Cinematic Shakespeare takes the reader inside the making of a number of significant adaptations to illustrate how cinema transforms and re-imagines the dramatic form and style central to Shakespeare's imagination. Cinematic Shakespeare investigates how Shakespeare films constitute an exciting and ever-changing film genre. The challenges of adopting Shakespeare to cinema are like few other film genres. Anderegg looks closely at films by Laurence Olivier (Richard III), Orson Welles (Macbeth), and Kenneth Branagh (Hamlet) as well as topics like "Postmodern Shakespeares" (Julie Taymor's Titus and Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books) and multiple adaptations over the years of Romeo and Juliet. A chapter on television looks closely at American broadcasting in the 1950s (the Hallmark Hall of Fame Shakespeare adaptations) and the BBC/Time-Life Shakespeare Plays from the late 70s and early 80s.

Black Lenses, Black Voices is a provocative look at films directed and written_and sometimes produced_by African Americans, as well as black-oriented films whose directors or screenwriters are not black. Mark Reid shows how certain films dramatize the contemporary African American community as a politically and economically diverse group, vastly different from film representations of the 1960s. Taking us through the development of African American independent filmmaking before and after World War II, he then illustrates the unique nature of African American family, action, horror, female-centered, and independent films, such as Eve's Bayou, Jungle Fever, Shaft, Souls of Sin, Bones, Waiting to Exhale, Monster's Ball, Sankofa, and many more.

Building a New China in Cinema introduces English readers for the first time to one of the most exciting left-wing cinema traditions in the world. This unique book explores the history, ideology, and aesthetics of China's left-wing cinema movement, a quixotic film culture that was as political as commercial, as militant as sensationalist. Originating in the 1930s, it marked the first systematic intellectual involvement in Chinese cinema. In this era of turmoil and idealism, the movement's films were characterized by fantasies of heroism intertwined with the inescapable spell of impotency, thus exposing the contradictions of the filmmakers' underlying ideology as their political and artistic agendas alternately fought against or catered to the taste and viewing habits of a popular audience. Political cinema became a commercially successful industry, resulting in a film culture that has never been replicated. Drawing on detailed archival research, Pang demonstrates that this cinema movement was a product of the era's social, economic, and political discourses. The author offers a close analysis of many rarely seen films, richly illustrated with over eighty stills collected from the Beijing Film Archive. With its original conceptual approach and rich use of primary sources, this book will be of interest not only to scholars and fans of Chinese cinema but to those who study the relationship between cinema and modernity.

Its unique ability to sway the masses has led many observers to consider cinema the artform with the greatest political force. The images it produces can bolster leaders or contribute to their undoing. Soviet filmmakers often had to face great obstacles as they struggled to make art in an authoritarian society that put them not only under ideological pressure but also imposed rigid economic constraints on the industry. But while the Brezhnev era of Soviet filmmaking is often depicted as a period of great repression, Soviet Art House reveals that the films made at the prestigious Lenfilm studio in this period were far more imaginative than is usually suspected. In this pioneering study of a Soviet film studio, author Catriona Kelly delves into previously unpublished archival documents and interviews, memoirs, and the films themselves to illuminate the ideological, economic, and aesthetic dimensions of filmmaking in the Brezhnev era. She argues that especially the young filmmakers who joined the studio after its restructuring in 1961 revitalized its output and helped establish Leningrad as a leading center of oppositional art. This unique insight into Soviet film production shows not only the inner workings of Soviet institutions before the system collapsed but also traces how filmmakers tirelessly dodged and negotiated contradictory demands to create sophisticated and highly original movies.

RICHARD LINKLATER

A new study of the American filmmaker Richard Linklater (b. 1960) whose movies include Dazed and Confused, School of Rock, Before Sunrise and A Scanner Darkly.

This new edition the only full-length appreciation of Linklater s available anywhere includes his latest films Me and Orson Welles and Inning By Inning.

FROM THE FOREWORD

Welcome to the world of Richard Linklater, the extraordinary US movie director from Austin, whose broad range of films - from indie (Slacker) to mainstream (School of Rock) - makes it impossible to pigeonhole him. What is not open to debate is quality of his output - his films are entertaining, intelligent, philosophical, innovative, adventurous, unpredictable, eclectic... to be honest, the adjectives could go on ad infinitum.

Welcome also to the world of Thomas A. Christie, whose pioneering attempt to pin down the elusive nature of the maverick auteur makes for a follow-up to his recent volume on Liv Tyler. This new work bears all the hallmarks of the earlier book - wide-ranging and meticulous research, and intelligent commentaries on each film, backed up by well informed and even-handed opinions. In chapter after chapter Christie demonstrates his knowledge of Linklater, his films and movieland in general - you feel safe in his cinematic hands. His opinions are authoritative - you know that Christie s judgements are the result of viewing and analysis of Linklater s oeuvre, seen through a sharp and perceptive mind. Christie shows once again that he is master of fine detail and formulated opinion, expressed in the clearest narrative prose. We couldn t ask for a better guide to the world of Linklater.

If you don t know Linklater s films, this book will make you want to see them. If you feel you know them all already, think again you ll want to re-view them again and again after reading Christie s thought-provoking volume.

THOMAS CHRISTIE has a life-long fascination with films and the people who make them. Currently reading for a PhD in Scottish Literature, he lives in Scotland with his family.

He is the author of Liv Tyler, Star in Ascendance: Her First Decade in Film (2007) and The Cinema of Richard Linklater (2008) which are also published by Crescent Moon.

As the movie and music industries have changed, film scoring has become an overwhelmingly independent process. Film composers have more responsibilities than ever before, and they must fulfill them with smaller budgets and shorter schedules. As a result, composers are increasingly becoming armies of one. In Guerrilla Film Scoring: Practical Advice from Hollywood Composers, Jeremy Borum provides valuable guidance on how to make a good film score both quickly and inexpensively. This handbook encompasses the entire film scoring process including education, preparation, writing and recording a score, editing, mixing and mastering, finding work, career development, and sample contracts. Offering strategic tools and techniques, this insider's guide draws on the expertise from a number of prominent composers in movies, television, and video gaming, including Stewart Copeland, Bruce Broughton, and Jack Wall. A straightforward do-it-yourself manual, this book will help composers at all levels create the best-sounding scores quickly and cost effectively-without jeopardizing their art. With access to rare and extremely useful input from the best in the business, Guerrilla Film Scoring will benefit not only students but also professionals looking to update their game.

"A timely intervention into debates on the representation of feminist and feminine identities in contemporary visual culture. The essays in this collection interrogate how and why certain formulations of feminism and femininity are currently prevalent in mainstream cinema and television, offering new insights into postfeminist media phenomena"--

As film history's oldest and one of today's most prominent forms, the live-action short film has both historical and contemporary significance. Felando discusses the historical significance of the short film, identifies the fiction short's conventions, and offers two general research categories: the classical short and the art short.

Rethinking Genre in Contemporary Global Cinema offers a unique, wide-ranging exploration of the intersection between traditional modes of film production and new, transitional/transnational approaches to film genre and related discourses in a contemporary, global context. This volume's content-the films, genres, and movements explored, as well as methodologies used in their analysis-is diverse and, crucially, up-to-date with contemporary film-making practice and theory. Significantly, the collection extends existing scholarly discourse on film genre beyond its historical bias towards a predominant focus on Hollywood cinema, on the one hand, and a tendency to treat "other" national cinemas in isolation and/or as distinct systems of production, on the other. In view of the ever-increasing globalisation and transnational mediation of film texts and screen media and culture worldwide, the book recognises the need for film genre studies and film genre criticism to cast a broader, indeed global, scope. The collection thus rethinks genre cinema as a transitional, cross-cultural, and increasingly transnational, global paradigm of film-making in diverse contexts.

A socio-cultural analysis of the relationship between modernism and science fiction, from the 1870s to the 1970s, with examples drawn from literature and other media in Britain, Europe and the Americas. The book challenges how high and low culture has been mapped in the twentieth century.

The interactions between popular culture and public policy in general, and foreign policy in particular, have always been an important area of scholarly enquiry and popular interest. However with the end of the bipolar world system and the emergence of a single world superpower in the form of the United States of America, which is waging a War Against Terror, this nexus has become critical. This is especially true because of the almost Manichean tendency of the United States to see other countries in terms of "good" or "evil." Indeed President Bush himself has coined the term "The Axis of Evil" for states, which in a kinder age were simply referred to by his predecessors as being "Rogue States."

This book draws together elements from several academic disciplines - politics, international relations, psychology, film and cultural studies and examines US foreign policy toward the so-called "rogue states" and the products of the Hollywood film industry in relation to these states, which promises to make a significant contribution to our understanding of the 'soft power' that is popular culture.

This book presents a unique insight into an extraordinary period of European history that had far-reaching significance for British cinema and for the way history itself is represented. The work collected in this volume draws from the best knowledge, enthusiasm and critical insight of leading scholars, archivists and historians specialising in British cinema. The editors are experts in the field of British silent cinema; in particular, its complex relationship to the Great War and its afterimage in popular culture. As the Great War continues to fade from living memory, it is a significant task to look back at how the cinema industry responded to that conflict as it unfolded, and how it shaped the war's memory through the 1910s and 1920s.

The fall of the Soviet Union had the effect of making Russia even more of a riddle to the foreign observer than it had ever been. This book incorporates into an organic whole the realities of film production, the films themselves, and the socio-political-cultural context, weaving these three threads into a narrative discourse. It aims to integrate the films of the 1990s with life, and to provide a global picture of Russia (with Moscow in the foreground) as the big stage on which the drama unfolded. The author discusses some eighty films made between 1990 and 2000. Many reflect the reality of the present day, either in dramatic or grotesque form. Others reassess the past, placing different spins on various epochs and figures according to the director's ideological orientation. Still others offer escapism into imaginary worlds. The films selected may vary in technical quality and depth of thought; they may be mainstream pictures, or art films. But taken together, they provide an eloquent portrait of Russia, entering the new millennium still in search of its true identity.

The ground has shifted from the days in which "serious history" and "boring" went hand in glove. Textbooks and lectures have their place, but less traditional classrooms can be powerfully immersive and insightful. Take the 1929 Marx Brothers film The Cocoanuts and what it teaches about both the Great Depression and early sound films. The Marx Brothers are among the funniest comedy teams of all time. Four of their 13 films are on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American comedies ever made. For many contemporary viewers, though, "getting" the jokes is not always easy because the humor can be subjective and timebound. This work looks at the American past through the lens of the Marx Brothers' films and other projects. Each of the chapters focuses on a specific film, contextualizing the world at the time and how the Marx Brothers lampooned those subjects. Along the way, the book demonstrates what the Marx Brothers revealed about weighty topics like gambling, gender relations, immigration, medical care, Prohibition, race and war, all leavened with offbeat humor.

The national cinemas of Czechoslovakia and East Germany were two of the most vital sites of filmmaking in the Eastern Bloc, and over the course of two decades, they contributed to and were shaped by such significant developments as Sovietization, de-Stalinization, and the conservative retrenchment of the late 1950s. This volume comprehensively explores the postwar film cultures of both nations, using a "stereoscopic" approach that traces their similarities and divergences to form a richly contextualized portrait. Ranging from features to children's cinema to film festivals, the studies gathered here provide new insights into the ideological, political, and economic dimensions of Cold War cultural production.

How do we define the globalized cinema and media cultures of Bollywood in an age when it has become part of the cultural diplomacy of an emerging superpower? Bollywood and Its Other(s) explores the aesthetic-philosophical questions of the other through, for example, discussions on Indian diaspora's negotiations with national identity.

Novel Approaches to Lesbian History tells a tale about history and community in our allegedly post-identity era, examining contemporary novels that depict lesbian characters in recognizable historical situations. These imaginative stories provide a politically vital, speculative past in the face of a sketchy, problematic archive. Among the memorable characters in some 200 novels are pirates, cowgirls, and famous artists, ghosts and time travellers, immigrants and lovers. The best lesbian historical novels are conscientious and buoyant as they engage critical historiographical questions, but Novel Approaches also discusses the class and race biases that weigh on the genre. Some lesbian historical novels are based on archival evidence, others on conjecture or fantasy, but all convey the true fact that identity is elusive without a past, without which its future is nearly impossible.

Style and Form in the Hollywood Slasher Film fills a broad scholastic gap by analysing the elements of narrative and stylistic construction of films in the slasher subgenre of horror that have been produced and/or distributed in the Hollywood studio system from its initial boom in the late 1970s to the present.