Performing arts

From Amos 'n' Andy to The Jeffersons to Family Matters to Chappelle's Show, this volume covers it all with entries on all different genres-animation, documentaries, sitcoms, sports, talk shows, and variety shows-and performers such as Muhammad Ali, Louis Armstrong, Bill Cosby, and Oprah Winfrey.

For nearly 40 years, David Lynch's works have enthralled, mystified, and provoked viewers.

In a film career that spanned more than seven decades, Freddie Francis distinguished himself as both an award-winning cinematographer and as a director of classic British horror films of the 1960s and 70s.

One minute: that's all the time an actor needs to make a scorching impression-to pull in an audience, make them care, laugh, cry, remind them that life is worth living, or help them forget that life is hard.

How do reality television programs shape our view of the world and what we perceive as real and normal?

This book explores how after 20 years of existence, virtual world games have evolved: the social landscapes within digital worlds have become rigid and commodified, and "e;play"e; and "e;fun"e; have become rational and mechanical products.

For decades, British stage musicals struggled to compete against the dazzling Broadway productions that came roaring in from across the pond.

This clearly written guide to the Stanislavski method has long been a favorite among students and teachers of acting.

This work provides an accurate, in-depth examination and scientific evaluation of the most famous hauntings in American history as depicted in popular films and television programs.

Even a century after its conclusion, the devastation of the Great War still echoes in the work of artists who try to make sense of the political, moral, ideological, and economic changes and challenges it spawned.

Of all the elements that combine to make movies, music sometimes seems the forgotten stepchild.

This is the only book of its kind to explore biblical epics from an LGBT perspective, studying films from the silent era, to the postwar major studio era, to the present day.

Providing intriguing insights for students, film buffs, and readers of various genres of fiction, this fascinating book delves into the psychology of 100 well-known fictional characters.

This lighthearted and eye-opening book explores the role of comedy in cultural and political critiques of American society from the past century.

Clint Eastwood-actor, director, composer, musician, and politician-is undeniably one of the most prolific and accomplished celebrities of the modern age.

Mickey Rooney is a cinematic icon whose career lasted from the silent era into the twenty-first century.

Cinema of Swords is a history, guide, and love letter to over four hundred movies and television shows featuring swashbucklers: knights, pirates, samurai, Vikings, gladiators, outlaw heroes like Zorro and Robin Hood, and anyone else who lives by the blade and solves their problems with the point of a sword.

An impassioned look at games and game design that offers the most ambitious framework for understanding them to date.

Rod Serling's pioneering series TheTwilight Zone (1959 to 1964) is remembered for its surprise twist endings and pervading sense of irony.

Marco Paolini: A Deep Map breaks new ground in the field of Italian political theatre by outlining the unique approach of one of Italy's most celebrated playwrights, Marco Paolini, whose work has hitherto remained mostly inaccessible to English-speaking audiences.

Richard Matheson was one of the leading writers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror in the twentieth century.

Projecting 9/11 examines sensibilities and ideologies that arose after September 11, 2001, and how these intersect with issues of race, gender, sexuality, and citizenship in contemporary mainstream films.

This guide provides an overview of the history of hip hop culture and an exploration of its dance style, appropriate both for student research projects and general interest reading.

Latino American cinema is a provocative, complex, and definitively American topic of study.

This book traces the evolution of George Clooney's successful career, from his humble start as a television heartthrob to his current position as one of the most powerful figures in film making today.

Now that television shows can live forever as DVD sets, the stories they can tell have changed; television episodes are now crafted as chapters in a season-long novel instead of free-standing stories.

This book explores how comedian Stephen Colbert's satiric views of American life have captured the imagination of viewers around the world-and sharpened these individuals' own critical interpretations and opinions on current events.

This book is a comprehensive, historical bible on the subject of urban street dance and its influence on modern dance, hip hop, and pop culture.

Animation was once a relatively simple matter, using fairly primitive means to produce rather short films of subjects that were generally comedic and often quite childish.

The past few years have featured such blockbusters as Super-Size Me, Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko, March of the Penguins, and An Inconvenient Truth.

Spike Lee's journey from guerrilla filmmaker to Hollywood insider is explored in light of his personal background, the cultural influence of his films, and the extensive scholarship his movies have inspired.

This encyclopedia collects and organizes theoretical and historical content on the topic of video games, covering the people, systems, technologies, and theoretical concepts as well as the games themselves.

This fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at a Hollywood dynasty offers an in-depth study of the films and artistry of iconic director Francis Ford Coppola and his daughter, Sofia, exploring their work and their impact on each other, both personally and professionally.

The Hollywood studios of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s were rarely concerned with film as an art form; this was especially true of those specializing in the B film.

What is the history of devised theatre?

The term Old Time Radio refers to the relatively brief period from 1926, when the National Broadcasting Company first began network broadcasting, until approximately 1960, when television became the dominant communication medium in the United States.

From the silent era into the early days of television, hundreds of small production companies turned out low-budget films that were played as second features in this country and abroad.

The Ziegfeld Follies: A History in Song presents an account of the Follies through the musical productions contained in the show.

The NBC series Hannibal has garnered both critical and fan acclaim for its cinematic qualities, its complex characters, and its innovative reworking of Thomas Harris's mythology so well-known from Jonathan Demme's Silence of the Lambs (1991) and its variants.

Selected for Arab America's Best Arab American Books of 2020 list.

German film is diverse and multi-faceted; its history includes five distinct German governments (Wilhelmine Germany, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the German Democratic Republic), two national industries (Germany and Austria), and a myriad of styles and production methods.

Roberto Benigni, the Italian comedian, actor, director, and writer, gained international fame when his film La vita e bella/ Life Is Beautiful (1997) won three Oscars in 1999, including Best Foreign Film and Best Actor.

Planet of the Apes started life in 1963 as a quirky work by Pierre Boulle, the French literary novelist famous for The Bridge over the River Kwai.

All the Classroom's a Stage reveals how teachers can apply theater skills to the craft of teaching and enhance their ability to engage and motivate students, cultivate collaborative learning, and become stronger and more dynamic 'performers' in the classroom.

Female Amerindians in Early Modern Spanish Theater is a collection of essays that focuses on the female Amerindian characters in comedias based on the discovery, exploration, and conquest of America.

An introductory guide to Othello in performance offering a scene-by-scene theatrically aware commentary, contextual documents, a brief history of the text and first performances, case studies of key productions, a survey of screen adaptations, a sampling of critical opinion and further reading.

Shakespeare and the Spanish Comedia is a nearly unique transnational study of the theater / performance traditions of early modern Spain and England.

Dreamscapes in Italian Cinema explores different representations of dreams, visions, hallucinations, and hypnagogic states in Italian film culture, covering the works of some of the most significant auteurs in the history of Italian cinema (Fellini, Pasolini, Moretti, Bellocchio, among others).

Place, Setting, Perspective examines the films of the Italian filmmaker, Nanni Moretti, from a fresh viewpoint, employing the increasingly significant research area of space within a filmic text.