"Alan Ball: Conversations" features interviews that span Alan Ball's entire career and include detailed observations and insights into his Academy Award-winning film "American Beauty" and Emmy Award-winning television shows "Six Feet Under" and "True Blood." Ball began his career as a playwright in New York, and his work soon caught the attention of Hollywood television producers. After writing for the sitcoms "Grace Under Fire" and "Cybill," Ball turned his attention to the screenplay that would become "American Beauty." The critical success of this film opened up exciting possibilities for him in the realm of television. He created the critically acclaimed show "Six Feet Under," and after the series finale, he decided to explore the issue of American bigotry toward the Middle East in his 2007 play "All That I Will Ever Be" and the film "Towelhead," which he adapted and directed in the same year. Ball returned to television once again with the series "True Blood"--an adaptation of the humorous, entertaining, and erotic world of Charlaine Harris's vampire novels. In 2012 Ball announced that he would step down as executive producer of "True Blood," in part, to produce both a new television series and his latest screenplay, "What's the Matter with Margie?"

The Frontier Club is Christine Bold's name for the network of eastern aristocrats who created the western as we now most commonly know it. At the turn of the twentieth century, they yoked this most popular formula to their own elite causes-from big-game hunting to conservation, immigration restriction to Jim Crow segregation-and aligned themselves with cattle kings and "quality" publishers. This book tells the story of that cultural sleight-of-hand. It delves into institutional archives and personal papers to excavate the hidden social, political, and financial interests in the making of the modern western. It re-reads frontier club fiction in relation to the federal policies and cultural spaces (from exclusive gentlemen's clubs to national parks to zoos) with which it was intimately connected; the centerpiece is Owen Wister's bestselling novel The Virginian. It casts new light on nine key clubmen, both the famous and the forgotten-in addition to Wister, the network included Theodore Roosevelt, George Bird Grinnell, Silas Weir Mitchell, Henry Cabot Lodge, Madison Grant, Caspar Whitney, Winthrop Chanler, and Frederic Remington-while recovering the women on whom these men depended and without whom this version of the popular West would not exist. Bold also considers some of the costs of the frontier club formula, in terms of its impact on Indigenous peoples and its marginalization of other popular voices, including western writings by African Americans, white women, and non-elite white men. The book ends by briefly charting the frontier club's enduring impression on western movies.

Classic American Films explores the origin and development of many of the most influential and revered films in cinema history, and does so with the aid and insight of the people who actually wrote the screenplays. These lively, candid, in-depth interviews are filled with fascinating new material (details, anecdotes, judgments, and opinions) about the creative and collaborative processes that went into the making of these extraordinary films. In the past, Hollywood screenwriters--the original artists-- have often been overlooked. This book is a special tribute to the invaluable contributions of these cinematic visionaries, many of whom are considered among the greatest screenwriters in American film history. As Orson Welles once said, "In my opinion, the writer should have the first and last word in filmmaking." This book allows them to have that exciting opportunity. Some of the highlights from these interviews include: Betty Comden and Adolph Green's explaining how a nightclub skit became the premise for Singin' in the Rain; Ernest Lehman's description of how, while in conversation with Hitchcock, his "unconscious" suddenly solved the plot problems in North by Northwest; Carl Gottlieb's remembrance of the terrible pressure involved with writing the script for Jaws while shooting was already underway; and Sylvester Stallone's account of how he received final approval to star in Rocky from studio executives who thought he was just another actor.

This text seeks to revise notions of film genre. It connects the roles played by industry critics and audiences in making and re-making genre. In a critique of major voices in the history of genre theory from Aristotle to Wittgenstein, Altman reveals the conflicting stakes for which the genre game has been played. Recognizing that the very term "genre" has different meaning for different groups, he bases his genre theory on the uneasy competitive yet complimentary relationship among genre users and discusses a range of films from "The Great Train Robbery" to "Star Wars," and from "The Jazz Singer" to "The Player."

THE LORD OF THE RINGS MOVIES: POCKET GUIDE

A pocket guide to the Hollywood adaptions of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings, released in 2001, 2002 and 2003. The book tells you everything you need to know about these very popular films, from writing the script through casting and financing, to shooting and performances, to visual effects, editing and theatrical distribution.

The pocket guide includes discussions of every single scene in the three movies, including the Special Extended Editions (some scenes are explored in great detail, as well as some key individual shots). There are sections on the all of the important differences between The Lord of the Ring book and the Hollywood movies (including numerous details), as well as a chapter exploring the additions and the omissions. Looks at behind the scenes stories, and also the critical response to the movies.

There are chapters on the visual effects, on the casting and key personnel of the movies, on the studio and the financing of the films, on the music and sound, and the marketing and release of the movies in 2001-2003 (including the home entertainment releases on DVD and video). There is also a chapter on the critical response to the movies.

There is also an appendix on other adaptions of J.R.R. Tolkien's books.

Jeremy Robinson has written many critical studies, including Steven Spielberg, Arthur Rimbaud, Jean-Luc Godard, Hayao Miyazaki, Ken Russell, Walerian Borowczyk, and The Sacred Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky, plus literary monographs on: J.R.R. Tolkien; J.M.W. Turner; Samuel Beckett; Thomas Hardy; Arthur Rimbaud; Andre Gide; John Cowper Powys; Robert Graves; and Lawrence Durrell.

Includes bibliography, illustrations, appendices and notes. ISBN 9781861713780. 496 pages.

www.crmoon.com

Oxi (Gr. Determiner, lit. 'No', fig. 'Resistance', pronounced 'ochi') retells Sophocles' Antigone through the contemporary Greek crisis and modern European philosophy. A collaboration between the renowned British auteur Ken McMullen and the literary theorist Martin McQuillan, the film draws upon and responds to the importance of the Antigone of modern thought (Hegel, Arendt, Lacan, Derrida, Butler), while coming up close to the politics of the street and the malign effects of the austerity experiment in Greece today. The screenplay weaves together a range of idioms, including performance, fiction, documentary, interview and literary collage. The result is an intensely moving reflection on the tragedy of austerity today, with contributions from Helene Cixous, Etienne Balibar and Antonio Negri, as well as several significant figures in Greek cultural life. The volume includes full transcripts of the interviews with Cixous, Balibar and Negri, and a previously unpublished interview with Jacques Derrida on the question of Oedipus, as well as critical commentary from the filmmakers.

Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990) rose from the ranks of chorus girl to become one of Hollywood's most talented leading women-and America's highest paid woman in the mid-1940s. Shuttled among foster homes as a child, she took a number of low-wage jobs while she determinedly made the connections that landed her in successful Broadway productions. Stanwyck then acted in a stream of high-quality films from the 1930s through the 1950s. Directors such as Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang, and Frank Capra treasured her particular magic. A four-time Academy Award nominee, winner of three Emmys and a Golden Globe, she was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Academy.

Dan Callahan considers both Stanwyck's life and her art, exploring her seminal collaborations with Capra in such great films as "Ladies of Leisure," "The Miracle Woman," and "The Bitter Tea of General Yen"; her Pre-Code movies "Night Nurse" and "Baby Face"; and her classic roles in "Stella Dallas," "Remember the Night," "The Lady Eve," and "Double Indemnity." After making more than eighty films in Hollywood, she revived her career by turning to television, where her role in the 1960s series "The Big Valley" renewed her immense popularity.

Callahan examines Stanwyck's career in relation to the directors she worked with and the genres she worked in, leading up to her late-career triumphs in two films directed by Douglas Sirk, "All I Desire" and "There's Always Tomorrow," and two outrageous westerns, "The Furies" and "Forty Guns." The book positions Stanwyck where she belongs-at the very top of her profession-and offers a close, sympathetic reading of her performances in all their range and complexity.

"Dukore's style is fluid and his wit delightful. I learned a tremendous amount, as will most readers, and Bernard Shaw and the Censors will doubtless be the last word on the topic." - Michel Pharand, former editor of SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies and author of Bernard Shaw and the French (2001). "This book shows us a new side of Shaw and his complicated relationships to the powerful mechanisms of stage and screen censorship in the long twentieth century." - - Lauren Arrington, Professor of English, Maynooth University, Ireland A fresh view of Shaw versus stage and screen censors, this book describes Shaw as fighter and failure, whose battles against censorship - of his plays and those of others, of his works for the screen and those of others - he sometimes won but usually lost. We forget usually, because ultimately he prevailed and because his witty reports of defeats are so buoyant, they seem to describe triumphs. We think of him as a celebrity, not an outsider; as a classic, not one of the avant-garde, of which Victorians and Edwardians were intolerant; as ahead of his time, not of it, when he was called "disgusting," "immoral", and "degenerate." Yet it took over three decades and a world war before British censors permitted a public performance of Mrs Warren's Profession. We remember him as an Academy Award winner for Pygmalion, not as an author whose dialogue censors required deletions for showings in the United States. Scrutinizing the powerful stage and cinema censorship in Britain and America, this book focuses on one of its most notable campaigners against them in the last century.

From its beginnings in the works of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne to the virtual worlds of William Gibson's "Neuromancer" and "The Matrix," "Science Fiction: A Guide to the Perplexed" helps students navigate the often perplexing worlds of a perennially popular genre. Drawing on literature as well as example from film and television, the book explores the different answers that criticism has offered to the vexed question, 'what is science fiction?' Each chapter of the book includes case studies of key texts, annotated guides to further reading and suggestions for class discussion to help students master the full range of contemporary critical approaches to the field, including the scientific, technological and political contexts in which the genre has flourished. Ranging from an understanding of the genre through the stereotypes of 1930s pulps through more recent claims that we are living in a science fictional moment, this volume will provide a comprehensive overview of this diverse and fascinating genre.

J.R.R. TOLKIEN: POCKET GUIDE

A new guide to the life and work of J.R.R. Tolkien, the premier British fantasy author of the 20th century, and his great works: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. This guide is clearly written for the general reader, offering an all-round introduction to this hugely popular writer. The book is full of illuminating facts and details about Tolkien and his works.The text has been revised for this edition.

EXTRACT FROM THE INTRODUCTION

Philip Toynbee declared, in 1961, that Tolkien's 'childish books had passed into a merciful oblivion', a wonderful statement, just a tad inaccurate. In 1997, The Lord of the Rings was voted the top book of the 20th century by readers in a British bookstore's poll (Waterstone's). 104 out of 105 stores and 25,000 readers put The Lord of the Rings at the top (1984 was second).

Around 100 million copies of The Lord of the Rings had been sold by the end of the twentieth century, and 60 million copies of The Hobbit, with sales of around 3 million per year of the two books combined. Readers just love reading Tolkien's books. It's that simple. You can't force people to buy books or go see movies; there's isn't a magic formula (or ruling ring) to hypnotize readers and consumers (if there was, it'd be worth billions). And the Tolkien phenomenon began with readers. Back in 1937, 1954 and 1955, the publishers Allen & Unwin did their bit, of course, with reviews, blurbs, advertizing and so on, promoting The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, as did the critics, but it was readers who first started the phenomenon that has become truly global. Tolkien's influence on literature has been considerable, too, and not just in the realm of fantasy, sci-fi, fairy tales and related genres. As fantasy author Terry Brooks said, Tolkien 'was the premier fantasy writer of the last century, and all of us writing today owe him a huge debt.' No other writer W.H. Auden reckoned had 'created an imaginary world and a history in such detail'. Colin Wilson agreed that only a few writers have concocted a total universe, and that Tolkien's was very impressive. Tolkien's mythological writings may be the 'largest body of invented mythology in the history of literature', according to David Day. Invented, that is, by one person. It's also 'certainly the most complex and detailed invented world in all literature'.

Jeremy Robinson has written many critical studies, including Steven Spielberg, Arthur Rimbaud, Jean-Luc Godard, and The Sacred Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky, plus literary monographs on: Samuel Beckett; Thomas Hardy; Andre Gide; Robert Graves; and Lawrence Durrell.

Includes bibliography, illustrations, appendices and notes. ISBN 9781861713797. 272 pages.

www.crmoon.com

The greatest conversation in the history of Hollywood.

From the archives of the American Film Institute comes a unique picture of what it was like to work in Hollywood from its beginnings to its present day. Hollywood: The Oral History, lets a reader ‘listen in’ on candid remarks from the biggest names in front of the camera – Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Jane Fonda, Harold Lloyd – the biggest behind it – Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Jordan Peele, as well as the musicians, writers, sound men, editors, make-up artists, and even script timers, messengers, and publicists who shaped what was heard and seen on screen.

Legendary film scholar Jeanine Basinger and New York Times bestselling author Sam Wasson have undertaken the monumental task of weaving these thousands of hours of talk into a conversation that is lively, funny, insightful, historically accurate and authentically honest in its portrait of workaday Hollywood.

This work provides an accurate, in-depth examination and scientific evaluation of the most famous hauntings in American history as depicted in popular films and television programs. Neither a debunking book nor one written for the "true believer" in the paranormal, American Hauntings objectively scrutinizes the historic evidence behind such hugely popular films as The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror, An American Haunting, The Conjuring, and The Haunting in Connecticut to ascertain the accuracy of these entertainment depictions of "true life" hauntings. The authors then compare these popular culture accounts against the alleged real-life encounters and impartially weigh the evidence to assess whether each incident actually took place. Written by highly credentialed, recognized authorities on the paranormal and social psychology, this book contains meticulously documented, science-based information written for a broad audience, from middle and high school students and those taking introductory courses at a university level to general readers. There is no other work that provides as careful and unbiased an evaluation of the most famous hauntings in American history. The book also examines the reliability of popular television shows such as Unsolved Mysteries and Paranormal Witness. Supplies a balanced approach to the subject of the paranormal and social psychology that explores both sides of the issue and evaluates the evidence as a scientist would Examines subject matter that is of universal, natural interest to students, teachers, and the general public, and supplies interdisciplinary coverage of religion, history, sociology, social psychology, folklore, critical thinking, pseudoscience, and media/film studies Provides an ideal resource for students writing reports and research papers

This edited book brings together an international cast of contributors to examine how academic literacy is learned and mastered in different tertiary education settings around the world. Bringing to the fore the value of qualitative enquiry through ethnographic methods, the authors illustrate in-depth descriptions of genre knowledge and academic literacy development in first and second language writing. All of the data presented in the chapters are original, as well as innovative in the field in terms of content and scope, and thought-provoking regarding theoretical, methodological and educational approaches. The contributions are also representative of both novice and advanced academic writing experiences, providing further insights into different stages of academic literacy development throughout the career-span of a researcher. Set against the backdrop of internationalisation trends in Higher Education and the pressure on multilingual academics to publish their research outcomes in English, this volume will be of use to academics and practitioners interested in the fields of Languages for Academic Purposes, Applied Linguistics, Literacy Skills, Genre Analysis and Acquisition and Language Education.

Eye of the Taika: New Zealand Comedy and the Films of Taika Waititi is the first book-length study of comic film director and media celebrity Taika Waititi. Author Matthew Bannister analyses Waititi's feature films and places his other works and performances-short films, TV series, advertisements, music videos, and media appearances-in the fabric of popular culture. The book's thesis is that Waititi's playful comic style draws on an ironic reading of NZ identity as Antipodean camp, a style which reflects NZ's historic status as colonial underdog. The first four chapters of Eye of the Taika explore Waititi's early life and career, the history of New Zealand and its film industry, the history of local comedy and its undervaluation in favor of more ""serious"" art, and ethnicity in New Zealand comedy. Bannister then focuses on Waititi's films, beginning with Eagle vs Shark (2007) and its place in ""New Geek Cinema,"" despite being an outsider even in this realm. Bannister uses Boy (2010) to address the ""comedian comedy,"" arguing that Waititi is a comedic entertainer before being a director. With What We Do in The Shadows (2014), Bannister explores Waititi's use of the vampire as the archetypal immigrant struggling to fit into mainstream society, under the guise of a mockumentary. Waititi's Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016), Bannister argues, is a family-friendly, rural-based romp that plays on and ironizes aspects of Aotearoa/New Zealand identity. Thor: Ragnarok (2017) launched Waititi into the Hollywood realm, while introducing a Polynesian perspective on Western superhero ideology. Finally, Bannister addresses Jojo Rabbit (2019) as an ""anti-hate satire"" and questions its quality versus its topicality and timeliness in Hollywood. By viewing Waititi's career and filmography as a series of pranks, Bannister identifies Waititi's playful balance between dominant art worlds and emergent postcolonial innovations, New Zealand national identity and indigenous Aotearoan (and Jewish) roots, and masculinity and androgyny. Eye of the Taika is intended for film scholars and film lovers alike.

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of research on the Gothic Revival. The Gothic Revival was based on emotion rather than reason and when Horace Walpole created Strawberry Hill House, a gleaming white castle on the banks of the Thames, he had to create new words to describe the experience of gothic lifestyle. Nevertheless, Walpole's house produced nightmares and his book The Castle of Otranto was the first truly gothic novel, with supernatural, sensational and Shakespearean elements challenging the emergent fiction of social relationships. The novel's themes of violence, tragedy, death, imprisonment, castle battlements, dungeons, fair maidens, secrets, ghosts and prophecies led to a new genre encompassing prose, theatre, poetry and painting, whilst opening up a whole world of imagination for entrepreneurial female writers such as Mary Shelley, Joanna Baillie and Ann Radcliffe, whose immensely popular books led to the intense inner landscapes of the Bronte sisters. Matthew Lewis's The Monk created a new gothic: atheistic, decadent, perverse, necrophilic and hellish. The social upheaval of the French Revolution and the emergence of the Romantic movement with its more intense (and often) atheistic self-absorption led the gothic into darker corners of human experience with a greater emphasis on the inner life, hallucination, delusion, drug addiction, mental instability, perversion and death and the emerging science of psychology. The intensity of the German experience led to an emphasis on doubles and schizophrenic behaviour, ghosts, spirits, mesmerism, the occult and hell. This volume charts the origins of this major shift in social perceptions and completes a trilogy of Palgrave Handbooks on the Gothic-combined they provide an exhaustive survey of current research in Gothic studies, a go-to for students and researchers alike.

Join Ashley Eckstein and live your best Star Wars life, with this 12-month guide to party planning, crafting, and cooking inspired by a galaxy from far, far away! Join Ashley Eckstein and live your best Star Wars life, with this 12-month guide to party planning, crafting, and cooking inspired by a galaxy from far, far away!/p>She may be the voice of Ahsoka Tano on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, but first and foremost, Ashley Eckstein is a lifelong fan of the Star Wars galaxy-a passion that led her to start the fangirl fashion brand Her Universe, and become a pillar of the Star Wars fan community. Now, you can celebrate your fandom with Ashley, as she shows you how to bring Star Wars into your everyday life, with this unique lifestyle book!

In Cinema at the Crossroads: Nation and the Subject in East Asian Cinema, Hyon Joo Yoo argues that East Asian experiences of colonialism and postcolonialism call for a different conceptualization of postcoloniality, subjectivity, and the nation. Through its analyses of Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese cinemas, this engaging study of cinema and culture charts the ways in which national cinemas visualize colonial and postcolonial conditions that derive from the history of Japanese colonialism and the post-war alliance between Japan and the United States. What does it mean to rethink postcolonial studies through East Asian cinema and experience? Yoo pursues this question by bringing an East Asian postcolonial framework, the notion of film as a manifestation of national culture, and the methodology of psychoanalysis to bear on a failed hegemonic subject. Cinema at the Crossroads is a profound look into how cinema and national culture intertwine with hegemony and power.

Winner of the MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Italian Studies 2016 Winner of the American Association for Italian Studies Book Prize 2016 This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Written by one of Europe's leading critics, Ecocriticism and Italy reads the diverse landscapes of Italy in the cultural imagination. From death in Venice as a literary trope and petrochemical curse, through the volcanoes of Naples to wine, food and environmental violence in Piedmont, Serenella Iovino explores Italy as a text where ecology and imagination meet. Examining cases where justice, society and politics interlace with stories of land and life, pollution and redemption, the book argues that literature, art and criticism are able to transform the unexpressed voices of these suffering worlds into stories of resistance and practices of liberation.

Migration documentary films played an important role in promoting Australian images to the outside world. Many films were made in this period to fulfill the function of migrant-recruiting and nation-building objectives. In these films, Australia was presented as a progressive and liberal nation seeking to establish her identities. The slogan "Australia for the White Man" prevailed over the entire period from 1908 to 1961. It was not until 1972 that The White Australia Policy was officially abolished. The historical meanings of these transformations are definitely worth exploring. The relationships among immigration policies, documentary films and the construction of national identities become valuable subjects for examination. This innovative book is the first in the field that comes with a systematic and comprehensive study of migration documentary films in post-war Australia. In the analysis of the sixty-seven films, this book reveals that the project for recruiting migrants to settle in Australia was not a simple matter of overseas campaigns. The terrain for media publicity was never just the emigrant countries and the target audience were both foreigners and local Australians. These migration documentary films are actually propaganda films in nature. However, visual images, narratives, and myths represented in these films were important in the self-depiction of Australian and in the formative discourse of national identity. This book shows how absences and under-representations of film images are important to examine in order to fully understand the particular, utopian visions of the post-war period. This book argues that open-door policies, coastal images, and modernization narratives gradually became a new "maritime myth" in the quest of a redefined Australian identity, and "new Australians," the post-war immigrants, became battlers, echoing the "bush legend" existing in the Australian narrative. Themes of modernization, industrialization, Anglo-centric identity, "the Australian way of life" itself, political freedom, and democracy of the overall films were stressed.

This book presents a chronology of thirty definitions attributed to the word, term, phrase, and concept of "documentary" between the years 1895 and 1959. The book dedicates one chapter to each of the thirty definitions, scrutinizing their idiosyncratic language games from close range while focusing on their historical roots and concealed philosophical sources of inspiration. Dan Geva's principal argument is twofold: first, that each definition is an original ethical premise of documentary; and second, that only the structured assemblage of the entire set of definitions successfully depicts the true ethical nature of documentary insofar as we agree to consider its philosophical history as a reflective object of thought in a perpetual state of being-self-defined: an ethics sui generis.