Gary Needham - Böcker

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, individual case studies explore the mutually supportive but also in places highly contentious relationships between United Artists and its producers, the difficult balance between artistic and commercial objectives, and the resulting hits and misses (among them The General, the Pink Panther franchise, Heaven’s Gate, Cruising, and Hot Tub Time Machine). The second volume in the Routledge Hollywood Centenary series, United Artists is a fascinating and comprehensive study of the firm’s history and legacy, perfect for students and researchers of cinema and film history, media industries, and Hollywood.

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, individual case studies explore the mutually supportive but also in places highly contentious relationships between United Artists and its producers, the difficult balance between artistic and commercial objectives, and the resulting hits and misses (among them The General, the Pink Panther franchise, Heaven’s Gate, Cruising, and Hot Tub Time Machine). The second volume in the Routledge Hollywood Centenary series, United Artists is a fascinating and comprehensive study of the firm’s history and legacy, perfect for students and researchers of cinema and film history, media industries, and Hollywood.

Bringing together fifty-one essays, each devoted to a single American film, Screening American Film offers a wide-ranging exploration of the histories, practices, politics, styles, and meanings that have shaped American film since the 1930s. While the volume proceeds decade by decade from the 1930s onward, contributors reach further back and forward to illuminate the breadth and complexity of the American screen.Complemented by the volumes on Screening American Independent Cinema (2023) and Screening Classical Hollywood Cinema (forthcoming), in these fifty-one chapters readers will encounter American cinema not as a singular tradition but as a constellation of overlapping and often competing practices, modes, and priorities: classical and post-classical Hollywood, major blockbusters, independent and indie filmmaking, exploitation and arthouse. The essays draw upon a variety of critical frameworks including the industrial, aesthetic, historical, political, and thematic while remaining attentive to key questions of style, genre, authorship, performance, stardom, and context.The central aim of Screening American Film is to complement the viewing and teaching of American cinema in film and screen studies classrooms, across related disciplines, and to reshape notions of canon. Each essay has been designed to stand on its own while contributing to a larger mosaic of what American film has been, and what it continues to become, from Mae West to Barbie. Written to support film screenings and teaching: every film discussed here is available for viewing, in one format or another, even if it lies outside the conventional structures of platform-era film consumption. Indeed, part of the book’s ambition is to highlight American films whose significance becomes newly visible in the revisitation of established “classics” sitting aside the lesser known, and in some cases, entirely un-mapped cinematic terrain.The fifty-one entries introduce students to different approaches within film studies from historical and contextual framing, film analysis, industrial and institutional analysis, politics and ideology, genre and authorship, film theory, representation, exhibition and reception, and technology. Screening American Film is the essential resource for anyone teaching or studying American film.

Bringing together fifty-one essays, each devoted to a single American film, Screening American Film offers a wide-ranging exploration of the histories, practices, politics, styles, and meanings that have shaped American film since the 1930s. While the volume proceeds decade by decade from the 1930s onward, contributors reach further back and forward to illuminate the breadth and complexity of the American screen.Complemented by the volumes on Screening American Independent Cinema (2023) and Screening Classical Hollywood Cinema (forthcoming), in these fifty-one chapters readers will encounter American cinema not as a singular tradition but as a constellation of overlapping and often competing practices, modes, and priorities: classical and post-classical Hollywood, major blockbusters, independent and indie filmmaking, exploitation and arthouse. The essays draw upon a variety of critical frameworks including the industrial, aesthetic, historical, political, and thematic while remaining attentive to key questions of style, genre, authorship, performance, stardom, and context.The central aim of Screening American Film is to complement the viewing and teaching of American cinema in film and screen studies classrooms, across related disciplines, and to reshape notions of canon. Each essay has been designed to stand on its own while contributing to a larger mosaic of what American film has been, and what it continues to become, from Mae West to Barbie. Written to support film screenings and teaching: every film discussed here is available for viewing, in one format or another, even if it lies outside the conventional structures of platform-era film consumption. Indeed, part of the book’s ambition is to highlight American films whose significance becomes newly visible in the revisitation of established “classics” sitting aside the lesser known, and in some cases, entirely un-mapped cinematic terrain.The fifty-one entries introduce students to different approaches within film studies from historical and contextual framing, film analysis, industrial and institutional analysis, politics and ideology, genre and authorship, film theory, representation, exhibition and reception, and technology. Screening American Film is the essential resource for anyone teaching or studying American film.

How can we queerly theorise and understand television? How can the realms of television studies and queer theory be brought together, in a manner beneficial and productive for both? Queer TV: Theories, Histories, Politics is the first book to explore television in all its scope and complexity – its industry, production, texts, audiences, pleasures and politics – in relation to queerness. With contributions from distinguished authors working in film/television studies and the study of gender/sexuality, it offers a unique contribution to both disciplines.An introductory chapter by the editors charts the key debates and issues addressed within the book, followed by three sections, each central to an understanding of the relationships between queerness and television: 'theories and approaches', histories and genres', and 'television itself'. Individual essays examine the relationships between queers, queerness, and television across the multiple sites of production, consumption, reception, interpretation and theorisation, as well as the textual and aesthetic dimensions of television and the televisual. The book crucially moves beyond lesbian and gay textual analyses of specific TV shows that have often focussed on evaluations of positive/negative representations and identities. Rather, the essays in Queer TV theorise not just the queerness in/on television (the production personnel, the representations it offers) but also the queerness of television as a distinct medium.

How can we queerly theorise and understand television? How can the realms of television studies and queer theory be brought together, in a manner beneficial and productive for both? Queer TV: Theories, Histories, Politics is the first book to explore television in all its scope and complexity – its industry, production, texts, audiences, pleasures and politics – in relation to queerness. With contributions from distinguished authors working in film/television studies and the study of gender/sexuality, it offers a unique contribution to both disciplines.An introductory chapter by the editors charts the key debates and issues addressed within the book, followed by three sections, each central to an understanding of the relationships between queerness and television: 'theories and approaches', histories and genres', and 'television itself'. Individual essays examine the relationships between queers, queerness, and television across the multiple sites of production, consumption, reception, interpretation and theorisation, as well as the textual and aesthetic dimensions of television and the televisual. The book crucially moves beyond lesbian and gay textual analyses of specific TV shows that have often focussed on evaluations of positive/negative representations and identities. Rather, the essays in Queer TV theorise not just the queerness in/on television (the production personnel, the representations it offers) but also the queerness of television as a distinct medium.

Asian cinema is an area of increasing interest in Anglo-US film studies while Asian films are now widely distributed and popular with western audiences. The fascination with Asian cinema must be examined in the context of a complex and often problematic relationship between western scholars, students, viewers and Asian films. This book, therefore, examines a number of detailed case studies (such as the films of Ozu, Bruce Lee, Hong Kong and Turkish cinema, Hindi melodramas, Godzilla films, Taiwanese directors and Fifth Generation Chinese cinema) and uses them in order to investigate the limitations of Anglo-US theoretical models and critical paradigms. By engaging the readers with familiar areas of critical discourse (such as postcolonial criticism, 'national cinema', 'genre', 'authorship' and 'stardom') the book aims to introduce within such contexts the ‘unfamiliar’ case studies which will be explored in depth and detail. The advantage of such an approach is that it works with the dynamics of familiarity/unfamiliarity and resists the temptation to construct Asian cinemas as a gallery of exotic objects that might be particularly fascinating but remain deeply distant and foreign. Features*A comprehensive study of Asian cinemas, including Hong Kong, Japan, China, India, Turkey and Taiwan*An accessible guide for the study and research of Asian cinema which addresses undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers* Each section contains a contextualising introduction* Includes key texts by Ackbar Abbas, Rey Chow, David Desser, Dimitris Eleftheriotis, Nezih Erdo

Upon its release in 2005, Brokeback Mountain became a major cultural event and a milestone in independent American filmmaking. Based on the short story by Annie Proulx and directed by Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain situated a love story between two closeted cowboys at the heart of American mythology, film spectatorship and genre. Brokeback Mountain offered an independent and queer revision of the conventions and clichés of the western and the melodrama through a studied exploration of homophobia and the closet. This book examines Brokeback Mountain in relation to indie cinema, genre, spectatorship, editing, and homosexuality. In doing so it brings film studies and queer theory into dialogue with one another and explains the importance of Brokeback Mountain as both a contemporary independent and queer film. Key Features" Provides an overview of Focus Features as a hybrid company operating across both the mainstream and independent cinema sectors. " Analyses Brokeback Mountain as a Western and places it within an enduring historical and cultural context of relations between homosexuality and the genre." Analyses Brokeback Mountain as a melodrama examining the film's relationship to concepts of pathos, backward feeling and passivity." Proposes a new way of thinking about gay spectatorship that takes into account how editing and cruising relate to one another.

Upon its release in 2005, Brokeback Mountain became a major cultural event and a milestone in independent American filmmaking. Based on the short story by Annie Proulx and directed by Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain situated a love story between two closeted cowboys at the heart of American mythology, film spectatorship and genre. Brokeback Mountain offered an independent and queer revision of the conventions and clichés of the western and the melodrama through a studied exploration of homophobia and the closet. This book examines Brokeback Mountain in relation to indie cinema, genre, spectatorship, editing, and homosexuality. In doing so it brings film studies and queer theory into dialogue with one another and explains the importance of Brokeback Mountain as both a contemporary independent and queer film. Key Features" Provides an overview of Focus Features as a hybrid company operating across both the mainstream and independent cinema sectors. " Analyses Brokeback Mountain as a Western and places it within an enduring historical and cultural context of relations between homosexuality and the genre." Analyses Brokeback Mountain as a melodrama examining the film's relationship to concepts of pathos, backward feeling and passivity." Proposes a new way of thinking about gay spectatorship that takes into account how editing and cruising relate to one another.

Edie Sedgwick, socialite, model, fashion icon, film star, and collaborator in Andy Warhol’s underground cinema of the 1960s. The legacy of Edie Sedgwick as the New York fashion icon (Vogue’s ‘youthquaker’ and Life’s ‘girl with the black tights’) and associate of Andy Warhol is still keenly felt today with the recent homage to her in a collection by Marc Jacobs, and an earlier one at Dior in 2005, and even thirty-three years after her death (then only 28 years old) her image was used to front a successful NARS cosmetics campaign; in short, Edie Sedgwick is the definition of iconic. Factory Girl, Factory Films is the first to explore the relationship between Edie Sedgwick and Warhol anew specifically in relation to the filmmaking and cinema, detailing all 22 films and 3 videos. Gary Needham explores several issues relevant to the study of Warhol and Warhol’s cinema, and proposing important new frameworks around collaborative artistic practices, acting, performance, stardom, and underground cinema.

Edie Sedgwick, socialite, model, fashion icon, film star, and collaborator in Andy Warhol’s underground cinema of the 1960s. The legacy of Edie Sedgwick as the New York fashion icon (Vogue’s ‘youthquaker’ and Life’s ‘girl with the black tights’) and associate of Andy Warhol is still keenly felt today with the recent homage to her in a collection by Marc Jacobs, and an earlier one at Dior in 2005, and even thirty-three years after her death (then only 28 years old) her image was used to front a successful NARS cosmetics campaign; in short, Edie Sedgwick is the definition of iconic. Factory Girl, Factory Films is the first to explore the relationship between Edie Sedgwick and Warhol anew specifically in relation to the filmmaking and cinema, detailing all 22 films and 3 videos. Gary Needham explores several issues relevant to the study of Warhol and Warhol’s cinema, and proposing important new frameworks around collaborative artistic practices, acting, performance, stardom, and underground cinema.