American Eccentric Cinema

American Eccentric Cinema PDF

Author: Kim Wilkins

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2019-02-21

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1501336924

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Since the late 1990s a new language has emerged in film scholarship and criticism in response to the popularity of American directors such as Wes Anderson, Charlie Kaufman, and David O. Russell. Increasingly, adjectives like 'quirky', 'cute', and 'smart' are used to describe these American films, with a focus on their ironic (and sometimes deliberately comical) stories, character situations and tones. Kim Wilkins argues that, beyond the seemingly superficial descriptions, 'American eccentric cinema' presents a formal and thematic eccentricity that is distinct to the American context. She distinguishes these films from mainstream Hollywood cinema as they exhibit irregularities in characterization, tone, and setting, and deviate from established generic conventions. Each chapter builds a case for this position through detailed film analyses and comparisons to earlier American traditions, such as the New Hollywood cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. American Eccentric Cinema promises to challenge the notion of irony in American contemporary cinema, and questions the relationship of irony to a complex national and individual identity.

American Eccentric Cinema

American Eccentric Cinema PDF

Author: Kim Wilkins

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2019-02-21

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1501336932

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Since the late 1990s a new language has emerged in film scholarship and criticism in response to the popularity of American directors such as Wes Anderson, Charlie Kaufman, and David O. Russell. Increasingly, adjectives like 'quirky', 'cute', and 'smart' are used to describe these American films, with a focus on their ironic (and sometimes deliberately comical) stories, character situations and tones. Kim Wilkins argues that, beyond the seemingly superficial descriptions, 'American eccentric cinema' presents a formal and thematic eccentricity that is distinct to the American context. She distinguishes these films from mainstream Hollywood cinema as they exhibit irregularities in characterization, tone, and setting, and deviate from established generic conventions. Each chapter builds a case for this position through detailed film analyses and comparisons to earlier American traditions, such as the New Hollywood cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. American Eccentric Cinema promises to challenge the notion of irony in American contemporary cinema, and questions the relationship of irony to a complex national and individual identity.

American Smart Cinema

American Smart Cinema PDF

Author: Claire Perkins

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2013-01-14

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0748654259

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American Smart Cinema examines a contemporary type of US filmmaking that exists at the intersection of mainstream, art and independent cinema and often gives rise to absurd, darkly comic and nihilistic effects.

Ghostlife of Third Cinema

Ghostlife of Third Cinema PDF

Author: Glen M. Mimura

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 0816648301

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Asian American filmmakers and video artists have created a substantial, diverse, and challenging body of work that reimagines the cultural and political representation of Asian Americans. Yet much of this work remains unknown. Ghostlife of Third Cinema examines such potent issues as diasporic identity, historical memory, and queer sexuality through sophisticated readings of a wide range of film and video projects, includingTrinh T. Minh-ha's experimental documentary Surname Viet Given Name Nam;avant-garde works by Japanese American filmmakers Rea Tajiri, Lise Yasui, andJanice Tanaka; and queer videos exploring the intersection of race, nation, andsexuality by Pablo Bautista, Ming-Yuen Ma, and Nguyen Tan Hoang.

The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson

The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson PDF

Author: Ethan Warren

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2023-04-25

Total Pages: 509

ISBN-13: 0231555601

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Paul Thomas Anderson’s evolution from a brash, self-anointed “Indiewood” auteur to one of his generation’s most distinctive voices has been one of the most remarkable career trajectories in recent film history. From early efforts to emulate his cinematic heroes to his increasingly singular late films, Anderson has created a body of work that balances the familiar and the strange, history and myth: viewers feel perpetually off balance, unsure of whether to expect a pitch-black joke or a moment of piercing emotional resonance. This book provides the most complete account of Anderson’s career to date, encompassing his varied side projects and unproduced material; his personal and professional relationships with directors such as Jonathan Demme, Robert Altman, and Robert Downey Sr.; and his work as a director of music videos for Fiona Apple, Joanna Newsom, and Haim. Ethan Warren explores Anderson’s recurring thematic preoccupations—the fraught dynamics of gender and religious faith, biological and found families, and his native San Fernando Valley—as well as his screenwriting methods and his relationship to his influences. Warren argues that Anderson’s films conjure up an alternate American history that exaggerates and elides verifiable facts in search of a heightened truth marked by a deeper level of emotional hyperrealism. This book is at once an unconventional primer on Anderson’s films and a provocative reframing of what makes his work so essential.

American Independent Cinema

American Independent Cinema PDF

Author: Geoff King

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2014-09-08

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 0857737333

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The independent sector has produced many of the most distinctive films to have appeared in the US in recent decades. From 'Sex, Lies and Videotape' in the 1980s to 'The Blair Witch Project' and New Queer Cinema in the 1990s and the ultra-low budget digital video features of the 2000s, indie films have thrived, creating a body of work that stands out from the dominant Hollywood mainstream. But what exactly is 'independent' cinema? This, the first book to examine the question in detail, argues that independence can be defined partly in industry terms but also according to formal and aesthetic strategies and by distinctive attitudes towards social and political issues, suggesting that independence is a dynamic rather than a fixed quality. Chapters focus on distribution and relationships with Hollywood studios; narrative ('Clerks' and 'Slacker' to 'Pulp Fiction', 'Magnolia' and 'Memento') and other formal dimensions (from 'Blair Witch's' 'authenticity' to expressive and stylized camerawork and editing in work from Harmony Korine to the Coen brothers); approaches to genre and alternative socio-political visions.

Hollywood and the Great Depression

Hollywood and the Great Depression PDF

Author: Iwan Morgan

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2016-10-31

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1474414028

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Examines how Hollywood responded to and reflected the political and social changes that America experienced during the 1930sIn the popular imagination, 1930s Hollywood was a dream factory producing escapist movies to distract the American people from the greatest economic crisis in their nations history. But while many films of the period conform to this stereotype, there were a significant number that promoted a message, either explicitly or implicitly, in support of the political, social and economic change broadly associated with President Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal programme. At the same time, Hollywood was in the forefront of challenging traditional gender roles, both in terms of movie representations of women and the role of women within the studio system. With case studies of actors like Shirley Temple, Cary Grant and Fred Astaire, as well as a selection of films that reflect politics and society in the Depression decade, this fascinating book examines how the challenges of the Great Depression impacted on Hollywood and how it responded to them.Topics covered include:How Hollywood offered positive representations of working womenCongressional investigations of big-studio monopolization over movie distributionHow three different types of musical genres related in different ways to the Great Depression the Warner Bros Great Depression Musicals of 1933, the Astaire/Rogers movies, and the MGM akids musicals of the late 1930sThe problems of independent production exemplified in King Vidors Our Daily BreadCary Grants success in developing a debonair screen persona amid Depression conditionsContributors Harvey G. Cohen, King's College LondonPhilip John Davies, British LibraryDavid Eldridge, University of HullPeter William Evans, Queen Mary, University of LondonMark Glancy, Queen Mary University of LondonIna Rae Hark, University of South CarolinaIwan Morgan, University College LondonBrian Neve, University of BathIan Scott, University of ManchesterAnna Siomopoulos, Bentley UniversityJ. E. Smyth, University of WarwickMelvyn Stokes, University College LondonMark Wheeler, London Metropolitan University

Screening American Independent Film

Screening American Independent Film PDF

Author: Justin Wyatt

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-05-31

Total Pages: 564

ISBN-13: 1000872742

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This indispensable collection offers 51 chapters, each focused on a distinct American independent film. Screening American Independent Film presents these films chronologically, addressing works from across more than a century (1915−2020), emphasizing the breadth and long duration of American independent cinema. The collection includes canonical examples as well as films that push against and expand the definitions of "independence." The titles run from micro-budget films through marketing-friendly Indiewood projects, from auteur-driven films and festival darlings to B-movies, genre pics, and exploitation films. The chapters also introduce students to different approaches within film studies including historical and contextual framing, industrial and institutional analysis, politics and ideology, genre and authorship, representation, film analysis, exhibition and reception, and technology. Written by leading international scholars and emerging talents in film studies, this volume is the first of its kind. Paying particular attention to issues of diversity and inclusion for both the participating scholars and the content and themes within the selected films, Screening American Independent Film is an essential resource for anyone teaching or studying American cinema.

Flesh Cinema

Flesh Cinema PDF

Author: Ara Osterweil

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2014-08-13

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9780719091919

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Flesh Cinema: The Corporeal Turn in American Avant-Garde Film explores the groundbreaking representation of the body in experimental films of the 1960s and 1970s. Focusing on sexually explicit films by Andy Warhol, Barbara Rubin, Stan Brakhage, Carolee Schneemann, Yoko Ono and Paul Sharits, this book demonstrates how experimental cinema not only transformed American visual culture, but also the lives of those who created it. By situating these films in relation to the civil rights and sexual liberation movements, Flesh Cinema investigates how social politics continue to inform their meaning. Drawing upon unpublished archival materials, this book provides a rich account of the intimate artistic collaborations that inspired these films. Merging close readings with historical and biographical analysis, Flesh Cinema argues that queer forms of friendship were essential to the innovative representations of bodies on-screen. In doing so, it provides a fresh take on avant-garde cinema for film and art scholars and students.

Post-Pop Cinema

Post-Pop Cinema PDF

Author: Jesse Fox Mayshark

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 2007-05-30

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13:

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Takes us on a film-by-film tour of the works of Wes and P T Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Richard Linklater, Alexander Payne, and David O Russell. This book reveals how a common pool of styles, collaborators, and personal connections helps them to confront the unifying problem of meaning in American film.