Category Archive for: ‘Issue 18 – Reviews’

Stephen Heath, César. (BFI Film Classics) London: BFI publishing, 2004. ISBN: 0 85170 833 1 88 pp £8.99stg. (pb) (Review copy supplied by BFI Publishing) If serious cinephilia has lionized the cosmopolitan, socially significant and cinematically important French master Renoir, Marcel Pagnol’s is the atmosphere that popularly signifies the “gloire” of classic French cinema. In the 1980s the Provençal Jean de …

George Bluestone, Novels into Film. Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Paperback edition. 2003. (first published Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore Maryland, 1957) ISBN: 0 80187 386 X 256pp US$25 (pb) (Review copy supplied by John Hopkins University Press) There can be many reasons for re-publishing a book. It may be so popular that it acquires new readers in every …

Jan Johnson-Smith, American Science Fiction TV: Star Trek, Stargate and Beyond. London & New York: I.B.Tauris, 2004. ISBN 1 86064 882 7 320pp £12.99 stg. (pb) (Review copy supplied by I.B.Tauris) This book offers a valuable overview of the recent history of science fiction television, with a primary focus on narrative, imagery and ideology. It offers many insights and helps …

Jeffrey Shaw & Peter Weibel (eds), Future Cinema: The Cinematic Imaginary after Film. ZKM, Karlsruhe; MIT Press, Cambridge MA. 2003. ISBN: 0 262 69286 4 600pp US$39.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by MIT Press) What a lovely book! When it arrived in my department, it seemed no-one could keep their hands off it. Fat, bound in a shiny aluminised cover, …

Denise Lowe, An Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Women in Early American Films: 1895-1930. Binghampton NY: Haworth Press, 2005 ISBN: 978 0 7890 1842 7 US$69.95 (hb) ISBN: 978 0 7890 1843 4 US$49.95 (pb) 623 pp (Review copy supplied by Haworth Press) In the current revival of interest in the early film industry, marked by a large number of new publications, this book …

David Ingram, Green Screen: Environmentalism and Hollywood Cinema. Exeter, Devon: University of Exeter. 2004 ISBN: 0 85989 608 0 £39.50 (hb) ISBN: 0 85989 609 9 £14.99 (pb) 240 pp (Review copy supplied by Exeter Press) This book takes a position at the intersection of two polemics – one concerning attitudes to the environment, and one concerning the ideological operations of …

Kevin Heffernan, Ghouls, Gimmicks and Gold: Horror Films and the American Movie Business, 1953-1968. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004 ISBN: 0 82233 215 9 304pp US$22.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Duke University Press) In Ghouls, Gimmicks and Gold, Kevin Heffernan explores a series of cultural and economic shifts that took place within the production and reception of horror films …

Julianne Pidduck, Contemporary Costume Film: Space, Place and the Past. London: BFI, 2004. ISBN: 1 84457 054 1 188pp US$27.50 (pb) (Review copy supplied by BFI Publishing) Costume film is sometimes called “costume drama”, “(British) heritage cinema”, “period film” or “quality cinema.” On one hand, its emphasis on visual spectacle, frequent use of beautiful painterly mise–en–scènes and adaptation of much-loved …

Felicity Collins and Therese Davis, Australian Cinema after Mabo. Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 0 521 54256 1 204pp AU$39.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Cambridge University Press) The power of cinema lies not only in what it makes us see but also in what it encourages us to think of. This involves not just a question of making us think …

Charlie Keil & Shelly Stamp (ed.), American Cinema’s Transitional Era. Audiences, Institutions, Practices. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. ISBN: 0 520 24025 1 US$60.00 (hb) ISBN: 0 520 24027 8 US$24.95 (pb) 371 pp (Review copy supplied by University of California Press) While the study of early cinema has successfully established itself in the last twenty years as a …

Jim Kitses, Horizons West: Directing the Western from John Ford to Clint Eastwood. London: BFI Publishing, 2004. ISBN: 1 84457 050 9 360pp US $24.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by BFI publishing) Back in the 1960s, before Hollywood movies were considered legitimate critical fare in English-speaking countries, two superb books helped change things. One was Robin Wood’s Hitchcock’s Films (1965), the first …

John Gibbs & Douglas Pye (eds), Style and Meaning: Studies in the Detailed Analysis of Film. Manchester University Press, 2005. ISBN: 0719065259 250 pp AUS$54.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Manchester University Press) Recently, scouring books for a bibliographic reference, my eye fell upon the opening salvo in a 1981 Framework piece by Paul Willemen on Anthony Mann. He dryly dismissed (and …

Alan Rosenthal and John Corner (eds.), New Challenges for Documentary (2nd edition) Manchester and New York, Manchester University Press, 2005 ISBN 0 7190 6899 1 512pp Au$58.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Manchester University Press) The original version of New Challenges was edited by Alan Rosenthal and published in 1988, and in this latest version he shares editing duties with John Corner. The …

Parsing The Perverse Pamela Church Gibson, More Dirty Looks: Gender, Pornography and Power. London: British Film Institute, 2004. ISBN: 0851709397 (pb) £16.99 ISBN: 0851709362 (hb) £55.00 360pp (Review copy supplied by BFI publishing) In Andrew Delbanco’s acerbic view, cultural studies are the practice of people who used to like literature, but not any more, and whose methods can as well …

Gabrielle Murray, This Wounded Cinema, this Wounded Lfe: Violence and Utopia in the Films of Sam Peckinpah. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004. ISBN: 0 275 98058 8 176pp US$89.95 (hb) (Review copy supplied by Greenwood Publishing Group) Those who champion the films of “Bloody Sam” Peckinpah are an impassioned and dedicated critical bunch. Indeed, by contrast with the critical neglect of …

Barbara Creed, Media Matrix: Sexing the New Reality. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2003. ISBN: 1 86508 926 5 216pp AU$35.00 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Allen & Unwin) Film critic, academic and media commentator Barbara Creed’s latest book Media Matrix: Sexing the New Reality is a collection of essays that argue that the growth of various forms of contemporary media …

Larry Ceplair & Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-60. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2003. ISBN: 0 252 07141 7 576pp US$24.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by University of Illinois Press) The Inquisition in Hollywood probably belongs on the History shelves more than it does on the Cinema Studies shelves. However, that should not deter …

Matthew C. Ehrlich, Journalism in the Movies. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004. ISBN 0 252 02934 8 208pp US$35.00 (hb) (Review copy supplied by University of Illinois Press) Journalism in the Movies provides a useful overview of the representation of American journalists/reporters and of their profession in a number of key movies of the sound period. It is …

Charles Acland, Screen Traffic, Movies, Multiplexes and Gobal Culture. London: Duke University Press. 2003 ISBN: 0 82233 163 2 320pp US$22.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Duke University Press) In Screen Traffic, Movies, Multiplexes and Global Culture, Charles Acland investigates the ways in which the post 1986 U.S. commercial film business altered prevailing industry and audience conceptions of movie-going. In particular, …

Jeanette Steemers, Selling Television. British Television in the Global Marketplace. London: BFI Publishing, 2004 ISBN: 1 84457-055-x (pb) ISBN 1-84457-022-3 (hb) 240pp U.K £15.99 (pb) (Review copy supplied by BFI Publishing) British tourists are apt to make two observations upon their return from their travels abroad. First, that foreign food is cheap and abundant; second, that British TV is the …

John Sinclair and Graeme Turner (eds), Contemporary World Television. London: British Film Institute, 2004. ISBN: 1 84457 010 X 204 pp £15.99 (pb) (Review copy supplied by BFI Publishing) When I was an adolescent, one of my hobbies was shortwave radio, and a primary goal was to listen to faraway stations and then get them to send collectible postcards that …

Irving Singer, Three Philosophical Filmmakers: Hitchcock, Welles, Renoir. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England: The MIT Press, 2004. ISBN: 0 262 19501 1279 pp US$32.95 (hb) (Review copy supplied by MIT Press) Edmund Husserl famously devoted several pages to the description of the act of perceiving a blank page. Recollection of this is sufficient to indicate the difficulty of applying phenomenological …

Christine Acham, Revolution Televised: Prime Time and the Struggle for Black Power. University of Minnesota Press. 2004. ISBN: 0 8166 4432 2 $18.95 (pb) ISBN: 0 8166 4431 4 $24.95 (hb) 284pp (Review copy supplied by University of Minnesota Press) Historicizing popular culture as Christine Acham does in Revolution Televised is a more difficult proposition than it seems. On the one hand, …

Beyond the finale of seem Joshua Clover, The Matrix. (BFI Modern Classics) London: BFI Publishing. 2004. ISBN: 1 84457 045 2 95pp UK£8.99 (pb) (Review copy supplied by BFI Publishing) Joshua Clover’s elegant and eloquent study of the Wachowski Brothers’ landmark film The Matrix (USA, 1999) is a welcome addition to the impressive list of titles in this smart series of books from …

Glyn Davis & Kay Dickinson (eds), Teen TV: Genre, Consumption and Identity. London: British Film Institute, 2004. ISBN: 0 85170 999 0 197pp £14.99stg. (pb) (Review copy supplied by BFI Publishing) What, then, does it mean for a group of academics over the age of nineteen to begin to rummage around in teen culture? (5) This is a pertinent question …

Jonathan Rosenbaum & Adrian Martin (eds.) Movie Mutations: The Changing Face of World Cinephilia. London: BFI, 2003. ISBN: 0 85170 984 2 (pb) £15.99 ISBN: 0 85170 983 4 (hb) £48.00 208pp (Review copy supplied by BFI Publishing) First of all, take hold of this book by the two handles Jonathan Rosenbaum and Adrian Martin give us in the title: …

David Thomson, The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood. Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. ISBN: 0 375 40016 8 416pp U.S. $27.95 (hb) (Review copy supplied by Alfred A. Knopf) David Thomson’s new book is less a history of Hollywood than a tentatively gonzo, utterly unsystematic elaboration of a particular idea that interests him: that the urge to create art and …

The way we were Vanessa Toulmin, Simon Popple & Patrick Russell, The Lost World of Mitchell & Kenyon: Edwardian Britain on Film. London: BFI, 2004. ISBN: 1844570460 £15.99 (pb) ISBN: 1844570479 £48.00 (hb) 288 pp (Review copy supplied by BFI publishing) Few discoveries of recent years have more to offer students of film history than the 826 rolls of nitrate …

Erica Carter, Dietrich’s Ghosts: The Sublime and the Beautiful in Third Reich Film. London: BFI Publishing, 2004. ISBN: 0 8517 0882 X £48.00 (hb) ISBN: 0 8517 0883 8 £16.99 (pb) 272 pp (Review copy supplied by BFI publishing) I was eager to read and review Erica Carter’s new book, both because I admire Carter’s scholarship and because I am …

S. S. Prawer, Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht. London: BFI Publishing. 2004. ISBN: 1 84457 031 2 96pp £8.99stg (pb) (Review copy supplied by BFI publishing) Bloodsuckers, nightbreed, stalkers of the human soul: no other character quite vies for the affections of western cinema like the vampire. The two seem to have been made for each other. Conceived in the popular …

Kevin Jackson, Withnail & I. (BFI Modern Classics). London: BFI Publishing, 2004. ISBN: 1 84457 035 5 96pp (Book supplied by BFI Publishing) What is one to say about a film whose very author-director treats it in a somewhat dismissive fashion? Who freely states that he informed the crew on the first day of shooting that he had no idea …