Individual film directors Books

Book SynopsisOffers a collection of interviews with the directors who have changed the face of Chinese and international cinema. This book includes discussions with such directors as Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Zhang Yimou (Hero), Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine), Stanley Kwan (Lan Yu), and Tsai Ming-Liang (Vive l'Amour).Trade ReviewSpeaking in Images, by Michael Berry, is engaging... It is refreshing to read artists talk about their work and medium. -- Malcom Parker Pots.com Berry's questions are intelligent... they illicit intelligent, detailed answers...useful to anyone seriously interested in world cinema...Essential. Choice [Speaking in Images] should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the complexities and power of contemporary Chinese Film. -- Mingwei Song China Review International Speaking in Images is an excellent, even essential resource for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of these three important Chinese film industries. -- Ethan de Seife Film InternationalTable of ContentsForeword by Martin Scorsese Acknowledgments Author's Note Introduction: Speaking in Images I. Voices from China Xie Jin: Six Decades of Cinematic Innovation Tian Zhuangzhuang: Stealing Horses and Flying Kites Chen Kaige: Historical Revolution and Cinematic Rebellion Zhang Yimou: Flying Colors Zhang Yuan: Working up a Sweat in a Celluloid Sauna Wang Xiaoshuai: Banned in China Jia Zhangke: Capturing a Transforming Reality Li Yang: The Future of Chinese Cinema? II. Voices from Taiwan Hou Hsiao-hsien with Chu Tien-wen: Words and Images Edward Yang: Luckily Unlucky Wu Nien-jen: Writing Taiwan in the Shadows of Cultural Colonialism Ang Lee: Freedom in Film Tsai Ming-liang: Trapped in the Past Chang Tso-chi: Shooting from the Margins III. Voices from Hong Kong Ann Hui: Living Through Films Stanley Kwan: From Spectral Nostalgia to Corporeal Desire Fruit Chan: Hong Kong Independent Peter Ho-sun Chan: Pioneering Pan-Asian Cinema Evans Chan: The Last of the Chinese Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisRecognizing the innovative work and distinct sensibilities of five major gay American and European film directors.Trade ReviewEmanuel Levy's book is enlightening. It brings into clear focus the disparate works of five gay male directors and helps the reader see these films in new and refreshing ways. -- Ed Sikov, author of Film Studies: An Introduction An impressively informative treatment of five prominent gay directors who represent a wide range of differences within the gay spectrum. Emanuel Levy's background in gay cinema, independent cinema, and traditional Hollywood cinema make him the ideal author for this significant and original study. -- Molly Haskell, film critic and author of Frankly, My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited In a nuanced examination of five pioneering gay directors, Emanuel Levy moves with fluid grace and astonishing erudition through a broad range of national traditions and personal styles, nailing what is peculiar and intriguing about each auteur. His study will enchant anyone interested in the twists and turns of gender, sex, and cinema over the past fifty years. -- Thomas Doherty, author of Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939 A vastly intelligent, comprehensively procured treat for film buffs. Kirkus Reviews [Levy's] treatment of his subjects is comprehensive, and his passion always shines through... This book is well-suited for the cinematic omnivore and the armchair aesthete. Publishers Weekly Like many good film books, this one's for movie mavens to argue with and revisit-often. Booklist [Gay Directors, Gay Films?] succeeds where it counts, enlivening the discussion of what it meant to make 'gay films' in the 20th century... Perfect for fans of film and gender studies. Library Journal Lively and entertaining. -- Brian T. Carney The Washington Blade Gay Directors, Gay Films? is a smart primer on the work of five very deserving directors. Casual film enthusiasts looking for a new trail to follow and readers interested in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender cultural studies should find plenty of material to inspire both movie rentals and thoughtful conversations. -- Ryan Little The Washington Post One of the finest books ever written on gay filmmaking... Anyone seeking to explore the features and meanings of gay films in the future must read Gay Directors, Gay Films? -- Brian Bromberger The Bay Area Reporter A broad introduction to the fascinating work of these significant directors. -- Melanie White Times Literary Supplement [Levy] places their careers into the larger context of American and European society and its gradual acceptance of homosexuality over the past five decades. [Gay Directors, Gay Films?] seems especially timely and relevant at this moment. -- Leonard Maltin Indiewire [A] nuanced, eminently readable book. Choice A comprehensive account of five remarkable careers in film. -- Dion Kagan Australian Book ReviewTable of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Pedro Almodovar: Spain's Enfant Terrible 2. Terence Davies: Subjective Memoirist 3. Todd Haynes: Deconstructive Queer Cinema 4. Gus Van Sant: Poet of Lost and Alienated Youth 5. John Waters: Queer as Trash and Camp Conclusion: Gay Directors-Who's Looking and How? Notes Select Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisRecognizing the innovative work and distinct sensibilities of five major gay American and European film directors.Trade ReviewEmanuel Levy's book is enlightening. It brings into clear focus the disparate works of five gay male directors and helps the reader see these films in new and refreshing ways. -- Ed Sikov, author of Film Studies: An Introduction An impressively informative treatment of five prominent gay directors who represent a wide range of differences within the gay spectrum. Emanuel Levy's background in gay cinema, independent cinema, and traditional Hollywood cinema make him the ideal author for this significant and original study. -- Molly Haskell, film critic and author of Frankly, My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited In a nuanced examination of five pioneering gay directors, Emanuel Levy moves with fluid grace and astonishing erudition through a broad range of national traditions and personal styles, nailing what is peculiar and intriguing about each auteur. His study will enchant anyone interested in the twists and turns of gender, sex, and cinema over the past fifty years. -- Thomas Doherty, author of Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939 A vastly intelligent, comprehensively procured treat for film buffs. Kirkus Reviews [Levy's] treatment of his subjects is comprehensive, and his passion always shines through... This book is well-suited for the cinematic omnivore and the armchair aesthete. Publishers Weekly Like many good film books, this one's for movie mavens to argue with and revisit-often. Booklist [Gay Directors, Gay Films?] succeeds where it counts, enlivening the discussion of what it meant to make 'gay films' in the 20th century... Perfect for fans of film and gender studies. Library Journal Lively and entertaining. -- Brian T. Carney The Washington Blade Gay Directors, Gay Films? is a smart primer on the work of five very deserving directors. Casual film enthusiasts looking for a new trail to follow and readers interested in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender cultural studies should find plenty of material to inspire both movie rentals and thoughtful conversations. -- Ryan Little The Washington Post One of the finest books ever written on gay filmmaking... Anyone seeking to explore the features and meanings of gay films in the future must read Gay Directors, Gay Films? -- Brian Bromberger The Bay Area Reporter A broad introduction to the fascinating work of these significant directors. -- Melanie White Times Literary Supplement [Levy] places their careers into the larger context of American and European society and its gradual acceptance of homosexuality over the past five decades. [Gay Directors, Gay Films?] seems especially timely and relevant at this moment. -- Leonard Maltin Indiewire [A] nuanced, eminently readable book. Choice A comprehensive account of five remarkable careers in film. -- Dion Kagan Australian Book ReviewTable of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Pedro Almodovar: Spain's Enfant Terrible 2. Terence Davies: Subjective Memoirist 3. Todd Haynes: Deconstructive Queer Cinema 4. Gus Van Sant: Poet of Lost and Alienated Youth 5. John Waters: Queer as Trash and Camp Conclusion: Gay Directors-Who's Looking and How? Notes Select Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisExploring the work of three visionary auteurs deeply invested in the political possibilities of film.Trade ReviewAn impressive book people will read for all kinds of reasons, academic and otherwise, not least of which is its bold proposal that the future is unthinkable without cinema. -- Richard Dienst, author of Still Life in Real Time: Theory After Television ... Pavsek renews our faith in the utopian possibilities of truly political art. -- Patrick Reagan, Yale University Screening the PastTable of ContentsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Idea of Cinema1. What Has Come to Pass for Cinema: From Early to Late Godard2. Kidlat Tahimik's "Third World Projector"3. The Actuality of Cinema: Alexander KlugeEpilogueNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisThe Cinema of Takeshi Kitano: Flowering Blood is a detailed aesthetic, Deleuzian, and phenomenological exploration of Japan's finest currently-working film director, performer, and celebrity. The volume uniquely explores Kitano's oeuvre through the tropes of stillness and movement, becoming animal, melancholy and loss, intensity, schizophrenia, and radical alterity; and through the aesthetic temperatures of color, light, camera movement, performance and urban and oceanic space. In this highly original monograph, all of Kitano's films are given due consideration, including A Scene at the Sea (1991), Sonatine (1993), Dolls (2002), and Outrage (2010).Trade ReviewAn imaginatively written self-reflexive academic's journey through the films of Kitano Takeshi. -- Isolde Standish, School of Oriental and African Studies A bold and provocative attempt at pinning down this most mercurial and misunderstood of Japanese directors. -- Jasper Sharp, Midnight Eye The depth of engagement with the films and the director within The Cinema of Takeshi Kitano ensures a complex reading of Kitano's cinema... An excellent book for anyone interested in Japanese culture, screen media and theory. More than this, The Cinema of Takeshi Kitano... is (like Kitano's cinema) an evocative and powerful contribution to film culture. -- Wendy Haslem, The University of Melbourne Senses of CinemaTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: Becoming Lost in Tokyo 1. Time, Space and Whatever 2. Flowering Blood 3. Intense Alterity 4. Starring Kitanos 5. This is the Sea Conclusion: Standing Outside Office Kitano Postscript: I Welcome the Pain of it Already Filmography Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewMuch of the available commentary on the films of Bela Tarr is often confused and confusing. Andras Balint Kovacs cuts through this Gordian Knot with a comprehensive but detailed and precise analysis; this is film-writing at its very best. -- John Cunningham, author of Hungarian Cinema: From Coffee House to MultiplexTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction 1. The Persona 2. Style in the Early Years 3. The Tarr style 4. The Tarr style in Evolution 5. Narration in the Tarr Films 6. The Characters Conclusion Filmography Select Bibliography Index of Names

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Book SynopsisTrade Review[An] excellent book on this maverick, shape-shifting filmmaker... Immaculately researched and illustrated with frame blowups throughout the text, the volume is an important contribution to the field... Highly recommended. ChoiceTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Preface by Thomas Schatz Introduction Part One: Author, Brand, Guerrilla 1. The Dialectical Signature: Soderbergh as Classical Auteur 2. Impresario of Indiewood: Soderbergh as Sellebrity Auteur 3. Corporate Revolutionary: Soderbergh as Guerrilla Auteur Part Two: History, Memory, Text 4. Searching Low and High: The Limey and the Schizophrenic Detective 5. Returning to the Scene of the Crime: Solaris and the Psychoanalytic Detective 6. The (Bl)end of History: The Good German and the Intertextual Detective Part Three: Crime, Capital, Globalisation 7. Genre and Capital: New Crime Wave in the 1990s 8. The Ethical Heist: Competing Modes of Capital in the Ocean's Trilogy 9. Trafficking Social Change: The Global Social Problem Film in the 2000s Conclusion Filmography Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review[An] excellent book on this maverick, shape-shifting filmmaker... Immaculately researched and illustrated with frame blowups throughout the text, the volume is an important contribution to the field... Highly recommended. ChoiceTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Preface by Thomas Schatz Introduction Part One: Author, Brand, Guerrilla 1. The Dialectical Signature: Soderbergh as Classical Auteur 2. Impresario of Indiewood: Soderbergh as Sellebrity Auteur 3. Corporate Revolutionary: Soderbergh as Guerrilla Auteur Part Two: History, Memory, Text 4. Searching Low and High: The Limey and the Schizophrenic Detective 5. Returning to the Scene of the Crime: Solaris and the Psychoanalytic Detective 6. The (Bl)end of History: The Good German and the Intertextual Detective Part Three: Crime, Capital, Globalisation 7. Genre and Capital: New Crime Wave in the 1990s 8. The Ethical Heist: Competing Modes of Capital in the Ocean's Trilogy 9. Trafficking Social Change: The Global Social Problem Film in the 2000s Conclusion Filmography Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn this second edition of The Cinema of Richard Linklater, Rob Stone shows how Linklater’s latest films have redefined our understanding of his work, offering critical analysis of films including Before Midnight (2013) and Everybody Wants Some!! (2016), as well as new interviews with Linklater and a chapter on Boyhood (2014).Trade ReviewAt last, a comprehensive study of one of America's most important independent filmmakers. This hugely readable and highly nuanced book reveals the sophisticated approach to filmmaking that underpins the apparent casualness of Linklater's 'slacker' aesthetic. -- Paul Cooke, University of Leeds A study as compelling and nuanced as Linklater's films. With remarkable insight, this volume provides provocative reflections on industry and indie filmmaking practices by exploring the work of this innovative filmmaker. -- Ann Marie Stock, College of William and Mary Stone's excellent book covers the director's entire career with skill and insight, illustrated with numerous stills throughout...an excellent course text, written in direct, accessible language. ChoiceTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: Walk, Don't Run: The Cinema of Richard Linklater 1. Locating Linklater 2. Crafting Contradictions 3. The Form and Content of Slack 4. American Art House 5. Dreamstate, USA: The Metaphysics of Animation 6. The Spaces In Between Filmography Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: Know Your Enemy, Know Yourself, by Rikke Schubart and Anne Gjelsvik Part 1: History 1. The Making and Remakings of an American Icon: 'Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima' from Photojournalism to Global, Digital Media, by Mette Mortensen 2. The Forgotten Cinematographer of Mount Suribachi: Bill Genaust's Eight-Second Iwo Jima Footage and the Historical Facsimile, by Bjorn Sorenssen 3. Flags of Their Stepfather? Race and Culture in the Context of Military Service and the Fight for Citizenship, by Martin Edwin Andersen Part 2: Flags of Our Fathers 6. Following the Flag in American Film, by Robert Eberwein 7. Care or Glory? Picturing a New War Hero, by Anne Gjelsvik 8.Beyond Mimesis: War, History, and Memory in Flags of Our Fathers, by Holger Potzsch 9. Clint Eastwood's Postclassical Multiple Narratives of Iwo Jima, by Glenn Man 10. Haunting in the War Film: Flags of Our Fathers, by Robert Burgoyne Part 3: Letters from Iwo Jima 11. Eastwood and the Enemy, by Rikke Schubart 12. Eat of Eastwood: Iwo Jima and the Japanese Context, by Lars-Martin Sorensen 13. Humanism versus Patriotism: Eastwood Trapped in the Bi-polar Logic of Warfare, by Mikkel Bruun Zangenberg 14. Suicide in Letters from Iwo Jima, by Robert Burgoyne Part 4: War Today 15. To Sell a War: Flags, Lies, and Tragedy, by Vibeke Schou Tjalve 16. Banzai! Letters from Iwo Jima and Choosing the Enemy in Risk Society, by Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen Filmography Index

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Book SynopsisThis volume maps Ruiz's cinematic trajectory across more than five decades of prolific workTrade ReviewMichael Goddard's erudite new book is among the finest of contemporary film director studies to be published in recent years. It is a bold, authoritative and compelling survey of a career famously difficult to capture. Combining important and enriching context, engaging film analysis and a convincing central thesis, Goddard delivers his survey with a brio of which its subject would surely approved. The result is a nuanced and detailed portrait of the work of one of cinema's most fecund and engaging minds. The author succeeds in proposing on the one hand a scholarly periodisation and on the other some unifying theoretical concepts (principally cartography) which, against the odds perhaps, will leave the aficionado with an urge to explore further and deeper in the Ruizian labyrinth and the novice with the desire to begin somewhere, anywhere in the polymorphous corpus. This book serves as a worthy critical response to the incomparable range of output, the uncompromising vision, the ravenous intellectual energy and the sheer audacity of imagination of one of cinema's true, or (as Ruiz himself would probably prefer), fake originals. -- Garin Dowd, University of West London A clear and penetrating analysis... Punctuated by brilliant film analysis, this volume is essential reading for anyone interested in the life and work of Raul Ruiz. -- Richard Begin, University of Montreal The cinema of Raul Ruiz is well known to all true cinephiles, but until now has gone under-analysed - effectively buried under the lamentably vague adjective 'Ruizian'. In the first single-authored English-language book on this great director, Michael Goddard expertly sifts through the many styles, contexts and personae of Ruiz: from Chilean radical to European artist, from no-budget experimentalist to wily entertainer, from theorist to storyteller. Using the lens of an 'impossible cartography', Goddard redraws all the maps we have used to grasp this most elusive and protean of international filmmakers - and concludes with a splendid, mind-expanding dialogue with Ruiz. -- Adrian Martin, Goethe University and co-author with Raul Ruiz of Magnificent Obsessions Raul Ruiz, one of cinema's prodigious inventors, is the subject of this fascinating book. This scholarly work on Ruiz's extensive oeuvre provides a history of his filmmaking practice in Chile, Europe and elsewhere by contextualizing his remarkable personal history and intellectual trajectory. Further, the writer shows great sensitivity and care in engaging with Ruiz's fecund theoretical ideas and cinematic thought. The interview with Ruiz, done shortly before his untimely death, is not only poignant but also astutely illuminates his labyrinthine mode of thought, which has been so stimulating. This is a philosophically attuned book, with perceptive film criticism, written in an accessible and engaging manner. It is heartily recommended to those who still find cinema an indispensable ally in the adventure of thought. Through this book Ruiz now seems to signal to us across death, which he looked in the face through his Latin American Baroque optic, laced with humour. So we may use this book to slake our thirst for an understanding of Ruiz's inexhaustible allegorical cinematic vision of the world. -- Laleen Jayamanne, Sydney UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: A New Cartographer? 1. Ruiz's Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s 2 The Cinema of Piracy, the Sea and Spectral Voyages: Ruiz's Neo-Baroque Cinema of the 1980s 3 Cartographies of Complexity: Ruiz's 'French' Cinema Since the Mid-1990s Conclusion: Ruizian Cartography from Chile to the Cosmos via the Littoral, or The Film to Come Appendix: Raul Ruiz Interview (Paris, November, 2009) Select Filmography Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisSuggestive readings of gender and identity explore the international appeal of Ang LeeTrade ReviewDilley not only provides an in-depth overview of Ang Lee's contribution to film, but also gives crucial contextualization for East-West film studies and theoretical approaches, as well as providing careful study of significant themes in Lee's personal life which molded him as a film director. This is an enormous amount of territory to cover. Dilley does it well with scholarly rigor in a tone of exploration and wonder. -- Barbara Kline, Seattle Pacific University The Cinema of Ang Lee is the most comprehensive study of Ang Lee and all the films directed by him to date. It tells the extraordinary story of a Taiwan-born Chinese director within the global contexts of diaspora, transnationalism, Chinese-language cinema, American cinema, and world cinema. The book is full of interesting details, and is written in a lucid, accessible style that will be appreciated by readers and moviegoers interested in this director. -- Sheldon Lu, University of California at Davis Writing about film is no easy task and writing about great film even harder. Ang Lee's films include not only three Academy Award winners, The Life of Pi, Brokeback Mountain, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but also less familiar masterpieces like Lust|Caution, Ride with the Devil, The Ice Storm, and Eat Drink Man Woman. Whitney Dilley's study of Ang Lee's art is written with remarkable clarity, insight, and compassion. It is a model of fine film literature. -- Jerome Silbergeld, Princeton University Recommended. All readers. ChoiceTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Note on Transliteration 1. Introduction: Ang Lee-A History 2. Ang Lee as Director: His Position in Asian and World Cinema 3. Confucian Values and Cultural Displacement in Pushing Hands 4. Transgressing Boundaries of Gender and Culture in The Wedding Banquet 5. Globalization and Cultural Identity in Eat Drink Man Woman 6. Opposition and Resolution in Sense and Sensibility 7. Fragmentary Narratives/Fragmented Identities in The Ice Storm 8. Race, Gender, Class, and Social Identity in Ride with the Devil 9. Wuxia Narrative and Transnational Chinese Identity in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 10. The Ultimate Outsider: Hulk 11. Transcending Gender in Brokeback Mountain 12. Eroticism and Performance in Lust/Caution 13. Memory, Narrative, and Transformation in Taking Woodstock 14. Storytelling and Truth in Life of Pi: A Spiritual Journey 15. Conclusion: The Dream of Cinema Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAgnes Varda, a pioneer of the French New Wave, has been making radical films for over half a century. Many of these are considered by scholars, filmmakers, and audiences alike, as audacious, seminal, and unforgettable. This volume considers her production as a whole, revisiting overlooked films like Mur, Murs/Documenteur (1980-81), and connecting her cinema to recent installation work. This study demonstrates how Varda has resisted norms of representation and diktats of production. It also shows how she has elaborated a personal repertoire of images, characters, and settings, which all provide insight on their cultural and political contexts. The book thus offers new readings of this director's multifaceted reveries, arguing that her work should be seen as an aesthetically influential and ethically-driven production where cinema is both a political and collaborative practice, and a synesthetic art form.Trade ReviewThere have been other excellent books on Varda, but this particular text, neatly illustrated with frame blow-ups, and graced with a detailed filmography, is one of the best, and also has the virtue of being the most complete... Pick up a copy now. Frame by Frame A solid contribution to the field... Unique in its precision and focus on the evolution of Varda's continual embrace of upcoming artistic media, technological advances, and social inclusion. French Review A relevant and insightful review of Varda's career thus far. LSE Review of BooksTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: Beginnings 1. Agnes Varda: A Woman Within History 2. Aesthetics and Technique 3. Varda's Ethics of Filming 4. Poetics of Space 5. Cinecriture and Originality Conclusion Filmography Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisExplores the massively popular cinema of writer-director James CameronTrade ReviewExamines Cameron's place in the transitional paradigm of a post-analogue, posthuman, and painterly cinema where impossible bodies are rendered through reassuringly old-fashioned narrative and spectacular conventions that have made his films the biggest on the planet. This comprehensive study outlines how his enduring fascination with bleeding-edge technology has both caught the public imagination and time and again proved a touchstone of the zeitgeist. -- Harvey O'Brien, University College Dublin Informative, interesting, and effective... Reading James Clarke's The Cinema of James Cameron: Bodies in Heroic Motion helps readers to appreciate [Cameron's] influence and proves to be an intriguing experience. Film MattersTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction 1. Genesis: From Short Film Visions to Low-Budget Monster Movie 2. The Terminator (1984) 3. Aliens (1986) 4. The Abyss (1989) 5. Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) 6. True Lies (1994) 7. Titanic (1997) 8. Avatar (2009) 9. Cameron's Documentaries 10. Cameron as Writer and Producer Filmography Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisEleven original essays by internationally-known scholars examine Stallone's contributions to mainstream cinema, independent film, and televisionTrade ReviewThis wide-ranging collection of perceptive and provocative essays turns the iconic figure and films of Sylvester Stallone into a dynamic conversation not only about Stallone himself but also about key issues and debates in cinema culture today. -- Timothy Corrigan, University of PennsylvaniaTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: Presenting Stallone/Stallone Presents, by Chris Holmlund Staying Alive: Stallone, Authorship and Contemporary Hollywood Aesthetics, by Paul Ramaeker Logic is the Cure, Meet the Disease: The Melos of Cobra, by Scott Higgins I, of the Tiger: Self and Self-Obsession in the Rocky Series, by Eric Lichtenfeld Stallone and Hollywood in Transition, by Mark Gallagher Adventures in Acting: Stallone the Performer, by Chris Holmlund Stallone's Stomach: Cop Land and the Weight of Actorly Legitimisation, by Paul McDonald The Rocky Effect: Sylvester Stallone as Sport Hero, by Alexandra Keller & Frazer Ward 'Who wouldn't want a body like that?': Masculinity, Muscularity and Male Audiences for the Films of Sylvester Stallone, by Ian Huffer Sylvester Stallone and John Rambo's Trek across Asia: Politics, Performance and American Empire, by Gina Marchetti Stallone, Ageing and Action Authenticity, by Yvonne Tasker Filmography Index

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Book SynopsisThe first English-language study of all Szabó's feature films and uses material from interviews with him and his collaboratorsTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: Beginnings 1. Born into the Storm 2. Growing Up, Film School and 1956 3. The Early Films: The Age of Daydreaming (Almodozasok kora); Father (Apa--egy hit naploja); Lovefilm (Szerelmesfilm) 4. The 'Budapest' Films: Films: Budapest, Why I Love It (Budapest, amiert szeretem); 25 Fireman's Street (Tuzolto utca 25); Budapest Tales (Budapesti mesek); City Map (Varosterkep) and Confidence (Bizalom) 5. Tales from Mitteleuropa: Mephisto; Colonel Redl; Hanussen 6. New Europe, New Hungary, New Problems: Meeting Venus and Sweet Emma, Dear Bobe (Edes Emma, draga Bobe) 7. 'The man who comes from somewhere else is always suspect': Sunshine 8. To Go or Stay? Taking Sides 9. Adaptations: Being Julia; Relatives; and The Door 10. The Controversy Surrounding the Events of 1957 and After 11. Szabo, Hungarian Cinema and the Question of Censorship--a Note 12. Some Conclusions Notes Filmography Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThis study explores how five major Spanish and Latino directors modeled their early careers on Hitchcock and his film aesthetics.Trade ReviewRefreshingly free of academese... Latin Hitchcock is an academic study that enthusiastic amateurs will also find illuminating. -- Miranda France Times Literary SupplementTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Part I: Spain 1. First Loves, First Cuts: The Initial Response to Hitchcock's Films in Spain 2. Pedro Almodovar's Criminal Side: Plot, Humour and Cinematic Style 3. Drawing on a Darker Humour, Cultural Icons and Mass Media: Alex de la Iglesia's Journey from Outer Space to the Spanish Academy 4. Against Hitchcock: Alejandro Amenabar's Meteoric Career Part II: Latin America 5. Latin American Openings: The Reception History of Hitchcock's Films for Mexico City 6. Guillermo del Toro's Continuing Education: Adapting Hitchcock's Moral and Visual Sensibilities to the World of Horror 7. Understanding Osmosis: Hitchcock in Argentina Through the Eyes of Juan Jose Campanella Conclusion: They Became Notorious Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisExplores Welles’s vision of cities by following recurring themes across his work, including urban transformation, race relations and fascism, the utopian promise of cosmopolitanism, and romantic nostalgia for archaic forms of urban culture.Trade ReviewAn impressive work of archival research and film analysis... A valuable contribution to the scholarly literature on cinematic places. Mediapolis Asprey Gear's At the End of the Street in the Shadow: Orson Welles and the City has much to offer anyone interested in the numerous projects brought into being by Welles. afterimageTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction Prelude. A Nuisance in a Factory: Hollywood: 1939-48, 1956-58 Welles's U.S.A 1. The Decline and Fall of the Lincoln Republic 2. An Empire Upon an Empire: Citizen Kane (1941) 3. The Darkening Midland: The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) Pan-America 4. Darkness and Fear: The Early Anti-fascist Thrillers 5. The Raucous Raggle-Taggle Jamboree of the Streets: It's All True (unfinished, 1942) 6. Ratline to Main Street: The Stranger (1946) 7. Port to Port: The Lady from Shanghai (1947) 8. The Border: Touch of Evil (1958) 9. Return to the Periphery: The Other Man (unproduced, 1977) Interlude. A Free Man Is Everywhere: Europe & Beyond: 1947-55, 1958-85 Postwar Europe 10. Skies and Rubblescape: Mr. Arkadin/Confidential Report (1955) 11. Lost in a Labyrinth: The Trial (1962) Immortal Stories 12. To Adore the Impossible 13. In the Land of Don Quixote Index

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Book SynopsisExplores the relevance of Romero's films within American cultural traditions and explains the potency of such work beyond 'splatter movie' models.Trade ReviewOne can look to Tony Williams' indispensable book for an abundance of enlightening observations about this important American director. Film Quarterly [A] fascinating book. New York TimesTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction to the First Edition Introduction to the Second Edition 1. A Director and His Traditions 2. Night of the Living Dead 3. There's Always Vanilla 4. Jack's Wife 5. The Crazies 6. Martin 7. Dawn of the Dead 8. Knightriders 9. Creepshow 10. Day of the Dead 11. Monkey Shines 12. One Evil Eye and The Dark Half 13. From Bruiser to Land of the Dead 14. Diary of the Dead 15. Survival of the Dead Epilogue Appendix One: The Romero Screenplays and Teleplays Appendix Two: Chronology Notes Filmography Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisSurveys Oscar-winning films, such as Fargo (1996) and No Country for Old Men (2007), as well as cult favorites, including O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) and The Big Lebowski (1998)Trade ReviewA thorough examination... Recommended. ChoiceTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction 1. Blood Simple: 'It's the Same Old Song' 2. Raising Arizona: A State of Mind 3. Miller's Crossing: 'A Handsome Movie about Men in Hats' 4. Barton Fink: 'For the Common Man' 5. The Hudsucker Proxy: A Comedy of Reinvention 6. Fargo: In the Land of Tall Tales 7. The Big Lebowski: 'The Dude Abides' 8. O Brother, Where Art Thou?: The Hayseed Epic 9. The Man Who Wasn't There: Recreating Classic Film Noir 10. No Country for Old Men: Darkness in the New West 11. A Serious Man Conclusion: The Ends of the Auteur: Drawing Conclusions About Coen Brothers Movies Filmography Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisSean Penn’s directorial works consist of some of the most interesting and singular films made in the United States over the past twenty years.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction 1. Politics 2. Penn's Performance Places 3. The Indian Runner 4. The Crossing Guard 5. The Pledge 6. Interlude: 'U.S.A.' 7. Into the Wild Conclusion: Places of Hope Filmography Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAnnovi revisits Pasolini’s oeuvre to examine the author’s performance as a way of assuming an antagonistic stance toward forms of artistic, social, and cultural oppression.Trade ReviewGian Maria Annovi provides an original, insightful assessment of the theme of authorship, which lies at the core of Pasolini's poetics. Examining this issue from a series of different perspectives, and skilfully navigating through the ocean of Pasolini's literary and visual corpus, Annovi's book shows remarkable intellectual bravura...Pier Paolo Pasolini represents a new, vital phase in Pasolini studies. -- Armando Maggi, University of Chicago Gian Maria Annovi's book brilliantly enlarges our understanding of Pasolini's urgency as a modern artist. With brio and erudition, Annovi argues that, by embracing different media throughout his career, including writing, film, theatre, and painting, Pasolini undertakes a deliberate, vibrant performance of authorship, resulting in a continuing presence that still haunts and provokes us today. -- Alessia Ricciardi, Northwestern University Annovi's is the first book to assess Pier Paolo Pasolini's multidisciplinary production across a variety of media. Drawing on theories of authorship and authority, queer theory, and theories of spectacle and performance, the book probes Pasolini's creation of an ever-shifting, reactive and rebellious authorial persona. His is an attempt-Annovi persuasively shows-to undermine his audiences' assumptions about power, sharpening their critical ability to question the political and social status quo. This is a compelling, original, and fascinating work of scholarship. -- Lucia Re, University of California, Los Angeles In this challenging book on one of Italy's greatest modern artists, Annovi's priority is to push the reception of Pasolini's work beyond dominant theoretical paradigms, and to recover the critical potential of the idea of creative authorship. Annovi's project is presented, in its theoretical ambitions, as nothing less than the death of the post-structuralist "death of the author" - and thus as an invitation to open Pasolini's heretical auteurism to new opportunities for aesthetic and ideological understanding. -- Patrick Rumble, University of Wisconsin Through an impressive analysis of Pier Paolo Pasolini's engagement with different media and genres, from poetry to novels, from theatre to cinema, from photography to painting, Annovi's Performing Authorship reassesses the significance of the authorial presence in Pasolini's oeuvre and offers an original and compelling take the political stance of his queer, unsettling, and provocative aesthetics. -- Manuele Gragnolati, Universite Paris-SorbonneTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Death 1. Theater 2. Dante 3. Celebrity 4. Self-Portrait 5. Acting 6. Voice Epilogue: Body Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisJeff Menne rewrites the history of the New Hollywood boom of the late 1960s and 1970s, arguing that auteur theory served to reconcile directors to Hollywood’s corporate project. Post-Fordist Cinema sheds new light on the cultural myth of the great director and the birth of the “creative economy.”Trade ReviewMenne links the development of the auteur theory in the U.S. and its enactment in the filmmaking practices of the New Hollywood to the rise of the “management revolution” of the postwar period. In Menne’s telling, New Hollywood auteurs—and their small production companies—at once instantiate the practices of this management revolution while also offering allegories for it in the films they make. This salient and persuasive book connects these arguments to case studies of small production companies, demonstrating how these entities enabled new forms of creative labor that were nonetheless compatible with the larger corporations that took over the studios at this time. -- Derek Nystrom, author of Hard Hats, Rednecks, and Macho Men: Class in 1970s American CinemaMenne has produced a masterful study in which close readings of key films of the post-studio era are informed by an understanding of large-scale socioeconomic trends and evolving institutional arrangements. Deeply researched and carefully argued, Post-Fordist Cinema represents a new and promising direction for the field. -- Virginia Wright Wexman, author of Creating the Couple: Love, Marriage, and Hollywood PerformancePost-Fordist Cinema rewrites the standard narrative of New Hollywood. Joining the dots between auteurism, corporate management theory, and the counterculture, Menne shows how innovative small firms played a pivotal role in the emergence of New Hollywood and the rise of the “cultural economy.” Packed with bravura close readings and rigorous industrial history, this is an outstanding contribution to the scholarship on 1960s and 1970s cinema. -- Lawrence Webb, author of The Cinema of Urban Crisis: Seventies Film and the Reinvention of the CityJeff Menne has made a crucial contribution to our understanding of postclassical Hollywood. Examining the films and filmmaking of small “outsider” firms run by a range of savvy industry players – from star Kirk Douglas to producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown to renegade director Robert Altman – Post-Fordist Cinema gauges the economic logic, innovative aesthetics and revisionist auteurism of the nascent New Hollywood. -- Thomas Schatz, author of The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio EraMenne’s book offers not only a history of the "new Hollywood” of the late 1960s and early 1970s, but also a deft examination of what was lost and what was gained as filmmaking dealt with television and the loss of a theater audience. * Choice *Menne provokes a reassessment of New Hollywood, a golden age of the directorin American cinema, as non-auteur driven. Such revision does not necessarily dilutethe achievements of the filmmakers who reinvigorated Hollywood but encourage usto appreciate them for resisting deification as auteurs in order to increase the artisticcontributions from the bottom-up in their productions during this period. * Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television *With its bold rethinking of New Hollywood, Menne’s book is undeniably appealing to film scholars. It should also appeal to readers seeking to understand how creative works encode abstract processes of capitalist development. * Film Quarterly *Impeccably researched, Menne’s monograph brings fresh clarity to New Hollywood’s industrial machinations . . . [Post-Fordist Cinema] refreshes the domain of auteur theory in ways both insightful and original. * This Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Business of Auteur Theory1: Post (Henry and John) Fordism: Kirk Douglas and Guerilla Economy2. The Cinema of Defection: The Corporate Counterculture and Robert Altman’s Lion’s Gate3. Television Totalities: Zanuck-Brown and the Privately-Held Company4. The Ethos of Incorporation: BBS and the Law of Unnatural PersonsAfterword: Auteurs, Amateurs, AnimatorsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisJeff Menne rewrites the history of the New Hollywood boom of the late 196s and 197s, arguing that auteur theory served to reconcile directors to Hollywood’s corporate project. Post-Fordist Cinema sheds new light on the cultural myth of the great director and the birth of the “creative economy.”Trade ReviewMenne links the development of the auteur theory in the U.S. and its enactment in the filmmaking practices of the New Hollywood to the rise of the “management revolution” of the postwar period. In Menne’s telling, New Hollywood auteurs—and their small production companies—at once instantiate the practices of this management revolution while also offering allegories for it in the films they make. This salient and persuasive book connects these arguments to case studies of small production companies, demonstrating how these entities enabled new forms of creative labor that were nonetheless compatible with the larger corporations that took over the studios at this time. -- Derek Nystrom, author of Hard Hats, Rednecks, and Macho Men: Class in 1970s American CinemaMenne has produced a masterful study in which close readings of key films of the post-studio era are informed by an understanding of large-scale socioeconomic trends and evolving institutional arrangements. Deeply researched and carefully argued, Post-Fordist Cinema represents a new and promising direction for the field. -- Virginia Wright Wexman, author of Creating the Couple: Love, Marriage, and Hollywood PerformancePost-Fordist Cinema rewrites the standard narrative of New Hollywood. Joining the dots between auteurism, corporate management theory, and the counterculture, Menne shows how innovative small firms played a pivotal role in the emergence of New Hollywood and the rise of the “cultural economy.” Packed with bravura close readings and rigorous industrial history, this is an outstanding contribution to the scholarship on 1960s and 1970s cinema. -- Lawrence Webb, author of The Cinema of Urban Crisis: Seventies Film and the Reinvention of the CityJeff Menne has made a crucial contribution to our understanding of postclassical Hollywood. Examining the films and filmmaking of small “outsider” firms run by a range of savvy industry players – from star Kirk Douglas to producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown to renegade director Robert Altman – Post-Fordist Cinema gauges the economic logic, innovative aesthetics and revisionist auteurism of the nascent New Hollywood. -- Thomas Schatz, author of The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio EraMenne’s book offers not only a history of the "new Hollywood” of the late 1960s and early 1970s, but also a deft examination of what was lost and what was gained as filmmaking dealt with television and the loss of a theater audience. * Choice *Menne provokes a reassessment of New Hollywood, a golden age of the directorin American cinema, as non-auteur driven. Such revision does not necessarily dilutethe achievements of the filmmakers who reinvigorated Hollywood but encourage usto appreciate them for resisting deification as auteurs in order to increase the artisticcontributions from the bottom-up in their productions during this period. * Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television *With its bold rethinking of New Hollywood, Menne’s book is undeniably appealing to film scholars. It should also appeal to readers seeking to understand how creative works encode abstract processes of capitalist development. * Film Quarterly *Impeccably researched, Menne’s monograph brings fresh clarity to New Hollywood’s industrial machinations . . . [Post-Fordist Cinema] refreshes the domain of auteur theory in ways both insightful and original. * This Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Business of Auteur Theory1: Post (Henry and John) Fordism: Kirk Douglas and Guerilla Economy2. The Cinema of Defection: The Corporate Counterculture and Robert Altman’s Lion’s Gate3. Television Totalities: Zanuck-Brown and the Privately-Held Company4. The Ethos of Incorporation: BBS and the Law of Unnatural PersonsAfterword: Auteurs, Amateurs, AnimatorsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisA pioneer of the French New Wave, Louis Malle went on to an acclaimed transatlantic career. This collection of essays reassesses his eclectic and subversive oeuvre to redress the critical neglect it has suffered. The volume features contributions from playwright John Guare and filmmakers Volker Schlöndorff and Wes Anderson.Trade ReviewIn sum, this volume is as generous to film enthusiasts just coming to Malle’s work as it is to seasoned scholars. Critics and scholars will find a wealth of new biographical and critical detail, as well as new primary sources and an excellent introduction to the current state of debates on Malle and his legacy. Newcomers will gain insight into the wide-ranging talents and interests of this bicultural, bilingual director who successfully navigated the film industries in France and the United States. -- Alison J. Murray Levine * EuropeNow *The Cinema of Louis Malle: Transatlantic Auteur is a major contribution to the study of a filmmaker who has been critically neglected. As such, it will be a key reference for future analyses of Malle, and we can hope that it will also contribute to a broader renewed interest in the works of this multifaceted and seminal transatlantic auteur. -- Armelle Blin-Rolland, Bangor University * H-France *An incredible collection of essays and biographical materials, as comprehensive as it is complex. * Film Matters *Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsNotes on ContributorsForeword, by Volker SchlöndorffIntroduction, by Philippe MetTransversal Studies1. Malle Before Malle, by Guillaume Soulez2. The Art of Silence: From Documentary to Fiction, by Caroline Eades3. No Comment: Direct Cinema in Humain, trop humain and Place de la République, by Derek Schilling4. Louis Malle’s Nonfiction: Tradition, Rebellion and Authorial Voice, by Alan Williams5. Louis Malle’s 1960s ‘Star’ Films, by Sue Harris6. Experimentation and Automation in Zazie dans le métro and Black Moon, by Ian Fleishman7. Louis Malle and ‘His’ Writers (Drieu La Rochelle, Nimier, Modiano) , by Michel Ciment8. A Gendered Geography of Death: Louis Malle’s Orphic Voyage, by T. Jefferson Kline9. The Figure of the Mother in May Fools, Au revoir les enfants and Murmur of the Heart, by Justine Malle10. Jazz as Counterpoint in Elevator to the Gallows, Murmur of the Heart and Pretty Baby, by Jean-Louis PautrotMonographic Essays11. The Fire Within: Touching, by Elisabeth Cardonne-Arlyck12. Le Voleur: (Self-)Portrait of the Filmmaker as a Thief, by Philippe Met13. Absorbtion and Reflectivity in Phantom India, by Ludovic Cortade14. Fog of War: Lacombe Lucien and Its Afterlives, by Steven Ungar15. Memory, Friendship and History in Au revoir les enfants, by Sandy Flitterman-Lewis16. Atlantic City: When Sound Meets Utopia, by Francesca Cinelli17. Between Conversation and Conversion: My Dinner with André, by Tom Conley18. Vanya on 42nd Street: Inventing a Space of Creation, by Sébastien RongierInterviewTruth and Poetry: An Interview with John Guare, by Philippe MetVaria (previously unpublished material)Notes for a Lecture on the Queen Elizabeth 2, by Louis Malle‘The Loner’: Treatment suggested by H. James’ What Maisie Knew, by Louis Malle (with introduction by Philippe Met)Afterword, by Wes AndersonFilmographyIndex

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Book SynopsisA pioneer of the French New Wave, Louis Malle went on to an acclaimed transatlantic career. This collection of essays reassesses his eclectic and subversive oeuvre to redress the critical neglect it has suffered. The volume features contributions from playwright John Guare and filmmakers Volker Schlöndorff and Wes Anderson.Trade ReviewIn sum, this volume is as generous to film enthusiasts just coming to Malle’s work as it is to seasoned scholars. Critics and scholars will find a wealth of new biographical and critical detail, as well as new primary sources and an excellent introduction to the current state of debates on Malle and his legacy. Newcomers will gain insight into the wide-ranging talents and interests of this bicultural, bilingual director who successfully navigated the film industries in France and the United States. -- Alison J. Murray Levine * EuropeNow *The Cinema of Louis Malle: Transatlantic Auteur is a major contribution to the study of a filmmaker who has been critically neglected. As such, it will be a key reference for future analyses of Malle, and we can hope that it will also contribute to a broader renewed interest in the works of this multifaceted and seminal transatlantic auteur. -- Armelle Blin-Rolland, Bangor University * H-France *An incredible collection of essays and biographical materials, as comprehensive as it is complex. * Film Matters *Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsNotes on ContributorsForeword, by Volker SchlöndorffIntroduction, by Philippe MetTransversal Studies1. Malle Before Malle, by Guillaume Soulez2. The Art of Silence: From Documentary to Fiction, by Caroline Eades3. No Comment: Direct Cinema in Humain, trop humain and Place de la République, by Derek Schilling4. Louis Malle’s Nonfiction: Tradition, Rebellion and Authorial Voice, by Alan Williams5. Louis Malle’s 1960s ‘Star’ Films, by Sue Harris6. Experimentation and Automation in Zazie dans le métro and Black Moon, by Ian Fleishman7. Louis Malle and ‘His’ Writers (Drieu La Rochelle, Nimier, Modiano) , by Michel Ciment8. A Gendered Geography of Death: Louis Malle’s Orphic Voyage, by T. Jefferson Kline9. The Figure of the Mother in May Fools, Au revoir les enfants and Murmur of the Heart, by Justine Malle10. Jazz as Counterpoint in Elevator to the Gallows, Murmur of the Heart and Pretty Baby, by Jean-Louis PautrotMonographic Essays11. The Fire Within: Touching, by Elisabeth Cardonne-Arlyck12. Le Voleur: (Self-)Portrait of the Filmmaker as a Thief, by Philippe Met13. Absorbtion and Reflectivity in Phantom India, by Ludovic Cortade14. Fog of War: Lacombe Lucien and Its Afterlives, by Steven Ungar15. Memory, Friendship and History in Au revoir les enfants, by Sandy Flitterman-Lewis16. Atlantic City: When Sound Meets Utopia, by Francesca Cinelli17. Between Conversation and Conversion: My Dinner with André, by Tom Conley18. Vanya on 42nd Street: Inventing a Space of Creation, by Sébastien RongierInterviewTruth and Poetry: An Interview with John Guare, by Philippe MetVaria (previously unpublished material)Notes for a Lecture on the Queen Elizabeth 2, by Louis Malle‘The Loner’: Treatment suggested by H. James’ What Maisie Knew, by Louis Malle (with introduction by Philippe Met)Afterword, by Wes AndersonFilmographyIndex

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Book SynopsisHitchcock Annual, volume 22, contains essays on Muybridge and Vertigo; undoing propaganda in Yeats, Hitchcock, and de Man; three newspaper articles Hitchcock wrote after visiting Hollywood in 1938; interviews with screenwriters Arthur Laurents and Howard Fast; and a review article on several new books on Hitchcock.

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Book SynopsisLinda Badley offers an in-depth examination of Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009), Melancholia (2011), Nymphomaniac (2013–14), and The House That Jack Built (2018) and the contexts that produced them. She draws on numerous interviews with the director and his collaborators as well as inside access to archival materials.Trade ReviewLinda Badley’s book is indispensable not only for those drawn, in spite of ourselves, to von Trier’s films, but also to all experiencing our contemporary moment in the register of despair and anxiety. Informed by personal conversations with von Trier, deeply ensconced in the filmmaking process and all its collaborators, and attentive to von Trier’s deliberate bad taste as well as his play with bending genre, Badley’s provocative readings of each film locate them in the director’s psyche while also showing that they offer a deft diagnosis of misogyny, climate disaster, capitalism, and hypocrisy run amok. -- Lori Marso, coeditor of Politics, Theory, and Film: Critical Encounters with Lars von TrierLars von Trier Beyond Depression is the first comprehensive account of the recent work of Lars von Trier, offering a lively and compelling critical evaluation of his cycle of ‘post-depression’ films that began with Melancholia (2009). A definitive resource on this period of von Trier’s output, its engagement with primary source material, interviews, and its incisive close readings will be indispensable to anyone interested in the filmmaker and his place within contemporary cinema. -- Tina Kendall, Anglia Ruskin UniversityWe should be grateful to Linda Badley for leading us into the darkness of Lars von Trier's cinematic world and illuminating it. Lars von Trier Beyond Depression draws on Badley's extraordinary knowledge of Trier and his cinema to study Antichrist, Melancholia, Nymphomaniac, and The House that Jack Built. Badley uses interviews of Trier and his collaborators, close analysis, genre studies, film-philosophy, ecocriticism, discussions of extreme cinema, and postcritical and postcinematic discussion to unfurl the strata of Trier's films. The book is a tour de force. Any reader interested in Trier or auteur cinema and its afterlife should read it. -- Andrew Nestingen, author of The Cinema of Aki KaurismakiBased on careful archival research and on highly productive insights from countless practitioner interviews, Lars von Trier Beyond Depression offers a compelling account of Antichrist, Melancholia, Nymphomaniac, and The House That Jack Built. Focusing on the intentions, self-understandings, and personal experiences of von Trier and such theoretical lenses as dark ecology and psychoanalysis/therapy, Linda Badley evokes the contours of an ethical project in the Danish director’s contributions to trauma cinema and extreme cinema. -- Mette Hjort, chair professor of humanities and dean of arts, Hong Kong Baptist UniversityLars von Trier Beyond Depression presents new, insightful readings into the director’s latest films, including valuable reflections on the creative processes and sources of inspiration in von Trier’s work based on extensive archival material, notes, statements, and drafts. These are supplemented with new interviews regarding key questions, which generates a fascinating explorative text on the cultural influences and impacts issuing from one of our finest film directors today. With her impressive and meticulous contribution, Linda Badley not only succeeds in giving new perspectives on von Trier’s films, she also manages to substantiate in depth how Danish and European culture and ways of thinking differ from American. Anyone interested in Lars von Trier’s oeuvre should start with reading this book infused with genuine ideas and perspectives. -- Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen, author of Lars von Trier's Renewal of Film 1984-2014: Signal, Pixel, DiagramAs one of the foremost scholars on Lars von Trier’s entire oeuvre, Linda Badley’s new in-depth study provides a fresh perspective, integrating extensive archival research, contemporary cultural references, and interviews with the director and his longtime collaborators. In examining some of the Danish auteur’s most criticized—perhaps even despised—films, Lars von Trier: Beyond Depression uncovers multiple new approaches to understanding the processes that shaped their intensity and singularity. -- Anna Westerstahl Stenport, coeditor of Nordic Film Cultures and Cinemas of ElsewhereTable of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Nature as Satan’s Church: Antichrist’s Dark Ecology2. Melancholia: Wagner, Superkitsch, and Dark Ecology3. Nymphomaniac: Digressionism, Collaboration, Hypotexts, Paratexts4. The House That Jack Built: Murder as Art/Art as MurderCodaAppendixNotesFilmographyBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisMalcolm Turvey examines Jacques Tati's unique comedic style and evaluates its significance for the history of film and modernism. Richly illustrated with images from the director's films, Play Time offers an illuminating and original understanding of Tati's work.Trade ReviewTurvey provides a sharply observant account of the scope and function of the more ‘cognitively challenging’ of these comic devices in Tati’s major films. -- David Trotter * London Review of Books *Turvey’s study of Tati’s context traces a fascinating continuity between the clown tradition, Charlie Chaplin’s construction of comic personas and the role of the 'living object' in Dada, Surrealism, Cubism and other interwar artistic movements. * Times Literary Supplement *Play Time is a subtle, intelligent—and wonderfully funny—book. It has much to offer both Tati novices and his connoisseurs. -- Pardis Dabashi * Modernism/modernity *The book is a delicious treat, and serious film students will appreciate it as a penetrating primer on the cinematic comic artisdt at work. * Choice *Play Time: Jacques Tati and Comedic Modernism must be warmly recommended reading for all lovers of Tati, particularly since it is written by one of them, which shows. And my recommendation gets only warmer for all those who, like myself, are interested in understanding comedy and its mechanisms. -- Gianni Barchiesi * Alphaville Journal *Malcolm Turvey’s exhilarating study of Jacques Tati is a precise, loving appreciation of the unique style and worldview of a great filmmaker. It’s also a history of avant-garde humor and a deep analysis of techniques of slapstick and satire. Turvey, one of our finest scholars of modernity in the arts, shows in detail how Tati’s comedy turned modernist experimentation into popular entertainment. -- David Bordwell, author of Reinventing Hollywood: How 1940s Filmmakers Changed Movie StorytellingMalcolm Turvey’s Play Time is the best extended critical study of Tati I’ve encountered: persuasively argued, scrupulously observed, and beautifully illustrated. The writing is clear and graceful, and the research is impressive, especially regarding the relation of slapstick films to avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century and Tati’s critiques of modern architecture. Most critical books about Tati have been short on close analysis, but this one beats them all. -- Jonathan Rosenbaum, author of Cinematic Encounters: Interviews and DialoguesFew films deserve a book-length study as much as those of Jacques Tati. Malcolm Turvey has done them justice. His explanation of their context in the slapstick and modernist traditions is fascinating. Turvey takes Tati’s work seriously, not by spoiling the fun but by respecting its extraordinary complexity. His title comes from Tati’s masterpiece. No matter how many times you have seen Play Time—and it is a film made for many viewings—Turvey will reveal something new and make you want to see it yet again. -- Kristin Thompson, Honorary Fellow in the Department of Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin-MadisonThis book is an excellent, detailed study of the films of Jacques Tati that establishes how Tati’s work draws upon classical “comedian comedy” while also connecting with the interwar European avant-garde. Moreover, the author insightfully discusses Tati’s love/hate relationship with modernity as well as his passion for creating a participatory style in which the spectator works to find humor in his films and also in the real world. -- Lucy Fischer, Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of PittsburghMalcolm Turvey’s Play Time is a completely joyful and entirely refreshing account of the films of Jacques Tati. It is also one of the finest, most nuanced accounts of comedic form that we have, a work that no one who studies comedy, or simply enjoys it, should be without. In tending so carefully to the structure of Tati’s gags—a seemingly infinite amount of them—Turvey does something that is as extraordinary as it is subtle. With Tati, he shows us how intelligence and popularity, structure and participation, aesthetic excellence and ordinary life, cannot be easily or gainfully opposed. -- Brian Price, University of TorontoTable of ContentsPreface and AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Comedic Modernism2. Comedy of Everyday Life3. The Beholder’s Share4. Satirizing ModernityAfterword: Parade, Tati, and Participatory CultureNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisHitchcock Annual, volume 24, includes essays on unresolved ambiguities in Suspicion and trauma and recovery in Under Capricorn. A special feature of the volume is an expanded section reviewing current critical work on Hitchcock.

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Book SynopsisWilliam Greaves is one of the most significant and compelling American filmmakers of the past century. This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of Greaves's remarkable career.Trade ReviewDuring his long and immensely productive filmmaking career, William Greaves remained focused on educating audiences about African and African American contributions to culture and history, and about the ways in which this long and productive history has been ignored and distorted. His many and varied films, beginning in the late 1950s and continuing into the 2000s, are a major achievement by an American master, an engagement with cinema long past ready for rediscovery. -- Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard UniversityScott MacDonald and Jacqueline Najuma Stewart have broken new ground on a whole new field of film study with William Greaves: Filmmaking as Mission. A rewarding adventure in itself, this is the first study of this scope on Greaves, an absolutely essential and kaleidoscopic figure of filmmaking and film thinking but one who until now has been hidden within his immense productivity. -- Terri Simone Francis, director of the Black Cinema Center/Archive, Indiana UniversitySome artists are so far ahead of their time that the uniqueness of their vision goes unrecognized. So it was with William Greaves, a man of many talents, who created innovative forms to represent crucial issues. Here, finally, is the appreciation he has long deserved. -- Bill Nichols, author of Introduction to Documentary, third editionThrough a thoughtfully curated selection of essays and other materials, the editors provide readers with a thorough understanding of the cultural context, aesthetic influences, and influence of William Greaves’s work. Following the director’s understanding of film as constantly in flux, the editors’ approach offers a beginning, or “take one,” to what they hope is a longer discussion of the director’s oeuvre. The result is the first detailed study of an important twentieth-century filmmaker that promises to engage scholars and students alike. -- Paula J. Massood, author of Making a Promised Land: Harlem in Twentieth-Century Photography and FilmTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsPreface. William Greaves: Renaissance Man and Race ManNote on Style1. William Greaves, Documentary Filmmaking, and the African-American Experience, by Adam Knee and Charles Musser2. Meta-interview with William Greaves (an Audiobiography), by Scott MacDonald3. Interview with Louise Archambault Greaves, by Scott MacDonald4. Interview with David Greaves, by Scott MacDonald5. The Efficacy of Acting, by Katherine Kinney6. POEM/1965, by William Greaves7. The First World Festival of Negro Arts: An Afro-American View, by William Greaves8. Views Across the Atlantic: An American Vision of the First World Festival of Negro Arts, by Joseph L. Underwood9. Sisters Inside Still a Brother: Inside the Negro Middle Class—Black Women Through the Lens of William Greaves, by Jacqueline Najuma Stewart10. The Documentary as Sociodrama: William Greaves’s In the Company of Men (1969) and The Deep North (1988), by J. J. Murphy11. Pugilism and Performance: William Greaves, Muhammad Ali, and the Making of The Fight, by Alexander Johnston12. Black Journal: A Few Notes from the Executive Producer, by William Greaves13. 100 Madison Avenues Will Be of No Help, by William Greaves14. Black Journal: A Personal Look Backward, by St. Clair Bourne15. “By, For and About”: Black Journal and the Rise of Multicultural Documentary in New York City, 1968–1975, by Charles Musser16. William Greaves, Black Journal, and the Long Roots of Black Internationalism, by Celeste Day Moore17. Government-Sponsored Film and Latinidad: Voice of La Raza (1971), by Laura Isabel Serna18. Afterthoughts on the Black American Film Festival, by William Greaves19. Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice: Personal Production Notes, by Michelle DusterDossier on the Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Films20. Proposal: Theatrical Short Subject, by William Greaves21. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One Rediscovered: A Conversation with Dara Meyers-Kingsley, by Scott MacDonald22. The Country in the City: Central Park as Metaphor in Jonas Mekas’s Walden and William Greaves’s Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, by Scott MacDonald23. “Just Another Word for Jazz”: The Signifying Auteur in William Greaves’s Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (Excerpt), by Akiva Gottlieb24. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2, by William Greaves25. Some Concepts and Logistics in Shooting the Two Excerpts of Take 2½, by William Greaves26. The Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Effect on Filmmaking Dynamics, by William Greaves27. The Symbio Cinematic Environment: An Aesthetic yet Scientific Theory for the Film, by William Greaves28. The Daring, Original, and Overlooked: Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, by Richard Brody29. Still No Answers, by Amy Taubin30. “We’re Not Raping Bill”: Race and Gender Politics in Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One and Take 2½, by Joan Hawkins31. Symbiopsychotaxiplasticity: Some Takes on William Greaves, by Franklin Cason, Jr., and Tsitsi Jaji32. A Guy Who Could Think Around the Corner: Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey, by Patricia R. Zimmermann33. Revealing Greaves: Unhiding His Archive, by Shola LynchFilmographyBibliographyContributorsIndex

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Book SynopsisWilliam Greaves is one of the most significant and compelling American filmmakers of the past century. This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of Greaves’s remarkable career.Trade ReviewDuring his long and immensely productive filmmaking career, William Greaves remained focused on educating audiences about African and African American contributions to culture and history, and about the ways in which this long and productive history has been ignored and distorted. His many and varied films, beginning in the late 1950s and continuing into the 2000s, are a major achievement by an American master, an engagement with cinema long past ready for rediscovery. -- Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard UniversityScott MacDonald and Jacqueline Najuma Stewart have broken new ground on a whole new field of film study with William Greaves: Filmmaking as Mission. A rewarding adventure in itself, this is the first study of this scope on Greaves, an absolutely essential and kaleidoscopic figure of filmmaking and film thinking but one who until now has been hidden within his immense productivity. -- Terri Simone Francis, director of the Black Cinema Center/Archive, Indiana UniversitySome artists are so far ahead of their time that the uniqueness of their vision goes unrecognized. So it was with William Greaves, a man of many talents, who created innovative forms to represent crucial issues. Here, finally, is the appreciation he has long deserved. -- Bill Nichols, author of Introduction to Documentary, third editionThrough a thoughtfully curated selection of essays and other materials, the editors provide readers with a thorough understanding of the cultural context, aesthetic influences, and influence of William Greaves’s work. Following the director’s understanding of film as constantly in flux, the editors’ approach offers a beginning, or “take one,” to what they hope is a longer discussion of the director’s oeuvre. The result is the first detailed study of an important twentieth-century filmmaker that promises to engage scholars and students alike. -- Paula J. Massood, author of Making a Promised Land: Harlem in Twentieth-Century Photography and FilmTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsPreface. William Greaves: Renaissance Man and Race ManNote on Style1. William Greaves, Documentary Filmmaking, and the African-American Experience, by Adam Knee and Charles Musser2. Meta-interview with William Greaves (an Audiobiography), by Scott MacDonald3. Interview with Louise Archambault Greaves, by Scott MacDonald4. Interview with David Greaves, by Scott MacDonald5. The Efficacy of Acting, by Katherine Kinney6. POEM/1965, by William Greaves7. The First World Festival of Negro Arts: An Afro-American View, by William Greaves8. Views Across the Atlantic: An American Vision of the First World Festival of Negro Arts, by Joseph L. Underwood9. Sisters Inside Still a Brother: Inside the Negro Middle Class—Black Women Through the Lens of William Greaves, by Jacqueline Najuma Stewart10. The Documentary as Sociodrama: William Greaves’s In the Company of Men (1969) and The Deep North (1988), by J. J. Murphy11. Pugilism and Performance: William Greaves, Muhammad Ali, and the Making of The Fight, by Alexander Johnston12. Black Journal: A Few Notes from the Executive Producer, by William Greaves13. 100 Madison Avenues Will Be of No Help, by William Greaves14. Black Journal: A Personal Look Backward, by St. Clair Bourne15. “By, For and About”: Black Journal and the Rise of Multicultural Documentary in New York City, 1968–1975, by Charles Musser16. William Greaves, Black Journal, and the Long Roots of Black Internationalism, by Celeste Day Moore17. Government-Sponsored Film and Latinidad: Voice of La Raza (1971), by Laura Isabel Serna18. Afterthoughts on the Black American Film Festival, by William Greaves19. Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice: Personal Production Notes, by Michelle DusterDossier on the Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Films20. Proposal: Theatrical Short Subject, by William Greaves21. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One Rediscovered: A Conversation with Dara Meyers-Kingsley, by Scott MacDonald22. The Country in the City: Central Park as Metaphor in Jonas Mekas’s Walden and William Greaves’s Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, by Scott MacDonald23. “Just Another Word for Jazz”: The Signifying Auteur in William Greaves’s Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (Excerpt), by Akiva Gottlieb24. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2, by William Greaves25. Some Concepts and Logistics in Shooting the Two Excerpts of Take 2½, by William Greaves26. The Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Effect on Filmmaking Dynamics, by William Greaves27. The Symbio Cinematic Environment: An Aesthetic yet Scientific Theory for the Film, by William Greaves28. The Daring, Original, and Overlooked: Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, by Richard Brody29. Still No Answers, by Amy Taubin30. “We’re Not Raping Bill”: Race and Gender Politics in Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One and Take 2½, by Joan Hawkins31. Symbiopsychotaxiplasticity: Some Takes on William Greaves, by Franklin Cason, Jr., and Tsitsi Jaji32. A Guy Who Could Think Around the Corner: Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey, by Patricia R. Zimmermann33. Revealing Greaves: Unhiding His Archive, by Shola LynchFilmographyBibliographyContributorsIndex

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Book SynopsisHitchcock Annual volume 25 is scheduled to be published in early 2022. Planned contents include examinations of the production conditions of Hitchcock's films, close readings of several key films, and review essays on current biographical and critical work on Hitchcock.Table of ContentsSpellbound by Sound: What WeLearn from Alfred Hitchcock’s Notes on Sound Michael Slowik 1Beyond the Blonde: The Dynamic Heroines of Hitchcock Elisabeth Karlin 32Vertigo and Birth: Echoes of Loss Norman Buckley 56Young and Innocent:Becoming Joanie and Hitchy Christina Lane 73Naughts and Crosses: Marital and Cinematic Gamesmanship in AlfredHitchcock’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith Elizabeth Bullock 93The Possessive Passions of Hitchcock’s Villains Lesley Brill 121Awakening from Hitchcock’s Nightmares Thomas Leitch 144Out of the Fog David Sterritt 174Books, Candles, a Cassone, and a Length of Cord: “Too-CloseViewing” Hitchcock’s Rope Matthew Solomon 183How the Words Appear Neil Badmington 213Patricia White, Rebecca David Greven 222

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Book SynopsisIn Crooked, but Never Common, Stuart Klawans combines a critic’s insight and a fan’s enthusiasm to offer deeper ways to think about and enjoy Preston Sturges’s work. He provides an in-depth appreciation of all ten of the writer-director’s major movies.Trade ReviewFrom one of our finest critics, an elegant and deftly argued contribution to our appreciation of the great and glorious Preston Sturges. Stuart Klawans teases out inspired connections in the culture surrounding the director—the books, paintings, and legends that fed the artistry of a man who refused to call himself an artist. The kind of book that makes you want to dive back into the films for fresh stimulation and delight. -- Molly Haskell, film critic and authorStuart Klawans has extended and upended the field with takes that are as witty and audacious as his subject. One has only to read his wry unpacking of the contradictions in Sullivan’s Travels or his sympathetic dissections of my own favorites, The Lady Eve and Unfaithfully Yours. Klawans really knows these films, has a nuanced understanding of cinema in general, writes beautifully, and is the best, most trustworthy guide imaginable to the genius of Preston Sturges. A triumph. -- Phillip Lopate, author of Totally, Tenderly, TragicallyStuart Klawans’s deep dive into the films of Preston Sturges is a gift for cinephiles. Whether providing context or close analysis, his tone is witty and accessible as well as erudite and profound. -- Annette Insdorf, author of Cinematic Overtures: How to Read Opening ScenesNobody wrote better screenplays than Preston Sturges, whose dialogue remains among the most sparkling ever committed to the screen. Yet, until now, his achievements as a visual artist have been overlooked. Klawans’s wonderful new study has finally remedied that, demonstrating that Sturges was an artist as skilled with the camera as he was with a typewriter. -- Richard Peña, director emeritus, New York Film Festival, and professor of film and media studies, Columbia University[A] portrait of a director with a gift for character development and 'head-spinning dialogue executed at high speed' by an author with a keen critical eye and plenty of flair in his own writing. Film buffs will relish this. * Publishers Weekly *It’s obvious Klawans has pored over Sturges’s films. After reading his thoughtful analyses, film buffs will want to rewatch them, armed with new insights. * Library Journal, starred review *[Klawans] carefully shows how these complicated comedies work, exploring what one might call Sturges’s ‘moral universe,’ which can be more unforgiving toward 1940s America than the surface froth suggests. . . The author deserves admiration for taking Sturges’s comedy seriously. * Wall Street Journal *A perceptive, exceptionally well-composed and earnest evaluation. * Film International *[An] incisive, compelling, and spirited analysis of the screwball maestro’s life and oeuvre. * The Arts Fuse *The book is both a compelling biography of Sturges and a close read of his films, and Klawans writes with great wit and insight. * The Film Stage *An invaluable, in-depth examination of the style and substance of 10 of Sturges' finest films. * Pop Culture Classics *Crooked, but Never Common brings new perspective to old movies that are in many minds better remembered for their motley assortments of expertly deployed character actors—among them William Demarest, Franklin Pangborn, Jimmy Conlin, and Eugene Pallette—than for their depth and magnificent construction. * Air Mail *A well-argued read for Sturges connoisseurs. * Total Film *A fine book by one of the best critics in the country. -- Antonio Monda * La Repubblica *[Klawans's] prose positively sizzles at every turn, in what is sure to be a defining study of Sturges’s films. * Times Literary Supplement *Klawans is a virtuoso writer and a savvy political thinker . . . Sturges's personal dilemmas flicker within an entertainment that becomes even more complex and stylish when we detect their traces. * Cineaste *Table of Contents1. Instead of an Introduction: A Rhetoric of Preston Sturges2. Ya Can’t Get Away from Arithmetic: The Great McGinty3. He Thinks He Has Ideas: Christmas in July4. I’m Not a Poet, I’m an Ophiologist: The Lady Eve5. As You Are, So Shall You Remain: Sullivan’s Travels6. Topic A: The Palm Beach Story7. Homo Sapiens, the Wise Guy: Triumph Over Pain8. Psycholology: The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek9. That’s All You Know How to Hurt: Hail the Conquering Hero10. You Arouse the Artist in Me: The Sin of Harold Diddlebock11. Every Emotion Was Exaggerated: Unfaithfully Yours 12. Instead of a Conclusion: A Genealogy of Preston SturgesAcknowledgmentsBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisKelly Reichardt''s 1994 debut River of Grass established her gift for a slow-paced realism that emphasizes the ongoing, everyday nature of emergency. Her work since then has communed with--yet remained apart from--postwar European realisms, the American avant-garde, independent film, and the emerging slow cinema movement. Katherine Fusco and Nicole Seymour read such Reichardt films as Wendy and Lucy and Night Moves to consider the root that emergency shares with emergence --the slowly unfolding or the barely perceptible. They see Reichardt as a filmmaker preoccupied with how environmental and economic crises affect those living on society''s fringes. Her spare plots and slow editing reveal an artist who recognizes that disasters are gradual, with effects experienced through duration rather than sudden shock. Insightful and boldly argued, Kelly Reichardt is a long overdue portrait of a filmmaker who sees emergency not as a break from the everyday, but as a version of it. Trade Review“The organizational structure is superb, as the concepts they’ve isolated seem excitingly to cut to the heart of Reichardt’s motifs. . . . These pages dazzlingly force their readers-as Reichardt’s films force their viewers their viewers- to reflect on the political implications of our empathy, or lack thereof, to imagine other kinds of relationships beyond empathy and judgment."--Cineaste "Kelly Reichardt remains well-reasoned and persuasive throughout in its detail and conviction, casting a keen eye towards the context of Reichardt's career, both in film and in the wider socio-political landscape. Perhaps most importantly of all, it is a tribute to and analysis of an invaluable, distinctively modern American director." --Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television "Fusco and Seymour's book offers a satisfyingly complex approach to the political import of her [Reichardt's] contributions to contemporary cinema." --ASAP Journal"An engaging and thoughtful book. Fusco and Seymour persuasively use political theory and affect studies to analyze Reichardt's unique deployment of realist traditions and the politics of temporality in her films. The authors' striking insights illuminate the filmmaker's style and her importance not only in contemporary art and indie cinema spheres but for American cinema more broadly."—Elena Gorfinkel, coeditor of Taking Place: Location and the Moving Image

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Keith Johnson’s Jan Švankmajer is a triumph: a bold, synoptic, and elegantly written conceptual survey that brings fully to life the animating ideas of the Czech surrealist artist-filmmaker. Attending to the work of animation as a philosophy of life rather than an aesthetic technique alone, Johnson’s book lucidly presents Švankmajer’s art as the bearer of 'a vital, emergent, biopolitical, ethical, and ecological outlook.' Featuring detailed analyses of the artist’s full body of cinematic, artistic, and curatorial work, as well as an illuminating set of interviews, Jan Švankmajer presents the Czech artist in vital, living color."--Jonathan Eburne, author of Surrealism and the Art of Crime

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Book SynopsisLana and Lilly Wachowski have redefined the technically and topically possible while joyfully defying audience expectations. Visionary films like The Matrix trilogy and Cloud Atlas have made them the world''s most influential transgender media producers, and their coming out retroactively put trans* aesthetics at the very center of popular American culture. Cáel M. Keegan views the Wachowskis'' films as an approach to trans* experience that maps a transgender journey and the promise we might learn 'to sense beyond the limits of the given world.' Keegan reveals how the filmmakers take up the relationship between identity and coding (be it computers or genes), inheritance and belonging, and how transgender becoming connects to a utopian vision of a post-racial order. Along the way, he theorizes a trans* aesthetic that explores the plasticity of cinema to create new social worlds, new temporalities, and new sensory inputs and outputs. Film comes to disrupt, rearranTrade Review"His attention to the sensorial and material--traced vividly through his method of close reading--are necessary approaches for scholars working to account for how race and gender intersect within trans* cinema." --Transgender Studies Quarterly"An admirable, focused study of the Wachowski sisters, best known for their postmillennial science fiction films, especially The Matrix franchise....makes a case for considering their work alongside the canon of new queer cinema, despite their exclusion from that corpus at the time of its formation. Highly recommended." --Choice"This book is a revelation! Leaving behind the more pedestrian methods of examining cinematic narratives of transgender lives, Cael Keegan goes one huge step beyond. With this book on Lana and Lilly Wachowski, we have in our hands the first book to consider the transgender content of the Wachowskis' massively influential cinematic practice. The trans* cinema of the Wachowskis is, according to Keegan, not just disruptive and wildly imaginative, although it is definitely that, it also represents an expansion of the popular imagination and a very different sense of life in and beyond the matrix. Keegan gives a masterful account of the Wachowskis' world and drops his readers down the rabbit hole of a trans* altered reality. Bon voyage."--Jack Halberstam, author of Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal"Keegan approaches trans* in the Wachowskis' cinema not in terms of literal, figurative representation but rather as a lens through which new forms and narratives may be evinced. Trans* thus becomes at once an ideological critique, method, and sensory experience." --Film Quarterly"A beautifully poetic--detailed and elaborate, yet at the same time cohesive and linear--work of trans* inquiry and critique. At its heart, Keegan offers a 'loving' and critical technology of sensing, a somatechnical disposition with which one may be immersed in the Wachowskis' offer to sense differently, through the trajectories of gender and cinema." --Somatechnics"This captivating book does more than argue persuasively for the centrality of the Wachowskis' oeuvre in the recent history of cinema: it demonstrates how their embodied transgender experience is a central component of their aesthetic vision, and how transgender experience has become paradigmatic of visual semiotic practices in the increasingly ubiquitous digital media environment. Keegan offers lucid close readings of the entire Wachowski filmography, while also mapping generative points of overlap and intersection between cinema studies and trans studies. It makes a significant contribution to both fields."--Susan Stryker, founding coeditor, Transgender Studies Quarterly

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Rosenbaum is arguably America's greatest living film critic. This stimulating collection forms a kind of essay about the types of dialogues and meditations that one can have about a film or a body of films. It is often absolutely riveting."--Alan Williams, author of Republic of Images: A History of French Filmmaking"Given the power and voraciousness of his mind, Jonathan Rosenbaum could dominate and devour everything in his path if he wanted to, like the bullying movies he abhors. But with his openness of spirit, he prefers films that let you question and participate. Those are also his activities in Cinematic Encounters, as he converses with great and good filmmakers he admires and swaps ideas and enthusiasms with his cinephile friends. Open the book and you, too, are welcome to join in."--Stuart Klawans, film critic, The Nation

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewWinner of the Theatre Library Association Award, 1991."The definitive work on Griffith's early career. . . . Will solidify the way in which film scholars, critics, and teachers conceive of not only Griffith's crucial contributions to film history but all early filmmaking in the U.S."--David Desser, coauthor of American Jewish Filmmakers: Traditions and Trends"An all-encompassing vision of D.W. Griffith's early work. Gunning's study is full of new information and places the Biographs in a lucid historical-critical context that will serve any future scholar who ventures into the realm of early cinema."--Joyce E. Jesionowski, author of Thinking in Pictures: Narrative Structure in D. W. Griffith's Biograph Films"A must purchase for motion picture buffs and historians."--Morse Press-News

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Book SynopsisAssesses Peckinpah's stature as a major artist and details the unbelievably shoddy treatment afforded his films by hostile producers and studio hit menTrade Review"In this new, expanded, and handsomely printed edition of his 1980 study, Seydor demonstrates that any discussion of Peckinpah's films has to be contained in both the context of the politics of Hollywood and the greater American literary tradition... For any student of American film or of American Western literature, this volume is a must. It's hard to imagine trying to teach a film course-not merely a course in western film but in any film-without it... Exceedingly well written and thoroughly documented...[this book is] a thorough study of one American artist's work, his pain, and his incredible contribution to our culture." - Clay Reynolds, Western American Literature "Seydor in his brilliant book makes us realize how movies such as The Wild Bunch or Ride the High Country emerged not so much from a single, fertile imagination as from the dusty crossroads of America's quintessential mythic tale and Peckinpah's own peculiar unconscious. The Western seemed made for Peckinpah... Seydor is an academic with a doctorate and a film editor with impressive feature credentials. He brings both experiences to bear in this thoughtful, elegantly written book. " - Gregg Bachman, Creative Screenwriting "Reading Seydor's book is galvanizing; it makes the reader a devout believer in the power of the medium, convincing him or her that celluloid running through a projector's gate can beam great art onto a white wall." DGA Magazine "Exceedingly well written and thoroughly documented ..[A] thorough study of one American artist's work, his pain and his contribution to our culture." - Express News, San Antonio, TX ADVANCE PRAISE "The new edition of Peckinpah: The Western Films-A Reconsideration is literally incomparable-the only study of the works of a major film director by a critic who writes both as a former academician with a Ph.D. in literature and as a voting member of that far more exclusive National Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. After all these years, this is more than ever a trail-blazing book, required reading for lovers of film and literature, and for literary theorists as well as cinema theorists." - Hershel Parker, author of Melville: A Biography, Volume 1, 1819-1855 "The most comprehensive and penetrating critical study of Peckinpah's work." - Variety"Stands as a shining example of how a single book from a small publisher can have a profound and lasting impact on our culture. The most penetrating study of Peckinpah, as well as one of the finest pieces of film criticism ever written... It taught me how to look at movies." - From the Foreword by David Weddle, author of If They Move, Kill 'Em: The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah REVIEWS FROM EARLIER EDITION "First-rate... Its enthusiasm for its subject is among its prime values, for it teaches us to understand, or to understand anew, an artist we may have overlooked, or dismissed, or misinterpreted." - Frank McConnell, Quarterly Review of Film Studies "Solid and sophisticated... Seydor writes of Peckinpah's films in finer detail than anyone else has." - Ernest Callenbach, Film Quarterly "At a time when Sam Peckinpah's reputation is scraping bottom, Paul Seydor's critical study bravely asserts Peckinpah's importance...A valuable study of a major auteur director." - Choice "This intensively researched, admiring, but never merely worshipful study of the westerns of Sam Peckinpah is one of the best tributes any director has yet received." - Booklist "Important... Interestingly ties Peckinpah into the 'cult of masculinity' so indigenous to American culture and literature." - Library Journal "Few critics have documented the agonies of Hollywood moviemaking as scarily well as Paul Seydor does in Peckinpah: The Western Films." - Michael Sragow, Los Angeles Herald Examiner "An exceptional job of explaining the central role of violence in [Peckinpah's] films." - Michael T. Isenberg, The Midwest Review "The book is rich in its insight into the mythology of the West, and the author is most illuminating when he discusses the exploitation of these myths by Peckinpah in developing the favorite themes of regeneration and individualism. Seydor's accomplishment is considerable." - Timothy P. Donovan, Journal of the West "A long overdue tribute to the screenwriter-director of action western movies... An exceptionally well-made biography of an astute writer-director that will stand as a definitive analysis." - David Winston York, West Coast Review of Books "Six of the director's movies, unified by themes, feelings and ideas, are incisively appraised by Paul Seydor. In-depth interviews bring out Peckinpah's complex personality, his assertive views on film art and his impatience with outsiders' perceptions of his style." - George L. George, American Cinematographer "A masterful critic ... correctly assesses Peckinpah's stature as a major artist and details the unbelievably shoddy treatment afforded his films by hostile producers and studio hit men." - Grover Lewis, New West "A highly literate work which will provide Peckinpah fans with more arguments in support of his brilliance." - Mark Busby, Western American Literature "Seydor's analysis of The Wild Bunch ... is one of the finest analyses of a film that I have ever read, and his chapters on Peckinpah's other westerns are equally brilliant." - Kenneth Seib, Fresno Bee "Sam Peckinpah is, arguably, the greatest American film maker to emerge since the Second World War. Paul Seydor's work chronicles and critiques his Western films, unearths new material on his early years, and follows Peckinpah's unsteady course through the wilderness of Hollywood. Seydor argues for this unique director's place alongside artists the magnitude of Melville and Hemingway-both a powerful premise and a compelling reading experience." - Walter Hill "A great critical study of a great filmmaker. Seydor's new revision of his own book is a must read for anyone interested in Peckinpah, the Western, or American film." - Ron Shelton, film writer/director

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Book SynopsisThe films of Atom Egoyan immerse the viewer in a world of lush sensuality, melancholia, and brooding obsession. From his earliest films Next of Kin and Family Viewing, to his coruscating Exotica and recent projects such as Where the Truth Lies, Egoyan has paid infinite attention to narrative intricacy and psychological complexity. Traumatic loss and its management through ritual return as themes in his films as he explores personal scenarios of mourning and broader issues of genocide, exile, and postmemory, in particular in relation to his own Armenian heritage. In this study, Emma Wilson closely analyzes the range of Egoyan''s films and their visual textures, emotional control, and perverse beauty. Offering a full-scale chronological overview of Egoyan''s work on films up to and including Where the Truth Lies, Wilson shows the persistence and development of certain structures and themes in Egoyan''s cinema: questions of exile and nostalgia, traumaTrade Review"This persuasive book brings Egoyan's films vibrantly alive, while at the same time offering compelling, intelligent and thought-provoking analysis."Times Higher Education"Wilson brings a fresh perspective to Egoyan's work, particularly insofar as gender and sexuality are concerned. Her analysis is elegant, and her writing is beautiful. Required reading for anyone interested in Atom Egoyan."--Judith Mayne, author of Claire DenisTable of ContentsPreface | ix Acknowledgments | xiii ON FOREIGENNESS AND FAMILIES | 1 Next of Kin (1984) 12 Family Viewing (1987) 22 Speaking Parts (1989) 34 The Adjuster (1991) 47 Calendar (1993) 61 Exotica (1994) 73 The Sweet Hereafter (1996) 88 Felicia's Journey (1999) 102 Ararat (2002) 115 Where the Truth Lies (2005) 128 INTERVIEW WITH ATOM AGOYAN | 137 Filmography | 147 Bibliography | 153 Index | 159

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Book SynopsisA penetrating study of one of America's most talented and controversial documentariansTrade Review"A detailed and insightful study of the work of the pioneering documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles."--Screening The Past "Detailed, insightful readings of individual films and overall assessment of Maysles' career welcomely emphasize aesthetic aspects, and a revealing interview with Maysles . . . concludes."--Booklist"McElhaney's biography runs like a classic Maysles brother film, sticking to the facts, letting personal back story slip in here and there, and presenting an end-of-the-book Q&A as a sort of DVD commentary track."--Los Angeles Times“Joe McElhaney makes a persuasive case that [Albert Maysles] belongs among the likes of Joel and Ethan Coen, Roman Polanski and Neil Jordan.”--PopMatters

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Book Synopsis For well over a decade, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have produced highly original and ethically charged films that immerse their audiences in an intense and embodied viewing experience. Their work has consistently attracted international recognition, including the rare feat of two Palmes d''Or at Cannes. In this first book-length study of the Belgian brothers, Joseph Mai delivers sophisticated close analyses of their directorial style and explores the many philosophical issues dealt with in their films (especially the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas). Mai discusses the Dardennes'' varied and searching career from its inception in the late 1970s, starting with the working-class political consciousness and lost utopias of their documentary period; passing through their transition toward fictional narrative, experimental techniques, and familial themes; and finishing with a series of in-depth and philosophically informed interpretations of the brothers'' more recent work. In sucTrade Review"Meticulously researched and fluently written, it makes a very substantial and important contribution to the literature on two enormously important film-makers."--H-France Review"In this masterful, efficient study, Mai reviews their canon with sensitivity, insight, and respectful objectivity. Recommended."--Choice"An innovative, intelligent introduction to the work of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Mai delivers a lucid, critically engaged account of the filmmakers' influences and their own unique style.”--Sarah Cooper, Reader in Film Theory and Aesthetics, King's College London"Intelligently argued. . . . A keenly observed account of the Dardennes' work, and whets the appetite for new, or renewed, viewings of the film."--Modern & Contemporary France

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Book Synopsis This in-depth study of Mexican film director Alejandro González Iñárritu explores his role in moving Mexican filmmaking from a traditional nationalist agenda towards a more global focus. Working in the United States and in Mexico, Iñárritu crosses national borders while his movies break the barriers of distribution, production, narration, and style. His features also experiment with transnational identity as characters emigrate and settings change. In studying the international scope of Iñárritu''s influential films Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel, Celestino Deleyto and María del Mar Azcona trace common themes such as human suffering and redemption, chance, and accidental encounters. The authors also analyze the director''s powerful visual style and his consistent use of multiple characters and a fragmented narrative structure. The book concludes with a new interview with Iñ&aTrade Review"An excellent analysis of the director’s style."--PopMatters"An important contribution on the work of one of the most interesting contemporary filmmakers. Through meticulous analysis and attention to detail, style and structure, the authors offer an in-depth analysis of the work of Alejandro González Iñárritu."--Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies"A model of impeccable scholarship and writing. Alejandro González Iñárritu is unquestionably one of the most interesting and important contemporary filmmakers in Latin America, and this study demonstrates a solid and secure understanding of Iñárritu's role in moving Mexican filmmaking toward a more globalized focus."--David William Foster, author of Mexico City and Contemporary Mexican Filmmaking

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Book Synopsis This volume is the first book-length study of the extensive career and prolific works of D.A. Pennebaker, one of the pioneers of direct cinema, a documentary form that emphasizes observation and a straightforward portrayal of events. With a career spanning decades, Pennebaker''s many projects have included avant-garde experiments (Daybreak Express), ground-breaking television documentaries (Primary), celebrity films (Dont Look Back), concert films (Monterey Pop), and innovative fusions of documentary and fiction (Maidstone). Exploring the concept of 'performing the real,' Keith Beattie interprets Pennebaker''s films as performances in which the act of filming is in itself a performative transgression of the norms of purely observational documentary. He examines the ways in which Pennebaker''s presentation of unscripted everyday performances is informed by connections between documentary filmmaking and other experimental Trade Review"A welcome addition to the Contemporary Film Directors Series."--Documentary "Filled with useful historical and technical details, this enthusiastic study of one of documentary cinema's most important filmmakers will convert some skeptics and create many new admirers of D.A. Pennebaker's work." --Joe McElhaney, author of Albert Maysles"Enlightening. . . . A useful look at the work of an affable, masterful documentary filmmaker who somehow managed to be in the midst of some of the major cultural turning points of the twentieth centrury."-- Journal of Film and VideoTable of ContentsAcknowledgments PERFORMING THE REAL Concert / Film; Collaborative / Filmmaking; Portraiture; Rehearsal INTERVIEW WITH D.A.PENNEBAKER Filmography; Bibliography; Index

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Book Synopsis Commanding a cult following among horror fans, Italian film director Dario Argento is best known for his work in two closely related genres, the crime thriller and supernatural horror, as well as his influence on modern horror and slasher movies. In his four decades of filmmaking, Argento has displayed a commitment to innovation, from his directorial debut with 1970''s suspense thriller The Bird with the Crystal Plumage to 2009''s Giallo. His films, like the lurid yellow-covered murder-mystery novels they are inspired by, follow the suspense tradition of hard-boiled American detective fiction while incorporating baroque scenes of violence and excess. While considerations of Argento''s films often describe them as irrational nightmares, L. Andrew Cooper uses controversies and theories about the films'' reflections on sadism, gender, sexuality, psychoanalysis, aestheticism, and genre to declare the anti-rational logic of Argento''s oeuvre. Approaching the films Trade Review "Contained in these pages are innumerable facts that illuminate the production, content, and backstory of these films and their maker. A thoroughly well researched book."--Film Matters"Cooper's text is deep and probing, throwing light onto the darkness and the bloodletting of Argento's world."--PopMatters.com "A novel and interesting approach to Argento's oeuvre. Cooper's interrogation of authorial style and theoretical readings of the films are thorough, insightful, and astute." --Brigid Cherry, coeditor of Twenty-first-century Gothic

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