Peter Jackson's film version of The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) is the grandest achievement of 21st century cinema so far. But it is also linked to topical and social concerns including war, terrorism, and cultural imperialism. Its style, symbols, narrative, and structure seem always already linked to politics, cultural definition, problems of cinematic style, and the elemenal mythologies that most profoundly capture our imaginations. From Hobbits to Hollywood: Essays on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings treats Jackson's trilogy as having two conditions of existence: an aesthetic and a...
Peter Jackson's film version of The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) is the grandest achievement of 21st century cinema so far. But it is also linked to ...
What is most important about cinema is that we are alive with it. For all its dramatic, literary, political, sociological, and philosophical weight, film is ultimately an art that provokes, touches, and riddles the viewer through an image that transcends narrative and theory. In The Horse Who Drank the Sky, Murray Pomerance brings attention to the visceral dimension of movies and presents a new and unanticipated way of thinking about what happens when we watch them.
What is most important about cinema is that we are alive with it. For all its dramatic, literary, political, sociological, and philosophical weight, f...
Michelangelo Antonioni, who died in 2007, was one of cinema s greatest modernist filmmakers. The films in his black and white trilogy of the early 1960sL avventura, La Notte, Leclisseare justly celebrated for their influential, gorgeously austere style. But in this book, Murray Pomerance demonstrates why the color films that followed are, in fact, Antonioni s greatest works. Writing in an accessible style that evokes Antonioni s expansive use of space, Pomerance discusses The Red Desert, Blow-Up, Professione: Reporter (The Passenger), Zabriskie Point, Identification of a Woman, The...
Michelangelo Antonioni, who died in 2007, was one of cinema s greatest modernist filmmakers. The films in his black and white trilogy of the early 196...
In the 1990s, American civil society got upended and reordered as many social, cultural, political, and economic institutions were changed forever. Pretty People examines a wide range of Hollywood icons who reflect how stardom in that decade was transformed as the nation itself was signaling significant changes to familiar ideas about gender, race, ethnicity, age, class, sexuality, and nationality.Such actors as Denzel Washington, Andy Garcia, Halle Berry, Angela Bassett, Will Smith, Jennifer Lopez, and Antonio Banderas became bona fide movie stars who carried major films to...
In the 1990s, American civil society got upended and reordered as many social, cultural, political, and economic institutions were changed forever.
For critics, fans, and scholars of drama and film, the laugh has traditionally been tied to comedy, indicating and expressing mirth, witty relief, joyous celebration, or arch and sarcastic parody. But strange, dark laughter that illuminates non-comedic, unfunny situations gets much less attention. In The Last Laugh: Strange Humors of Cinema, editor Murray Pomerance has assembled contributions from thirteen estimable scholars that address the strange laughter of cinema from varying intellectual perspectives and a wide range of sources.
Contributors consider unusual humors in...
For critics, fans, and scholars of drama and film, the laugh has traditionally been tied to comedy, indicating and expressing mirth, witty relief, ...
The Eyes Have It explores those rarified screen moments when viewers are confronted by sights that seem at once impossible and present, artificial and stimulating, illusory and definitive. Beginning with a penetrating study of five cornfield sequences--including The Wizard of Oz, Arizona Dream, and Signs--Murray Pomerance journeys through a vast array of cinematic moments, technical methods, and laborious collaborations from the 1930s to the 2000s to show how the viewer's experience of "reality" is put in context, challenged, and willfully engaged. Four...
The Eyes Have It explores those rarified screen moments when viewers are confronted by sights that seem at once impossible and present, artific...
A thrilling tale of anxiety and moral extremity, Marnie (1964) cemented Hitchcock's reputation as a master of suspense and the visual form. Murray Pomerance's stimulating and original introduction to this classic film sparks new critical discussion and provides fresh insights into Marnie's character and her historical and geographical contexts.
A thrilling tale of anxiety and moral extremity, Marnie (1964) cemented Hitchcock's reputation as a master of suspense and the visual form. Murray Pom...
George Cukor is one of the studio era's most famous and admired directors, with many of the American cinema's most beloved classics to his credit, including The Women, Gaslight, Adam's Rib, A Star is Born, and My Fair Lady to his credit. Not himself a scriptwriter, he was particularly adept at choosing which properties to adapt and then managing the adaptation process with verve and effectiveness. What makes for a good adapter, for a talented master of ceremonies who knows where to put everything and everybody (including the camera)? Who knows how to make a property his own even while...
George Cukor is one of the studio era's most famous and admired directors, with many of the American cinema's most beloved classics to his credit, inc...
Murray Pomerance R. Barton, Prof. Palmer Murray Pomerance
Today's film scholars draw from a dizzying range of theoretical perspectives--they're just as likely to cite philosopher Gilles Deleuze as they are to quote classic film theorist Andre Bazin. To students first encountering them, these theoretical lenses for viewing film can seem exhilarating, but also overwhelming.
Thinking in the Dark introduces readers to twenty-one key theorists whose work has made a great impact on film scholarship today, including Rudolf Arnheim, Sergei Eisenstein, Michel Foucault, Siegfried Kracauer, and Judith Butler. Rather than just discussing each...
Today's film scholars draw from a dizzying range of theoretical perspectives--they're just as likely to cite philosopher Gilles Deleuze as they are to...
