Roz Kaveney – författare

Jocks, cheerleaders, nerds, goths and stoners - the American teen movie is peopled with types and tribes yet manages to speak interestingly about hopes and dreams that do not have just to do with skipping detention or going to the prom. In her new book, Roz Kaveney charts the development of the teen movie from a marketing category to a full-blown genre obsessed with smart answers to its own past. Starting with the groundbreaking John Hughes movies of the 1980s, and with Lehman and Waters' sardonic comedy "Heathers", Kaveney discusses the evolution of themes like the Mean Girl and the loss of virginity. She examines the metamorphosis of Jane Austen's novel "Emma" into the Beverly Hills comedy "Clueless" and the way the "American Pie" trilogy has subverted the gross-out sex comedy into a lesson in sexual manners. She looks at the link between these films and some of the most innovative teen television of the last two decades, including "Popular", "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and the teen detective show "Veronica Mars". In the process, she demonstrates, with characteristic wit and intelligence, how teen films and TV series deal with the tragic and comic undersides of the American dream.

Modern myths, cheap trash or the objects of fetishist desire? Most people know something about Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and Wonder Woman, even if what they know is heavily filtered through film and television versions, rather than the comics in which they first appeared. Yet, even though the continuity of the DC and Marvel Comics universes rival or surpass in size almost anything else in Western culture, surprisingly little attention has been paid to comics, which we were supposed to grow out of. In "Superheroes!", acclaimed cultural commentator Roz Kaveney argues that this is a mistake, that, at their best, superhero comics are a form in which some writers and artists are doing fascinating work, not in spite of their chosen form, but because of it. "Superheroes!" discusses the slow accretion of comics universes from the thirties to the present day, the ongoing debate within the conventions of the superhero comic about whether superheroes are a good thing and the discussion within the comics fan community of the extent to which superhero comics are disfigured by misogyny and sexism.Roz Kaveney attempts to explain the differences between Marvel and DC, the notion of the floating present (or why Spider-Man, fifteen when he adopted the costume, is still only in his early thirties), and the various attempts by both companies to re-invent and re-boot individual characters and their entire continuity universes. She also looks at the influence of comics on the group of film and television screenwriters she calls 'the fanboy creators', all of whom moonlight as comics script writers, using Joss Whedon as her case study, and examines the adaptation of well-known comics into large-budget feature films, not always to the advantage of the material.

Promoted as a 'disturbingly perfect' and 'deeply shallow' television drama and created by Ryan Murphy, who is also behind the teen musical show Glee, Nip/Tuck has been one of the most popular and controversial shows on cable TV. The misadventures and soap opera-esque entanglements of the lives of plastic surgeons Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) and Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) won Golden Globes and boycotts from the American Family Association. Yet, as this first full critical examination of Nip/Tuck shows, ironically the show is an examination of the American family and its many definitions, anxieties and complications of gender and sexuality, and the class issues and illusions surrounding the American dream. It is also revealed as a glorious televisual melodrama, full of Gothic tropes and contemporary sensationalism and at the same time, a deeply misanthropic satire on the American dream with a sometimes highly problematic portrayal of women and minorities. The book also features an interview with frequent Nip/Tuck director Elodie Keene and an episode guide.

"The West Wing" or "Generation Kill" in Space? A show about God-fearing sex-obsessed robots? Or a complex meditation on fate, dreaming and eternal recurrence? Of all recent television science fiction series, the reimagined "Battlestar Galactica" is the most highly praised and consistently inventive and intelligent. Where the original show was a straightforward space opera, the new one is rich, strange and above all unpredictable. This book covers the new "Battlestar Galactica" from beginning to end, covering all of the show's principal themes from the depiction of sexuality in an era of artificial people and downloaded memories to what it means to be a member of a military organization when the stakes are not victory or defeat but survival. Like all the best shows about the future or the past - we are never sure when all this is supposed to be happening - "Battlestar Galactica" is a series about the present; chapters here cover its depiction of the post-9.11 world and such issues as abortion and worker's rights.This definitive book on the full new "Battlestar Galactica" also includes an interview with Jane Espenson, co-executive producer of the show's last seasons and writer/director of the "Battlestar Galactica" prequel film "The Plan", with a complete episode guide.

Written by a world expert in Science Fiction, From Alien to The Matrix is a hugely entertaining and enlightening read and a new critical approach to SF films that considers them as autonomous creations and contributions to the genre and to the broader culture. Kaveney looks at the movies of alien invasion and movie franchises, and offers a celebration of Galaxy Quest; deep readings of the Alien quartet, of Dark City, Starship Troopers and Strange Days; extended consideration of the Star Wars series and the Terminator films, and much more.