Category Archive for: ‘Issue 36 – Reviews’

Last Day Every Day: Figural Thinking from Auerbach and Kracauer to Agamben and Brenez

Adrian Martin, Last Day Every Day: Figural Thinking from Auerbach and Kracauer to Agamben and Brenez Brooklyn, New York: Punctum Books, 2012 ISBN: 978 0615719 467 US$9.00 (pb) 54 pp Available to buy or download at http://punctumbooks.com/titles/last-day-every-day/ Figures in a Garden: The Domino Effect On first reading, one could deduce that Last Day Every Day is essentially (and as its …

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The cinema of Michael Winterbottom

Deborah Allison, The cinema of Michael Winterbottom Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2013 ISBN: 9780739125847 US$32.99 (pb) 224pp (Review copy supplied by Lexington Books) This is the second book-length study devoted to Michael Winterbottom’s films. It was commissioned as part of a “Genre Film Auteurs” series (with the other books in the series to date on John Dahl and Michael Mann), …

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Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist

Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle (eds), Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 2012 ISBN: 978-0-8166-8037-5 US$29.95 (pb) 776 pages (Review copy supplied by University of Minnesota Press) First published in 1997, Tender Comrades has been republished by University of Minnesota in their commendable series of reprints. Based at least conceptually on a never …

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Ride, Boldly Ride: The Evolution of the American Western

Mary Lea Bandy and Kevin Stoehr, Ride, Boldly Ride: The Evolution of the American Western University of California Press, 2012 ISBN: 978-0-520-25866-2 US $39.95(hb) 344pp (Review copy supplied by University of California Press) Not surprisingly, themes of landscape, Manifest Destiny, and the western character loom large in Ride, Boldly Ride: The Evolution of the American Western, but the book has …

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The Cinema of Eric Rohmer: Irony, Imagination, and the Social World

Jacob Leigh, The Cinema of Eric Rohmer: Irony, Imagination, and the Social World New York: Continuum, 2012 ISBN: 9 781441198 310 Au$45 (pb) 384pp (Review copy supplied by Continuum) “I saw a Rohmer film once. It was kind of like watching paint dry”. So says Gene Hackman, as private investigator Harry Moseby, in Arthur Penn’s Night Moves (1975).  It’s a …

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Cinema After Deleuze

Richard Rushton, Cinema After Deleuze London: Continuum International Publishing, 2012 ISBN: 9 780 8264389 28 US$29.95 (pb) 184pp (Review copy supplied by Bloomsbury publishing) Of the fruits of philosophers of modernity engaging with their penchant for cinephilia, the two books of Gilles Deleuze’s freewheeling ruminations on cinema are arguably of the most utility to the contemporary film scholar. Like the …

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The West Wing

Janet McCabe, The West Wing (TV Milestones series) Wayne State University Press, 2012 ISBN: 9 780 81433436 2 US$15.95(pb) 133pp (Review copy supplied by Wayne State University Press) The scholarly genre of the slim-volume-on-one-film and/or-TV-programme is a burgeoning one this millennium. BFI popularized the notion in the early 1990s with their Film Classics series, now at around 150 titles. The …

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The British Film Institute, the Government and Film Culture, 1933-2000

Geoffrey Nowell-Smith and Christophe Dupin (ed.) The British Film Institute, the Government and Film Culture, 1933-2000 Manchester/New York: Manchester University Press, 2012 ISBN: 978 0 7190 7908 5 US$95/UK£65 (hb) 288pp (Review copy supplied by Footprint Books/Warriewood) The most interesting job I’ve ever had was my two and a half years of working for the British Film Institute, between 1974 …

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Film After Film: Or, What Became of 21st-Century Cinema?

J. Hoberman, Film After Film: Or, What Became of 21st-Century Cinema? Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2012 ISBN-13: 978-1844677511 US$34.95 (hb) 304pp Review copy supplied by Verso Long-time (but now former) Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman opens his investigation of cinema in the twenty-first century with two quotations: one is a 1999 prediction by Bruce Goldstein that in fifteen years all movies …

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Through Amateur Eyes: Film and Photography in Nazi Germany

Frances Guerin, Through Amateur Eyes: Film and Photography in Nazi Germany Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012 ISBN: 9 780 816670 079 US$27.95 (pb) 342 pp (Review copy supplied by University of Minnesota Press) In her previous two books Frances Guerin looked at the German cinema of the 1920s and, with co-editor Roger Hallas, the role of visual culture in bearing …

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Hyper Material For Our Very Brain

Philip Brophy, Hyper Material For Our Very Brain Brisbane: Institute of Modern Art, 2012 ISBN: 9 781 8757927 57 Aud$25 (pb) 136pp (Review copy supplied by IMA publishers) Sonority does not inhabit language in quite the same way as the other perceptible qualities.  (Jean-Luc Nancy, Listening) Philip Brophy states at the beginning of Hyper Material For Our Very Brain that …

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The Hollywood Family Film: A History, From Shirley Temple to Harry Potter

Noel Brown, The Hollywood Family Film:  A History, From Shirley Temple to Harry Potter I.B. Tauris, London & New York, 2012 ISBN: 978 1 78076 270 8 US$29 (pb) 276pp (Review copy supplied by I.B. Tauris) The contemporary Hollywood family film, which accommodates an apparently limitless range of genres such as action-adventure, fantasy, sci-fi and even horror, has become synonymous …

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Richard Linklater (Contemporary Film Directors Series)

David T. Johnson, Richard Linklater (Contemporary Film Directors Series) University of Illinois Press, 2012 ISBN: 978 0252078507 US$22 (pb) 200pp (Review copy supplied by University of Illinois Press) “… a sense of the present as possibility, potential energy not yet become kinetic (or the inherent kineticism of waiting itself)” (53). Such a statement, drawn from the middle of David T. …

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Mourning Films: A Critical Study of Loss and Grieving in Cinema

Richard Armstrong, Mourning Films: A Critical Study of Loss and Grieving in Cinema McFarland & Company Inc., 2012 ISBN: 978-0-7864-6699-3 US$40.00 (sb) 212pp (Review copy supplied by McFarland publishers) In his book Mourning Films: A Critical Study of Loss and Grieving in Cinema Richard Armstrong argues a strong case for a new genre of films based around depictions of grief …

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What Are You Laughing At? A Comprehensive Guide to the Comedic Event

Dan O’Shannon, What Are You Laughing At? A Comprehensive Guide to the Comedic Event New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2012 ISBN 978 1 4411 6293 9 US$24.95 (pb) 298pp (Review copy supplied by Continuum International Publishing Group) What Are You Laughing At? A Comprehensive Guide to the Comedic Event is an enjoyable exploration of comedy with a benevolent and …

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British Cinema Comedy

I.Q. Hunter & Laraine Porter, British Cinema Comedy London and New York: Routledge, 2012 ISBN: 978 0 415 6666 7 1 UK £24.99 (pb) 228pp (Review copy supplied by Routledge) This is undoubtedly one of the best and most comprehensive genre collections in the Routledge British Popular Cinema series to have appeared so far. Covering familiar ground such as Ealing …

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The Horror Sensorium: Media and the Senses

Angela Ndalianis, The Horror Sensorium: Media and the Senses Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland, 2012 ISBN: 978 0 7864 6127 1 US$38.00 (pb) 223pp (Review copy supplied by McFarland publishers) Of all screen genres, Horror has perhaps stimulated the most scholarship, with various attempts to explain its social and psychological meanings and functions, and the paradoxical pleasures for its …

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