Author Archive for: ‘Harriet Margolis’

Tania Modleski, Old Wives’ Tales: Feminist Re-visions of Film and other Fictions. London: I.B. Tauris, 1999. ISBN 1 86064 386 8 238 pp UK£14.95 (Review copy supplied by I.B. Tauris) Uploaded 1 November 2000 At the outset I should say that I’m personally involved in some of what Tania Modleski is writing about in Old Wives’ Tales: Feminist Re-visions of Film and …

Valeria Belletti, Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary: Her Private Letters from Inside the Studios of the 1920s. (Ed. and annotated by Cari Beauchamp.) Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. ISBN: 0 520 24780 9 231pp (Review copy supplied by University of California Press) Once again Cari Beauchamp has produced a fascinating glimpse into the history of women’s early involvement in …

Pam Cook and Mieke Bernink (eds.), The CInema Book. 2nd ed. London: BFI, 1999. ISBN 085170 726 2 AU$80.00. (Review copy supplied by Peribo) Uploaded 1 November 2000 The fact that a book gets reprinted in a second edition says something about its popularity and usefulness. When that book originates with and is reprinted by the British Film Institute, its profile …

Virginia Wright Wexman, Jane Campion: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi, 1999 216pp ISBN 1 57806 082 6 US$45.00 (cloth) ISBN 1 57806 083 4 US$18.00 (paper) (Review copy supplied by University Press of Mississippi) Uploaded 12 November 1999 | 1802 words There is no doubt but that a collection of interviews with Jane Campion will find an audience. I am sure of …

Lindsay Shelton, The Selling of New Zealand Movies. Wellington: Awa Press, 2005. ISBN: 0 9582 5384 6 239pp NZ$39.99 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Awa Press) The cover of Lindsay Shelton’s The Selling of New Zealand Movies describes it as “the inside story of the deal-making, shrewd moves and sheer luck that took New Zealand films from obscurity to the top of …

Helen Martin and Sam Edwards New Zealand Film 1912-1996 Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1997 ISBN: 019 558336 1 NZ$49.95 (pb) 215 pp Without question, New Zealand Film 1912-1996 goes far towards filling the gap in reference material on the cinema of Aotearoa New Zealand. Page by page, along with plot summary, some critical analysis, and even a bit of cultural context, it …

Jonathan Dennis and Jan Bieringa, eds Film in Aotearoa New Zealand Wellington, NZ: Victoria University of Wellington Press, 1996 2nd edition ISBN: 0 86473 309 7 NZ$49.95 (pb) 244 pp Given the paucity of writing on cinema in Aotearoa New Zealand, the publication of Film in Aotearoa New Zealand in its original edition in 1992 was a major event for film culture …

Graeme Harper and Jonathan Rayner (eds), Cinema and Landscape. Bristol: Intellect, 2010 ISBN: 978-1-84150-309-7 US$25.00 (pb) 315pp (Review copy supplied by Intellect) Presumably anyone interested in reading Cinema and Landscape, an anthology of eighteen essays edited by Graeme Harper and Jonathan Rayner, is interested in considering landscape and cinema in tandem in order to practice a reading strategy that will reveal …

David Lascelles, Celluloid Creams: A Century of Film in New Zealand. Wellington: IPL Books. 1997 ISBN 0 908876 96 3. 144 pp. NZ$39.95 within New Zealand or $45 overseas (Pb) Fax 64-4-499-3032. David Lascelles, 80 Turbulent Years: The Paramount Theatre Wellington 1917-1997. Wellington: Millwood Press. 1997 ISBN 0-908582-80-3. 90 pp. NZ $39.95 (Pb) Uploaded 1 July 1999 Both Celluloid Dreams: A Century …

Sue Thornham (ed), Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999) ISBN 0 7486 0890 7 361pp NZ$64.95 Sue Thornham, Passionate Detachments: An Introduction to Feminist Film Theory. (London: Arnold, 1997) ISBN 0 340 65225 X 204pp NZ$64.95 Uploaded 1 March 2000 In 1972, when the first essay included in Sue Thornham’s Feminist Film Theory: A Reader originally appeared, there was very little …

Ehrhard Bahr, Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. ISBN: 978 0 520 25128 1 US$39.95 (hb) 358pp (Review copy supplied by University of California Press) Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism is the forty-first title in the …

Jeffrey S. Miller, Something Completely Different: British Television and American Culture Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. ISBN 0 8166 3241 3 250 pp US$17.95 (Review copy supplied by University of Minnesota Press) Uploaded 1 December 2001 | Modified on 2 January 2002 The cosmopolitan society of Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand finds Jeffrey Miller’s thesis ludicrous. The idea that British …

John Mowitt, Re-takes: Postcoloniality and Foreign Film Languages. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. ISBN: 0 8166 2891 2 246pp US$23.50 (pb) (Review copy supplied by University of Minnesota Press) Those of us who lived through the heady heyday of high theory in film studies learned in various ways about the difficulties of communicating clearly. Personally, I remember Peter Brunette …

Robert M. Entman & Andrew Rojecki, The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2000. ISBN: 0 226 21075 8. 305 pp. US$26.00(hb) (Review copy supplied by University of Chicago Press) Uploaded 25 July 2002 Part of a series called “Studies in communication, media, and public opinion,” The Black Image in the …

Emiel Martens, Once Were Warriors: The Aftermath. The Controvery of OWW in Aotearoa New Zealand. Amsterdam: Aksant, 2007. ISBN: 978-90-5260-236-3. €24.90 (pb) 184pp (Review copy supplied by Aksant Publishers) How does one describe Once Were Warriors? In Aotearoa New Zealand it was originally a surprisingly successful first novel by Alan Duff, a man of no particular fame or standing at the …

Edward Baron Turk Hollywood Diva: A Biography of Jeanette MacDonald Berkeley: University of California Press. 1998 ISBN 0 520 21202 9 467pp US $35.00 (cloth) Uploaded 16 April 1999 Although Edward Baron Turk’s Hollywood Diva: A Biography of Jeanette MacDonald is billed equally as cultural and film history, that isn’t strictly accurate. It is primarily an homage to Jeanette MacDonald, the dancer, …

Gönül Dönmez-Colin, Turkish Cinema: Identity, Distance and Belonging. London: Reaktion, 2008 ISBN: 978-1-86189-370-3 US$35.00 (pb) 268pp (Review copy supplied by Footprint Books http://www.footprint.com.au/) Gönül Dönmez-Colin’s Turkish Cinema: Identity, Distance and Belonging provides an historical overview of Turkish cinema from the perspective of the framework indicated by the book’s subtitle. While identity is a broad concept, the author has developed it into workable …

Deb Verhoeven, Jane Campion. London: Routledge, 2009 ISBN: 978-0-415-26275-0 US$31.95 285pp (Review copy supplied by Routledge http://www.routledge.com/) Over a decade ago, when I began working on Jane Campion’s The Piano, the amount of material a web search on the director’s name generated was overwhelming. So I appreciate Deb Verhoeven’s reference to “a time ‘BC’ (‘Before Campion’)” (xii); for female film scholars in …

Anita Loos, Anita Loos Rediscovered: Film Treatments and Fiction by Anita Loos. Ed. and annotated by Cari Beauchamp & Mary Anita Loos. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. ISBN: 0 520 22894 4. 322pp US$27.50 (hb) (Review copy supplied by University of California Press) Another lovely book resulting from Cari Beauchamp’s passion for the history of women’s early involvement in US …