Motion picture serials, the forerunner of today’s serialized television dramas, have been around since the earliest days of the narrative cinema. Exhibitors rapidly realized that in order to assure continued…
Stephen Chibnall and Brian McFarlane, The British 'B' Film. London: BFI/Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. ISBN: 978-1-84457-319-6 US$30.00 (pb) 256pp (Review copy supplied by BFI/Palgrave Macmillan) Let me say right off that…
Elizabeth Legge, Wavelength. London: Afterall Books, 2009 ISBN-10: 1-846380-56-1 US$16.00 (pb) 112pp (Review copy supplied by MIT Press) Michael Snow’s Wavelength (US 1966) is a groundbreaking film in every sense of the…
David Welky, The Moguls and the Dictators: Hollywood and the Coming of World War II. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008 ISBN-13: 978-0801890444 US$45.00 (pb) 448pp (Review copy supplied by…
Wayne Koestenbaum, The Anatomy of Harpo Marx Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780520269019 US$29.95 (pb) 336pp (Review copy supplied by University of California Press) This is an eccentric,…
Peter Gidal, Andy Warhol’s Blow Job. London: Afterall Books, 2008. ISBN: 1-846380-41-3 US$16.00 (pb) 112pp (Review copy supplied by MIT Press) During its most influential “Silver” period, Andy Warhol’s factory…
Abstract The New American Cinema of the 1960s differed from conventional models of filmmaking in many ways, embracing chance, roughness of physical execution, an impoverishment of technical and financial…
Steve Chibnall, Quota Quickies: The Birth of the British ‘B’ Film. London: BFI, 2007. ISBN-13: 978-1844571550 US$28.95 (pb) 329pp (Review copy supplied by BFI Publishing) Steve Chibnall is a well-known…
(Canyon Cinema.www.canyoncinema.com) US$50 (individual) US$150 (institution) Some films move you, some films entertain you, and some films enlighten you. Watching Gordon Ball’s films is a transcendent experience, and I’m sure…
New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2010. ISBN: 978-0-8135-4732-9 US$25.95(pb) 328pp (Review copy supplied by Rutgers University Press) This excellent volume, part of the series Star Decades: American Culture/American Cinema, edited by…
Gerry O’Hara is a true original, and if he never really got the chance to definitively climb out of the ranks of assistant directors into the realm of full-fledged feature…