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The Cinema of Werner Herzog
by Kirsten Moana ThompsonWerner Herzog is renowned for pushing the boundaries of conventional cinema, especially those between the fictional and the factual, the fantastic and the real. The Cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Truth is the first study in twenty years devoted entirely to an analysis of Herzog's work. It explores the director's continuing search for what he has described as 'ecstatic truth,' drawing on over thirty-five films, from the epics Aguirre: Wrath of God (1972) and Fitzcarraldo (1982) to innovative documentaries like Fata Morgana (1971), Lessons of Darkness (1992), and Grizzly Man (2005). Special attention is paid to Herzog's signature style of cinematic composition, his "romantic" influences, and his fascination with madmen, colonialism, and war.
The Cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Truth (Directors' Cuts)
by Brad PragerWerner Herzog is renowned for pushing the boundaries of conventional cinema, especially those between the fictional and the factual, the fantastic and the real. The Cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Truth is the first study in twenty years devoted entirely to an analysis of Herzog's work. It explores the director's continuing search for what he has described as 'ecstatic truth,' drawing on over thirty-five films, from the epics Aguirre: Wrath of God (1972) and Fitzcarraldo (1982) to innovative documentaries like Fata Morgana (1971), Lessons of Darkness (1992), and Grizzly Man (2005). Special attention is paid to Herzog's signature style of cinematic composition, his "romantic" influences, and his fascination with madmen, colonialism, and war.
The Cinema of Wes Anderson: Bringing Nostalgia to Life (Directors' Cuts)
by Whitney Crothers DilleyWes Anderson is considered one of the most important directors of the post-Baby Boom generation, making films such as Rushmore (1998) and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) in a style so distinctive that his films are often recognizable from a single frame. Through the travelogue The Darjeeling Limited (2007) and the stop-motion animation of Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), his films examine issues of gender, race, and class through dysfunctional family dynamics, with particular focus on masculinity and male bonding. Anderson's auteur status is enriched by his fascination with Truffaut and the French New Wave, as well as his authorship of every one of his screenplays, drawing on influences as diverse as Mark Twain, J. D. Salinger, Roald Dahl, and Stefan Zweig. Works such as Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) continue to fascinate with their postmodern, hyper-nostalgic attention to detail. This book explores the filmic and literary influences that have helped make Anderson a major voice in 21st century "indie" culture, and reveals why Wes Anderson is one of the most inventive filmmakers working in cinema today.
The Cinema of Yakov Protazanov (Global Film Directors)
by F. Booth WilsonBest known for Aelita (1924), the classic science-fiction film of the Soviet silent era, Yakov Protazanov directed over a hundred films in a career spanning three decades. Called "the Russian D.W. Griffith" in the 1910s for his formative role in the first movies in the last years of the Russian Empire, he fled the Civil War and maintained a successful career in Europe before making an unusual decision to return to Russia now under Soviet power. There his films continued their remarkable success with audiences undergoing a bewildering and often brutal revolutionary transformation. Rather than treating him as an indistinct, if capable craftsman, The Cinema of Yakov Protazanov argues that his films are suffused with a unique creative vision that reflects both his mindset as a traditional Russian intellectual and his experience of dislocation and migration after 1917. As he adapted his films to revolutionary culture, they intermingled different voices and reinterpreted his past work from a disavowed era. Offering fresh perspectives of Protazanov’s films, the book will give readers a new appreciation of his career. The book offers a uniquely valuable vantage point from which to explore how cinema reflected a society in transformation and a seminal moment in the development of cinematic art.
The Cinema of the Coen Brothers
by Jeffrey AdamsThe films of the Coen brothers have become a contemporary cultural phenomenon. Highly acclaimed and commercially successful, over the years their movies have attracted increasingly larger audiences and spawned a subculture of dedicated fans. Shunning fame and celebrity, Ethan and Joel Coen remain maverick filmmakers, producing and directing independent films outside the Hollywood mainstream in a unique style combining classic genres like film noir with black comedy to tell off-beat stories about America and the American Dream. This study provides an overview of the films of the Coen brothers, including multiple-Oscar winning movies like Fargo and No Country for Old Men, as well as cult favorites such as O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Big Lebowski. Beginning with the 1984 debut Blood Simple, this volume examines the development of the Coens' body of work, identifying and analyzing major themes and generic constructs and offering diverse interpretative approaches to their enigmatic films. Drawing on a wide array of sources, especially the pulp fiction of Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Raymond Chandler, this study examines the influence of these literary sources as well as key cinematic precursors to reveal how the Coens' intertextual creativity exemplifies the aesthetics of postmodernism.
The Cinema of the Coen Brothers: Hard-Boiled Entertainments (Directors' Cuts)
by Jeffrey AdamsThe films of the Coen brothers have become a contemporary cultural phenomenon. Highly acclaimed and commercially successful, over the years their movies have attracted increasingly larger audiences and spawned a subculture of dedicated fans. Shunning fame and celebrity, Ethan and Joel Coen remain maverick filmmakers, producing and directing independent films outside the Hollywood mainstream in a unique style combining classic genres like film noir with black comedy to tell off-beat stories about America and the American Dream. This study surveys Oscar-winning films, such as Fargo (1996) and No Country for Old Men (2007), as well as cult favorites, including O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) and The Big Lebowski (1998). Beginning with Blood Simple (1984), it examines major themes and generic constructs and offers diverse approaches to the Coens' enigmatic films. Pointing to the pulp fiction of Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Raymond Chandler, the study appreciates the postmodern aesthetics of the Coens' intertextual creativity.
The Cinema of the Dardenne Brothers: Responsible Realism (Directors' Cuts)
by Philip MosleyThe brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have established an international reputation for their emotionally powerful realist cinema. Inspired by their home turf of Liège-Seraing, a former industrial hub of French-speaking southern Belgium, they have crafted a series of fiction films that blends acute observation of life on the social margins with moral fables for the postmodern age. This volume analyses the brothers' career from their leftist video documentaries of the 1970s and 1980s through their debut as directors of fiction films in the late 1980s and early 1990s to their six major achievements from The Promise (1996) to The Kid with a Bike (2011), an oeuvre that includes two Golden Palms at the Cannes film festival, for Rosetta (1999) and The Child (2005). It argues that the ethical dimension of the Dardennes' work complements rather than precludes their sustained expression of a fundamental political sensibility.
The Cinema of the Real (SUNY series, Insinuations: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Literature)
by Hyon Joo YooA significant intervention into Lacanian film studies, this book sets forth a new theory of the psychoanalytic Real in cinema. In psychoanalysis, the Real ruptures the Symbolic that organizes law, ideology, and other systems of belief, revealing fissures in this underlying order. The Cinema of the Real explores how transnational cinema and especially South Korean cinema facilitate an encounter with the Real, enabling the emergence of a new political subject. Paying close attention to form, Hyon Joo Yoo reveals the existence of an "emancipatory drive" in films by Jang Hun, Park Chan-wook, Lee Chang-dong, Jia Zhangke, Michael Haneke, Claire Denis, and Bong Joon-ho, among others. Their work in effect provides viewers with a picture of how it looks and feels to be on a trajectory in which the subject and her world can change. Far from being a passive consumer of images, Yoo's spectator enters the space of the Real. Theoretically rigorous and inventive, The Cinema of the Real offers new, transnationally attuned tools for conceptualizing the body, affect, femininity, and spectatorship, as well as fresh readings of both classic and contemporary films.
The Cinema of the Soviet Thaw: Space, Materiality, Movement
by Lida OukaderovaFollowing Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953, the Soviet Union experienced a dramatic resurgence in cinematic production. The period of the Soviet Thaw became known for its relative political and cultural liberalization; its films, formally innovative and socially engaged, were swept to the center of international cinematic discourse. In The Cinema of the Soviet Thaw, Lida Oukaderova provides an in-depth analysis of several Soviet films made between 1958 and 1967 to argue for the centrality of space—as both filmic trope and social concern—to Thaw-era cinema. Opening with a discussion of the USSR’s little-examined late-fifties embrace of panoramic cinema, the book pursues close readings of films by Mikhail Kalatozov, Georgii Danelia, Larisa Shepitko and Kira Muratova, among others. It demonstrates that these directors’ works were motivated by an urge to interrogate and reanimate spatial experience, and through this project to probe critical issues of ideology, social progress, and subjectivity within post–Stalinist culture.
The Cinematic Connery: The Films of Sir Sean Connery
by A. J. BlackScotland’s greatest export. The world’s first super spy. Voted the sexiest man on the planet. Sir Sean Connery was a titanic figure on screen and off for over half a century. Behind the son of a factory worker, growing up in near-poverty on the harsh streets of pre-war Edinburgh, lay a timeless array of motion pictures that spanned multiple decades and saw Connery work across the globe with directors as diverse as Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay. And amongst them his greatest role, whether he liked it or not – Bond, James Bond. Author A. J. Black delves into Connery’s life for more than mere biography, exploring not just the enormously varied pictures he made including crowd pleasing blockbusters such as The Untouchables or Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, serious-minded fare in The Hill or The Offence, and his strange sojourns into eclectic fantasy with Zardoz or Time Bandits, but also the sweep of a career that crossed movie eras as well as decades. From skirmishes with the angry young men of the British New Wave, via becoming the cinematic icon of the 1960s as 007, through to a challenging reinvention as a unique older actor of stature in the 1980s, this exploration of the Cinematic Connery shows just how much his work reflected the changing movie-going tastes, political realities and cultural trends of the 20th century, and beyond . . .
The Cinematic Eighteenth Century: History, Culture, and Adaptation (Routledge Advances in Film Studies)
by Srividhya Swaminathan Steven W. ThomasThis collection explores how film and television depict the complex and diverse milieu of the eighteenth century as a literary, historical, and cultural space. Topics range from adaptations of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (The Martian) to historical fiction on the subjects of slavery (Belle), piracy (Crossbones and Black Sails), monarchy (The Madness of King George and The Libertine), print culture (Blackadder and National Treasure), and the role of women (Marie Antoinette, The Duchess, and Outlander). This interdisciplinary collection draws from film theory and literary theory to discuss how film and television allows for critical re-visioning as well as revising of the cultural concepts in literary and extra-literary writing about the historical period.
The Cinematic Language of Theo Angelopoulos
by Vrasidas KaralisBeginning with his first film Reconstruction, released in 1970, Theo Angelopoulos’s notoriously complex cinematic language has long explored Greece’s contemporary history and questioned European culture and society. The Cinematic Language of Theo Angelopoulos offers a detailed study and critical discussion of the acclaimed filmmaker’s cinematic aesthetics as they developed over his career, exploring different styles through which Greek and European history, identity, and loss have been visually articulated throughout his oeuvre, as well as his impact on both European and global cinema.
The Cinematic Legacy of Frank Sinatra
by David WillsIn a film career spanning more than five decades, Frank Sinatra proved to be a roulette wheel of constantly spinning talent, the likes of which Hollywood has rarely seen. Film history is filled with stars created by the studio system. Occasionally, however, a performer emerged who, against all preconceived odds of what a star should be or look like, knocked down the walls of convention by becoming nothing other than what they already were. Frank Sinatra was the embodiment of this fundamental truth. The legacy of his work stands apart from many of his contemporaries, who essentially based their performances on an extension of a core character type. Sinatra, however, was able to take his signature persona and translate it successfully into many film genres-first as the comedic song-and-dance man, then as the dramatic actor and romantic lead, and finally as the tough guy and action hero. Sinatra also respectfully challenged contemporary ideals of acting technique. While being humble enough to learn from his peers, he kept his acting style fresh and instinctual, and earned an Oscar at a time when many actors were either classically trained or coached in the "Method." In The Cinematic Legacy of Frank Sinatra, author David Wills presents a stunning collection highlighting the work of one of Hollywood's greatest stars in roles as varied as those in the classics Anchors Aweigh, From Here to Eternity, Suddenly, Guys and Dolls, The Man With the Golden Arm, Ocean's 11, The Manchurian Candidate,Von Ryan's Express, and The Detective. Pairing more than two hundred first-generation photos with reflections on Sinatra from costars and work associates, and including contributing essays by his children Nancy Sinatra, Tina Sinatra, and Frank Sinatra, Jr., it is an unforgettable showcase of the actor's transformation from world-famous singer, to movie star, to Academy Award winner, and finally to one of the most enduring icons in cinema history.
The Cinematic Life of the Gene
by Jackie StaceyWhat might the cinema tell us about how and why the prospect of cloning disturbs our most profound ideas about gender, sexuality, difference, and the body? In The Cinematic Life of the Gene, the pioneering feminist film theorist Jackie Stacey argues that as a cultural technology of imitation, cinema is uniquely situated to help us theorize "the genetic imaginary," the constellation of fantasies that genetic engineering provokes. Since the mid-1990s there has been remarkable innovation in genetic engineering and a proliferation of films structured by anxieties about the changing meanings of biological and cultural reproduction. Bringing analyses of several of these films into dialogue with contemporary cultural theory, Stacey demonstrates how the cinema animates the tropes and enacts the fears at the heart of our genetic imaginary. She engages with film theory; queer theories of desire, embodiment, and kinship; psychoanalytic theories of subject formation; and debates about the reproducibility of the image and the shift from analog to digital technologies. Stacey examines the body-horror movies Alien: Resurrection and Species in light of Jean Baudrillard's apocalyptic proclamations about cloning and "the hell of the same," and she considers the art-house thrillers Gattaca and Code 46 in relation to ideas about imitation, including feminist theories of masquerade, postcolonial conceptualizations of mimicry, and queer notions of impersonation. Turning to Teknolust and Genetic Admiration, independent films by feminist directors, she extends Walter Benjamin's theory of aura to draw an analogy between the replication of biological information and the reproducibility of the art object. Stacey suggests new ways to think about those who are not what they appear to be, the problem of determining identity in a world of artificiality, and the loss of singularity amid unchecked replication.
The Cinematic Superhero as Social Practice
by Joseph Zornado Sara ReillyThis book analyzes the cinematic superhero as social practice. The study’s critical context brings together psychoanalysis and restorative and reflective nostalgia as a way of understanding the ideological function of superhero fantasy. It explores the origins of cinematic superhero fantasy from antecedents in myth and religion, to twentieth-century comic book, to the cinematic breakthrough with Superman (1978). The authors then focus on Spider-Man as reflective response to Superman’s restorative nostalgia, and read MCU’s overarching narrative from Iron Man to End Game in terms of the concurrent social, political, and environmental conditions as a world in crisis. Zornado and Reilly take up Wonder Woman and Black Panther as self-conscious attempts to reflect on gender and race in restorative superhero fantasy, and explore Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy as a meditation on the need for authoritarian fascism. The book concludes with Logan, Wonder Woman 1984, and Amazon Prime’s The Boys as distinctly reflective fantasy narratives critical of the superhero fantasy phenomenon.
The Cinematic Tourist: Explorations in Globalization, Culture and Resistance (International Library of Sociology)
by Rodanthi TzanelliRecent years have seen a radical transformation of conventional tourist marketing and experience. The use of exotic locations in Hollywood films has allowed global audiences to enjoy distant places. Simultaneously, Hollywood screening of potential 'tourist paradises' has generated new tourist industries around the world. This book takes a closer look at this new phenomenon of 'cinematic tourism', combining theory with case studies drawn from four continents: America, Europe, Asia and Australasia. The author explores audiences' perceptions of film and their covert relationship with tourist advertising campaigns, alongside the nature of newly-born tourist industries and the reaction of native populations and nation-states faced with the commodification of their histories, identities and environments.
The Cinematographer's Voice: Insights into the World of Visual Storytelling (SUNY series, Horizons of Cinema)
by Lindsay Coleman; Roberto SchaeferThe Cinematographer's Voice is a unique exploration of contemporary filmmaking and cinematography. The distillation of more than one-hundred interviews with cinematographers from around the world, and the product of a decade's worth of scholarship, the book is not only a collection of interviews with some of the world's leading cinematographers, but also a panoramic sweep of what image-making means in the era of digital cinema. Frequently, cinematography may seem intimidating as a discipline, the preserve solely of practitioners who have learned, through years of exposure to photographic technology, both the required jargon and background knowledge to comfortably engage with an often-technical field. In our present era of film studies, this is no longer the case. The interviews collected here are informative not only on matters of technique, but also on the ways in which practitioners formulate their methodologies, work with directors, and engage with the many logistical hurdles of visual storytelling. The result is an oral history of the past forty years of filmmaking and the cinematography it has produced.
The Circadian Tarot
by Jen Altman Michelle BladeThis refreshingly contemporary take on Tarot is equal parts gorgeous art piece and thought-provoking spiritual touchstone. All 78 classic Tarot cards are represented, beautifully depicted in ethereal watercolors by Michelle Blade and eloquently explained in text by Jen Altman. The Circadian Tarot invites readers to start each day by reading a section at random (a technique known in the use of traditional Tarot decks as the single draw method"); the card thus revealed offers guidance for navigating hopes.
The Circus Age
by Janet M. DavisA century ago, daily life ground to a halt when the circus rolled into town. Across America, banks closed, schools canceled classes, farmers left their fields, and factories shut down so that everyone could go to the show. In this entertaining and provocative book, Janet Davis links the flowering of the early-twentieth-century American railroad circus to such broader historical developments as the rise of big business, the breakdown of separate spheres for men and women, and the genesis of the United States' overseas empire. In the process, she casts the circus as a powerful force in consolidating the nation's identity as a modern industrial society and world power.Davis explores the multiple "shows" that took place under the big top, from scripted performances to exhibitions of laborers assembling and tearing down tents to impromptu spectacles of audiences brawling, acrobats falling, and animals rampaging. Turning Victorian notions of gender, race, and nationhood topsy-turvy, the circus brought its vision of a rapidly changing world to spectators--rural as well as urban--across the nation. Even today, Davis contends, the influence of the circus continues to resonate in popular representations of gender, race, and the wider world.
The Cities We Need: Essential Stories of Everyday Places
by Gabrielle Bendiner-VianiAn expressive book of prose and photographs that reveals the powerful ways our everyday places support our shared belonging.Where would you take someone on a guided tour of your neighborhood? In The Cities We Need, photographer and urbanist Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani introduces us to the complex, political, and eminently personable stories of residents who answered this question in Brooklyn, New York, and Oakland, California. Their universal stories and Bendiner-Viani&’s evocative images illuminate what&’s at stake in our everyday places—from diners to churches to donut shops. In this culmination of two decades of research and art practice, Bendiner-Viani intertwines the personal, historical, and photographic to present us with placework, the way that unassuming places foster a sense of belonging and, in fact, do the essential work of helping us become communities.In this unique book, Bendiner-Viani makes visible how seemingly unimportant places can lay the foundation for a functional interconnected society, so necessary for both public health and social justice. The Cities We Need explores both what we gain in these spaces and what we risk losing as they are threatened by gentrification, large-scale development, and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic. Ultimately, Bendiner-Viani shows us how to understand ourselves as part of a shared society, with a shared fate; she shows us that everyday places can be the spaces of liberation in which we can build the cities we need.
The Citizen Audience: Crowds, Publics, and Individuals
by Richard ButschIn The Citizen Audience, Richard Butsch explores the cultural and political history of audiences in the United States from the nineteenth century to the present. He demonstrates that, while attitudes toward audiences have shifted over time, Americans have always judged audiences against standards of good citizenship. From descriptions of tightly packed crowds in early American theaters to the contemporary reports of distant, anonymous Internet audiences, Butsch examines how audiences were represented in contemporary discourse. He explores a broad range of sources on theater, movies, propaganda, advertising, broadcast journalism, and much more. Butsch discovers that audiences were characterized according to three recurrent motifs: as crowds and as isolated individuals in a mass, both of which were considered bad, and as publics which were considered ideal audiences. These images were based on and reinforced class and other social hierarchies. At times though, subordinate groups challenged their negative characterization in these images, and countered with their own interpretations. A remarkable work of cultural criticism and media history, this book is essential reading for anyone seeking an historical understanding of how audiences, media and entertainment function in the American cultural and political imagination.
The Citizen Journalist's Photography Handbook: Shooting the World As it Happens
by Carlos MillerWith dramatic and exciting stories, Carlos Miller reveals the secrets behind successful citizen journalism.Whether you're planning a publicity blitz for your cause, you're interested in the down-and-dirty practices of the police, or just want to be prepared for the moment you're the first on the scene, this book has everything you'll need to know to take newsworthy pictures and get them in front of a wide audience.You don't need a DSLR camera - though they can be useful - what is essential for citizen journalism is a cool head, an eye for a great angle, and the initiative to capture the moment: let Carlos Miller show you how.
The Citizen's Guide to Planning
by Christopher Duerksen Gregory C Dale Donald L ElliottAPA's popular primer for citizens is all new! For decades, planning officials and engaged citizens have relied on this book for a better understanding of the basics of planning. Now the authors have revised this perennial bestseller into a 21st-century guide for anyone who wants to make his or her community a better place. This book describes the land-use planning process, the key players in that process, and the legal framework in which decisions are made. The authors advocate principles and disciplines that will help those involved in the process make good decisions. In easy-to-understand language, they offer nuts-and-bolts information about different types of plans and how they are implemented. Chapters cover the goals and values of planning, the history of planning, the different people and organizations involved, the creation and implementation of a comprehensive plan, sustainability, the application review process, and legal and ethical questions.
The Citron Compendium: The Citron (Etrog) Citrus medica L.: Science and Tradition
by Moshe Bar-Joseph Eliezer E. GoldschmidtThis comprehensive book covers the theoretical and practical aspects of citron trees and fruit. The citron (Citrus medica L.), one of the three primary species ancestral to most citrus types, is used for traditional medicine and is highly revered in the Jewish religion during the Tabernacles feast, referred to by the name 'Etrog'. This book’s three sections address biology (botany, genomics, Chinese and Mediterranean citrons, diseases, pests, and horticulture), tradition (Talmudic discourse, mysticism, medicine, literature, art, food, and beverages) and history (archaeology, trade, grafting controversies); these sections are supplemented by a glossary and pictorial album. The 22 chapters, some new and some translated and considerably expanded from the 2018 Hebrew edition, were written by world-renowned specialists from Israel, Italy, France, the U.S.A., China and Australia. The book is written in an accessible scientific style aimed at a wide range of readers.
The City As A Tangled Bank: Urban Design versus Urban Evolution (Architectural Design Primer)
by Sir Terry FarrellHere Sir Terry Farrell, who has built an international career as an architect-planner, encourages other planners and architects to follow the biologists—look at, learn from, and, indeed, admire the nature of the forces that drive the change, and then with humility and respect work with them to nudge, anticipate and prepare for where it takes us. Searching for patterns within the apparent turbulence and complexity, he analyses the notions of urban design and urban evolution and examines whether or not they need necessarily be seen as opposing one another. The first two chapters discuss emergence as an idea in a biological and architectural context, as well as the distinction between urban design and planning in both education and practice, and the impact of other fields such as landscape design. Seven further chapters examine a range of themes embracing the importance of chain reactions in the progress of urban engineering; the character of habitation; layering; taste and context; adaptation and conversion; the advocacy of the architect-planner; and the effects of digital technology on city evolution. Farrell brings his considerable experience in practice to bear, elucidating his thoughts with examples from cities across the world, including Beijing, Hong Kong, London, New York, and Paris.