American director Robert Altman (1925-2006) first came to national attention with the surprise blockbuster M*A*S*H (1970), and he directed more than thirty feature films in the subsequent decades. Critics and scholars have noted that music is central to Altman's films, and in addition to his feature films, Altman worked in theater, opera, and the emerging field of cable television. His treatment of sound is a hallmark of his films, alongside overlapping dialogue, improvisation, and large ensemble casts. Several of his best-known films integrate musical performances into the central plot, including Nashville (1975), Popeye (1980), Short Cuts (1993), Kansas City (1996), The Company (2003) and A Prairie Home Companion (2006), his final film. Even such non-musicals as McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) have been described as, in fellow director and protege Paul Thomas Anderson's evocative phrase, as "musicals without people singing." Robert Altman's Soundtracks considers Altman's celebrated, innovative uses of music and sound in several of his most acclaimed and lesser-known works. In so doing, these case studies serve as a window not only into Altman's considerable and varied output, but also the changing film industry over nearly four decades, from the heyday of the New Hollywood in the late 1960s through the "Indiewood" boom of the 1990s and its bust in the early 2000s. As its frame, the book will consider the continuing attractions of auteurism inside and outside of scholarly discourse, by considering Altman's career in terms of the director's own self-promotion as a visionary and artist; the film industry's promotion of Altman the auteur; the emphasis on Altman's individual style, including his use of music, by the director, critics, scholars, and within the industry; and the processes, tensions, and boundaries of collaboration.

Environmental ethics presents and defends a systematic and comprehensive account of the moral relation between human beings and their natural environment and assumes that human behaviour toward the natural world can and is governed by moral norms. In contemporary society, film has provided a powerful instrument for the moulding of such ethical attitudes. Through a close examination of the medium, Environmental Ethics and Film explores how historical ethical values can be re-imagined and re-constituted for more contemporary audiences. Building on an extensive back-catalogue of eco-film analysis, the author focuses on a diverse selection of contemporary films which target audiences' ethical sensibilities in very different ways. Each chapter focuses on at least three close readings of films and documentaries, examining a wide range of environmental issues as they are illustrated across contemporary Hollywood films. This book is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of environmental communication, film studies, media and cultural studies, environmental philosophy and ethics.

The 1950s are widely regarded as the golden age of American science fiction. This book surveys a wide range of major science fiction novels and films from the long 1950s--the period from 1946 to 1964--when the tensions of the Cold War were at their peak. The American science fiction novels and films of this period clearly reflect Cold War anxieties and tensions through their focus on such themes as alien invasion and nuclear holocaust. In this sense, they resemble the observations of social and cultural critics during the same period.

Meanwhile, American science fiction of the long 1950s also engages its historical and political contexts through an interrogation of phenomena, such as alienation and routinization, that can be seen as consequences of the development of American capitalism during this period. This economic trend is part of the rise of the global phenomenon that Marxist theorists have called late capitalism. Thus, American science fiction during this period reflects the rise of late capitalism and participates in the beginnings of postmodernism, described by Frederic Jameson as the cultural logic of late capitalism.

McAdams provides the first extensive synthesis of American and world history with the war film genre. He demonstrates how the war film reflects the currents of history of the time with actual events portrayed and in dramatic plot points.

Beginning with DEGREESIThe Birth of a Nation DEGREESR in 1915, McAdams weaves the development of Hollywood, the larger socioeconomic and political events of the time with the way war was and is portrayed in American film. In wartime he shows the struggle between propaganda and patriotism on the one side and the desire of many directors and film people to portray war as they came to know it on the other. He concludes with DEGREESIPearl Harbor DEGREESR and Hollywood's search for historical film blockbusters. A fascinating survey for film and American military history scholars and students as well as the general public interested in American film in context.

Who you gonna call? This deluxe book celebrates three decades of ghostbusting fun, exploring all aspects of the ever-popular phenomenon. Covering the production of the first two Ghostbusters movies in great detail, including rare behind-the-scenes pictures and in-depth commentary from cast and crew, the book will also take in the expanded Ghostbusters universe, from cartoons to comics, toys, and video games. The last word on the Ghostbusters franchise.

India produces more films each year than any other country in the world. Yet, apart from the films of Sanjit Ray, the diverse and lavish output of Indian film-makers is largely unknown outside the Far East. This pioneering reference work features all major Indian film directors over an 80-year period. The book takes as its starting point D. G. Phalke's famous 1913 silent film "Raja Harishchandra," generally acknowledged as the first Indian feature. Original Indian language titles from the regional cinemas are transliterated - whether in Assamese, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malyayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Sanskrit, Sinhalese, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu or other languages. Three Hundred Eighty-three directors are included alphabetically by surname. There is complete coverage of all periods and genres.

Expand your knowledge of the aesthetics, forms and meaning of motion graphics as well as the long-running connections between the American avant-garde film, video art and TV commercials. In 1960 avant-garde animator and inventor John Whitney started a company called "Motion Graphics, Inc." to make animated titles and logos. His new company crystalized a relationship between avant-garde film and commercial broadcast design/film titles. Careful discussion of historical works puts them in context, allowing their reappearance in contemporary motion graphics clear. This book includes a thorough examination of the history of title design from the earliest films through the present, including Walter Anthony, Saul Bass, Maurice Binder, Pablo Ferro, Wayne Fitzgerald, Nina Saxon, and Kyle Cooper. This book also covers early abstract film (the Futurists Bruno Corra and Arnaldo Ginna, Leopold Survage, Walther Ruttmann, Viking Eggeling, Hans Richter, Oskar Fischinger, Mary Ellen Bute, Len Lye and Norman McLaren) and puts the work of visual music pioneers Mary Hallock-Greenewalt and Thomas Wilfred in context. The History of Motion Graphics is the essential textbook and general reference for understanding how and where the field of motion graphic design came from and where it's going.

"The Moving Picture World" magazine was the industry standard during the silent cinema era. This is the first index compiled for all the films reviewed in the early volumes of this journal. In 1916, the magazine itself began providing an index to film reviews. Until now, researchers and scholars had to scour page-by-page through each weekly issue from 1907-1915 to find a desired review. This new index, focusing on this period, lists films alphabetically by title, identifies manufacturers/distributors with their films, and provides full dates and page locations for reviews. The index provides easy access to reviews of theatrical films, news pictorials, series and serials, and early travelogues.

Many of the films included in this index are no longer extant; thus, contemporary reviews may be the only means for analysis of these pioneering cinematic efforts. The reviews contain valuable information about the standards and tastes of film in its infancy, and shed light on story content in those early days. Some of the titles in this index will shock the user; many will cause laughter; all are worthy of remembrance for their historical value. Over 27,000 films are listed; the preface chronicles the history of the journal and explains clearly how to use the book. No reviews are included--the index is designed to encourage and guide the user towards an increased familiarity with the "Moving Picture World," which is currently available on microfilm through the Library of Congress

Why has Portugal's vibrant and creative cinema industry not been more commercially successful? This book traces the evolution of Portuguese cinema between the beginning of the New Cinema movement in 1960 and the height of the economic crisis in 2010 from a socio-cultural and economic perspective. It aims to explain why this vibrant and creative industry has not been more commercially successful and pays especial attention to questions of financial viability, domestic consumption, international distribution, and the effects of legislation. It shows how film-makers have responded to historical difficulties and material obstacles and how market conditions have influenced aesthetics. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, film theory, and history, the book assesses the place of Portuguese cinema within Portuguese culture as well as the wider film world. While focussed on the case of Portugal, it also sheds light on problems faced by other peripheral film cultures in the international marketplace and on the festival circuit.

Picturing home examines the depiction of domestic life in British feature films made and released in the 1940s. It explores how pictorial representations of home onscreen in this period re-imagined modes of address that had been used during the interwar years to promote ideas about domestic modernity. Picturing home provides a close analysis of domestic life as constructed in eight films, contextualising them in relation to a broader, offscreen culture surrounding the suburban home, including magazines, advertisements, furniture catalogues and displays at the Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition. In doing so, it offers a new reading of British 1940s films, which demonstrates how they trod a delicate path balancing prewar and postwar, traditional and modern, private and public concerns. -- .

This book opens up the history of twentieth-century French cinema from the silent era to the present day by exploring the key role of gender and sexual politics. A much-needed sequel to Berg's bestselling Gender and German Cinema, the volume tackles such questions as:
- What role did the female voice play when sound cinema was first developed?
- How have film genres and movements been shaped by gender and sexual politics?
- How does gender intersect with factors of race, class, ethnic and national identity?
The contributors also throw into relief broad issues such as the evolution of film in the context of 20C French social, political and cultural history.
Bringing together original essays by French, British and American scholars, the collection fully covers the development of French cinema. It addresses the work of individual auteurs, the French star system, and film genres and movements such as Dada and Surrealism, the New Wave and the New New Wave. It also focuses on film narratives in which issues of gender are particularly pertinent. The volume, which features illustrations, a filmography and bibliography, will be one of the standard handbooks in French cultural/film studies for some time to come.

The laws of movie-making explains the basic legal and business principles behind producing and distributing an independent feature film. This title discusses way of conceptualising an economically viable idea for a film and procure financial investment, warns of the pitfalls of production and simplifies the intricacies of international distribution, while showing you how to limit your legal liabilities. It is intended not only for film students and future film producers, but also for lawyers and entrepreneurs who are eager to understand the mechanisms of the film industry.

Adaptation in Contemporary Culture: Textual Infidelities seeks to reconfigure the ways in which adaptation is conceptualised by considering adaptation within an extended range of generic, critical and theoretical contexts. This collection explores literary, film, television and other visual texts both as origins and adaptations and offers new insights into the construction of genres, canons and classics. Chapters investigate both classic and contemporary texts by British and American authors, from Jane Austen, Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Dickens to Bret Easton Ellis, P.D James and Sarah Waters. A diverse range of literary, film and television genres is examined, from romance to science fiction, the Western to the;women's picture and the heritage film to postmodern pastiche. With a thematic focus on key critical paradigms for adaptation studies - fidelity, intertextuality, historicity and authorship - this collection expands the field of adaptation studies beyond its conventional focus on page to screen adaptations to include film remakes, video games, biopics, fan fiction and celebrity culture.

Ghost Movies in Southeast Asia and Beyond explores ghost movies, one of the most popular film genres in East and Southeast Asia, by focusing on movie narratives, the cultural contexts of their origins and audience reception. In the middle of the Asian crisis of the late 1990s, ghost movies became major box office hits. The emergence of the phenomenally popular "J-Horror" genre inspired similar ghost movie productions in Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Singapore. Ghost movies are embedded and reflected in national as well as transnational cultures and politics, in narrative traditions, in the social worlds of the audience, and in the perceptual experience of each individual. They reflect upon the identity crises and traumas of the living as well as of the dead, and they unfold affection and attraction in the border zone between amusement and thrill, secular and religious worldviews. This makes the genre interesting not only for sociologists, anthropologists, media and film scholars, but also for scholars of religion.

This is a comprehensive guide to the black experience both on film and behind the camera. More than 6,000 entries documenting global film activity from 1919 to 1990 offer historical perspective on the black image in film, bibliographical material on filmmakers and individual artists, and exciting information on newly emerging talent throughout the world. Drawing on a wide variety of resource materials, the study furnishes extensive coverage of developments in filmmaking in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Europe, and the Caribbean, followed by a thorough examination of the African-American film experience. Two appendixes provide supplementary data on reference works, and names and addresses of notable film resource centers. Four indexes keyed by artist, title, subject, and author complete the work, which proves to be a valuable reference work for scholars and historians in the field of blacks in film.