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In this book, Justin Russell Greene examines how Quentin Tarantino uses his auteur identity to further cement the masculine tropes of Hollywood – and ultimately, society – through language, visual aesthetics, and performative representations of masculinity in his films and media appearances. Greene posits that the careful crafting of his auteur persona allows Tarantino to project a consistent version of what it means to be a writer-director-artist, and that through his interview and speeches, he reveals the deeper intensions behind the representations his characters present in his films. However, although he is valorized by audiences, media personalities, and peers as an artistic genius,...
A sharp, funny, and deeply engaging memoir, A Reluctant Film Critic traces Gerald Peary's unlikely journey from a bookish, movie-obsessed boy in small-town America to one of the country's most distinctive critical voices. Told in vivid, fast-moving vignettes, it's a story of curiosity, rebellion, and discovery, of a life spent both inside and outside the darkened cinema, forever questioning what it means to watch, to feel, and to judge. I've always admired Gerald Peary's boldness as a critic, his political savvy, deep knowledge of film history, and contrarian aesthetic judgment. Over more than fifty years we've also had many spirited disagreements, which I value in a critic and friend who, a...
Dorothy Arzner was the exception in Hollywood film history—the one woman who succeeded as a director, in a career that spanned three decades. In Part One, Dorothy Arzner's film career—her work as a film editor to her directorial debut, to her departure from Hollywood in 1943—is documented, with particular attention to Arzner's roles as "star-maker" and "woman's director." In Part Two, Mayne analyzes a number of Arzner's films and discusses how feminist preoccupations shape them, from the women's communities central to Dance, Girl, Dance and The Wild Party to critiques of the heterosexual couple in Christopher Strong and Craig's Wife. Part Three treats Arzner's lesbianism and the role that desire between women played in her career, her life, and her films.
John Ford at Work: Production Histories 1927-1939 explores the evolution of John Ford's career in the Hollywood studio system of the 1930s as the system itself changed in response to the coming of sound and the business downtown instigated by the Depression. Based upon a decade of research utilizing the studio files of Twentieth Century-Fox, RKO and Samuel Goldwyn, it delineates the director's collaborations with the producers, screen- writers, actors and cinematographers that had the most impact on his production practices. It traces the major literary, cinematic and musical sources from which he drew. It considers relevant changes in film technology and seeks to explain how they were incorporated into his style. Films analyzed include 4 Sons, The Black Watch, Arrowsmith, Air Mail, The Lost Patrol, The Informer, Judge Priest, Steamboat Round the Bend, The Prisoner of Shark Island, Wee Willie Winkie, Stagecoach and Young Mr. Lincoln.
Responsible for some of the greatest films of the 20th century—The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, and The Quiet Man among others—John Ford was best known for motion pictures that defined the American West and the face of wartime military. A Hollywood celebrity, Ford lived his life against the background that Twentieth Century-Fox fashioned for him. As he did, the facts of his life merged with—and became inseparable from—his multifaceted legend, fostered by Hollywood’s studio culture and his own imagination. In The Westerns and War Films of John Ford Sue Mathesonoffers an engaging look at one of America’s greatest directors and the two genres of films that solidified hi...
Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader offers students an introductory and comprehensive view of perhaps the most central concept in film studies. This unique anthology addresses the aesthetic and historical debates surrounding auteurship while providing author criticism and analysis in practice. Examines a number of mainstream and established directors, including John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Douglas Sirk, Frank Capra, Kathryn Bigelow, and Spike Lee Features historically important, foundational texts as well as contemporary pieces Includes numerous student features, such as a general editor's introduction, short prefaces to each of the sections, bibliography, alternative tables of contents, and boxed features Each essay deliberately focuses across film makers’ oeuvres, rather than on one specific film, to enable lecturers to have flexibility in constructing their syllabi
In the New Hollywood Era of the 1960s and 1970s, as weakening studio control granted directors more artistic freedom, the auteur theory, which regards the director as the primary artist among all those who contribute to filmmaking, gained traction. It was embraced by both the media and by directors themselves, who were glad to see their contribution so glorified. One positive was the discovery of filmmakers whose work was under the radar but virtually all the feted directors were white and overwhelmingly heterosexual—only in recent decades have the contributions of marginalized auteur filmmakers been recognized. Mavericks: Interviews with the World's Iconoclast Filmmakers amplifies the voi...
Branded a "cultural Chernobyl" and the "tragic kingdom," the Euro Disney Resort has been on its own thrill ride since opening in 1992. The much publicized version of the Magic Kingdom gave Europeans alcohol-free "mocktails," surly employees, even colors too muted for the Disney image. Facing financial disaster, was it any wonder that Disney execs found themselves wishing upon a star for answers? After so many knee-jerk criticisms of Euro Disney, this book combines firsthand experience and research to shed new light on claims that the park is nothing more than a form of American cultural imperialism. Andrew Lainsbury, a former Euro Disney employee who knows what the park meant to its visitors...
Proceedings of a conference on the topic of Soviet and East European film makers working in the West held at McMaster University in Ontario in March 1989. The volume considers Soviet, Polish, Czech and Hungarian cinema, with particular emphasis on the films by Milos Forman and Jerzy Skolimowski.