Noel Carroll, a brilliant and provocative philosopher of film, has gathered in this book eighteen of his most recent essays on cinema and television--what Carroll calls "moving images." The essays discuss topics in philosophy, film theory, and film criticism. Drawing on concepts from cognitive psychology and analytic philosophy, Carroll examines a wide range of fascinating topics. These include film attention, the emotional address of the moving image, film and racism, the nature and epistemology of documentary film, the moral status of television, the concept of film style, the foundations of film evaluation, the film theory of Siegfried Kracauer, the ideology of the professional western, and films by Sergei Eisenstein and Yvonne Rainer. Carroll also assesses the state of contemporary film theory and speculates on its prospects. The book continues many of the themes of Carroll's earlier work Theorizing the Moving Image and develops them in new directions. A general introduction by George Wilson situates Carroll's essays in relation to his view of moving-image studies.

Peter Sellers's explosive talent made him a beloved figure in world cinema and continues to attract new audiences. With his darkly comic performances in Dr. Strangelove and Lolita and his outrageously funny appearances as Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther films, he became one of the most popular movie stars of his time. Sellers himself identified most personally with the character he played in Being There--an utterly empty man on whom others projected what they wanted, or needed, to see. In this lively and exhaustively researched biography, Ed Sikov offers unique insight into Sellers's comedy style. Beginning with Sellers' lonely childhood with a mother who wouldn't let go of him, through his service in the Royal Air Force and his success on BBC Radio's The Goon Show, Sikov goes on to detail his relationships with co-stars such as Alec Guinness, Sophia Loren, and Shirley MacLaine; his work with such directors as Stanley Kubrick, Billy Wilder, and Blake Edwards; his four failed marriages; his ridiculously short engagement to Liza Minnelli; and all the other peculiarities of this eccentric man's unpredictable life. The most insightful biography ever written of this endlessly fascinating star, Mr. Strangelove is as comic and tragic as Peter Sellers was himself.

The definitive account of the motion picture phenomenon, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: The Ultimate Visual History is a must-have for fans of the beloved Steven Spielberg classic. Documenting the complete history of E.T., the book explores Spielberg's initial inspiration for the story, the challenging shoot, and the record-breaking success, as well as the film's endurance, examining the merchandising it inspired and the reasons E.T. holds a permanent place in the hearts of movie fans the world over. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: The Ultimate Visual History features exclusive interviews with key members of the creative team, including cast and crew. Filled with visual treasures, the book also includes rare and never-before-seen imagery from the Amblin Entertainment archives, including on-set photography, concept art, and storyboards, plus a wealth of removable insert items, such as annotated script pages, studio memos, preliminary sketches, and more. The perfect tribute to a film that defines movie magic, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: The Ultimate Visual History is the final word on a modern masterpiece.

Outer space, whether the homeland of demonic invaders or the destination of intrepid explorers, seems to ignite the wildest imagination of filmmakers and audiences alike. And back on earth we all marvel when our planet is taken over by apes or when in a laboratory beings are created that defy, or perhaps reflect, our own humanity. This lavishly illustrated collection of essays begins with 'Cinematic Views', written between 1907 and 1929 by the great film pioneer Georges Melies. It goes on to explore the foundation of science fiction films in writings from the 20s and 30s by such masters of word and image as H G Wells, Luis Bunuel and Jorge Luis Borges. With the genre established and flourishing, the book moves in a variety of directions -- toward outer space, as a subject; different periods in film history, each with its own style and dominant themes; the work of specific directors and writers and, finally, some classic science fiction films of the recent past.

In early-twentieth-century motion picture houses, offensive stereotypes of African Americans were as predictable as they were prevalent. Watermelon eating, chicken thievery, savages with uncontrollable appetites, Sambo and Zip Coon were all representations associated with African American people. Most of these caricatures were rendered by whites in blackface.

Few people realize that from 1915 through 1929 a number of African American film directors worked diligently to counter such racist definitions of black manhood found in films like D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, the 1915 epic that glorified the Ku Klux Klan. In the wake of the film's phenomenal success, African American filmmakers sought to defend and redefine black manhood through motion pictures.

Gerald Butters's comprehensive study of the African American cinematic vision in silent film concentrates on works largely ignored by most contemporary film scholars: African American-produced and -directed films and white independent productions of all-black features. Using these "race movies" to explore the construction of masculine identity and the use of race in popular culture, he separates cinematic myth from historical reality: the myth of the Euro American-controlled cinematic portrayal of black men versus the actual black male experience.

Through intense archival research, Butters reconstructs many lost films, expanding the discussion of race and representation beyond the debate about "good" and "bad" imagery to explore the construction of masculine identity and the use of race as device in the context of Western popular culture. He particularly examines the filmmaking of Oscar Micheaux, the most prolific and controversial of all African American silent film directors and creator of the recently rediscovered Within Our Gates-the legendary film that exposed a virtual litany of white abuses toward blacks.

"Black Manhood on the Silent Screen" is unique in that it takes contemporary and original film theory, applies it to the distinctive body of African American independent films in the silent era, and relates the meaning of these films to larger political, social, and intellectual events in American society. By showing how both white and black men have defined their own sense of manhood through cinema, it examines the intersection of race and gender in the movies and offers a deft interweaving of film theory, American history, and film history.

Providing an indispensable resource for students and general readers, this book serves as an entry point for a conversation on America's favorite pastime, focusing in on generational differences and the evolution of American identity. In an age marked by tension and division, Americans of all ages and backgrounds have turned to film to escape the pressures of everyday life. Yet, beyond escapism, popular cinema is both a mirror and microscope for our collective psyche. Examining the films that have made billions of dollars through a new lens reveals that popular culture is a vital source for understanding what it means to be an American. This book is divided into four sections, each associated with a different generation. Featuring such era-defining hits as Jaws, Back to the Future, Avatar, and The Avengers, each section presents detailed film analyses that showcase the consistency of certain American values throughout generations as well as the constant renegotiation of others. Ideal for any cinephile, The American Blockbuster demonstrates how complex and meaningful even the summer blockbuster can be. Provides readers with a completely different take on their favorite films Extrapolates what "American" might mean and analyzes common values in the 21st century Locates film as a crucial element to the understanding of late modern aesthetics, culture, spirituality, politics, and economics Features a broad array of films spanning from the 1970s to today

From the early days of "worker films" that attracted working-class audiences to tiny, storefront theaters in the first decades of the twentieth century to the gritty films of social realism that brought audiences to theaters during the Great Depression and beyond, Hollywood has played a major role in defining the working class in America. This power of film to define the working class was never more apparent than in the Hollywood of the late 1960s and 1970s. Films from that epoch continue to have a profound effect on America's political and cultural lives decades later. Although the plight of the working class has been a Hollywood subject for more than a century, no significant work has explored Hollywood's role in shaping the modern working class. Most studies of the films of the late 1960s and 1970s explore the "New Hollywood," or the "Hollywood Renaissance," a brief period of directorial creativity in the industry. Some studies analyze the emergence of the "blockbuster" film and "four-wall" distribution that rejuvenated Hollywood with films like Jaws and Star Wars, while others examine the effect of the Vietnam War on the film industry. This study, however, explains how Hollywood created a false binary of the counterculture vs. the working class in an effort to appeal to the largest possible audience and, in doing so, helped to draw the lines for cultural and political discourse four decades later. Through narrative repetition, film has the power to create a world that becomes accepted as "the way things are." This happened in the mid-1970s when several significant films depicted the white working class as victim of a system that privileged the broad "counterculture," creating a world view that still flourishes in some circles of the white working and middle classes. This study makes that connection for the reader through close readings of various films of the era. As the first study to establish a direct connection between popular films of the 1970s and right-wing populist movements of today, this book helps to provide context for the more extreme rhetoric and activities of the Tea Party and other more fringe groups of the 2010s. By analyzing the depiction of the working class in films of the late 1960s and 1970s, this study provides the first look at how films of the era changed how the working class is viewed by others and by itself. This study also examines the political climate of the Nixon and Carter eras and demonstrates how concepts like Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority" found their way to the big screen and helped to shape the future of the working class. Finally, this unique study explores how Hollywood, given a choice of providing an honest rendering of the era or exploiting its tensions to ensure better box office, made the latter choice. By breaking down iconic films like Easy Rider, Dirty Harry, Jaws, and Rocky, character studies like Scarecrow, Blue Collar, and Hard Times, and cult favorites like Joe, Billy Jack, and Medium Cool, author Robert A. Marcink provides a comprehensive look at how Hollywood's choice played a significant role in shaping the modern working class. By exploring films from both the Left and the Right, he also demonstrates that in Hollywood the message rarely strays too far from the ideological center. The Working Class in American Film is an important volume for all film collections. It is also an important volume for communications, sociology, political science, and history collections that explore the relationship between popular media and the shaping of American society and political discourse.

This book examines the treatment of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his work in twentieth and twenty-first century fiction, drama, music, and film, specifically since 1950. The author uses these genres to examine how text, music, performance, and visual images work as a system of representation. In this book, the author strives to clarify the many Dante Gabriel Rossettis, using thirteen of the thirty easily identifiable roles in this system of representation which the author has identified herself-roles by which Rossetti is described and portrayed. The identified portrayals of Rossetti fall easily into five groupings: first, the Italian-English man who is a brother and a loyal friend; second, the poet who is a painter and co-founder of an art movement which afforded him the chance to be a mentor; third, the lover, seducer, husband, oppressor; fourth, the murderer; and fifth, the tortured artist and addict who was mentally ill. These are the portrayals are used throughout this work. Several have chronological boundaries and are discrete representations while others reoccur across the time period covered. Using these categories, the author examines seven works of prose fiction, a feature-length film, two television series, a stage play, and the songs and lyrics of a contemporary band.

This book traces a trend that has emerged in recent years within the modern panorama of American horror film and television, the concurrent-and often overwhelming-use of multiple stock characters, themes and tropes taken from classics of the genre. American Horror Story, Insidious and The Conjuring are examples of a filmic tendency to address a series of topics and themes so vast that at first glance each taken separately would seem to suffice for individual films or shows. This book explores this trend in its visible connections with American Horror, but also with cultural and artistic movements from outside the US, namely Baroque art and architecture, Asian Horror, and European Horror. It analyzes how these hybrid products are constructed and discusses the socio-political issues that they raise. The repeated and excessive barrage of images, tropes and scenarios from distinct subgenres of iconic horror films come together to make up an aesthetic that is referred to in this book as Baroque Horror. In many ways similar to the reactions provoked by the artistic movement of the same name that flourished in the XVII century, these productions induce shock, awe, fear, and surprise. Eljaiek-Rodriguez details how American directors and filmmakers construct these narratives using different and sometimes disparate elements that come together to function as a whole, terrifying the audience through their frenetic accumulation of images, tropes and plot twists. The book also addresses some of the effects that these complex films and series have produced both in the panorama of contemporary horror, as well as in how we understand politics in a divisive world that pushes for ideological homogenizations.

Opera can reveal something fundamental about a film, and film can do the same for an opera, argues Marcia J. Citron. Structured by the categories of Style, Subjectivity, and Desire, this volume advances our understanding of the aesthetics of the opera/film encounter. Case studies of a diverse array of important repertoire including mainstream film, opera-film, and postmodernist pastiche are presented. Citron uses Werner Wolf's theory of intermediality to probe the roles of opera and film when they combine. The book also refines and expands film-music functions, and details the impact of an opera's musical style on the meaning of a film. Drawing on cinematic traditions of Hollywood, France, and Britain, the study explores Coppola's Godfather trilogy, Jewison's Moonstruck, Nichols's Closer, Chabrol's La Ceremonie, Schlesinger's Sunday, Bloody Sunday, Boyd's Aria, and Ponnelle's opera-films."

This insightful account analyzes and provides context for the films and careers of directors who have made Latin American film an important force in Hollywood and in world cinema. In this insightful account, R. Hernandez-Rodriguez analyzes some of the most important, fascinating, and popular films to come out of Latin America in the last three decades, connecting them to a long tradition of filmmaking that goes back to the beginning of the 20th century. Directors Alejandro Inarritu, Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron, and Lucretia Martel and director/screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga have given cause for critics and public alike to praise a new golden age of Latin American cinema. Splendors of Latin Cinema probes deeply into their films, but also looks back at the two most important previous moments of this cinema: the experimental films of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the stage-setting movies from the 1940s and 1950s. It discusses films, directors, and stars from Spain (as a continuing influence), Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and Chile that have contributed to one of the most interesting aspects of world cinema.

"Harmony Korine: Interviews" tracks filmmaker Korine's stunning rise, fall, and rise again through his own evolving voice. Bringing together interviews collected from over two decades, this unique chronicle includes rare interviews unavailable in print for years and an extensive, new conversation recorded at the filmmaker's home in Nashville.

After more than twenty years, Harmony Korine (b. 1973) remains one of the most prominent and yet subversive filmmakers in America. Ever since his entry into the independent film scene as the irrepressible prodigy who wrote the screenplay for Larry Clark's "Kids" in 1992, Korine has retained his stature as the ultimate cinematic provocateur. He both intelligently observes modern social milieus and simultaneously thumbs his nose at them. Now approaching middle age, and more influential than ever, Korine remains intentionally sensationalistic and ceaselessly creative.

In 1995, Korine was discovered while skateboarding and became the bad boy teen writer behind "Kids." He parlayed this success into directing the dreamy portrait of neglect "Gummo" two years later. With his audacious 1999 digital video drama "Julien Donkey-Boy," Korine continued to demonstrate a penchant for fusing experimental, subversive interests with lyrical narrative techniques. Surviving an early career burnout, he resurfaced with a trifecta of insightful works that built on his earlier aesthetic leanings: a surprisingly delicate rumination on identity ("Mister Lonely," 2007), a gritty quasi-diary film ("Trash Humpers," 2009) and a blistering portrait of American hedonism ("Spring Breakers," 2013), which yielded significant commercial success. Throughout his career he has also continued as a mixed media artist whose fields included music videos, paintings, photography, publishing, songwriting, and performance art.

Al Brodax was the producer of and with Erich Segal and others a co-author of the screenplay for The Beatles 'Yellow Submarine'. In this book he recalls a frenzied, madcap escapade that came to be reflected in an enduring piece of screen history. In addition to John, Ringo, Paul and George, and Al, the "cast" included more than a dozen animators, platoons of inkers, background artists, soundmen, cameramen, and various essential expediters. Recruited from the U.S., Europe, Australia and all over the U.K., they produced, aside from the film, more than a dozen pregnancies and one or two marriages. This story has been culled by the author from a rich jumble of late-night, early-morning scribblings during production. His generously illustrated book is a special gift to fans of the Beatles, of 'Yellow Submarine' and of spirited, flavourful writing about movies.

Comprising 91 A-Z entries, this encyclopedia provides a broad and comprehensive introduction to the topic of religion within film. Technology has enabled films to reach much wider audiences, enabling today's viewers to access a dizzying number of films that employ diverse symbolism and communicate a vast array of viewpoints. Encyclopedia of Religion and Film will provide such an audience with the tools to begin their own exploration of the deeper meanings of these films and grasp the religious significance within. Organized alphabetically, this encyclopedia provides more than 90 entries on the larger religious traditions, the major film-producing regions of the globe, the films that have stirred controversy, the most significant religious symbols, and the more important filmmakers. The included topics provide substantially more information on the intersection of religion and film than any of the similar volumes currently available. While the emphasis is on the English-speaking world and the films produced therein, there is also substantial representation of non-English, non-Western film and filmmakers, providing significant intercultural coverage to the topic. Presents 91 A-Z entries that illuminate topics of geographic and regional interest, biographic data, categories common in the study of religion, and examinations of specific films or film-related events Contains contributions from a remarkable group of distinguished, well-published authorities and younger scholars, all with relevant backgrounds in religion, film, culture, or multiple areas of expertise Includes images of important film directors as well as film stills Provides selected bibliographic information regarding the intersection of religion and film that supplements the "for further reading" section of each entry Offers an indexed filmography of works noted throughout the encyclopedia, providing significant information about each film, such as year released, director, and major actors