Film history, theory or criticism Books

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisSiegfried Kracauer (1889-1966), friend and colleague of Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, was one of the most influential film critics of the mid-twentieth century. This book assembles essays in cultural criticism, film, literature, and media theory that he wrote during the quarter century he spent in America after fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe.Trade Review"[A] fine work." -- Noah Isenberg Film Comment "There is an urgency in these pieces to convey exactly how powerful what he called "those movies with a message" could be." Los Angeles Review Of Books "American Writings shows that Kracauer was ... a cultural critic keenly attuned to the interplay of culture and politics as they collided on the cinema screen." Times Literary Supplement (TLS) "This edition is quite informative... [The editors' input] smoothly guides through the many facets of this important character." -- Alexander Ebert popcultureshelf.comTable of ContentsPreface: Notes on the Edition Acknowledgments Introduction: Affinities Part I. A Cultural Critic in New York 1. Why France Liked Our Films (1942) 2. Hollywood's Terror Films (1946) 3. Jean Vigo (1947) 4. The Revolt against Rationality (1947) 5. On Jewish Culture (1947) 6. Filming the Subconscious (1948) 7. Psychiatry for Everything and Everybody (1948) 8. Those Movies with a Message (1948) 9. National Types as Hollywood Presents Them (1949) 10. The Mirror Up to Nature (1949) 11. Preston Sturges, or Laughter Betrayed (1950) 12. Art Today (1961) 13. About the State of the Humanities 14. A Statement on the Humanistic Approach 15. Talk with Teddie (1960) Part II. Film Reviews 16. An American Experiment (1941) 17. Dumbo (1941) 18. Film Notes from Hollywood (1941) 19. A Few American Films (1941) 20. William Wyler's New Bette Davis Film (1941) 21. Flaherty, The Land (1942) 22. For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) 23. Paisan (1948) 24. The Decent German (1949) 25. The Eternal Jew (1956) 26. A Few Notes on The Connection (1961) Part III. Book Reviews 27. In Eisenstein's Workshop (1943) 28. The Russian Director (1949) 29. The Movie Colony (1942) 30. A Lady of Valor (1947) 31. The Teutonic Mind (1948) 32. Consciousness, Free and Spontaneous (1948) 33. Indologian Holiday (1948) 34. Portrait in Film (1948) 35. Total Teaching (1949) 36. Pictorial Deluge (1950) 37. Movie Mirror (1950) 38. Reflexion faite (1952) Part IV. Toward a Theory of Film 39. Stage vs. Screen Acting (1950) 40. The Photographic Approach (1951) 41. Silent Film Comedy (1951) 42. The Found Story and the Episode (1956) 43. Letter to film 56 (1956) Afterword: Kracauer, the Magical Nominalist / Martin Jay Notes Index

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisAlien and Philosophy: I Infest, Therefore I Am presents a philosophical exploration of the world of Alien, the simultaneously horrifying and thought-provoking sci-fi horror masterpiece, and the film franchise it spawned. The first book dedicated to exploring the philosophy raised by one of the most successful and influential sci-fi franchises of modern times Features contributions from an acclaimed team of scholars of philosophy and pop culture, led by highly experienced volume editors Explores a huge range of topics that include the philosophy of fear, Just Wars, bio-weaponry, feminism and matriarchs, perfect killers, contagion, violation, employee rights and Artificial Intelligence Includes coverage of H.R. Giger's aesthetics, the literary influences of H.P. Lovecraft, sci-fi and the legacy of Vietnam, and much more! Table of ContentsAcknowledgements xi About the Editors xiii List of Contributors xv 1 Introduction 1 Esa Metsälä and Juha Salmelin 1.1 Introducing 5G in Transport 1 1.2 Targets of the Book 3 1.3 Backhaul and Fronthaul Scope within the 5G System 3 1.4 Arranging Connectivity within the 5G System 4 1.5 Standardization Environment 5 1.5.1 3GPP and other organizations 5 References 8 2 5G System Design Targets and Main Technologies 11 Harri Holma and Antti Toskala 11 2.1 5G System Target 11 2.2 5G Technology Components 12 2.3 Network Architecture 14 2.4 Spectrum and Coverage 21 2.5 Beamforming 22 2.6 Capacity 24 2.6.1 Capacity per Cell 24 2.6.2 Capacity per Square Kilometre 24 2.7 Latency and Architecture 26 2.8 Protocol Optimization 28 2.8.1 Connectionless RRC 28 2.8.2 Contention-Based Access 28 2.8.3 Pipelining 29 2.9 Network Slicing and QoS 30 2.10 Integrated Access and Backhaul 32 2.11 Ultra Reliable and Low Latency 33 2.12 Open RAN 34 2.13 3GPP Evolution in Release 16/17 36 2.14 5G-Advanced 38 References 39 3 5G RAN Architecture and Connectivity – A Techno-economic Review 41 Andy Sutton 3.1 Introduction 41 3.2 Multi-RAT Backhaul 41 3.3 C-RAN and LTE Fronthaul 43 3.4 5G RAN Architecture 44 3.5 5G D-RAN Backhaul Architecture and Dimensioning 46 3.6 Integrating 5G within a Multi-RAT Backhaul Network 48 3.7 Use Case – BT/EE 5G Network in the UK 51 3.8 5G C-RAN – F1 Interface and Midhaul 55 3.9 5G C-RAN – CPRI, eCPRI and Fronthaul 56 3.10 Connectivity Solutions for Fronthaul 59 3.11 Small Cells in FR1 and FR 2 62 3.12 Summary 62 References 63 4 Key 5G Transport Requirements 65 Kenneth Y. Ho and Esa Metsälä 4.1 Transport Capacity 65 4.1.1 5G Radio Impacts to Transport 65 4.1.2 Backhaul and Midhaul Dimensioning Strategies 67 4.1.3 Protocol Overheads 68 4.1.4 Backhaul and Midhaul Capacity 69 4.1.5 Fronthaul Capacity 70 4.1.6 Ethernet Link Speeds 71 4.2 Transport Delay 73 4.2.1 Contributors to Delay in 5G System 73 4.2.2 Allowable Transport Delay 73 4.2.3 User Plane and Control Plane Latency for the Logical Interfaces 75 4.2.4 Fronthaul (Low-Layer Split Point) 76 4.2.5 Low-Latency Use Cases 77 4.3 Transport Bit Errors and Packet Loss 78 4.3.1 Radio-Layer Performance and Retransmissions 78 4.3.2 Transport Bit Errors and Packet Loss 79 4.4 Availability and Reliability 80 4.4.1 Definitions 80 4.4.2 Availability Targets 81 4.4.3 Availability in Backhaul Networks 82 4.4.4 Recovery Times in Backhaul and Fronthaul 84 4.4.5 Transport Reliability 84 4.4.6 Air Interface Retransmissions and Transport Reliability 87 4.4.7 Packet Duplication in 5G and Transport 88 4.4.8 Transport Analysis Summary for Availability and Reliability 90 4.5 Security 91 4.5.1 Summary of 5G Cryptographic Protection 91 4.5.2 Network Domain Protection 92 4.5.3 Security in Fronthaul 92 4.6 Analysis for 5G Synchronization Requirement 92 4.6.1 Frequency Error 93 4.6.2 Time Alignment Error (Due to TDD Timing) 93 4.6.3 Time Alignment Error (Due to MIMO) 100 4.6.4 Time Alignment Error (Due to Carrier Aggregation) 101 4.6.5 Time Alignment Accuracy (Due to Other Advanced Features) 102 References 102 5 Further 5G Network Topics 105 Esa Malkamäki, Mika Aalto, Juha Salmelin and Esa Metsälä 5.1 Transport Network Slicing 105 5.1.1 5G System-Level Operation 105 5.1.2 Transport Layers 105 5.2 Integrated Access and Backhaul 108 5.2.1 Introduction 108 5.2.2 IAB Architecture 109 5.2.3 Deployment Scenarios and Use Cases 110 5.2.4 IAB Protocol Stacks 111 5.2.5 IAB User Plane 113 5.2.6 IAB Signalling Procedures 114 5.2.7 Backhaul Adaptation Protocol 116 5.2.8 BH Link Failure Handling 117 5.2.9 IAB in 3GPP Release 17 and Beyond 118 5.3 Ntn 118 5.3.1 NTN in 3GPP 118 5.3.2 Different Access Types 119 5.3.3 Protocol Stacks 121 5.3.4 Transparent Architecture 123 5.3.5 Feeder Link Switchover 124 5.4 URLLC Services and Transport 125 5.4.1 Background 125 5.4.2 Reliability 127 5.4.3 Latency 128 5.5 Industry Solutions and Private 5G 129 5.5.1 Introduction to Private 5G Networking 129 5.5.2 3GPP Features Supporting Private 5G Use Cases 130 5.5.3 URLLC and TSC in Private 5G 133 5.6 Smart Cities 133 5.6.1 Needs of Cities 134 5.6.2 Possible Solutions 135 5.6.3 New Business Models 137 5.6.4 Implications for BH/FH 138 References 139 6 Fibre Backhaul and Fronthaul 141 Pascal Dom, Lieven Levrau, Derrick Remedios and Juha Salmelin 6.1 5G Backhaul/Fronthaul Transport Network Requirements 141 6.1.1 Capacity Challenge 141 6.1.2 Latency Challenge 143 6.1.3 Synchronization Challenge 144 6.1.4 Availability Challenge 144 6.1.5 Software-Controlled Networking for Slicing Challenge 145 6.1.6 Programmability and OAM Challenges 145 6.2 Transport Network Fibre Infrastructure 146 6.2.1 Availability of Fibre Connectivity 146 6.2.2 Dedicated vs Shared Fibre Infrastructure 147 6.2.3 Dedicated Infrastructure 149 6.2.4 Shared Infrastructure 149 6.3 New Builds vs Legacy Infrastructure 150 6.4 Optical Transport Characteristics 151 6.4.1 Optical Fibre Attenuation 151 6.4.2 Optical Fibre Dispersion 152 6.5 TSN Transport Network for the Low-Layer Fronthaul 153 6.6 TDM-PONs 154 6.6.1 TDM-PONs as Switched Transport Network for Backhaul and Midhaul 154 6.6.2 TDM-PONs as Switched Transport Network for Fronthaul 156 6.7 Wavelength Division Multiplexing Connectivity 156 6.7.1 Passive WDM Architecture 156 6.7.2 Active–Active WDM Architecture 158 6.7.3 Semi-Active WDM Architecture 160 6.8 Total Cost of Ownership for Fronthaul Transport Networking 161 References 163 7 Wireless Backhaul and Fronthaul 165 Paolo Di Prisco, Antti Pietiläinen and Juha Salmelin 7.1 Baseline 165 7.2 Outlook 166 7.3 Use Cases Densification and Network Upgrade 169 7.4 Architecture Evolution – Fronthaul/Midhaul/Backhaul 172 7.5 Market Trends and Drivers 172 7.5.1 Data Capacity Increase 173 7.5.2 Full Outdoor 174 7.5.3 New Services and Slicing 174 7.5.4 End-to-End Automation 175 7.6 Tools for Capacity Boost 176 7.6.1 mmW Technology (Below 100 GHz) 176 7.6.2 Carrier Aggregation 177 7.6.3 New Spectrum Above 100 GHz 181 7.7 Radio Links Conclusions 183 7.8 Free-Space Optics 183 7.8.1 Introduction 183 7.8.2 Power Budget Calculations 184 7.8.3 Geometric Loss 184 7.8.4 Atmospheric Attenuation 185 7.8.5 Estimating Practical Link Spans 186 7.8.6 Prospects of FSO 188 References 189 8 Networking Services and Technologies 191 Akash Dutta and Esa Metsälä 8.1 Cloud Technologies 191 8.1.1 Data Centre and Cloud Infrastructure 191 8.1.2 Data Centre Networking 194 8.1.3 Network Function Virtualization 196 8.1.4 Virtual Machines and Containers 198 8.1.5 Accelerators for RAN Functions 202 8.1.6 O-RAN View on Virtualization and Cloud Infrastructure 204 8.2 Arranging Connectivity 206 8.2.1 IP and MPLS for Connectivity Services 206 8.2.2 Traffic Engineering with MPLS-TE 208 8.2.3 E-vpn 208 8.2.4 Segment Routing 210 8.2.5 IP and Optical 211 8.2.6 IPv4 and IPv 6 212 8.2.7 Routing Protocols 212 8.2.8 Loop-Free Alternates 214 8.2.9 Carrier Ethernet Services 215 8.2.10 Ethernet Link Aggregation 216 8.3 Securing the Network 217 8.3.1 IPsec and IKEv 2 217 8.3.2 Link-Layer Security (MACSEC) 219 8.3.3 Dtls 220 8.4 Time-Sensitive Networking and Deterministic Networks 220 8.4.1 Motivation for TSN 220 8.4.2 IEEE 802.1CM – TSN for Fronthaul 221 8.4.3 Frame Pre-emption 223 8.4.4 Frame Replication and Elimination 223 8.4.5 Management 225 8.4.6 Deterministic Networks 226 8.5 Programmable Network and Operability 227 8.5.1 Software-Defined Networking Initially 227 8.5.2 Benefits with Central Controller 228 8.5.3 Netconf/YANG 229 References 230 9 Network Deployment 233 Mika Aalto, Akash Dutta, Kenneth Y. Ho, Raija Lilius and Esa Metsälä 9.1 NSA and SA Deployments 233 9.1.1 Shared Transport 233 9.1.2 NSA 3x Mode 235 9.1.3 SA Mode 237 9.2 Cloud RAN Deployments 237 9.2.1 Motivation for Cloud RAN 237 9.2.2 Pooling and Scalability in CU 240 9.2.3 High Availability in CU 242 9.2.4 Evolving to Real-Time Cloud – vDU 244 9.2.5 Enterprise/Private Wireless 250 9.3 Fronthaul Deployment 251 9.3.1 Site Solutions and Fronthaul 251 9.3.2 Carrying CPRI over Packet Fronthaul 252 9.3.3 Statistical Multiplexing Gain 253 9.3.4 Merged Backhaul and Fronthaul 255 9.4 Indoor Deployment 257 9.5 Deploying URLLC and Enterprise Networks 262 9.5.1 Private 5G Examples 262 9.5.2 Private 5G RAN Architecture Evolution 264 9.5.3 IP Backhaul and Midhaul Options for Private 5G 266 9.5.4 Fronthaul for Private 5G 266 9.5.5 Other Transport Aspects in Private 5G Networks 267 9.6 Delivering Synchronization 268 9.6.1 Network Timing Synchronization Using PTP and SyncE 269 9.6.2 SyncE 269 9.6.3 IEEE 1588 (aka PTP) 270 9.6.4 ITU-T Profiles for Telecom Industry Using SyncE and PTP 270 9.6.5 Example of Putting All Standards Together in Planning 271 9.6.6 Resilience Considerations in Network Timing Synchronization 275 9.6.7 QoS Considerations in Network Timing Synchronization 276 9.6.8 Special Considerations in Cloud RAN Deployment 276 9.6.9 Satellite-Based Synchronization 277 9.6.10 Conclusion for Synchronization 278 References 278 10 Conclusions and Path for the Future 279 Esa Metsälä and Juha Salmelin 10.1 5G Path for the Future 279 10.2 Summary of Content 280 10.3 Evolutionary Views for Backhaul and Fronthaul 280 Index 283

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book probes the feminist faultlines in Derrida's thought and generates original feminist insight into key concerns of contemporary film studies, including spectatorship, realism vs artifice, narrative, adaptation, auto/biography and the still.

Read more less

Book SynopsisNi! Peng! Nee-wom! Applause Theatre & Cinema Books revered and august publisher of weighty tomes on all things histrionic is proud to present ÊMonty Python FAQ: All That''s Left to Know About Spam Grails Spam Nudging Bruces and SpamÊ the only 127% unauthorized guide to the greatest comedy troupe to ever feature Graham Chapman John Cleese Terry Gilliam Eric Idle Terry Jones and Michael Palin to what is doubtlessly an astute and discerning global audience! Written in Applause''s popular FAQ format this behemoth pack a broad range of historical trivia trivial history illicit paraphernalia and sophomoric overeducation into a tastefully apportioned ranged of eminently readable silly-walk-accessible chapters sure to delight Python newcomers and veterans alike.ÞRather than offering narrow analyses of the quintet''s work ÊMonty Python FAQÊ ganders at the big picture tracing the Pythons across space time and media format. This noble quest for meaning leaves no turn unston

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisFilm Censorship is a concise overview of Hollywood censorship and efforts to regulate American films. Sheri Chinen Biesen unveils the behind-the-scenes history of cinema censorship and explore how Hollywood responded to censorial constraints on screen content in a changing cultural and industrial landscape.Trade ReviewAlthough most introductory textbooks touch upon the broader subject, with a short gloss of the Production Code Administration (PCA), there’s never been a handy guide or a more thorough treatment until now, with Sheri Chinen Biesen’s expertly researched, amply illustrated, and wonderfully concise primer Film Censorship: Regulating America’s Screen. . . . Film Censorship fills an important gap and is sure to provide a vital resource for students and readers eager to immerse themselves in this fascinating and equally fraught subject. -- Noah Isenberg * Film Quarterly *[A] thoroughly researched introduction to American film censorship. -- Katherine Waters * Times Literary Supplement *Through original and rich case studies, this volume explores the authorship, power and organization of censorship in compelling ways. Enormously valuable. -- Ellen Scott, University of California, Los AngelesThis impressive, concise, readable book should become a standard in university classrooms that teach American film culture. . . . Essential. * Choice *Students of film censorship should learn about this crucial legal component of the regulation of American screens. * Journal of American History *Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroduction1. Pre-Code Era2. Enforcing the Motion Picture Production Code3. Post-war Developments4. Pushing the Envelope: The Demise of Code CensorshipEpilogue: The Post-PCA Legacy of CensorshipNotesAppendixBibliographyIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis collection of fourteen essays explores how the dominant media of our time film and television have engaged with the golden age as formulated in the Western classical tradition.

Read more less

Book SynopsisNico Baumbach revisits the much-maligned tradition of seventies film theory to reconsider: What does it mean to call cinema political? He explores how cinema can condition philosophy through its own means, challenging received ideas about what is seeable, sayable, and doable.Trade ReviewThis is a good book for cinephiles, particularly those of a more intellectual bent. -- Ryne Clos * Spectrum Culture *Baumbach’s text will undoubtedly serve as a crucial launch pad of thinking on cinema. -- Daniel Fairfax * Senses of Cinema *In this lucid and insightful book, Nico Baumbach offers a much-needed critical account of new European philosophies of the image. Pairing Rancière with Althusser, Badiou with Deleuze, and Agamben with Benjamin, Baumbach demonstrates convincingly how these influential philosophers remap the relation of philosophy to film in ways continuous with the recent history of film theory, while in turn offering his own powerful perspective on the relation between aesthetics and politics. -- D. N. Rodowick, Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor, University of ChicagoIn this nuanced book, Nico Baumbach digs into contemporary European philosophy and its intersection with cinema, art, and aesthetics. Focusing on the trio of Rancière, Badiou, and Agamben, Baumbach makes a compelling case that such theorists, having already influenced discussions in literature and philosophy, also offer a new path for the future of cinema and media studies. Ultimately the question is not so much how film represents the world, or the material reality of affect or sensation, but how cinema itself is directly philosophical and political. -- Alexander R. Galloway, Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York UniversityFilm theory of the 1970s is not dead. True, we understand now that ideology critique and détournement are not the sole tools available to the political theorist or maker. In Cinema/Politics/Philosophy, Nico Baumbach shows that Rancière, Deleuze, Badiou, and Agamben—frequently set in opposition to their predecessors—in fact continue their work, while also illuminating exit signs from its various culs-de-sac. More urgently, Baumbach reveals the massive consequences when cinema is reduced to data, whether by celebrants of so-called “grand theory” or by its detractors. Cinema is not simply political or apolitical, a set of good or bad objects; it is itself a form of politics and a mode of thought. Provocative and timely, Cinema/Politics/Philosophy suggests that film’s political capacities are not opposed to, but rather inextricable from its capacity for thought and art. -- Homay King, Professor and Eugenia Chase Guild Chair in the Humanities, Bryn Mawr CollegeOnce again, philosophy knocks at cinema’s door and raises unsettling questions. Through an ideal conversation with Badiou, Rancière, and Agamben, Nico Baumbach retraces and relaunches a crucial debate. -- Francesco Casetti, Yale UniversityA compelling and innovative argument for thinking through the connection between the three topics listed in its title...The book therefore deserves a reception beyond the discipline of film studies and will be of interest to film scholars and philosophers alike. * Film Philosophy *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Politics of Film Theory and Its Discontents1. Cinematic Equality: Rancière and Film Theory After Althusser2. Cinema’s Thought: Badiou and the Philosophy of Cinema After Deleuze3. Cinema as Emergency Brake: Agamben and the Philosophy of Media After Benjamin4. Rethinking the Politics of the Philosophy of CinemaAcknowledgmentsNotes BibliographyIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisWith over 50 original essays by leading scholars, artists, critics, and curators, this is the first book to trace the “unwatchable” across our contemporary media environment, in which viewers encounter difficult content on various screens and platforms. The volume offers multidisciplinary approaches to the vast array of troubling images that circulate in global visual culture.Trade Review"Confronting the Unwatchable," by Maggie Hennefeld and Nicholas Baer https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/confronting-the-unwatchable/#!— Los Angeles Review of Books "Carefully edited to allow multiple voices and experiences to be in dialogue and sometimes challenge each other, Unwatchable shows how productive the unwatchable is as a moral and aesthetic category and also reveals that when it comes to these images, our watch has just begun."— Aurore Spiers, Discourse "The tone of the writing is refreshing—sometimes experimental and at others painfully reflective. Readers embark on deeply personal and highly politicised journeys with contributors, recalling harrowing moments from cinematic, televisual, world, and personal history."— Moveable Type "A substantial collection of essays, bristling with anxiety about the social impact of the kind of mediations broadcasting the news requires of us daily."— Times Literary Supplement "This book will find its greatest connections in studies of both the ethics and aesthetics of visual culture at its fringes."— Communication Booknotes Quarterly "A compelling foray into the bio- and necropolitics of spectacle, suffering, and violence. The short pieces in this weighty collection linger uncomfortably, highlighting the incommensurability of the unwatchable and the unthinkable."— Jasbir K. Puar, author of Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times "The anthology is an impressive collection of essays written by over fifty scholars and artists working on issues in film and media studies from a variety of disciplines and professional (as well as personal) perspectives, each of whom attempts to struggle with sharing what it means for something to be 'unwatchable' for them. Researchers on related issues in film, media, gender, politics, and philosophy broadly construed will find much that is both new and old to consider anew and to reconsider, while those new to such debates may find another space within which to theorize."— Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism "A socially urgent and intellectually galvanizing book. Unwatchable opens up a vital critical space for sharing the burden of navigating the difficult, often painful terrain of the twenty-first century visual regime. Highly readable, and productively challenging, it is a book that will inform our discussions of the politics of watching (and not watching) for a long time to come."— Journal of Cinema and Media Studies "This anthology does nothing less than challenge us to grapple with the criteria and ramifications of the unwatchable. It does not offer any one-dimensional or easily digestible answers to the complex questions raised in individual contributions. Though its richness and variety, it instead makes possible a deeper understanding of the concept of the unwatchable, which has become a crucial category across global media and politics."— MEDIENwissenschaft: Rezensionen New Books Network: New Books in Popular Culture -- New Books in film podcast interview withNicholas Baer, Maggie Hennefeld, Laura Horak, and Gunnar Iversen— New Books Network - New Books in Film "By posing a seemingly modest question—what visual experiences in our media-saturated world are 'unwatchable?'—the editors of this remarkable volume have elicited an astonishing range of intensely felt responses. They reveal the most potent anxieties of our troubled times, forcing us to attend to what we cannot bear to witness directly."— Martin Jay, author of Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought "This is a volume edited by the discipline’s top scholars and featuring some of our most brilliant theorists. Film scholars will doubtless be citing the essays in this volume for a long time to come. I know I will. What is likely to impress students, and what this collection gifts so gorgeously, is its demonstration of the way theory and film alike can crack open the most pressing issues of our day and offer moral support and ethical guidance for thinking through a life lived as citizen and spectator."— The Communication Review "While many edited anthologies boast interdisciplinarity and intermediality, Unwatchable stands out for the astounding reach of the media and discourses marshalled under its theme. Its implications are manifold, evidence that 'unwatchable' is more than just an aesthetic category. Unwatchable’s editors suggest that the currently unobservable, whether expressly repudiated or involuntarily rendered invisible, will surely linger and haunt the public imagination for years—if not generations—to come." — Film Quarterly "This thoughtfully curated anthology of short essays comes at a classical aesthetic problem with a fresh sense of historical urgency and from a number of truly new, often surprising directions. Radically extending the conceptual reach of its title, Unwatchable offers readers real traction on core questions in media and cultural studies surrounding taste, identity, and embodied experience as it navigates deftly across the dizzying landscape of contemporary spectatorship."— Sianne Ngai, author of Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting "Unwatchable is a powerful, potent collection because of its mission to crack our fingers apart just a little bit wider to see more of what we're averse to. Look for this book."— Jump CutTable of ContentsContents Introduction: Envisioning the Unwatchable Part I: Violence and Testimony Theorizing the Unwatchable 1. W. J. T. Mitchell, Unwatchable 2. Boris Groys, The Gaze from Within 3. Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Unwatchable and the Unwatchable 4. Alenka Zupančič, Melting Into Visibility 5. Meghan Sutherland, Pro Forma Spectacles of Destruction 6. Jonathan Crary, Terminal Radiance 7. Poulomi Saha, Unwatched/Unmanned: Drone Strikes and the Aesthetics of the Unseen 8. Alex Bush, Breakaway 9. Meir Wigoder, The Watchability of the Unwatchable: Television Disaster Coverage Bearing Witness 10. Peter Geimer, The Incommensurable 11. Leshu Torchin, Not Seeing is Believing: The Unwatchable in Advocacy 12. Frances Guerin, Even If She Had Been a Criminal: A Past Unwatched 13. Federico Windhausen, Deframing Evidence: A Transmission from Los ingrávidos 14. Emily Regan Wills, Alan Kurdi’s Body on the Shore Visual Regimes of Racial Violence 15. Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, Held Helpless in the Breach: On American History X 16. Jared Sexton, The Flash of History: On the Unwatchable in Get Out 17. Alexandra Juhasz, Nothing is Unwatchable for All 18. Michael Boyce Gillespie, Empathy. Complicity. Spectacularization and Resistance 19. Alok Vaid-Menon, Entertainment Value 20. Alec Butler, Holocausts, Hallowe’en, and Headdresses 21. Danielle Peers, Unwitnessable: Outrageous Ableist Impersonations and Unwitnessed Everyday Violence Part II: Histories and Genres The Tradition of Provocateurs 22. Asbjørn Grønstad, The Two Unwatchables 23. Akira Lippit, Real Horrorshow 24. Mauro Resmini, Asymmetries of Desire: Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom 25. Mattias Frey, Unstomachable: Irréversible and the Extreme Cinema Tradition Enduring the Avant-Garde 26. Christophe Wall-Romana, Unwatchability by Choice: Isou’s Venom and Eternity 27. Kenneth Berger, The Refusal of Spectacle: Debord’s Howls for Sade 28. J. Hoberman, Warhol’s Empire: Unwatched and Unwatchable 29. Noël Carroll, Warhol's Empire 30. Erika Balsom, Watching Paint Dry Visceral Responses to Horror 31. Vivian Sobchack, “Peekaboo”: Thoughts on (Maybe Not) Seeing Two Horror Films 32. B. Ruby Rich, Why I Cannot Watch 33. Genevieve Yue, Apotropes Pornography and the Question of Pleasure 34. Susie Bright, I Am Curious (Butterball) 35. Bill Nichols, At the Threshold to the Void Archives and the Disintegrating Image 36. Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, Restoring Blood Money 37. Jan Olsson, Turning Garbo Watchable: From Swedish Bread Bun to Hollywood Goddess 38. Philipp Stiasny and Bennet Togler, Twilight of the Dead Part III: Spectators and Objects Passionate Aversions 39. Jonathan Rosenbaum, “Sad!”: Why I Won’t Watch Antichrist 40. Nathan Lee, Transforming Nihilism 41. Julian Hanich, Oh, Inventiveness! Oh, Imaginativeness! Precious Cinema and Its Discontents: A Rant 42. Jeffrey Sconce, The Biopic is an Affront to the Cinema Tedious Whiteness 43. Jack Halberstam, White Men Behaving Sadly 44. Brandy Monk-Payton, “You is Kind, You is Smart, You is Important” or, Why I Can't Watch The Help 45. Mel Y. Chen, Two Tables and a Ladder: WCGW? Reality Trumpism 46. Lynne Joyrich, TV Trumps 47. Abigail De Kosnik, The Once and Future Hillary: Why I Won't Watch Any Fictionalizations of the 2016 Election Pedagogy and Campus Politics 48. Raúl Pérez, Why We Can’t Take a Joke 49. Jennifer Malkowski, The Bridge and Unteachable Films 50. Katariina Kyrölä, Squirming in the Classroom: Fat Girl and the Ethical Value of Extreme Discomfort The Triggered Spectator 51. E. Ann Kaplan, What is an “Unwatchable” Film? (With Reference to Amour and Still Alice) 52. Barbara Hammer, Watch at Your Own Peril 53. Samuel England, Sects, Fries, and Videotape 54. Rebecca Schneider, Off Watch Acknowledgments Filmography Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisRick Altman is Professor of French and Film Studies at the University of Iowa, USA. He is the author of The American Film Musical (Indiana University Press and BFI Publishing) and the editor of Cinema/Sound and Sound Theory/Sound Practice.

Read more less

Book SynopsisDirected by Richard Donner and written by David Seltzer, The Omen (1976) is perhaps the best in the devil-child cycle of movies that followed in the wake of Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist. Released to a highly suggestible public, The Omen became a major commercial success, in no small part due to an elaborate pre-sell campaign that played and preyed on apocalyptic fears and a renewed belief in the Devil and the supernatural. Since polarising critics and religious groups upon its release, The Omen has earned its place in the horror film canon. It’s a film that works on different levels, is imbued with nuance, ambiguity and subtext, and is open to opposing interpretations. Reflecting the film’s cultural impact and legacy, the name ‘Damien’ has since become a pop culture byword for an evil child. Adrian Schober’s Devil’s Advocate entry covers the genesis, authorship, production history, marketing and reception of The Omen, before going on to examine the overarching theme of paranoia that drives the narrative: paranoia about the 'end times'; paranoia about government and conspiracy; paranoia about child rearing (especially, if one strips away the layer of Satanism); and paranoia about imagined threats to the right-wing Establishment from liberal and post-countercultural forces of the 1970s.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn the 1940s and 1950s, hundreds of art documentaries were produced, many of them being highly personal, poetic, reflexive and experimental films that offer a thrilling cinematic experience. With the exception of Alain Resnais’s Van Gogh (1948), Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Mystère Picasso (1956) and a few others, most of them have received only scant scholarly attention. This book aims to rectify this situation by discussing the most lyrical, experimental and influential post-war art documentaries, connecting them to contemporaneous museological developments and Euro-American cultural and political relationships. With contributors with expertise across art history and film studies, Art in the Cinema draws attention to film projects by André Bazin, Ilya Bolotowsky, Paul Haesaerts, Carlo Ragghianti, John Read, Dudley Shaw Aston, Henri Storck and Willard Van Dyke among others.Trade ReviewThis remarkable book charts the development, as well as the public and critical acceptance, of the art film documentary at the mid-point of the 20th century. In a series of elegantly written and deeply perceptive essays by some of the most respected authorities in the field, such classic films as The Mystery of Picasso (1956), Henry Moore (1951), and the experimental feature film Pictura (1951) are brought back to public attention in a volume that is an essential text for both cinema historians and art lovers as well. A dazzling volume in every respect – bravo! -- Wheeler Winston Dixon, James Ryan Professor of Film Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USAIt is not well-known today that in the aftermath of World War II, emerging trends in media and international alliances, ideas about mass communication and the democratization of culture, and representation of national identity converged to produce a "golden age" of films about art and artists in Europe and the U.S. Art in Cinema is an invaluable resource on the mid-century heyday of the art documentary. -- Susan Felleman, Professor, Art History & Film and Media Studies, University of South Carolina, USATable of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgements Introduction: The Mid-Century Celluloid Museum, Steven Jacobs (Ghent University & Antwerp University, Belgium) & Dimitrios Latsis (Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada) 1. The Institutional Breeding Grounds of the Postwar Film on Art, Birgit Cleppe (Ghent University, Belgium) 2. American Art Comes of Age: Documentaries and the Nation at the Dawn of the Cold War, Dimitrios Latsis (Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada) 3. Art History with a Camera: Rubens (1948) and Paul Haesaerts’s Concept of Cinéma Critique, Steven Jacobs (Ghent University & Antwerp University, Belgium) & Joséphine-Charlotte Vandekerckhove (Ghent University, Belgium & Verona University, Italy) 4. Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti’s Critolfims and Beyond: From Cinema to Information Technology, Emanuele Pellegrini (IMT School for Advanced Studies, Italy) 5. André Bazin’s Art Documentary in Saintonge, Angela Dalle Vacche (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA) 6. Projecting Cultural Diplomacy: Cold War Politics, Films on Art, and Willard Van Dyke’s The Photographer, Natasha Ritsma (Loyola University Museum of Art, USA) 7. Henry Moore and A Sculptor’s Landscape: Modernity, the Land and the Bomb in Two Television Films by John Read, John Wyver (University of Westminster, UK) 8. Creative Process, Material Inscription and Dudley Shaw Ashton’s Figures in a Landscape (1953), Lucy Reynolds (University of Westminster, UK) 9. Neoplasticism and Cinema: Ilya Bolotowsky’s Experimental Films on Art, Henning Engelke (Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany) Mid-Twentieth-Century Art Documentaries: A Selected Bibliography About the Authors Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisOrson Welles' classic 1958 noir movie Touch of Evil, the story of a corrupt police chief in a small town on the Mexican-American border, starring Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh and Marlene Dietrich, is widely recognised as one of the greatest noir films of Classical Hollywood cinema. Richard Deming's study of the film considers it as an outstanding example of the noir genre and explores its complex relationship to its source novel, Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson. He traces the film's production history, and provides an insightful close analysis of its key scenes, including its famous opening sequence, a single take in which the camera follows a booby-trapped car on its journey through city streets and across the border.Trade ReviewEngaging… It combines a blow-by-blow account of the thriller’s troubled production with a thoughtful rebuttal to Paul Schrader’s description of it as “film noir’s epitaph”, while Orson Welles’ shadow inevitably looms large. * Total Film *“[The] BFI Film Classics… make a welcome return with Richard Deming’s excellent study of A Touch of Evil. Orson Welles’s 1958 noir is justly celebrated by film aficionados, though its meandering plot has puzzled many viewers. Deming's book is a fine guide for the perplexed * The Best American Poetry blog *In this contribution to the BFI Film Classics series, Richard Deming explores what makes Touch of Evil so intricate and so knowing as a parable of idealism dying many deaths… Deming ably conveys just how visceral the film is. * Times Literary Supplement *Table of ContentsPreface: Touching Back on Touch of Evil. 1. Noir's Epitaph 2. Scene analysis 3. Characters and themes 4. Final stages and legacy Credits Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisHow one company created the dominant aesthetic of digital realism. Just about every major film now comes to us with an assist from digital effects. The results are obvious in superhero fantasies, yet dramas like Roma also rely on computer-generated imagery to enhance the verisimilitude of scenes. But the realism of digital effects is not actually true to life. It is a realism invented by Hollywoodby one company specifically: Industrial Light & Magic. The Empire of Effects shows how the effects company known for the puppets and space battles of the original Star Wars went on to develop the dominant aesthetic of digital realism. Julie A. Turnock finds that ILM borrowed its technique from the New Hollywood of the 1970s, incorporating lens flares, wobbly camerawork, haphazard framing, and other cinematography that called attention to the person behind the camera. In the context of digital imagery, however, these aesthetic strategies had the opposite effect, heightening the sense of realism by calling on tropes suggesting the authenticity to which viewers were accustomed. ILM's style, on display in the most successful films of the 1980s and beyond, was so convincing that other studios were forced to follow suit, and today, ILM is a victim of its own success, having fostered a cinematic monoculture in which it is but one player among many.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA rigorous and imaginative inquiry into rhythm’s vital importance for film and the moving imageFocusing attention on a concept much neglected in the study of film, The Rhythm of Images opens new possibilities for thinking about expanded perception and idiosyncratic modes of being. Author Domietta Torlasco engages with both philosophy and cinema to elaborate a notion of rhythm in its pre-Socratic sense as a “manner of flowing”—a fugitive mode that privileges contingency and calls up the forgotten fluidity of forms. In asking what it would mean to take this rhythm as an ontological force in its own right, she creatively draws on thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, and Luce Irigaray. Rhythm emerges here as a form that eludes measure, a key to redefining the relation between the aesthetic and the political, and thus a pivotal means of resistance to power.Working with constellations of films and videos by international artists—from Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, and David Lynch to Harun Farocki and Victor Burgin, among others—Torlasco brings to bear on them her distinctive concept of rhythm with respect to four interrelated domains: life, labor, memory, and medium. With innovative readings of artworks and critical texts alike, The Rhythm of Images fashions a vibrant, provocative theory of rhythm as the excess or potential of perception. Ultimately, the book reconceives the relation between rhythm and the world-making power of images. The result is a vision of cinema as a hybrid medium endowed with the capacity not only to reinvent corporeal boundaries but also to find new ways of living together.Trade Review"Domietta Torlasco is a unique scholar-artist whose work resides at the intersection of critique and practice, reflection and poeisis. Her erudition and critical virtuosity are on full display in The Rhythm of Images, a work that looks at the way image cultures produce rhythms that resonate across philosophy, speculative thought, and cinema. Among the remarkable achievements of The Rhythm of Images is its stereographic score, a multivocity that emerges from the force of Torlasco’s ensemble."—Akira Mizuta Lippit, author of Cinema without Reflection: Jacques Derrida’s Echopoiesis and Narcissism Adrift"Domietta Torlasco’s The Rhythm of Images is a major breakthrough in aesthetic ontology. At the heart of this extraordinary intervention—as beautifully written as it is rigorously conceived—is an unexpected conception of rhythm as rhuthmos. Taken as rhuthmos, rhythm is understood against the all-too-familiar, and altogether problematic, assumption that rhythm is the engine of order, synchronization, and relations of identity—and against the idea that rhythm is primarily a question of sound. For Torlasco, rhythm is a force of difference, of what holds us together in and with difference. And what emerges first as a difficult problem of form moves fearlessly outward to surprisingly new, and much needed, ways of thinking about the relation between being and technicity, subject/object relations, time and capital, freedom and labor, difference and sameness."—Brian Price, University of TorontoTable of ContentsContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Life2. Labor3. Memory4. MediumNotesIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisProviding a comprehensive exploration of his groundbreaking achievements in cinema, the book considers Schrader's more overlooked films and provides new insights to their connection with his celebrated work in direction and screenwriting such as Taxi Driver (1976), Cat People (1982) and The Comfort of Strangers (1990).Trade Review"As a filmmaker and as an essayist, Paul Schrader has always been focused on the life of spirit, often under the most debased conditions and shocking circumstances. That focus, as a writer and as a director, has resulted in several truly remarkable pictures. We’ve worked together on and off throughout the better part of our lives. It hasn’t always been easy, but it has always been fruitful and, quite often, revelatory. Truly, I don’t know where the art of cinema would be without his work, his mind, and his presence. This collection is a just and illuminating tribute to the work of a very important artist." - Martin ScorseseTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Contributors Introduction: Taxi Driver Forward - Brian Brems and Michelle E. Moore Schrader and Style - Erik M. Bachman Movement and Meaning: The "unmotivated" Camera in Four Films by Paul Schrader - Deborah Allison Late Schrader: From the Canon to the Canyons - BillyStevenson "Thinking White:" Performing Racial Tension in Blue Collar - Scott Balcerzak Prophets and Zealots: Paul Schrader's Adaptations of The Mosquito Coast and The Last Temptation of Christ - Erica Moulton "So I find another form of expression": Art and Life/Art in Life in Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters - Thomas Prasch Schrader’s Women: Cat People and Patty Hearst - Brian Brems Paul Schrader’s Experiment in Italian Neo-decadence: The Comfort of Strangers and the Sadean System - Robert Dassanowsky "Just Being Transparent Baby": Surveillance Culture, Digitization and Self-Regulation in Paul Schrader’s The Canyons - James Slaymaker "Every Act of Preservation Is an Act of Creation": Paul Schrader’s Eco-Theology in First Reformed - Tatiana Prorokova Leaning on the Everlasting Arms: Love and Silence in First Reformed - Robert Ribera Interview with Paul Schrader conducted by Michelle E. Moore and Brian Brems on 9/27/2018 at the Rail Line Diner, NY Filmography Bibliography

Read more less

Book SynopsisRegarded as one of the greatest film composers of all time, Bernard Herrmann was responsible for some of the most memorable music in film. His work with Alfred Hitchcock produced a slew of classics including Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), and Psycho (1960). Several years before collaborating with Hitchcock, however, Herrmann composed the brilliant score for The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), which remained a personal favorite of the composer''s. Herrmann''s score reinforces the film''s romantic theme, and much of the music has an appropriately elegiac quality. In mood, orchestration, and even to some extent thematic identity, it seems to prefigure his music for Vertigo. In this latest addition to the Scarecrow Film Score Guide series, author David Cooper examines Herrmann''s career in general, as well as the specific elements that went into the creation of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir''s score. Cooper traces the development of Herrmann''s craft as a film composer, especially throuTrade Review...David Cooper's approach—tightly organized like an intro film theory class—will instill, certainly in some, new methods of appreciating film music....Like prior volumes in the series, the book's first section gives us an excellent portrait of the events that led the cast, crew, and composer towards the film project...Cooper's technical and theoretical breakdowns will be of particular interest to composers...There's no doubt this book is the result of a long and detailed effort to craft an important educational reference... * Music From The Movies, January 2007 *In this guide, Cooper (music and technology, U. of Leeds, UK) examines Bernard Herrmann's craft as a film composer, particularly in the score of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. He also explores nonmusical elements of the film, including the screenplay's relationship to the popular novel from which it was adapted, the contribution of director Joseph Mankiewicz, and the performances of Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison. A rundown of all the cues in Herrmann's manuscript is followed by an examination of the score as a musical artifact. * Reference and Research Book News *Table of ContentsPart 1 List of Illustrations Part 2 Abbreviations Part 3 Editor's Foreword Part 4 Acknowledgments Part 5 Introduction Chapter 6 1. Herrmann's Career up to the Composition of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir Chapter 7 2. Musical Style and Musical Meaning: Herrmann's Film Scoring Technique Chapter 8 3. Literary, Filmic and Critical Context of the Score Chapter 9 4. Overview of the Score as a Musical Text Chapter 10 5. Analysis and Readings of the Score Part 11 Notes Part 12 Bibliography Part 13 Index Part 14 About the Author

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Innocence of Memories is an important addition to the oeuvre of Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk. Comprised of the screenplay of the acclaimed film by Grant Gee from 2015 (by the same name), a transcript of the author and filmmaker in conversation, and captivating colour stills, it is an essential volume for understanding Pamuk's work.Drawing on the themes from Pamuk's best-selling books, The Museum of Innocence, Istanbul and The Black Book, this book is both an accompaniment to the author's previous publications and a wonderfully revelatory exploration of Orhan Pamuk's key ideas about art, love, and memory.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe 1940 film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s gothic romance Rebecca begins by echoing the novel’s famous opening line, ‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.’ Patricia White takes the theme of return as her starting point for an exploration of the film’s enduring power. Drawing on archival research, she shows how the production and reception history of Rebecca, the first fruit of the collaboration between Hollywood movie producer David O. Selznick and British director Alfred Hitchcock, is marked by the traces of women’s contributions. White provides a rich analysis of the film, addressing the gap between perception and reality that is constantly in play in the gothic romance, and highlighting the queer erotics circulating around ‘I’ (the heroine), Mrs Danvers, and the dead but ever-present Rebecca. Her discussion of the film’s afterlives emphasizes the lasting aesthetic impact of this dark masterpiece of memory and desire, while her attention to its remakes and sequels speaks to the ongoing relevance of its vision of gender and power.Trade ReviewWhite pays ample and poetic attention to the film’s aesthetic dimensions, beautifully highlighting both Hitchcock’s style and cinematic experience ... White’s marvelously observed, meticulous monograph offers fitting tribute. * Hitchcock Annually *This in-depth look at… [the] celebrated 1940 film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s gothic romance draws on archival research to consider themes of returning and appearance and reality. * Choice *Patricia White’s study of the 1940 goth romance turns a salutary spotlight on the women who steered it to the screen. Ben Wheatley’s re-do gets a nod, but there’s a more fruitful comparison with Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread. * Total Film *[Patricia White has found] an autonomous and brilliant path in the wide range of readings of the film that have accumulated over the years, managing to provide an original contribution and to open up further interpretative possibilities. (Bloomsbury Translation) * Imago: Studi di cinema e media (Bloomsbury Translation) *In Rebecca, Patricia White lends her voice to the women—among them, Daphne du Maurier, Irene Selznick, Joan Harrison, and Alma Reville, as well the film’s critics—who have contributed extensively to the making and understanding of Hitchcock’s classic film. In a sense White brilliantly stages yet one more return of the dead woman, Rebecca, who haunts the unnamed heroine and so many fans of the novel and the film, and in lucid and compelling prose testifies to the undying appeal of the ghostly character and her magnificent maleficence. * Tania Modleski, University of Southern California, USA *Table of Contents1. Introduction 2. Production and release history 3. 'Rebecca' the novel 4. 'Rebecca' the film 5. Reception and film criticism 6. The afterlives of 'Rebecca'

Read more less

Book SynopsisProviding a clear, systematic account of the evolution of Bellour's thought on the nature of cinematic representation, the impact of digital technology and the response of the spectator, this is an essential guide to the work of a major contemporary thinker.

Read more less

Book SynopsisJon Solomon's new book offers an exciting and detailed study of the Ben-Hur brand, tracking its spectacular journey from Wallace's original novel through to twenty-first century adaptations, and encompassing a wealth of previously unexplored material along the way

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe book offers a radical rethinking of Michelangelo Antonioni's work. It argues against prevalent understandings of it in terms of both cinematic purity and indebtedness to painting.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWritten on the Wind (1956) is one of classical Hollywood's most striking films and ranks among Douglas Sirk's finest achievements. An intense melodrama about an alcoholic playboy who marries the woman his best friend secretly loves, the film is highly stylised, psychologically complex, and marked by Sirk's characteristic charting of the social realities of 1950s America. This first single study of Written on the Wind reassesses the film's artistic heritage and place within the wider framework of contemporary American culture. Incorporating original archival research, Peter William Evans examines the production, promotion and reception of Written on the Wind, exploring its themes – of time, memory, space, family, class and sex – as well as its brilliance of form. Its vivid aesthetics, powerful performances and profound treatment of human emotions, make Written on the Wind a masterpiece of Hollywood melodrama.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments .- Overture: The Wind .- 1 Production and Promotion .- 2 Realism, Modernism and Melodrama .- 3 Mise en scene .- 4 Dorothy Malons/Marylee: 'Enough devil in her...' .- 5 Lauren Bacall: 'A lady, a beautiful lady' .- 6 Rock Hudson and Robert Stack: Cain and Abel .- Coda: The River .- Synopsis .- Notes .- Credits .- Bibliography.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn 1968 audiences around the world were transported to a world eerily similar to their own, but where apes ruled and mankind was subjugated. A terrifying, thrilling film, featuring one of the most famous twist endings in film history, Planet of the Apes is a science fiction masterpiece. The film birthed one of the longest running and most successful film franchises in cinema history, spawning seven further films, two television series, comics, novels and much more. Over 40 years later moviegoers around the world are still enthralled by this iconic, award-winning series. Planet of the Apes: The Evolution of the Legend is the definitive guide to every aspect of this cultural phenomenon. From the groundbreaking original to 2014''s blockbuster Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, this book tells the whole story, accompanied by brand new interviews with key creatives and die-hard fans. The book is illustrated throughout by gorgeous behind the scenes photog

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn urgent volume of essays engages the Gothic to advance important perspectives on our geological era What can the Gothic teach us about our current geological era? More than just spooky, moonlit castles and morbid graveyards, the Gothic represents a vibrant, emergent perspective on the Anthropocene. In this volume, more than a dozen scholars move beyond longstanding perspectives on the Anthropocene—such as science fiction and apocalyptic narratives—to show that the Gothic offers a unique (and dark) interpretation of events like climate change, diminished ecosystems, and mass extinction.Embracing pop cultural phenomena like True Detective, Jaws, and Twin Peaks, as well as topics from the New Weird and prehistoric shark fiction to ruin porn and the “monstroscene,” Dark Scenes from Damaged Earth demonstrates the continuing vitality of the Gothic while opening important new paths of inquiry. These essays map a genealogy of the Gothic while providing fresh perspectives on the ongoing climate chaos, the North/South divide, issues of racialization, dark ecology, questions surrounding environmental justice, and much more.Contributors: Fred Botting, Kingston U; Timothy Clark, U of Durham; Rebecca Duncan, Linnaeus U; Michael Fuchs, U of Oldenburg, Germany; Esthie Hugo, U of Warwick; Dawn Keetley, Lehigh U; Laura R. Kremmel, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology; Timothy Morton, Rice U; Barry Murnane, U of Oxford; Jennifer Schell, U of Alaska Fairbanks; Lisa M. Vetere, Monmouth U; Sara Wasson, Lancaster U; Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Central Michigan U.Trade Review"All of the essays connect the subjective potency of the texts under discussion — the affects and moods that they inspire in the reader or viewer — to the ways that such works also give us a deeper understanding of the ongoing ecological transactions that are putting our very existence at risk. Dark Scenes from Damaged Earth both reclaims the gothic as an urgently relevant mode of fiction-making and suggests that aesthetic approaches are able to bring us a kind of understanding that scientific studies on their own could not."—Los Angeles Review of Books"It is impossible for me to do complete justice to this book in a review, but I will say that the sixteen essays included in it are all illuminating, thoughtful, and interesting."—Gothic WandererTable of ContentsContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Gothic in the AnthropocenePart I. Anthropocene1. The AnthropoceneJeffrey Andrew Weinstock2. De-extinction: A Gothic Masternarrative for the AnthropoceneMichael Fuchs3. Lovecraft vs. VanderMeer: Posthuman Horror (and Hope?) in the Zone of ExceptionRune Graulund4. Monstrous Megalodons of the Anthropocene: Extinction and Adaptation in Prehistoric Shark Fiction, 1974–2018Jennifer Schell5. A Violence “Just below the Skin”: Atmospheric Terror and Racial Ecologies from the African AnthropoceneEsthie HugoPart II. Plantationocene6. Horrors of the Horticultural: Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland and the Landscapes of the AnthropoceneLisa M. Vetere7. True Detective’s Folk GothicDawn Keetley8. Beyond the Slaughterhouse: Anthropocene, Animals, and GothicJustin D. EdwardsPart III. Capitalocene9. Gothic in the Capitalocene: World-Ecological Crisis, Decolonial Horror, and the South African PostcolonyRebecca Duncan10. Overpopulation: The Human as InhumanTimothy Clark11. Digging Up Dirt: Reading the Anthropocene through German RomanticismBarry Murnane12. Got a Light? The Dark Currents of Energy in Twin Peaks: The ReturnTimothy Morton and Rune GraulundPart IV. Chthulucene13. The Anthropocene Within: Love and Extinction in M. R. Carey’s The Girl with All the Gifts and The Boy on the BridgeJohan Höglund14. Rot and Recycle: Gothic Eco-burialLaura R. Kremmel15. Erotics and Annihilation: Caitlín R. Kiernan, Queering the Weird, and Challenges to the “Anthropocene”Sara Wasson16. MonstroceneFred BottingContributorsIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisEver since horror leapt from popular fiction to the silver screen in the late 1890s, viewers have experienced fear and pleasure in exquisite combination. Wheeler Winston Dixon's fully revised and updated A History of Horror is still the only book to offer a comprehensive survey of this ever-popular film genre.Arranged by decades, with outliers and franchise films overlapping some years, this one-stop sourcebook unearths the historical origins of characters such as Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman and their various incarnations in film from the silent era to comedic sequels. In covering the last decade, this new edition includes coverage of the resurgence of the genre, covering the swath of new groundbreaking horror films directed by women, Black and queer horror films, and a new international wave in body horror films.A History of Horror explores how the horror film fits into the Hollywood studio system, how the distribution and exhibition of horror films have changed in a post-COVID world, and how its enormous success in American and European culture expanded globally over time.Dixon examines key periods in the horror film-in which the basic precepts of the genre were established, then banished into conveniently reliable and malleable forms, and then, after collapsing into parody, rose again and again to create new levels of intensity and menace. A History of Horror, supported by rare stills from classic films, brings over sixty timeless horror films into frightfully clear focus, zooms in on today's top horror Web sites, and champions the stars, directors, and subgenres that make the horror film so exciting and popular with contemporary audiences. Trade Review"Dixon is recognized as an eminent film scholar and the current title is an impressive addition to his oeuvre. This book certainly has solid scholarship, but it is also a book that once picked up is hard to put down. Essential." * Choice *"Dixon is a deft and knowledgeable guide, leading us from silent ghouls to Universal's monsters. Interspersed throughout this catalogue are nuggets of surprising information." * Times Literary Supplement *"This is an excellent survey of horror movies. The author, a veteran film historian, takes the reader back to the beginning, when, in the first three decades of the twentieth century, such directors as Georges Melies, F. W. Murnau, and Paul Wegener were defining not only the look of a genre but also cinema itself. The period between 1930 and the late 1940s saw the rise of the classic Universal Studios characters—Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Mummy—and the actors who played them: Karloff, Lugosi, Chaney Jr. By the end of the 1940s, horror was dying, 'killed by a plethora of poorly made sequels.' But never fear: the period between the late 1940s and 1970 saw a massive resurgence, due in part to gimmicks (such as 3-D); low-budget quickies from the likes of Roger Corman, the wizard of the B movie; and the stylish resurrection of the classic Universal monsters by Britain's Hammer Film Productions. This survey, which takes the reader right up to the present, is full of fascinating information and is delivered in an accessible manner. Required reading for horror fans." -- David Pitt * Booklist *"Dixon surveys the development of the horror genre from the earliest Frankenstein and Dracula films through the decades of classics by Hammer studios, William Castle, Roger Corman, and Val Lewton. Dixon covers movies seldom found in other histories and more modern, international titles such as Wolf Creek, Black Water, and Grudge. The endurance of horror, trends like remakes and sequels, and such popular franchises as Child's Play and Halloween are also discussed. In the final chapter, Dixon analyzes the decline of modern horror owing to desensitized audiences, graphic gore, violence, and lack of solid plot lines or character development. Lists of the best horror websites as well as the 50 movies covered round out this volume. This concise overview is an informative and entertaining read. Recommended." * Library Journal *"In less than 250 pages, Wheeler Winston Dixon manages to cover the trends and sub-genres of film horror from 1896 to 2009. Bonuses include a list of top horror sites, a list of fifty classic films, and a pretty wonderful bibliography. Well written and well researched and offering an enjoyable overview of more than one hundred years of cinema, A History of Horror is a quick, delightful read." * Seattle Post-Intelligencer *"No mere catalogue of titles, Dixon's account explores all aspects of the genre: literary underpinnings, themes, and transformations, including much on actors and directors. Dixon's mind-priming volume will enhance spine-tingling late-night viewings." * ForeWord Reviews *"A breathtaking panorama, written with wit and candor, showing how the horror film has shaped cinema from the origins of the genre until now." -- Tom Conley, Harvard University"Rich with excellent illustrations and clever anecdotes, this book will appeal to fans of horror as well as film students and scholars interested in a readable overview of the history of the genre." -- Rebecca Bell-Metereau, author of Hollywood Androgyny "There’s No Dark Universe Anymore, Just One Monster After Another," by Robert Ito https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/movies/the-invisible-man-universal.html * New York Times *"New from Rutgers U. Press: A History of Horror" by Dan Aubrey https://www.communitynews.org/princetoninfo/artsandentertainment/new-from-rutgers-u-press-a-history-of-horror/article_3fae29f2-a6fb-11ed-9ef2-ff473369899e.html * U.S. 1, Princeton *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements 1 Origins: 1896-1929 2 Classics: 1930-1948 3 Rebirth: 1949-1970 4 New Blood: 1970-1990 5 The Next Wave: 1990-2010 6 The Future: 2010-Present Top Horror Websites 50 Classic Horror Films Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book Synopsis'Prepare to laugh, sob and dance: this lively history of Indian cinema is imprinted with the memories of a life-long cinephile.' The Telegraph'A gem of a book and a must for film lovers everywhere' Abir Mukherjee'My biggest recommendation of the year. Sunny Singh's honouring of story and history shine through powerfully - an exquisitely enjoyable read' Nikita GillLike all Indians, Sunny Singh was born and brought up in a country of film fanatics. She and her friends waited impatiently for the latest releases, listened to the songs on radio and wore clothes inspired by those seen on screen. They learned about India and the world, determined their enemies and friends, and chose their moralities thanks to films.A Bollywood State of Mind is a personal, intellectual and emotional journey which crosses five continents and 50 years of modern Indian history and cinema and explores why Bollywood means so much to so many across the globe. Sunny describes how this exceptional cinema retains its hold on the national imagination, how Bollywood has enhanced India's global standing in the 21st century, and how its characteristics endure despite the social and political changes.Ranging over history, aesthetic theory and politics, A Bollywood State of Mind explores encounters with Bollywood in the market places of Dakar and Marrakesh, in the nightclubs of New York, Barcelona and Mexico City, and in the ruins of Egypt's Valley of the Kings, Petra and beyond. It shows how the pioneers and heroes of Bollywood cut across national, linguistic and cultural lines not only in India but in far reaches of Somalia, Peru, Malaysia and Russia.Trade Review'Bright, brilliant and beautifully researched, this glorious book is my biggest recommendation of the year. Sunny Singh's honouring of story and history shine through powerfully - an exquisitely enjoyable read!' -- Nikita Gill'Singh's book is an unrivalled celebration of Bollywood films...the nostalgia unfurled the sepia vignettes of memory from a distant almost forgotten past into the glittering joy of the present day' -- Shobna Gulati'Part history, part personal reminiscence, A Bollywood State of Mind is a thoughtful, magical journey through the annals of the world's largest, most spectacular and most vivacious film industry. A gem of a book and a must for film lovers everywhere' -- Abir Mukherjee'A masterful memoir, Singh's love story with Bollywood is one told with precision, authority and panache, capturing the all-singing, all-dancing joy and wonder of Indian cinema' -- Monisha Rajesh'A deeply personal, deeply political dive into one of the most popular forms of entertainment today. Part memoir, part film criticism, part cultural excavation, Singh writes with passion, clarity and introspection' -- Nikesh Shukla'This is a gorgeous, perfect, mini-blockbuster of a book that tells story upon story within story of India's beloved Hindi cinema and all those who make and love it, in India and wherever they - we! because I count myself among its lovers - have travelled all over the world. Part personal and family memoir, part social history of modern India and its neighbours and diasporas, part expert (but never, ever stuffy) analysis of how India's classic dramatic storytelling aesthetics have morphed into modern cinema, part close explanation of the cinematic techniques makers use to entrance and enfold their audiences - Sunny Singh's genre-defying book gets to the essential emotional heart - the rasa - of Bollywood cinema. I loved this joyful, wonderful book with my whole heart.' -- Dr. Katherine Schofield

Read more less

Book SynopsisRECORDING BROADWAY: A LIFE IN CAST ALBUMS

Read more less

Book SynopsisAs Nick and Nora Charles in the six Thin Man movies from 1934 to 1947, the husband-and-wife team of William Powell and Myrna Loy showed that marriage didn't have to mean the end of the romantic comedy. From the comedic delight that was the initial The Thin Man through its five sequels as well as eight other films (including the Oscar-winning The Great Ziegfeld and Manhattan Melodrama), Powell and Loy were cemented in the public imagination as Hollywood's happiest married couple.In Becoming Nick and Nora, comedy writer and Hollywood historian Rob Kozlowski follows the winding path that Powell and Loy's screen personas took over their careers. Studios originally cultivated the two as villains in the silent era: Powell as a mustachioed, swashbuckling fiend and Loy as an exotic adversary. With the rise of talkies, the two managed to broaden their range beyond villainous stereotypes, but it took several false starts before they achieved their lasting legacy as Nick and Nora. Packe

Read more less

Book SynopsisProduced in the aftermath of the Second World War, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (1946) stars David Niven as an RAF pilot poised between life and death, his love for the American radio operator June (Kim Hunter) threatened by medical, political and ultimately celestial forces. The film is a magical, profound fantasy and a moving evocation of English history and the wartime experience, with virtuoso Technicolor special effects. In the United States it was released under the title Stairway to Heaven, referencing one of its most famous images, a moving stairway between earth and the afterlife. Ian Christie's study of the film shows how its creators drew upon many sources and traditions to create a unique form of modern masque, treating contemporary issues with witty allegory and enormous visual imagination. He stresses the teamwork of Powell and Pressburger's gifted collaborators, among them Director of Photography Jack Cardiff, production designer Alfred Junge, and costume designer Hein Heckroth, and explores the history of both British and international responses to the film. Christie argues that the film deserves to be thought of as one of the greatest achievements of British cinema, but of all cinema.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 1. Beginnings 2. Production 3. Responses Epilogue: Afterlife Notes Credits

Read more less

Book SynopsisA New York Times Book Review Editors'' Choice One of Esquire''s 125 best books about HollywoodAward-winning master critic Robert Gottlieb takes a singular and multifaceted look at the life of silver screen legend Greta Garbo, and the culture that worshiped her.Wherever you look in the period between 1925 and 1941, Robert Gottlieb writes in Garbo, Greta Garbo is in people's minds, hearts, and dreams. Strikingly glamorous and famously inscrutable, she managed, in sixteen short years, to infiltrate the world's subconscious; the end of her film career, when she was thirty-six, only made her more irresistible. Garbo appeared in just twenty-four Hollywood movies, yet her impact on the worldand that indescribable, transcendent presence she possessedwas rivaled only by Marilyn Monroe's. She was looked on as a unique phenomenon, a sphinx, a myth, the most beautiful woman in the world, but in reality she was a Swedish peasant girl, uneducated, naïve, and always on her guard. When she arrived in Hollywood, aged nineteen, she spoke barely a word of English and was completely unprepared for the ferocious publicity that quickly adhered to her as, almost overnight, she became the world's most famous actress.In Garbo, the acclaimed critic and editor Robert Gottlieb offers a vivid and thorough retelling of her life, beginning in the slums of Stockholm and proceeding through her years of struggling to elude the attention of the worldher desperate, futile striving to be left alone. He takes us through the films themselves, from M-G-M's early presentation of her as a vampher overwhelming beauty drawing men to their doom, a formula she loathedto the artistic heights of Camille and Ninotchka (Garbo Laughs!), by way of Anna Christie (Garbo Talks!), Mata Hari, and Grand Hotel. He examines her passive withdrawal from the movies, and the endless attempts to draw her back. And he sketches the life she led as a very wealthy woman in New Yorka hermit about townand the life she led in Europe among the Rothschilds and men like Onassis and Churchill. Her relationships with her famous co-star John Gilbert, with Cecil Beaton, with Leopold Stokowski, with Erich Maria Remarque, with George Schleewere they consummated? Was she bisexual? Was she sexual at all? The whole world wanted to knowand still wants to know.In addition to offering his rich account of her life, Gottlieb, in what he calls A Garbo Reader, brings together a remarkable assembly of glimpses of Garbo from other people's memoirs and interviews, ranging from Ingmar Bergman and Tallulah Bankhead to Roland Barthes; from literature (she turns up everywherein Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, in Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and the letters of Marianne Moore and Alice B. Toklas); from countless songs and cartoons and articles of merchandise. Most extraordinary of all are the pictures250 or so ravishing movie stills, formal portraits, and revealing snapshotsall reproduced here in superb duotone. She had no personal vanity, no interest in clothes and make-up, yet the story of Garbo is essentially the story of a face and the camera. Forty years after her career ended, she was still being tormented by unrelenting paparazzi wherever she went.Includes Black-and-White Photographs

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe highest artistic achievement of Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, an innovative production company that emerged in Hollywood at the end of the classic studio system, Sweet Smell of Success (1957) portended the collapse of Breen-Office censorship and was the first US entertainment film to depict McCarthy-style exploitation of the press. It also presented an unusually dark view of the culture of celebrity, presaging developments of an even darker kind in our own day. Sweet Smell's frightening portrayal of a newspaperman loosely based on Walter Winchell and its unstinting depiction of corruption and sleaze in the world of Broadway theatres and nightclubs have given it a legendary reputation; critics and film-makers continue to praise the whiplash dialogue of Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman, the seductive location photography of James Wong Howe, the stylish direction of Alexander Mackendrick and the disturbing performances of Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis as ruthless gossip columnist J. J. Hunse

Read more less

Book SynopsisExamines race and nation in postcolonial, settler-colonial, and Indigenous film adaptation

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade Review"In addition to the almost unparalleled breadth and depth of his research, Bordwell's love of and admiration for the period's experimentation and risk-taking comes through on every page. His exuberance is infectious, and again and again I found myself writing down titles of films--many of which I had not heard of before--I now want to see due to his impassioned account of their innovations. This is a singularly important book that powerfully brings to life a rich period of experimentation in Hollywood's history."--Malcolm Turvey, Tufts University "A new book from David Bordwell is always a welcome event in the field of film studies, particularly for the cinephilic academic who appreciates his wide-ranging corpus and the close attention with which he analyses individual moments. . . . It is a hugely engaging account of the fertility of this period and a convincing collection of invigorating storytelling innovations. . . . A fresh contribution to scholarship on Hollywood cinema and an aficionado's joy."--Times Higher Education "As our premier analyst of cinematic storytelling, Bordwell plunges us into Hollywood movies in the 1940s, brilliantly opening up the era's productive innovations in narrative and narration. Along the way, he explains experiments with devices such as amnesia, cine-portraiture, converging-fates and episode plots, focused space, ghost-movie rules, hooks, impression management, interruptive flashbacks, the omnibus format, polyphonic voice-overs, rhythms of replacement, the switcheroo, and the traveling object. What a treasure for lovers of cinema."--Janet Staiger, University of Texas at Austin "Bordwell effectively argues that the change in the era of bold, different, sometimes difficult films from the '40s made a permanent mark of cinematic storytelling that resonates to this day."--PopMatters (11/06/2017) "An exhaustive, meticulous study of a decade when cinematic storytelling exploded with fresh creative options."--Noir City, Film Noir Foundation "Rather than focusing on the colorful stars and studio bosses of 1940s Hollywood, prolific film historian Bordwell . . . zooms in on the films themselves, and more specifically, how they were made." --Library Journal "Deeply impressive."--Times Literary Supplement "Few exceed David Bordwell at the job of looking at cinematic technique and describing how, exactly, the trick is done. . . . The book lays out a remarkable curriculum of 1940s American films before reaching a conclusion that traces their legacy to the present day, arguing that well before young American filmmakers of the 1970s 'discovered' modernism from the European art film, the Europeans had been learning from the experimentation of Hollywoood in the 1940s--a seemingly inexhaustible creative wellspring, here drunk from deeply."--Film Comment "a two-fisted approach to rethinking Hollywood's evolution"--Sight & Sound "Reinventing Hollywood shows how risk-taking screenwriters and directors of the 1940s introduced storytelling strategies taken from modernist novels and avant-garde theater, enriching movies with their use of unreliable narrators and flashbacks within flashbacks. . . . No dry encyclopedia of cinematic tropes, this is a delectable menu of narrative techniques that maximize the complexity and depth of a plot. . . . As invaluable to storytellers as to cinephiles and scholars interested in the narrative architecture of Hollywood efforts, both the well-known and less so."--Film Quarterly "No other critic or historian comes close to the sort of comprehensive discussion of the period that Bordwell gives in Reinventing Hollywood. With an encyclopedic knowledge of movie history, he seems to have seen everything. His research is prodigious, filled with fascinating details about how specific scripts were written and revised. Despite this, there isn't a whiff of pretention in his writing, which is not only lucid but also witty and engaging."--James Naremore, Indiana University Bloomington "Situating Hollywood film among other popular arts of the times, such as theater or the novel or radio drama, Bordwell convincingly shows how movies were key cases of what he terms 'moderate modernism' and explored and expanded storytelling possibilities. Having seen everything, read everything, and thought brilliantly about everything, Bordwell delivers the definitive poetics of American cinema as narrative act and narrative art."--Dana Polan, New York University "Bordwell is our soldier of the cinema, the guy up on the wall telling us what's out there and, in this case, how and why it got there. Reinventing Hollywood is a deep and wide look into a period of creative fervor and storytelling innovation in the movies that hasn't been matched by any other art form since. This book is bracing and encyclopedic and has real heft, but it's still a breezy read. It's not just that you can read it, you can see it. And if modern filmmakers can't find any inspiring ideas in here, they're just not trying."--David Koepp, screenwriter, Jurassic Park and War of the Worlds; director, Ghost Town and Premium Rush "With Reinventing Hollywood, Bordwell pulls off the near impossible. His book, which is meticulously researched, somehow has the ability to inform, to contextualize, and to entertain in equal measures. He is able to demystify arguably the most mature decade of American films in a way that explains patterns and influences but also recognizes those unique, inexplicable masterpieces that somehow came from out of nowhere."--Mark Johnson, producer, Rain Man, Galaxy Quest, and Breaking Bad

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisExamines the cinematic strategies that elicit visceral pleasure in the face of content that is crass, politically problematic, or unethical

Read more less

Book SynopsisJoseph McBride analyzes Ernst Lubitsch’s films in rich detail in the first in-depth critical study to consider the full scope of his work in both his native and adopted lands. McBride explains the “Lubitsch Touch,” shows how the director challenged American attitudes toward romance and sex, and offers revealing insights into his working methods.Trade Review[This] excellent, authoritative book . . . is chockful of cultivated insights. -- Phillip Lopate * New York Review of Books *Named the best silent film book of 2019. * Silent London *McBride delivers his best book yet . . . A nuanced, thorough look at an important artist and his art. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *In How Did Lubitsch Do It? Joseph McBride has written a love letter to a filmmaker . . . McBride’s detailed appreciations could serve, ideally, as a viewer’s companion to the many layers of Lubitsch’s art. -- Geoffrey O'Brien * Wall Street Journal *Film historian Joseph McBride's tome How Did Lubitsch Do It? makes a comprehensive and enthusiastic . . . case for [Lubitsch]'s importance. * New York Times Book Review *Though some early Lubitsch films are lost, McBride rescues the director's neglected and underrated reputation, securing his legacy with critical insights and sound scholarship in one of the few full-length appreciations of the artist. Highly recommended. * Library Journal *[McBride] reacquaints readers with the director’s genius. . . . Will be a great companion for those interested in underexplored comedies in film history. * Washington Post *There is no better time than now for a comprehensive study of Lubitsch like McBride’s. . . McBride does much-needed work in showing how Lubitsch was one of the consummate artists America was ever lucky enough to claim as her own. * San Francisco Chronicle *How Did Lubitsch Do It? is one of the most indispensable film books I’ve ever read, not only a rigorously researched and considered biography and an illuminating analysis of Lubitsch’s technique but a broader study of how culture affects filmmaking and vice versa. * Filmmaker Magazine *Revered film historian Joseph McBride's new book, How Did Lubitsch Do It?, explores this master of modern comedy in scintillating detail. * LA Weekly *A compelling case for Lubitsch as an unequaled master of elegant, sophisticated entertainments marked by sly innuendo and adult sensibilities that have stood the test of time. * DGA Quarterly *Critical study. * Weekly Standard *A critical study. * Wellesnet *A critical study. * Mass Live *Nine well-informed chapters written in McBride's familiar, accessible style. -- Matthew Sorrento * Film International *[A] fine book. * The Sydney Morning Herald *A book well worth recommending. It is enjoyable, provocative and thorough. * World Socialist Web Site *In this delightfully informative book McBride is unabashedly nostalgic for the urbane art of concealing art that Lubitsch mastered in The Shop around the Corner and in so many of his other films. -- David Weir * Athenaeum Review *How Did Lubitsch Do It? is a critical [and] masterful study. -- Michel Ciment * Positif *Joseph McBride’s study of Lubitsch matches the breadth and range of his incomparable work on Welles and Ford. Reading it, it is impossible not to want to see each of the director’s greatest films again or for the first time – readers will be driven straight to seek out not only the repertory standards but the silents, the musicals, and the German films. It is especially gratifying to see McBride apply his supple understanding of the intricacies of Lubitsch’s sexual politics to the paradoxes lurking for contemporary viewers, exploring how the films play both against and into feminist readings. McBride doesn’t shy from such explorations, but never leaps to premature conclusions. The book is an act of devotion matched to the heart of its subject. -- Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless BrooklynMcBride subtly and concretely describes the change in cinematic tastes over the course of a century. We who love cinema and Lubitsch should be grateful to have such a book in our lifetime, and it will be the definitive work for years to come. -- Molly Haskell, author of From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the MoviesErnst Lubitsch’s work has never needed reappraisal more than it does today, and McBride is just the writer for the job. As usual, he mobilizes formidable research and passionate sympathy to probe a great director’s many sides. We see Lubitsch the ethnic comedian, the exile, the romantic, the sardonic satirist, the sly provocateur, the moralist, the supremely confident master of technique. Above all, we see an artist who poured into film after film his keen sensitivity to the vagaries of love and his tolerant wisdom about the ways of the world. -- David Bordwell, University of Wisconsin-MadisonIt’s a wonderful book on a wonderful picturemaker! The work and detail and time put into it — just extraordinary. Superb! A great service to the public, bringing this unique and brilliant director back to the public's attention. This splendid work does real justice to its subject. -- Peter BogdanovichAlthough Ernst Lubitsch is one of the wittiest, most entertaining, and sexiest of filmmakers, he’s difficult to write about because wit and humor are more resistant to analysis than drama. McBride succeeds admirably in this task, providing a comprehensive, in-depth critical analysis and commentary on the cultural significance of Lubitsch’s work. His book is a joy to read and a gift to anyone who cares about the art of film. -- James Naremore, Indiana UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction: “How Did Lubitsch Do It?”1. “Herr Ernst Lubitsch”2. “Who Is Ernst Lubitsch?”3. The “Berlin Style” in Hollywood4. Tin Cans in a Warehouse?5. “Give Me a Moment, Please”6. “In Times Like These . . .”7. Master of the Ineffable8. The Aging Master9. The Door ClosesEpilogue: The Importance of Being ErnstAcknowledgments and InfluencesFilmographyNotes on SourcesIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade Review"Written in clear and urgent prose, Martial Law Melodrama invites a wide readership, giving access to an intricate sociopolitical history and awakening the desire to revisit Brocka’s impressive oeuvre . . ." * Film Quarterly *“A close examination of Brocka’s films, which considers them within the context of social and political trends, as well as within the framework of Brocka’s life and career.” * Cineaste *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments 1. The Country and the City: Social Melodrama and the Symptoms of Authoritarian Rule 2. “A Thoroughly Different Kind of Mother”: Surrogate Autocrats, Restive Youth, and the Maternal Melodrama 3. The Melodramatics of Crime: Film Noir in the Twilight of Martial Law 4. Tales of Unrelenting Misfortunes: Family Melodrama and the 1980s Economic Crisis 5. Men in Revolt: Two Experiments in Political Cinema 6. A Dirty Affair: Political Melodramas of Democratization 7. Picturing “A Faggot’s Dilemma”: Sexuality, Politics, and a Commerce in Queer Movies Coda: Three Non-endings Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade Review"Written in clear and urgent prose, Martial Law Melodrama invites a wide readership, giving access to an intricate sociopolitical history and awakening the desire to revisit Brocka’s impressive oeuvre . . ." * Film Quarterly *“A close examination of Brocka’s films, which considers them within the context of social and political trends, as well as within the framework of Brocka’s life and career.” * Cineaste *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments 1. The Country and the City: Social Melodrama and the Symptoms of Authoritarian Rule 2. “A Thoroughly Different Kind of Mother”: Surrogate Autocrats, Restive Youth, and the Maternal Melodrama 3. The Melodramatics of Crime: Film Noir in the Twilight of Martial Law 4. Tales of Unrelenting Misfortunes: Family Melodrama and the 1980s Economic Crisis 5. Men in Revolt: Two Experiments in Political Cinema 6. A Dirty Affair: Political Melodramas of Democratization 7. Picturing “A Faggot’s Dilemma”: Sexuality, Politics, and a Commerce in Queer Movies Coda: Three Non-endings Notes Index

Read more less