Description
Book SynopsisAcclaimed British director Michael Winterbottom is renowned for the abundance and diversity of his output. His films span a wide range of genres in art house and mainstream cinema alike, from the heritage film to neo-noir. Working with different genres gives Winterbottom a framework in which to explore favored themes, while incorporating new ideas and taking on new challenges. At the same time, his manner of undermining familiar generic qualities and frustrating audience expectations also refreshes the genres he explores. In The Cinema of Michael Winterbottom, Deborah Allison investigates Winterbottom's contributions to contemporary cinema, using ideas of genre as a critical tool. Focusing on eight films, Allison examines the ways he adopts, inflects, and challenges the main attributes of the films' associated genres, enriching a highly personal and idiosyncratic style of filmmaking. The potency and integrity of his authorship unites films as generically diverse as the road movie Butte
Trade ReviewDeborah Allison has grasped [Winterbottom’s] distinctive modus operandi, which no other filmmaker would dare imitate, or could afford to. Her tour of Winterbottom’s glorious ups and occasional downs, a mid-career assessment, confirms Winterbottom’s place as the most versatile and prolific director of his generation. The reader can decide whether Winterbottom’s determination to take on so many varied challenges is courageous or crazy, or both. -- David D'Arcy, Screen International
Michael Winterbottom is terrifically prolific and diverse in his cinematic output. It is difficult to write about someone who is still producing work, and Allison makes no claim to offer definitive statements. It remains to follow Winterbottom’s career in the years ahead, and the growth of critical analysis of his work, to which The Cinema of Michael Winterbottom makes a sterling contribution. * Screening The Past *
The Cinema of Michael Winterbottom is. . . traditional in terms of methodology, but. . . eloquent and explicit on the question of value. * Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies *
Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter One. Butterfly Kiss: The Road Movie Chapter Two. Jude: The Heritage Film Chapter Three. Welcome to Sarajevo: War Cinema Chapter Four. Wonderland: Social Realist Drama Chapter Five. The Claim: The Western Chapter Six. Code 46: Science Fiction Chapter Seven. The Road to Guantanamo: Docudrama Chapter Eight. The Killer Inside Me: Neo-Noir Conclusion Filmography
