"Rarely has a movie this expensive provided so many quotable lines." So spake Roger Ebert in his review of Ghostbusters, the 1984 blockbuster that combined our paranormal fears and fascination with some of the sharpest comic minds of the day. Ghostbusters instantly resonated with audiences thanks to eye-popping special effects and crackling wit; ......
Contributors use a variety of theoretical frameworks to analyze distinct areas of Craven's work, including ecology, auteurism, philosophy, queer studies, and trauma. Scholars of cinema studies, horror, and ecology will find this book of particular interest.
This volume surveys the full breath of American neo-noir, its style and substance, its evolution over succeeding generations of filmmakers, from activist through postmodern to millennial and on.
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 ......
Political Storytelling in Paintings, Music, and Movies
Stories matter. Stories help us digest information, make sense of our world, understand ourselves and remember. This book takes political storytelling seriously. It examines stories as presented in paintings, music, and Films. and concludes with commentary designed to make sense of the role of political stories in our lives.
Bloody Women traces changing gender dynamics in the horror film industry to explore how women have played a crucial role in defining the genre of horror understood as a scholarly discipline, cultural institution, and site of pleasure. While acknowledging that women in the industry face ongoing challenges, this book focuses on their diverse ......
Bloody Women: Women Directors of Horror is the first book-length exploration of female creators at the cutting edge of contemporary horror, turning out some of its most inspired and twisted offerings.
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.
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.
(Applause Books). Featuring rumpled PIs, shyster lawyers, corrupt politicians, double-crossers, femmes fatales, and, of course, losers who find themselves down on their luck yet again, film noir is a perennially popular cinematic genre. This extensive encyclopedia describes movies from noir's earliest days and even before, looking at some of ......
This book examines horror films through a critical criminological lens. Each chapter considers how the genre impacts audiences and their understanding of topics like place, crime, and identity.
Science fiction has hosted some of the greatest minds and most innovative thinkers in human history. From Orson Wells to Octavia Butler, Star Trek to Star Wars, in books, on television, and at the movies, science fiction has shaped our future, pushed the limits of human imagination, and guided us within ourselves to examine the universal truths of ......
This collection focuses on the social forces and ideologies-such as race, class, gender, religion, and the economy-that play a key role in constructing and framing fear, monsters, and the monstrous across a range of films and eras.
Alain Silver and James Ursini, the editors of numerous studies of film noir, present a new anthology of essays that examine the visual style of the filmmakers of cinema s classic period.
(Limelight). Noted film noir historians Alain Silver and James Ursini, acting as editors, concentrate in this work on the thirty key directors of the classic noir period. These include well-known luminaries, such as Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, Nicholas Ray, and Joseph Losey as well as lesser-known lights of noir, such as Gerd Oswald, Felix E. ......
This book examines the significance of the thirty-two Krimi films produced by Rialto Film from 1959 to 1972, canonizing their role in the era of German popular cinema during Krimi's rise to popularity and inevitable decline and evolution.
Gloria Swanson is most remembered today for her role as "Norma Desmond" in Billy Wilder's noir sound classic Sunset Boulevard (1950), but Swanson during her heyday was heralded as filmdom's leading fashion queen, as proclaimed by director Cecil B. DeMille in such silent motion pictures as Male and Female (1919), Why Change YourHusband (1921), and ......
Hybridity, Appropriation, and Intertextuality in Gothic Storytelling
Through an examination of texts from diverse periods and media, Gothic Mash-Ups explores the role that appropriation and intertextuality play in Gothic storytelling. Building on recent scholarship on Gothic remix and adaptation, the contributors demonstrate that the Gothic is ...
Grief in Contemporary Horror Cinema: Screening Loss examines bereavement as it appears in horror films of the last two decades. This book addresses global hits such as Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth and Jennifer Kent's The Babadook as well as lauded arthouse films such as Lars von Trier's Melancholia and Ari Aster's Midsommar.
Representations of Adolf Hitler, the Third Reich, and the Holocaust in C
A 2023 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title Haunted Laughter addresses whether it is appropriate to use comedy as a literary form to depict Adolf Hitler, The Third Reich, and the Holocaust. Guided by existing theories of comedy and memory and through a comprehensive examination of comedic film and television productions, from the United ......
All That's Left to Know About Everyone's Favorite Superspy
(FAQ). A favorite of film followers for 50 years, James Bond is the hero loved by everyone: Men want to be just like him, women just want to be with him. Moviegoers around the world have spent more than $5 billion to watch his adventures across the last five decades. What's not to enjoy about such a glorious multitude of gadgets, gals, grand ......
Critical Essays on Film, Literature, Anime, Video Games
Contemporary Japanese horror is deeply rooted in the folklore of its culture, with fairy tales-like ghost stories embedded deeply into the social, cultural, and religious fabric. Ever since the emergence of the J-horror phenomenon in the late 1990s with the opening and critical success of films such as Hideo Nakata's The Ring (Ringu, 1998) or ......
This study analyzes North Korean comedy films from the late 1960s to present day. It analyzes their role in the culture of the film industry, the subjectivity of the viewer, and the impact popular actors and comedians have had on North Korean society.
This book uses an intercultural communication lens to analyze six cross-cultural films and their depictions of migration, mobility, and the resulting intercultural communications. It argues that the results of these complex and stressful moments of conflict include personal growth, oppression, familial or social separation, and loss of identity.
Reality is made up of absolute and casualty ideals. This book analyzes the lower aspects of absolute ideals that result in personal and social dysfunction and the ultimate end of civilization. Conversely, a society based on casualty and justice is stable and vibrant. It is a classless society, free of gender and ethnic biases.
This book examines how Hollywood has promoted the myth of the American White male savior and the way in which this myth has negatively affected people of color throughout U.S. history.
In this book, Brandon R. Grafius takes the reader on a tour of the dark corners of the Hebrew Bible, using contemporary horror films as a conversation partner. He examines how the Hebrew Bible can be both sacred text and tome of fright, and explores the numerous ways in which the worlds of religion and horror share uncomfortable spaces.
The Crazy True Story Behind the Fight That Saved Zack Snyder's Justice L
A recap of 2017's failed Justice League movie and the fan base effort to unearth director Zack Snyder's unfinished version. Their efforts finally paid off with the recent announcement that Snyder's cut will be release in 2021 by Warner Bros. and HBO Max. This book tells the entire story.
Seeing the Apocalypse: Essays on Bird Box is the first volume to explore Josh Malerman's best-selling novel and its recent film adaptation. The essays in this collection offer an interdisciplinary approach to Bird Box, one that draws on the fields of gender studies, cultural studies, and disability studies.
The autobiography of Harpo Marx's wife, Susan Fleming, tells the story of her time as a Broadway showgirl during the Roaring Twenties, her struggles as an up-and-coming movie actress in 1930s Hollywood, and her twenty-eight-year marriage to Harpo. But her story doesn't end there: Susan rediscovered her own identity as a relatively young widow ......
