The Cognitive Impact of Contemporary Television Series
Television serial fiction is one of the most popular cultural products around the world today, and there is much indirect evidence that its stories influence the understanding of those who watch and enjoy it. All the chapters gathered in this collection address the idea that the specific aesthetic and narrative properties of television seriality contribute to distinct ways of conveying cognitive impact in a broad sense: from content learning, to reflection on social and philosophical issues, to character engagement and emotional reactions. The Cognitive Impact of Contemporary Television Series goes through some of the thematic constants of the last decade of television seriality, such as dystopia, coming-of-age or metaphysical drama, making panoramic views and delving into specific case studies, like The Purge, The End of the F***ing World and Undone, among many others. This book will be of interest to graduate students and scholars working in television studies, as well as in film studies, cognitive media theory, media psychology, and aesthetics.
The Cognitive Impact of Contemporary Television Series
Television serial fiction is one of the most popular cultural products around the world today, and there is much indirect evidence that its stories influence the understanding of those who watch and enjoy it. All the chapters gathered in this collection address the idea that the specific aesthetic and narrative properties of television seriality contribute to distinct ways of conveying cognitive impact in a broad sense: from content learning, to reflection on social and philosophical issues, to character engagement and emotional reactions. The Cognitive Impact of Contemporary Television Series goes through some of the thematic constants of the last decade of television seriality, such as dystopia, coming-of-age or metaphysical drama, making panoramic views and delving into specific case studies, like The Purge, The End of the F***ing World and Undone, among many others. This book will be of interest to graduate students and scholars working in television studies, as well as in film studies, cognitive media theory, media psychology, and aesthetics.
Financing the British Film Industry
Financing the British Film Industry provides a comprehensive history of the financing of British film production from the origin of the industry until the end of the Second World War. It documents the growth of the film business from a cottage industry to a mature business enterprise. It considers the capitalisation of the industry and analyses the relationships between producers, banks and insurance companies. It charts the fluctuating fortunes of British film-making and the various government-backed initiatives support the production sector. James Chapman argues that the difficulties of the British film industry arose not from the extravagances of individual producers or the collapse of particular companies but from underlying economic and structural weaknesses: that the industry was too reliant on short-term finance and that the domestic market was insufficient to guarantee a profitable return for anything other than a modestly-budgeted film
Women's New Cinema in Contemporary Turkey
For the first time in the history of cinema, Turkey witnesses a generation of female directors who occupy their own space within the New Cinema Movement. They claim an authority of their own and create a distinct cinema. However, recent scholarship on the cinema of Turkey predominantly conceptualises contemporary cinema in relation to the patriarchal discourse of male auteurs and recognises its female directors in a tokenistic manner. This book is the first academic work recognising this historical moment - the flourish of a women's cinema in Turkey which disrupts the dominant discourses and brings another view to look at the post-millennial cinema. This study identifies the new production methodologies used by the contemporary female directors from Turkey in relation to socio-political and cultural dynamics and conceptualises these features under the term, 'Women's New Cinema'. It also undertakes feminist textual exegesis of selected case studies in these directors' work.
Romanian and Chinese Cinemas
Drawing on what used to be the erstwhile internationalist cultural space of Communist Eurasia, the author reads socialist-era and postsocialist films made in Romania and China as promoting a common aesthetics predicated on the miserabilism of Third Cinema. The book argues that, despite indictments that socialist cultures were saturated with the oppressing ideology of socialist realism in the 1950s and various forms of indoctrination thereafter, in practice, film directors had the leverage to tackle social issues even in those works that are deemed today "propagandist." Refusing to endorse contemporary theories that seek to align the Romanian and the Chinese New Waves solely to Western cinematic practices, the author argues that China's fifth and sixth generation films as well as New Romanian Cinema are hugely indebted to socialist-era themes, as well as to the dogmatism of socialist realism. Identifying continuity rather than rupture between the socialist past and the capitalist present, the author seeks to redress an imbalance that contemporary scholars of Romanian and Chinese cinemas oftentimes ignore.
Shaping Film Festivals in a Changing World
This volume is a collective attempt on the part of a community of academics, film festival curators, and archivists to come to terms with practical and intellectual challenges of the pandemic and post-pandemic realities affecting cultures of film festivals. The collection draws contours of critical inquiry orienting current film festival research and practice to explore new directions in archiving and decolonizing practices and big data analysis in the post-Covid-19 context and beyond. The four-part study gathers the voices of academics and practitioners who engage in a dialogue to articulate critical areas for both study and practice of film festivals, and identifies conceptual tools to address them: "Archival Turn," "Decolonizing Film Festival Studies," "Post-Covid-19 and Film Festival Studies" and "Data Visualization and Film Festival Research and Practice."
Cinematic Intermediality
This edited collection proposes new directions for understanding cinematic intermediality, mapping out innovative approaches to film's relationship with some of its most influential artistic predecessors in the fields of performance, sculpture, painting, photography and dance. With essays by leading researchers and practitioners, this book investigates cinema's productive synergies and crossovers with the other arts through a broad range of avant-garde and experimental work. Mapping a trajectory from pre-cinema to the digital era, the book considers the impact of technological materiality on intermedial expression, incorporating both mainstream and experimental practice, world cinema and peripheral cinemas. Bridging the gap between theory and practice, it opens up new pathways for thinking about how intermediality, as both a creative method and an interpretative paradigm, might be explored alongside probing questions of what cinema is, has been and can be.
Hollywood Haunts the World
The secret history of the world can be decoded through film. In Hollywood Haunts the World: An Investigation into the Cinema of Occulted Taboos, Robert Guffey deconstructs the most powerful taboos of the twentieth century (and the initial decades of the twenty-first century) by analyzing how disturbing and transgressive ideas involving Theosophy, Gnosticism, Freemasonry, Darwinian Evolution, Surrealism, Freudian and Jungian psychology, race relations, paranoia, UFOs, xenophobia, political conspiracies, the JFK assassination, virtual reality, and alternate dimensions have been reflected in films--both American and foreign--throughout the past one hundred years. Popular films and TV shows that fall under Robert Guffey's cutting-edge scrutiny include Guillermo del Toro's Nightmare Alley, Larry Wade Carell's Girl Next, Matt Shakman's WandaVision, Anthony and Joe Russo's Avengers: Infinity War, Scott Derrickson's Dr. Strange, Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One, Jennifer Kent's The Babadook, Christopher Nolan's Inception, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, Vince Gilligan's Breaking Bad, Oliver Stone's JFK, Mark Frost and David Lynch's Twin Peaks, John Carpenter's They Live, Alan Pakula's The Parallax View, John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate, Jack Arnold's It Came from Outer Space, Edgar G. Ulmer's The Man from Planet X, Robert Florey's Murders in the Rue Morgue, Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr., and Victor Sj繹str繹m's The Phantom Carriage.
Capturing Big Ideas for Less in Feature Film
This accessible guide is directed towards filmmakers with restricted resources and shortened schedules who want to ensure their creation of riveting, fresh, and exciting projects. Whether a film is produced under a low or high budget, itemphasizes that a small world coupled with a big idea can serve strong themes, and powerful stories.
Disney/Pixar the Art of Elio
This stunning book showcases the art, behind-the-scenes details, and making of the Disney and Pixar animated film Elio The next in the fan-favorite, collectible Disney and Pixar Art of series, The Art of Elio presents the story behind the out-of-this-world film from Pixar Animation Studios. Adventure across the galaxy with alien-obsessed Elio in this essential story of connection, friendship, and searching for your place in the world, or in this case, universe. This book highlights the stunning artwork from the film's creation--including character designs, storyboards, color scripts, and much more--and features exclusive interviews with the creative team along with behind-the-scenes details. This book is the perfect gift for aspiring artists, animators, film buffs, and fans. (c) 2025 Disney Enterprises, Inc. and Pixar. All rights reserved. EXCLUSIVE LOOK AT ANIMATION FILMMAKING: Fans will want to delve into and explore this Pixar Animation film through production art, stories, and making-of details exclusive to this book. PART OF THE FAN-FAVORITE SERIES: The collectible Art of series is perfect for animation enthusiasts, filmmakers, students, and fans of Disney and Pixar. Add The Art of Elio to the shelf with other bestselling books like The Art of Elemental, The Art of Turning Red, and The Art of Soul. Perfect for: Animators and animation students Disney fans of all ages Cinephiles and movie buffs Pop culture enthusiasts and historians Families that love watching Disney and Pixar films together Fans of sci-fi books and movies People interested in aliens, extraterrestrials, space, and space travel
Becoming Johnny Vegas
'My name is Michael Pennington, and I am not a comic character. I'm often mistaken for one though. You might know him by another name. Johnny Vegas.' From BBC Dickens adaptations to Benidorm and Ideal to the PG Tips ads, Johnny Vegas has become one of Britain's best-loved comic actors. But before he'd ever drunk tea with a knitted monkey or made himself the exception that proves the rule in terms of the predictability of TV panel game regulars, Johnny Vegas was perhaps the most fearlessly confessional stand-up comedian this country has ever produced. How did an eleven-year-old Catholic trainee priest from St Helens grow up to become the North West of England's answer to Lenny Bruce? That's just one of the many questions answered by this eye-poppingly frank memoir. Becoming Johnny Vegas establishes its author as the poet laureate of the Pimblett's pie. Once you've finished this darkly hilarious tale of family, faith and the creative application of alcohol dependency, you'll never look at a copy of the Catholic men's society newsletter the same way again.
The Harry O Viewing Companion
In the golden era of 1970s TV detective shows, Harry O stood out. David Janssen, already renowned for his role in The Fugitive, played Harry Orwell, a San Diego cop who retired after being shot in the back. The chemistry between Janssen and Anthony Zerbe, who delivered an Emmy-Award winning performance as Lt. K.C. Trench, captivated viewers and contributed to the show's popularity. While Harry O was largely character-driven, it also featured compelling plots that retained the show's audience throughout its two seasons. This viewing companion to Harry O covers all episodes, providing information about cast, crew, and locations along with story analysis. Informed by archival material, including series' creator Howard Rodman's papers, it also features new interviews conducted by the authors, providing insight into the creation of the series. From the filming of the pilot episodes in 1972 to the show's cancellation in 1976, the book offers a comprehensive history of each step in the show's development.
Man of Taste
Radley Metzger was one of the foremost directors of adult film in America, with credits including softcore titles like The Lickerish Quartet and the hardcore classic The Opening of Misty Beethoven. After getting his start making arthouse trailers for Janus Films, Metzger would go on to become among the most feted directors of the "porno chic" era of the 1970s, working under the pseudonym Henry Paris. In the process, he produced a body of work that exposed the porous boundaries separating art cinema from adult film, softcore from hardcore, and good taste from bad. Rob King uses Metzger's work to explore what taste means and how it works, tracing the evolution of the adult film industry and the changing frontiers of cultural acceptability. Man of Taste spans Metzger's entire life: his early years in Manhattan's Washington Heights neighborhood, his attempt to bring arthouse aesthetics to adult film in the 1960s, his turn to pseudonymously directed hardcore movies in the 1970s, and his final years, which included making videos on homeopathic medicine. Metzger's career, King argues, sheds light on how the distinction between the erotic and the pornographic is drawn, and it offers an uncanny reflection of the ways American film culture transformed during these decades. Lavishly illustrated with rare photos and publicity images, this book paints a vivid picture of a filmmaker who channeled his artistic aspirations into some of the most disreputable movie genres of his day.
The Companion Guide to the Godfather Trilogy
"...draws from a wide variety of previously published sources to give Godfather fans something new and exciting." - BooklistThe Companion Guide to The Godfather Trilogy: Betrayal, Loyalty, and Family offers a fresh perspective, going beyond the surface to uncover the real-life context and historical inspirations behind the story. Scene by scene, it explores: * The authentic mafia history, individuals, and events that served as the foundation for Mario Puzo's compelling narrative* Insights into the Italian-American experience and the American Dream portrayed in the films* The mafia's influence on Hollywood, Cuba, and Las Vegas, and its connection to the storyline* A comparison between the novel, the cinematic adaptation and script drafts, highlighting differences and similarities* Michael Corleone's journey in post-war Sicily and its ties to World War II and Mafia operations* Intriguing details about filming locations, including rare photos and behind-the-scenes anecdotes* Answers to common questions about the films, along with director's notes and production drama* Frank Sinatra and other celebrity associations with the films* Untold stories and details not read elsewhereWell-researched and with detailed analysis, The Companion Guide to The Godfather Trilogy: Betrayal, Loyalty, and Family caters to fans seeking a deeper understanding of The Godfather universe, shedding light on untold stories and providing invaluable insights into the cinematic masterpiece.
How Walt Disney Changed Animation Forever
A focused study of Walt Disney and his studio, highlighting their innovations, operations, and lasting impact on animation.Most biographies of Walt Disney cover the full span of his life and the full history of his studio, from its start in 1923 until his death in 1966. However, these books, while broad, often give very little detail in the way of the production of its famous films, the operation of its studio, or its major accomplishments. How Walt Disney Changed Animation Forever instead focuses on a key period of the growth, innovation, and eclipsing popularity of the Walt Disney Studio, intertwining its narrative history with the historical context of the 1920s-1950s and the daily life of its founder. Based upon years of historical research including recollections by prominent Disney artists and on-the-ground, in-person experiences at key locations from Disney history, How Walt Disney Changed Animation Forever describes the global impact the studio had on how films were produced for decades to come.
Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film
A cinematic study of Asian-Indigenous relationalitySettler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film is an interdisciplinary examination of the stubborn attachment of Asian diasporas to settler-colonial ideals and of the decolonial possibilities Asian diasporic films imagine. Beenash Jafri uniquely addresses the complexities of Asian-Indigenous relationality through film and visual media, urging film scholars to approach their subjects with an eye to the entanglements of race, diaspora, and Indigeneity. Highlighting how Asian diasporic attachments to settler colonialism are structural, she explores how they are manifested through melancholic yearning within the figure of the Asian cowboy in films such as Cowgirl and Wild West and through the aesthetic and representational politics of body and land in experimental films by Shani Mootoo and Vivek Shraya. While recognizing the pervasive violence of settler colonialism, Jafri maintains a hopeful outlook, showcasing how Asian diasporic filmmakers persistently work toward decolonial worldmaking. This emerging vision can be seen in the radical friendship between Ali Kazimi and Onondaga artist Jeffrey Thomas in Kazimi's film Shooting Indians, in the queer relational survivance depicted in films such as This Place and Scarborough, and in the sensory disruptions of Jin-me Yoon's interactive art project Untunnelling Vision. From film and media studies to diaspora studies and critical ethnic studies, Indigenous studies to queer theory, Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film provides a critical framework for engaging cinematic media to understand and imagine beyond the entrenched settler-colonial dynamics within Asian diasporic communities. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.
Feminist Posthumanism in Contemporary Science Fiction Film and Media
Feminist Posthumanism in Contemporary Science Fiction Film and Media: FromAnnihilation toHigh Life and Beyond places posthumanism and feminist theory into dialogue with contemporary science fiction film and media. This essay collection is intimately invested in the debates around the posthuman and the critical posthumanities within a feminist critical-theoretical framework.In this posthumanist light, science fiction as a genre allows for new imaginings of human-technological relations, while it can also be the site of a critique of human exceptionalism and essentialism. In this way, science fiction affords unique opportunities for the scholarly investigation of the relevance and relative applicability of specific posthumanist themes and questions in a particularly rich and wide-ranging popular cultural field of production. One of the reasons for this suitability is the genre's historically longstanding relationship with the critical investigation of gender, specifically the position and relative empowerment of women. The original analyses presented here pay close attention to audiovisual style (including game mechanics), facilitating the critical interrogation of the issues and questions around posthumanism. Where typically the mention of SF in the posthumanist context calls to mind a whole set of (often clich矇d) tropes-the cyborg, technologically augmented bodies, AI subjectivities, etc.-this volume's thirteen chapters analyze specific examples of contemporary SF cinema that engage in meaningful ways with the burgeoning field of critical posthumanism, and that utilize such films to interrogate posthumanist and feminist as well as humanistic ideas.
Singing Out
Singing Out explores a broad range of singing voices and sung moments, from lavish film musical sequences, television and videogames, through to online platforms, advertising, and multimedia installation work. It illustrates the diverse ways in which the singing voice is produced and understood in different media across international contexts, taking into consideration issues such as corporeal form, age, race, reception, and gender. The act of singing emphasises issues of identity, technology, and the identifying markers of the voice itself, heightening communication, acting as an aid to memory, and inviting judgement. Singing demarcates and breaks down textual and conceptual boundaries, and offers an intensity of experience that gives it a special status on the soundtrack. Singing Out contains a range of approaches to the singing voice, offering students and researchers a variety of methodological and critical tools to understand the contemporary context and importance of singing in multimedia.
Toward a More Perfect Rebellion
Toward a More Perfect Rebellion tells the riveting story of the socially engaged filmmakers of color who studied in the Ethno-Communications Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, between 1969 and 1973. While the program is best known for training the trailblazing group of Black directors known as the L.A. Rebellion, this book also includes the radical Asian American, Chicana/o, and Native American filmmakers who collaborated alongside their Black classmates to create one of the most expansive and groundbreaking bodies of work of any US university cohort. Through extensive interviews with the filmmakers and cross-racial analysis of their collective filmography, Josslyn Jeanine Luckett sheds light on a largely untold history of media activists working outside Hollywood yet firmly rooted in Los Angeles, aiming their cameras with urgency and tenderness to capture their communities' stories of power, struggle, and improvisational brilliance.
Pretty, Pretty, Pretty Good
Readers can't curb their enthusiasm for Pretty, Pretty, Pretty Good, now fully revised and includes a full insightful episode guide to the entire Curb Your Enthusiasm series For Larry David, success was no sure thing. A frustrated New York comic who was known to walk off the stage in disgust, David was barely making a living. At least until his friend Jerry Seinfeld asked him to create a new kind of television sitcom for NBC. The result -- Seinfeld -- started slowly but became a gigantic hit. But most people didn't know that the real genius behind the show was Larry David. Rich beyond his wildest dreams, David still had something to prove -- and some television boundaries to push. And so he created Curb Your Enthusiasm, the improvised comedy that cast aside political correctness and made for hilarious, cringeworthy TV, a show that dared to relive the disastrous Seinfeld finale and turn it into a triumph. This second, fully updated edition of Pretty, Pretty, Pretty Good offers a complete episode-by-episode guide to the series and recounts David's early struggle to succeed in television and movies, the creation and development of his hit sitcoms, and his later success starring in the HBO film Clear History and the Broadway hit Fish in the Dark. It also explores Larry's on- and off-screen relationships with famous pals like Richard Lewis, Ted Danson, and Jerry, Jason, Julia, and Michael. Filled with candor and humor David himself would respect, Pretty, Pretty, Pretty Good is an essential companion to a comedic force.
The Vanishing (Spoorloos)
At the 1989 Sydney Film Festival, George Sluizer's little-known independent film, Spoorloos (The Vanishing), was an unexpected hit, winning the festival's audience award and gaining accolades at other international film festivals. The Vanishing has earned a reputation as a psychological thriller that shocked audiences with its unexpected twist ending. This is the first book-length study to examine The Vanishing as a film that complements and broadens generic expectations of psychological horror cinema. It delves into The Vanishing's production history, including Sluizer's adaptation of the film screenplay from the novella The Golden Egg (1984) by Dutch author Tim Krabb矇. Beyond exploring Sluizer's filmmaking style and The Vanishing's place in Dutch cinema, this book analyses how the film's plot, themes and symbolic imagery connect it to topics prevalent in prominent sub-genres of horror cinema, including the serial-killer sub-genre that rose to prominence in the late 1980s. Its themes are also echoed in contemporary films associated with arthouse cinema, which are variously dubbed 'post-horror' and 'elevated horror'. The book will illuminate The Vanishing's close associations with modern-day cinema, arguing that its particular type of psychological horror has consistently resonated with audiences in the decades since its release.
The Vanishing (Spoorloos)
At the 1989 Sydney Film Festival, George Sluizer's little-known independent film, Spoorloos (The Vanishing), was an unexpected hit, winning the festival's audience award and gaining accolades at other international film festivals. The Vanishing has earned a reputation as a psychological thriller that shocked audiences with its unexpected twist ending. This is the first book-length study to examine The Vanishing as a film that complements and broadens generic expectations of psychological horror cinema. It delves into The Vanishing's production history, including Sluizer's adaptation of the film screenplay from the novella The Golden Egg (1984) by Dutch author Tim Krabb矇. Beyond exploring Sluizer's filmmaking style and The Vanishing's place in Dutch cinema, this book analyses how the film's plot, themes and symbolic imagery connect it to topics prevalent in prominent sub-genres of horror cinema, including the serial-killer sub-genre that rose to prominence in the late 1980s. Its themes are also echoed in contemporary films associated with arthouse cinema, which are variously dubbed 'post-horror' and 'elevated horror'. The book will illuminate The Vanishing's close associations with modern-day cinema, arguing that its particular type of psychological horror has consistently resonated with audiences in the decades since its release.
Behind the Scripts Stories in Progress
Welcome to a book that offers more than just screenplays, it provides an exclusive glimpse into the very first drafts of two film projects. If you are passionate about the creative process behind a film and want to experience how an idea evolves into a living story, then this book is for you. This book is for readers who do not just consume stories but engage with them, feel them, and want to be part of their development. It is for those who appreciate the raw, unpolished energy of a first screenplay draft and enjoy witnessing the journey from concept to completion. Here, you will not find polished, meticulously refined scripts, but rather exciting blueprints that still have room to grow. We invite you to be part of the journey. Your thoughts, feedback, and enthusiasm can help shape these projects into films. Let us create stories together that captivate and inspire. Enjoy the read and the discovery!
James Cameron
Ground breaker. Game changer. The King of the World. Director James Cameron went from cult sci-fi rising star to box-office dominator at faster than light speed. As much a technical innovator as he is a visionary artist, Cameron has proven himself the master of his own cinematic destiny. His methods have often been controversial, but the results are undeniably impactful. Taking in his scrappy early days, his impressive breakthrough with The Terminator, his colossal triumph with Titanic, his real-life adventures in planet Earth's most extreme environment, and his astonishing world-building success with Avatar, this is a truly essential guide to Cameron's stellar filmography.
One Frame Per Second
"One Frame Per Second: Graphic Design as Visual Storyteller" is a work that explores how graphic design has become an essential storyteller in film and television. From silent films, where images made up for the absence of sound, to the streaming era, where graphic interfaces create personalized experiences, this book reveals how every visual decision transforms stories into unforgettable narratives. Through in-depth analysis, it unveils the secrets behind opening titles, visual universes in franchises and graphic strategies on digital platforms, showing how design communicates emotions, builds identities and connects with audiences.The book inspires students, designers and audiovisual lovers to appreciate the cultural and narrative impact of graphic design. It is an invitation to rediscover the power of images and to value each graphic element as a bridge between stories and their audiences. This work is a celebration of design as an art that, frame by frame, creates worlds that transcend the screen and remain in the collective memory.
Hotels
From Marienbad to the Bates Motel, cinematic hotels are more than a mere backdrop to a film's action. They actively scaffold the formal, aesthetic, and narrative possibilities of cinema. This book takes a journey through spaces of temporary dwelling--hotels, inns, and motels--to delve into the dynamics and contradictions that structure modern life. Along the way, O'Dwyer considers questions of plot and eroticism, labor and globalization, and the ethics and economics of hospitality. Drawing on a broad array of films from European art cinema to experimental adult media, and placing cinema into dialogue with film theory and media history, Hotels explores both how and why the hotel has such a strong purchase on the cinematic imaginary.
Women and Migration in Contemporary Italian Cinema
Women and Migration in Contemporary Italian Cinema: Screening Hospitality puts gender at the centre of cinematic representations of contemporary transnational Italian identities. It offers an intersectional feminist analysis of the ways in which transnational migration has been represented, understood, and constructed in the contemporary cinema of Italy. Drawing on Jacques Derrida's notion of hospitality and in dialogue with postcolonial and decolonial theory, queer studies, and feminist critiques, the six chapters of the book focus on a series of exemplary fiction films from the last twenty years, which both reflect and shape the nation's responses to the growing presence of transnational migrants in Italian society. The book shows how questions of gender, sexual difference, and reproductivity have been central to Italian filmmakers' approaches to stories of mobility and displacement. Gender is also enmeshed in the rhetoric and poetic of hospitality that filmmakers propose as a critical framework to condemn Italian border policies and politics. Women and Migration in Contemporary Italian Cinema: Screening Hospitality traces an arc that moves from the embrace of a humanitarian rhetoric of infinite hospitality toward migrants, apparent in films produced in the early 2000s, to a more fluid understanding of Italian identities from a transnational perspective.
Descriptive Analysis of Sound and Silence in the Audiovisual Translations of American and Japanese Movies
This book delves into the powerful role of sound and silence in film translation, revealing how acoustic choices shape cultural perception and audience experience. Through in-depth analyses of acclaimed films like Spirited Away and The Lego Movie, it shows how subtle shifts in silence, sound effects, and music can bridge or widen the cultural divide. Perfect for translators, filmmakers, and anyone curious about the hidden layers of cross-cultural storytelling. It is a groundbreaking study of how sound and silence shape cultural perception in film translation, particularly between American and Japanese movies. It explores the impact of nonverbal acoustic elements-such as background music, sound effects, and silences-on the experience of dubbed and subtitled films.Through a detailed analysis of iconic films like Spirited Away, The Lego Movie, and Love and Honor, the book investigates how silence is treated differently in American and Japanese translations and the implications for cross-cultural communication. It also includes a quantitative study comparing 120 film versions to identify broader trends in audiovisual translation.In addition to film translation, the book extends its analysis to literary translation, examining the adaptation of Japanese children's books into English. It highlights the balancing act translators must perform between faithfulness to the original text and cultural adaptation for new audiences.This book is an essential resource for translation scholars, linguists, film studies experts, and anyone interested in how audiovisual media shapes cultural narratives. It offers unique insights into how translation choices affect audience perception and emotional engagement in international cinema.
Man of Taste
Radley Metzger was one of the foremost directors of adult film in America, with credits including softcore titles like The Lickerish Quartet and the hardcore classic The Opening of Misty Beethoven. After getting his start making arthouse trailers for Janus Films, Metzger would go on to become among the most feted directors of the "porno chic" era of the 1970s, working under the pseudonym Henry Paris. In the process, he produced a body of work that exposed the porous boundaries separating art cinema from adult film, softcore from hardcore, and good taste from bad. Rob King uses Metzger's work to explore what taste means and how it works, tracing the evolution of the adult film industry and the changing frontiers of cultural acceptability. Man of Taste spans Metzger's entire life: his early years in Manhattan's Washington Heights neighborhood, his attempt to bring arthouse aesthetics to adult film in the 1960s, his turn to pseudonymously directed hardcore movies in the 1970s, and his final years, which included making videos on homeopathic medicine. Metzger's career, King argues, sheds light on how the distinction between the erotic and the pornographic is drawn, and it offers an uncanny reflection of the ways American film culture transformed during these decades. Lavishly illustrated with rare photos and publicity images, this book paints a vivid picture of a filmmaker who channeled his artistic aspirations into some of the most disreputable movie genres of his day.
Religion, Theology, and Stranger Things
Religion, Theology and Stranger Things: Studies from the Upside Down on Evil, Ethics, Horror, and Hope brings interdisciplinary analysis to the teeming spiritual side of the hit television series. With chapters from social scientists, historians, theologians, and Biblical scholars, the volume addresses the many different theological, religious, and supernatural themes present in the fictional world of Hawkins, Indiana. From spiritualism to secularism, Mormon gender norms to monsters of abnormality, rock & roll to Dungeons & Dragons, an international list of scholars come together to argue that imaginative realms like the one created by the Duffer brothers can serve to showcase and to scrutinize the common impulses and needs of our culture and ourselves. To venture into the darkness of the Upside Down is to venture into the depths of human experience. This volume explores the shadows and suggests a few paths back into the light.
Screening Sherlock
Screening Sherlock is the first book-length academic study of the film and television career of the most famous detective in fiction. Chapman explores the contexts, adaptation strategies and critical reception of Sherlock Holmes (and Dr Watson) on film and television in Britain and the United States. The book includes case studies of such famous Holmes impersonators as William Gillette, Basil Rathbone, Peter Cushing, Jeremy Brett and Benedict Cumberbatch, as well as charting a path through many lesser-known productions. From early cinema to the Hollywood studio system, and from heritage drama to contemporary postmodern television, Screening Sherlock is an indispensible work for all aficionados of Arthur Conan Doyle's consulting detective of Baker Street.
Representations of Endymion and Selene
A focused study of an ancient myth and its reception, which provokes new consideration of how myth in general can challenge social norms. Analyzing the visual and literary transformations of the myth of Endymion and Selene, Anna Chiara Corradino argues that this myth becomes a valuable tool for understanding the cultural problematization and censorship of female sexuality, as well as the marginalization of alternative forms of male sexuality. The myth's key themes, of dominant femininity, reified masculinity and female necrophilia, are shaped through the centuries from the core story of Selene, the goddess of the Moon, falling in love with a mortal shepherd, Endymion, and granting him eternal sleep so she can kiss him every night. In five core sections focusing on the archaeology of the myth in the ancient world, the art of the Renaissance to Baroque periods, and modern art and film, Corradino traces the way the relationship between the two 'lovers' embodies the taboo topic of the eroticization of the sleeping and/or dead male body, and the suppressed desire of female domination and dominance. This research breaks new ground by displaying how these marginal desires have always challenged normativity and have had a profound impact on and through multiple receptions.
The Superhero Blockbuster
The Superhero Blockbuster: Adaptation, Style, and Meaning builds an innovative framework for analyzing one of the most prominent genres in twenty-first-century Hollywood. In combining theories of adaptation with close textual analysis, James C. Taylor provides a set of analytical tools with which to undertake nuanced exploration of superhero blockbusters' meanings. This deep understanding of the films attends to historical, sociopolitical, and industrial contexts and also illuminates key ways in which the superhero genre has contributed to the development of the Hollywood blockbuster. Each chapter focuses on a different superhero or superhero team, covering some of the most popular superhero blockbusters based on DC and Marvel superheroes. The chapters cover different aspects of the films' adaptive practices, exploring the adaptation of stylistic strategies, narrative models, and modes of seriality from superhero comic books, while being attentive to the ways in which the films engage with the wider networks of texts in various media that comprise a given superhero franchise. Chapter 1 looks back to the first superhero blockbuster, 1978's Superman: The Movie, examining its cinematic re-envisioning of the quintessential superhero and role in establishing Hollywood's emerging model of blockbuster filmmaking. Subsequent chapters analyze the twenty-first-century boom in superhero blockbusters and examine digital imaging and nostalgia in Spider-Man films, Marvel Studios' adaptation of a shared universe model of seriality in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the use of alternate timeline narratives in X-Men films. The book concludes by turning its analytical toolkit to analysis of DC Studios' cinematic universe, the DC Extended Universe.
The Superhero Blockbuster
The Superhero Blockbuster: Adaptation, Style, and Meaning builds an innovative framework for analyzing one of the most prominent genres in twenty-first-century Hollywood. In combining theories of adaptation with close textual analysis, James C. Taylor provides a set of analytical tools with which to undertake nuanced exploration of superhero blockbusters' meanings. This deep understanding of the films attends to historical, sociopolitical, and industrial contexts and also illuminates key ways in which the superhero genre has contributed to the development of the Hollywood blockbuster. Each chapter focuses on a different superhero or superhero team, covering some of the most popular superhero blockbusters based on DC and Marvel superheroes. The chapters cover different aspects of the films' adaptive practices, exploring the adaptation of stylistic strategies, narrative models, and modes of seriality from superhero comic books, while being attentive to the ways in which the films engage with the wider networks of texts in various media that comprise a given superhero franchise. Chapter 1 looks back to the first superhero blockbuster, 1978's Superman: The Movie, examining its cinematic re-envisioning of the quintessential superhero and role in establishing Hollywood's emerging model of blockbuster filmmaking. Subsequent chapters analyze the twenty-first-century boom in superhero blockbusters and examine digital imaging and nostalgia in Spider-Man films, Marvel Studios' adaptation of a shared universe model of seriality in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the use of alternate timeline narratives in X-Men films. The book concludes by turning its analytical toolkit to analysis of DC Studios' cinematic universe, the DC Extended Universe.
Queer for Fear
A new analysis of the connection between the horror genre and the queer community. Queer for Fear is the groundbreaking empirical study of the LGBTQ+ community that not only documents the opinions, habits, and tastes of the horror-loving queer spectator but also evidences how and why queers have a distinctive relationship to the horror genre. This interdisciplinary book makes impactful contributions to the fields of queer, film, horror, trauma, camp, and live cinema studies.
Winning the Crowd
How is Hollywood shaping the American public's thought about politics? Winning The Crowd: The Politics of Popular Films analyses the philosophies of power and the good life found in some of the smartest popular films of recent years.
