You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Renowned film scholar R. Barton Palmer explores the historical, ideological, economic, and technical developments that led Hollywood filmmakers of the late 1940s and 1950s to increasingly head outside the studio and capture footage of real places. Examining works ranging from Sunset Blvd. to The Searchers, Shot on Location discovers the massive influence that wartime newsreels had on the postwar Hollywood film, as the blurring of the formal boundaries between cinematic journalism and fiction lent a "reality effect" to otherwise implausible stories.
The essays in this collection analyse major film adaptations of twentieth-century American fiction, from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon to Toni Morrison's Beloved. During the century, films based on American literature came to play a central role in the history of the American cinema. Combining cinematic and literary approaches, this volume explores the adaptation process from conception through production and reception. The contributors explore the ways political and historical contexts have shaped the transfer from book to screen, and the new perspectives that films bring to literary works. In particular, they examine how the twentieth-century literary modes of realism, modernism, and postmodernism have influenced the forms of modern cinema. Written in a lively and accessible style, the book includes production stills and full filmographies. Together with its companion volume on nineteenth-century fiction, the volume offers a comprehensive account of the rich tradition of American literature on screen.
From The Maltese Falcon (1941) to Touch of Evil (1958), the classic film noir is easily recognizable for its unusual lighting, sinister plots, and feeling of paranoia. For critics and fans alike, these films defined an era. The Philosophy of Film Noir explores philosophical themes and ideas inherent in classic noir and neo-noir films, establishing connections to diverse thinkers ranging from Camus to the Frankfurt School. The authors, each focusing on a different aspect of the genre, explore the philosophical underpinnings of classic films such as The Big Sleep (1946), Out of the Past (1947), and Pulp Fiction (1994). They show how existentialism and nihilism dominate the genre as they explore profound themes in a vital area of popular culture.
From its beginnings, the American film industry has profited from bringing popular and acclaimed dramatic works to the screen. This is the first book to offer a comprehensive account, focusing on key texts, of how Hollywood has given a second and enduring life to such classics of the American theater as Long Day's Journey into Night, A Streetcar Named Desire and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Each chapter is written by a leading scholar and focuses on Broadway's most admired and popular productions. The book is ideally suited for classroom use and offers an otherwise unavailable introduction to a subject which is of great interest to students and scholars alike.
"Film Noir explores the murky world of a genre responsible for many of film's most enduring images. Mark Bould discusses problems of definition and the often ambiguous nature of film noir and looks at contemporary 'neo-noir' films. Iconic and enduring, film noir attracted great stars (Bogart, Bacall, Mitchum, Lancaster), many of the best directors of the postwar period (Wilder, Lang, Preminger, Hawks, Siodmak, Welles) and in considering the history and continuing importance of noir, from Weimar Cinema to Sin City, this book is an indispensible guide to this still popular genre."--
Table of contents
This collection provides a comprehensive reading of Machaut’s literary and musical corpus that privileges his engagement with contemporary political, ethical, and aesthetic concerns of late medieval culture as well as his reception by artists and thinkers, medieval and modern.
The modern concept of passing leisure hours pleasantly would, in the Middle Ages, have fallen under the rubric of Sloth, a deadly sin. Yet aristocrats of past centuries were not always absorbed in affairs of state or warfare. What did they do in moments of peace, "downtime" as we might call it today? In this collection of essays, scholars from various disciplines investigate courtly modes of entertainment ranging from the vigorous to the intellectual: hunting, jousting, horse racing; physical and verbal games; reading, writing, and book ownership. Favorite pastimes spanned differences of gender and age, and crossed geographical and cultural boundaries. Literary and historical examples come f...
An authoritative companion that offers a wide-ranging thematic survey of this enduringly popular cultural form and includes scholarship from both established and emerging scholars as well as analysis of film noir's influence on other media including television and graphic novels. Covers a wealth of new approaches to film noir and neo-noir that explore issues ranging from conceptualization to cross-media influences Features chapters exploring the wider ‘noir mediascape’ of television, graphic novels and radio Reflects the historical and geographical reach of film noir, from the 1920s to the present and in a variety of national cinemas Includes contributions from both established and emerging scholars
The core volume in the Traditions in World Cinema series, this book brings together a colourful and wide-ranging collection of world cinematic traditions - national, regional and global - all of which are in need of introduction, investigation and, in some cases, critical reassessment. Topics include: German expressionism, Italian neorealism, French New Wave, British new wave, Czech new wave, Danish Dogma, post-Communist cinema, Brazilian post-Cinema Novo, new Argentine cinema, pre-revolutionary African traditions, Israeli persecution films, new Iranian cinema, Hindi film songs, Chinese wenyi pian melodrama, Japanese horror, new Hollywood cinema and global found footage cinema.Features*Includes a preface by Toby Miller.*Each chapter covers a key world cinema tradition and is written by an expert in the field: Roy Armes, Nitzan Ben-Shaul, Peter Bondanella, Corey Creekmur, Adrian Danks, Peter Hames, Randal Johnson, Robert Kolker, Myrto Konstantarakos, Jay McRoy, Negar Mottahedeh, Richard Neupert, Christina Stojanova, J.P. Telotte, Stephen Teo.*Traditions are examined from a wide range of views and include historical, social, cultural and industrial perspectives.