This book is an informal attempt at defining the genre of medieval film by describing its features and analysing its effects and their significance, there being few works presently available that work toward such definition. There are three parts: the introduction enters the medieval film world, describing its typical features and showing how they create a convincing sense of its time; three short chapters discuss authenticity, simplicity and spectacle-the roots of film medievalism; and six longer chapters comment on individual films. Works are discussed that extend the reach of the genre, such as Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne D'Arc with its emotional range, or Bergman's Seventh Seal, which creates a universal symbolism. In short, the author describes what goes into a medieval film and how it affects its audience, while offering suggestions about why its themes are meaningful to us.

Fifteen chapters explaining every aspect, with excerpts from classic and prominent modern works, quotations from noted playwrights, and anecdotes from the author's personal experiences with such as Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Interviews with A.R. Gurney, Lloyd Richards, Connie Congdon, Alfred Uhry, and others are included. An appendix gives information about submitting playscripts, getting grants, entering contests, doing play festivals, securing an agent and so on.

The geographic scope of this work is all of Europe, European Russia, Great Britain, Ireland, Iceland, the Mediterranean Islands such as Sicily and Corsica, the Caucasus area north of Turkey, including territory now in the new republics of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, and the Balkans and Greece. There are entries for shorts, animation, silents, television series, films (both theatrical and made-for-television releases), miniseries, epics, war films, dramas, literary adaptations, comedies, horrors, mysteries, musical comedies, and operettas. Complete entries provide such particulars as the title, date, alternate title(s), black & white or colour, nationality, director, production company, length, producer, screenplay writer, literary source, cinematographer, score composer, actors (in order of importance) with character names and a brief synopsis or description, commentary, and references to the Variety review and one other filmographic source. Most of the titles were produced in Europe or Hollywood, but a few were made in such countries as Japan, Canada, Australia, Mexico, and Argentina. Productions based on Shakespeare's plays themselves are omitted; those based on his life are included. Opera and ballet films are omitted but musical comedy and operetta films are included, as are silent films based on operas. Fairy tales are out but folkloric works are in. Documentaries are not included. Subject (places, periods, events, and historical figures) and name indexes allow for easy reference.

Ria Mooney was a pioneer in the theatre, the first woman to serve as the resident producer of the National Theatre of Ireland (popularly referred to as The Abbey) between 1948 and 1963. She distinguished herself as an actress and director of some of the most important playwrights and performers of her time, and received excellent reviews for her work. But after leaving the Abbey, she has, for the most part, been overlooked in theatrical histories. In this work, Ria Mooney receives the notice she deserves as one of Ireland's most significant theatrical artists of the twentieth century. Her entire theatrical career is covered and special attention is paid to her work as an actress and resident producer at the Abbey. The author explains how Mooney assembled and nurtured her acting company and worked with the playwrights whose plays she mounted at the Abbey and the Queen's playhouses. A picture is created of the swiftly changing theatrical, cultural, political, and social climate of Dublin during her tenure at the Abbey. Her importance to Irish theatre is summarised, and her career is evaluated in light of reviews of her work and the work of those she directed.

Railway travel has definitely influenced modern theatre's sense of space and time. Early in the 20th century, breakthroughs - ranging from F.T. Marinetti's futurist manifestos to epic theatre's first use of the treadmill - explored the mechanical rhythms and perceptual effects of railway travel to investigate history, technology, and motion. After World War II, some playwrights and auteur directors, from Armand Gatti to Robert Wilson to Amiri Baraka, looked to locomotion not as a radically new space and time but as a reminder of obsolescence, complicity in the Holocaust, and its role in uprooting people from their communities. By analysing theatrical representations of railway travel, this book argues that modern theatre's perceptual, historical and social productions of space and time were stretched by theatre's attempts to stage the locomotive.

The veterans' culture in postwar eras from World War I to the present is examined in this book, with specific attention to the historic events of each era as they influence veterans, and the literature and movies produced about veterans and by veterans. The intention is to highlight the reciprocal interactions among the influences of the war, the veterans, and the culture. The common alienation of the veterans of foreign wars is discussed with regard to creative works about them. Films and literary works featuring war veterans of each era are examined in detail for their various views of alienation. Homer's Odyssey, myths, fairy tales, modern novels, memoirs, and short stories are all discussed with an emphasis on detailing what is common and expected with returning veterans, and what is unique for each postwar era.

Civilization seems to move ever more toward the power of words over weapons. But many people, especially Americans, still believe wrongs in life can be righted with a fist or a gun or a bomb. Cultural mythology lags reality and continues to send the message of regeneration through violence. But the transition to a healthier mythology is already underway and can be seen in the strength of an alternative trend in depictions of violence in storytelling. This book examines this trend by comparing examples drawn from film and television with the traditional popular dramatic approach-reflecting and promoting a culture of violence. This comparison shows that attitudes toward conflict in drama are a key indicator of a shift in awareness of violence in society. The book concludes with an account of increasing challenges confronting the individual in today's world and the necessity for individual producers and consumers to take greater responsibility for their choices-which shape culture through omnipresent and profoundly influential screen technology.

Popular movies can enhance the study of history. A dominant form of entertainment during the mid-20th century, they can serve as nontraditional primary sources and offer remarkable opportunities to observe attitudes about social concerns, gender or racial issues, politics, and historical events that were current when the movies were made. This book is a topical guide for educators, providing detailed analysis of 35 movies, followed by discussion questions that will help students interpret how each movie's content and themes reflect the times when it was made. The book covers four main topics: the Great Depression, coping with World War II, the early years of the Cold War, and the changing expectations and images of women in movies from 1930 to 1970. An historical overview chronicles how each topic was treated in movies from that time period. The movies should have wide appeal in grades 7 through 12 and can help students learn to think more critically about the images and messages that appear in popular media today.

This book explores the presence of the anti-hero in mainstream dramatic serial television. It offers critical examinations of Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, True Blood, Breaking Bad, and Boardwalk Empire. What purpose might such unusual protagonists serve in today's culture and what do their tales tell about U.S. political and economic issues from 2008 to 2012? The author discovers how the characters that seem initially so different prove to be strong examplars of established forms of power, such as white patriarchy and late capitalist interests. The book finds that even when the characters are groundbreaking fictional figures, they are all eventually written into submission by the narratives of their series, echoing the same tales of fictitious heroism recycled in American television narratives for decades. New trends in television narratives are discussed - with the hope that future dramas will free audiences from oppressive narratives rather than continue to normalise them.

'I could fly to New York and back every day for seven years and still not leave a carbon footprint as big as if I have a child. Ten thousand tonnes of CO2. That's the weight of the Eiffel Tower. I'd be giving birth to the Eiffel Tower.' In a time of global anxiety, terrorism, erratic weather and political unrest, a young couple want a child but are running out of time. If they over think it, they'll never do it. But if they rush, it could be a disaster.They want to have a child for the right reasons. Except, what exactly are the right reasons? And what will be the first to destruct - the planet or the relationship?

In a hundred years of filmmaking dozens of potentially great films of master directors and artists were either never completed or not released. Many of these films are lost forever, but their little-known histories illustrate what fiction writers have known all along: People's failures often make stories more compelling than their successes. The reasons these might-have-beens never came to fruition are almost as varied as the plots themselves: Love spurned (L'Ecole des Femmes, 1941, Max Olphuls), unmanageable stars (I Loved a Soldier, 1936, Henry Hathaway), government suppression (Bezhin Meadow, 1935, Sergei Eisenstein) and fear of reprisal (Metall, 1931-33, Hans Richter) are but a few. A detailed discussion of each attempt is accompanied by cast and production credits (when available) and excerpts from scripts and other sources. Rare stills are interspersed throughout.

This detailed chronological analysis of British World War II movies from 1939 until the present explores how recognizable stereotypes of British national character were projected and how the times in which a film was made shaped its perceptions. Several chapters look at films from the Golden Age of World War II. In films about the Home Front, characters display resolve as well as emotional restraint and present an image of a classless society co-operating to fight evil. By contrast, duty and patriotism are the paramount virtues of service films while spy melodramas exemplify the British love of improvisation. Fifties war films are examined against the backdrop of alarm and uncertainty caused by the Cold War. Such films reflect traditional national character stereotypes, though the stiff upper lip begins to be questioned by the end of the decade. The book then traces the radical effect of the 60s revolution, revealing how the fondness for sceptical antiwar movies went hand in hand with the questioning of Britain's place in the world. The book ends by looking at recent war films and asks whether these reflect the cult of narcissism so prevalent in modern Britain.

The collection features essays that examine how authors of the 20th and 21st centuries continue the use of sentimental forms and tropes of 19th century literature. Current literary and cultural critical consensus seems to maintain that Americans engaged in a turn-of-the-century refutation of the sentimental mode; however, the analysis in these essays of 20th and 21st century narratives reveals ongoing use of sentimental expression that draws upon its ability to instruct and influence readers through their emotions. While these later narratives employ aspects of the sentimental mode, many of them also engage in a critique of the failures of the sentimental, deconstructing 19th century perspectives on race, class and gender and the ways they are promoted by sentimental ideals.

Television comedy traces its roots to vaudeville, radio and film, from which it developed its own unique forms to make the audience laugh. These styles became industry standards: the so-called traditional forms of variety shows and situation comedies. In recent years modern comedy-nighttime variety shows, adult programmes, stand-up acts, British imports, parody shows-have gained increasing acceptance, with these innovative forms bringing an artistry often lost under the traditional formats. These thirteen essays trace the history of television comedy from the genius of Jack Benny, Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Ed Sullivan and Lucille Ball to the antics of ALF, Martin Mull, Julie Brown and the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. Emphasis is placed on the development and artistry of the genre as evidenced in shows such as Dobie Gillis, Green Acres, Newhart, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Bewitched.

This book examines 13 movies that deal with the protagonist and his projected ""other"". The cinematic Other is interpreted as an unconscious personality, a denied part of the protagonist that appears in his life as a shadowy menace who won't go away. Devoting a chapter to each movie, the book starts with Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and three cinematic pairs: two Hitchcock films, Shadow of a Doubt and Strangers on a Train; two versions of Cape Fear, J. Lee Thompson's 1962 original and Martin Scorsese's 1991 remake; and a pair of Clint Eastwood films, In the Line of Fire and Blood Work. The book then examines Something Wild, Sea of Love, Fight Club, Desperately Seeking Susan, Apocalypse Now and The Lives of Others. The book overall aims to show how movies envision the unconscious Other we all too often project on other people.

Character Design Quarterly (CDQ) is a lively, creative magazine bringing inspiration, expert insights, and leading techniques from professional illustrators, artists, and character art enthusiasts worldwide. Each issue provides detailed tutorials on creating diverse characters, enabling you to explore the processes and decision making that go into creating amazing characters. Learn new ways to develop your own ideas, and discover from the artists what it is like to work for prolific animation studios such as Disney, Warner Bros., and DreamWorks.

While it is certainly the case that the work of Karl Marx has a revered place in the realm of social philosophy, political science, and literary criticism, there is a place in which Marxism seems to have been forgotten. This place is the study of popular culture, where Marxism provides a lens through which many seemingly disparate films are brought together through philosophical exploration of theme, social and political hierarchies, and questions of power. Essentially, this text seeks to bring to popular culture studies the same sort of scholarly weight that attends the work of Aristotle or Plato or Derrida and, at the same time, to present that scholarship in a readable style that allows both laypeople and scholars to read and enjoy. Often popular culture studies is not taken seriously because the work in discussion is seen as an example of some other great work - for example, one might see a philosopher use an episode of The Simpsons to explain a concept related to Kant's Categorical Imperative. Notice, it is Kant that is under discussion there, not really The Simpsons. This robs the popular work of its own voice. Thus, this text seeks to engage Marxist critical theory from a variety of scholarly angles emphasising the interplay of visual text and critical interpretation. The premium is placed in two areas - critical analysis and readability.

Horror films come in a wide variety of styles and subject matter. The films examined in this study are three of the most intimate explorations of terror in the genre. Intimate in terms of settings (small towns and an isolated motel) and in the emotional links between the characters and the terrors they face. In Psycho, Norman Bates is a darker reflection of Marion Crane and Sam Loomis. They share frustrations, fears and compulsions, albeit at different levels of intensity. In The Birds, Melanie Daniels and her new acquaintances in Bodega Bay share emotional problems which sometimes impel them to act in destructive ways. Ways echoed and then overwhelmed by violence from the natural world. Halloween features a monster, Michael Myers, who has more in common with one of his victims, heroine Laurie Strode, than is evident at first glance. But beyond the link between normality and the violently aberrant, all three films give their audiences glimpses of emotional intimacy that is threatened and sometimes tragically destroyed by horror that, even though rare, can rob us of what makes life worth living.

For more than a century the Western film has proven to be an enduring genre. At the dawn of the 20th century, in the same years that The Great Train Robbery begat a film genre, Owen Wister wrote ,em>The Virginian, which began a new literary genre. From the beginning, both literature and film would usually perpetuate the myth of the Old West as a place where justice always triumphed and all concerned (except the villains) pursued the Law. The facts, however, reflect abuses of due process: lynch mobs and hired gunslingers rather than lawmen regularly pursued lawbreakers; vengeance rather than justice was often employed; and even in courts of law justice didn't always prevail. Some films and novels bucked this trend, however. This book discusses the many Western films as well as the novels they are based on, that illustrate distortions of the law in the Old West and the many ways, most of them marked by vengeance, in which its characters pursued justice. The author has used correspondence from studio files, letters from the Production Code office, newspaper and magazine reviews, passages from the novels to analyse not only the filmmakers' intentions but also how the films, contrary to reality, became a showcase of America as it promoted the principles of due process, trial by jury, and innocence before proven guilty.

America in the 1950s was a cauldron of contradictions. Advances in technology chafed against a grimly conservative political landscape; the military-industrial complex ceaselessly promoted the ""Communist menace""; young marrieds fled crumbling cities for artificial communities known as suburbs; and the corporate cipher known as ""The Organization Man"" was created, along with stifling images of women. The decade, huddled under the fear of nuclear holocaust, was also dedicated to all things futuristic. Science fiction was in its salad days, in magazines and novels and in motion pictures, trying every trick in the book to lure customers back from television, including reliance on monster movies. All of these forces collided in 1957, when an astounding 57 movies of the science fiction, horror and fantasy variety were shown in the United States--a record unmatched to this day. Each of these beloved and memorable films addressed and reflected some of the many socio-political topics of the day, and several are exceptional examples of their genres. This book is a critical discussion of this unique one-year collection of cultural artifacts.

The Classical Animated Documentary and Its Contemporary Evolution is the first book to provide an historical insight into the animated documentary. Drawing on archival research and textual analysis, it shows how this form, usually believed to be strictly contemporaneous, instead took shape in the 1940s. Cristina Formenti integrates a theoretical and a historical approach in order to shed new light on the animated documentary as a form as well as on the work of renowned studios such as The Walt Disney Studios, Halas & Batchelor, National Film Board of Canada and never before addressed ones, such as Corona Cinematografica. She also highlights the differences and the similarities existing among the animated documentaries created between the 1940s and the mid-1980s and those produced today so as to demonstrate how the latter do not represent a complete otherness in respect to the former, but rather an evolution.

This is an extended analysis of the film, from different perspectives. The first half is largely a discussion of the cinematic technique, with key sequences analysed shot by shot. The second half approaches the film from many other angles, including its history, the critical reception, Renoir's life and career, and film theory, e.g., film in relation to music. A case is made that Renoir's career was inconsistent during the 1930s, especially after La Regle du jeu; melodramatic plots and trite cinematic technique detract from many of his films. And rather than emphasising the humanist, anti-war thrust of La Grande Illusion, the film is approached as a work of art that is deeply expressive cinematically.

As we approach the new millennium there is a growing interest within western religion in the apocalypse. In "Apocalyptic Bodies" Tina Pippin traces the biblical notions of end times as represented in ancient and modern texts, art, music and popular culture, and addresses the question of how we, in the late twentieth century, are to be competent and ethical readers of and responders to the " signs of the times." "Apocalyptic Bodies" presents a postmodern reading of the biblical texts and offers new ways of thinking about the bible and the end of the world.

This is a compilation of interviews with motion picture crew members who worked during Hollywood's Independent Age of film and television production--basically from 1945 to 1980. A celebratory insiders' look at the Tinseltown machine, the project utilises individual interviews, with rare crew photographs to provide the back story of production challenges and solutions for some of the world's most recognised movies. The Searchers, Chinatown, The Hustler, andBullitt (to name a few) were done by the various people included in this book. It provides not only an educational treatment of the jobs and techniques of film making but also a dose of humourous and memorable experiences from the trenches. This book was compiled by a production hand with 30 years in the biz and is full of classic Hollywood fare.

The classic of Russian spirituality—now with facing-page commentary that illuminates and explains the text. The Way of a Pilgrim is the timeless account of an anonymous wanderer who set out on a journey across nineteenth-century Russia with nothing but a backpack, some bread, and a Bible, with a burning desire to learn the true meaning of the words of St. Paul: "Pray without ceasing." In this completely accessible new abridgment, all the terms and references are explained for you--with intriguing insights into aspects of the text that are often not available to the general reader.