Name: The Wallflower Critical Guide to Contemporary British and Irish Directors
Brand: Yoram Allon
Price: 32.0 USD
Availability: InStock

Yoram Allon

The Wallflower Critical Guide to Contemporary British and Irish Directors

$32.00

Encompassing the careers of over 350 directors who have worked within the British and Irish film industries over the last twenty years, this volume covers stalwarts such as David Lean, Richard Attenborough, and Neil Jordan; pioneers of 1960s Social Realism such as Lindsay Anderson and Tony Richardson, 1980s heritage filmmakers Ishmail Merchant and James Ivory; stylistic innovators such as Sally Potter, Lynne Ramsay and Derek Jarman; documentarists Nick Broomfield and Kevin MacDonald; and many emergent contemporary talents such as Danny Boyle, Shane Meadows and Guy Ritchie. For each director, the volume provides brief biographical material, a complete filmography, and critical analysis of individual works.

The Wallflower Critical Guide to Contemporary British and Irish Directors

John Saunders

The Western Genre

$21.00

The Western Genre: From Lordsburg to Big Whiskey offers close readings of the definitive American film movement as represented by such leading exponents as John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Sam Peckinpah. In his consideration of such iconic motifs as the Outlaw Hero and the Lone Rider, John Saunders traces the development of perennial aspects of the genre, its continuity and, importantly, its change. Representations of morality and masculinity are also foregrounded in consideration of the genre's major stars John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, and such films as Shane, Rio Bravo, The Wild Bunch, and Unforgiven.

Cover image for The Western Genre, isbn: 9781903364123

Pelle Snickars

The YouTube Reader

$26.00

YouTube has come to epitomize the possibilities of digital culture. With more than seventy million unique users a month and approximately eighty million videos online, this brand-name video distribution platform holds the richest repository of popular culture on the Internet. As the fastest growing site in the history of the Web, YouTube promises endless new opportunities for amateur video, political campaigning, entertainment formats, and viral marketinga clip culture that has seemed to outpace both cinema and television.

The YouTube Reader is the first full-length book to explore YouTube as an industry, archive, and cultural form. This remarkable volume brings together renowned film and media scholars to debate the problems and potential of "broadcasting yourself." The YouTube Reader takes on claims of newness, immediacy, and popularity with sytematic and theoretically informed arguments, offering a closer look at the available texts on YouTube and the policies and norms that govern their access and use.

Contributors include Christopher Anderson, Thomas Elsaesser, Richard Grusin, Bernard Stiegler, Toby Miller, Lisa Parks, William Uricchio, and Janet Wasko.

D. Harlan Wilson

They Live

$15.00

Born out of the cultural flamboyance and anxiety of the 1980s, They Live (1988) is a hallmark of John Carpenter's singular canon, combining the aesthetics of multiple genres and leveling an attack against the politics of Reaganism and the Cold War. The decision to cast the professional wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper as his protagonist gave Carpenter the additional means to comment on the hypermasculine attitudes and codes indicative of the era. This study traces the development of They Live from its comic book roots to its legacy as a cult masterpiece while evaluating the film in light of the paranoid/postmodern theory that matured in the decidedly "Big 80s." Directed by a reluctant auteur, the film is examined as a complex work of metafiction that calls attention to the nature of cinematic production and reception as well as the dynamics of the cult landscape.

Ethan de Seife

This Is Spinal Tap

$15.00

A documentary, a mockumentary, indeed a rockumentaryRob Reiner's phony road movie following the exploits of a fictitional heavy metal band has long been celebrated as a comedy landmark. This book is the first attempt to provide a sustained critical appraisal of the film's success, addressing general cinephiles and devoted Tapheads alike. The study considers the film within the context of cult cinema, real and mock documentaries, Hollywood comedies and musicals, and the history of rock music. This detailed stylistic and comic analysis offers new insights into the ardent Cult of Tap.

Edited by Joel Gwynne

Transgression in Anglo-American Cinema

$32.00

Sexuality within mainstream Hollywood cinema features primarily in comedy or rom-com genres, where lightness of tone permits audience engagement with what would otherwise be difficult affective terrain. Focusing on marginal productions in Anglo-American contexts, this collection explores the gendered dynamics of sex and the body, particularly embodied deviations from normative cultural scripts. It explores transgressions acted through and written on the body, and the ways in which corporeality inscribes gender discourse and reflects cultural and institutional power. Films analyzed include Mysterious Skin (2004), Shame (2011), Nymphomaniac (2013), and Dallas Buyers Club (2013). Navigating queer politics, taboo fantasy, body modification, fetishism, sex addiction, and underage sex, essays problematize understandings of adult agency, childhood innocence, and healthy desire, locating sex and gender as sites of oppression, liberation, and resistance.

Edited by Joel Gwynne

Transgression in Anglo-American Cinema

$105.00

Sexuality within mainstream Hollywood cinema features primarily in comedy or rom-com genres, where lightness of tone permits audience engagement with what would otherwise be difficult affective terrain. Focusing on marginal productions in Anglo-American contexts, this collection explores the gendered dynamics of sex and the body, particularly embodied deviations from normative cultural scripts. It explores transgressions acted through and written on the body, and the ways in which corporeality inscribes gender discourse and reflects cultural and institutional power. Films analyzed include Mysterious Skin (2004), Shame (2011), Nymphomaniac (2013), and Dallas Buyers Club (2013). Navigating queer politics, taboo fantasy, body modification, fetishism, sex addiction, and underage sex, essays problematize understandings of adult agency, childhood innocence, and healthy desire, locating sex and gender as sites of oppression, liberation, and resistance.

Cover image for Transgression in Anglo-American Cinema, isbn: 9780231176040

Guy Barefoot

Trash Cinema

$23.00

This volume explores the lower reaches of cinema and its paradoxical appeal. It looks at films from the B-movies of the 1930s to the mockbusters of today, and from the New York underground to the genre variations of Turkey's Yesilçam studios (and their YouTube afterlife). Critically examining the reasons for studying, denigrating, or celebrating the detritus of film history, it also considers the place of a trash aesthetic within and beyond 1960s American avant-garde and looks at the cult of trash in the fanzines of the 1980s. It draws on debates about cult, paracinema, and camp, arguing that trash cinema exists in relation to these but brings with it a particular history that includes the ordinary as well as the strange. Trash Cinema places these debates, and the strand of self-proclaimed low culture that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century, within a historical and international perspective. It focuses on American cinema history but addresses Eurotrash reception as well as the related field of garbology, examining trash cinema as a distinct but fluid category.

Cover image for Trash Cinema, isbn: 9780231180375

Neil Archer

Twenty-First-Century Hollywood

$23.00

Twenty-First-Century Hollywood looks into the contexts of studio film production in the new century in order to understand what shapes the style and content of present-day cinema. In an era dominated in box-office terms by the franchise and the family film, this book combines close textual readings and industrial analysis, illustrating why these kinds of movies are favored in the contemporary climate by producers and audiences alike. Neil Archer critically explores the narrative and aesthetic strategies at work in Hollywood’s most high-profile films, from Harry Potter, to Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, to The Lego Movie. Along the way, the book answers some often unexpected questions: Why is Hollywood nervous about flying saucers? Why might the cinematic auteur be Hollywood’s savior? And why are the most grown-up movies those made for children? As this study shows, like the films themselves, the answers to these questions are often complex and surprising.

Cover image for Twenty-First-Century Hollywood, isbn: 9780231191593

Ewout van der Knaap

Uncovering the Holocaust

$27.00

Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog, 1956) by Alain Resnais carried the impact of the Holocaust to the cinema screen and to societies across the world. This volume, which coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the film's release, examines its representation of the Holocaust and documents its reception in different contexts, countries, and societies, as well as its continuing place in the cultural memory of the Holocaust. It comprises a comparative study of the place of the film in the debates around the actuality and the meaning of the Holocaust in France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, the UK, and the U.S. The film itself, from the director of Last Year in Marienband (1960), used footage from the liberation of the concentration camps (previously only used in newsreels) and integrated it with reflective and poetic material.

Ewout van der Knaap

Uncovering the Holocaust

$95.00

Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog, 1956) by Alain Resnais carried the impact of the Holocaust to the cinema screen and to societies across the world. This volume, which coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the film's release, examines its representation of the Holocaust and documents its reception in different contexts, countries, and societies, as well as its continuing place in the cultural memory of the Holocaust. It comprises a comparative study of the place of the film in the debates around the actuality and the meaning of the Holocaust in France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, the UK, and the U.S. The film itself, from the director of Last Year in Marienband (1960), used footage from the liberation of the concentration camps (previously only used in newsreels) and integrated it with reflective and poetic material.

Edited by Xavier Mendik and Steven Jay Schneider. Foreword by Lloyd Kaufman

Underground U.S.A.

$28.00

Whether defined by the carnivalesque excesses of Troma studios (The Toxic Avenger), the arthouse erotica of Radley Metzger and Doris Wishman, or the narrative experimentations of Abel Ferrara, Melvin Van Peebles, Jack Smith, or Harmony Korine, underground cinema has achieved an important position within American film culture. Often defined as "cult" and "exploitation" or "alternative" and "independent," the American underground retains separate strategies of production and exhibition from the cinematic mainstream, while its sexual and cinematic representations differ from the traditionally conservative structures of the Hollywood system. Underground U.S.A. offers a fascinating overview of this area of maverick moviemaking by considering the links between the experimental and exploitative traditions of the American underground.

Cover image for Underground U.S.A., isbn: 9780231162791

John Wyver

Vision On

$100.00

Vision On narrates the turbulent yet distinguished history of one of the fundamental pillars of British broadcasting—the arts. This volume chronicles the years of dynamic and often controversial collaboration between broadcasters and the Arts Council, a key player in bringing art films to the wider public audience. Beginning with the earliest TV documentaries, the arts became central to the remit of public broadcasters, and by the 1980s Channel 4 and the Arts Council were boldly redefining the relationship of the arts and the media by commissioning and airing exclusive and innovative films. With detailed discussion of the cultural role of television programmes such as Civilisation (1966) and Arena (1974 onwards), close analysis of over 25 films and exclusive access to the Arts Council's collection of the 450 films supported between 1953 and 1999, this volume illuminates the vanguard role the arts have played in the proud history of British public broadcasting, and attempts to locate the place of arts broadcasting in today's multi-channel, multi-media world.

John Wyver

Vision On

$29.00

Vision On narrates the turbulent yet distinguished history of one of the fundamental pillars of British broadcasting—the arts. This volume chronicles the years of dynamic and often controversial collaboration between broadcasters and the Arts Council, a key player in bringing art films to the wider public audience. Beginning with the earliest TV documentaries, the arts became central to the remit of public broadcasters, and by the 1980s Channel 4 and the Arts Council were boldly redefining the relationship of the arts and the media by commissioning and airing exclusive and innovative films. With detailed discussion of the cultural role of television programmes such as Civilisation (1966) and Arena (1974 onwards), close analysis of over 25 films and exclusive access to the Arts Council's collection of the 450 films supported between 1953 and 1999, this volume illuminates the vanguard role the arts have played in the proud history of British public broadcasting, and attempts to locate the place of arts broadcasting in today's multi-channel, multi-media world.

Barry Keith Grant

Voyages of Discovery

$35.00

Frederick Wiseman is America’s foremost chronicler of public institutions. His films have focused on city, state, and local governments; hospitals; asylums; creative organizations and museums; schools; libraries; and more. In recent years, Wiseman’s work has reached a new level of popularity, with films such as In Jackson Heights (2015), Monrovia, Indiana (2018), and City Hall (2020) all earning widespread acclaim.

Voyages of Discovery is the definitive account of Wiseman’s career, offering a comprehensive analysis of the work of the leading documentary filmmaker in the United States. In this updated edition, Barry Keith Grant adds new material exploring the documentarian’s works since the 1990s, discussing every film in Wiseman’s remarkable sixty-year career. He examines the core concerns running across Wiseman’s work from the early films, which focus on documenting institutional failure, through an expanding interest in cultural institutions and ideology, to a blossoming embrace of democracy in later films. He pays particular attention to Wiseman’s strategies for involving and implicating the spectator in the institutional processes the films document. Grant also places Wiseman within the history of the documentary and other traditions of American art and considers the relationship between documentary film and authorship. Voyages of Discovery is an important book for anyone interested in Wiseman’s work or how documentary film can reveal the fabric of our shared civic life.

Barry Keith Grant

Voyages of Discovery

$140.00

Frederick Wiseman is America’s foremost chronicler of public institutions. His films have focused on city, state, and local governments; hospitals; asylums; creative organizations and museums; schools; libraries; and more. In recent years, Wiseman’s work has reached a new level of popularity, with films such as In Jackson Heights (2015), Monrovia, Indiana (2018), and City Hall (2020) all earning widespread acclaim.

Voyages of Discovery is the definitive account of Wiseman’s career, offering a comprehensive analysis of the work of the leading documentary filmmaker in the United States. In this updated edition, Barry Keith Grant adds new material exploring the documentarian’s works since the 1990s, discussing every film in Wiseman’s remarkable sixty-year career. He examines the core concerns running across Wiseman’s work from the early films, which focus on documenting institutional failure, through an expanding interest in cultural institutions and ideology, to a blossoming embrace of democracy in later films. He pays particular attention to Wiseman’s strategies for involving and implicating the spectator in the institutional processes the films document. Grant also places Wiseman within the history of the documentary and other traditions of American art and considers the relationship between documentary film and authorship. Voyages of Discovery is an important book for anyone interested in Wiseman’s work or how documentary film can reveal the fabric of our shared civic life.

Cover image for Voyages of Discovery, isbn: 9780231206228

Guy Westwell

War Cinema

$21.00

An introduction to and overview of the Hollywood war movie, a linchpin in American cultural imagination. The book considers the history of this genre, one of continuing significance, from All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) to We Were Soldiers (2002). Guy Westwell focuses in particular on representations of the Vietnam War (Apocalypse Now [1979], Rambo [1985] and Platoon [1986]) and the more recent return to and reexamination of the Second World War (Saving Private Ryan [1998]).

Cover image for War Cinema, isbn: 9781904764540

Mark Cousins

Widescreen

$100.00

Cinema has undergone huge changes in the last decade: Asian filmmaking has been making the running; the ne'er do well genre, documentary, has broken through; digitalization and DVD has revived film history and is revolutionizing projection; world cinema has shifted in the direction of the real and the visually grainy; and animation has become more dominant that any time since Disney. Month by month, in the acclaimed journal Prospect , critic and filmmaker Mark Cousins has charted and contextualized these changes. Writing from Britain, Europe, Iran, India and Mexico, he has looked at the social trends and aesthetic implications of modern cinema's shifting sands. Widescreen: Watching. Real. People. Elsewhere is the result; a skeptical, passionate, eye-witness account of film today, argued originally and written with panache.

Mark Cousins

Widescreen

$26.00

Cinema has undergone huge changes in the last decade: Asian filmmaking has been making the running; the ne'er do well genre, documentary, has broken through; digitalization and DVD has revived film history and is revolutionizing projection; world cinema has shifted in the direction of the real and the visually grainy; and animation has become more dominant that any time since Disney. Month by month, in the acclaimed journal Prospect , critic and filmmaker Mark Cousins has charted and contextualized these changes. Writing from Britain, Europe, Iran, India and Mexico, he has looked at the social trends and aesthetic implications of modern cinema's shifting sands. Widescreen: Watching. Real. People. Elsewhere is the result; a skeptical, passionate, eye-witness account of film today, argued originally and written with panache.

Alison Butler

Women's Cinema

$21.00

Women's Cinema provides an introduction to critical debates around women's filmmaking and relates those debates to a variety of cinematic practices. Taking her cue from the groundbreaking theories of Claire Johnston, Alison Butler argues that women's cinema is a minor cinema that exists inside other cinemas, inflecting and contesting the codes and systems of the major cinematic traditions from within. Using canonical directors and less established names, ranging from Chantal Akerman to Moufida Tlatli, as examples, Butler argues that women's cinema is unified in spite of its diversity by the ways in which it reworks cinematic conventions.