Writing Australian History on Screen reveals the depths in Australian history from convict times to the present day. The essays convey perspectives of Australian history on screen taken from an Australian viewpoint in a way that offers insights and an understanding of the unique Australian history and sense of identity.
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.
Examines motion pictures produced or sponsored by Ford Motor Company from a rhetorical perspective, demonstrating how the films reveal a long-term rhetorical project that has helped embed corporations into many of the social systems guiding societies today.
American women who contributed their talents to the silent film industry are still largely unrecognized, in spite of their great influence. This book details the lives and careers of America's first women directors, unveiling the history of those who, with little recognition, helped pave the way for females in the film industry today.
Rolling the credits on six decades of women in film After the advent of sound, women in the British film industry formed an essential corps of below-the-line workers, laboring in positions from animation artist to negative cutter to costume designer. Melanie Bell maps the work of these women decade-by-decade, examining their far-ranging economic ......
The Paths of Zatoichi charts the history and continuing influence of the Japanese film and TV franchise about Zatoichi the blind swordsman, both within the Japanese media industriesand within global popular culture.
How a Beguiling Young Novice, a Handsome Austrian Captain, and Ten Sin
Tom Santopietro has written the ultimate Sound of Music fan book with all the details from behind-the-scenes stories of the filming in Austria and Hollywood to new interviews with Johannes von Trapp and others.
The story of racial hierarchy in the American film industry The #OscarsSoWhite campaign, and the content of the leaked Sony emails which revealed, among many other things, that a powerful Hollywood insider didn't believe that Denzel Washington could "open" a western genre film, provide glaring evidence that the opportunities for people of color ......
John Ford, John Wayne, and the Making of Three Classic Westerns
Like other filmmakers in post-WWII Hollywood, John Ford (already a three-time Best Directing Oscar winner), longed for the freedom and independence to make his own films, away from the dictates of studio executives. Then, in 1946, Ford and producer Merian C. Cooper (King Kong) decided to form their own production company, Argosy Productions. ......
David Finchers Zodiac, the first book-length study of the critically acclaimed 2007 release, offers various critical approaches to the film ranging from early influences, studies in genre and narrative, and media analysis including cinema history, game theory, musicology, and extensions in television studies.
The Evolution of Horror in the Twenty-First Century explores the many aspects of the horror genre across thematics and media in the 2020s. Consisting of 21 original essays by experts in the field, this book examines how horror reveals the anxieties around our current cultural moment and how that might develop in the future.
"Charlie Chaplin: A Reference Guide to His Life and Works captures his life, and legacy. It features a chronology, an introduction offers a brief account of his life, a dictionary section lists entries on Chaplin's childhood, career, family, and associates. The bibliography is one of the largest available bibliographies of works concerning ......
From Mammy to Minny, What the Academy Awards Tell Us about African Ameri
Black Oscars is a timely exploration of the complicated legacy of the Academy Awards and African American participation in film. Reflecting on how the Oscars have recognized Black actors from the award's inception to the present, this book is an indispensable guide to understanding race in mainstream Hollywood and American history.
A Critical Companion to Christopher Nolan provides a wide-ranging exploration of Christopher Nolan's films, practices, and collaborations. From a range of critical perspectives, this volume examines Nolan's body of work, explores its industrial and economic contexts, and interrogates the director's auteur status.
Philip Cowan introduces new approaches to analyzing the art of cinematography and new methodologies for attributing authorship to moving images. Cowan's revisionist examination of the work of Gregg Toland emphasizes the expressive potential of contemporary cinematographers' contribution to visual storytelling.
This book looks at Wonder Woman's creation, mysterious identity, and deep roots in the feminist movement, as well as the cultural and psychological impact she has had on five generations of fans from the Baby Boomers through to today.
This book is an academic study of the work of an important American director working primarily in the action genre. The book explores the ways in which Hill's filmography reveals his point of view and intensifies classical approaches to storytelling.
In this book, Paul Lynch explores the genre of the British conspiracy thriller, a confrontational and dark response to what novelists and filmmakers perceived as an increasingly Orwellian secret state in the political landscape of the time. Through analyses of a variety of film and television productions, Lynch examines the ways in which they were ......
This book challenges past definitions of Italian American cinema and media studies by introducing fresh critical models into the discourse. Proposing new intersectional debates about ethnic identity, including race, class, gender, and sexuality studies, contributors establish new interpretations concerning Italian Americans on screen.
Japanese Horror, Fractured Realities, and New Media
This book examines Japanese horror films released from the 2010s to present day, analyzing the function of computers, smartphones, and social media in the narratives, dissemination, and consumption of these films. Lindsay Nelson argues that the multitude of screens creates a sense of fractured reality in contemporary Japanese horror.
Reconsidering the dynamics of perceptionUsing cinema to explore the visual aspects of alterity, Randall Halle analyzes how we become cognizant of each other and how we perceive and judge another person in a visual field. Halle draws on insights from philosophy and recent developments in cognitive and neuroscience to argue that there is no pure ......
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.
This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Australian and New Zealand Cinema contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on leading films as well as many directors, writers, actors and producers.
Universal Studios produced some of the most famous movie monsters in history including Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, and The Wolf Man. This book looks at each of the key films produced by Universal from 1931 until The Creature Walks among Us in 1956. A concluding chapter will discuss the continued impact of the films.
Critical Essays on a Cannibal, Clarice, and a Nice Chianti
One of only three films to-date to win Academy Awards in all five major categories, The Silence of the Lambs marked a sea change in horror films when it debuted, shifting the genre from teen slasher fare of the 1970s to the sophisticated psychological horror that characterizes acclaimed films today. Praised by some as the first true feminist ......
Representations of Sexual Violence on Prime Time Television Dramas
This book focuses on how various police and police-adjacent agencies present investigations of rape, treat and discuss rape victims, and help to create a lens through which audience members view rape in the real world. The programs discussed in this volume include program The Good Wife, CSI, NCIS, Law & Order SVU, The Closer, and Criminal Minds.
This text examines psychiatry and the cinema. It looks at the typology, mythology, and ideology of the psychiatry in movies. It also examines psychoanalytic film criticism and such issues as narcissm in the cinema, and phallic women in contemporary cinema.
A deep dive into classic noir films and how filmmakers today are refreshing and updating the genre for new generations. In American Film Noir, M. Keith Booker introduces readers to the cult-favorite genre of film noir and discusses the ongoing power and popularity of the genre's key elements and themes in modern films, often considered ......
Although he died at a heartbreakingly young age and appeared in only a handful of movies, James Dean revolutionized American manhood. As a celebrity and icon, he melded vulnerability with determination, sensitivity with strength, in a way that offered a bracing and--for some--threatening new vision of masculinity. His massive influence and the ......
The Dynamic History of the Heroines of Gotham City
Explores the history of Batgirlfrom her groundbreaking comics debut to her disappointing live-action appearances and beyond. For over sixty years, every woman who took on the mantle of Batgirl has been a powerful, independent heroine, belying the sidekick status the name implies. Betty Kane, the original Bat-Girl, was a hero for young girls at a ......
Recording Broadway: A life in Cast Albums is veteran producer Thomas Z. Shepard's first-person account of the making of fifty plus years' worth of show albums, featuring up-close-and-personal stories of his work with pretty much everyone who was anyone on Broadway, including Julie Andrews, Leonard Bernstein ("truly awesome but very complicated"), ......
Successful cult films like The Host and Snowpiercer proved to be harbingers for Bong Joon Ho's enormous breakthrough success with Parasite. Joseph Jonghyun Jeon provides a consideration of the director's entire career and the themes, ambitions, techniques, and preoccupations that infuse his works. As Jeon shows, Bong's sense of spatial and ......
Successful cult films like The Host and Snowpiercer proved to be harbingers for Bong Joon Ho's enormous breakthrough success with Parasite. Joseph Jonghyun Jeon provides a consideration of the director's entire career and the themes, ambitions, techniques, and preoccupations that infuse his works. As Jeon shows, Bong's sense of spatial and ......
