Author Archive for: ‘Jaime S. Ong’

Parsing The Perverse Pamela Church Gibson, More Dirty Looks: Gender, Pornography and Power. London: British Film Institute, 2004. ISBN: 0851709397 (pb) £16.99 ISBN: 0851709362 (hb) £55.00 360pp (Review copy supplied by BFI publishing) In Andrew Delbanco’s acerbic view, cultural studies are the practice of people who used to like literature, but not any more, and whose methods can as well …

Scott Nygren, Time Frames: Japanese Cinema and the Unfolding of History. University of Minnesota Press, 2007. ISBN-13: 978 0 8166 4708 8 US$25.00 (pb) 304pp (Review copy supplied by University of Minnesota Press) Scott Nygren’s prefatory caveats should dispel any expectation that his book title promises a history of film in Japan; an update, say, of Anderson and Richie’s The Japanese …

A smorgasboard for actors Adam Macauley, Don’t Tell Me, Show Me: Directors Talk about Acting. NSW: Currency Press, 2003 ISBN 0 86819 669 X 211 pp Au$29.95 (Review copy supplied by Currency Press) In Don’t Tell Me, Show Me, Adam Macauley asks twelve Australian film, television, theatre, and opera directors the same question: When you work with actors you consider good, what …

Joseph Epstein, Fred Astaire. Yale University Press, 2008 (Review copy supplied by Yale University Press) The question that engages Joseph Epstein concerns Fred Astaire’s enduring magic: why his movies still shimmer with glamour, 50 years after his time, when what he did may not have been all that worth doing in the first place. (The question may likewise be asked …

Paula Marantz Cohen, Silent Film and the Triumph of the American Myth. Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN: 0195 14 094X 240pp US$18.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Oxford University Press) Uploaded 20 September 2002 The photographs of British royalty that illustrate the first and last chapters of Paula Marantz Cohen’s study of the themes and impact of American silent film …

Steven Cohan, Incongruous Entertainment: Camp, Cultural Value and the MGM Musical. Duke University Press, 2005. ISBN: 0 8223 3595 6 US$23.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Duke University Press) Steven Cohan’s critique of MGM musicals in the 1940s and 1950s is resounding confirmation of fellow film theoretician Alexander Doty’s conjecture that queer readings are meant to show that “certain films …