Download or read book The Hollywood Romantic Comedy written by Leger Grindon and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-04-18 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most up-to-date study of the Hollywood romantic comedy film, from the development of sound to the twenty-first century, this book examines the history and conventions of the genre and surveys the controversies arising from the critical responses to these films. Provides a detailed interpretation of important romantic comedy films from as early as 1932 to movies made in the twenty-first century Presents a full analysis of the range of romantic comedy conventions, including dramatic conflicts, characters, plots, settings, and the function of humor Develops a survey of romantic comedy movies and builds a canon of key films from Hollywood's classical era right up to the present day Chapters work as discrete studies as well as within the larger context of the book
Download or read book From Hollywood with Love written by Scott Meslow and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth celebration of the romantic comedy’s modern golden era and its role in our culture, tracking the genre from its heyday in the ’80s and the ’90s, its unfortunate decline in the 2000s, and its explosive reemergence in the age of streaming, featuring exclusive interviews with the directors, writers, and stars of the iconic films that defined the genre. No Hollywood genre has been more misunderstood—or more unfairly under-appreciated—than the romantic comedy. Funny, charming, and reliably crowd-pleasing, rom-coms were the essential backbone of the Hollywood landscape, launching the careers of many of Hollywood’s most talented actors and filmmakers, such as Julia Roberts and Matthew McConaughey, and providing many of the yet limited creative opportunities women had in Hollywood. But despite—or perhaps because of—all that, the rom-com has routinely been overlooked by the Academy Awards or snobbishly dismissed by critics. In From Hollywood with Love, culture writer and GQ contributor Scott Meslow seeks to right this wrong, celebrating and analyzing rom-coms with the appreciative, insightful critical lens they’ve always deserved. Beginning with the golden era of the romantic comedy—spanning from the late ’80s to the mid-’00s with the breakthrough of films such as When Harry Met Sally—to the rise of streaming and the long-overdue push for diversity setting the course for films such as the groundbreaking, franchise-spawning Crazy Rich Asians, Meslow examines the evolution of the genre through its many iterations, from its establishment of new tropes, the Austen and Shakespeare rewrites, the many love triangles, and even the occasional brave decision to do away with the happily ever after. Featuring original black-and-white sketches of iconic movie scenes and exclusive interviews with the actors and filmmakers behind our most beloved rom-coms, From Hollywood with Love constructs oral histories of our most celebrated romantic comedies, for an informed and entertaining look at Hollywood’s beloved yet most under-appreciated genre.
Download or read book Romantic Comedy in Hollywood written by James Harvey and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 1998-03-22 with total page 738 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1934 four movies—It Happened One Night, Twentieth Century, The Thin Man, and The Gay Divorcee—ushered in the golden age of the Hollywood romantic ("screwball") comedy. Slangy, playful, and "powerfully, glamorously in love with love," the films that followed were unique in their combination of swank and slapstick. Here are the directors—Lubitsch (Trouble in Paradise), Capra (It Happened One Night), Hawks (Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday), McCarey (The Awful Truth), La Cava (My Man Godfrey, Stage Door), Sturges (The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story, The Miracle at Morgan's Creek)—and their stars—Carole Lombard, Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Fred Astaire, Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, William Powell, Myrna Loy, among others—all described and analyzed in one comprehensive and delightful volume.
Download or read book Writing the Romantic Comedy written by Billy Mernit and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2001-07-31 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the slapstick shenanigans of Hepburn and Grant in Bringing Up Baby to the sexy repartee of Shakespeare in Love, romantic comedies have delighted filmgoers -- and challenged screenwriters -- since Hollywood's Golden Age. Whether you're a first time screenwriter, or an intermediate marooned in the rewriting process, this thoroughly charming and insightful guide to the basics of crafting a winning script will take you step by step from "cute meet" all the way to "joyous defeat." You'll learn the screenwriting secrets behind some of the funniest scenes ever written; how to create characters and dialogue that set the sparks flying; why some bedroom scenes sizzle and others fall flat; and much more. Writing the Romantic Comedy features case studies drawn from beloved romantic comedies such as When Harry Met Sally, Annie Hall, Tootsie, and The Lady Eve, as well as field-tested writing exercises guaranteed to short-circuit potential mistakes and ensure inspiration.
Download or read book The Hollywood Romantic Comedy written by Leger Grindon and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most up-to-date study of the Hollywood romantic comedy film, from the development of sound to the twenty-first century, this book examines the history and conventions of the genre and surveys the controversies arising from the critical responses to these films. Provides a detailed interpretation of important romantic comedy films from as early as 1932 to movies made in the twenty-first century Presents a full analysis of the range of romantic comedy conventions, including dramatic conflicts, characters, plots, settings, and the function of humor Develops a survey of romantic comedy movies and builds a canon of key films from Hollywood's classical era right up to the present day Chapters work as discrete studies as well as within the larger context of the book
Download or read book Romantic Comedy written by Tamar Jeffers McDonald and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-10 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Romantic Comedy offers an introduction to the analysis of a popular but overlooked film genre. The book provides an overview of Hollywood's romantic comedy conventions, examining iconography, narrative patterns, and ideology. Chapters discuss important subgroupings within the genre: screwball sex comedy and the radical romantic comedy of the 1970s. A final chapter traces the lasting influence of these earlier forms within current romantic comedies. Films include: Pillow Talk (1959), Annie Hall (1977), and You've Got Mail (1998).
Download or read book Romantic Comedy written by Claire Mortimer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-04-05 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Romantic comedy is an enduringly popular genre which has maintained its appeal by constantly evolving, from the screwball comedy to the recent emergence of the bromance. Romantic Comedy examines the history of the genre, considering the social and cultural context for key developments in new genre cycles. It studies the key themes and issues at work within romantic comedy films, focusing in particular on the representation of gender and how the genre acts as a barometer for gender politics in the course of the twentieth century. Claire Mortimer provides the reader with a comprehensive overview of the genre, tracing its development, enduring appeal, stars and the nature of its comedy. Mortimer discusses both British and Hollywood classic and contemporary romantic comedies, ranging from canonical films to more recent examples which have taken the genre in new directions. In-depth case studies span a wide variety of films, including: It Happened One Night Bringing Up Baby Annie Hall Four Weddings and a Funeral Bridget Jones’s Diary Wimbledon Knocked Up Sex and the City This book is the perfect introduction to the romantic comedy genre and will be particularly useful for all those investigating this area within film, media or women's studies.
Download or read book Guilty Pleasures written by Alice Guilluy and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-11-04 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Guilty Pleasures, Alice Guilluy examines the reception of contemporary Hollywood romantic comedy by European audiences. She offers a new look at the romantic comedy genre through a qualitative study of its consumption by actual audiences. In doing so, she attempts to challenge traditional critiques of the genre as trite “escapism” at best, and dangerous “guilty pleasure” at worst. Despite this cultural anxiety, little work has been done on the genre's real audiences. Guilluy addresses this gap by presenting the results of a major qualitative study of the genre's reception, based on interview research with rom-com viewers in Britain, France and Germany, focusing on Sweet Home Alabama (2002, dir. Andy Tennant). Throughout the interviews, participants attempted to distance themselves from what they described as the “typical” rom-com viewer: the uneducated, gullible, overly emotional (American) woman. Guilluy calls this fantasy figure the “phantom spectatrix”. Guilluy complements this with a critical examination of the press reviews of the 20 biggest-grossing rom-coms at the worldwide box-office in order to contextualise the findings of her audience research.
Download or read book The Runaway Bride written by Elizabeth Kendall and published by Cooper Square Press. This book was released on 2002-02-18 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1934 classic It Happened One Night, heiress Claudette Colbert races away from the altar and a conventional marriage and throws herself into a wisecracking rough-and-tumble affair with Clark Gable. The new brand of movies following in the wake of Capra's kooky masterpiece-and the women starring in them-are the focus of Kendall's The Runaway Bride, a look at the films that mirrored the climate of the Great Depression while at the same time helping Americans get through it. Kendall details the collaborations between the romantic comedy directors and the female stars, showing how such films as Alice Adams (with Katherine Hepburn), Swing Time (where Ginger Rogers enjoys "A Fine Romance" with Fred Astaire), The Awful Truth (with Irene Dunne), and The Lady Eve (wherein Barbara Stanwyck's shapely leg repeatedly trips naïve millionaire Henry Fonda) came to be, and what they said about the 1930s. Written with erudition and enthusiasm, The Runaway Bride is a trip through some of Hollywood's most memorable moments, and a key to the national issues of an era as revealed in its films.
Download or read book Bound to Bond written by Mark Rubinfeld and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2001-08-30 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bound to Bond: Gender, Genre, and the Hollywood Romantic Comedy looks at gender roles in a unique way--by examining what the last thirty years of romantic comedy films have argued, reflected, and implied. Mark Rubinfeld contends that, essentially, we are what we see, and by identifying four basic plots of the genre, representing four basic love stories, he studies the implications of filmic depictions of male/female relationships. Cultural changes that have transformed our society since 1970 are seen here as we see them on the silver screen, and the author analyzes notable examples of the genre with a rigorous sociological perspective. What he reveals may be surprising: during the seventies and, to an extent, the early eighties, the plot conventions of Hollywood romantic comedy seemed to challenge, rather than reinforce, existing gender stereotypes. Later, however--during what should have been a more enlightened time--the genre reversed course, reverting to more traditional types for men and women alike.
Download or read book Hollywood Screwball Comedy 1934 1945 written by Grégoire Halbout and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2022-01-13 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 2022 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Love at first sight, whirlwind marriages, break-ups, divorces, remarriage... What accounts for the enduring success of the Hollywood madcap comedies of the 1930s? Directed by masters of comedy (Hawks, LaCava, Leisen, Ruggles...) and featuring the decade's most iconic stars (Colbert, Dunne, Grant, Hepburn...), these films set romantic comedy standards for decades to come. Screwball comedy embarked on two challenging missions: to poke fun at established social norms and to undermine stereotypical depictions of gender roles, putting forward a discourse that postulated the possibility of equality between men and women. Grégoire Halbout's reexamination of screwball comedy provides a comprehensive overview of this (sub)genre, eschewing the auteurist approach and including “minor” works never before analyzed through the screwball lens. His book explains how these screwball stories met the expectations of a booming American middle class eager for the liberalization of morals, with daring plots, verbal humor and slapstick techniques. Building on the work of Cavell, Altman and Gehring, as well as international and French scholarship, Halbout's investigation unfolds in three parts. He first establishes a definition of Hollywood screwball comedy through a cross-sectional analysis of its socio-historical context and an in-depth examination of the genre. He then situates screwball comedy in relation to its institutional context. An exclusive study of archival material explains the emergence of a screwball aesthetic meant to subvert the prohibitions of the 1934 Hollywood Production Code through a verbal and visual rhetoric of diversion and mitigation. Finally, Halbout explores the social function of the genre's placement of romantic intimacy at the center of the public sphere and the democratic debate, confirming that screwball eccentricity upholds America's founding values: freedom of speech, free consent, and contractual engagement.
Download or read book Romantic vs Screwball Comedy written by Wes D. Gehring and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2002-10-16 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Famous co-stars such as Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant to Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, have made screwball and romantic comedies a big seller at the box office. These seemingly timeless genres are as popular today as ever! This book takes a closer look at the precise meanings of the terms screwball and romantic. Film fans and scholars alike tend to lump film with laughter and love under a screwball/romantic umbrella and use the terms screwball and romantic interchangeably. In reality, there is a distinction; the screwball variety places its emphasis on "funny," while the more traditional romantic comedy accents "love." Covering over 60 titles each of romantic and screwball comedy dating from the 1930s to the present, this research tool not only demonstrates how screwball and romantic comedy are two distinct genres, but also highlights pivotal social and artistic changes which impacted both genres. Includes 24 black and white movie stills, countless quotations from selected films, an annotated bibliography, and a two-part filmography. Not only an informative resource for film students and scholars, but also an interesting read for film buffs.
Download or read book Classical Hollywood Comedy written by Kristine Brunovska Karnick and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Applies the recent `return to history' in film studies to the genre of classical Hollywood comedy as well as broadening the definition of those works considered central in this field.
Download or read book The secret life of romantic comedy written by Celestino Deleyto and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-04 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The secret life of romantic comedy offers a new approach to one of the most popular and resilient genres in the history of Hollywood. Steering away from the rigidity and ideological determinism of traditional accounts of the genre, this book advocates a more flexible theory, which allows the student to explore the presence of the genre in unexpected places, extending the concept to encompass films that are not usually considered romantic comedies. Combining theory with detailed analyses of a selection of films, including To Be or Not to Be (1942), Rear Window (1954), Kiss Me Stupid (1964), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Before Sunset (2004), the book aims to provide a practical framework for the exploration of a key area of contemporary experience – intimate matters – through one of its most powerful filmic representations: the genre of romantic comedy. Original and entertaining, The secret life of romantic comedy is perfect for students and academics of film and film genre.
Download or read book Terms of Endearment written by Peter William Evans and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the complex ways in which recent cultural discourses on gender and sexuality have found their way into the apparently inflexible structure of romantic comedy.
Download or read book Hollywood romantic comedy written by Kathrina Glitre and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-19 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the changing representation of the couple, focusing on themes of marriage, equality and desire. Kathrina Glitre moves beyond the usual screwball territory to consider cycles of production from 1934-65. The central concern with the representation of the couple is distinctive and includes discussion of three star couples: Myrna Loy and William Powell, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, and Doris Day and Rock Hudson. Glitre offers explanations of genre, as well as detailed analysis of screwball comedy, career woman comedy and sex comedy. Each cycle is placed into context to analyse cultural discourses around heterosexuality, gender, romance and love. This structure also enables a more sophisticated understanding of such conventions as masquerade, gender inversion and the happy ending. The book will appeal to university students and academics working on genre, gender, culture and representation, and anyone with a keen interest in Hollywood romantic comedy.
Download or read book Writing the Romantic Comedy Revised and Updated Edition written by Billy Mernit and published by Harper Paperbacks. This book was released on 2020-01-20 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Writing the Romantic Comedy is so much fun to read it could pop a champagne cork."--Alexa Junge, writer and producer of Friends Revised and expanded to celebrate a new generation of romantic comedies, Billy Mernit's insightful look into the mechanics of writing Hollywood's most enduring genre features case studies that reveal the screenwriting secrets behind classics new and old. Whether you're a first-time screenwriter, an intermediate marooned in the rewriting process, or a professional wanting to explore the latest genre trends, this thoroughly charming and insightful guide to the basics of crafting a winning and innovative script will take you step by step from "meet cute" all the way to "joyous defeat." You'll learn the screenwriting secrets behind some of the funniest scenes ever written; how to create characters and dialogue that getsparks flying; why some bedroom scenes sizzle and others fall flat; and much more. Written in a refreshingly accessible style and updated and expanded to recognize the contributions of a fresh generation of romantic comedies, this newly revised 20th Anniversary edition of Writing the Romantic Comedy features case studies drawn from beloved romantic classics such as When Harry Met Sally, Annie Hall, Tootsie, and The Lady Eve to modern-day favorites including Hitch, (500) Days of Summer, Bridesmaids, and Silver Linings Playbook. Field-tested writing exercises are also included, guaranteed to short-circuit potential mistakes and ensure inspiration.
