Category Archive for: ‘Issue 10 – Reviews’

Adrian Martin Uploaded 30 June 2000 Kaja Silverman and Harun Farocki, Speaking about Godard . New York: New York University Press, 1998. ISBN 0814780660 (pb) 256pp US$19.00 David Sterritt, The Films of Jean-Luc Godard: Seeing the Invisible . New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. ISBN 0521589711 (pb) 304pp A$34.95 Godard had a style and sensibility that appealed to certain anarchistic and …

Bruce M.Owen, The Internet Challenge to Television, (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1999 ) ISBN 0 674 87299 1 (hb) 372 pp US$29.95 (Review copy supplied by Harvard University Press) John Sinclair, Latin American Television: A Global View, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) ISBN 0 19 815930 7, 0 19 815929 3 (pb) 187 pp A$45.00 (Review copy supplied by Oxford University …

Peter C. Lutze, Alexander Kluge: The Last Modernist. Wayne State University Press. Detroit, 1998. ISBN 0 814326 560 (pb) 296pp US$29.95 (Review copy supplied by Wayne State University Press) Uploaded 30 June 2000 While Cinemedia’s holdings of Kluge’s films are wideranging, taking in both shorts and features, it would be interesting to know their current lending rate. In terms of …

Peter William Evans and Celestino Deleyto (eds), Terms of Endearment: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1980s and 1990s. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998. ISBN 0 7486 0885 0 (pb) £stg 16.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Edinburgh University Press) Uploaded 30 June 2000 In their fine 1989 book, Affairs to Remember: The Hollywood Comedy of the Sexes, Bruce Babington and Peter …

John Mundy, Popular Music on Screen: From Hollywood Musical to Music Video. Manchester University Press, 1999. ISBN 0719040299 (pb) 272 pp. US$19.95 Uploaded 30 June 2000 For historians of art and culture, perhaps the most basic, but difficult judgment one must make concerns how we measure the significance of particular historical events or trends. Such a question not only relates …

Deb Verhoeven (ed), Twin Peeks: Australian and New Zealand Feature Films. Melbourne: Damned publishing, 1999. ISBN 1876310006 A$39.95 (Review copy supplied by Damned publishing) Uploaded 30 June 2000 I’d be tempted to say that the metaphoric play of ideas of doubling, duplication, twinning or mirroring is central to Deb Verhoeven’s new anthology of writing on Australian and New Zealand feature …

David Sterritt (ed), Robert Altman: Interviews. Jackson: University of Mississippi, 2000. (Conversations with filmmakers series. General editor: Peter Brunette.) ISBN 1 57806 186 5 (hb) ISBN 1 57806 187 3 (pb) 256pp US$45.00 (hb) US$18.00 (pb) (Review copy supplied by University of Mississippi Press) Uploaded 30 June 2000 Robert Altman: Interviews is a welcome and precious addition to this prolific “Conversations …

Ross Laird, Sound Beginnings: The Early Record Industry in Australia. City: Currency Press, 2000. ISBN 0 86819 579 0 (pb) 384pp A$39.95 (Review copy supplied by Currency Press) Uploaded 30 June 2000 Ross Laird’s new book sets out to document the early history of the Australian record industry between 1924 and 1934 in what the author recognises as a period …

Scott Eyman, The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution, 1926-1930. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. ISBN 0801861926 (pb) 432pp US$18.06 (Review copy supplied by John Hopkins University Press) Uploaded 30 June 2000 Scott Eyman’s latest book revisits the tumultuous period of the late 1920s in order to dispel the myths surrounding the coming of sound to the American …

Steven C. Caton, Lawrence of Arabia: A Film’s Anthropology. Berkeley:University of California Press, Berkeley, 1999. ISBN 05202100832 (pb) 316pp US$19.95 (Review copy supplied by University of California Press) Uploaded 30 June 2000 Time rather than history (or even anthropology) is central to Steven Caton’s “dialectical critique”of David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962). The 1989 re-release of Lean’s controversial anti-epic co-incided with the …

Alison Smith, Agnès Varda. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998. ISBN 0 7190 5060 x 213pp £9.95 (Review copy supplied by Manchester University Press) Uploaded 30 June 2000 This is one of the first of Manchester University Press’s new series on French film directors. The editors indicate that the series is targeting “students and teachers seeking information and accessible but rigorous …

Yvonne Rainer, A Woman Who…Essays, Interviews, Scripts. Baltimore, Maryland: The John Hopkins University Press. 1999. ISBN 0-8018-6078-4 (hb) ISBN 0-8018-6079-2 (pb) 437pp. US$45.00 (hb) US$19.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by John Hopkins University Press) Uploaded 30 June 2000 A woman who…is the latest in a Paj publication series devoted to “art and performance” and the first to treat a filmmaker. …

Janet Bergstrom (ed.), Endless Night: Cinema and Psychoanalysis, Parallel Histories. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. ISBN 0 520 20748 3 305pp Au $33.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by University of California Press) Uploaded 30 June 2000 Endless Night: Cinema and Psychoanalysis, Parallel Histories is an anthology of eleven essays emanating from a 1993 UCLA conference. Janet Bergstrom explains in her …

Klaus Kreimeier, The UFA Story: A History of Germany’s Greatest Film Company, 1918-1945. London: University of California Press, 1999. ISBN 0-520-22069-2 451pp US$19.95 (Review copy supplied by California University Press) Uploaded 30 June 2000 The story of the Universum-Film A.G., popularly known as Ufa, is indelibly bound to the history of Germany’s cinema. As perhaps no other film company in …

Michael Paris (ed.), The First World War and Popular Cinema. 1914 to the Present. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1999. ISBN 0-8486-1099-5 (pb) 240pp £stg 15.95 (Review copy supplied by Edinburgh University Press) Uploaded 30 June 2000 In many respects the relation between war and media, and more specifically war and cinema, is one of the most interesting and richest areas …

John Hill, British Cinema in the 1980s. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN: 0-19-874256 (pb) 261 pp US$24.95 (pb) Uploaded 30 June 2000 The cover of John Hill’s solid, informed account of English film in the 1980s tells you a lot about who and what is important to its author: Derek Jarman, Tilda Swinton, a still from The …

Darren Tofts, Parallax: Essays on Art, Culture and Technology. City: Interface Books, 1999. ISBN 90 5704 007 7 109 pp. A$19.95 (Review copy supplied by 21C Publications) Uploaded 30 June 2000 Parallax collects a number of essays on art and literature in various media, both the sort known as “old” as well as the self-described “new” variety, from Ulysses and Duchamp’s Green Box to the …

Lesley Stern and George Kouvaros(eds.), Falling For You: Essays on Cinema and Performance. Sydney: Power Publications, 1999. ISBN 1 86487 025 7 (pb) 314 pp. A$19.95 (Review copy supplied by Power Publications) Uploaded 30 June 2000 Raymond Bellour once pointed out that the chief difficulty facing anyone who writes about film is an inability to quote. A literary critic who …

Kari Uusitalo (ed.), Suomen kansallisfilmografia (The Finnish National Filmography). Volumes 1-8. Helsinki: Finnish Film Archive. Edita 1989-1999. ISBN 951 860 973 X (whole series) 437FIM (each volume) Uploaded 30 June 2000 All major film-producing countries of the world have their own filmographies that provide a solid basis for research on national film production. However, in countries like the United States, France, …

Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith (eds.), Passionate Views: Film, Cognition and Emotion. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. ISBN 0 8018 6011 3 (pb) 312pp US$17.95 (Review copy supplied by John Hopkins Press) Uploaded 30 June 2000 The case for cognitive approaches in film studies goes something like this: cognitivism sets out to explain the ways we make sense …