Download or read book Film at the Intersection of High and Mass Culture written by Paul Coates and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1994-03-25 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the boundaries of such genres as film noir, science fiction and melodrama, it demonstrates how these genres were radically expanded by such filmmakers as Neil Jordan, Chris Marker and Georges Franju. This work also reflects on kitsch, the star system, racial and gender stereotypes, and the nature of audience participation.
Download or read book It s Only a Movie written by Raymond J. HaberskiJr. and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once derided as senseless entertainment, movies have gradually assumed a place among the arts. Raymond Haberski's provocative and insightful book traces the trajectory of this evolution throughout the twentieth century, from nickelodeon amusements to the age of the financial blockbuster. Haberski begins by looking at the barriers to film's acceptance as an art form, including the Chicago Motion Picture Commission hearings of 1918–1920, one of the most revealing confrontations over the use of censorship in the motion picture industry. He then examines how movies overcame the stigma attached to popular entertainment through such watershed events as the creation of the Museum of Modern Art's Film Library in the 1920s. The arguments between Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris's heralded a golden age of criticism, and Haberski focuses on the roles of Kael, Sarris, James Agee, Roger Ebert, and others, in the creation of "cinephilia." Described by Susan Sontag as "born of the conviction that cinema was an art unlike any other," this love of cinema centered on coffee houses, universities, art theaters, film festivals, and, of course, foreign films. The lively debates over the place of movies in American culture began to wane in the 1970s. Haberski places the blame on the loss of cultural authority and on the increasing irrelevance of the meaning of art. He concludes with a persuasive call for the re-emergence of a middle ground between art and entertainment, "something more complex, ambiguous, and vexing—something worth thought."
Download or read book The Battle for the Bs written by Blair Davis and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-06 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The emergence of the double-bill in the 1930s created a divide between A-pictures and B-pictures as theaters typically screened packages featuring one of each. With the former considered more prestigious because of their larger budgets and more popular actors, the lower-budgeted Bs served largely as a support mechanism to A-films of the major studios—most of which also owned the theater chains in which movies were shown. When a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court antitrust ruling severed ownership of theaters from the studios, the B-movie soon became a different entity in the wake of profound changes to the corporate organization and production methods of the major Hollywood studios. In The Battle for the Bs, Blair Davis analyzes how B-films were produced, distributed, and exhibited in the 1950s and demonstrates the possibilities that existed for low-budget filmmaking at a time when many in Hollywood had abandoned the Bs. Made by newly formed independent companies, 1950s B-movies took advantage of changing demographic patterns to fashion innovative marketing approaches. They established such genre cycles as science fiction and teen-oriented films (think Destination Moon and I Was a Teenage Werewolf) well before the major studios and also contributed to the emergence of the movement now known as underground cinema. Although frequently proving to be multimillion-dollar box-office draws by the end of the decade, the Bs existed in opposition to the cinematic mainstream in the 1950s and created a legacy that was passed on to independent filmmakers in the decades to come.
Download or read book Film Criticism as Cultural Fantasy written by Andrew McGregor and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2010 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an unprecedented analysis of the dynamics of cultural representation and interpretation in film criticism. It examines how French critical reception of Australian cinema since the revival period of the 1970s has evolved as a narrative of perpetual discovery, and how a clear parallel can be drawn between French critics' reading of Australian film and their interpretation of an exotic Australian national identity. In French critical writing on Australian cinema, Australian identity is frequently defined in terms of extremes of cultural specificity and cultural anonymity. On the one hand, French critics construct a Euro-centric orientalist fantasy of Australia as not only a European Antipodes, but the antithesis of Europe. At the same time, French critics have tended to subordinate Australian cultural identity within the framework of a resented Anglo-American filmic and cultural hegemony. The book further explores this marginalisation by examining the influence of the French auteur paradigm, particularly in reference to the work of Jane Campion, as well as by discussing the increasingly problematic notion of national identity, and indeed national cinemas, within the universal framework of international film culture.
Download or read book Screen Adaptation written by Hester Bradley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2010-06-23 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adaptation studies has historically been neglected in both the English and Film Studies curricula. Reflecting on this, Screen Adaptation celebrates its emergence in the late 20th and 21st centuries and explores the varieties of methodologies and debates within the field. Drawing on approaches from genre studies to transtexuality to cultural materialism, the book examines adaptations of both popular and canonical writers, including William Shakespeare, Jane Austen and J.K.Rowling. Original and provocative, this book will spark new thinking and research in the field of adaptation studies. Mapping the way in which this exciting field has emerged and shifted over the last two decades, the book is also essential reading for students of English Literature and Film.
Download or read book The Horror Film Reader written by Alain Silver and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2000 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays offer a broad overview of the horror film genre, from the silent screen to Scream 3, demonstrating how it remains defiantly, frighteningly alive.
Download or read book Opera on Screen written by Marcia J. Citron and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The author draws on ideas from diverse fields, including media studies and gender studies, to examine issues ranging from the relationship between sound and image to the place of the viewer in relation to the spectacle. As she raises questions about divisions between high art and popular art and about the tensions between live and reproduced art forms, Citron reveals how screen treatments reinforce opera's vitality in a media-intensive age."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Willing Seduction written by Barbara Kosta and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Josef von Sternberg's 1930 film The Blue Angel (Der blaue Engel) is among the best known films of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933). A significant landmark as one of Germany's first major sound films, it is known primarily for launching Marlene Dietrich into Hollywood stardom and for initiating the mythic pairing of the Austrian-born American director von Sternberg with the star performer Dietrich. This fascinating cultural history of The Blue Angel provides a new interpretive framework with which to approach this classic Weimar film and suggests that discourses on mass and high culture are integral to the film's thematic and narrative structure. These discourses surface above all in the relationship between the two main characters, the cabaret entertainer Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich) and the high school teacher Immanuel Rath (one-time Oscar winner Emil Jannings). In addition to offering insight into some of the major debates that informed the Weimar Republic, this book demonstrates that similar issues continue to shape the contemporary cultural landscape of Germany. Barbara Kosta thus also looks at Dietrich as a contemporary cultural icon and at her symbolic value since German unification and at Lola Lola's various "incarnations."
Download or read book Cinema and Nation written by Mette Hjort and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-08-18 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cinema and Nation considers the ways in which film production and reception are shaped by ideas of national belonging and examines the implications of globalisation for the concept of national cinema.
Download or read book Avant Garde Hamlet written by R. S. White and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-09-10 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hamlet stands as a high water mark of canonical art, yet it has equally attracted rebels and experimenters, those avant-garde writers, dramatists, performers, and filmmakers who, in their adaptations and appropriations, seek new ways of expressing innovative and challenging thoughts in the hope that they can change perceptions of their own world. One reason for this, as the book argues, is that the source text that is their inspiration was written in the same spirit. Hamlet as a work of art exhibits many aspects of the “vanguard” movements in every society and artistic milieux, an avant-garde vision of struggle against conformity, which retains an edge of provocative novelty. Accordingly, it has always inspired unorthodox adaptations and can be known by a neglected portion of the company it keeps, the avant-garde in every age. After placing Hamlet alongside “cutting edge” works in Shakespeare’s time, such as Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, chapters deal with the ways in which experimental writers, theatre practitioners, and film-makers have used the play down to the present day to develop their own avant-garde visions. This is a part of the uncanny ability of Shakespeare’s Hamlet to be “ever-now, ever-new.”
Download or read book Shakespeare s cinema of love written by R. S. White and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-03 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This engaging and stimulating book argues that Shakespeare's plays significantly influenced movie genres in the twentieth century, particularly in films concerning love in the classic Hollywood period. Shakespeare's 'green world' has a close functional equivalent in 'tinseltown' and on 'the silver screen', as well as in hybrid genres in Bollywood cinema. Meanwhile, Romeo and Juliet continues to be an enduring source for romantic tragedy on screen. The nature of generic indebtedness has not gained recognition because it is elusive and not always easy to recognise. The book traces generic links between Shakespeare's comedies of love and screen genres such as romantic comedy, 'screwball' comedy and musicals, as well as clarifying the use of common conventions defining the genres, such as mistaken identity, 'errors', disguise and 'shrew-taming'. Speculative, challenging and entertaining, the book will appeal to those interested in Shakespeare, movies and the representation of love in narratives.
Download or read book Cutting Edge written by Joan Hawkins and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Popular Culture written by Raiford Guins and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2005-05 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The selection of essays here is outstanding. The Reader is particularly strong in bridging between founding figures and cutting edge work by newer writers."- Henry Jenkins, MIT "An extraordinarily well considered selection of articles and essays, arranged with skill and style." - Charlie Blake, University College NorthamptonPopular Culture: A Reader helps students understand the pervasive role of popular culture and the processes that constitute it as a product of industry, an intellectual object of inquiry and an integral component of all our lives.The volume is divided into 7 thematic sections, and each section is preceded by an introduction which engages with, and critiques, the chapters that follow. The book contains: Classic writings from all the ′big names′ including Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Frederic Jameson, Dick Hebdige, Angela McRobbie, Paul Gilroy and many more. Contemporary cultural references throughout - this is not simply an historical account. Pieces drawing on diverse national, disciplinary and subdisciplinary contexts. Sensitivity to issues of gender, race and sexuality. This reader is a key resource for students of media and communication studies, cultural studies, and the sociology of the media.
Download or read book The Cult Film Reader written by Mathijs, Ernest and published by McGraw-Hill Education (UK). This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An invaluable collection for anyone researching or teaching cult cinema ... The Cult Film Reader is an authoritative text that should be of value to any student or researcher interested in challenging and transgressive cinema that pushes the boundaries of conventional cinema and film studies." Science Fiction Film and Television "A really impressive and comprehensive collection of the key writings in the field. The editors have done a terrific job in drawing together the various traditions and providing a clear sense of this rich and rewarding scholarly terrain. This collection is as wild and diverse as the films that it covers. Fascinating." Mark Jancovich, Professor of Film and Television Studies, University of East Anglia, UK "It's about time the lunatic fans and loyal theorists of cult movies were treated to a book they can call their own. The effort and knowledge contained in The Cult Film Reader will satisfy even the most ravenous zombie's desire for detail and insight. This book will gnaw, scratch and infect you just like the cult films themselves." Brett Sullivan, Director of Ginger Snaps Unleashed and The Chair "The Cult Film Reader is a great film text book and a fun read." John Landis, Director of The Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London and Michael Jackson's Thriller "Excellent overview of the subject, and a comprehensive collection of significant scholarship in the field of cult film. Very impressive and long overdue." Steven Rawle, York St John University, UK Whether defined by horror, kung-fu, sci-fi, sexploitation, kitsch musical or ‘weird world cinema’, cult movies and their global followings are emerging as a distinct subject of film and media theory, dedicated to dissecting the world’s unruliest images. This book is the world’s first reader on cult film. It brings together key works in the field on the structure, form, status, and reception of cult cinema traditions. Including work from key established scholars in the field such as Umberto Eco, Janet Staiger, Jeffrey Sconce, Henry Jenkins, and Barry Keith Grant, as well as new perspectives on the gradually developing canon of cult cinema, the book not only presents an overview of ways in which cult cinema can be approached, it also re-assesses the methods used to study the cult text and its audiences. With editors’ introductions to the volume and to each section, the book is divided into four clear thematic areas of study – The Conceptions of Cult; Cult Case Studies; National and International Cults; and Cult Consumption – to provide an accessible overview of the topic. It also contains an extensive bibliography for further related readings. Written in a lively and accessible style, The Cult Film Reader dissects some of biggest trends, icons, auteurs and periods of global cult film production. Films discussed include Casablanca, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Eraserhead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Showgirls and Ginger Snaps. Essays by: Jinsoo An; Jane Arthurs; Bruce Austin; Martin Barker; Walter Benjamin; Harry Benshoff; Pierre Bourdieu; Noel Carroll; Steve Chibnall; Umberto Eco; Nezih Erdogan; Welch Everman; John Fiske; Barry Keith Grant ; Joan Hawkins; Gary Hentzi; Matt Hills; Ramaswami Harindranath; J.Hoberman; Leon Hunt; I.Q. Hunter; Mark Jancovich; Henry Jenkins; Anne Jerslev; Siegfried Kracauer; Gina Marchetti; Tom Mes; Gary Needham; Sheila J. Nayar; Annalee Newitz; Lawrence O’Toole; Harry Allan Potamkin; Jonathan Rosenbaum; Andrew Ross; David Sanjek; Eric Schaefer; Steven Jay Schneider; Jeffrey Sconce; Janet Staiger; J.P. Telotte; Parker Tyler; Jean Vigo; Harmony Wu
Download or read book Quarterly of Film Radio and Television written by and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book High Contrast written by Sharon Willis and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In High Contrast, Sharon Willis examines the dynamic relationships between racial and sexual difference in Hollywood film from the 1980s and 1990s. Seizing on the way these differences are accentuated, sensationalized, and eroticized on screen--most often with little apparent regard for the political context in which they operate--Willis restores that context through close readings of a range of movies from cinematic blockbusters to the work of the new auteurs, Spike Lee, David Lynch, and Quentin Tarantino. Capturing the political complexity of these films, Willis argues that race, gender, and sexuality, as they are figured in the fantasy of popular film, do not function separately, but rather inform and determine each other's meaning. She demonstrates how collective anxieties regarding social difference are mapped onto big budget movies like the Die Hard and Lethal Weapon series, Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, Thelma and Louise, Terminator 2, and others. Analyzing the artistic styles of directors Lynch, Tarantino, and Lee, in such films as Wild at Heart, Pulp Fiction, and Do the Right Thing, she investigates how these interactions of difference are linked to the production of specific authorial styles, and how race functions for each of these directors, particularly in relation to gender identity, erotics, and fantasy.
Download or read book Cinema Religion and the Romantic Legacy written by Paul Coates and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cinema, Religion and the Romantic Legacy surveys the ways in which notions of religion and spirituality have impinged upon the cinema. Cinema is conceived as a post-Romantic form for which religion and spirituality can be unified only problematically. While inspecting many of the well-established themes and topoi of writing on religion and film (such as films about priests and 'Christ-figures') it also seeks to problematize them, focusing primarily upon the issues of religious representation foregrounded by such European directors as Kieslowski and Godard. Coates draws on theories of theologians, philosophers and cultural and literary critics including: Otto, Kant, Schiller and Girard. Addressing the relationship between religion and spirituality from a film studies specialist's perspective, this book offers all those concerned with film, media or religious studies an invaluable examination of artistic interaction with the theological and aesthetic issues of representation and representability. Paul Coates is Reader in Film Studies at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and author of many books including: The Gorgon's Gaze (CUP), Film at the Intersection of High and Mass Culture (CUP), The Story of the Lost Reflection (Verso).
