Using the four tissue types (connective, epithelial, nervous, and muscular), Dudenhoeffer expands and complicates the subgenre of "body horror." Changing the emphasis from the contents of the film to the "organicity" of its visual and affective registers, he addresses the application of psychoanalysis, phenomenology, object-ontology, and cyborgism.

The Culture and Philosophy of Ridley Scott, edited by Adam Barkman, Ashley Barkman, and Nancy Kang, brings together eighteen critical essays that illuminate a nearly comprehensive selection of the director's feature films from cutting-edge multidisciplinary and comparative perspectives. Chapters examine such signature works as Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Thelma and Louise (1991), Gladiator (2000), Hannibal (2001), Black Hawk Down (2001), and American Gangster (2007). This volume divides the chapters into three major thematic groups: responsibility, remembering, and revision; real, alienated, and ideal lives; and gender, identity, and selfhood. Each section features six discrete essays, each of which forwards an original thesis about the film or films chosen for analysis. Each chapter features close readings of scenes as well as broader discussions that will interest academics, non-specialists, as well as educated readers with an interest in films as visual texts. While recognizing Scott's undeniable contributions to contemporary popular cinema, the volume does not shy away from honest and well-evidenced critique. Each chapter's approach correlates with philosophical, literary, or cultural studies perspectives. Using both combined and single-film discussions, the contributors examine such topics as gender roles and feminist theory; philosophical abstractions like ethics, honor, and personal responsibility; historical memory and the challenges of accurately rendering historical events on screen; literary archetypes and generic conventions; race relations and the effect of class difference on character construction; how religion shapes personal and collective values; the role of a constantly changing technological universe; and the schism between individual and group-based power structures. The Culture and Philosophy of Ridley Scott assembles the critical essays of scholars working in the fields of philosophy, literary studies, and cultural studies. An international group, they are based in the United States, Canada, Argentina, Italy, Greece, Korea, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. The guiding assumption on the part of all the writers is that the filmmaker is the leading determiner of a motion picture's ethos, artistic vision, and potential for audience engagement. While not discounting the production team (including screenwriters, actors, and cinematographers, among others), auteur theory recognizes the seminal role of the director as the nucleus of the meaning-making process. With Scott an active and prolific presence in the entertainment industry today, the timeliness of this volume is optimal.

What was it like to work behind the scenes, away from the spotlight's glare, in Hollywood's so-called Golden Age? The interviews in this book provide eye-witness accounts from the likes of Steven Spielberg and Terry Gilliam, to explore the creative decisions that have shaped some of Classical Hollywood's most-loved films.

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.

The purpose of this book, through its very creation, is to strengthen the dialogue between practitioner and theorist. To that end, a film academic and musicologist have collaborated as editors on this book, which is in turn comprised of interviews with composers alongside complementary chapters that focus on a particular feature of the composer's approach or style. These chapters are written by a fellow composer, musicologist, or film academic who specializes in that element of the composer's output. In the interview portions of this book, six major film composers discuss their work from the early 1980s to the present day: Carter Burwell, Mychael Danna, Dario Marianelli, Rachel Portman, Zbigniew Preisner, and A.R. Rahman. The focus is on the practical considerations of film composition, the relationship each composer has with the moving image, narrative, technical considerations, personal motivations in composing, the relationships composers have with their directors, and their own creative processes. Contemporary Film Music also explores the contemporary influence of electronic music, issues surrounding the mixing of soundtracks, music theory, and the evolution of each composer's musical voice.

The most popular film genre during the golden years of Italian cinema, the Comedy Italian Style emerged after the fall of the Facist regime, narrating the identity crisis of many Italian men. Exploring the birth, growth, and decline of this genre, Bini shows this notable style was the search for a new role in the shattered postwar middle class.

"The main spine of this book stems from a comprehensive series of interviews with subjects recalling their experiences of 1930s cinemagoing. Your feel the breath of life in these spectators, a rarity in film studies, thanks to the painstaking work contracting the interview subjects and recording and tabulating their testimony."--"JUMPCUT"

In the 1930s, Britain had the highest annual per capita cinema attendance in the world, far surpassing ballroom dancing as the nation's favorite pastime. It was, as historian A.J.P. Taylor said, the "essential social habit of the age." And yet, although we know something about the demographics of British cinemagoers, we know almost nothing of their experience of film, how film affected them, how it fit into their daily lives, what role cinema played in the larger culture of the time, and in what ways cinemagoing shaped the generation that came of age in the 1930s.

In Dreaming of Fred and Ginger, Annette Kuhn draws upon contemporary publications, extensive interviews with cinemagoers themselves, and readings of selected film, to produce a provocative and perspective-altering ethno-historical study. Taking cinemagoers' accounts of their own experiences as both "the engine and product of investigation," Kuhn enters imaginatively into the world of 1930s cinema culture and analyzes its place in popular memory. Among the topics she examines are the physical space of the cinemas; the role film played in growing up; the experience of being a member of a cinema audience; film-inspired fantasies of American life; the importance of cinema to adolescence in offering role models, ideals of romance, as well as practical opportunities for courtship; and thesheer pleasure of watching such film stars as Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Nelson Eddy, Ronald Colman, and many others.

Engagingly written and painstakingly researched, with contributions to film history, cultural studies, and social history, Dreaming of Fred and Ginger offers an illuminating account of a key moment in British cultural memory.

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.

Philosophy, Myth and Epic Cinema looks at the power of cinema in creating ideas that inspire our culture. Sylvie Magerstadt discusses the relationship between art, illusion and reality, a theme that has been part of philosophical debate for centuries. She argues that with the increase in use of digital technologies in modern cinema, this debate has entered a new phase. She discusses the notion of illusions as a system of stories and values that inspire a culture similar to other grand narratives, such as mythology or religion. Cinema thus becomes the postmodern "mythmaking machine" par excellence in a world that finds it increasingly difficult to create unifying concepts and positive illusions that can inspire and give hope. The author draws on the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Siegfried Kracauer, and Gilles Deleuze to demonstrate the relevance of continental philosophy to a reading of mainstream Hollywood cinema. The book argues that our longing for illusion is particularly strong in times of crisis, illustrated through an exploration of the recent revival of historic and epic myths in Hollywood cinema, including films such as Troy, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and Clash of the Titans.

This book analyses the film industries and cinema cultures of Nazi-occupied countries (1939-1945) from the point of view of individuals: local captains of industry, cinema managers, those working for film studios and officials authorized to navigate film policy. The book considers these people from a historical perspective, taking into account their career before the occupation and, where relevant, pays attention to their post-war lives. The perspectives of these historical agents" contributes to an understanding of how top-down orders and haphazard signals from the occupying administration were moulded, adjusted and distorted in the process of their translation and implementation. This edited collection offers a more dynamic and less deterministic approach to research on the international expansion of Third-Reich cinema in World War Two; an approach that strives to balance the role of individual agency with the structural determinants. The case studies presented in this book cover the territories of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and the Soviet Union.

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.

Best known for "The Piano," Jane Campion is a author/director whose films explore the relationship between literature and cinema. This book mixes cultural and textual analysis of Campion's films alongside consideration of concepts such as context, pastiche and genre. All those interested in Campion or adaptation studies must read this text.

A summary analysis of Charlie Chaplin's films that star his alter-ego, Charlie, which is to say, for the most part, Chaplin's silent films and not his sound films. In the book I stress Chaplin's often underrated skills as a film-director as well as his work as a mimetic satirist. And I structure the book according to the key ideas and ingredients of Chaplin's art, rather than by the chronological, film-by-film, structure that has characterized the vast majority of critical works on Chaplin. My goal is not to summarize the arc of Chaplin's career but to carve out the essence of his art, to offer a lexicon of his filmic nature. I mean the book for Chaplin scholars but, just as much, for the general reader who is looking for a cogent, but thorough, introduction to Chaplin, who would like to know why it is that critics take Chaplin as seriously as they do.

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.

This book explores ways in which diverse regional cultures in Indonesia and their histories have been expressed in film since the early 1950s. It also explores underlying cultural dominants within the new nation, established at the end of 1949 with the achievement of independence from Dutch colonialism. It sees these dominants-for example forms of group body language and forms of consultation-not simply as a product of the nation, but as related to unique and long standing formations and traditions in the numerous societies in the Indonesian archipelago, on which the nation is based. Nevertheless, the book is not concerned only with past traditions, but explores ways in which Indonesian filmmakers have addressed, critically, distinctive aspects of their traditional societies in their feature films (including at times the social position of women), linking past to the present, where relevant, in dynamic ways.

This book offers comparative studies of the production, content, distribution and reception of film and television drama in Europe. The collection brings together scholars from the humanities and social sciences to focus on how new developments are shaped by national and European policies and practices, and on the role of film and television in our everyday lives. The chapters explore key trends in transnational European film and television fiction, addressing issues of co-production and collaboration, and of how cultural products circulate across national borders. The chapters investigate how watching film and television from neighbouring countries can be regarded as a special kind of cultural encounter with the possibility of facilitating reflections on national differences within Europe and negotiations of what characterizes a national or a European identity respectively.

"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

Vera Dika explores the reuse of images, plots and genres of film history from a broad range of critical perspectives. Examining works of art and film that resist the pull of the past, Dika provides an in-depth analysis within a variety of media, including performance, photography, Punk film, and examples from mainstream American and European cinema. Her study analyzes avant-garde art work within the context of contemporary mainstream film practice, as well as in relationship to their historical moment.