Inside Popular Film – serie

One of the few books to address the horror film from any kind of critical position.. Unique - The first history of the horror film to approach it from a queer perspective.. Written with detail and thoroughness - covers all eras of the horror film and correlates specific types of movie monsters to the historical social conditions which produced them.. Explores how popular culture encodes and demonizes queerness within the generic format of the horror film.

This introductory text analyzes 25 years of popular French film including recent developments in all genres. Reflecting French cinema's diversity since the new Wave, chapters include the Heritage film; thrillers; war movies; Cinema-du-Look; representations of sexuality; women film-makers; and others. Each chapter introduces the public reception and critical debates surrounding a given genre, interwoven with detailed accounts of individual films from "Les Valseuses" to "Les Visiteurs" and "Delicatessen". Those looking at French film for the first time should have the opportunity to read at length about the internationally renowned work of Cinema-du-Look directors Luc Besson, Jean-Jacques Beineix and Leos Carax, as well as recent blockbusters of the Heritage genre from "Cyrano de Bergerac" and "Jean de Florette" to "Germinal" and "La Reine Margot". The book includes a glossary and detailed filmography.

This groundbreaking study engages with the theoretical aspects of realism - a long neglected area in film studies.. Contributes to an understanding of how popular films use realist forms to address contentious social and political issues such as social exclusion, war and violence.. Focusing on key moments in film history the authors examine the uses of realism in national cinemas as a context for their in-depth analysis of contemporary popular films.. A series of case studies examines the hybrid styles of realism used in recent filmmaking practice and the politics of these forms in relation to topics such as urban youth and domestic violence (Boyz N the Hood, La Haine, Once Were Warriors, Ladybird, Ladybird, Nil By Mouth), government conspiracies and war (Cry Freedom, JFK, Schindler's List), and serial killers (Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer, Man Bites Dog, Natural Born Killers).. Will give rise to new directions in the theorisation of both popular film and realism in the cinema.

Stars are central to the cinema experience, and this collection offers a variety of fresh and informed perspectives on this important but sometimes neglected area of film studies.This book takes as its focus film stars from the past and present, from Hollywood, its margins and beyond and analyses them through a close consideration of their films and the variety of contexts in which they worked.The book spreads the net wide, looking at past stars from Rosalind Russell and Charlton Heston to present day stars including Sandra Bullock, Jackie Chan and Jim Carrey, as well as those figures who have earnt themselves a certain film star cachet such as Prince, and the martial artist Cynthia Rothrock.The collection will be essential reading for students and lecturers of film studies, as well as to those with a general interest in the cinema.

A fascinating multi-dimensional investigation of popular film as a commercial, cultural and social phenomenon, focusing on well known and controversial films, and on important - and marketable - issues such as sex and violence. Traces the circulation in Britain of three Hollywood films – Basic Instinct, Bram Stoker's Dracula and Natural Born Killers – from marketing and critical reception to consumption. Draws on economic and discursive contexts and original audience research to trace how meanings, pleasures and uses are derived from popular film. First in the field to look at how Hollywood blockbusters are marketed in Britain. Combining detailed case studies with a clear and up-to-date overview of audience research and the political economy of contemporary cinema this will be essential reading for students of film, popular culture and the media.

A study of the rape-revenge film, in which Jacinda Read suggests that the rape-revenge cycle can be read as one of the primary ways in which Hollywood has attempted to make sense of feminism and the changing shape of heterosexual femininity in the post-1970 period. Arguing that rape-revenge is better understood not as a genre, but as a narrative structure, the author analyzes the ways in which various deployments of this structure rework the "mass cultural fictions of femininity" inscribed in the genres over which they have been mapped. From the "frontier femmes" of rape-revenge westerns such as "Hannie Caulder", through the "erotic avengers" of neo-noirs such as "Batman Returns", to the "maternal avengers" of rape-revenge melodrama such as "An Eye for an Eye", this work explores the popular understandings of feminism that circulate around these generic manifestations of the female avenger. Applying ideas from feminist cultural studies to the analysis of film, and combining detailed textual analysis with contextual analysis, the book challenges many of the received orthodoxies of feminist theory.

This is the first collection in English to focus exclusively on the various forms of popular film produced in Spain and to acknowledge the variety, range and depth of Spanish cinema.Contributors from across Hispanic, media and cultural studies explore a range of genres, from the musicals of the 1930s and 1940s to contemporary horror movies, historical epics of the 1940s and 1950s and contemporary representations of the Spanish Civil War. The book includes reappraisals of key popular directors such as Luis Garcia Berlanga and Antonio Mercero as well as critical analyses of celebrated stars like Marisol. It provides innovative consideration of the promotion and reception of horror in the 1960s, recollections of cinema-going in Madrid, and reflections on successful recent works such as 'Abre los Ojos' and 'Solas'.The contributors offer a range of critical and methodological perspectives, opening up new ways of analysing Spanish popular film.

The first full length academic study of Hepburn's star persona and films featuring reseach into the experience of British women who have admired her in the 1950s, 1960s and the 1990s. Examines the historical specificity of discourses of feminity circulating around Hepburn and her female fans, suggesting that the flexibility of Hepburn's image has contributed to her enduring appeal. Makes a significant contribution to the growing field of star studies. Argues that class and gender are siginifcant factors in the relatonship between stars and audiences.

One of the first books to put memory at the centre of analysis when exploring the relationship between film culture and the past. Provides a sustained, interdisciplinary perspective on memory and film from early cinema to the present, drawing from film studies, American studies and cultural studies. Adopts a resolutely cultural perspective and unlike psychoanalytic or formalist approaches to memory, explores questions of culture, power and identity. Contributes to the growing debate about the status and function of the past in cultural life and discourse, discussing issues of memory in film, and of film as memory. Considers such well known films as Forrest Gump, Pleasantville, and Jackie Brown.

Andrew Caine details the reaction to British and American pop films during the 1950s and 1960s. By examining the British reception of films such as Rock Around the Clock, Love Me Tender, A Hard Day's Night and Summer Holiday the book provides a valuable insight into British film criticism, teenage culture during the 1950s and 1960s and the generic status of rock films/teen movies and cultural hierarchies. Interpreting rock movies not only contains an extensive account of how the film and music press reacted to rock 'n roll films, but also fully explores issues about taste and distinction within reviewing practices. The movie output of Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and numerous others is located within the context of popular music during the 1950s and 1960s.

Concentrates on the analysis of cult movies, how they are defined, who defines them and the cultural politics of these definitions. Raises issues about the perception of it as an oppositional form of cinema, and of its strained relationships to mainstream cinema and the processes of institutionalisation and classification. Claims that the history of academic film studies and that of cult movie fandom are inextricably intertwined and raises fundamental questions about both cult movies themselves, and film studies as a discipline. Updates work on cult movies at a time when cult films and TV have become a central part of contemporary culture. Ranges over the full and entertaining gamut of cult films from Dario Argento, Spanish horror and Peter Jackson's New Zealand gorefests to sexploitation, kung fu and sci fi flicks, as well investigations of Sharon Stone, 'underground' and trivia.

New Hollywood violence is a groundbreaking collection of essays devoted to an interrogation of various aspects, dimensions, and issues relating to the depiction of violence in New Hollywood filmmaking. 'New Hollywood’ refers to the return to genre filmmaking following America's flirtation with European art cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and is characterised by vast production budgets, and special effects. Focusing on the motivations, the formal and stylistic qualities and the cultural politics of violence as well as the effects on viewers, the collection is divided into four sections: 'Surveys and schemas'; 'Spectacle and style'; 'Race and gender' and 'Politics to ideology'. An Afterword by Stephen Prince reflects on the various essays and points the way towards areas of future exploration.

Since the 1970s Hollywood cinema has been the site of remarkable developments in film sound. New revolutionary sound technologies have been developed, a new generation of filmmakers have learned to use them as powerful storytelling tools, and audiences have enjoyed a different way of experiencing films, both theatrically and at home.For the first time, through historical analysis and interviews with key players, such as Ray Dolby (founder and creator of Dolby Laboratories), Ioan Allen (the initiator of the Dolby Stereo programme), sound designer Gary Rydstrom (Titanic, Terminator 2, Toy Story, Saving Private Ryan, Finding Nemo), and supervising sound editor Bruce Stambler (The Fugitive, Batman Forever, Clear and Present Danger, The Fast and the Furious, XXX) this book aims at providing a substantial account of sound in contemporary Hollywood cinema since the early 1970s. Film enthusiasts and students alike will find this book provides an alternative take on Hollywood cinema to the traditional image-biased approach.

Trash or treasure is a wide-ranging historical study of the British circulation of the video nasties - a term that was originally coined to ban a group of horror videos in Britain in the 1980s but which continues to have cultural resonance in Britain up to the present day.The book is divided into three sections, which represent the key periods of existence of the nasties category - the formation of the term in the 1980s, the fan culture that formed around the nasties subsequent to their banning under the video recordings act and the DVD and theatrical re-release of some of the titles from 1990 onwards. Through an exploration of a range of relevant historical materials (from film reviews to fan websites, to video advertising materials) the book examines how this unusual, historically-specific genre category was formulated in a particular context, and then used (for different reasons) by moral campaigners, distributors, critics and fans.By examining the discourses that inform the circulation of a group of banned films (including the growth of DVD, the internet and the academic rehabilitation of horror films), the book argues that censorship is not just about rules and regulations, but also about the material, cultural and commercial consequences of a censorhsip act of law.It will be of great interest to lecturers and students of film, popular culture and the media, as well as enthusiasts of horror films and those interested in film censorship debates.

Recent years have witnessed an explosion of interest in the 'spatialities of cinema' across the social sciences and humanities, yet to date critical inquiry has tended to explore this issue as a question of the 'city' and the 'urban'. For the first time, leading scholars in geography, film and cultural studies have been drawn together to explore the multiple ways in ideas of cinema and countryside are co-produced: how 'film makes rural' and 'rural makes film'. From the expanse of the American great west to the mountainous landscapes of North Korea, Cinematic Countrysides draws on a range of popular and alternative film genres to demonstrate how film texts come to prefigure expectations of rural social space, and how these representations come to shape, and be shaped by, the material and embodied circumstances of 'lived' rural experience. At the heart of this volume's varied apprehensions of the 'cinematic countryside' is a concern to argue that ideas of rurality in film are central to wider questions of 'modernity' and 'tradition', 'self' and 'other', 'nationhood' and 'globalisation', and crucially, ones that are central to an account of the 'cinematic city'.

Recent years have witnessed an explosion of interest in the 'spatialities of cinema' across the social sciences and humanities, yet to date critical inquiry has tended to explore this issue as a question of the 'city' and the 'urban'. For the first time, leading scholars in geography, film and cultural studies have been drawn together to explore the multiple ways in ideas of cinema and countryside are co-produced: how 'film makes rural' and 'rural makes film'. From the expanse of the American great west to the mountainous landscapes of North Korea, Cinematic countrysides draws on a range of popular and alternative film genres to demonstrate how film texts come to prefigure expectations of rural social space, and how these representations come to shape, and be shaped by, the material and embodied circumstances of 'lived' rural experience. At the heart of this volume's varied apprehensions of the 'cinematic countryside' is a concern to argue that ideas of rurality in film are central to wider questions of 'modernity' and 'tradition', 'self' and 'other', 'nationhood' and 'globalisation', and crucially, ones that are central to an account of the 'cinematic city'.