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Cinema Futures: Cain, Abel or Cable?
The Screen Arts in the Digital Age
Edited by Thomas Elsaesser & Kay Hoffmann
In the late 1960s, the cinema was pronounced
dead, killed by television. Some thirty years later, the popularity of cinema suggests
a reversal of roles. Examining the complex dynamics of convergence and divergence
among the audio-visual media, the authors are realistic in their estimate of the
future of cinema's aesthetic identity. (1998). Softcover. $39.95.
Screen Violence
Edited by Karl French
Contributions include Martin Amis on Michael
Medved and "Chucky"; John Waters on "Why I love violence"; John
Grisham on suing Oliver Stone; Oliver Stone on his defence; Camille Paglia on sexual
violence; and Pauline Kael on Clint and his Magnum etc. (1996). Softcover. $19.95.
Understanding Movies, Canadian Edition
by Louis Giannetti & Jim Leach
Intended for use in Canada in introductory
film course that, while dealing with the basic issues of film language and film criticism,
include sections on Canadian cinema and pay some attention to the Canadian context.
The overall goal of the textbook is not to teach students to change their viewing
habits, but to make them more aware of the reasons why people respond to movies as
they do. (1998). Softcover. $70.95.
Reel to Real: Race, Sex and Class at the
Movies
by bell hooks
The author talks back to films she has watched
as a way to engage the pedagogy of cinema -- how film teaches its audience. She comes
to film not as a film critic but as a cultural critic, fascinated by the issues movies
raise in their depiction of race, sex and class. The book brings together her classic
essays on Paris is Burning and She's Gotta Have It, and her
new work on Girl 6, Pulp Fiction and Waiting to Exhale. (1996).
Softcover. $29.99.
Celluloid Indians: Native Americans and
Film
by Jacquelyn Kilpatrick
An overview of Native American representation
in film over the past century. Beginning with the beginning of the movies industry,
the author traces changes in the cinematic depictions of Native peoples and identifies
cultural and historical reasons for those changes. Kilpatrick places appropriate
emphasis on the impact Native American screenwriters and filmmakers have had on the
industry. Softcover. (1999). $31.95.
Living Room Lectures: The Fifties Family
in Film and Television
by Nina C. Leibman
The 1950s television family has achieved near
mythological status as a model of what real families "ought" to be. Yet
feature films of the period often portrayed families in trouble, with parents and
children in conflict over appropriate values and behaviours. Leibman compares the
two mediums, and finds surprising commonalities in their representations. (1995).
Softcover. $28.50.
The Road to Romance and Ruin: Teen Films
and Youth Culture
by Jon Lewis
Looks at teen films as a rare medium able
to represent the otherwise chaotic and conflicting experience of youth. Lewis focuses
on six major issues: Alienation, Deviance and Delinquency, Sex and Gender, the Politics
of Consumption, Rebellion, and Regression into Nostalgia. Despite the many differences
within the genre, the author sees all teen films as focused on a single social concern:
the breakdown of traditional forms of authority -- school, church, family. (1992).
Softcover. $24.95.
How to Read a Film: Movies, Media, Multimedia,
Third Edition
by James Monaco
Looking at film from many vantage points,
this book explores the medium as both art and craft, sensibility and science, tradition
and technology. After examining film's close relation to such other narrative media
as the novel, painting, photography, television, and even music, Monaco discusses
those elements necessary to understand how films convey meaning, and how we can best
discern all that a film is attempting to communicate. A new chapter on multimedia
brings media criticism into the 21st century with a through discussion of topics
like virtual reality, cyberspace, and the proximity of both to film. Softcover. (2000).
$43.95.
Popular Music on Screen:
From the Hollywood Musical to Music Video
by John Mundy
Through detailed examination of films, television
programs and popular music, together with analysis of the economic, technological
and cultural determinants which have an impact upon their production and consumption,
the book argues that popular music has been increasingly influenced by its visual
economy. (1999). Softcover. $28.95.
More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts
by James Naremore
The author discusses film noir as a term in
criticism; as an expression of artistic modernism; as a symptom of Hollywood censorship
and politics in the 1940s; as a marketing strategy; as an evolving style; as a cinema
about races and nationalities; and as an idea that circulates throughout all the
information technologies. (1998). Softcover. $31.95.
Fatal Attractions:
Rescripting Romance in Contemporary Literature in Film
Edited by Lynne Pearce & Gina Wisker
Considers the fate of romance in the wake
of postmodernism and postcolonialism and offers clear evidence of romance as a "category
under stress". Viewing romance in the context of queer theory and AIDS, and
challenging many popular psychoanalytic concepts such as "abjection", this
collection makes a significant contribution to feminist and gay/lesbian discussion
on the politics of romantic love. (1998). Softcover. $32.95.
Recreational Terror:
Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing
by Isabel Cristina Pineda
The author challenges the conventional wisdom
that violent horror films can only degrade women and incite violence, and instead
contends that the contemporary horror film speaks to the cultural need to express
rage and terror in the midst of social upheaval. Her range of topics include slasher
films, race horror, and the cultural politics of the postmodern horror film. (1997).
Softcover. $23.95.
Identifying Hollywood's Audiences:
Cultural Identity and the Movies
Edited by Melvun Stokes & Richard Maltby
Examines the methods the American motion picture
industry has used to identify and understand its audiences from the 1920s to the
1990s; the ways in which this understanding has shaped production, and the responses
made by audiences to particular varieties of film-going experience. The book also
examines how such groups as adolescent males and female horror movie fans use film-viewing
to display and establish their cultural competence and subcultural identities. (1999).
Softcover. $44.95.
Film as Social Practice, Third Edition
by Graeme Turner
A classic student textbook that explores the
feature film as entertainment, as narrative, and as a cultural event. Turner discusses
the major theoretical issues surrounding the history of film production and film
studies, using them to examine the cultural function of film and its place in our
popular culture. Softcover. (1999). $28.99.
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