Category Archive for: ‘Issue 13 – Reviews’

Laurent Mannoni, The Great Art of Light and Shadow: Archaeology of the Cinema. Translated and edited by Richard Crangle. Exeter Studies in Film History: University of Exeter Press, 2000. ISBN: 0 85989 665 X (pb) 512pp £25.00 (Review copy supplied by University of Exeter Press) Uploaded 1 December 2001 Mannoni’s big, handsome, well-illustrated book offers a long history of the …

Robert Stam & Toby Miller(eds.), Film and Theory: An Anthology. Blackwell, 2000. ISBN 0 631 20625 6 (pb) 862pp A$52.70 (Review copy supplied by Allen & Unwin) Uploaded 1 December 2001 This dauntingly hefty anthology offers a selection of forty-four essays, organized into thirteen sections focusing on major issues in film theory (authorship, technology, realism), each preceded by an editorial …

Brian Winston, Lies, Damn Lies and Documentaries. BFI Publishing, 2000. ISBN 085 17079 7 (pb) 186 pp £14.99 Uploaded 1 December 2001 Exploring the unstable ground of media ethics, Lies, Damn Lies and Documentaries begins with an account of the moral panic surrounding Britain’s 1997 “fakery” scandal when The Guardian published revelations gleaned from a disgruntled documentary researcher which eventually led to ITV production …

Gabriel Miller, The Films of Martin Ritt: Fanfare for the Common Man. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000. ISBN: 157806 277 2 224 pp US$18.00 (Review copy supplied by University Press of Mississippi) Uploaded 1 December 2001 Film scholarship on the work of director Martin Ritt has been spartan at best, and this is a lack of analysis that Gabriel …

Laurence A. Rickels, The Vampire Lectures. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. ISBN: 0 8166 3392 4 (pb) 358pp US$17.00 (Review copy supplied by University of Minnesota Press) Uploaded 1 December 2001 The recent popularity of Anne Rice’s novels and the television series Buffy: The Vampire Slayer (USA 1997) indicate that, no matter how many vampires we stake, the undead …

Liam Kennedy, Race and Urban Space in Contemporary American Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000. ISBN: 0 7486 0952 0 (pb) Pp 224 £16.95 (Review copy supplied by Edinburgh University Press) Uploaded 1 December 2001 Race and Urban Space is one in a series of books from Edinburgh UP entitled “Tendencies: identities, texts, and cultures.” The series editor’s introduction explains that …

Vernon Gras and Gras, Marguerite (eds.), Peter Greenaway: Interviews. ackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000. ISBN: I 57806 255 I 200pp US$18 (Review copy supplied by University Press of Mississippi) Uploaded 1 December 2001 Between the popcorn and the ivory tower: eccentric Englishmen, brick wallpaper and plastic caravans. Greenaway himself sees his films as part of a “living cinema… that …

Sam Rohdie, Promised Lands: Cinema, Geography, Modernism. London: The British film Institute, 2001. ISBN: 0 85170 853 6 (pb) 220pp £15.99 (Review copy supplied by British Film Institute) Uploaded 1 December 2001 Promised Lands deals with struggles waged between affect and science. In initial allegiance with André Gide the author avows that an affinity for the scientific rigor of geography hides …

Shelly Stamp, Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the Nickelodeon. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2000. ISBN 0 69104 457 0 320pp US$22.95 (Review copy supplied by Princeton University Press) Uploaded 1 December 2001 Following the decline of the nickelodeon boom, a number of profound changes took place within the American film industry. Cinema’s visual syntax, its narrative structure …

Sue Harper, Women in British Cinema: Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know. London and New York: Continuum, 2000. ISBN: 0 82644 733 3 (pb) 267pp £16.99 (Review copy supplied by Continuum International Publishing Group) Andrew Spicer, Typical Men: The Representation of Masculinity in Popular British Cinema. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2001. ISBN: 1 86064 563 1 (hb) 262pp £35.00 Uploaded 1 …

Luis Buñuel, An Unspeakable Betrayal: Selected Writings of Luis Buñuel. Translated by Garrett White. University of California Press: Berkeley, California. 2000. ISBN 0 520 20840 4 (hb) 275 pp US$27.50 (Review copy supplied by University of California Press) Uploaded 1 December 2001 An Unspeakable Betrayal is a collection of writings by Luis Buñuel (1900-1983), published originally in French as Le Christ à …

Jeffrey A. Brown, Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and their Fans. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001. ISBN 1 57806 282 9 (pb) 232pp US$18.00 (Review copy supplied by University Press of Mississippi) Uploaded 1 December 2001 Why read this book? Jeffrey Brown’s book ought to interest anyone interested in contemporary popular culture. For the past fifteen years, comics have occupied …

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Dead Man. London: BFI Publishing, 2000. ISBN: 0 85170 806 4 (pb) 96pp A$24.95 (Review copy supplied by Peribo: Distributors of Fine Books) Uploaded 1 December 2001 “The joy of reading: Jonathan Rosenbaum’s Dead Man.” …it seems to me that formal innovation is often a matter of finding ways to discover and articulate new kinds of content, to say …

William Baer (ed), Elia Kazan: Interviews. University of Mississipi Press, 2000. ISBN: 1 57806 224 1 (pb) 268pp US $18.00 (review copy supplied by University of Mississippi Press) Uploaded 1 December 2001 Elia Kazan’s career is unique among major American film directors in that he achieved at least equal acclaim in the theatre, where he worked with the leading American …

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 …

Tony Shaw, British Cinema and the Cold War: The State, Propaganda and Consensus. London: I.B. Tauris, 2001. ISBN 1 86064 371-X (hb) 281pp £39.50 (Review copy supplied by I.B. Tauris) Uploaded 1 December 2001 A great deal has been written about the propagandist role of the American film industry during the Cold War; from studies of individual films such as Iron …

Trevor Barr, newmedia.com.au Allen & Unwin: Australia, 2000. ISBN: 1 86508 049 7 280pp A$29.95 (Review copy supplied by Allen & Unwin Australia) Uploaded 1 December 2001 Trevor Barr’s latest book newmedia.com.au is a thorough and decisive examination of where Australia’s media and communications industry is today and how it has been influenced by government, private, and public agendas. The book points …