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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Films, cinema > General
Kord and Krimmer investigate the most common male types - cops, killers, fathers, cowboys, superheroes, spies, soldiers, rogues, lovers, and losers - by tracing changing concepts of masculinity in popular Hollywood blockbusters from 1992 to 2008 - the Clinton and Bush eras - against a backdrop of contemporary political events, social developments, and popular American myths. Their in-depth analysis of over sixty films, from The Matrix and Iron Man to Pirates of the Caribbean and The Lord of the Rings, shows that movies, far from being mere entertainment, respond directly to today's social and political realities, from consumerism to "family values" to the War on Terror.
Wherever vampires existed in the imaginations of different peoples, they adapted themselves to the customs of the local culture. As a result, vampire lore is extremely diverse. So too, representations of the vampire in creative works have been marked by much originality. In "The Vampyre" (1819), John Polidori introduced Lord Ruthven and established the vampire craze of the 19th century that resulted in a flood of German vampire poetry, French vampire drama, and British vampire fiction. This tradition culminated in Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (1897), which fixed the character of the Transylvanian nobleman as the archetypal vampire firmly in the public imagination. Numerous films drew from Stoker's novel to varying degrees, with each emphasizing different elements of his vampire character. And more recent writers have created works in which vampirism is used to explore contemporary social concerns. The contributors to this volume discuss representations of the vampire in fiction, folklore, film, and popular culture. The first section includes chapters on Stoker and his works, with attention to such figures as Oscar Wilde and Edvard Munch. The second section explores the vampire in film and popular culture from Bela Lugosi to "Blacula." The volume then looks at such modern writers as Anne Rice and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro who have adapted the vampire legend to meet their artistic needs. A final section studies contemporary issues, such as vampirism as a metaphor for AIDS in ""Killing Zoe."
Cecil B. DeMille, David Selznick, Louella Parsons, Joan Crawford--these legendary men and women built an empire called Hollywood. In Movie Crazy, meet another group of powerful players who shaped the film industry--the fans. MGM, for example, struggled to find a screen name for an actress named Lucille LeSeur. A fan--one of thousands who responded to a contest sponsored by the studio--called her Joan Crawford. Using fan club journals, fan letters, and studio production records, Samantha Barbas reveals how the passion, enthusiasm, and sometimes possessive advocacy of fans transformed early cinema, the modern mass media, and American popular culture. Barbas sheds new light on the development of the cult of celebrity in America, and demonstrates that while fans were avid consumers of the film industry, they did not mindlessly accept the images presented to them by the studios. Fans reacted to movies and stars with excitement, anger, confusion, joy, or boredom. Far from a united force, fans were often complex, and never predictable.
These essays all-in various ways-address the relationship between adaptation, "true events," and cultural memory. They ask (and frequently answer) the question: how do we script stories about real events that are often still fresh in our memories and may involve living people? True Event Adaptation: Scripting Real Lives contains essays from scholars committed to interrogating historical and current hard-hitting events, traumas, and truths through various media. Each essay goes beyond general discussion of adaptation and media to engage with the specifics of adapting true life events-addressing pertinent and controversial questions around scriptwriting, representation, ethics, memory, forms of history, and methodological interventions. Written for readers interested in how memory works on culture as well as screenwriting choices, the collection offers new perspectives on historical media and commercial media that is currently being produced, as well as on media created by the book's contributors themselves.
This book explores the role and centrality of women in the development of collaborative theatre practice, alongside the significance of collective creation and devising in the development of the modern theatre. Tracing a web of women theatremakers in Europe and North America, this book explores the connections between early twentieth century collective theatre practices such as workers theatre and the dramatic play movement, and the subsequent spread of theatrical devising. Chapters investigate the work of the Settlement Houses, total theatre in 1920s' France, the mid-century avant-garde and New Left collectives, the nomadic performances of Europe's transnational theatre troupes, street-theatre protests, and contemporary devising. In so doing, the book further elucidates a history of modern theatre begun in A History of Collective Creation (2013) and Collective Creation in Contemporary Performance (2013), in which the seemingly marginal and disparate practices of collective creation and devising are revealed as central-and women theatremakers revealed as progenitors of these practices.
Now in its fourth edition, Television and Screen Writing: From Concept to Contract is a classic resource for students and professionals in screenwriting and television writing. This book will teach you how to become a creative and marketable writer in every professional arena - including major studios, production companies, networks, cable and pay TV, animation, and interactive programs. Specific techniques and script samples for writing high-quality and producible "spec" scripts for theatrical motion pictures, the sitcom series, one-hour dramatic series, longform television, soaps, talk show, variety, animation, interactive and new media are provided. Television and Screen Writing: From Concept to Contract, Fourth Edition also offers a fully detailed examination of the current marketplace, and distinct strategies for marketing your scripts, from registering and copyrighting the script to signing with an agent. This new edition has been expanded to include the most up-to-date creative and professional script samples, marketing resources, and practical information possible. The companion website offers a wide range of contacts and resources for you to explore, and Internet links to professional resources. There is also an Annotated and Selected Bibliography for your reference
Examining the vast breadth and diversity of contemporary documentary production, while also situating nonfiction film and video within the cultural, political, and socio-economic history of the region, this book addresses topics such as documentary aesthetics, indigenous media, and transnational filmmaking, among others.
Why is film becoming increasingly important to philosophers? Is it because it can be a helpful tool in teaching philosophy, in illustrating it? Or is it because film can also think for itself, because it can create its own philosophy? In fact, a popular claim amongst film philosophers is that film is no mere handmaiden to philosophy, that it does more than simply illustrate philosophical texts: rather, film itself can philosophise in direct audio-visual terms. Approaches that purport to grant to film the possibility of being more than illustrative can be found in the subtractive ontology of Alain Badiou, the Wittgensteinian analyses of Stanley Cavell, and the materialist semiotics of Gilles Deleuze. In each case there is a claim that film can think in its own way. Too often, however, when philosophers claim to find indigenous philosophical value in film, it is only on account of refracting it through their own thought: film philosophizes because it accords with a favored kind of extant philosophy. "Refractions of Reality: Philosophy and the Moving Image" is the first book to examine all the central issues surrounding the vexed relationship between the film image and philosophy. In it, John Mullarkey tackles the work of particular philosophers and theorists (Zizek, Deleuze, Cavell, Bordwell, Badiou, Branigan, Ranciere, Frampton, and many others) as well as general philosophical positions (Analytical and Continental, Cognitivist and Culturalist, Psychoanalytic and Phenomenological). Moreover, he also offers an incisive analysis and explanation of several prominent forms of film theorizing, providing a metalogical account of their mutual advantages and deficiencies that will prove immensely useful to anyone interested in the details of particular theories of film presently circulating, as well as correcting, revising, and revisioning the field of film theory as a whole. Throughout, Mullarkey asks whether the reduction of film to text is unavoidable. In particular: must philosophy (and theory) always transform film into pretexts for illustration? What would it take to imagine how film might itself theorize without reducing it to standard forms of thought and philosophy? Finally, and fundamentally, must we change our definition of philosophy and even of thought itself in order to accommodate the specificities that come with the claim that film can produce philosophical theory? If a 'non-philosophy' like film can think philosophically, what does that imply for orthodox theory and philosophy?
Covers the archaeological content of approximately 120 popular films, most of which have been produced in the United States since 1912. A unique feature is the inclusion of archaeologically significant dialogue from films that reveal how the industry portrays archaeology. Key words at the top of each page in the filmography allow readers to locate a particular film by title. Extensive commentaries appear for the newer pictures while briefer remarks are found for older films.
Produce professional level dialogue tracks with industry-proven techniques and insights from an Emmy Award winning sound editor. Gain innovative solutions to common dialogue editing challenges such as room tone balancing, noise removal, perspective control, finding and using alternative takes, and even time management and postproduction politics. In Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures, Second Edition veteran film sound editor John Purcell arms you with classic as well as cutting-edge practices to effectively edit dialogue for film, TV, and video. This new edition offers: A fresh look at production workflows, from celluloid to Digital Cinema, to help you streamline your editing Expanded sections on new software tools, workstations, and dialogue mixing, including mixing "in the box" Fresh approaches to working with digital video and to moving projects from one workstation to another An insider's analysis of what happens on the set, and how that affects the dialogue editor Discussions about the interweaving histories of film sound technology and film storytelling Eye-opening tips, tricks, and insights from film professionals around the globe A companion website (www.focalpress.com/cw/purcell) with project files and video examples demonstrating editing techniques discussed in the book Don't allow your dialogue to become messy, distracting, and uncinematic! Do dialogue right with John Purcell's all-inclusive guide to this essential yet invisible art.
World War II saw the greatest ever flight of cultural and intellectual talent from Europe. This mass escape from the Nazi regime saw legends such as Greta Garbo and Igor Stravinsky leave their homelands and settle in America. Their presence - in Hollywood especially - enabled the evolution of film noir, and changed movie-making forever. In "Exiles in Hollywood", David Wallace profiles many of the refugees, including the filmmakers, Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock, writers like Thomas Mann, and actors such as Garbo and Charles Laughton. The result is a rich, page-turning look at an era, its triumphs and tragedies, its gossip and hidden facts, and its colourful personalities.
JEAN-LUC GODARD Theres no one else quite like Jean-Luc Godard. You could take a few frames from one of his films and know they were by the maestro and nobody else. Where the flood of movies globally now runs into many thousands, Godards works stand out as original, acerbic, romantic, ironic, humorous and explorative. EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER 2: GODARD BIOGRAPHY With Bout du Souffle, Godard produced one of the first, great French New Wave movies, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, and written by, among others, Franois Truffaut. Bout du Souffle, with its cool Parisian milieu, its filmic and film noir allusions, handheld camera, direct sound, startling editing and stylish, self-conscious performances from Belmondo and Seberg, established Godard as one of the major voices of postwar cinema, a reputation which Godard built on in subsequent early films such as Le Petit Soldat (1960), Une Femme Est Une Femme (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Mpris (1963), Bande Part (1964), and Une Femme Marie (1964). In these films of the early to mid-1960s, Godard established a radical, polemical series of films as film-essays which confronted issues such as late consumer capitalism, prostitution, labour, politics, ideology, gender, marriage, music, popular culture, Hollywood and not forgetting cinema itself. In the mid-1960s, Godards films became increasingly political - the sci-fi film Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), Made in U.S.A (1966), Masculine/ Fminin (1966), 2 ou 3 Choses Que Je Sais (1966) until, by 1967-68, the Marxist and Maoist influences permeated Godards films: Weekend (1967), La Chinoise (1967), La Gai Savoir (1968), and One Plus One (Sympathy For the Devil, 1968). His concern was not to make political films, but to make films politically (my emphasis). In the 1970s, Godard moved into video and television territory, and worked with Anne-Marie Miville on many projects: Ici Et Ailleurs (1974), Numro Deux (1975), Comment a Va (1976), Six Fois Deux/ Sur Et Sous La Communication (1976), and France/ Tour/ Dtour/ Deux/ Enfants (1977-78). In the late 1970s, Godard made a return to feature filmmaking, with the sublime trilogy, Sauve Qui Peut (a.k.a. Every Man For Himself and Slow Motion, 1979), Passion (1982), and Prnom: Carmen (1983). Easily his most controversial film, Je Vous Salue Marie (Hail Mary), appeared in 1985; it was followed by Dtective (1985), made to help finance the completion of Hail Mary, King Lear (1987), which starred Peter Sellars, Burgess Meredith, Molly Ringwald, Norman Mailer and Woody Allen, Nouvelle Vague (1990), Hlas Pour Moi (1993), For Ever Mozart (1997), loge de lAmour (In Praise of Love, 2000) and Notre Musique (2005). Fully illustrated. Bibliography and notes.
This is a new edition of Laura Mulvey's groundbreaking collection of essays, originally published in 1989. in an extensive introduction to this second edition, Mulvey looks back at the historical and personal contests for her famous article "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, "and reassesses her theories in the light of new technologies.
Showcasing the unique costumes featured in the Star Trek franchise, from Mr. Spock's Starfleet uniform to Uhura's mirror universe ensemble. The book features a wardrobe gallery that explores beautiful and innovative fashions from the various film and television versions of Star Trek, including different iterations of the Starfleet uniform, exquisitely designed alien garb, and much, accompanied by exclusive interviews with costume designers and experts
"From IBM to MGM: Cinema at the Dawn of the Digital Age" uncovers the early history of cinema and computers and looks at how filmmakers first encountered the defining technology of the digital age. In this original study, author Andrew Utterson charts the beginnings of digital cinema, addressing both how filmmakers used new digital technologies and how attitudes and anxieties about the rise of the computer were represented in films such as Walter Lang's "Desk Set," Jean-Luc Godard's "Alphaville, " Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Michael Crichton's "Westworld." At once both timely and historically-grounded, "From IBM to MGM" focuses on cinema's earliest encounters with computers, as filmmakers like John Whitney, Stan VanDerBeek and other pioneers responded to the flurry of digital devices that emerged in the post-war decades.
This work examines the reasons why anthropologists have not used the camera as a research instrument or film as a means of communicating ethnographic knowledge. It suggests that images and words in this discipline operate on different logical levels; that they are hierarchically related; that whereas writings may encompass the images produced by film, the inverse of this cannot be true. The author argues for this position further by suggesting that the visual is to the written mode as "thin description" (giving a record of the form of behaviour) is to "thick description" (giving an account of meaning). -- .
Queer Nostalgia in Cinema and Pop Culture explores popular representations of queer nostalgia in films, animation and music videos as means of empowerment, re-evaluating and recreating lost gay youth, coming to terms with one's sexual otherness and homoerotic desires, celebrating queer counterculture, and creatively challenging homophobia, chauvinism, ageism and racism. In particular, Queer Nostalgia engages in a critical discussion of nostalgia-in-motion, the significance of 'femininostlagia' (gay men's effeminate nostalgia), the intricate relationship between queer nostalgia, martyrdom and emergent queer mythology, the contribution of nostalgia to 'autoqueerography' (queer autobiography inspired by women's dissident autobiography or 'autogynography'), and the interrelationship between ethnic and queer nostalgias.
In Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games author Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall analyzes how films and video games from around the world have depicted slave revolt, focusing on the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). This event, the first successful revolution by enslaved people in modern history, sent shock waves throughout the Atlantic World. Regardless of its historical significance however, this revolution has become less well-known-and appears less often on screen-than most other revolutions; its story, involving enslaved Africans liberating themselves through violence, does not match the suffering-slaves-waiting-for-a-white-hero genre that pervades Hollywood treatments of Black history. Despite Hollywood's near-silence on this event, some films on the Revolution do exist-from directors in Haiti, the US, France, and elsewhere. Slave Revolt on Screen offers the first-ever comprehensive analysis of Haitian Revolution cinema, including completed films and planned projects that were never made. In addition to studying cinema, this book also breaks ground in examining video games, a pop-culture form long neglected by historians. Sepinwall scrutinizes video game depictions of Haitian slave revolt that appear in games like the Assassin's Creed series that have reached millions more players than comparable films. In analyzing films and games on the revolution, Slave Revolt on Screen calls attention to the ways that economic legacies of slavery and colonialism warp pop-culture portrayals of the past and leave audiences with distorted understandings.
From the silent era into the early days of television, hundreds of small production companies turned out low-budget films that were played as second features in this country and abroad. As might be expected, a high percentage of these films were Westerns. The people who made these films-producers, directors, writers, actors, and technicians-inhabited what came to be known as Poverty Row, eking out a living doing a job they loved. Author C. Jack Lewis spent 25 years in this world of low-budget Westerns, and here he portrays the human side of the industry through the many people with whom he came into contact as he worked his way from film to film. Highly personal, filled with rare glimpses of a life that lives only in the memory of a few, this narrative is a nostalgic memoir of a bygone time, of those who shared life on Poverty Row-and of the hard work, failures, successes, and dreams made or broken. Liberal use of photos helps readers identify the faces they have seen on their television screens in the reruns of these pictures still making the rounds. A must-read for students of film and popular culture-great for fans of Westerns as well.
One of the most fascinating aspects of film studies is how it can explain more about the nature of "closed" societies. In Eastern Europe, artists, intellectuals, and entertainers are now free to create film outside the direct control of the state. This unique handbook convincingly shows how much film art was still being produced behind the Iron Curtain even during such repressive periods as those under Stalin and Brezhnev. Thomas J. Slater has compiled a valuable history of cinematic evolution in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe through the use of detailed historiographical essays for each country. The dramatic changes in the political and economic structures of Eastern Europe that occurred during 1989-90 have revealed even more about courageous filmmakers who worked under difficult conditions. Many were still able to produce artistically important films, but filmmakers were often forced to become propagandizers for their authoritarian governments. This book outlines the film achievements in the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, East Germany, Romania, and Bulgaria, and how their people responded to the films they were allowed to see. An appendix contains a chronology of major historical, cultural, and film events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe during the past 100 years. This book will be of great value to scholars not only of film studies, but also of history, social and political science, communications, culture, and the fine arts. The handbook is an excellent addition to the collections of academic and public libraries and provides a vital listing for film historians and filmmakers.
This updated third edition of Studio Television Production and Directing introduces readers to the basic fundamentals of studio and control room production. Accessible and focused, readers of this updated third edition will gain fluency in essential studio terms and technology and acquire the necessary skills to make it in the industry. This book is your back-to-the-basics guide to common technology-including principles of directing, assistant directing, technical directing, audio ops, the basics of studio lighting, an introduction to set design, camera ops, floor directing, story types (VO, VO/SOT, PKG), basic engineering, and more. Whether an established professional or a student, this book provides readers with the technical expertise to successfully coordinate live or taped studio television today. In this new edition, author Andrew Hicks Utterback offers an expanded glossary and new material on visualization walls, alternative camera mounts, basic engineering, and news narrative diagramming. |
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