Category Archive for: ‘Issue 6 – Reviews’

Paranagua, Paulo Antonio (ed) Mexican Cinema  (Translated by Ana Lopez) London: British Film Institute in association with IMCINE, 1995. ISBN 0-85170-515-4 hbk ISBN 0-85170-516-2 pbk. 321pp. 18.99 (pds stg.) (pb) Uploaded 16 April 1999 Probably the most complete study to date of Mexican cinema, as Duran Loera states in the preface of the book (ix), Mexican Cinema comes forward as a sound, …

Stella Bruzzi, Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies. London: Routledge, 1997. ISBN 0-415-13957 226 pages. A $29.95. Pam Cook, Fashioning the Nation: Costume and Identity in British Cinema. London: British Film Institute, 1996. ISBN 0-85170-574-X. 138 pages. US $49.95 (hb) US $19.95 (pb) Uploaded 16 April 1999 Given the important role that costume plays in film, it is surprising that there …

Life is Beautiful (1998): An Appreciation Uploaded 16 April 1999 | Modified 7 June 1999 Many serious critics, at home and abroad, have acknowledged the charms of Benigni’s film, Life is Beautiful, but maintain a principled resistance to those charms. Their grounds are familiar ones: linking pleasure and humour with the Holocaust, that most horrific chapter in modern Jewish history, is …

Stephan Oettermann The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium (Trans. By Deborah Lucas Schneider) New York: Zone Books, 1997 ISBN 0-942299-83-3, 407 pp, $37.50 US (cloth). Uploaded 16 April 1999 A major controversy has ignited in the United States among Civil War historians and preservationists over the Cyclorama Center at Gettysburg, discussed by Thomas Hine in the New York Times. Designed …

Colin Harding & Simon Popple, In the Kingdom of Shadows: A Companion to Early Cinema London: Cygnus Arts, 1996 ISBN 1 900541 05 X 271 pp. Uploaded 16 April 1999 We normally review books only within two years of publication, but this one was a long time reaching us, so we are stretching a point. This compilation of documents relating …

James Naremore More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts Berkeley, Los Angeles,London: University of California Press, 1998 ISBN 0 520 21294 0 359 pp US $19.95 (paper) Uploaded 16 April 1999 Almost every book on film noir begins with the problem of definition, usually only to deposit it half-way through the Introduction once it has served its purpose of …

Edward Baron Turk Hollywood Diva: A Biography of Jeanette MacDonald Berkeley: University of California Press. 1998 ISBN 0 520 21202 9 467pp US $35.00 (cloth) Uploaded 16 April 1999 Although Edward Baron Turk’s Hollywood Diva: A Biography of Jeanette MacDonald is billed equally as cultural and film history, that isn’t strictly accurate. It is primarily an homage to Jeanette MacDonald, the dancer, …

Robert Murphy (ed) The British Cinema Book London: BFI, 1997. ISBN 0-85170-641-X. 279pp. A$39.95 (paper) Uploaded 16 April 1999 British director Stephen Frears, in his affirmation of British cinema in the television documentary  Typically British , cited Francois Truffaut’s observation that there was a certain incompatibility between the words “British” and “Cinema”. Frears response was “bollocks to Truffaut” and this …

Henry A Giroux Channel Surfing: Race Talk and the Destruction of Today’s Youth South Yarra, Victoria: Macmillan, 1997 ISBN 0-333-72025-3 224pp A $39.95 Uploaded 16 April 1999 American society currently “exudes both a deep-seated hostility and chilling indifference toward youth,” (37) according to Henry A. Giroux. Why? In large part because the dominant media in the United States have created …

Valerie Walkerdine Daddy’s Girl: Young Girls and Popular Culture Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1997 ISBN 0333647807 176pp. A$29.95 (Pb) Uploaded 16 April 1999 Daddy’s Girl is a very personal and passionate book which returns to a project initially embarked on by Walkerdine in her controversial essay “Video replay: families, films and fantasy” . In this earlier essay Walkerdine raised …

Robin Nelson TV Drama in Transition Macmillan Press 1997 ISBN 0 333 67754 4 220 pp. A$34.95 (pb) Uploaded 16 April 1999 Robin Nelson’s book TV in Transition: Forms, Values, and Cultural Change examines changing trends in dramatic narrative television in both the United Kingdom and United States over the last two decades. Nine chapters and a coda alternate between theory (chapters …