Download or read book Acting and Performance in Moving Image Culture written by Deborah Levitt and published by Transcript Verlag, Roswitha Gost, Sigrid Nokel u. Dr. Karin Werner. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers transdisciplinary perspectives on the study of acting and performance in moving image forms. It assembles 26 international scholars from dance, theatre, film, media and cultural studies, art history and philosophy to investigate the art of acting and the presence of the human body in analog and digital film, animation and video art. The volume includes classical case studies and essays devoted to acting history and acting and genres, but its particular emphasis is on introducing a wide range of groundbreaking theoretical approaches - from continental and analytic philosophy to new media theory and cognitivist research - all of which interrogate the fundamental conceptions of »act« and »actor« that underwrite both popular and academic notions of performance in moving image culture.
Download or read book Acting and Performance in Moving Image Culture written by Jörg Sternagel and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2014-03-31 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers transdisciplinary perspectives on the study of acting and performance in moving image forms. It assembles 26 international scholars from dance, theatre, film, media and cultural studies, art history and philosophy to investigate the art of acting and the presence of the human body in analog and digital film, animation and video art. The volume includes classical case studies and essays devoted to acting history and acting and genres, but its particular emphasis is on introducing a wide range of groundbreaking theoretical approaches - from continental and analytic philosophy to new media theory and cognitivist research - all of which interrogate the fundamental conceptions of »act« and »actor« that underwrite both popular and academic notions of performance in moving image culture.
Download or read book Ethics of Cinematic Experience written by Orna Raviv and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-16 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethics of Cinematic Experience: Screens of Alterity deals with the relationship between cinema and ethics from a philosophical perspective, finding an intrinsic connection between film spectatorship and the possibility of being open to different modes of alterity. The book’s main thesis is that openness to otherness is already found in the basic structures of cinematic experience. Through a close examination of the ethical relevance of the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Stanley Cavell, Emmanuel Levinas and Gilles Deleuze to cinema studies, Ethics of Cinematic Experience: Screens of Alterity pursues the question of how film can open the viewer to what is not her, and so bring her to encounter otherness in a way that is unique to cinematic experience. The book sees ethics as not just the subject, content or story of a film but part of its aesthetic structure. Accompanied by readings of films mainly from mainstream cinema, each chapter focuses on a different aspect of the encounter with alterity through cinema. The book gives particular attention to how theoretical discussion of the cinematic close-up can lead to ethical insights into the status of both the human and the non-human in film, and thus lead to an understanding of the relationships the viewer makes with them. The book is a helpful resource for students and scholars interested in the relationship between philosophy, film and ethics, and is appropriate for students of philosophy and media and cultural studies.
Download or read book Carnal Thoughts written by Vivian Sobchack and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2004-11-01 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these innovative essays, Vivian Sobchack considers the key role our bodies play in making sense of today's image-saturated culture. Emphasizing our corporeal rather than our intellectual engagements with film and other media, Carnal Thoughts shows how our experience always emerges through our senses and how our bodies are not just visible objects but also sense-making, visual subjects. Sobchack draws on both phenomenological philosophy and a broad range of popular sources to explore bodily experience in contemporary, moving-image culture. She examines how, through the conflation of cinema and surgery, we've all "had our eyes done"; why we are "moved" by the movies; and the different ways in which we inhabit photographic, cinematic, and electronic space. Carnal Thoughts provides a lively and engaging challenge to the mind/body split by demonstrating that the process of "making sense" requires an irreducible collaboration between our thoughts and our senses.
Download or read book A Companion to the Biopic written by Deborah Cartmell and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-01-15 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most comprehensive reference text of theoretical and historical discourse on the biopic film The biopic, often viewed as the most reviled of all film genres, traces its origins to the early silent era over a century ago. Receiving little critical attention, biopics are regularly dismissed as superficial, formulaic, and disrespectful of history. Film critics, literary scholars and historians tend to believe that biopics should be artistic, yet accurate, true-to-life representations of their subjects. Moviegoing audiences, however, do not seem to hold similar views; biopics continue to be popular, commercially viable films. Even the genre’s most ardent detractors will admit that these films are often very watchable, particularly due to the performance of the lead actor. It is increasingly common for stars of biographical films to garner critical praise and awards, driving a growing interest in scholarship in the genre. A Companion to the Biopic is the first global and authoritative reference on the subject. Offering theoretical, historical, thematic, and performance-based approaches, this unique volume brings together the work of top scholars to discuss the coverage of the lives of authors, politicians, royalty, criminals, and pop stars through the biopic film. Chapters explore evolving attitudes and divergent perspectives on the genre with topics such as the connections between biopics and literary melodramas, the influence financial concerns have on aesthetic, social, or moral principles, the merger of historical narratives with Hollywood biographies, stereotypes and criticisms of the biopic genre, and more. This volume: Provides a systematic, in-depth analysis of the biopic and considers how the choice of historical subject reflects contemporary issues Places emphasis on films that portray race and gender issues Explores the uneven boundaries of the genre by addressing what is and is not a biopic as well as the ways in which films simultaneously embrace and defy historical authenticity Examines the distinction between reality and ‘the real’ in biographical films Offers a chronological survey of biopics from the beginning of the 20th century A Companion to the Biopic is a valuable resource for researchers, scholars, and students of history, film studies, and English literature, as well as those in disciplines that examine interpretations of historical figures
Download or read book Toy Story written by Susan Smith and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-01-25 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995), Pixar's first feature-length production and Hollywood's first completely computer-generated animated film, is an international cultural phenomenon. This collection brings together a diverse range of scholars and practitioners who together explore the themes, compositional techniques, cultural significance and industry legacy of this landmark in contemporary cinema. Topics range from industrial concerns, such as the film's groundbreaking use of computer generated imagery and the establishment of Pixar as a major player in the animation world, to examinations of its music, aesthetics, and the role of toys in both the film and its fandom. The Toy Story franchise as a whole is also considered, with chapters looking at its cross-generational appeal and the experience of growing up alongside the series. As the first substantial work on this landmark film, this book will serve as an authoritative introduction for scholars, students and fans alike.
Download or read book Performing Identity written by Barry King and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Comics and Pop Culture written by Barry Keith Grant and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2019-12-13 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is hard to discuss the current film industry without acknowledging the impact of comic book adaptations, especially considering the blockbuster success of recent superhero movies. Yet transmedial adaptations are part of an evolution that can be traced to the turn of the last century, when comic strips such as “Little Nemo in Slumberland” and “Felix the Cat” were animated for the silver screen. Representing diverse academic fields, including technoculture, film studies, theater, feminist studies, popular culture, and queer studies, Comics and Pop Culture presents more than a dozen perspectives on this rich history and the effects of such adaptations. Examining current debates and the questions raised by comics adaptations, including those around authorship, style, and textual fidelity, the contributors consider the topic from an array of approaches that take into account representations of sexuality, gender, and race as well as concepts of world-building and cultural appropriation in comics from Modesty Blaise to Black Panther. The result is a fascinating re-imagination of the texts that continue to push the boundaries of panel, frame, and popular culture.
Download or read book The Craft of Criticism written by Michael Kackman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-06-22 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With contributions from 30 leading media scholars, this collection provides a comprehensive overview of the main methodologies of critical media studies. Chapters address various methods of textual analysis, as well as reception studies, policy, production studies, and contextual, multi-method approaches, like intertextuality and cultural geography. Film and television are at the heart of the collection, which also addresses emergent technologies and new research tools in such areas as software studies, gaming, and digital humanities. Each chapter includes an intellectual history of a particular method or approach, a discussion of why and how it was used to study a particular medium or media, relevant examples of influential work in the area, and an in-depth review of a case study drawn from the author's own research. Together, the chapters in this collection give media critics a complete toolbox of essential critical media studies methodologies.
Download or read book Embodying Adaptation written by Christina Wilkins and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-08-04 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the impact of the body on the mediation of character in adaptations. Specifically, it thinks about how identity is shaped by the body and how this alters meanings of adaptations. With an increasingly digital world, the importance of the body may be seen as diminishing. However, the book highlights the different political and social meanings the body signifies, which in turn renders character. Through a discussion of adaptations of sexuality, race, and mental difference, the mediation of character is shown to be tied to the physical. The book challenges the hierarchies in place both for the understanding of character, which privileges the actor, and in adaptations, which privileges the original. The discussion of the body, character, and adaptation asserts that the meanings the physical has in its shaping of, and by, character in adaptations reflect the way in which we position our own bodies in the world.
Download or read book The Non Professional Actor written by Catherine O'Rawe and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2023-11-16 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides the first critical overview of acting, stardom, and performance in post-war Italian film (1945-54), with special attention to the figure of the non-professional actor, who looms large in neorealist filmmaking. Italian post-war cinema has been widely celebrated by critics and scholars: films such as Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948) and Paisan (Rossellini, 1946) remain globally influential, particularly for their use of non-professional actors. This period of regeneration of Italian cinema initiated the boom in cinemagoing that made cinema an important vector of national and gender identity for audiences. The book addresses the casting, performance, and labour of non-professional actors, particularly children, their cultural and economic value to cinema, and how their use brought ideas of the ordinary into the discourse of stars as extraordinary. Relatedly, O'Rawe discusses critical and press discourses around acting, performance, and stardom, often focused on the 'crisis' of acting connected to the rise of non-professionals and the girls (like Sophia Loren) who found sudden cinematic fame via beauty contests.
Download or read book Screening Characters written by Johannes Riis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-29 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Characters are central to our experiences of screened fictions and invite a host of questions. The contributors to Screening Characters draw on archival material, interviews, philosophical inquiry, and conceptual analysis in order to give new, thought-provoking answers to these queries. Providing multifaceted accounts of the nature of screen characters, contributions are organized around a series of important subjects, including issues of class, race, ethics, and generic types as they are encountered in moving image media. These topics, in turn, are personified by such memorable figures as Cary Grant, Jon Hamm, Audrey Hepburn, and Seul-gi Kim, in addition to avatars, online personalities, animated characters, and the ensembles of shows such as The Sopranos, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad.
Download or read book Beyond Method written by Scott Balcerzak and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-25 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stella Adler (1901–92) trained many well-known American actors yet throughout much of her career, her influence was overshadowed by Lee Strasberg, director of the Actors Studio. In Beyond Method: Stella Adler and the Male Actor, Scott Balcerzak focuses on Adler’s teachings and how she challenged Strasberg’s psychological focus on the actor’s "self" by promoting an empathetic and socially engaged approach to performance. Employing archived studio transcripts and recordings, Balcerzak examines Adler’s lessons in technique, characterization, and script analysis as they reflect the background of the teacher—illustrating her time studying with Constantin Stanislavski, her Yiddish Theatre upbringing, and her encyclopedic knowledge of drama. Through this lens, Beyond Method resituates the performances of some of her famous male students through an expansive understanding of the discourses of acting. The book begins by providing an overview of the gender and racial classifications associated with the male "Method" actor and discussing white maleness in the mid-twentieth century. The first chapter explores the popular press’s promotion of "Method" stars during the 1950s as an extension of Strasberg’s rise in celebrity. At the same time, Adler’s methodology was defining actor performance as a form of social engagement—rather than just personal expression—welcoming an analysis of onscreen masculinity as culturally-fluid. The chapters that follow serve as case studies of some of Adler’s most famous students in notable roles—Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and The Missouri Breaks (1976), Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver (1976), Henry Winkler in Happy Days (1974–84), and Mark Ruffalo in The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). Balcerzak concludes that the presence of Adler altered the trajectory of onscreen maleness through a promotion of a relatively complex view of gender identity not found in other classrooms. Beyond Method considers Stella Adler as not only an effective teacher of acting but also an engaging and original thinker, providing us a new way to consider performances of maleness on the screen. Film and theater scholars, as well as those interested in gender studies, are sure to benefit from this thorough study.
Download or read book Reading Contemporary Performance written by Gabrielle Cody and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-09-25 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the nature of contemporary performance continues to expand into new forms, genres and media, it requires an increasingly diverse vocabulary. Reading Contemporary Performance provides students, critics and creators with a rich understanding of the key terms and ideas that are central to any discussion of this evolving theatricality. Specially commissioned entries from a wealth of contributors map out the many and varied ways of discussing performance in all of its forms – from theatrical and site-specific performances to live and New Media art. The book is divided into two sections: Concepts - Key terms and ideas arranged according to the five characteristic elements of performance art: time; space; action; performer; audience. Methodologies and Turning Points - The seminal theories and ways of reading performance, such as postmodernism, epic theatre, feminisms, happenings and animal studies. Case Studies – entries in both sections are accompanied by short studies of specific performances and events, demonstrating creative examples of the ideas and issues in question. Three different introductory essays provide multiple entry points into the discussion of contemporary performance, and cross-references for each entry also allow the plotting of one’s own pathway. Reading Contemporary Performance is an invaluable guide, providing not just a solid set of familiarities, but an exploration and contextualisation of this broad and vital field.
Download or read book Acting written by Claudia Springer and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-18 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Screen performances entertain and delight us but we rarely stop to consider actors’ reliance on their craft to create memorable characters. Although film acting may appear effortless, a host of techniques, artistic conventions, and social factors shape the construction of each role. The chapters in Acting provide a fascinating, in-depth look at the history of film acting, from its inception in 1895 when spectators thrilled at the sight of vaudeville performers, Wild West stars, and athletes captured in motion, to the present when audiences marvel at the seamless blend of human actors with CGI. Experts in the field take readers behind the silver screen to learn about the craft of film acting in six eras: the silent screen (1895–1928), classical Hollywood (1928–1946), postwar Hollywood (1947–1967), the auteur renaissance (1968–1980), the New Hollywood (1981–1999), and the modern entertainment marketplace (2000–present). The contributors pay special attention to definitive performances by notable film stars, including Lillian Gish, Dick Powell, Ginger Rogers, Beulah Bondi, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Nicholas Cage, Denzel Washington, and Andy Serkis. In six original essays, the contributors to this volume illuminate the dynamic role of acting in the creation and evolving practices of the American film industry. Acting is a volume in the Behind the Silver Screen series—other titles in the series include Animation; Art Direction and Production Design; Cinematography; Costume, Makeup, and Hair; Directing; Editing and Special/Visual Effects; Producing; Screenwriting; and Sound.
Download or read book Scoring the Hollywood Actor in the 1950s written by Gregory Camp and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-30 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scoring the Hollywood Actor in the 1950s theorises the connections between film acting and film music using the films of the 1950s as case studies. Closely examining performances of such actors as James Dean, Montgomery Clift, and Marilyn Monroe, and films of directors like Elia Kazan, Douglas Sirk, and Alfred Hitchcock, this volume provides a comprehensive view of how screen performance has been musicalised, including examination of the role of music in relation to the creation of cinematic performances and the perception of an actor’s performance. The book also explores the idea of music as a temporal vector which mirrors the temporal vector of actors’ voices and movements, ultimately demonstrating how acting and music go together to create a forward axis of time in the films of the 1950s. This is a valuable resource for scholars and researchers of musicology, film music and film studies more generally.
Download or read book Modern Acting written by Cynthia Baron and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-08-18 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone has heard of Method acting . . . but what about Modern acting? This book makes the simple but radical proposal that we acknowledge the Modern acting principles that continue to guide actors’ work in the twenty-first century. Developments in modern drama and new stagecraft led Modern acting strategies to coalesce by the 1930s – and Hollywood’s new role as America’s primary performing arts provider ensured these techniques circulated widely as the migration of Broadway talent and the demands of sound cinema created a rich exchange of ideas among actors. Decades after Strasberg’s death in 1982, he and his Method are still famous, while accounts of American acting tend to overlook the contributions of Modern acting teachers such as Josephine Dillon, Charles Jehlinger, and Sophie Rosenstein. Baron’s examination of acting manuals, workshop notes, and oral histories illustrates the shared vision of Modern acting that connects these little-known teachers to the landmark work of Stanislavsky. It reveals that Stella Adler, long associated with the Method, is best understood as a Modern acting teacher and that Modern acting, not Method, might be seen as central to American performing arts if the Actors’ Lab in Hollywood (1941-1950) had survived the Cold War.
