Carnavalization and anthropophagy in Carlos Reichenbach’s metacinema
An analysis of the work of filmmaker Carlos Reichenbach, based on his films made in S瓊o Paulo's Boca do Lixo. The book emphasizes metalinguistic, anthropophagic and carnivalizing aspects in the filmography of the director, who created a unique work in Brazilian cinema. The study uses elements from philosophy, literature, eroticism, music, discourse analysis and cinema itself, in self-referential productions.
Scripts That Captivate
In "Scripts That Captivate: A Guide to Writing and Selling TV Ideas," veteran screenwriter and industry insider Frank P. Spielberg unveils the secrets to transforming your television concepts into compelling screenplays that not only captivate audiences but also capture the attention of network executives and producers. With a career spanning over three decades, Spielberg demystifies the television industry, providing aspiring writers with a roadmap to success in one of the most competitive creative fields. This comprehensive guide delves deep into the art and science of television writing, from the initial spark of an idea to the final pitch. Spielberg shares invaluable insights into creating memorable characters, crafting engaging plots, and weaving narratives that resonate with viewers. Beyond the page, he reveals strategies for navigating the business side of the industry, offering advice on finding representation, understanding contracts, and the crucial art of pitching. With a blend of practical tips, real-world examples, and motivational anecdotes, "Scripts That Captivate" serves as an indispensable resource for anyone looking to make their mark in television. Whether you're a seasoned writer seeking to refine your craft or a newcomer with a story to tell, this book will guide you through the complexities of the TV industry, helping you turn your creative visions into reality. Join Frank P. Spielberg on this journey and take the first step towards bringing your TV ideas to life.
Indian Indies
This book offers a concise and cutting-edge repository of essential information on new independent Indian films, which have orchestrated a recent renaissance in the Bollywood-dominated Indian cinema sphere.
Unshot Columbo
Can't get your fill of Columbo? Then sink your teeth into 19 adventures that the show almost filmed.From the author of the best-selling Shooting Columbo comes this unique, behind-the-scenes peek at the unmaking of episodes that were shot down-and why.Discover the early 1970s tales by "murder consultant" Larry Cohen and by a young, pre-Carrie Brian De Palma... the aborted pilot for Mrs. Columbo that was reimagined for Columbo... as well as the unmade masterpiece that Peter Falk desperately wanted to close out the series with as his final case. Find out why he never got the chance.
The Art of Close-ups in Mohamed Khan’s Movies. What Purposes do these Close-ups Serve?
Master's Thesis from the year 2021 in the subject Film Science, grade: A, E繹tv繹s Lor獺nd University (E繹tv繹s Lor獺nd University), course: Master's degree in Film Studies: Filmmaking Specialization, language: English, abstract: Mohamed Khan made 25 films during his lifetime, and he was known for frequently using close-ups in his films. In this research, I attempt to depict close-ups' art in terms of functions in one of Khan mid-career movies: "Wife of an Important Man" (1987). I will analyze five different scenes from this single movie in which he massively used the close-ups. Further, I will provide a description of these close-ups' functions in each one of the scenes. I will be answering the question of what functions did the close-ups serve in Mohamed Khan's selected scenes? How did exactly they make his style unique? Close-ups are usually artistic and, at the same time, conventional in shootings for cinematic purposes. The art of close-ups reveals the emotions and/or details of the subject, as well as orient the audience's attention to a person's feelings or reactions. In this context, I would like to recall a renowned Egyptian-English filmmaker who was a conscious user of close-ups in his movie, Mohamed Khan. In one of his interviews, he declared that, as a director, his purpose in filmmaking was not the storyline, nor finding solutions to any social issues. What attracted him were feelings and details.
Crossing in a trance
The aim of this book is to study, in a comparative analysis, the relationship between Jo瓊o Guimar瓊es Rosa's imagistic language and canga癟o cinema, based on a film that is said to have been directly influenced by the writer: Deus e o diabo na terra do sol (God and the Devil in the Land of the Sun) (1964), by Glauber Rocha. To this end, concepts from Literature, Cinema and Philosophy will be used, fields through which this research will pass, as will be described below. It is known that Guimar瓊es Rosa did not like a certain philosophy, as he navigated other logics, far from what he calls, in a letter to his Italian translator, Edoardo Bizzarri, "the Cartesian shrew" or, in a conversation with the German literary critic, G羹nter Lorenz, "the curse of language". In this sense, the philosophical apparatus used in this work goes beyond and constitutes an immense critical legacy to Cartesianism.
My Affair with Art House Cinema
Finalist, 2025 PEN / Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, PEN America Phillip Lopate fell hard for the movies as an adolescent. As he matured into an acclaimed critic and essayist, his infatuation deepened into a lifelong passion. My Affair with Art House Cinema presents Lopate's selected essays and reviews from the last quarter century, inviting readers to experience films he found exhilarating, tantalizing, and beguiling--and sometimes disappointing or frustrating--through his keen eyes. In an essayist's sinuous prose style, Lopate captures the formal mastery, artistic imagination, and emotional intensity of art house essentials like Yasujirō Ozu's Late Spring, David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, and Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, as well as works by contemporary filmmakers such as Maren Ade, Hong Sang-soo, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Christian Petzold, Paolo Sorrentino, and Jafar Panahi. Essays explore Chantal Akerman's rigorous honesty, Ingmar Bergman's intimacy, Abbas Kiarostami's playfulness, Kenji Mizoguchi's visual style, and Frederick Wiseman's vision of the human condition. Lopate also reflects on the work of fellow critics, including Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael, and Jonathan Rosenbaum. His considered, at times contrarian critiques and celebrations will inspire readers to watch or rewatch these films. Above all, this book showcases Lopate's passionate advocacy for not only particular films and directors but also the joys and value of a filmgoing culture.
From Shtetl to Stardom
The influence of Jews in American entertainment from the early days of Hollywood to the present has proved an endlessly fascinating and controversial topic, for Jews and non-Jews alike. From Shtetl to Stardom: Jews and Hollywood takes an exciting and innovative approach to this rich and complex material. Exploring the subject from a scholarly perspective as well as up close and personal, the book combines historical and theoretical analysis by leading academics in the field with inside information from prominent entertainment professionals. Essays range from Vincent Brook's survey of the stubbornly persistent canard of Jewish industry "control" to Lawrence Baron and Joel Rosenberg's panel presentations on the recent brouhaha over Ben Urwand's book alleging collaboration between Hollywood and Hitler. Case studies by Howard Rodman and Joshua Louis Moss examine a key Coen brothers film, A Serious Man (Rodman), and Jill Soloway's groundbreaking television series, Transparent (Moss). Jeffrey Shandler and Shaina Hamermann train their respective lenses on popular satirical comedians of yesteryear (Allan Sherman) and those currently all the rage (Amy Schumer, Lena Dunham, and Sarah Silverman). David Isaacs relates his years of agony and hilarity in the television comedy writers' room, and interviews include in-depth discussions by Ross Melnick with Laemmle Theatres owner Greg Laemmle (relative of Universal Studios founder Carl Laemmle) and by Michael Renov with Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner. In all, From Shtetl to Stardom offers a uniquely multifaceted, multimediated, and up-to-the-minute account of the remarkable role Jews have played in American movie and TV culture.
Re-Thinking The Godfather 50 Years Later
This collection of essays looks at all aspects of Coppola's "classic," as the late Dr. Anne Paolucci called it. The individual studies examine a series of issues that are both thematic and structural. How did the lm speak to us in 1972, and how does it speak to us now? What narrative devices did Coppola adopt to bring forth his communiqu矇? Can we decipher what his communiqu矇 was? In viewing the lm from a more theoretical perspective, what can the spectator take away from the film?-FROM THE "PREFACE"
Queer Cinema in Contemporary France
Jacques Martineau, Olivier Ducastel, Alain Guiraudie, S矇bastien Lifshitz and C矇line Sciamma. The films of these five major French directors exemplify queer cinema in the twenty-first century. Comprehensive in scope, Queer cinema in contemporary France traces the development of the meaning of queer across these directors' careers, from their earliest, often unknown films to their later, major films with wide international release. Whether having sex on the beach or kissing in the high school swimming pool, these cinematic characters create or embody forward-looking, open-ended and optimistic forms of queerness and modes of living, loving and desiring. Whether they are white, beur or black, whether they are lesbian, gay, trans* or queer, they open up hetero- and cisnormativity to new ways of being a gendered subject.
Scientific and technological literacy through cinema films
School education must go beyond basic teachings, and schools and universities need to educate citizens who are capable of understanding the social relations of science and technology. For this reason, this paper proposes the use of films to work with secondary and technical school students in the light of the theoretical and philosophical assumptions of the CTS (Science Technology and Society) approach. Under a qualitative methodological approach of an interpretative nature, the object of study is analysed and interpreted: films as a teaching strategy for promoting ACT (Scientific and Technological Literacy).
Hanna and Barbera: Conversations
Hanna and Barbera: Conversations presents a lively portrait of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, the influential producers behind Tom and Jerry, the Flintstones, Scooby-Doo, the Smurfs, and hundreds of other cartoon characters who continue to entertain the world today. Encompassing more than fifty years of film and television history, the conversations in this volume include first-person accounts by the namesakes of the Hanna-Barbera studio as well as recollections by artists and executives who worked closely with the pair for decades. It is the first collection of its kind about Hanna and Barbera, likely the most prolific animation producers of the twentieth century, whose studio once outflanked its competitor Walt Disney in output and influence. Bill Hanna fell into animation in 1930 at the Harman-Ising studio in Los Angeles, gaining skills across the phases of production as MGM opened its animation studio. Joe Barbera, a talented and sociable artist, entered the industry around the same time at the wild and woolly Van Beuren studio in Manhattan, learning the ins and outs of animation art before crossing the country to join MGM. In television, Hanna's timing and community-oriented work ethic along with Barbera's knack for sales and creating funny characters enabled Hanna-Barbera to build a roster of beloved cartoon series. A wide range of pieces map Hanna and Barbera's partnership, from their early days in Hollywood in the 1930s to Cartoon Network in the 1990s, when a new generation took the reins of their animation studio. Relatively unknown when they made over one hundred Tom and Jerry theatrical cartoons at MGM in the 1940s and 1950s, Hanna and Barbera became household names upon entering the new medium of television in 1957. Discussions here chart their early primetime successes as well as later controversies surrounding violence, overseas production, and the lack of quality in their Saturday morning cartoons. With wit, candor, insight, and bravado, Hanna and Barbera: Conversations reflects on Bill and Joe's breakthroughs and shortcomings, and their studio's innovations and retreads.
If You Ask Me
Hi. I'm Libby Gelman-Waxner, and I'm an assistant buyer in juniors' activewear. While I find my work both rewarding and creative, especially with the new knits coming in, I want more. And so I decided to become a film critic.... Move over, Siskel & Ebert. Watch out, Leonard Maltin. And just forget saving that aisle seat, Mr. Medved. Libby Gelman-Waxner has arrived -- in the critic's circle, that is -- and the silver screen may never be the same again. Witty, wicked, and scathingly honest -- If You Ask Me is a hilarious collection of her columns from Premiere magazine. Just listen to Libby on some recent films and film stars: Prince of Tides -- "Barbra's only spontaneous moment in Prince of Tides comes when Nick tosses her a football and she screams 'My nails!'" Diane Keaton -- "She's a pioneer; she takes that thing that hangs in the back of your closet, the thing that was too marked down to pass up, Diane takes that thing and she doesn't call Goodwill, she wraps it around her head a few times, pins on a Smurf brooch, and wins an Oscar...." The Last of the Mohicans -- "Daniel Day-Lewis makes American actors look like giggly junior high school boys playing Nintendo during the prom; at one point, Madeleine asks Daniel what he is looking at, and he says, I'm looking at you, Miss, and let me tell you, the usher had to conk me with his flashlight to make me stop whimpering...." Daryl Hannah -- "All men in America, my Josh included, they all want a date with Daryl Hannah. A girl like Daryl -- we're not talking about a Ph.D. in comparative literature; I think we're talking about hair in the eyes and not much in the way of lingerie...."
Horrifying Children
Horrifying Children examines weird and eerie children's television and literature via critical analysis, memoir and autoethnography. There has been an explosion of interest in the impact of children's television and literature of the late twentieth century. In particular, the 1970s, '80s and '90s are seen as decades that shaped a great deal of the contemporary cultural landscape. Television of this period dominated the world of childhood entertainment, drawing freely upon literature and popular culture, like the Garbage Pail Kids and Stranger Things, and much of it continues to resonate powerfully with the generation of cultural producers (fiction writers, screenwriters, directors, musicians and artists) that grew up watching the weird, the eerie and the horrific: the essence of 21st-century Hauntology. In these terms this book is not about children's television as it exists now, but rather as it features as a facet of memory in the 21st century. As such it is the legacy of these television programmes that is at the core of Horrifying Children. The 'haunting' of adults by what we have seen on the screen is crucial to the study. This collection directly addresses that which 'scared us' in the past insomuch as there is a correlation between individual and collective cultural memory, with some chapters providing an opportunity for situating existing explorations and understandings of Gothic and Horror TV within a hauntological and experiential framework.
Hanna and Barbera: Conversations
Hanna and Barbera: Conversations presents a lively portrait of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, the influential producers behind Tom and Jerry, the Flintstones, Scooby-Doo, the Smurfs, and hundreds of other cartoon characters who continue to entertain the world today. Encompassing more than fifty years of film and television history, the conversations in this volume include first-person accounts by the namesakes of the Hanna-Barbera studio as well as recollections by artists and executives who worked closely with the pair for decades. It is the first collection of its kind about Hanna and Barbera, likely the most prolific animation producers of the twentieth century, whose studio once outflanked its competitor Walt Disney in output and influence. Bill Hanna fell into animation in 1930 at the Harman-Ising studio in Los Angeles, gaining skills across the phases of production as MGM opened its animation studio. Joe Barbera, a talented and sociable artist, entered the industry around the same time at the wild and woolly Van Beuren studio in Manhattan, learning the ins and outs of animation art before crossing the country to join MGM. In television, Hanna's timing and community-oriented work ethic along with Barbera's knack for sales and creating funny characters enabled Hanna-Barbera to build a roster of beloved cartoon series. A wide range of pieces map Hanna and Barbera's partnership, from their early days in Hollywood in the 1930s to Cartoon Network in the 1990s, when a new generation took the reins of their animation studio. Relatively unknown when they made over one hundred Tom and Jerry theatrical cartoons at MGM in the 1940s and 1950s, Hanna and Barbera became household names upon entering the new medium of television in 1957. Discussions here chart their early primetime successes as well as later controversies surrounding violence, overseas production, and the lack of quality in their Saturday morning cartoons. With wit, candor, insight, and bravado, Hanna and Barbera: Conversations reflects on Bill and Joe's breakthroughs and shortcomings, and their studio's innovations and retreads.
A Critical Companion to Sofia Coppola
This volume offers eight interdisciplinary readings to the films of Sofia Coppola, analyzing her oeuvre with a focus on her treatment of masculinity, sexual politics, bodies, and love.
Stigmatized on Screen
This book analyzes the 500 top-grossing films of the last 20 years to show how speakers of traditionally stigmatized dialects are represented, underrepresented, misrepresented, and mocked. Ultimately, the author demonstrates how Hollywood reinforces long-standing negative beliefs about the languages of marginalized communities.
Between accident and control
"Between accident and control: the poetic dimension of contemporary video documentary" investigates the relationship between the plastic character and the documentary nature of images produced from reality. The text reflects on the creation of a new documentary language from the 1980s onwards, with the incorporation of electronic media into audiovisual productions, and the influence of video art on the work of new directors.
Smoldering Lust
The groundbreaking inside look at the making - and unmaking - of a network TV series, back in print for the first time in thirty years. Smoldering Lust seemed like a sure-fire hit for NBC - a sexy new comedy-drama starring Kate Capshaw from Jay Tarses, the acclaimed, Emmy-awarding winning writer/producer of The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, Buffalo Bill and The Bob Newhart Show. But things started to go wrong from the start and author Vance Muse was there to witness it all, from the development, casting, and production of the show all the way to the disastrous test screening, the long-delayed broadcast premiere under the new title Black Tie Affair, and its demise after only five of the thirteen produced episodes. It is an unparalleled expose of the culture and business of network television that is as relevant today as it was in 1994. This new edition features an Afterword by Ken Levine, the Emmy and WGA award-winning writer/producer of M*A*S*H and Cheers. "An entertaining autopsy of a failed NBC TV drama/comedy. Don't worry if you never saw or even heard of the show. Muse makes it interesting, providing colorful chapters on everything...and populates the scene-behind-the-scenes with comic episodes and likable, three-dimensional characters who really seem to love what they do." Kirkus Reviews "The book confirms what you suspect: Hollywood is a miserable place and sometimes good shows fail and bad shows succeed." Fort Worth Star-Telegram "An amusing narrative that is at its best when showing the nuts-and-bolts aspects of television production." New York TimesPreviously published as We Bombed in Burbank: A Joyride to Prime Time
Nollywood Movie Reviews
About the BookNollywood Movie Reviews is a literary commentary on films made in the English-speaking enclave of West Africa. Besides general adult readerships, it's a project geared toward educating primary and secondary school students about the new and burgeoning film industry in the region. Most recently schools in this region have added study of film to their curriculum, hence the importance of this publication. Included in this production are several interviews with Nollywood and Ghallyood actors and actresses, directors, and producers who sat for us.About the AuthorAli S. Baylay has a diploma in Radio and Television Broadcasting and an FCC broadcast license (expired) from Carolina School of Broadcasting, Charlotte, North Carolina. He also attends Central Piedmont Community College and is working on a Graphic Arts Printing Management Degree. He has attended lots of creative writing seminars and workshops and has written and coproduced a now trending YouTube movie, "Watchin' Lydia." In 2006 he started a web magazine, African Moviestar.com, with almost 150 films reviewed and has interviewed about twenty movie personalities.Ali is a printer by occupation and spends lots of his time writing film reviews or developing new screenplays, and he is an avid reader.
Winter Kept Us Warm
Widely considered to be English Canada's first queer film, Winter Kept Us Warm explores a romance between two young men at the University of Toronto in the early 1960s, a moment when homosexuality was still a crime in Canada. A true student film, Winter was written and directed by David Secter, a twenty-two-year-old English major, shot with amateur actors and a volunteer crew, and completed on a budget of only $8,000. Against the odds, the film was a huge success. Lauded by critics at home and abroad, it was selected to open the Commonwealth Film Festival, played art house cinemas across the United States and Europe, and became the first Anglo-Canadian fiction feature to screen at Cannes. Influential film journals including Sight and Sound and Cahiers du cin矇ma covered it, as did mainstream publications such as Variety and the New York Times. David Cronenberg has cited it as influential on his own work. Despite this acclaim, the film has largely vanished from the cultural consciousness and few queer people today have even heard of it, let alone seen it. With this new addition to the Queer Film Classics series, Chris Dupuis looks at the disconnect between the film's historical importance and its subsequent disappearance, examining how the story of Winter Kept Us Warm can serve as a starting point for intergenerational queer dialogue.
Cinema, Black Suffering, and Theodicy
This book analyzes how films depict God when black characters experience suffering and tragedy to elucidate how cinema often portrays a God that is considered supportive, yet who does little to mitigate suffering. This sparks theodical contemplation on the role of divinity in protecting people from the consequences of human depravity.
Animals in Narrative Film and Television
This book explores fictional representations of animals in animated and live-action film and television and examines the way these representations intersect with culture, race, gender, class, disability, and health issues. Contributors analyze the narrative functions of familiar animals as well as fantastic and hybrid creatures.
Television/Death
Television/Death intertwines the study of death, dying and bereavement on television with discussion of the ways that television (and the TV archive) provides access to the dead. Section One explores the representation of death and dying on television, in historical and contemporary television documentaries. It looks at the early history of this genre as well as contemporary documentaries about a range of death and dying experiences, from home deaths to hospice care and assisted dying. Section Two focuses on dramas of grief and bereavement and discusses how contemporary complex serial television drama and comedy, from family melodramas to the ghost serial to afterlife dramadies, present emotionally realist representations of experiences of grief, bereavement and death-related trauma and explore questions like 'What happens to us after we die?' Finally, Section Three proposes that television has been overlooked in critical analyses of how recorded media 'brings back the dead'. It argues that television is the ultimate posthumous medium and looks at how the dead return via incorporation into new television programmes or through projects to bring television out of the archive.
Beyond Realism
Beyond Realism: Naturalist Film in Theory and Practice is the first major critical study of international naturalist cinema. Often mistaken for realist film, international naturalist cinema has a unique cultural and critical history. From its earliest representation in silent films such as Walsh's Regeneration (1915), and Eisenstein's Stachka/Strike (1925), to recent productions such as Chukwu's Clemency (2019), and Aronofsky's The Whale (2022), the naturalist film narrative encompasses the whole of film history, traversing language, movement, and genre. The naturalist film is predicated on two foundational, intersecting paradigms that configure as one ideological system in an overarching scientific and social experimental narrative. Either the scientific or social paradigm may be dominant in the film narrative or they may simply co-exist, but a naturalist film reveals both templates and, most significantly, suggests an implicit cinematic anthropology that renders the body as an observed spectacle.
Filming Death
End-of-life documentaries have proliferated in the 21st century as various organisations, institutions, journalists, independent filmmakers, and members of the public have wanted to give death and dying a face in the public discussion. Each documentary film that concerns individuals with a terminal illness, in hospice care, or desiring assisted death, redefines cultural expectations of what dying is and feels like. These films invite their viewers to witness intimate and emotional moments of dying people, including moments on their deathbed. Filming Death explores these documentaries as ethical spaces, asking the viewers to learn how to engage with end-of-life through the experiences of others and to find ways to alleviate potential death anxiety. The book argues that the diversity of documentary films resists simplified moral divisions between good and bad death, and instead, embellishes diverse realities where dying takes many forms, ranging from death acceptance to raging to death.
AI in the Movies
AI in the Movies analyses film representations of artificial intelligence, from their first emergence in the 1950s up to 2020. These strong or general artificial intelligences take different forms: some are digital AIs, some robot AIs, some move between material and digital forms. Some are indistinguishable from humans, and some have no material existence at all. Analysis of these representations demonstrates filmmakers eroding the division between human and AI, by presenting character doubles, narrative parallels and eventually, identities in which the biological and artificial overlap and intersect in new hybrid forms.The book identifies the aspects of AI science that fascinate filmmakers and outlines the key themes and tropes in AI film, including parent-child relationships, the female robot, human-AI doubles, parallels and hybrids, and AI death and mortality.
Puzzling Stories
Many films and novels defy our ability to make sense of the plot. While puzzling storytelling, strange incongruities, inviting enigmas and persistent ambiguities have been central to the effects of many literary and cinematic traditions, a great deal of contemporary films and television series bring such qualities to the mainstream-but wherein lies the attractiveness of perplexing works of fiction? This collected volume offers the first comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and trans-medial approach to the question of cognitive challenge in narrative art, bringing together psychological, philosophical, formal-historical, and empirical perspectives from leading scholars across these fields.
Economic Evaluation of Film Industry in the case of Ethiopia
Creative industries provide significant contributions to sustain economic development in both developed and developing countries. The film industry is one of the sub-sectors of the creative industries. Ethiopia is one of the first countries in the continent to experience film as a technology and an art form since its invention hundred years before. Since then the country has gone through different development stages that range from analogue to celluloid to digital.This book examines the Ethiopian film industry, beginning with the period of increased production following the collapse of the country's communist Derg regime in 1991. Focusing on the last three decades, the economic aspects of the movie industry in Ethiopia was analyzed in my work. It is aimed to examine the economic contribution of the film industry in Ethiopia and its potential for the future development of Ethiopia as well as to identify the key challenges that face the film industry not to play a significant role in the development of the Ethiopian economy, along with a way forward.
Accidental Archivism
In the digital media ecology, archives are changing. Artists, curators, critics and scholars assume the role of accidental archivists. They shape cinema's futures by salvaging precarious repositories and making them matter in new ways. In the process, the cinema's public, a democratic body seemingly scattered about platforms and niches in a post-pandemic world, re-emerges as a political force.Accidental Archivism brings together programmatic statements and proposals to explore an artistic space between archiving and activism, a space where remnants of the past become the building blocks of new ways of making, showing, teaching and thinking cinema.
Serge Daney and Queer Cinephilia
French critic Serge Daney was a central figure in film, television and media criticism of the second half of the twentieth century. He died of AIDS in 1992, just as the concept of queer cinema entered international film studies and just before the start of the digital era that has transformed film culture. This collection of new essays investigates the legacy of Daney's work alongside considerations of feminist, queer and digital cinephilia and contemporary practices of film curation.
Anime, Philosophy and Religion
Anime is exploding on the worldwide stage! Anime has been a staple in Japan for decades, strongly connected to manga. So why has anime become a worldwide sensation? A cursory explanation is the explosion of online streaming services specializing in anime, like Funimation and Crunchyroll. Even more general streaming services like Netflix and Amazon have gotten in on the game.Anime is exotic to Western eyes and culture. That is one of the reasons anime has gained worldwide popularity. This strange aesthetic draws the audience in only to find it is deeper and more sophisticated than its surface appearance. Japan is an honor and shame culture. Anime provides a platform to discuss "universal" problems facing human beings. It does so in an amazing variety of ways and subgenres, and often with a sense of humor. The themes, characters, stories, plotlines, and development are often complex. This makes anime a deep well of philosophical, metaphysical, and religious ideas for analysis.International scholars are represented in this book. There is a diversity of perspectives on a diversity of anime, themes, content, and analysis. It hopes to delve deeper into the complex world of anime and demonstrate why it deserves the respect of scholars and the public alike.
Jean-Luc Godard
JEAN-LUC GODARD: THE PASSION OF CINEMAVOLUME 1: TO 1968By Jeremy Mark RobinsonThere's no one else quite like Jean-Luc Godard, one of the most significant and inspiring filmmakers of recent times. Where the flood of movies globally now runs into many thousands, Godard's works stand out as original, acerbic, romantic, ironic, controversial, humorous and explorative. This book considers all of Godard's works in cinema, from his early short films and the important success and cultural impact of Breathless through the remarkable series of movies of the 1960s to the latest feature films. The book is split into two volumes: Jean-Luc Godard: The Passion of Cinema/ La Passion deuCinema: Volume 1: To 1968Jean-Luc Godard: The Passion of Cinema/ La Passion du Cinema: Volume 2: From 1968Volume 1 includes a biography of Godard; an exploration of aspects of his cinema; and chapters on movies such as Breathless, Vivre Sa Vie, Contempt, A Band Apart, Pierrot le Fou, Alphaville, One Plus One, Weekend, Two or Three Things I Know About Her, La Chinoise, A Married Woman and Masculine/ Feminine. EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER 2: "GODARD BIOGRAPHY"With ? Bout du Souffle, Godard produced one of the first, great French New Wave movies, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, and written by, among others, Fran癟ois Truffaut. ? Bout du Souffle, with its cool Parisian milieu, its filmic and film noir allusions, handheld camera, direct sound, startling editing and self-conscious performances from Belmondo and Seberg, established Godard as one of the major voices of postwar cinema, a reputation which Godard built on in subsequent early films such as Le Petit Soldat (1960), Une Femme Est Une Femme (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le M矇pris (1963), Bande ? Part (1964), and Une Femme Mari矇e (1964).In these films of the early to mid-1960s, Godard developed a radical, polemical series of films as film-essays which confronted issues such as late consumer capitalism, prostitution, labour, politics, ideology, gender, marriage, music, popular culture, Hollywood and not forgetting cinema itself.Fully illustrated. Bibliography, filmography, Godardisms and notes.
Hitchology
Murder! Mothers! Men on the run!Film fans know these are just a few key ingredients of Alfred Hitchcock's movies. When Hitchcock fused these elements with his innovative directorial approach, that blend of familiar themes and stylistic ingenuity became known as 'Hitchcockian'. In a refreshingly original way, HITCHOLOGY considers how Hitchcock used these narrative tropes and formal flourishes to create some of cinema's most unforgettable experiences.Alongside unique takes on every film and TV episode Hitchcock directed, HITCHOLOGY also examines his collaborators, his cameos, other films in the Hitchcock cinematic universe, and more. Passionately written with wit and warmth, HITCHOLOGY is an accessible introduction for newcomers to Hitchcock, and an insightful companion for devoted fans.
The City on Screen
'The City on Screen: Modern Strangers of Cinematic Istanbul' attempts to analyze how Istanbul is captured through the projector; in other words, the ontological relationship between city and film and how it is elaborated within the context of Istanbul and the sense of strangerhood. This book shifts the axis of Istanbul, typically known as a touristic city, to its underlying details through the strangers in the modern city. Five different films set in this region are analyzed in the text that help to reveal and clarify the socio-urban life of modern Istanbul. The characters and stories in these films tell how Istanbul has socially and architecturally become a city of strangers. The films analyzed include 'A Touch of Spice' (2004), 'Men on the Bridge' (2009), 'A Run for Money' (1999), 'Distant' (2002), and '10 to 11' (2009). The theoretical framework of this book is based on the works of Georg Simmel, Zygmunt Bauman and Richard Sennett. These three thinkers have all attempted to look for answers to the sociological question of strangerhood in urban living. This book accomplishes this connection by discussing the similarities and differences between each of their theories regarding the city, cinema and strangerhood.
Indigeneity in Latin American Cinema
Indigeneity in Latin American Cinema explores how contemporary films (2000-2020) participate in the evolution and circulation of images and sounds that in many ways define how indigenous communities are imagined, at a local, regional and global scale. The volume reviews the diversity of portrayals from a chronological, geopolitical, linguistic, epistemic-ontological, transnational and intersectional, paradigm-changing and self-representational perspective, allocating one chapter to each theme. The corpus of this study consists of 68 fictional features directed by non-indigenous filmmakers, 31 cinematic works produced by indigenous directors/communities, and 22 Cine Regional (Regional Cinema) films. The book also draws upon a significant number of engravings, drawings, paintings, photographs and films, produced between 1493 and 2000, as primary sources for the historical review of the visual representations of indigeneity. Through content and close (textual) analysis, interviews with audiences, surveys and social media posts analysis, the author looks at the contexts in which Latin American films circulate in international festivals and the paradigm shifts introduced by self-representational cinema and Roma (Mexico, 2018). Conclusively, the author provides the foundations of histrionic indigeneity, a theory that explains how overtly histrionic proclivities play a significant role in depictions of an imagined indigenous Other in recent films.
The Intruder
In 1991, Jean-Luc Nancy's heart gave out. In one of the first such procedures in France, a stranger's heart was grafted into his body. Numerous complications followed, including more surgeries and lymphatic cancer. The procedure and illnesses he endured revealed to him, in a more visceral way than most of us ever experience, the strangeness of bodily existence itself and surviving the stranger within him. During this same period, Europe began closing its borders to those seeking refuge from war and poverty. Alarmed at this trend and drawn to a highly intimate form of strangeness with which he had been living for years, Nancy set out in The Intruder to articulate how intrusion--whether of a body or a border--is not antithetical to one's identity but constitutive of it. In 2004, Claire Denis adapted The Intruder into a film already hailed among the most important of our century. This edition includes Nancy's and Denis's accounts of turning philosophy into film and the text of a shorter collaboration between the two of them. Throughout, Nancy and Denis push us to recognize that to truly welcome strangers means a constant struggle against exoticism, enforced assimilation, and confidence in our own self-identity.
The Film of the Islamic State
The film of the so-called Islamic State is part of the still relatively opaque history of radical Sunni Islamist video propaganda, a field in which it is simultaneously its strongest exponent. Through its imports of aesthetics in the age of digitalization and the concurrent de-professionalization of film, this violent propaganda film has interestingly drawn attention for its seeming likeness to Hollywood film, an odd comparison that the Islamic State itself opposes through its own filmic antagonisms to commercial cinema. In an intermittent attempt at attacking cinematic illusionism, it has made increasing use of cinematic devices in order to communicate its violent and anti-humanist ideology - and has thereby entered a state of filmic self-contradiction. This book analyzes and uncovers the mechanisms and dynamics of ideological communication in the Islamic State's videos through a combined historical and neoformalist approach, making them predictable for future researchers.
Tom Cruise
Chris Wade explores the film career of TOM CRUISE, the most popular movie star of our time and one of the most celebrated actors in cinema history. In a series of essays, Wade celebrates Cruise's work over the past four decades; his first movie parts of the early 80s, including The Outsiders and Taps; his star making turns in such films as Risky Business, Top Gun and Cocktail; seminal late 80s classics Rain Man and Born on the Fourth of July; such 90s mega hits as The Firm, A Few Good Men, Interview the Vampire and Jerry Maguire; his acclaimed turns in such films as Eyes Wide Shut, Magnolia and Vanilla Sky; the remarkable Mission: Impossible films, which began in 1996 and are still being released to this day; and everything else in between. In this book, Wade dissects Cruise's work in all these films and more, homing in on his remarkable attention to detail, his laser-focused work ethic, and the many stand out performances he has given us over the years.
Unhomed
In this rich cultural history, Pamela Roberston Wojcik examines America's ambivalent and shifting attitude toward homelessness. She considers film cycles from five distinct historical moments that show characters who are unhomed and placeless, mobile rather than fixed--characters who fail, resist, or opt out of the mandate for a home of one's own. From the tramp films of the silent era to the 2021 Oscar-winning Nomadland, Wojcik reveals a tension in the American imaginary between viewing homelessness as deviant and threatening or emblematic of freedom and independence. Blending social history with insights drawn from a complex array of films, both canonical and fringe, Wojcik effectively "unhomes" dominant narratives that cast aspirations for success and social mobility as the focus of American cinema, reminding us that genres of precarity have been central to American cinema (and the American story) all along.
The Prison of Time
We are imprisoned in circadian rhythms, as well as in our life reviews that follow chronological and causal links. For the majority of us our lives are vectors directed toward aims that we strive to reach and delimited by our birth and death. Nevertheless, we can still experience fleeting moments during which we forget the past and the future, as well as the very flow of time. During these intense emotions, we burst out laughing or crying, or we scream with pleasure, or we are mesmerized by a work of art or just by eyes staring at us. Similarly, when we watch a film, the screening time has a well defined beginning and end, and screening and diegetic time and their relations, together with narrative and stylistic techniques, determine a time within the time of our life with its own rules and exceptions. Through the close analysis of Stanley Kubrick's, Adrian Lyne's, Michael Bay's and Quentin Tarantino's oeuvres, this book discusses the overall 'dominating' time of their films and the moments during which this 'ruling' time is disrupted and we momentarily forget the run toward the diegetic future - suspense - or the past - curiosity and surprise. It is in these very moments, as well as in our own lives, that the prison of time, through which the film is constructed and that is constructed by the film itself, crumbles displaying our role as spectators, our deepest relations with the film.
The Art of the B Movie Poster
Exploding off the page with over 1,000 of the best examples of exploitation, grindhouse, and pulp film poster design comes The Art of the B-Movie Poster, a collection of incredible posters from low-budget films from the 1940s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. Once relegated to the underground and midnight movie circuit, these films and their bombastic advertisements are experiencing a surge of mainstream popularity driven by fans appreciative of the artistic skill, distinctive aesthetic, and unabashed sensationalism they relied on to make a profit, with the quality of the poster often far surpassing that of the film itself. The book celebrates this tradition with sections divided into "moral panic" films, action, horror, sci-fi, and of course, sex, each introduced with short essays by genre experts such as Kim Newman, Eric Schaffer, Simon Sheridan, Vern, and author Stephen Jones, winner of the Horror Writer's Association 2015 Bram Stoker Award for Non-Fiction. Edited by Adam Newell and featuring an introduction by author and filmmaker Pete Tombs, The Art of the B-Movie Poster is a loving tribute to the artwork and artists that brought biker gangs, jungle girls, James Bond rip-offs and reefer heads to life for audiences around the world.
Science Fiction Double Feature
Critical discussion of cult cinema has often noted its tendency to straddle or ignore boundaries, to pull together different sets of conventions, narrative formulas, or character types for the almost surreal pleasure to be found in their sudden juxtapositions or narrative combination. With its own boundary-blurring nature--as both science and fiction, reality and fantasy--science fiction has played a key role in such cinematic cult formation. This volume examines that largely unexplored relationship, looking at how the sf film's own double nature neatly matches up with a persistent double vision common to the cult film. It does so by bringing together an international array of scholars to address key questions about the intersections of sf and cult cinema: how different genre elements, directors, and stars contribute to cult formation; what role fan activities, including "con" participation, play in cult development; and how the occulted or "bad" sf cult film works. The volume pursues these questions by addressing a variety of such sf cult works, including Robot Monster (1953), Zardoz (1974), A Boy and His Dog (1975), Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), Space Truckers (1996), Ghost in the Shell 2 (2004), and Iron Sky (2012). What these essays afford is a revealing vision of both the sf aspects of much cult film activity and the cultish aspects of the whole sf genre.
Nosferatu in the 21st Century
'Nosferatu' in the 21st Century is a celebration and a critical study of F. W. Murnau's seminal vampire film Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens on the 100th anniversary of its release in 1922.The movie remains a dark mirror to the troubled world we live in seeing it as striking and important in the 2020s as it was a century ago. The unmistakable image of Count Orlok has traveled from his dilapidated castle in old world Transylvania into the futuristic depths of outerspace in Star Trek and beyondas the all-consuming shadow of the vampire spreads ever wider throughout contemporary popular culture. This innovative collection of essays, with a foreword by renowned Dracula expert Gary D. Rhodes, brings together experts in the field alongside creative artists to explore the ongoing impact of Murnau's groundbreaking movie as it has been adapted, reinterpreted, and recreated across multiple mediums from theatre, performance and film, to gaming, music and even drag. As such, 'Nosferatu' in the 21st Century is not only a timely and essential book about Murnau's film but also illuminates the times that produced it and the world it continues to influence.
Poltergeist
'Created' by Steven Spielberg yet officially directed by Tobe Hooper, Poltergeist (1982) can be best described as 'family horror movie' both in its target audience and in its narrative context, the story of an All-American suburban family, the Freelings, whose home suddenly becomes the site of a spectacular haunting, apparently summoned by their young daughter. The film is somewhat of an anachronism and this Devil's Advocate explores this in both the scope of production and narrative.The book discusses the duality of the text highlighting debates surrounding both Spielberg's somewhat saccharine portrayal of middle-class Americana and his more subversive cinematic endeavours. The duality of the text also will also be discussed in the context of the film's production - with both Spielberg and Hooper on set for much of the time, the result was a movie with the production values, effects and marketing of a high budget mainstream cinema blockbuster apparently directed by a subversive 'grindhouse' cinema auteur. Yet Poltergeist is neither nor both of those things, instead being a unique hybrid of genres and styles taking the best and worst from both aspects of family blockbuster and cult horror film, and as such can be seen as a text that is something unique - a classic modern take on the traditional haunted house story.
I Walked with a Zombie
I Walked with a Zombie (1943), Val Lewton's second feature for RKO Radio Pictures, was described by critic Robin Wood as 'perhaps the most delicate poetic fantasy in the American Cinema.' Following immediately in the wake of the groundbreaking Cat People (1942), Zombie pioneered an even more radical narrative approach yet proved to be the critical and commercial equal of its predecessor, cementing the reputation of both Lewton and his director, Jacques Tourneur.Despite the lurid, studio-imposed title, I Walked with a Zombie is a subtle and ambiguous visual poem that advanced a daring condemnation of slavery and colonialism at a time when such themes were being actively suppressed by government censors. Clive Dawson charts the complex development and production of the project, essential to understanding the concerns of the filmmakers in the context of wartime Hollywood, then analyses the film in detail, referencing a broad range of academic studies of the audio-visual text and distilling new insight into its layers of meaning. Finally, he explores the film's reception, and the influence it exerted on the horror genre and beyond. Extensive primary research has uncovered a wealth of previously unpublished new material that solves many unanswered questions and dispels various myths about this utterly unique film.
Jacques Rivette and French New Wave Cinema
This first comprehensive English collection of the interviews of Jacques Rivette (19282016) documents his career through chronology, filmography, bibliography, and image stills. A comprehensive introduction places this work in the wider context of twentieth-century social change. Rivettes films, like many of the works of the French New Wave, seem to have avoided the aging process entirely, remaining as playful, fresh, and quietly spectacular as the day they were made. Indeed, his body of work may be the most impressive of the French New Wave. Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974) has been recognized as possibly the best film to emerge from the post-New Wave era, even as Paris Belongs to Us (1961) is one of the best pictures to emerge from the New Wave itself. Rivette was hardly the most prolific director, however, and the length of his films has often counted against him. Nonetheless, his clinical, self-reflexive essays in film form reveal him as a cinematic purist whose commitment to the celluloid muse hardly diminished from the heady days of the early 1950s to the end of his career in 2009. Beyond inspiring the New Wave movement and continuing to reflect, and reflect on, its central tenets, Rivettes enduring contribution to the history of film is unquestionably evident in his sensitive treatment of the histories and destinies of women, especially through strong roles for actresses. During the six decades of his career, nonetheless, he struck a subtle balance not only between female and male characters, but also between political and personal obsession, between myth and fiction, between theater and cinema, in films that, in addition to having influenced such contemporary filmmakers as Claire Denis, Jim Jarmusch, Olivier Assayas, and David Lynch, continue to redefine the art of cinema around the world.
Cahiers Du Cinema
Cahiers du Cinema: Interviews with Film Directors, 19531970 brings together eighteen directorsOtto Preminger, Roberto Rossellini, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Max Ophuls, Nicholas Ray, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Michelangelo Antonioni, Carl-Theodor Dreyer, Federico Fellini, Robert Bresson, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Jean Renoir, and Eric Rohmer -- who are among the leading auteurs in the history of the cinema. The interviews were all commissioned for the legendary movie journal Cahiers du Cinema (the oldest such French-language magazine in continuous publication), the first critical enterprise to treat films, particularly Hollywood films, as a serious art form. Co-founded in 1951 by Andre Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca, Cahiers was edited, after 1957, by Rohmer himself, including among its writers (and interviewers) Jacques Rivette, Godard, Claude Chabrol, and Truffaut -- all of whom went on to become highly influential filmmakers. Conducted in Cahiers famously in-depth, critical and engaged style, the interviews in this volume catch each director at a crucial juncture in his development as an artist, and stand as a historical record of the dominance of the Euro-American tradition in cinematic art. This is the first such collection of its kind in English, edited with a contextualizing introduction, critical biographies, career filmographies, and a comprehensive index by the American scholar James R. Russo.
