Download or read book The Merry Widow Murders written by Melodie Campbell and published by Cormorant Books. This book was released on 2023-05-13 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lucy Revelstoke, unconventional widow of a young British lord and daughter of a Canadian mobster twice removed, is crossing the Atlantic on a state-of-the-art ocean liner in 1928. Rubbing elbows with the era’s elite and reconnecting with her husband’s aristocratic friend Tony should make for a swell trip. But a dead body dumped in Lucy’s stateroom the first night of the voyage threatens to capsize the new life she’s built for herself. Who is this dead man? And how did he get into her room? Together with her pickpocket-turned maid and Tony, Lucy rushes to investigate, just steps ahead of the authorities who will certainly dig too deeply into her dodgy Canadian past.
Download or read book Children in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock written by Debbie Olson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-12-17 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Children and youth perform both innocence and knowingness within Hitchcock's complex cinematic texts. Though the child often plays a small part, their significance - symbolically, theoretically, and philosophically - offers a unique opportunity to illuminate and interrogate the child presence within the cinematic complexity of Hitchcock's films.
Download or read book Hitchcock s People Places and Things written by John Bruns and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hitchcock’s People, Places, and Things argues that Alfred Hitchcock was as much a filmmaker of things and places as he was of people. Drawing on the thought of Bruno Latour, John Bruns traces the complex relations of human and nonhuman agents in Hitchcock’s films with the aim of mapping the Hitchcock landscape cognitively, affectively, and politically. Yet this book does not promise that such a map can or will cohere, for Hitchcock was just as adept at misdirection as he was at direction. Bearing this in mind and true to the Hitchcock spirit, Hitchcock’s People, Places, and Things anticipates that people will stumble into the wrong places at the wrong time, places will be made uncanny by things, and things exchanged between people will act as (not-so) secret agents that make up the perilous landscape of Hitchcock’s work. This book offers new readings of well-known Hitchcock films, including The Lodger, Shadow of a Doubt, Psycho, The Birds, and Marnie, as well as insights into lesser-discussed films such as I Confess and Family Plot. Additional close readings of the original theatrical trailer for Psycho and a Hitchcock-directed episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents expand the Hitchcock landscape beyond conventional critical borders. In tracing the network of relations in Hitchcock’s work, Bruns brings new Hitchcockian tropes to light. For students, scholars, and serious fans, the author promises a thrilling critical navigation of the Hitchcock landscape, with frequent “mental shake-ups” that Hitchcock promised his audience.
Download or read book Hearths of Darkness written by Tony Williams and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2014-11-27 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film traces the origins of the 1970s family horror subgenre to certain aspects of American culture and classical Hollywood cinema. Far from being an ephemeral and short-lived genre, horror actually relates to many facets of American history from its beginnings to the present day. Individual chapters examine aspects of the genre, its roots in the Universal horror films of the 1930s, the Val Lewton RKO unit of the 1940s, and the crucial role of Alfred Hitchcock as the father of the modern American horror film. Subsequent chapters investigate the key works of the 1970s by directors such as Larry Cohen, George A. Romero, Brian De Palma, Wes Craven, and Tobe Hooper, revealing the distinctive nature of films such as Bone, It’s Alive, God Told Me To, Carrie, The Exorcist, Exorcist 2, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as well as the contributions of such writers as Stephen King. Williams also studies the slasher films of the 1980s and 1990s, such as the Friday the 13th series, Halloween, the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Nightmare on Elm Street, exploring their failure to improve on the radical achievements of the films of the 1970s. After covering some post-1970s films, such as The Shining, the book concludes with a new postscript examining neglected films of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. Despite the overall decline in the American horror film, Williams determines that, far from being dead, the family horror film is still with us. Elements of family horror even appear in modern television series such as The Sopranos. This updated edition also includes a new introduction.
Download or read book Hitchcock s Music written by Jack Sullivan and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2006-12-01 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A wonderfully coherent, comprehensive, groundbreaking, and thoroughly engaging study” of how the director of Psycho and The Birds used music in his films (Sidney Gottlieb, editor of Hitchcock on Hitchcock). Alfred Hitchcock employed more musical styles and techniques than any film director in history, from Marlene Dietrich singing Cole Porter in Stage Fright to the revolutionary electronic soundtrack of The Birds. Many of his films—including Notorious, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho—are landmarks in the history of film music. Now author and musicologist Jack Sullivan presents the first in-depth study of the role music plays in Hitchcock’s films. Based on extensive interviews with composers, writers, and actors, as well as archival research, Sullivan discusses how Hitchcock used music to influence his cinematic atmospheres, characterizations, and even storylines. Sullivan examines the director’s relationships with various composers, especially Bernard Herrmann, and tells the stories behind some of their now-iconic musical choices. Covering the entire director’s career, from the early British works up to Family Plot, this engaging work will change the way we watch—and listen—to Hitchcock’s movies.
Download or read book American Murder written by Mike Mayo and published by Visible Ink Press. This book was released on 2008-02-01 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigating the way Hollywood scoops up notorious criminals and turns them into legends, this entertaining who's-who guide provides thumbnail sketches of such killers as Ma Barker, Black Beard, Al Capone, John Wesley Hardin, and Charles Starkweather. Noting that some figures are glamorized in popular culture (Jesse James), while others are demonized (Charles Manson), this encyclopedic collection explores the legends' emotional truths as depicted in movies, stories, and songs. Facts of the real cases behind these notorious criminals are also presented, including the landmark rulings that pioneered new approaches to criminal justice.
Download or read book Post Theory written by David Bordwell and published by University of Wisconsin Pres. This book was released on 2012-11 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1970s, the academic study of film has been dominated by Structuralist Marxism, varieties of cultural theory, and the psychoanalytic ideas of Freud and Lacan. With Post-Theory, David Bordwell and Noel Carroll have opened the floor to other voices challenging the prevailing practices of film scholarship. Addressing topics as diverse as film scores, national film industries, and audience response. Post-Theory offers fresh directions for understanding film.
Download or read book Contemplating Art written by Jerrold Levinson and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2006-10-05 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemplating Art is a compendium of writings from the last ten years by one of the leading figures in aesthetics, Jerrold Levinson. The book contains twenty-four essays and is divided into seven parts. The first is about issues relating to art in general, not specific to one art form. The second and longest part of the book is about philosophical problems specific to music. The third part focuses on pictorial art, and the fourth on interpretation, in particular the interpretation of literature and literary language. In the remaining parts of the book Levinson discusses aesthetic properties, issues in historical aesthetics, humour, and intrinsic value. These lively essays, rigorous but accessible, will appeal not only to philosophers but also to musicologists, literary theorists, art critics, and reflective lovers of the arts.
Download or read book Death of a Merry Widow written by Richard Hunt and published by St Martins Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Searching for the truth behind the unlikely murder of a well-liked Cambridge widow, Detective Chief Inspector Sidney Walsh and his assistants discover the dead woman's secret identity as a writer of explicit romance novels.
Download or read book Hitchcock and the Censors written by John Billheimer and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2019-06-14 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edgar Award Winner: This lively account of the director’s battles with the Code Office is “an essential addition to any Hitchcock shelf” (Mystery Scene Magazine). From 1934 to 1968, the Motion Picture Production Code Office controlled the content and final cut on all films made and distributed in the United States. Code officials protected sensitive ears from standard four-letter words, as well as a few five-letter words like tramp and six-letter words like cripes. They also scrubbed “excessively lustful” kissing from the screen and ensured that no criminal went unpunished. Thus, throughout his career, Alfred Hitchcock had to deal with a wide variety of censors attuned to the slightest suggestion of sexual innuendo, undue violence, toilet humor, religious disrespect, and all forms of indecency, real or imagined. During their review of Hitchcock’s films, the censors demanded an average of 22.5 changes, ranging from the mundane to the mind-boggling, on each of his American films. Code reviewers dictated the ending of Rebecca, absolved Cary Grant of guilt in Suspicion, edited Cole Porter’s lyrics in Stage Fright, decided which shades should be drawn in Rear Window, and shortened the shower scene in Psycho. In Hitchcock and the Censors, John Billheimer traces the forces that led to the Production Code and describes Hitchcock’s interactions with code officials on a film-by-film basis as he fought to protect his creations, bargaining with code reviewers and sidestepping censorship to produce a lifetime of memorable films. Despite the often-arbitrary decisions of the code board, Hitchcock still managed to push the boundaries of sex and violence permitted in films by charming—and occasionally tricking—the censors and by swapping off bits of dialogue, plot points, and individual shots (some of which had been deliberately inserted as trading chips) to protect cherished scenes and images. By examining Hitchcock’s priorities in dealing with the censors, this work highlights the director’s theories of suspense as well as his magician-like touch when negotiating with code officials.
Download or read book Hitchcock as Philosopher written by Robert J. Yanal and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2010-06-28 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The films of Alfred Hitchcock deal heavily with psychological and philosophical themes, and one needn't look very far into the canon to find them. In Psycho, for example, the personality metamorphosis in Marion Crane that leads her into grand larceny is a pale double of the murderous oedipal divide in Norman Bates. In The Birds, overbearing natural mutations turn what might have been a "creature feature" into a film about fear of the unknowable. This book looks at 12 Hitchcock films and the positions they put forth on three problem areas of epistemology: deception, knowledge of mind, and problematic knowledge of the external world. These philosophical concepts are explained and woven into the author's thorough and thought-provoking discussion of each film. Descartes and Wittengenstein star; Plato, Locke, Hume, Kant and Kierkegaard also make appearances in this new "philosopher's cut" of the master's works.
Download or read book Film Genre Reader IV written by Barry Keith Grant and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 785 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From reviews of the third edition: “Film Genre Reader III lives up to the high expectations set by its predecessors, providing an accessible and relatively comprehensive look at genre studies. The anthology’s consideration of the advantages and challenges of genre studies, as well as its inclusion of various film genres and methodological approaches, presents a pedagogically useful overview.” —Scope Since 1986, Film Genre Reader has been the standard reference and classroom text for the study of genre in film, with more than 25,000 copies sold. Barry Keith Grant has again revised and updated the book to reflect the most recent developments in genre study. This fourth edition adds new essays on genre definition and cycles, action movies, science fiction, and heritage films, along with a comprehensive and updated bibliography. The volume includes more than thirty essays by some of film’s most distinguished critics and scholars of popular cinema, including Charles Ramírez Berg, John G. Cawelti, Celestino Deleyto, David Desser, Thomas Elsaesser, Steve Neale, Thomas Schatz, Paul Schrader, Vivian Sobchack, Janet Staiger, Linda Williams, and Robin Wood.
Download or read book Auteurs and Authorship written by Barry Keith Grant and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-02-11 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader offers students an introductory and comprehensive view of perhaps the most central concept in film studies. This unique anthology addresses the aesthetic and historical debates surrounding auteurship while providing author criticism and analysis in practice. Examines a number of mainstream and established directors, including John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Douglas Sirk, Frank Capra, Kathryn Bigelow, and Spike Lee Features historically important, foundational texts as well as contemporary pieces Includes numerous student features, such as a general editor’s introduction, short prefaces to each of the sections, bibliography, alternative tables of contents, and boxed features Each essay deliberately focuses across film makers’ oeuvres, rather than on one specific film, to enable lecturers to have flexibility in constructing their syllabi
Download or read book Appetites and Anxieties written by Diane Carson and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-01 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cinema is a mosaic of memorable food scenes. Detectives drink alone. Gangsters talk with their mouths full. Families around the world argue at dinner. Food documentaries challenge popular consumption-centered visions. In Appetites and Anxieties: Food, Film, and the Politics of Representation, authors Cynthia Baron, Diane Carson, and Mark Bernard use a foodways paradigm, drawn from the fields of folklore and cultural anthropology, to illuminate film's cultural and material politics. In looking at how films do and do not represent food procurement, preparation, presentation, consumption, clean-up, and disposal, the authors bring the pleasures, dangers, and implications of consumption to center stage. In nine chapters, Baron, Carson, and Bernard consider food in fiction films and documentaries-from both American and international cinema. The first chapter examines film practice from the foodways perspective, supplying a foundation for the collection of case studies that follow. Chapter 2 takes a political economy approach as it examines the food industry and the film industry's policies that determine representations of food in film. In chapter 3, the authors explore food and food interactions as a means for creating community in Bagdad Café, while in chapter 4 they take a close look at 301/302, in which food is used to mount social critique. Chapter 5 focuses on cannibal films, showing how the foodways paradigm unlocks the implications of films that dramatize one of society's greatest food taboos. In chapter 6, the authors demonstrate ways that insights generated by the foodways lens can enrich genre and auteur studies. Chapter 7 considers documentaries about food and water resources, while chapter 8 examines food documentaries that slip through the cracks of film censorship by going into exhibition without an MPAA rating. Finally, in chapter 9, the authors study films from several national cinemas to explore the intersection of food, gender, and ethnicity. Four appendices provide insights from a food stylist, a selected filmography of fiction films and a filmography of documentaries that feature foodways components, and a list of selected works in food and cultural studies.
Download or read book Violence in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock written by David Humbert and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2017-05-01 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Parting ways with the Freudian and Lacanian readings that have dominated recent scholarly understanding of Hitchcock, David Humbert examines the roots of violence in the director’s narratives and finds them not in human sexuality but in mimesis. Through an analysis of seven key films, he argues that Girard’s model of mimetic desire—desire oriented by imitation of and competition with others—best explains a variety of well-recognized themes, including the MacGuffin, the double, the innocent victim, the wrong man, the transfer of guilt, and the scapegoat. This study will appeal not only to Hitchcock fans and film scholars but also to those interested in Freud and Girard and their competing theories of desire.
Download or read book Intimate Violence written by David Greven and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intimate Violence explores the consistent cold war in Hitchcock's films between his heterosexual heroines and his queer characters, usually though not always male. Decentering the authority of the male hero, Hitchcock's films allow his female and queer characters to vie for narrative power, often in conflict with one another. These conflicts eerily echo the tense standoff between feminism and queer theory. From a reparative psychoanalytic perspective, David Greven merges queer and feminist approaches to Hitchcock. Using the theories of Melanie Klein, Greven argues that Hitchcock's work thematizes a constant battle between desires to injure and to repair the loved object. Greven develops a theory of sexual hegemony. The feminine versus the queer conflict, as he calls it, in Hitchcock films illuminates the shared but rivalrous struggles for autonomy and visibility on the part of female and queer subjects. The heroine is vulnerable to misogyny, but she often gains an access to agency that the queer subject longs for, mistaking her partial autonomy for social power. Hitchcock's queer personae, however, wield a seductive power over his heterosexual subjects, having access to illusion and masquerade that the knowledge-seeking heroine must destroy. Freud's theory of paranoia, understood as a tool for the dissection of cultural homophobia, illuminates the feminine versus the queer conflict, the female subject position, and the consistent forms of homoerotic antagonism in the Hitchcock film. Through close readings of such key Hitchcock works as North by Northwest, Psycho, Strangers on a Train, Spellbound, Rope, Marnie, and The Birds, Greven explores the ongoing conflicts between the heroine and queer subjects and the simultaneous allure and horror of same-sex relationships in the director's films.
Download or read book Shots in the Mirror written by Nicole Hahn Rafter and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2006 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Criminologist Nicole Rafter analyses the source of the appeal of crime films, and their role in popular culture. She argues that crime films both reflect and shape our ideas about fundamental social, economic and political issues.
