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How one company created the dominant aesthetic of digital realism. Just about every major film now comes to us with an assist from digital effects. The results are obvious in superhero fantasies, yet dramas like Roma also rely on computer-generated imagery to enhance the verisimilitude of scenes. But the realism of digital effects is not actually true to life. It is a realism invented by Hollywood—by one company specifically: Industrial Light & Magic. The Empire of Effects shows how the effects company known for the puppets and space battles of the original Star Wars went on to develop the dominant aesthetic of digital realism. Julie A. Turnock finds that ILM borrowed its technique from th...
Luke Colton believes the South and slavery are right. How else will cotton get to market, tobacco harvested without slaves to do the work? Southern economy is based on such a workforce and besides, what would slaves do if they were free? Luke’s three brothers, parents, and his wife think slavery and states’ rights are wrong. They side with the Union. Here in Kansas, Luke chooses to ride with the leader of Quantrill’s Raiders, a ruthless group of border ruffians. He hides his decision from his family. James Colton, Luke’s older brother, a victim of Apache capture and torture, visits from New Mexico and displays what slavery looks like, explains what it costs. Unconvinced, Luke continues to ride with Quantrill by burning houses, raiding, looting, and assaulting men, until he realizes his family is right. But how to get out of the Confederate guerrilla’s clutches? Upon learning of Quantrill’s plans to burn Lawrence, Kansas, Luke’s hometown, the Colton brothers rush to save everyone. But, no one listens . . .
In late 1997, world order has been destabilized by recession and extreme nationalism. France and Germany unite to form the "European Confederation." EurCon's attempt to place Eastern Europe under its control meets with resistance, particularly from Poland, and soon the U.S. and Britain are pulled into the struggle. The war and its build-up are reported by various observers: the senior CIA field man in Moscow, the private advisor to the U.S. president, a French intelligence agent, a Hungarian police commander, a Russian intelligence man, a CIA economist and officers of the American, German and Polish armed forces. The nonstop action includes massive air, naval and land battles with first-line...
This book addresses the intersections between the interdisciplinary realms of Ecocriticism and Indigenous and Native American Studies, and between academic theory and pragmatic eco-activism conducted by multiethnic and indigenous communities. It illuminates the multi-layered, polyvocal ways in which artistic expressions render ecological connections, drawing on scholars working in collaboration with Indigenous artists from all walks of life, including film, literature, performance, and other forms of multimedia to expand existing conversations. Both local and global in its focus, the volume includes essays from multiethnic and Indigenous communities across the world, visiting topics such as ...
Humphrey Bogart. Abbott and Costello. Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. John Wayne. Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable. Images of these film icons conjure up a unique moment in cinema and history, one of optimism and concern, patriotism and cynicism. What Dreams Were Made Of examines the performers who helped define American cinema in the 1940s, a decade of rapid and repeated upheaval for Hollywood and the United States. Through insightful discussions of key films as well as studio publicity and fan magazines, the essays in this collection analyze how these actors and actresses helped lift spirits during World War II, whether in service comedies, combat films, or escapist musicals. The contributors, all major writers on the stars and movies of this period, also explore how cultural shifts after the war forced many stars to adjust to new outlooks and attitudes, particularly in film noir. Together, they represented the hopes and fears of a nation during turbulent times, enacting on the silver screen the dreams of millions of moviegoers.
From the late 1930s to the early twenty-first century, European and American filmmakers have displayed an enduring fascination with Nazi leaders, rituals, and symbols, making scores of films from Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) and Watch on the Rhine (1943) through Des Teufels General (The Devil’s General, 1955) and Pasqualino settebellezze (Seven Beauties, 1975), up to Der Untergang (Downfall, 2004), Inglourious Basterds (2009), and beyond. Probing the emotional sources and effects of this fascination, Sabine Hake looks at the historical relationship between film and fascism and its far-reaching implications for mass culture, media society, and political life. In confronting the specter ...
Essays on “how motion pictures in the first two decades of the 20th century constructed ‘communities of nationality’ . . . recommended.” —Choice While many studies have been written on national cinemas, Early Cinema and the “National” is the first anthology to focus on the concept of national film culture from a wide methodological spectrum of interests, including not only visual and narrative forms, but also international geopolitics, exhibition and marketing practices, and pressing linkages to national imageries. The essays in this richly illustrated landmark anthology are devoted to reconsidering the nation as a framing category for writing cinema history. Many of the 34 con...
An Imaginary Cinema is the first systematic study of Sergei Eisenstein's unrealized films as well as a deeply informed historical and theoretical inquiry into the role and meaning of the unmade in his oeuvre. Eisenstein directed some of the twentieth century's most important films, from the early classic of montage, Battleship Potemkin, to his late masterpiece, Ivan the Terrible. Alongside these, however, the Soviet filmmaker also toiled over a compelling array of unrealized projects, from ideas that never grew beyond complex, passionate notebook scrawls and sketches to productions that were mounted and shot to some degree of completion without ever being finished. Working from the archival ...
"Edgar Allan Poe is one of American culture's most iconic figures, inspiring countless derivations beyond the literary realm, from commercial illustration and kitch to art installations and video games. Why has Poe been so hugely influential in media other than his own? What do filmmakers, composers, and other artists find in Poe that suits their purposes so often and so variously? Poe's works are violent and brooding, memorable both for certain grisly images and for certain prevailing moods-dread, creepiness, mournfulness. They are, in other words, distinctly graphic and richly atmospheric. Jonathan Elmer locates the source of Poe's fascination for artists in these two vernacular aesthetic ...
Global Auteurs employs auteur theory to examine the work of three contemporary and innovative directors: Pedro Almodóvar, Lars von Trier, and Michael Winterbottom. With extensive background information on the global film industry, and on auteur theory and its implications for ideological critique, this book's insightful case studies examine both ideologies the filmmakers re-circulate and ideologies that they confront in textual form. The discussion of Pedro Almodóvar devotes particular attention to mass mediation, the family, and gender in the corpus of his films, while Lars von Trier's corpus is interpreted as driven by a motif that characterizes all of his films: the «failed idealist». Michael Winterbottom's body of work presents a genre-diverse, post-MTV style concerned with «outsiders» and taboo, representation and truth, and human rights. Global Auteurs' sophisticated approach to decoding film is suitable for graduate and undergraduate courses on film, global mass media, and contemporary Europe.