Search results for ""Author Dr Claire Molloy""

Ambiguous, complex and innovative, Christopher Nolan's Memento has intrigued audiences and critics since the day of its release. Memento is the archetypal 'puzzle film', a noir thriller about a man with short-term memory loss seemingly seeking revenge for the death of his wife but finding it increasingly difficult to navigate through the facts. Truth, memory and identity are all questioned in a film that refuses to give easy answers or to adhere to some of the fundamental rules of classical filmmaking as the film makes use of some audacious stylistic and narrative choices, including a unique (for American cinema) editing pattern that produces a dizzying and highly disorienting effect for the spectator. The book introduces Memento as an important independent film and uses it to explore relationships between "indie," arthouse and commercial mainstream cinema while also examining independent film marketing practices, especially those associated with Newmarket, the film's producer and distributor. Finally, the book also locates Memento within debates around key film studies concepts such as genre, narrative and reception. Key features: * Presents an overview of Newmarket that maps the company's development from an independent financier to producer and distributor * Explores aspects of narrative complexity in contemporary films and examines Memento as an example of a 'puzzle film' * Considers Memento in relation to genre categories of noir and neo-noir * Examines the marketing of Memento and locates it within independent film marketing practices and strategies

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This title explores the implications of our animal origins and posthuman futures for our understanding of our humanity and our relations with other species. "Beyond Human" investigates what it means to call ourselves human beings in relation to both our distant past and our possible futures as a species, and the questions this might raise for our relationship with the myriad species with which we share the planet. Drawing on insights from zoology, theology, cultural studies and aesthetics, an international line-up of contributors explore such topics as our origins as reflected in early cave art in the upper Palaeolithic through to our prospects at the forefront of contemporary biotechnology. In the process, the book positions 'the human' in readiness for what many have characterized as our transhuman or posthuman future. For if our status as rational animals or 'animals that think' has traditionally distinguished us as apparently superior to other species, this distinction has become increasingly problematic. It has come to be seen as based on skills and technologies that do not distinguish us so much as position us as transitional animals. It is the direction and consequences of this transition that is the central concern of "Beyond Human".

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