaze'. Through a combination of psychosociological theory and media analysis, this book offers a complex understanding of patriarchy, by looking at how neoliberalism penetrates the intimate relations between women.

In Hollywood Cartoons, Michael Barrier takes us on a glorious guided tour of American animation in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, to meet the legendary artists and entrepreneurs who created Bugs Bunny, Betty Boop, Mickey Mouse, Wile E. Coyote, Donald Duck, Tom and Jerry, and many other cartoon favorites.
Beginning with black-and-white silent cartoons such as Winsor McCay's "Gertie the Dinosaur," Barrier offers an insightful account of animation's first flowering, taking us inside early New York studios and such Hollywood giants as Disney, Warner Bros., and MGM. Barrier excels at illuminating the creative side of animation--revealing how stories are put together, how animators develop a character, how technical innovations enhance the "realism" of cartoons. Here too are colorful portraits of the giants of the field, from Walt and Roy Disney and their animators (including Ub Iwerks, Bill Tytla, and Ward Kimball), to Dave and Max Fleischer, Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, and Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. And along the way, Barrier gives us an inside look at the making of such groundbreaking cartoons as "Out of the Inkwell" (with KoKo the Clown), "Steamboat Willie" (the first successful sound cartoon), "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," and "Bambi."
The years from the Depression through World War Two witnessed a golden age of American animation. Based on hundreds of interviews with veteran animators, Hollywood Cartoons gives us the definitive inside look at this colorful era and at the creative process behind these marvelous cartoons.

Between the end of the Civil War (1949) and the colonels' military coup (1967) Greece underwent tremendous political, economic, and social transformations which influenced gender identities and relations. During the same period, Greece also witnessed an unparalleled bloom in cinema productions. Based on the recently established paradigm that cinema and popular culture viewed as social institutions can inform a historical study, this book explores the relationship between Greek cinema and the society within which it was created and viewed. The book's double analytical perspective on cinema and masculinity advances both the study of cinema and popular culture as historical sources, and of masculinity and gender relations as valid categories of historical analysis. Cinema as a medium of representation, not only managed to reflect on these issues, it also provided a whole new field for their interpretation. This is the first study to explore the dramatic transformation of masculinity and gender roles, as represented in Greek cinema during the turbulent 1950s and 1960s.