You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
For scholars of film and readers who love cinema, these essays will be rich and playful inspiration.
In This Is a Picture and Not the World, Joseph Natoli employs the lingua franca of film itself—screenplay dialogue—as well as the more recent form of the political blog to present a hyperreal account of popular film as both a creator and a reflector of our post-9/11 mass psyche. Drawing on both classic and contemporary film examples, the book also offers a quasihistory of film genres, including science fiction, the western, film noir, and screwball comedy, emphasizing how these genres have been shaken up, recontextualized, recombined, turned self-reflexive, and parodied over the past couple of decades. Taken together, these satirical parodies of screenplays and blogs reveal and perform how our very gaze has shifted from modern to postmodern, from a direct view of the world to a filtered one.
For around a hundred years up to the Stonewall riots, the word used for gay men was 'queers'. In The Culture of Queers, Richard Dyer traces the contours of queer culture, examining the differences and continuities with the gay culture which succeeded it. Opening with a discussion of the very concept of 'queers', Dyer asks what it means to speak of a sexual grouping having a culture, and addresses issues such as gay attitudes to women and the notion of camp. From screaming queens to sensitive vampires and sad young men, and from pulp novels to pornography to the films of Fassbinder, The Culture of Queers explores the history of queer arts and media.
Andrew Dickos's Street with No Name traces the film noir genre back to its roots in German expressionist cinema and the French cinema of the interwar years. Dickos describes the development of the film noir in America from 1941 through the 1970s and examines how this development expresses a modern cinema. He argues that, in its most satisfying form, the film noir exists as a series of conventions with an iconography and characters of distinctive significance. Featuring stylized lighting and urban settings, these films tell melodramatic narratives involving characters who commit crimes predicated on destructive passions, corruption, and a submission to human weakness and fate. Unlike other st...
In the words of one reader, Brian W. Fairbanks has a real talent for extracting the essence of a given subject and articulating it in a meaningful way. In WRITINGS, the author collects some of his finest essays and criticism spanning the years 1991-2005 and covering four subjects: FILM LITERATURE MUSIC SOCIETY Whether offering an insightful analysis of film noir, examining Benjamin Franklin's impact on American society, taking a clear-eyed, non-partisan look at democrats, republicans, the 2004 presidential campaign, George W. Bush, and the war on terror, or lambasting the corruption of television news, Brian W. Fairbanks is ingenious with a sophisticated yet effortlessly readable style. Also available in two hardcover editions.
"Fleeing the mobsters he has double crossed, Harry Fabian runs through a virtual obstacle course of London's back streets and alleys during a night in which the shadows seem to grow darker with his every footstep. The night itself seems to be his stalker, its shadows enveloping him like a closing coffin lid."So begins "The Shadows of Film Noir," Brian W. Fairbanks' perceptive analysis of the genre, one of the highlights of a collection that also includes knowledgable profiles of film giants like John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Richard Widmark and even Elliott Gould, as well as a memorable lament for the movie palaces that have fallen victim to the multiplex in our fast food styled culture.THE LATE SHOW: WRITINGS ON FILM celebrates the glory days of cinema in witty prose from a writer with a "real talent for extracting the essence of a given subject and articulating it in a meaningful way."
Short Synopsis on the book: Men and Women you love to hate or What’s his name I really hate him’ (As you can see, above; I have two possible titles; but I can’t decide which one to use?) This is how I envisage the book cover the front of the book; the character is a cartoon representation of a ‘Baddie’ based on Dick Dastardly from ‘Whacky Races’ which is originally based on a Victorian actor Todd Slaughter who always played villains in plays and films. The Men & Women you love to hate Or What’s his name? I really hate him! Main Body of the book The character of the villain is an integral part of the history of ‘story telling’ in books, fairy tales in the cinema and on the...
Shadows. Smoke. Dark alleys. Rain-slicked city streets. These are iconic elements of film noir visual style. Long after its 1940s heyday, noir hallmarks continue to appear in a variety of new media forms and styles. What has made the noir aesthetic at once enduring and adaptable? Sheri Chinen Biesen explores how the dark cinematic noir style has evolved across eras, from classic Hollywood to present-day streaming services. Examining both aesthetics and material production conditions, she demonstrates how technological and industrial changes have influenced the imagery of film noir. When it emerged in the early 1940s, the visual style’s distinctive shadowy look was in part a product of wart...
Queer Cinema, the Film Reader brings together key writings that use queer theory to explore cinematic sexualities, especially those historically designated as gay, lesbian, bisexual and/or transgendered.
Hailed for its dramatic expressionist visuals, film noir is one of the most prominent genres in Hollywood cinema. Yet, despite the "boom" in sound studies, the role of sonic effects and source music in classic American noir has not received the attention it deserves. Siren City engagingly illustrates how sound tracks in 1940s film noir are often just as compelling as the genre's vaunted graphics. Focusing on a wide range of celebrated and less well known films and offering an introductory discussion of film sound, Robert Miklitsch mobilizes the notion of audiovisuality to investigate period sound technologies such as the radio and jukebox, phonograph and Dictaphone, popular American music such as "hot" black jazz, and "big numbers" featuring iconic performers such as Lauren Bacall, Veronica Lake, and Rita Hayworth. Siren City resonates with the sounds and source music of classic American noir-gunshots and sirens, swing riffs and canaries. Along with the proverbial private eye and femme fatale, these audiovisuals are central to the noir aesthetic and one important reason the genre reverberates with audiences around the world.