In John Wayne's Way, author Doug Brode explores the film legacy of the Duke and provides commentary on the lessons learned from the archetypes of the West and American manhood Wayne displayed on the silver screen. Complete with quotes and photographs from the movies, these pithy lessons will be appealing to John Wayne fans and Western film buffs.
Representing Women's Intellect in Film and Television
In Smart Chicks on Screen: Representing Women's Intellect in Film and Television, Laura Mattoon D'Amore brings together a collection of essays that examine the disparate portrayals of beauty and brains in film and television. This text will be of interest to scholars of film and television, communications, and women's studies, to name a few.
Consider the usual view of film noir: endless rainy nights populated by down-at-the-heel boxers, writers, and private eyes stumbling toward inescapable doom while stalked by crooked cops and cheating wives in a neon-lit urban jungle. But a new generation of writers is pushing aside the fog of cigarette smoke surrounding classic noir scholarship. ......
This book provides a film-by-film look at the thirty-two movies James Cagney made during the 1930s, from his supporting role in Sinner's Holiday (1930) to the end of the decade as an established star of Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and The Roaring Twenties in 1939.
This volume examines various representation of John F. Kennedy on film, from fictionalized accounts of his wartime exploits-PT-109 (1963)-to his presidency, his assassination, and his legacy. With a focus on docudramas, the book looks at how such films keep the myth of Kennedy and Camelot alive.
This collection addresses the relative scarcity of work relating to food-film studies, showcasing innovative viewpoints about a popular, yet understudied, subject in film. The volume asks provocative questions about food and its relationship with work, urban life, sexual orientation, the family, race, morality, and a wide range of "appetites."
American Film Comedies: From Anarchy to Mockumentary
In this book, Tueth looks at some of the most enduring comic movies of all time. Beginning with the anarchic romp Duck Soup (1933), each chapter explores a specific sub-genre by examining a representative film. Tueth delves into the background of each film's production and discusses their audience reception and critical appraisal.
In this book, noted film and literature scholar Gene D. Phillips looks at the crime film genre. In addition to the usual suspects like Little Caesar, and The Godfather Part II, which he examines with a fresh perspective, Phillips also calls attention to some of the less heralded but no less worthy films and filmmakers that represent the genre.
In Listening to Stanley Kubrick, Christine Gengaro provides an in-depth exploration of the music that was composed for Stanley Kubrick's films and places the preexistent music he utilized into historical context. This book offers a thoroughly researched examination into the musical elements of one of cinema's most brilliant artists.
Place, Setting, Perspective examines the films of the Italian filmmaker, Nanni Moretti, from a fresh viewpoint, employing the increasingly significant research area of space within a filmic text. The book is conceived with the awareness that space cannot be studied only in aesthetic or narrative terms: social, political, and cultural aspects of ......
White hot essays on overlooked aspects of classic film noirConsider the usual view of film noir: endless rainy nights populated by down-at-the-heel boxers, writers, and private eyes stumbling toward inescapable doom while stalked by crooked cops and cheating wives in a neon-lit urban jungle. But a new generation of writers is pushing aside the fog ......
Screening Minors in Latin American Cinema is the first book to examine how Latin American filmmakers represent the subjectivity of children and adolescents in an adult medium. The chapters analyze children's developing agency in diverse social contexts across Latin America.
This volume compares films from the late Cold War era with films of the same genre, or of similar themes, from the post-Cold War era, paying particular attention to shifts in narrative that reflect changes in American culture, attitudes, and ideas. It explains how the absence of the Cold War has changed the way we understand and interpret film.
This collection of essays looks at how films in the last few years have reflected and juxtaposed the ascent of Barack Obama and his administration. The films examined here include The Help, Django Unchained, Lincoln, The Mist, Invictus, Black Dynamite, and The Great Gatsby.
Over the past century or more, the genres of fantasy, horror, and supernatural fiction have increasingly expanded beyond literature and into an array of media-film, television, comic books, and art. Many of the leading figures in the field engage in multimedia enterprises that allow their work to reach a much wider public than the mere readers of ......
Of the twenty or so science fiction films produced in America during the 1950s, there is a fascinating subset of nine films that do more than portray an invasion. These films use the invasions as metaphors for assaults against the integrity of various things, such as the self, marriage, and notions involving the supremacy of the human race.
Using the framework of self-representation, this book rethinks problems of representation of the female body in French cinema and contemporary French culture. By filming themselves, these filmmakers visually claim their roles, establish their authority in the field, and expose new ways to configure representation, gender, and cinema.
This dictionary covers the history of South American Cinema through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced dictionary entries on directors, producers, performers, films, film studios, and genres.
Composing, Casablanca, and the Golden Age of Film Music
Max Steiner is one of the greatest-not to mention most prolific-composers of the Golden Age of Hollywood. The winner of three Academy Awards, Steiner's credits include King Kong, The Informer, Gone with the Wind, Now, Voyager, Since You Went Away, Johnny Belinda, and The Caine Mutiny. Though known for timeless melodies that symbolize the glamor of ......
Desperate young lovers on the lam (They Live by Night), a cynical con man making a fortune as a mentalist (Nightmare Alley), a penniless pregnant girl mistaken for a wealthy heiress (No Man of Her Own), a wounded veteran who has forgotten his own name (Somewhere in the Night) - this gallery of film noir characters challenges the stereotypes of the ......
Everyone seems to know what film noir is, but scholars and critics cannot agree on any definition. Some go so far as to insist that there is no such thing. What is Film Noir? claims that this confusion arises from the fact that film noir is both a genre and a period style, and as such is unique in the history of Hollywood. The genre, now known as ......
Offers a comprehensive history of cinematic pornography that details sex in film from 100 years ago to today. This title discusses the many controversial aspects to the porn film business, including Mafia influences, the impact of the AIDS epidemic on the industry, and the myths and realities behind child pornography.
For the last quarter of a century cinema has given expression to feminist debates about culture, representation and identity. This anthology charts the history of those debates, bringing together significant essays in feminist film theory.
A filmmaker and a film theorist construct a dialogue around a close reading of eight Godard films, in chronological order, beginning with My Life to Live (1962) and ending with New Wave (1990). Their close reading follows the unfolding of the films as if the two were sitting at a flatbed, with the
Probably the prominent living filmmaker, and one of the foremost directors of the postwar era, Jean Luc-Godard has received astonishingly little critical attention in the United States. This title conveys the sense that we are at the movies with Silverman and Farocki, and that we, as both student and participant, are the ultimate beneficiaries.
