The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (Yukiyukite Shingun)

Jeffrey Ruoff and Kenneth Ruoff, The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (Yukiyukite Shingun) Trowbridge, UK: Flicks Books, 1998 ISBN 0948911050. 57 pp. £ 9.9.5 stg (paper) (Review copy supplied by Jeffrey Ruoff) Uploaded 12 November 1999 Hara Kazuo’s 1986 documentary The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On is a film once seen never forgotten. Hara tags along behind a former Imperial Army soldier …

Ten Years of Screening the Past

Ten years of Screening the Past is reason for congratulation and celebration! But it also merits some reflection. The news that the journal has been going for a decade has come as a shock to me, because it really does feel like it all began just yesterday. However, that is simply a sign of my age! Of more general significance is the …

Hu, where and when: locating “Contemporary film theory in China”

Uploaded 25 March 1998 If Japanese film was the first non-Western cinema to receive sustained Western interest and Chinese has been the most recent, it is notable that English-language scholarship on these two cinemas has been quite different. For the most part, English-language scholars writing about Japan have been silent about the critical reception of Japanese film in Japan and …

Cinematic Political Thought: Narrating Race, Nation and Gender

Michael J. Shapiro, Cinematic Political Thought: Narrating Race, Nation and Gender. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999. ISBN 0 7486 1289 0 176 pp £16.95 (paper) (Review copy supplied by Edinburgh University Press) Uploaded 1March 2000 Michael Shapiro’s latest book confirms the author of Reading the Postmodern Polity and Violent Cartographies‘s status as an interdisciplinary scholar; his range takes in critical theory and cultural …

Floating Lives: The Media and Asian Diasporas

Stuart Cunningham and John Sinclair (eds), Floating Lives: The Media and Asian Diasporas. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2000 ISBN 0 7022 31223 244pp AU$29.95 (paper) (Review copy supplied by University of Queensland Press) Uploaded 1 March 2000 Floating Lives: The Media and Asian Diasporas is far more specific in its focus than its title might suggest, and by and large …

The Flash of Capital: Film and Geopolitics in Japan

Eric Cazdyn, The Flash of Capital: Film and Geopolitics in Japan. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002. ISBN 0 8223 2929 5 316 pp US$21.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Duke University Press) As its title suggests, Eric Cazdyn’s new book brings together global economics and aesthetics to write a new history of Japanese film. The result is a stimulating and …

Kung Fu Cult Masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger

Leon Hunt, Kung Fu Cult Masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger. London: Wallflower, 2003. ISBN: 1 903364 63 9 229 pp £15.99 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Wallflower Press) Like some of the performers he writes about, Leon Hunt performs a difficult stunt with Kung Fu Cult Masters. He walks the fine line between fandom and academic criticism, trying not …

The Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years’ War, 1931-1945

Peter B. High, The Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years’ War, 1931-1945. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2003. ISBN 0 299 18134 0 544 pp US$24.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by The University of Wisconsin Press) The University of Wisconsin Press is to be congratulated on the publication of Peter High’s The Imperial Screen. For many years …

Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness

Daniel Bernardi, (ed.) Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. ISBN: 08166 3239 1. 516pp. US$24.95 (Review copy supplied by Minnesota University Press) Linda Williams, Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. ISBN: 0 691 10283 X. 401pp. US$16.95 (Review copy supplied by Princeton University Press) …

Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Island

Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh and Darrell William Davis, Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Island New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. ISBN: 0 231 12898 3 (hb) US$69.50 ISBN: 0 231 12899 1 (pb) US$25.50 312pp (Review copy supplied by Columbia University Press) Taiwan Film Directors is a very welcome contribution to the burgeoning literature on Chinese cinemas. Taiwan has contributed strongly to …

China into Film: Frames of Reference in Contemporary Chinese Cinema

Jerome Silbergeld, China into Film: Frames of Reference in Contemporary Chinese Cinema London: Reaktion Books, 1999. ISBN 1861890508 352pp AU$59.95(paper) (Review copy supplied by Thames and Hudson (Australia) Pty Ltd) Uploaded 1 November 200 Although the subtitle claims this book to be about contemporary Chinese cinema, its primary focus is on the internationally well-known Chinese film of the mid-1980s to …

China’s New “Women’s Cinema”

Chris Berry, “China’s New Women’s Cinema” originally appeared in Camera Obscura, Volume 18. Copyright 1989 Camera Obscura. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Duke University Press. “Women’s cinema” (女的电影院 ) is a term that has come into common critical usage in the People’s Republic of China over the last year or two. Certainly, Chinese commentators are aware …

Author Archive for: ‘Chris Berry’