John Huston As Adaptor

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John Huston as Adaptor

Author : Douglas McFarland
Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 1438463731
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis John Huston as Adaptor by : Douglas McFarland

Download or read book John Huston as Adaptor written by Douglas McFarland and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2017-01-27 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that understanding Hustons film adaptations of literary works is essential to understanding his oeuvre as a filmmaker. John Huston as Adaptor makes the case that adaptation is the salient element in Hustons identity as a filmmaker and that his early and deep attraction to the experience of reading informed his approach to film adaptation. Thirty-four of Hustons thirty-seven films were adaptations of literary texts, and they stand as serious interpretations of literary works that could only be made by an astute reader of literature. Indeed, Huston asserted that a film director should be above all else a reader and that reading itself should be the intellectual and emotional basis for filmmaking. The seventeen essays in this volume not only address Huston as an adaptor, but also offer an approach to adaptation studies that has been largely overlooked. How an adaptor reads, the works to which he is drawn, and how his literary interpretations can be brought to the screen without relegating film to a subservient role are some of the issues addressed by the contributors. An introductory chapter identifies Huston as the quintessential Hollywood adaptor and argues that his skill at adaptation is the mark of his authorial signature. The chapters that follow focus on fifteen of Hustons most important films, including The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), The African Queen (1951), The Night of the Iguana (1964), Under the Volcano (1984), and The Dead (1987), and are divided into three areas: aesthetics and textuality; history and social context; and theory and psychoanalysis. By offering a more comprehensive account of the centrality of adaptation to Hustons films, John Huston as Adaptor offers a greater understanding of Huston as a filmmaker.

John Huston as Adaptor

Author : Douglas McFarland
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 143846374X
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis John Huston as Adaptor by : Douglas McFarland

Download or read book John Huston as Adaptor written by Douglas McFarland and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2017-01-28 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Huston as Adaptor makes the case that adaptation is the salient element in Huston's identity as a filmmaker and that his early and deep attraction to the experience of reading informed his approach to film adaptation. Thirty-four of Huston's thirty-seven films were adaptations of literary texts, and they stand as serious interpretations of literary works that could only be made by an astute reader of literature. Indeed, Huston asserted that a film director should be above all else a reader and that reading itself should be the intellectual and emotional basis for filmmaking. The seventeen essays in this volume not only address Huston as an adaptor, but also offer an approach to adaptation studies that has been largely overlooked. How an adaptor reads, the works to which he is drawn, and how his literary interpretations can be brought to the screen without relegating film to a subservient role are some of the issues addressed by the contributors. An introductory chapter identifies Huston as the quintessential Hollywood adaptor and argues that his skill at adaptation is the mark of his authorial signature. The chapters that follow focus on fifteen of Huston's most important films, including The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), The African Queen (1951), The Night of the Iguana (1964), Under the Volcano (1984), and The Dead (1987), and are divided into three areas: aesthetics and textuality; history and social context; and theory and psychoanalysis. By offering a more comprehensive account of the centrality of adaptation to Huston's films, John Huston as Adaptor offers a greater understanding of Huston as a filmmaker.

Letters from Hollywood

Author : Bill Krohn
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438477651
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Letters from Hollywood by : Bill Krohn

Download or read book Letters from Hollywood written by Bill Krohn and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2020-08-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Journalist and filmmaker Bill Krohn has been the Los Angeles correspondent for the French magazine Cahiers du cinéma for over forty years. Letters from Hollywood brings together thirty-four of his essays, many of them appearing in English for the first time. Focusing most pieces on a particular director and film, Krohn uses his inside knowledge of the studio system to illuminate an art that is also a multibillion-dollar business. He connects currents in French film criticism and theory with an unfolding account of American cinema past and present, offering penetrating insights into directors and their work. Beginning with Allan Dwan, who learned how to make movies before Hollywood was born by watching D. W. Griffith, Krohn presents a panorama that encompasses Alfred Hitchcock and Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick and Sergio Leone, Star Wars and I Love Lucy. He covers everything from gangsters to gremlins, from blockbusters to no-budget cult films like Moon Over Harlem and Plan 9 from Outer Space, in a style that is accessible to anyone who loves movies, or has a passion for writing about them.

New Approaches to Contemporary Adaptation

Author : Betty Kaklamanidou
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
ISBN 13 : 081434626X
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (143 download)

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Book Synopsis New Approaches to Contemporary Adaptation by : Betty Kaklamanidou

Download or read book New Approaches to Contemporary Adaptation written by Betty Kaklamanidou and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars of cultural, gender, film, literary, and adaptation studies will find this collection innovative and thought-provoking.

American Stranger

Author : Will Scheibel
Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 1438464118
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis American Stranger by : Will Scheibel

Download or read book American Stranger written by Will Scheibel and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reconstructs how Ray became a "rebel auteur" in cinema culture.

Some Kind of Mirror

Author : Amanda Konkle
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 1978802617
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (788 download)

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Book Synopsis Some Kind of Mirror by : Amanda Konkle

Download or read book Some Kind of Mirror written by Amanda Konkle and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-04 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: playing Marilyn Monroe -- Becoming a star: the publicity buildup and early performances -- Mrs. America: Marilyn Monroe and marriage anxiety -- "It's kinda personal and embarrassing, too": Monroe, the Kinsey Reports, and the double standard -- The actress and her method: resisting playing Marilyn Monroe -- Conclusion: a Marilyn Monroe type

Tuitions and Intuitions

Author : William Rothman
Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 1438475799
Total Pages : 414 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Tuitions and Intuitions by : William Rothman

Download or read book Tuitions and Intuitions written by William Rothman and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2019-11-01 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Makes the case that philosophy has an essential role to play in the serious study of film. William Rothman has long been considered one of the seminal figures in the field of film-philosophy. From his landmark book Hitchcock: The Murderous Gaze, now in its second edition, to the essays collected here in Tuitions and Intuitions, Rothman has been guided by two intuitions: first, that his kind of film criticism is philosophy; and second, that such a marriage of criticism and philosophy has an essential part to play in the serious study of film. In this book, he aspires, borrowing a formulation from Emerson, to “pay the tuition” for these intuitions. Thoughtful, philosophically sophisticated, and provocative, the essays included here address a wide range of films, including classical Hollywood movies; the work of “auteur” directors like Alfred Hitchcock, George Cukor, Yasujirō Ozu, and Woody Allen; performances by John Barrymore and James Stewart; unconventional works by Jean Genet, Chantal Akerman, Terrence Malick, and the Dardenne brothers; the television series Justified; and documentaries by Jean Rouch, Ross McElwee, and Robert Gardner. All the essays address questions of philosophical significance and, taken together, manifest Rothman’s lifelong commitment when writing about a film, to respect the film’s own ideas; to remain open to the film’s ways of expressing its ideas; and to let the film help teach him how to view it, how to think about it, and how to discover what he has at heart to say about it. “Tuitions and Intuitions is simply indispensable to anyone interested in philosophy and in film as philosophy. This book as a whole expresses and exemplifies moral perfectionism through the exploration of what our self becomes with this experience of cinema.” — Sandra Laugier, University Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris “Bringing Rothman’s work together highlights patterns and consistent concerns that may not otherwise be obvious to readers. The book will be invaluable to current and future Rothman scholars.” — Kyle Stevens, author of Mike Nichols: Sex, Language, and the Reinvention of Psychological Realism

Brechtian Cinemas

Author : Nenad Jovanovic
Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 1438463634
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Brechtian Cinemas by : Nenad Jovanovic

Download or read book Brechtian Cinemas written by Nenad Jovanovic and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2017-01-30 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the influence of Bertolt Brechts ideas on the practice and study of cinema. In Brechtian Cinemas, Nenad Jovanovic uses examples from select major filmmakers to delineate the variety of ways in which Bertolt Brechts concept of epic/dialectic theatre has been adopted and deployed in international cinema. Jovanovic critically engages Brechts ideas and their most influential interpretations in film studies, from apparatus theory in the 1970s to the presently dominant cognitivist approach. He then examines a broad body of films, including Brechts own Mysteries of a Hairdressing Salon (1923) and Kuhle Wampe (1932), Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillets History Lessons (1972), Peter Watkinss La Commune (2000), and Lars von Triers Nymphomaniac (2013). Jovanovic argues that the role of montagea principal source of artistic estrangement (Verfremdung) in earlier Brechtian filmshas diminished as a result of the techniques conventionalization by todays Hollywood and related industries. Operating as primary agents of Verfremdung in contemporary films inspired by Brechts view of the world and the arts, Jovanovic claims, are conventions borrowed from the main medium of his expression, theatre. Drawing upon a vast number of sources and disciplines that include cultural, film, literature, and theatre studies, Brechtian Cinemas demonstrates a continued and broad relevance of Brecht for the practice and understanding of cinema. This book opens up one of the most vaguely and often ill employed terms within film theory for extremely detailed discussion, providing the most thorough analysis of Brechtianism available to film scholars. It will become a standard reference. R. Barton Palmer, coeditor of Invented Lives, Imagined Communities: The Biopic and American National Identity

Rumble and Crash

Author : Milo Sweedler
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438472811
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Rumble and Crash by : Milo Sweedler

Download or read book Rumble and Crash written by Milo Sweedler and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2019-01-31 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the beginning of the twenty-first century, as the contradictions of capitalism became more apparent than at any other time since the 1920s, numerous films gave allegorical form to the crises of contemporary capitalism. Some films were overtly political in nature, while others refracted the vicissitudes of capital in stories that were not, on the surface, explicitly political. Rumble and Crash examines six particularly rich and thought-provoking films in this vein. These films, Milo Sweedler argues, give narrative and audiovisual form to the increasingly pervasive sense that the economic system we have known and accepted as inevitable and ubiquitous is in fact riddled with self-destructive flaws. Analyzing four movies from before the global financial crisis of 2008 and two that allegorize the financial meltdown itself, Sweedler explores how cinema responded to one of the defining crises of our time. Films examined include Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men (2006), Stephen Gaghan's Syriana (2005), Fernando Meirelles's The Constant Gardener (2005), Spike Lee's Inside Man (2006), Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine (2013).

Brute Force

Author : Dominic Lennard
Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 1438476612
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Brute Force by : Dominic Lennard

Download or read book Brute Force written by Dominic Lennard and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2019-11-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considers how dangerous beasts in horror films illuminate the human-animal relationship. It’s always been a wild world, with humans telling stories of killer animals as soon as they could tell stories at all. Movies are an especially popular vehicle for our fascination with fierce creatures. In Brute Force, Dominic Lennard takes a close look at a range of cinematic animal attackers, including killer gorillas, sharks, snakes, bears, wolves, spiders, and even a few dinosaurs. Lennard argues that animal horror is not so much a focused genre as it is an impulse, tapping into age-old fears of becoming prey. At the same time, these films expose conflicts and uncertainties in our current relationship with animals. Movies considered include King Kong, Jaws, The Grey, Them!, Arachnophobia, Jurassic Park, Snakes on a Plane, An American Werewolf in London, and many more. Drawing on insights from film studies, art history, cognitive science, and evolutionary psychology, Brute Force is an engaging critical exploration—and appreciation—of cinema’s many bad beasts. “The brilliance of Dominic Lennard’s Brute Force is not only that it is long overdue, but one didn’t realize it was due in the first place! Yet upon reflection and, of course, through Lennard’s engaging book, one realizes not only the ubiquity of animals in horror, but their utter centrality to so many classic horror films. In reading this, we can hear the distant rumble of footsteps of a genetically reborn Tyrannosaurus or the hurried pounding of our beloved Rover who has decided that he wants more than kibbles and bits for dinner—and we look mighty appetizing. ‘Groundbreaking’ is often overused, but in this case it truly fits.” — David Desser, coeditor of Tough Ain’t Enough: New Perspectives on the Films of Clint Eastwood

The Slapstick Camera

Author : Burke Hilsabeck
Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 1438477317
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis The Slapstick Camera by : Burke Hilsabeck

Download or read book The Slapstick Camera written by Burke Hilsabeck and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2020-02-01 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demonstrates that slapstick film comedies display a canny and sometimes profound understanding of their medium. Slapstick film comedy may be grounded in idiocy and failure, but the genre is far more sophisticated than it initially appears. In this book, Burke Hilsabeck suggests that slapstick is often animated by a philosophical impulse to understand the cinema. He looks closely at movies and gags that represent the conditions and conventions of cinema production and demonstrates that film comedians display a canny and sometimes profound understanding of their medium—from Buster Keaton’s encounter with the film screen in Sherlock Jr. (1924) to Harpo Marx’s lip-sync turn with a phonograph in Monkey Business (1931) to Jerry Lewis’s film-on-film performance in The Errand Boy (1961). The Slapstick Camera follows the observation of philosopher Stanley Cavell that self-reference is one way in which “film exists in a state of philosophy.” By moving historically across the studio era, the book looks at a series of comedies that play with the changing technologies and economic practices behind film production and describes how comedians offered their own understanding of the nature of film and filmmaking. Hilsabeck locates the hidden intricacies of Hollywood cinema in a place where one might least expect them—the clowns, idiots, and scoundrels of slapstick comedy. “From its analysis of the vaudevillian Victorian origins to early Hollywood expressions, and from defining classical performances by the likes of Keaton to recent postmodern recapitulations, Hilsabeck’s theoretically rigorous and wide-ranging study masterfully weaves a path through the historical, technical, and philosophical art of slapstick comedy. A must for scholars working in this field.” — Daniel Varndell, author ofHollywood Remakes, Deleuze and the Grandfather Paradox

From El Dorado to Lost Horizons

Author : Ken Windrum
Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 1438473974
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis From El Dorado to Lost Horizons by : Ken Windrum

Download or read book From El Dorado to Lost Horizons written by Ken Windrum and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2019-03-25 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigates how musicals, war films, sex comedies, and Westerns dealt with contentious issues during a time of change in Hollywood. The era known as the Hollywood Renaissance is celebrated as a time when revolutionary movies broke all the rules of the previous “classical” era as part of the ferment of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Yet many films during this era did not overtly smash the system but provided more traditional entertainment, based on popular genres, for a wider audience than the youth culture who flocked to more transgressive fare. Ken Windrum focuses on four genres of traditionalist movies—big-budget musicals, war spectacles, “naughty” sex comedies, and Westerns. From El Dorado to Lost Horizons shows how even seemingly innocuous, family-oriented films still participated in the progressive aspects of the time while also holding a conservative point of view. Windrum analyzes representations of issues including gender roles, marriage, sexuality, civil rights, and Cold War foreign policy, revealing how these films dealt with changing times and reflected both status quo positions and new attitudes. He also examines how the movies continued or deviated from classical principles of structure and style. Windrum provides a counter-history of the Hollywood Renaissance by focusing on a group of important films that have nevertheless been neglected in scholarly accounts. “This book is detailed and insightful in discussing the traditional (classical) and maverick (but ultimately recuperative) qualities of the mainstream films of the period. Windrum’s discussion of the narrative structure and stylistic elements of the films, both classical and innovative, is a highlight of the book.” — Glenn Man, author of Radical Visions: American Film Renaissance, 1967–1976

Ripping England!

Author : Roger Rawlings
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438467354
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Ripping England! by : Roger Rawlings

Download or read book Ripping England! written by Roger Rawlings and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2017-12-04 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ripping England! investigates a fertile moment for British satire—the period between 1947 and 1953, which produced the films Passport to Pimlico, Kind Hearts and Coronets, and The Lavender Hill Mob, as well as the seminal radio program The Goon Show. Against the postwar background of fading empire, universal rationing, and the implementation of a welfare state, these satires laid the foundation for a new British cultural identity later fleshed out by the Angry Young Men, the Movement poets, the Social Realists, and those involved in the satire boom of the 1960s, which lives on even to this day. The peculiarity of these satires and the British identity they shaped is better understood when seen in relief against postwar cinematic cultures of Italy, France, and the United States. Roger Rawlings places postwar British film in the context of contemporaneous European national film movements and contrasts it with Hollywood's comedies and satires of the same period. British satires of the late forties and early fifties held up a mirror to a nation that was in the throes of change, moving from a colonial empire to an inward-turning island culture. Ripping England! looks at the all too often neglected miracle of postwar British cinema and popular culture.

Hollywood Films in North Africa and the Middle East

Author : Nolwenn Mingant
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438488564
Total Pages : 203 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Hollywood Films in North Africa and the Middle East by : Nolwenn Mingant

Download or read book Hollywood Films in North Africa and the Middle East written by Nolwenn Mingant and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2022-05-01 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a broad range of primary sources, from trade and government publications to interviews, Hollywood Films in North Africa and the Middle East traces the circulation of Hollywood films across the region from the early twentieth century to the present. Originally introduced by French distributors, Hollywood films have been a key component of film culture in North Africa and the Middle East. These films became a favored mode of entertainment during the first half of the century as the major US film studios built a strong distribution structure. After World War II, the changing geopolitical context of decolonization pushed US distributors out of the market. Hollywood films, however, have continued to be favored by audiences. Today, in a landscape that also includes Egyptian and Indian films, Hollywood remains a relevant force in the region’s film culture, experienced by audiences in myriad ways from the pirate markets of North Africa to state-of-the-art theatres in the United Arab Emirates.

Passionate Detachments

Author : Amy Rust
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438465416
Total Pages : 210 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Passionate Detachments by : Amy Rust

Download or read book Passionate Detachments written by Amy Rust and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2017-05-24 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Passionate Detachments investigates the rise of graphic violence in American films of the late 1960s and early 1970s and the popular aesthetics and critical responses this violence inspired. Amy Rust examines four technologies adopted by commercial American cinema after the fall of the Hollywood Production Code: multiple-camera montage, squibs (small explosive devices) and artificial blood, freeze-frames, and zooms. Approaching these technologies as figures, as opposed to mere tools, Rust traces the encounters they mediate between perception (what one sees, hears, and feels) and representation (how those sights, sounds, and feelings make meaning). These technologies, she argues, lend shape to film violence while organizing viewers' on- and off-screen relationships to it. The result proves meaningful for an era self-consciously and perilously preoccupied with bloodshed. The post-Code period found Americans across the political spectrum demanding visual—and increasingly violent—demonstrations of presumably "authentic" realities. Corroborating fantasies of authenticity from military to counterculture, these technologies challenge them as well, pointing, however unwittingly, to the violently classed, gendered, and racialized blind spots such fantasies harbor. More broadly, the technologies answer concerns that films control violence too much or too little. Offering neither mere discourse nor mere thrills, they recover sense and sensation for all, not some, or even most, depictions of bloodshed. As figures, the devices also remediate vision and violence for film theory, which exhibits distrust for each in spite of the complexities phenomenology and psychoanalysis have brought to cinematic perception and pleasure.

Miraculous Realism

Author : Niels Niessen
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 143847735X
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Miraculous Realism by : Niels Niessen

Download or read book Miraculous Realism written by Niels Niessen and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2020-03-01 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, two movies from northern-Francophone Europe swept almost all the main awards. Rosetta by the Walloon directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne won the Golden Palm, and L'humanité by the French director Bruno Dumont won the Grand Prize; both won acting awards as well. Taking this "miracle" of Cannes as the point of departure, Niels Niessen identifies a transregional film movement in the French-Belgian border region—the Cinéma du Nord or "cinema of the North." He examines this movement within the contexts of French and Belgian national cinemas from the silent era to the digital age, as well as that of the new realist tendency in world cinema of the last three decades. In addition, he traces, from a northern perspective, a secular-religious tradition in Francophone-European film and philosophy from Bresson and Pialat, via Bazin, Deleuze, and Godard, to the Dardennes and Dumont, while critiquing this tradition for its frequent use of a humanist vocabulary of grace for a secular world. Once a cradle of the Industrial Revolution, the Franco-Belgian Nord faced economic crisis for most of the twentieth century. Miraculous Realism demonstrates that the Cinéma du Nord's rise to prominence resulted from the region's endeavor to reinvent itself economically and culturally at the crossroads of Europe after decades of recession.

Are You Watching Closely?

Author : Seth Friedman
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438465920
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Are You Watching Closely? by : Seth Friedman

Download or read book Are You Watching Closely? written by Seth Friedman and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are You Watching Closely? is the first book to explore the recent spate of "misdirection films," a previously unidentified Hollywood genre characterized by narratives that inspire viewers to reinterpret them retrospectively. Since 1990, Hollywood has backed more of these films than ever before, many of which, including The Sixth Sense (1999), A Beautiful Mind (2001), and Inception (2010), were both commercial and critical successes. Seth Friedman examines this genre in its sociocultural, industrial, and technological contexts to explain why it has become more attractive to producers and audiences. The recent popularity of misdirection films, Friedman argues, is linked to new technologies that enable repeat viewings and online discussion, which makes it enticing to an industry that depends increasingly on the aftermarket, as well as to historically specific cultural developments. That is, in addition to being well suited for shifting industrial and technological conditions, these films are appealing because they suggest that it remains possible to know what "actually" occurred and who was "really" responsible for events at a time when it is also becoming increasingly recognized that "truth" is relative. Are You Watching Closely? shows how Hollywood's effective strategies for these changing circumstances put it at the forefront of a storytelling trend that has increasingly become important across media. Through close analyses of how misdirection films have been designed, marketed, and received in relation to their contexts, Friedman demonstrates the ways in which they epitomize a kind of narrative experimentation that has become a crucial facet of twenty-first-century audiovisual storytelling.