Category Archive for: ‘Issue 14 – Reviews’

J.P. Telotte, Science Fiction Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2001. ISBN 0 521 59647 9 254pp AU$49.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Cambridge University Press) Uploaded 20 September 2002 It says something of the science fiction film genre that it reaches from Metropolis (Lang, 1926, Germany) to Metropolis (Rintaro, 2001, Japan). There were earlier science fiction films of course (eg., Melies’s A Trip to the …

Jane Mills, The Money Shot: Cinema, Sin and Censorship. Pluto Press, Annandale 2001. ISBN  1 86403 142 5 255 pp A$32.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Pluto Press) Uploaded 25 July 2001 The “money shot” – so-called because it is the most expensive shot in the movie –  is the sequence in a porn film which depicts the “male ejaculatory …

Beard, William, The Artist as Monster: The Cinema of David Cronenberg, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2001. ISBN: 0 8020 3569 8 469 pp. US$50.00 (hb) (Review copy supplied by University of Toronto Press) Uploaded 20 September 2002 (Modified Friday, 15 November 2002) William Beard’s extensive critical analysis of the cinema of David Cronenberg considers Cronenberg as a filmmaker with …

David Henry Slavin, Colonial Cinema and Imperial France: White Blind Spots, Male Fantasies, Settler Myths. Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore and London, 2001. ISBN: 0 8018 6616 2 288pp US$42.00 (hb) (Review copy supplied by John Hopkins University Press) Uploaded 20 September 2002 This is a book which aims to relate a number of French colonial films of the period …

B. J. Bullert, Public Television: Politics and the Battle over Documentary Film, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-8135-2470-9 Review copy supplied by the publisher. Uploaded 20 September 2002 The steady flow of radical and often ground breaking political documentaries emerging from America’s independent sector has been one of the great ironies of that country’s overwhelmingly commercial …

Larry May, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. ISBN 0 226 51162 6 348pp US$32.60 (hb) (Review copy supplied by Chicago University Press) Uploaded 20 September 2002 In The Big Tomorrow, Larry May makes the case that certain “traditional” American values often associated with the films of the Hollywood studio …

Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001. ISBN 0 691 043924 374 pp US$24.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Princeton University Press) Uploaded 25 July 2002 Hamid Naficy’s imposing new work, An Accented Cinema, sets itself two related and equally ambitious tasks. First and most straightforwardly, the book presents a critical overview of the style …

Chris Fujiwara, Jacques Tourneur.The Cinema of Nightfall. John Hopkins University Press, 2001. ISBN: 0801865611 344pp US$18.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by John Hopkins University Press) Uploaded 20 September 2002 I Walked With a Zombie (1943), the sixth film directed by Jacques Tourneur, is one of the great American films. I have been waiting many years to write that. Although there has …

Dina Iordanova, Cinema of Flames: Balkan Film, Culture and the Media. London: BFI publishing, 2001. ISBN 0 85170 8471 322 pp US$27.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by BFI) Uploaded 25 July 2002 Rethinking the Balkans There is, probably, no better time for a book on Balkan film and media to appear. After a decade of crises, amidst the ambiguity of …

Marcia Landy, Italian Film, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. ISBN: 0 5216 497 7 434pp US$24.00 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Cambridge University Press) Uploaded 25 July 2002 Marcia Landy’s massive study of Italian cinema has all the advantages and disadvantages of a “national cinema” study. It provides readers with a number of stimulating essays concerning various aspects of Italian cinema, …

Robert Warshow, The Immediate Experience. Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBN 0 674 00726 3 US $18.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Harvard University Press) Uploaded 20 September 2002 Three-quarters into Brian DePalma’s Scarface (1983), an extraordinary moment occurs. A drunk, depressed, and abusive Tony Montana (Al Pacino), after finishing his meal in a swank restaurant and witheringly insulting his wife, turns his …

Uploaded 25 July 2002 For nine days in November 2001 (9th-17th), the 6th Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF) rocked the seaside city of Pusan. A record 659 industry guests from 30 countries, 3100 official Korean guests, and more than a hundred thousand moviegoers filled the seats of 332 completely sold-out, or near sell-out screenings in 15 different theatres. Thousands and …

John Rajchman, The Deleuze Connections. MIT Press, 2000. ISBN: 0 262 68120 X 120 pp US$16.00 (pb) (Review copy supplied by MIT Press) Uploaded 25 July 2002 There are two main reasons why Gilles Deleuze has come to be recognised as an important intellectual figure. On the one hand, he made a significant contribution to the history of philosophy. His …

Edward Buscombe, The Searchers. London: BFI, 2000. ISBN 0 85170 820 X 79pp US$12.95 (pb) Uploaded 25 July 2002 A tricky film, The Searchers (1956). The audience is drawn into identifying with Ethan, played by that icon of Westerns, John Wayne, only to learn to its growing discomfort that our hero is not only a racist, but a hate-filled, sexually frustrated, murderous …

David Hanan (ed), Film in South East Asia: Views from the Region. Hanoi: SEAPAAVA (South East Asia-Pacific Audio Visual Archive Association), 2001. ISBN: 0 642 705 1 7 320pp AuS$40.00 (pb) (Review copy supplied by SEAPAAVA) Uploaded 20 September 2002 David Hanan’s edited collection, Film in South East Asia: Views from the Region, provides an important first anthology on the largely …

Le Grice, Malcolm, Experimental Cinema in the Digital Age. London: British Film Institute, 2001. ISBN 0 85170 873 0 484pp UK£7.99 (pb) (Review copy supplied by BFI Publishing) Uploaded 20 September 2002 In Experimental Cinema in the Digital Age, Malcolm Le Grice is sparing in his use of the term “new media”. For me, this wins undying gratitude, and in this …

Robert M. Entman & Andrew Rojecki, The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2000. ISBN: 0 226 21075 8. 305 pp. US$26.00(hb) (Review copy supplied by University of Chicago Press) Uploaded 25 July 2002 Part of a series called “Studies in communication, media, and public opinion,” The Black Image in the …

Andrew Higson (ed), Young and Innocent? The Cinema in Britain 1896-1930. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002. Paperback: ISBN: 0859897176 Price: GBP25.00 USD39.95 Hardback: ISBN: 0859896595 Price: GBP47.50 USD89.95 (Review copy supplied by University of Exeter Press) Uploaded 20 September 2002 In the remarkable upsurge in scholarly study of British cinema which has characterised the last few years, one of …

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 …

Douglas Kahn, Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts. Cambridge: MIT P, 1999. ISBN: 0 2621 243 4 464 pp US$46.00 (hb) Review copy supplied by MIT Press) Uploaded 25 July 2002 Douglas Kahn’s Noise, Water, Meat is a highly valuable book for anyone interested in sound. Of course, its value extends beyond the notoriously fractious audio arts community; it also …

James Lastra, Sound Technology and the American Cinema (Film and culture series). Columbia University Press, 2000. ISBN: 0 2311 1517 2 270pp US$18.50 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Columbia University Press) Uploaded 25 July 2002 Sound Technology and the American Cinema makes an exciting contribution to the fields of film history, film theory, and cultural studies. It offers an in-depth, multi-sourced study …