"New Jews'?" is the first comprehensive study of American Jewish identity in Hollywood movies of the new millennium. Despite the argument that we live in a "post-racial" society with supposedly "new" Jewish characters emerging on the big screen, this book details how traditional racial stereotypes of American Jews persist in popular films from the first decade of this century. In clear and readable prose, the book offers an innovative and penetrating look at dozens of American Jewish "meddling matriarchs," "neurotic nebbishes," "pampered princesses," and "scheming scumbags" from 21st century film, whether Hollywood blockbusters like Meet the Fockers and Sex and the City or indie favorites like Garden State and Kissing Jessica Stein. Throughout the book, famous American Jewish characters played by the likes of Jim Carrey, Tom Cruise, Anne Hathaway, Kate Hudson, Scarlett Johansson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Adam Sandler, and Ben Stiller are discussed, with the ultimate conclusion that movies today are marked less by the emergence of "new Jews" than by the continued - but dynamic and transformed -- presence of the same old stereotypes.

Sin and redemption. The ridiculous and the sublime. The carnivalesque excess of the Strip and the barrenness of the desert surrounding the city. Visited by millions of fortune seekers - and starry-eyed lovers - each year, Las Vegas is a city with as many apparent contradictions as Elvis impersonators and this complexity is reflected in the diversity of films that have been shot on location there. A copiously illustrated retrospective of Vegas's appearances on the big screen, this new volume in Intellect's World Film Locations series presents synopses of scenes from a broad selection of films - from big-budget blockbusters like Oceans Eleven to acclaimed classics Rain Man, Casino and The Godfather to cult favourites like Showgirls and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Insightful essays throughout explore a range of topics, including the Rat Pack's Las Vegas, the cinematised Strip, Las Vegas as a frequent backdrop for science fiction and the various film portrayals of iconic pop-cultural figures like Elvis and Frank Sinatra. Rounding out this information are film stills juxtaposed with photographs of the locations as they appear today.

"Europe and Love in Cinema" explores the relationship between love and Europeanness in a wide range of films from the 1920s to the present. A critical look at the manner in which love--in its broadest sense--is portrayed in cinema from across Europe and the United States, this volume exposes constructed notions of "Europeanness" that both set Europe apart and define some parts of it as more "European" than others. Through the international distribution process, these films in turn engage with ideas of Europe from both outside and within, while some, treated extensively in this volume, even offer alternative models of love. A bracing collection of essays from top film scholars, "Europe and Love in Cinema" demonstrates the centrality of desire to film narrative and explores multiple models of love within Europe's frontiers.

Science Fiction explores the genre from 1895 to the present day, drawing on examples from over forty countries. It raises questions about the relationship between science fiction, science and technology, and examines the interrelationships between spectacle, narrative and self-reflexivity, paying particular attention to the role of special effects in creating meaning and affect. It explores science fiction s evocations of the sublime, the grotesque, and the camp, and charts the ways in which the genre reproduces and articulates discourses of colonialism, imperialism and neo-liberal globalization. At the same time, "Science Fiction" provides a thorough analysis of the genre s representation of race, class, gender and sexuality, making this text an essential guide for students, academics and film fans alike.

Key films discussed include:

• Le voyage dans la lune (1902)
• 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (1916)
• L Atlantide (1921)
• King Kong (1933, 2005)
• Gojira (1954)
• La Jet e (1962)
• The Abominable Dr Phibes (1971)
• Tetsuo (1989)
• Sleep Dealer (2008)
• Avatar (2009)

The biography of the original Mr. Cool, Steve McQueen. The actor who perhaps, first epitomised the Action Hero; a complex man, prone to casual affairs and violence, yet capable of helping those more unfortunate than him.

Part of the Directory of World Cinema series, this title includes contributions from some of the leading academics in the field. It features film recommendations from a range of genres for those interested in watching more cinema from these regions. It also features comprehensive filmography as an index. Given the prevalence of important new wave cinemas across Eastern Central Europe in the post-war, post-Stalinist era (Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia), this new volume of the Directory of World Cinema series charts the trends of these national cinemas. In the decades since the 1970s, the continuing popularity of filmmakers from these countries (including Krzysztof Kieslowski, Bela Tarr, Istvan Szabo and Jiri Menzel), coupled with a recent international surge in the visibility of the cinemas of Serbia, Slovakia and Romania, means that these countries in East Central Europe are a central focus in the directory. Introductory essays of this title establish key players and explore important genres such as war, comedy, surrealism and art cinema while reviews and case studies analyse individual titles in considerable depth. For the film studies scholar, or for all those who love cinema and want to learn more, Directory of World Cinema: East Europe will be an essential companion.

All too often, highly fictionalized cinematic depictions of the past are accepted as the unassailable truth by those unfamiliar with the "real" account. This book profiles sixty movies that portray actual moments in history, and compares the mythologized account of each event to what really happened. Movies chronicled include The Ten Commandments, Spartacus, A Man for All Seasons, Gladiator, Gandhi, Apollo 13, The Thin Red Line, Dances with Wolves, Braveheart, The Last Emperor, All the Presidents Men, Mutiny on the Bounty, Gone with the Wind, Bonnie & Clyde, Patton, and Elizabeth. Sanello also contrasts several historical figures with their filmed treatments, including Julius Caesar, Henry V, Christopher Columbus, Joan of Arc, Sir Thomas More, Jesus Christ, Catherine the Great, Sigmund Freud, and Harry Houdini. Lavishly illustrated with sixty film stills, Reel v. Real shows how a happening's genuine details are frequently reshaped and distorted by Hollywood's bottomless appetite for over-the-top flamboyance and melodrama.

British comedy cinema has been a mainstay of domestic production since the beginning of the last Century and arguably the most popular and important genre in British film history. This edited volume will offer the first comprehensive account of the rich and popular history of British comedy cinema from silent slapstick and satire to contemporary romantic comedy. Using a loosely chronological approach, essays cover successive decades of the 20th and 21st Century with a combination of case studies on key personalities, production cycles and studio output along with fresh approaches to issues of class and gender representation. It will present new research on familiar comedy cycles such as the Ealing Comedies and Carry On films as well as the largely undocumented silent period along with the rise of television spin offs from the 1970s and the development of animated comedy from 1915 to the present. Films covered include: St Trinians, A Fish Called Wanda, Brassed Off, Local Hero, The Full Monty, Four Lions and In the Loop. Contributors: Melanie Bell, Alan Burton, James Chapman, Richard Dacre, Ian Hunter, James Leggott, Sharon Lockyer, Andy Medhurst, Lawrence Napper, Tim O'Sullivan, Laraine Porter, Justin Smith, Sarah Street, Peter Waymark, Paul Wells

If you ran into Stephen Tobolowsky on the street, you would not be mistaken: Yes, you've seen him before. A childhood dentist? A former geometry teacher? Your local florist? Tobolowsky is a character actor, one of the most prolific screen and stage presences of our time, having appeared in productions that range from Deadwood to Glee, from Mississippi Burning to Groundhog Day. But Stephen Tobolowsky, it turns out, is also a dazzlingly talented storyteller and writer. The Dangerous Animals Clubis a beguiling series of stories combining biography and essay, with a tone both hilarious and introspective. The stories have heroics and embarrassments, riotous humour and pathos, characters ranging from Bubbles the Pigmy Hippo to Stephen's unforgettable mother, and scenes that include coke-fueled parties, Hollywood sets, and hospital rooms. Told in a voice that is "wry, discursive, and full of generous spirit and curiosity" (Kirkus Reviews), Tobolowsky renders the majestic out of the mundane, profundity from the patently absurd, and grace from tragedy. The Dangerous Animals Clubmarks the debut of a massively talented storyteller.

Though loved by moviegoers worldwide, Spanish cinema has thus far suffered from a relative lack of critical attention. Focusing on the vast corpus of films that have left their marks on generations of spectators, "Directory of World Cinema: Spain "returns the national cinema of Spain rightfully to the forefront with numerous full-color stills and essays establishing the key players and genres in their sociopolitical context, including civil war films, romances, comedies, and the cinema of the transition. From the award-winning big-budget productions of Pedro Almodovar in Madrid to Pere Portabella's experimental documentaries and the influential Barcelona School, reviews cover individual titles in considerable depth. Essential reading for aficionados of Spanish cinema at all levels, this volume provides an accessible overview of the main trends and issues in Spanish film.

Taking an inclusive approach to South African film history, this volume represents an ambitious attempt to analyze and place in appropriate sociopolitical context the aesthetic highlights of South African cinema from 1896 to the present. Thoroughly researched and fully documented by renowned film scholar Martin Botha, the book focuses on the many highly creative uses of cinematic form, style, and genre as set against South Africa's complex and often turbulent social and political landscape. Included are more than two hundred illustrations and a look at many aspects of South African film history that haven't been previously documented.

Funny yet down-to-earth, honest yet full of exaggeration, actor Walter Matthau (1920-2000) will always occupy a place in America's heart as one of the great comic talents of his generation. Born Walter Matuschanskayasky into Jewish tenements on New York's Lower East Side, he was a child actor in New York Yiddish theater, and later a World War II Air Force radioman-gunner. He paid dues for ten years on Broadway, in summer stock, and on television before landing his film debut The Kentuckian in 1955. By the time of his 1968 casting as cantankerous but lovable slob Oscar Madison in the film version of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, Matthau had won major Hollywood stardom. Based on dozens of interviews and extensive research, this book covers the breadth of his often-complicated personal life and multi-faceted career, including his unforgettable performances in such films as The Fortune Cookie, A Guide for the Married Man, Plaza Suite, Charley Varrick, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The Sunshine Boys, The Bad News Bears, California Suite, and Grumpy Old Men.

This is a comprehensive book about fan films, covering the secret history of the burgeoning movement creating the cinema of tomorrow.Who would risk his life swinging six stories above the ground without a net, just for a homemade Spiderman movie? What would drive a young couple with a newborn baby to spend their life savings on a Star Wars film that has been seen by 4 million people - but from which they can never profit? And why would Steven Spielberg praise three nobodies for a home movie they made as teenagers in the Eighties? They're fan filmmakers, creating the cinema of tomorrow: quick, bitesized movies, starring world-famous characters from Superman to Captain Kirk to Lara Croft. The flicks are fun, free and totally illegal.Now, thanks to Internet sites like YouTube and file sharing technologies like Bit Torrent, this controversial filmmaking movement is starting to rise to the surface. Likewise, Hollywood is taking notice: However, there is no comprehensive book about fan films. There's no tome devoted to the controversies surrounding this unlawful brand of filmmaking and how they're already changing today's media. There's no guide that tells you which movies to search out - and which ones to leave hidden under their rocks. "Homemade Hollywood: The Fan Film Phenomenon" can be that book.

Dance on Screen is a comprehensive introduction to the rich diversity of screen dance genres. It provides a contextual overview of dance in the screen media and analyses a selection of case studies from the popular dance imagery of music, video and Hollywood, through to experimental art dance. The focus then turns to video dance, dance originally choreographed for the camera. Video dance can be seen as a hybrid in which the theoretical and aesthetic boundaries of dance and television are traversed and disrupted.

"Urban Cinematics" surveys the mechanisms by which cinema contributes to our understanding of cities to address two key issues: How do filmmakers make use of urban spaces, and how do urban spaces make use of cinema? Merging the disciplines of architecture, landscape design, and urban planning with film studies, this book explores the potential of cinema as a tool to investigate the communal narratives of cities. A series of dialogues with filmmakers rounds out this insightful and methodologically innovative volume.

A hero to millions who adored his portrayals of Robin Hood and Fletcher Christian, Errol Flynn (1909-59) lived a life that far surpassed any adventure he ever acted out on screen: exotic travels, criminal exploits, passionate love affairs, violent confrontations, scandals, and international fame. In this highly readable, witty and colourful autobiography, reissued by Aurum Press in B-format using the original uncensored text, Flynn reveals himself and his remarkable life as he did nowhere else.

This book discusses contemporary film in all the main countries of Southeast Asia, and the social practices and ideologies which films either represent or oppose. It shows how film acquires signification through cultural interpretation, and how film also serves as a site of contestations between social and political agents seeking to promote, challenge, or erase certain meanings, messages or ideas from public circulation. A unique feature of the book is that it focuses as much on films as it does on the societies from which these films emerge: it considers the reasons for film-makers taking the positions they take; the positions and counter-positions taken; the response of different communities; and the extent to which these interventions are connected to global flows of culture and capital.

The wide range of subjects covered include documentaries as political interventions in Singapore; political film-makers? collectives in the Philippines, and films about prostitution in Cambodia and patriotism in Malaysia, and the Chinese in Indonesia. The book analyses films from Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines, across a broad range of productions ? such as mainstream and independent features across genres (for example comedy, patriotic, political, historical genres) alongside documentary, classic and diasporic films.

In the 1934 classic It Happened One Night, heiress Claudette Colbert races away from the altar and a conventional marriage and throws herself into a wisecracking rough-and-tumble affair with Clark Gable. The new brand of movies following in the wake of Capra's kooky masterpiece-and the women starring in them-are the focus of Kendall's The Runaway Bride, a look at the films that mirrored the climate of the Great Depression while at the same time helping Americans get through it. Kendall details the collaborations between the romantic comedy directors and the female stars, showing how such films as Alice Adams (with Katherine Hepburn), Swing Time (where Ginger Rogers enjoys "A Fine Romance" with Fred Astaire), The Awful Truth (with Irene Dunne), and The Lady Eve (wherein Barbara Stanwyck's shapely leg repeatedly trips naive millionaire Henry Fonda) came to be, and what they said about the 1930s. Written with erudition and enthusiasm, The Runaway Bride is a trip through some of Hollywood's most memorable moments, and a key to the national issues of an era as revealed in its films.