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A widescreen frame in cinema beckons the eye to playfully,
creatively roam. Such technology also gives inventive filmmakers
room to disrupt and redirect audience expectations, surprising
viewers through the use of a wider, more expansive screen. Playful
Frames: Styles of Widescreen Cinema studies the poetics of the
auteur-driven widescreen image, offering nimble, expansive analyses
of the work of four distinctive filmmakers – Jean Negulesco,
Blake Edwards, Robert Altman, and John Carpenter – who creatively
inhabited the nooks and crannies of widescreen moviemaking during
the final decades of the twentieth century. Exploring the
relationship between aspect ratio and subject matter, Playful
Frames shows how directors make puckish use of widescreen
technology. All four of these distinctive filmmakers reimagined
popular genres (such as melodrama, slapstick comedy, film noir,
science fiction, and horror cinema) through their use of the wide
frame, and each brings a range of intermedial interests (painting,
performance, and music) to their use of the widescreen image. This
study looks specifically at the technological underpinnings,
aesthetic shapes, and interpretive implications of these four
directors’ creative use of widescreen, offering a way to
reconsider the way wide imagery still has the potential to amaze
and move us today.Â
The most distinguished actor among Charlie Chaplin's children,
Geraldine Chaplin has created a striking performative presence
across international cinema. In shifting cinematic contexts and
through collaborations with major film directors, she playfully
evokes the memory of her iconic father, while establishing her own
distinctive screen art. Geraldine Chaplin: The Gift of Film
Performance is a long-overdue appreciation of Chaplin's remarkable
screen achievements, and includes close readings of her
performances in films such as Doctor Zhivago, Peppermint Frappe,
Cria cuervos, Nashville, Welcome to L.A., Remember My Name, Noroit,
Chaplin, Talk to Her, and more.
A widescreen frame in cinema beckons the eye to playfully,
creatively roam. Such technology also gives inventive filmmakers
room to disrupt and redirect audience expectations, surprising
viewers through the use of a wider, more expansive screen. Playful
Frames: Styles of Widescreen Cinema studies the poetics of the
auteur-driven widescreen image, offering nimble, expansive analyses
of the work of four distinctive filmmakers – Jean Negulesco,
Blake Edwards, Robert Altman, and John Carpenter – who creatively
inhabited the nooks and crannies of widescreen moviemaking during
the final decades of the twentieth century. Exploring the
relationship between aspect ratio and subject matter, Playful
Frames shows how directors make puckish use of widescreen
technology. All four of these distinctive filmmakers reimagined
popular genres (such as melodrama, slapstick comedy, film noir,
science fiction, and horror cinema) through their use of the wide
frame, and each brings a range of intermedial interests (painting,
performance, and music) to their use of the widescreen image. This
study looks specifically at the technological underpinnings,
aesthetic shapes, and interpretive implications of these four
directors’ creative use of widescreen, offering a way to
reconsider the way wide imagery still has the potential to amaze
and move us today.Â
Over the course of nearly thirty years, Hal Hartley has cultivated
a reputation as one of America's most steadfastly independent film
directors. From his breakthrough films - The Unbelievable Truth
(1989), Trust (1990), and Simple Men (1992) - to his recently
completed 'Henry Fool' trilogy, Hartley has honed a rigorous,
deadpan, and instantly recognizable film style informed by both
European modernism and playful revisions of Classical Hollywood
genres. Featuring new essays on this important director and his
films, this collection explores Hartley's work from a variety of
aesthetic, cultural, and economic contexts, while also looking
closely at his collaborations with actors, the contexts of his
authorial reputation, his reworking of the romantic comedy and
other genres, and the shifting economics of his filmmaking. This
book, up-to-date through Hartley's latest film, Ned Rifle (2014),
includes new scholarship on the director's early work as well as
reflections on his cinema in connection with new theories and
approaches to independent filmmaking. Covering the entire
trajectory of his career, including both his features and short
films, the book also includes new readings of several of Hartley's
seminal films, including Amateur (1994), Flirt (1995), and Henry
Fool (1997).
John Barrymore's influence on screen and stage in the early
twentieth century is incalculable. His performances in the theatre
defined Shakespeare for a generation, and his transition to cinema
brought his theatrical performativity to both silent and sound
screens. This book, a collection of fifteen original essays on the
film performances and stardom of John Barrymore, redresses this
lack of scholarship on Barrymore by offering a range of varied
perspectives on the actor's work. Looking at his performances and
influence from the perspectives of gender studies, psychoanalysis,
queer studies and performance analysis, Hamlet Lives in Hollywood
represents a major attempt by contemporary scholars to come to
terms with the ongoing vitality of John Barrymore's work in our
present day.
John Barrymore's influence on screen and stage in the early
twentieth century is incalculable. His performances in the theatre
defined Shakespeare for a generation, and his transition to cinema
brought his theatrical performativity to both silent and sound
screens. This book, a collection of fifteen original essays on the
film performances and stardom of John Barrymore, redresses this
lack of scholarship on Barrymore by offering a range of varied
perspectives on the actor's work. Looking at his performances and
influence from the perspectives of gender studies, psychoanalysis,
queer studies and performance analysis, Hamlet Lives in Hollywood
represents a major attempt by contemporary scholars to come to
terms with the ongoing vitality of John Barrymore's work in our
present day.
Over the course of nearly thirty years, Hal Hartley has cultivated
a reputation as one of America's most steadfastly independent film
directors. From his breakthrough films - The Unbelievable Truth
(1989), Trust (1990), and Simple Men (1992) - to his recently
completed 'Henry Fool' trilogy, Hartley has honed a rigorous,
deadpan, and instantly recognizable film style informed by both
European modernism and playful revisions of Classical Hollywood
genres. Featuring new essays on this important director and his
films, this collection explores Hartley's work from a variety of
aesthetic, cultural, and economic contexts, while also looking
closely at his collaborations with actors, the contexts of his
authorial reputation, his reworking of the romantic comedy and
other genres, and the shifting economics of his filmmaking. This
book, up-to-date through Hartley's latest film, Ned Rifle (2014),
includes new scholarship on the director's early work as well as
reflections on his cinema in connection with new theories and
approaches to independent filmmaking. Covering the entire
trajectory of his career, including both his features and short
films, the book also includes new readings of several of Hartley's
seminal films, including Amateur (1994), Flirt (1995), and Henry
Fool (1997).
Few other contemporary Hollywood filmmakers fit the category of
"genre stylist" as well as Michael Mann, the director of such films
as Heat, The Insider, Ali, Collateral, Manhunter, Thief, and Miami
Vice. Mann's film style marks him as a director who chooses the
iconographic backdrop of a genre as a canvas upon which he and his
collaborators can craft a unique cinematic vision. The Cinema of
Michael Mann traces the innovative and under-explored stylistic
contours of Mann's work, the director's inflection upon and
innovation within preexisting genre frameworks, and the
relationship of both style and genre to issues of authorship and
film criticism. Steven Rybin's critical study of Mann's cinema, and
the importance of the filmmaker's themes to our contemporary world,
is valuable for both film scholars and cinephiles alike.
Michael Mann first made his mark as a writer for such television
programs as Starsky and Hutch, Police Story, and Vegas. In 1981 he
made his feature film directing debut with the James Caan thriller
Thief, and in the 1980s he served as a writer and executive
producer for the groundbreaking programs Miami Vice and Crime
Story. Though he has delved into other genres, Mann's career as a
writer, producer, and director has consistently focused on criminal
activity, from small-time hoods and professional thieves to
corporate manipulators and serial killers. In Michael Mann: Crime
Auteur, Steven Rybin looks at the television programs and films
that Mann has stamped with his personal signature. This book
closely examines the themes and techniques used in films such as
Manhunter, Heat, The Insider, and Collateral and connects these
elements to his work on the non-genre films The Last of the
Mohicans and Ali. A revised and significantly expanded edition of
The Cinema of Michael Mann (2007), this book includes new chapters
on Public Enemies and the big screen version of Miami Vice, as well
as Mann's work on the shows Crime Story and Luck. Covering Mann's
entire career, this book will be of interest to fans of the
writer/director's body of work as well as to scholars of both film
and television.
As the director of Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, and
The New World, Terrence Malick has created a remarkable body of
work that enables imaginative acts of philosophical interpretation.
Steven Rybin's Terrence Malick and the Thought of Film looks
closely at the dialogue between Malick's films and our powers of
thinking, showing how his work casts the philosophy of thinkers
such as Stanley Cavell, Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Andre
Bazin, Edgar Morin, and Immanuel Kant in new cinematic light. With
a special focus on how the voices of Malick's characters move us to
thought, Terrence Malick and the Thought of Film offers new
readings of his films and places Malick's work in the context of
recent debates in the interdisciplinary field of film and
philosophy. Rybin also provides a postscript on Malick's
recently-released fifth film, The Tree of Life.
As the director of Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, and
The New World, Terrence Malick has created a remarkable body of
work that enables imaginative acts of philosophical interpretation.
Steven Rybin's Terrence Malick and the Thought of Film looks
closely at the dialogue between Malick's films and our powers of
thinking, showing how his work casts the philosophy of thinkers
such as Stanley Cavell, Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Andre
Bazin, Edgar Morin, and Immanuel Kant in new cinematic light. With
a special focus on how the voices of Malick's characters move us to
thought, Terrence Malick and the Thought of Film offers new
readings of his films and places Malick's work in the context of
recent debates in the interdisciplinary field of film and
philosophy. Rybin also provides a postscript on Malick's
recently-released fifth film, The Tree of Life.
Few other contemporary Hollywood filmmakers fit the category of
'genre stylist' as well as Michael Mann, the director of such films
as Heat, The Insider, Ali, Collateral, Manhunter, Thief, and Miami
Vice. Mann's film style marks him as a director who chooses the
iconographic backdrop of a genre as a canvas upon which he and his
collaborators can craft a unique cinematic vision. The Cinema of
Michael Mann traces the innovative and under-explored stylistic
contours of Mann's work, the director's inflection upon and
innovation within preexisting genre frameworks, and the
relationship of both style and genre to issues of authorship and
film criticism. Steven Rybin's critical study of Mann's cinema, and
the importance of the filmmaker's themes to our contemporary world,
is valuable for both film scholars and cinephiles alike.
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