Welcome to the Dreamhouse - Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs by Lynn Spigel

$20.00 NZD

Category: Film | Series: Console-Ing Passions Ser. | Reading Level: very good

In "Welcome to the Dreamhouse" feminist media studies pioneer Lynn Spigel takes on Barbie collectors, African American media coverage of the early NASA space launches, and television s changing role in the family home and its links to the broader visual culture of modern art. Exploring postwar U.S. medi a in the context of the period s reigning ideals about home and family life, Spigel looks at a range of commercial objects and phenomena, from television and toys to comic books and magazines.The volume considers not only how the media portrayed suburban family life, but also how both middle-class ideals and a perceived division between private and public worlds helped to shape the visual forms, storytelling practices, and reception of postwar media and consumer culture. Spigel also explores those aspects of suburban culture that media typically render invisible. She looks at the often unspoken assumptions about class, nation, ethnicity, race, and sexual orientation that underscored both media images (like those of 1960s space missions) and social policies of the mass-produced suburb. Issues of memory and nostalgia are central in the final section as Spigel considers how contemporary girls use television reruns as a source for women s history and then analyzes the current nostalgia for baby boom era family ideals that runs through contemporary images of new household media technologies.Containing some of Spigel s well-known essays on television s cultural history as well as new essays on a range of topics dealing with popular visual culture, "Welcome to the Dreamhouse" is important reading for students and scholars of media and communications studies, popular culture, American studies, women s studies, and sociology." ...Show more

Parallel Tracks - The Railroad and Silent Cinema by Lynne Kirby

$20.00 NZD

Category: Film | Reading Level: very good

From the earliest days, the cinema has enjoyed a special kinship with the railroad, a mutual attraction based on similar ways of handling speed, visual perception and the promise of a journey. This work explores and explains this relationship in both historical and theoretical terms, blending film schol arship with railroad history. ...Show more

Film Theory Goes to the Movies - Cultural Analysis of Contemporary Film by Hilary Radner (Editor); Jim Collins (Editor); Ava Preacher Collins (Editor)

$14.00 NZD

Category: Film | Series: AFI Film Readers Ser. | Reading Level: very good

Film Theory Goes to the Movies fills the gap in film theory literature which has failed to analyze high-grossing blockbusters. The contributors in this volume, however, discuss such popular films as The Silence of the Lambs, Dances With Wolves, Terminator II, Pretty Woman, Truth or Dare, Mystery Train, and Jungle Fever. They employ a variety of critical approaches, from industry analysis to reception study, to close readings informed by feminist, deconstructive and postmodernist theory, as well as recent developments in African American and gay and lesbian criticism. An important introduction to contemporary Hollywood, this anthology will be of interest to those involved in the fields of film theory, literary theory, popular culture, and women's studies. ...Show more

Comedy/Cinema/Theory by Andrew Horton (Editor)

$16.00 NZD

Category: Film | Reading Level: very good

The nature of comedy has interested many thinkers, from Plato to Freud, but film comedy has not received much theoretical attention in recent years. The essays in Comedy/Cinema/Theory use a range of critical and theoretical approaches to explore this curious and fascinating subject. The result is a stim ulating, informative book for anyone interested in film, humor, and the art of bringing the two together.Comedy remains a central human preoccupation, despite the vagaries in form that it has assumed over the centuries in different media. In his introduction, Horton surveys the history of the study of comedy, from Aristophanes to the present, and he also offers a perspective on other related comic forms: printed fiction, comic books, TV sitcoms, jokes and gags.Some essays in the collection focus on general issues concerning comedy and cinema. In lively (and often humorous) prose, such scholars as Lucy Fischer, Noel Carroll, Peter Lehman, and Brian Henderson employ feminist, post-Freudian, neo-Marxist, and Bakhtinian methodologies. The remaining essays bring theoretical considerations to bear on specific works and comic filmmakers. Peter Brunette, William Paul, Scott Bukatman, Dana Polan, Charles Eidsvik, Ruth Perlmutter, Stephen Mamber, and Andrew Horton provide different perspectives for analyzing The Three Stooges, Chaplin, Jerry Lewis, Woody Allen, Dusan Makavejev, and Alfred Hitchcock's sole comedy, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, as well as the peculiar genre of cynical humor from Eastern Europe.As editor Horton notes, an over-arching theory of film comedy does not emanate from these essays. Yet the diversity and originality of the contributions reflect vital and growing interest in the subject, and both students of film and general moviegoers will relish the results. ...Show more

Cinephilia in the Age of Digital Reproduction - Film, Pleasure, and Digital Culture Volume 1 by Scott Balcerzak; Jason Sperb; Sperb Balcerzak

$15.00 NZD

Category: Film | Series: Film and Media Studies | Reading Level: very good

For years, "cinephilia" has been a part of the theatrical experience, denoting a deep, even limitless passion for the medium. Cinephilia encompasses consuming, defining, sharing, discussing, and writing about films, but what happens when the experience of watching movies becomes something increasingly c omplemented by digital means? This volume of original essays explores the pleasures of cinema in the realms of online communication, digital imagery, and digitized home viewing. Including the work of critics, scholars, and bloggers from the US, the UK, and Australia, Cinephilia in the Age of Digital Reproduction provides an innovative and multifaceted approach to the ever-evolving world of cinema culture. The first in a two-book series (volume two follows in 2009), this collection features contributions from Robert Burgoyne, Zach Campbell, Tobey Crockett, Brian Darr, Kevin Fisher, Andy Horbal, Christian Keathley, Adrian Martin, Jenna Ng, Lisa Purse, Dan Sallitt, and Girish Shambu. ...Show more

Spectacular Bodies - Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema by Yvonne Tasker

$12.00 NZD

Category: Film | Series: Comedia Ser. | Reading Level: very good

While films such as Rambo, Thelma and Louiseand Basic Instincthave operated as major points of cultural reference in recent years, popular action cinema remains neglected within contemporary film criticism. Spectacular Bodiesunravels the complexities and pleasures of a genre often dismissed as `obvious' in both its pleasure and its politics, arguing that these controversial films should be analysed and understood within a cinematic as well as a political context. Yvonne Tasker argues that today's action cinema not only responds to the shifts in gendered, sexual and racial identities which took place during the 1980s, but reflects the influences of other media such as the new video culture. Her detailed discussion of the homoeroticism surrounding the muscleman hero, the symbolic centrality of blackness within the crime narrative, and the changing status of women within the genre, addresses the constitution of these identities through the shifting categories of gender, class, race, sex, sexuality and nation. Spectacular Bodiesalso examines the ambivalence of supposedly secure categories of popular cinema, questioning the existing terms of film criticism in this area and addressing the complex pleasures of this neglected form.ies through the shifting categories of gender, class, race, sex, sexuality and nation. Spectacular Bodiesalso examines the ambivalence of supposedly secure categories of popular cinema, questioning the existing terms of film criticism in this area and addressing the complex pleasures of this neglected form. ...Show more

Women in Film Noir by E. Ann Kaplan

$14.00 NZD

Category: Film | Reading Level: very good

The Film Spectator - From Sign to Mind by Warren Buckland (Editor)

$14.00 NZD

Category: Film | Series: Film Culture in Transition Ser. | Reading Level: very good

This is the first collection of essays in English to give prominence to the work of European film scholars whose aim is "to understand how film is understood." The Film Spectator raises fundamental issues that have confronted film theory for the past thirty years, but which have never been adequately an swered. It gathers together a representative sample of this work, covering the period from the mid-seventies to the present. ...Show more

Projections 4 - Film-Makers on Film-Making by John Boorman (Editor); Walter Donahue (Editor); Tom Luddy (Editor); David Thompson (Editor)

$15.00 NZD

Category: Film | Series: Projections Ser. | Reading Level: very good

Projections is a forum for film-makers in which the practitioners of cinema write about their craft. In this edition we celebrate the centenary of film with articles ranging from an interview with Louis Lumière - the inventor of the cinema - to James Toback's tales of contemporary Hollywood. Included in Projections 4: Louis Lumière - Founding Father Martin Scorsese - Anamorphobia James Toback - A Journal for 1994 Penn on Penn Ken Burns - Raising the Dead Sidney Howard - The Gone with the Wind Letters and The Story Gets a Treatment Louis Malle, Andre Gregory, Wallace Shawn, Julianne Moore, Fred Berner, Larry Pine - Chekhov's Children Walter Murch - Sound Design: The Dancing Shadow Eddie Fowlie - Playing Cowboys and Indians John Seale - Lunch and a Book Gene Kelly - An American in Paradise Sally Potter - The Tango Lesson Federico Fellini - Creation and the Artist Viggo Mortensen - Missing Sandy Dennis Lindsay Anderson - On John Ford This edition also includes contributions by Percy Adlon, Kevin Brownlow, Roger Corman, Alex Cox, Andre de Toth, Nora Ephron, Monte Hellman, Huang Mingchuan, Richard Lowenstein, Dusan Makavejev, Arthur Penn, Vincent Sherman, Istvan Szabo, Michael Tolkin, Vincent Ward and Fred Zinneman. ...Show more

Love Is Colder Than Death - The Life and Times of Rainer Werner Fassbinder by Robert Katz; Peter Berling

$10.00 NZD

Category: Film | Reading Level: good

Hitchcock at Work by Bill Krohn

$65.00 NZD

Category: Film | Reading Level: very good

The Cinema Book by Pam Cook

$35.00 NZD

Category: Film | Reading Level: very good

This much-anticipated new edition builds upon the achievements of the first, taking stock of the many recent exciting developments in the field while retaining the historical coverage and depth of the original. The text is supported by over 250 illustrations, selected reading guides, and full bibliograp hies. Another unique feature of The Cinema Book is its fifty-five sidebars that support the text with in-depth analysis and relevant information on over 350 films. This new edition will consolidate The Cinema Book's position as the leading teaching aid in the field. ...Show more