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Fans of the movie and students and scholars of cultural, performance, and film history will appreciate the insight in The Time of Our Lives.
This book provides a detailed and engaging account of how Hollywood cinema has represented and ‘remembered’ the Sixties. From late 1970s hippie musicals such as Hair and The Rose through to recent civil rights portrayals The Help and Lee Daniels’ The Butler, Oliver Gruner explores the ways in which films have engaged with broad debates on America’s recent past. Drawing on extensive archival research, he traces production history and script development, showing how a group of politically engaged filmmakers sought to offer resonant contributions to public memory. Situating Hollywood within a wider series of debates taking place in the US public sphere, Screening the Sixties offers a rigorous and innovative study of cinema’s engagement with this most contested of epochs.
Bringing together a group of international scholars from diverse academic backgrounds, ‘Grease Is the Word’ analyses the cultural phenomenon Grease. With essays covering everything from the film’s production history, political representations and industrial impact to its stars and reception, the book shines a spotlight on one of Broadway’s and Hollywood’s biggest commercial successes. By adopting a range of perspectives and drawing on various visual, textual and archival sources, the contributors maintain a vibrant dialogue throughout, offering a timely reappraisal of a musical that continues to resonate with fans and commentators the world over.
The oldest and most respected martial arts title in the industry, this popular monthly magazine addresses the needs of martial artists of all levels by providing them with information about every style of self-defense in the world - including techniques and strategies. In addition, Black Belt produces and markets over 75 martial arts-oriented books and videos including many about the works of Bruce Lee, the best-known marital arts figure in the world.
The representation of Southerners on film has been a topic of enduring interest and debate among scholars of both film and Southern studies. These 15 essays examine the problem of Southern identity in film since the civil rights era. Fresh insights are provided on such familiar topics as the redneck image, transitions to modernity and the prevalence of the Southern gothic. Other essays reflect the reinvigorated and expanding field of new Southern studies and topics include the transnational South, the intersection of ethnicity and environment and the cultural significance of Southern identity outside the South.
"Fractured Fifties: The Cinematic Periodization and Evolution of a Decade presents a two-pronged argument that (1) cinema has helped define the 1950s by contributing in considerable and meaningful ways to the process of periodization and thus a general conception of the decade, and (2) cinema has fractured our sense of the 1950s. It challenges a reductive and fairly cohesive set of tropes with a complex amalgam of representations that also intervene in debates about historiography, historicity, cultural memory, mediation, nostalgia, and periodization. In other words, cinema has fractured our sense of the 1950s, yielding in the process a series of 1950s types or kinds, (e.g., The Leave it to Beaver Fifties, The Jukebox Fifties, and The Cold War Fifties, The Retromediated Fifties, etc.) as well as a wealth of critical insights into myriad pasts, presents, and the evolving relationships between them"--
Fifty Hollywood Directors introduces the most important, iconic and influential filmmakers who worked in Hollywood between the end of the silent period and the birth of the blockbuster. By exploring the historical, cultural and technological contexts in which each director was working, this book traces the formative period in commercial cinema when directors went from pioneers to industry heavyweights. Each entry discusses a director’s practices and body of work and features a brief biography and suggestions for further reading. Entries include: Frank Capra Cecil B DeMille John Ford Alfred Hitchcock Fritz Lang Orson Welles DW Griffith King Vidor This is an indispensible guide for anyone interested in film history, Hollywood and the development of the role of the director.
As a period of film history, The American New Wave (ordinarily understood as beginning in 1967 and ending in 1980) remains a preoccupation for scholars and audiences alike. In traditional accounts, it is considered to be bookended by two periods of conservatism, and viewed as a (brief) period of explosive creativity within the Hollywood system. From Bonnie and Clyde to Heaven's Gate, it produced films that continue to be watched, discussed, analysed and poured over. It has, however, also become rigidly defined as a cinema of director-auteurs who made a number of aesthetically and politically significant films. This has led to marginalization and exclusion of many important artists and filmma...
Hollywood films have been influential in the portrayal and representation of race relations in the South and how African Americans are cinematically depicted in history, from The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Gone with the Wind (1939) to The Help (2011) and 12 Years a Slave (2013). With an ability to reach mass audiences, films represent the power to influence and shape the public's understanding of our country's past, creating lasting images -- both real and imagined -- in American culture. In Southern History on Screen: Race and Rights, 1976--2016, editor Bryan Jack brings together essays from an international roster of scholars to provide new critical perspectives on Hollywood's relationsh...
Established in 1919 by Hollywood's top talent United Artists has had an illustrious history, from Hollywood minor to industry leader to a second-tier media company in the shadow of MGM. This edited collection brings together leading film historians to examine key aspects of United Artists' centennial history from its origins to the sometimes chaotic developments of the last four decades. The focus is on several key executives – ranging from Joseph Schenck to Paula Wagner and Tom Cruise – and on many of the people making films for United Artists, including Gloria Swanson, David O. Selznick, Kirk Douglas, the Mirisch brothers and Woody Allen. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, ind...