Vince Gilligan's Breaking Bad has emerged as a defining example of the recent renaissance in television-making. The sheer breadth and visionary scope of the series demand that it receive extensive critical engagement. The contributors collected here, from chemists and midwives to philosophers and novelists, examine a variety of themes in Breaking Bad. Walter White is discussed as father, as psychopath, as a scientist, and as an example of masculinity. The writers look at the series in terms of gender, neo-liberal politics, and health care reform as well as the more traditional aesthetic categories of narrative construction, experimentation, allusion, and genre. With television emerging as the dominant artistic genre of the early 21st century America, Breaking Bad should not simply be seen as a wildly popular phenomenon, but also as a superbly designed artwork that reflects widespread cultural concerns and crises. The series' complexity warrants the rigorous analysis that it here receives.

This is an examination of the interactions between people of different cultures as portrayed in relatively modern, commonly available American and European films. The cinema is a desirable medium through which to show cultural differences because it vividly portrays settings, actions and emotions, all of which greatly influence viewers perceptions. Films showing relations of the United States, north and south; Japan, China, India, Asia, and Africa meeting the West; the clash between American Indians and white settlers; various other intercultural contrasts, multicultural voices in film, and the connection between popular film and intercultural studies--all are examined in this work. Each chapter concludes with a filmography.

With diverse contributions from scholars in English literature, psychology, and film and television studies, this collection of essays contextualizes Fringe as a postmodern investigation into what makes us human, and as an examination of how technology invariably transforms our humanity. The essays provide a provocative meditation on how a stellar example of science fiction television comments on the state of personal identity in a 21st century society dependent on technology that both enlivens and threatens the individual. In compiling this collection, the editors sought material as multifaceted as the series itself, devoting sections to specific areas of interest explored by both the writers of Fringe and the writers of the essays: humanity, duality, genre, and viewership. Taken together, the section headings serve as a map to the many thematic readings the editors and contributors apply to Fringe.

It's a collection of profiles, most of which are being published for the first time, of the process that today's top horror actors underwent before and during shooting to transform themselves into the people we saw on screen, from both the perspective of the frightening (i.e., the villains) and the frightened (i.e., the prey). It's about what they did to take a new step as members of one of the film world's oldest and most popular genres. The horror world is often full of impossibility - although many consider the realistic to be the most frightening of all - and taking on such a role requires a different sort of preparation than drama, romance, or others that could occur. The cornerstone of this book is preparation: what went into becoming these characters, so often trapped in impossible or at least unthinkable worlds, on the individuals' own, long before the cameras began to role? That's a question that hasn't been asked enough in writing, but it gets answered many different ways here, and often for the first time ever, even from those experienced with acting itself.

Upon its original publication in 1962, Edward Wagenknecht's The Movies in the Age of Innocence immediately earned recognition as a classic in the history of early cinema. A tribute to American silent film from the first-person perspective of one who grew up with the medium, the volume surveys the pre-feature and feature era of silent films from a distinctly literary standpoint and considers the careers of directors like D. W. Griffith and Erich von Stroheim, and actors such as Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish. With nearly 90 illustrations from early films, fan magazines and brochures, indices of film titles and credits, and an appendix containing Wagenknecht's otherwise unavailable 1927 pamphlet Lillian Gish: An Interpretation, this third edition retains its significance today.

The definitive monograph on the work of sculptor, installation artist, and Arte Povera pioneer Luciano Fabro Luciano Fabro was a founding member, and later leading critic, of Arte Povera, the materials- and experience-based art movement that began in Italy in the late 1960s. He went on to be exhibited internationally, becoming the first artist from the group to receive a major US retrospective, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1992. Fabro was a controversial artist, yet still a critical favorite: in 2018 the leading art publication The Brooklyn Rail dedicated an entire issue to Fabro; and New York Times critic Roberta Smith wrote that Fabro treated ‘artmaking less as a profession and more as a continuing experiment intended to keep himself entertained and the viewer slightly off-balance’. This comprehensive, heavily illustrated monograph is the first complete overview of Fabro’s life and career, written by esteemed critic and curator Margit Rowell, who interacted with Fabro repeatedly in his later years, and is published with the full support and participation of the artist’s estate and international galleries, Paula Cooper (New York), Christian Stein (Milan) and Simon Lee (London and Hong Kong).

This book fills a very basic and useful function in its bibliographic essays surveying the literature. . . . A comprehensive guide for lovers and students of animation. Recommended for most reference collections. Library Journal.

When disaster strikes, survivors suddenly find themselves in a world that has become confusing and unfamiliar. Such traumatic events impose severe psychological strain on every member of a community, but children are a particularly vulnerable group requiring special attention. Children and Disasters addresses the needs of this specific population by examining the impact of major disasters on the mental health and emotional functioning of children. The programs described in this book are designed to provide early intervention to children and families undergoing stress reactions to a catastrophic event. The authors offer interventions aimed at enhancing the skills of mental health professionals, educators, and peer counselors in responding to the intensified demands of disasters. These intervention approaches provide information regarding the event itself, reinforce the legitimacy of the anxieties and fears that children and their families are experiencing, and encourage the expression of feelings in group and individual settings (for the younger child, through drawing and play). Furthermore, they build on the coping capacity of individuals and theirs families and provide concrete coping skills and techniques to alleviate stress reactions. The intervention model can be applied to programs for individual children and their families, multi-family groups, and groups for children in mental health, educational, and community settings. The practical "hands-on" approach to program design makes this book an attractive resource for mental health professionals, social workers, rehabilitation specialists, professional and volunteer counselors, and suicide intervention workers. It will also be useful for school personnel, including teachers, school counselors, and administrators, as well as federal and state emergency planners and coordinators.

As the popularity of film grew and audiences demanded longer stories, Hollywood began borrowing plots as well as actors and directors from Broadway - some of these play-to-films were triumphs and others were inexplicable duds. This reference work is an annotated guide to American stage productions remade for film and television, with works ranging from late 19th-century American plays and musicals, through silent and sound films, to made-for-video productions by PBS, A&E, HBO, and others. Each alphabetically listed entry provides complete credits for the play or musical: date, theatre, playwright, cast (with characters) and crew, length of run, along with choreographer, song titles, and authors of the score where available. The screen versions follow, listing alternate titles, date, studio, screenwriter, cast (with characters), director, and producer. Each entry concludes with detailed commentary on the productions; it describes what changes occurred between the formats, determines the strengths and weaknesses of each, judges the success of the transition, and describes how the end product was received. A bibliography and name and title indexes complete this cross-referenced work.

The Thatcher administration of 1979 to 1990 had a profound and apparently lasting effect on British theatre and drama. It is now roughly a decade since the fall of Margaret Thatcher and, with the benefit of hindsight, it has become possible to disentangle fact from fantasy concerning her effect on the British theatre. During her administration, there was a significant cultural shift which affected drama in Britain. While some critics have argued that the theatre was simply affected by financial cutbacks in arts subsidies, this volume challenges that view. While it looks at the economic influence of Thatcher's policies, it also examines how her ideology shaped theatrical and dramatic discourse. It begins by defining Thatcherism and illustrating its cultural influence. It then examines the consequences of Thatcherite policies through the agency of the Arts Council of Great Britain.

Having established this political and cultural environment, the book considers in detail the effect of Thatcher's administration on the subject-matter and dramatic and theatrical discourse of left-wing drama and on the subsidized political theatre companies which proliferated during the 1970s. Attention is then given to the development of constituency theatres, such as Women's and Black Theatre, which assumed an oppositional cultural stance and, in some cases, attempted to develop characteristic theatrical and dramatic discourses. The penultimate chapter deals with the effect of Thatcherite economic policy and ideology on new writing and performance, while the final chapter draws conclusions and suggests that the cultural shift perpetrated by the Thatcher regime has altered the status of subsidized theatre from an agency of cultural, spiritual, social, or psychological welfare to an entertainment industry which is viewed as largely irrelevant to the workings of society.

If the made-for-television movie has long been regarded as a poor stepchild of the film industry, then telefilm horror has been the most uncelebrated offspring of all. Considered unworthy of critical attention, scary movies made for television have received little notice over the years. Yet millions of fans grew up watching them--especially during the 1970s--and remember them fondly. This exhaustive survey addresses the lack of critical attention by evaluating such films on their own merits. Covering nearly 150 made-for-TV fright movies from the 1970s, the book includes credits, a plot synopsis, and critical commentary for each. From the well-remembered Don't Be Afraid of the Dark to the better-forgotten Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby, it's a trustworthy and entertaining guide to the golden age of the televised horror movie.

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.

Isabelle Cornaro, based in Paris and Geneva, holds degrees in art history and visual arts. She has a strong interest in experimental cinema and devotes herself to the narrative, symbolic, and economic origins of things. In her work she assumes an anthropologist-type manner to investigate people's seemingly fixated attachment to emotionally charged, even fetishised objects, creating large stage installations and short movies. This book is part of the new On Words series that presents conversations with contemporary women artists. Through them, readers come to understand the sources from which they draw inspiration, the themes in their work, and their view of the world. Edited by Julie Enckell, Federica Martini, and Sarah Burkhalter and bringing together a wide range of viewpoints, the On Words series adds a new narrative to polyphonic art history as told by those who actively shape it. Text in English and French.

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.

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.

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.