Robert Shail – författare

British national cinema has produced an exceptional track record of innovative, creative and internationally recognised filmmakers, amongst them Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell and David Lean. This tradition continues today with the work of directors as diverse as Neil Jordan, Stephen Frears, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. This concise, authoritative volume analyses critically the work of 100 British directors, from the innovators of the silent period to contemporary auteurs. An introduction places the individual entries in context and examines the role and status of the director within British film production. Balancing academic rigour with accessibility, British Film Directors provides an indispensable reference source for film students at all levels, as well as for the general cinema enthusiast.Key features include:* A complete list of each director’s British feature films.* Suggested further reading on each filmmaker.* A comprehensive career overview, including biographical information and an assessment of the director’s current critical standing. * 10 B&W illustrations.

British national cinema has produced an exceptional track record of innovative, creative and internationally recognised filmmakers, amongst them Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell and David Lean. This tradition continues today with the work of directors as diverse as Neil Jordan, Stephen Frears, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. This concise, authoritative volume analyses critically the work of 100 British directors, from the innovators of the silent period to contemporary auteurs. An introduction places the individual entries in context and examines the role and status of the director within British film production. Balancing academic rigour with accessibility, British Film Directors provides an indispensable reference source for film students at all levels, as well as for the general cinema enthusiast.Key features include:* A complete list of each director’s British feature films.* Suggested further reading on each filmmaker.* A comprehensive career overview, including biographical information and an assessment of the director’s current critical standing. * 10 B&W illustrations.

Male Icons and Identity in 1960s Britain: Revolt into Style explores the profound social and cultural transformations of the 1960s through the lens of masculinity.This collection of essays delves into how male identity, often resistant to change, serves as a barometer for the broader societal shifts of the era. Contributors from diverse academic backgrounds examine iconic figures from popular music (Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger), cinema (Michael Caine) and television (Patrick Macnee, Peter Wyngarde, and Patrick McGoohan), as well as artistic polymaths like Anthony Newley and Peter Whitehead. The essays also venture into the realms of politics, football, fashion and fine art, providing a comprehensive view of how evolving masculine ideals influenced British culture. The collection highlights the tension between traditional values and emerging pluralistic ideals, offering a nuanced understanding of the period's cultural dynamics.This collection is ideal for students and academics in gender studies, cultural history, and sociology, as well as general readers interested in understanding a transformative decade when established norms of male identity faced unprecedented challenges.

Male Icons and Identity in 1960s Britain: Revolt into Style explores the profound social and cultural transformations of the 1960s through the lens of masculinity.This collection of essays delves into how male identity, often resistant to change, serves as a barometer for the broader societal shifts of the era. Contributors from diverse academic backgrounds examine iconic figures from popular music (Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger), cinema (Michael Caine) and television (Patrick Macnee, Peter Wyngarde, and Patrick McGoohan), as well as artistic polymaths like Anthony Newley and Peter Whitehead. The essays also venture into the realms of politics, football, fashion and fine art, providing a comprehensive view of how evolving masculine ideals influenced British culture. The collection highlights the tension between traditional values and emerging pluralistic ideals, offering a nuanced understanding of the period's cultural dynamics.This collection is ideal for students and academics in gender studies, cultural history, and sociology, as well as general readers interested in understanding a transformative decade when established norms of male identity faced unprecedented challenges.

For decades, cinema audiences have turned to the film reviews featured in national and local newspapers, listened to commentators via radio, television and, latterly, the internet, and read fan magazines to learn about the latest releases. These critics helped shape the responses of generations of film fans, creating success and failure, as well as controversy. This wide-ranging collection brings together some of the leading academics on British film history to consider the role of these commentators. It covers the work of influential critics like Dilys Powell and Raymond Durgnat and key magazines such as Time Out, Monthly Film Bulletin and Radio Times. Contributors include leading scholars such as James Chapman, Pamela Hutchinson and Julian Petley, along with the screenwriter and filmmaker David McGillivray and others who have worked as film journalists themselves.For film students or cinema enthusiasts anywhere, this volume provides an insightful analysis of the British film critic.

For decades, cinema audiences have turned to the film reviews featured in national and local newspapers, listened to commentators via radio, television and, latterly, the internet, and read fan magazines to learn about the latest releases. These critics helped shape the responses of generations of film fans, creating success and failure, as well as controversy.This wide-ranging collection brings together some of the leading academics on British film history to consider the role of these commentators. It covers the work of influential critics like Dilys Powell and Raymond Durgnat and key magazines such as Time Out, Monthly Film Bulletin and Radio Times. Contributors include leading scholars such as James Chapman, Pamela Hutchinson and Julian Petley, along with the screenwriter and filmmaker David McGillivray and others who have worked as film journalists themselves.For film students or cinema enthusiasts anywhere, this volume provides an insightful analysis of the British film critic.

Jason Statham has risen from street seller through championship diving and modelling to become arguably the biggest British male film star of the twenty-first century. This is the first book to offer a critical analysis of his work across a variety of media, including film, television, video games and music videos. Each chapter focuses on a particular aspect of Statham’s career, from his distinctive screen presence to his style, branding and celebrity. Accessibly written, and featuring a contribution from Hollywood director Paul Feig, who worked with Statham on the 2015 action-comedy Spy, the collection will appeal to a wide audience of scholars, students and fans.

The successful return of horror to our television screens in the post-millennial years, and across a multi-media range of platforms, demonstrates that this previously moribund genre is once again vibrant, challenging and long-lasting. The traditional TV audience of the past would have watched very few horror TV shows, because not many were made. But that has changed. Programme makers have tapped into their public's insatiable need - in these days of terrorism, violence and mayhem - to provide programmes that have high production values, engaging storylines, and plenty of frights and gore.  Horror TV offers a safety-valve for its audience, one that enables them to enter into it from the safety of their armchairs. The era of instant access, streaming, downloading and binge-watching whole seasons over a weekend, where fandom has blossomed into a cultural force, clearly shows horror as a vital part of today's TV scheduling.This edited collection investigates the rising popularity of horror-television through deconstructing the gender roles within them via series of case studies including such programmes as Hannibal, American Horror Story, The Walking Dead, Penny Dreadful, Supernatural, The Exorcist and Bates Motel. By using a series of case studies and employing theoretical modes of close analysis, each chapter demonstrates how and why these TV shows are important in reflecting the changing gender roles within modern society.

Contemporary popular media has been marked by its startling ability to morph into a wide variety of formats, fed by the ongoing revolution in digital technology. Despite these significant changes, the horror genre has retained its attraction for audiences, and the representation of gender has been crucial to that appeal.Gender and Contemporary Horror in Comic, Games and Transmedia examines the impact of media convergence on the horror genre, focusing on comic books and graphic novels, video games, audio broadcasts, and transmedia adaptations, as well as considering the increasingly proactive role of audiences in making media themselves. A wide range of scholars consider the effect of this new hybridity on established debates regarding the role of gender in the horror genre, offering vital new interpretations of identity and representation.;This book is an illuminating, exciting read for academics and students interested in the effect of changing media, and an evolving cultural landscape, on the established debates surrounding gender in the horror genre. The responses of the authors reflect both the possible limitations and the groundbreaking possibilities of this new era in horror.

The horror genre will always remain current because it reflects our anxieties, shining a light onto our worst fears whilst creating worlds defined by darkness. Horror as a genre has always engaged with era-specific societal mores and moral panics, often about isolation or abandonment, changing family values and the role of women. It is often specifically about how gender is constructed in everyday life. Women are commonly defined in horror by their passivity, or monstrosity/sexuality or victimhood - or a mix of the three. At the same time women in horror are forced into psychological and physical torture ending in violent showdowns in which they emerge damaged but triumphant. Bringing together research from a wide range of established and emerging scholars this edited collection provides an insight into how modern horror films portray femininities, sexualities, masculinities, ageing, and other current issues, exploring the use of vampires, zombies, werewolves and ghosts in films made internationally. This volume, one of three by the same editorial team examining the horror genre, focuses on gender and contemporary horror in film, asking questions about how and if representations of gender in horror have changed. In these readings and re-readings, the authors examine developments in films about vampires, zombies, werewolves and ghosts, in films made internationally.

Seventies British Cinema provides a comprehensive re-evaluation of British film in the 1970s. The decade has long been written off in critical discussions as a 'doldrums' period in British cinema, perhaps because the industry, facing near economic collapse, turned to 'unacceptable' low culture genres such as sexploitation comedies or extreme horror. The contributors to this new collection argue that 1970s cinema is ripe for reappraisal: giving serious critical attention to populist genre films, they also consider the development of a British art cinema in the work of Derek Jarman and Peter Greenaway, and the beginnings of an independent sector fostered by the BFI Production Board and producers like Don Boyd. A host of highly individual directors managed to produce interesting and cinematically innovative work against the odds, from Nicolas Roeg to Ken Russell to Mike Hodges. As well as providing a historical and cinematic context for understanding Seventies cinema, the volume also features chapters addressing Hammer horror, the Carry On films, Bond films of the Roger Moore period, Jubilee and other films that responded to Punk rock; heritage cinema and case studies of key seventies films such as The Wicker Man and Straw Dogs. In all, the book provides the final missing piece in the rediscovery of British cinema's complex and protean history.Contributors: Ruth Barton, James Chapman, Ian Conrich, Wheeler Winston Dixon, Christophe Dupin, Steve Gerrard, Sheldon Hall I. Q. Hunter, James Leggott, Claire Monk, Paul Newland, Dan North, Robert Shail, Justin Smith and Sarah Street.

From the 1950s to the 1980s the Children's Film Foundation made films for Saturday morning cinema clubs across the UK - entertaining and educating generations of British children. This first history of this much-loved organisation provides an overview of the CFF's films, interviews with key backstage personnel, and memories of audience members.

This edited collection offers the first authoritative study of masculinity in the British situation comedy. The volume uses a distinctively intersectional approach combining a concern with the format of the television situation comedy (with its typical narrative conceits and characterisations, including stereotyping) combined with a focus on the specifics of male representation. This also allows for a consideration of other areas of identity representation such as class, sexuality, and ethnicity.The British situation comedy has been a fruitful area for writers and actors to explore male characterisation with recurrent themes such as failure, an inability to make meaningful relationships, or issues coming to terms with changing attitudes to gender and the social position of men. Theoretical analysis of comedic strategies is combined with an awareness of how the television sitcom has been in conversation with the wider culture of Britain, giving expression to anxieties and conflicts sometimes too painful to address in any other way. Consequently, the seismic changes in male identity over a sixty year period are reflected in characters struggling to come to terms with a new landscape of identity.The authors come from a variety of academic backgrounds with well-established authors sitting alongside new voices. A significant period of development in the situation comedy is mapped, with both classic, popular series and more esoteric entries. The volume should find wide interest within academia (media and cultural studies, gender studies) and the wider public as the British situation comedy continues to attract much attention both in the UK and internationally.

This book offers the first in-depth, fully-researched analysis of the career of Stanley Baker, one of the most significant cinema figures to have come out of Wales and sheds considerable light on the image of Welsh national identity and masculinity which he projected. Stanley Baker is one of only a handful of Welsh-born actors to have become a major film star. Like his friend Richard Burton, his rise to fame took him from an impoverished childhood in the valleys of south Wales to international stardom in films such as Zulu and Accident. As well as being an important figure in front of the camera, he became a producer and film executive as well, whilst never losing his strong links with his Welsh background.

Tony Richardson was a key figure in British cinema of the 1950s and 1960s. Having established himself in the theatre with the first production of John Osborne’s landmark play Look Back in Anger, he became a central director in the New Wave, bringing greater realism to British cinema. He went on to make some of the most significant films of the 1960s including the multi Oscar-winning Tom Jones.This detailed and authoritative account of Richardson’s career provides a reassessment of his achievements. As well as looking at his best known films, it considers neglected works such as Ned Kelly and Joseph Andrews, illustrating how Richardson remained a champion of the socially marginalised.In mapping out his life and work, from the English Stage Company to his final films in America, Shail re-establishes Richardson’s at the front rank of British film directors, confirming his contribution to a period of dynamic change in British culture.