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“Donald Crafton, our lively guide, shows us around a Tooniverse populated by performers, not just images, who engage us in all the ways their flesh-and-blood counterparts do, and then some. Taking classical animation as his terrain, Crafton nevertheless pushes ongoing discussions of performance, liveness, and corporeality in the directions in which they need to go if they are to help us describe and navigate our increasingly virtual worlds.” Philip Auslander, author of Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture "Every once in a while a book comes along that marks a transformational point in its discipline. Such a book is Donald Crafton's Shadow of a Mouse. Crafton skillfully draws tog...
This text offers readers a look at the time when sound was a vexing challenge for filmmakers and the source of contentious debate for audiences and critics. The author presents a view of the talkies' reception, amongst other issues.
This is the definitive biography of Emile Cohl (1857-1938), one of the most important pioneers of the art of the animated cartoon and an innovative contributor to popular graphic humor at a critical moment when it changed from traditional caricature to the modern comic strip. This profusely illustrated book provides not only a wealth of information on Cohl's life but also an analysis of his contribution to the development of the animation film in both France and the United States and an interpretation of how the new genre fit into the historical shift from a "primitive" to a "classical" cinema. "Beautiful in look and design, with stunning reproductions from films and newspapers, Emile Cohl, ...
This is the first book to trace the prehistory of animation - zoetrope, flipbooks, and vaudeville "lightning sketches" - and to chronicle the achievements of Emil Cohl, the first animator, and Felix's creator Otto Mesmer, among others.
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Twenty years ago, noted film scholars Tom Gunning and André Gaudreault introduced the phrase “cinema of attractions” to describe the essential qualities of films made in the medium’s earliest days, those produced between 1895 and 1906. Now, The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded critically examines the term and its subsequent wide-ranging use in film studies. The collection opens with a history of the term, tracing the collaboration between Gaudreault and Gunning, the genesis of the term in their attempts to explain the spectacular effects of motion that lay at the heart of early cinema, and the pair’s debts to Sergei Eisenstein and others. This reconstruction is followed by a look at applications of the term to more recent film productions, from the works of the Wachowski brothers to virtual reality and video games. With essays by an impressive collection of international film scholars—and featuring contributions by Gunning and Gaudreault as well—The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded will be necessary reading for all scholars of early film and its continuing influence.
This collection of essays explores the link between comedy and animation in studio-era cartoons, from filmdom’s earliest days through the twentieth century. Written by a who’s who of animation authorities, Funny Pictures offers a stimulating range of views on why animation became associated with comedy so early and so indelibly, and illustrates how animation and humor came together at a pivotal stage in the development of the motion picture industry. To examine some of the central assumptions about comedy and cartoons and to explore the key factors that promoted their fusion, the book analyzes many of the key filmic texts from the studio years that exemplify animated comedy. Funny Pictures also looks ahead to show how this vital American entertainment tradition still thrives today in works ranging from The Simpsons to the output of Pixar.
The last installment of the acclaimed Behind the Silver Screen series, Animation explores the variety of technologies and modes of production throughout the history of American animation. Drawing on archival sources to analyze the relationship between production and style, this volume provides also a unique approach to understanding animation in general.
Mickey Mouse, Betty Boop, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, Felix the Cat, and other beloved cartoon characters have entertained media audiences for almost a century, outliving the human stars who were once their contemporaries in studio-era Hollywood. In Animated Personalities, David McGowan asserts that iconic American theatrical short cartoon characters should be legitimately regarded as stars, equal to their live-action counterparts, not only because they have enjoyed long careers, but also because their star personas have been created and marketed in ways also used for cinematic celebrities. Drawing on detailed archival research, McGowan analyzes how Hollywood studios constructed and manipulated...
The heyday of silent film soon became quaint with the arrival of "talkies." As early as 1929, critics and historians were writing of the period as though it were the distant past. Much of the literature on the silent era focuses on its filmic art--ambiance and psychological depth, the splendor of the sets and costumes--yet overlooks the inspiration behind these. This book explores the Middle Ages as the prevailing influence on costume and set design in silent film and a force in fashion and architecture of the era. In the wake of World War I, designers overthrew the artifice of prewar style and manners and drew upon what seemed a nobler, purer age to create an ambiance that reflected higher ideals.