The Western tradition, with its well-worn tropes, readily identifiable characters, iconic landscapes, and evocative soundtracks, is not limited to the United States.
Although ostensibly presented as “light entertainment,” the work of writer-director-producer Joss Whedon takes much dark inspiration from the horror genre to create a unique aesthetic and perform a cultural critique.
Vincenzo Tomeo's pioneering research in the 1960s and 1970s drew attention to the importance of popular culture in our understanding of the operation of the justice system.
Late 19th century science fiction stories and utopian treatises related to morals and attitudes often focused on economic, sociological and, at times Marxist ideas.
Traversing the Fantasy: The Dialectic of Desire/Fantasy proposes a new and comprehensive model of spectatorship at the heart of which it draws an analogy between the ethics of Lacanian psychoanalysis and the ethics of narrative film.
The theme of surveillance has become an increasingly common element in movies and television shows, perhaps as a response to the sense that the world is now virtually under watch.
The remarkable commercial success of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ in 2004 came as a surprise to the Hollywood establishment, particularly considering the film's failure to find production funding through a major studio.
This book provides the first comprehensive study of narco cinema, a cross-border exploitation cinema that, for over forty years, has been instrumental in shaping narco-culture in Mexico and the US borderlands.
A Companion to the War Film contains 27 original essays that examine all aspects of the genre, from the traditional war film, to the new global nature of conflicts, and the diverse formats that war stories assume in today s digital culture.
Why have certain kinds of documentary and non-narrative films emerged as the most interesting, exciting, and provocative movies made in the last twenty years?
From the cheaply made “tax-shelter” films of the 1970s to the latest wave of contemporary “eco-horror,” Canadian horror cinema has rarely received much critical attention.
This revealing history of the American film musical synthesizes the critical literature on the genre and provides a series of close analytical readings of iconic musical films, focusing on their cultural relationship to other aspects of American popular music.
In 1980s India, the Ramsay Brothers and other filmmakers produced a wave of horror movies about soul-sucking witches, knife-wielding psychopaths, and dark-caped vampires.
Jez Stewart charts the course of this extraordinarily fertile area of British film from early experiments with stop-motion and the flourishing of animated drawings during WWI.
In the context of changing constructs of home and of childhood since the mid-twentieth century, this book examines discourses of home and homeland in Irish children's fiction from 1990 to 2012, a time of dramatic change in Ireland spanning the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger and of unprecedented growth in Irish children's literature.
Although the horror genre has been embraced by filmmakers around the world, Japan has been one of the most prolific and successful purveyors of such films.
Robert Pippin (1948- ) is a major figure in contemporary philosophy, having published influential work on thinkers including Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche.
Cinema Wars explores the intersection of film, politics, and US culture and society through a bold critical analysis of the films, TV shows, and documentaries produced in the early 2000s Offers a thought-provoking depiction of Hollywood film as a contested terrain between conservative and liberal forces Films and documentaries discussed include: Black Hawk Down, The Dark Knight, Star Wars, Syriana, WALL-E, Fahrenheit 9/11 and other Michael Moore documentaries, amongst others Explores how some films in this era supported the Bush-Cheney regime, while others criticized the administration, openly or otherwise Investigates Hollywood s treatment of a range of hot topics, from terrorism and environmental crisis to the Iraq war and the culture wars of the 2000s Shows how Hollywood film in the 2000s brought to life a vibrant array of social protest and helped create cultural conditions to elect Barack Obama
Although precise definitions have not been agreed on, historical cinema tends to cut across existing genre categories and establishes an intimidatingly large group of films.
Feminist Posthumanism in Contemporary Science Fiction Film and Media: From Annihilation to High Life and Beyond places posthumanism and feminist theory into dialogue with contemporary science fiction film and media.
Consuming Visions explores the relationship between cinema and writing in early twentieth-century Brazil, focusing on how the new and foreign medium of film was consumed by a literary society in the throes of modernization.
Betty Comden and Adolph Green were the writers behind such classic stage musicals as On the Town, Wonderful Town, and Bells Are Ringing, and they provided lyrics for such standards as "e;New York, New York,"e; "e;Just in Time,"e; "e;The Party's Over,"e; and "e;Make Someone Happy,"e; to name just a few.
For more than half a century now, scholars have debated over what comprises a 'genuinely' religious film-one that evinces an 'authentic' manifestation of the sacred.
This book presents and analyses the results of the Lockdown Library Project survey, using a range of quantitative and qualitative approaches to provide a unique insight into the ways in which the first UK COVID-19 lockdown affected public reading habits.
This book investigates how persuasion relates to values in self-improvement literature, revealing the discursive practices used to persuade and engage their readers, and construct a credible persona.
