Archive for April 2015
*Surveillance Cinema***
/Catherine Zimmer/
"/Surveillance Cinema/ presents cutting-edge scholarship in the
field of cinema studies in its reconceptualization of the centrality of
surveillance to film narratives, subject formations, and temporalities.
Smartly pushing beyond the critical models that have long been
associated with surveillance in and outside of cinema, Zimmer makes a
persuasive case for examining surveillance within historical and
political contexts. An excellent book, both far-reaching and convincing
in its claims, Surveillance Cinema is sure to become one of the central
works in the emerging field of surveillance studies."—Aviva
Briefel,co-editor of /Horror after 9/11: World of Fear, Cinema of Terror/
In Paris, a static video camera keeps watch on a bourgeois home. In
Portland, a webcam documents the torture and murder of kidnap victims.
And in clandestine intelligence offices around the world, satellite
technologies relentlessly pursue the targets of global conspiracies.
Such plots represent only a fraction of the surveillance narratives that
have become commonplace in recent cinema.
Catherine Zimmer examines how technology and ideology have come
together in cinematic form to play a functional role in the politics of
surveillance. Drawing on the growing field of surveillance studies and
the politics of contemporary monitoring practices, she demonstrates that
screen narrative has served to organize political, racial, affective,
and even material formations around and through surveillance. She
considers how popular culture forms are intertwined with the current
political landscape in which the imagery of anxiety, suspicion, war, and
torture has become part of daily life. From /Enemy of the State/ and The
Bourne Series to /Saw, Caché/ and /Zero Dark Thirty/, /Surveillance
Cinema/ explores in detail the narrative tropes and stylistic practices
that characterize contemporary films and television series about
surveillance.
New York University Press
April 2015 288pp 9781479836673 PB £18.99now only £15.19when you quote
CSL415FILM when you order
http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/surveillance-cinema
**
*Cinema and Counter-History***
/Marcia Landy/
"A very ambitious book! The range of Marcia Landy’s scholarship and
knowledge of film is impressive." —Robert Burgoyne, author of /Film
Nation: Hollywood Looks at U.S. History/
"Once again, Marcia Landy impressively, masterfully, combines her
well-known talents for broad critical reflection for trenchant close
reading’ of individual films to produce ground-breaking theorization of
cinema’s powers to both make and remake historical meaning and to
counter dominant cultural representations. A far-reaching study with
major insights at every turn." —Dana Polan, New York University
Despite claims about the end of history and the death of cinema,
visual media continue to contribute to our understanding of history and
history-making. In this book, Marcia Landy argues that rethinking
history and memory must take into account shifting conceptions of visual
and aural technologies. With the assistance of thinkers such as Gilles
Deleuze and Félix Guattari, /Cinema and Counter-History/ examines
writings and films that challenge prevailing notions of history in order
to explore the philosophic, aesthetic, and political stakes of
activating the past. Marshaling evidence across European, African, and
Asian cinema, Landy engages in a counter-historical project that calls
into question the certainty of visual representations and unmoors
notions of a history firmly anchored in truth.
*Marcia Landy* is Distinguished Professor of English/Film Studies, with
a Secondary Appointment in French and Italian, at University of
Pittsburgh. She is author of /Stardom, Italian Style: Screen Performance
and Personality in Italian Cinema / (IUP, 2008).
Indiana University Press
April 2015 328pp 37 b&w illus. 9780253016164 PB £24.99now only
£19.99when you quote CSL415FILM when you order
http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/Book/50093/Cinema-and-Counter-History
*Classic Hollywood***
*Lifestyles and Film Styles of American Cinema, 1930-1960***
/Veronica Pravadelli /
/Translated by Michael Meadows/
"Veronica Pravadelli looks back at the classical Hollywood cinema
with a powerful magnifying glass. What comes into full view are not only
new details, but an entire new geography. Trends, dividing lines,
stylistic choices, plots, questions of gender, become much clearer. The
result is a cutting edge analysis, surprising and convincing."—Francesco
Casetti, author of /Eye of the Century: Film, Experience, Modernity///
Studies of "Classic Hollywood" typically treat Hollywood films
released from 1930 to 1960 as a single interpretive mass. Veronica
Pravadelli complicates this idea. Focusing on dominant tendencies in box
office hits and Oscar-recognized classics, she breaks down the so-called
classic period into six distinct phases that follow Hollywood's
amazingly diverse offerings from the emancipated females of the
"Transition Era" and the traditional men and women of the conservative
1930s that replaced it to the fantastical Fifties movie musicals that
arose after anti-classic genres like film noir and women's films.
Pravadelli sets her analysis apart by paying particular attention
to the gendered desires and identities exemplified in the films.
Availing herself of the significant advances in film theory and
modernity studies that have taken place since similar surveys first saw
publication, she views Hollywood through strategies as varied as close
textural analysis, feminism, psychoanalysis, film style and study of
cinematic imagery, revealing the inconsistencies and antithetical traits
lurking beneath Classic Hollywood's supposed transparency.
*Veronica Pravadelli* is a professor of film studies and director of the
Center for American Studies at Roma Tre University and a former visiting
professor at Brown University. She is the author of several books
including /Performance, Rewriting, Identity: Chantal Akerman's
Postmodern Cinema, Alfred Hitchcock. Notorious /and/Le donne del cinema:
dive, registe, spettatrici/. The Italian edition of /Classic Hollywood
/won two prizes for Best Book in Film Studies.
University of Illinois Press
November 2014 312pp 51 black and white photographs, discography
9780252080340 PB £19.99now only £15.99when you quote CSL415FILM when you
order
http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/classic-hollywood
*Kiss the Blood Off My Hands***
*On Classic Film Noir***
/Edited by Robert Miklitsch/
"A thrilling example of the possibilities of renewed scholarly
attention to the classic noir period. Its broad range of novel topics
and uniformly astute analyses reframe and open up the field of film noir
study in provocative and insightful ways that herald a new phase in
scholarship not only of the genre but of Classic Hollywood
itself."—David Greven, author of /Psycho-Sexual: Male Desire in
Hitchcock, De Palma, Scorsese, and Friedkin/
"An invaluable resource for anyone interested in film noir.
Essential."—/Choice/
Consider the usual view of film noir: endless rainy nights populated
by down-at-the-heel boxers, writers, and private eyes stumbling toward
inescapable doom while stalked by crooked cops and cheating wives in a
neon-lit urban jungle.
But a new generation of writers is pushing aside the fog of
cigarette smoke surrounding classic noir scholarship. /In Kiss the Blood
Off My Hands: On Classic Film Noir/, Robert Miklitsch curates a bold
collection of essays that reassesses the genre's iconic style, history,
and themes. Contributors analyze the oft-overlooked female detective and
little-examined aspects of filmmaking like love songs and radio
aesthetics, discuss the significance of the producer and women's pulp
fiction, as well as investigate Disney noir and the Fifties heist film,
B-movie back projection and blacklisted British directors. At the same
time the writers' collective reconsideration unwinds the impact of
hot-button topics like race and gender, history and sexuality,
technology and transnationality.
As bracing as a stiff drink, /Kiss the Blood Off My Hands/ writes
the future of noir scholarship in lipstick and chalk lines for film fans
and scholars alike.
*Robert Miklitsch* is a professor in the department of English language
and literature at Ohio University. He is the author of Siren City: Sound
and Source Music in American Film Noir.
University of Illinois Press
September 2014 264pp 35 black and white photographs, 1 line drawing
9780252080180 PB £19.99now only £15.99when you quote CSL415FILM when you
order
http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/kiss-the-blood-off-my-hands
*Orienting Hollywood***
*A Century of Film Culture between Los Angeles and Bombay***
/Nitin Govil/
“Impressively researched and astutely argued, /Orienting Hollywood/
will no doubt change the way we think about and research
transnationalism in film and media. Govil brilliantly integrates notions
of aspirational practice, affective labor, contact tropes, industrial
mirroring, and cultural echoing in a compelling and original analysis.
/Orienting Hollywood/ stands as an exemplary model of exactly the kind
of integration between ‘cultural’ and ‘political economic’ research that
many have called for, but few have realized. This book will be widely
recognized and embraced as a key, innovative text in our field.”—John T.
Caldwell, author of /Production Culture/
“/Orienting Hollywood/ brilliantly remaps the relationship between
Hollywood and Bombay cinema through a critical analysis of industry
relations that pushes beyond traditional ‘national cinema’ frameworks
and theories of cultural imperialism. Compelling and convincingly
argued, Nitin Govil frames the century-long interactions between
Hollywood and Bombay cinema as part of a complex and contradictory
history, opening up new ways of understanding the transnational dynamics
of global media industries.”—Shanti Kumar,author of /Gandhi Meets
Primetime: Globalization and Nationalism in Indian Television///
With American cinema facing intense technological and financial
challenges both at home and abroad, and with Indian media looking to
globalize, there have been numerous high-profile institutional
connections between Hollywood and Bombay cinema in the past few years.
Many accounts have proclaimed India’s transformation in a relatively
short period from a Hollywood outpost to a frontier of opportunity.
/Orienting Hollywood/ moves beyond the conventional popular wisdom that
Hollywood and Bombay cinema have only recently become intertwined
because of economic priorities, instead uncovering a longer history of
exchange. Through archival research, interviews, industry sources,
policy documents, and cultural criticism, Nitin Govil not only documents
encounters between Hollywood and India but also shows how connections
were imagined over a century of screen exchange. Employing a comparative
framework, Govil details the history of influence, traces the nature of
interoperability, and textures the contact between Hollywood and Bombay
cinema by exploring both the reality and imagination of encounter.
New York University Press
March 2015 272pp 9780814789346 PB £18.99now only £15.19when you quote
CSL415FILM when you order
http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/orienting-hollywood
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