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In this critic's-eye guide to the cinema, Christopher Tookey mixes his own viewpoint with those of leading British and American critics to present a selection of their most laudatory and most merciless judgements on actors, directors and films in the English-speaking cinema and on video. The book exposes occasions when the critics' judgements have been wrong, and each entry explores a film's critical reception at the time of its release, and how it has subsequently been re-evaluated - or reinforced
Some films are remembered long after they are released; others are soon forgotten, but do they deserve oblivion? Are factors other than quality involved? This book exhumes some of the films released in Britain over the last seventy years from Daybreak (1948) to 16 Years of Alcohol (2003), and considers the reasons for their neglect. As well as exploring the contributions of those involved in making the films, the book examines such issues as marketing and the response of critics and audiences. Films are grouped loosely into categories such as “B” films and television films. Some works were little seen when they were first released and have stayed that way; others were popular in their day, but have slipped into obscurity. In some cases, social change has overtaken them, making the attitudes or subjects they depict seem dated. Even being released as a DVD does not guarantee that a title will be rehabilitated. In addition, how significant is the American market? This book should appeal to lovers of British film, as well as to film studies students and everybody curious about the vagaries of success and failure in the arts.
An exploration of how the Middle Ages are manipulated ideologically in today's communication.
The Irish Republican Army (IRA) has for decades pursued the goal of unifying its homeland into a single sovereign nation, ending British rule in Northern Ireland. Over the years, the IRA has been dramatized in motion pictures directed by John Ford (The Informer), Carol Reed (Odd Man Out), David Lean (Ryan's Daughter), Neil Jordan (Michael Collins), and many others. Such international film stars as Liam Neeson, James Cagney, Richard Gere, James Mason and Anthony Hopkins have portrayed IRA members alternately as heroic patriots, psychotic terrorists and tormented rebels. This work analyzes celluloid depictions of the IRA from the 1916 Easter Rising to the peace process of the 1990s. Topics include America's role in creating both the IRA and its cinematic image, the organization's brief association with the Nazis, and critical reception of IRA films in Ireland, Britain and the United States.
Taking early 21st century Britain as a case study, Rethinking Holocaust Film Reception: A British Case Study presents an intervention into the scholarship on the representation of the Holocaust on film. Based on a study of audience responses to select films, Stefanie Rauch demonstrates that the reception of films about the Holocaust is a complex process that we cannot understand through textual analysis alone, but by also paying attention to individual reception processes. This book restores the agency of viewers and takes seriously their diverse responses to representations of the Holocaust. It demonstrates that viewers’ interpretative resources play an important role in film reception. V...
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This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2016. This volume comprises numerous academic papers concerning essential subjects in relation to fear, horror and terror, from cinematic representations and their subsequent responses, to first person accounts of terror by way of literature and journalism. Key scholars are employed to develop these important research areas as they provide new insights into cultural experiences and evaluations of fear, horror and terror, and their consequent analysis. Contributors also explore cross-cultural fear, the memorialisation of violence, and female experiences of fear represented through literature, theatre, and cinema. Valuable research is also demonstrated by way of the conceptualisation and management of fear, including the control of public fear in relation to mental illness, along with significant insights concerning depictions of sexual violence, the concept of the sublime in relation to the visualisation of the universe, and the relationship between scales of fright and the bulk of the on-screen monster.
The question of how to move beyond contentious pasts exercises societies across the globe. Focusing on Northern Ireland, this book examines how historical injustices continue to haunt contemporary lives, and how institutional and juridical approaches to 'dealing' with the past often give way to a silencing consensus or re-marginalising victims.
For scholars of film and readers who love cinema, these essays will be rich and playful inspiration.
Middle Easterners: Sometimes White, Sometimes Not - an article by John Tehranian The Middle Eastern question lies at the heart of the most pressing issues of our time: the war in Iraq and on terrorism, the growing tension between preservation of our national security and protection of our civil rights, and the debate over immigration, assimilation, and our national identity. Yet paradoxically, little attention is focused on our domestic Middle Eastern population and its place in American society. Unlike many other racial minorities in our country, Middle Eastern Americans have faced rising, rather than diminishing, degrees of discrimination over time; a fact highlighted by recent targeted im...