Kategoria BISAC: Performing Arts >> Film - General

This intriguing book explores why spectacular films involving Biblical figures or set in Biblical times have been a staple of filmmaking since talkies began. Forshey looks at these films, and suggests that the underlying purpose was to mediate between a monistic scientific world view and a dualistic religious world view, and between secular and religious ethics. Forshey discusses how filmic, political, religious, and cultural history influenced filmmakers of these spectaculars.

The first chapter differentiates between religious spectaculars and biblical spectaculars. Following are...

"Visions of Empire" explores film's function as a medium of political communication, recognizing not just the propaganda film, but the various ways that conventional narrative films embody, question, or critique established social values underlying American attitudes toward historical, social, and political events. Stephen Prince discusses Hollywood film productions of the 1980s in terms of salient political issues of the period, including anxieties about declining U.S. military power, the wars in Central America and the prospects for U.S. intervention, the legacy of the Vietnam War, and...

George Lukas and other leading filmmakers acknowledge their indebtedness to mythographic scholarship on archetypes. In his new study, author Rodney Farnsworth identifies a pattern of filmmakers' obsessions with archetypical rituals centered on sacrifice and the family in films made between 1977 and 1983, a period of political upheaval on both sides of the Atlantic. Combining a strong historical reading of the films in a sociopolitical context and utilizing Queer Theory as a framework for his arguments, Farnsworth offers a close examination of key films of the period, including works by...

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This book is a study of Burrough's first six Tarzan books, revealing intriguing parallels between Tarzan's story and the sagas of the heroes of ancient Greece and Rome.

As the popularity of the genre increases and special effects are pushed to greater extremes of terror and cruelty, more and more people have begun to wonder, what is the attraction of horror films? Do they have any socially redeeming features? Rockett offers some surprising and provocative answers to these questions in his analysis of the cinema of cruelty. First commenting on our fascination with experiences that transcend the world of ordinary reality, he looks at film as a means of expressing the dark side of human nature. Next, he examines the essential ingredients that go into the...

The success of clown comedy is dependent on the comic or comics who take center stage. These comics are usually identified with a specific comedic shtick, physical or visual humor, and their underdog status. This study by film scholar Wes Gehring presents a brief, historical overview of major figures in the genre, including W. C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, Bob Hope, and Woody Allen. The comedians discussed are drawn from four genre periods: the silent era, the depression era, the post-World War II period, and the modern era.

This book examines eleven horror films in-depth and their relationships to Romantic Gothic literary conventions--mainly, but not solely, found in works dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. To illustrate the use of these conventions in film, Michael Sevastakis analyzes shots from scenes and sequences of all films discussed. Due to the large quantity of horror films produced during this period, the films in this book have been selected on the basis of their supernatural and preternatural content, and upon four conventions predicated on fictional literary models dealing with...

Jews have played a constant and diverse role in the growth of cinema and film-making. This unique book provides a catalogue of over 1,200 films about Jews and Jewish history, culture, personalities, and issues. It contains entries that have been collected from a variety of sources worldwide (much of it personal correspondence with film-makers themselves) and there is international coverage of the following genres: documentaries; foreign language films; Hollywood features; film testimony; made-for-television mini-series, dramas, and documentaries; educational/instructional films; and...

Between 1936 and 1955, Hollywood significantly changed its portrayal of Hispanics in motion pictures. This change resulted from the demands of the Production Code Administration, which required film makers to eliminate the more offensive stereotypical Hispanic images. This filmography chronicles all of the Hispanic-related films released during this period. The volume includes entries for nearly four thousand films. The entries are arranged in chapters, with each chapter devoted to a single year. Within the chapters, the entries are listed alphabetically by film title. Each entry includes...

"Radical Visions" discusses an important period in American film history: Films such as "Bonnie and Clyde," "The Graduate," "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," "Midnight Cowboy," "Nashville," and "Taxi Driver" challenged the narrative structure and style of the classical Hollywood paradigm, transformed its conventional genres, exploded traditional American myths, and foregrounded a consciousness of the cinematic process. Film students, scholars, and aficionados will gain insight into generic conventions and narrative style presented within the cultural attitudes of the time.

The book features a...

Analyzing a sample of 25 films, including such notables as "Red River," "Shane," "Unforgiven," "The Wild Bunch," "Wyatt Earp," and "Dances with Wolves," this work examines traditional leadership theories as reflected in the western film genre. The western vividly portrays a variety of leadership styles, motifs, and characteristics giving perspective on several traditional leadership theories. The different leadership styles the films exhibit are categorized and described through content analysis. Some of the concepts and underlying theories and styles reveal a universal quality about...