American Eccentric Cinema

Download or read book American Eccentric Cinema written by Kim Wilkins and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-02-21 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book American Smart Cinema written by Claire Perkins and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-14 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Post-Pop Cinema written by Jesse Fox Mayshark and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2007-05-30 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Looking Past the Screen written by Jon Lewis and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-22 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Film scholarship has long been dominated by textual interpretations of specific films. Looking Past the Screen advances a more expansive American film studies in which cinema is understood to be a social, political, and cultural phenomenon extending far beyond the screen. Presenting a model of film studies in which films themselves are only one source of information among many, this volume brings together film histories that draw on primary sources including collections of personal papers, popular and trade journalism, fan magazines, studio publications, and industry records. Focusing on Hollywood cinema from the teens to the 1970s, these case studies show the value of this extraordinary range of historical materials in developing interdisciplinary approaches to film stardom, regulation, reception, and production. The contributors examine State Department negotiations over the content of American films shown abroad; analyze the star image of Clara Smith Hamon, who was notorious for having murdered her lover; and consider film journalists’ understanding of the arrival of auteurist cinema in Hollywood as it was happening during the early 1970s. One contributor chronicles the development of film studies as a scholarly discipline; another offers a sociopolitical interpretation of the origins of film noir. Still another brings to light Depression-era film reviews and Production Code memos so sophisticated in their readings of representations of sexuality that they undermine the perception that queer interpretations of film are a recent development. Looking Past the Screen suggests methods of historical research, and it encourages further thought about the modes of inquiry that structure the discipline of film studies. Contributors. Mark Lynn Anderson, Janet Bergstrom, Richard deCordova, Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, Sumiko Higashi, Jon Lewis, David M. Lugowski, Dana Polan, Eric Schaefer, Andrea Slane, Eric Smoodin, Shelley Stamp

Download or read book American Independent Cinema written by Geoff King and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-09-08 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Screening Reality written by Jon Wilkman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A towering achievement, and a volume I know I'll be consulting on a regular basis.”-Leonard Maltin "Authoritative, accessible, and elegantly written, Screening Reality is the history of American documentary film we have been waiting for." --Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic From Edison to IMAX, Ken Burns to virtual environments, the first comprehensive history of American documentary film and the remarkable men and women who changed the way we view the world. Amidst claims of a new “post-truth” era, documentary filmmaking has experienced a golden age. Today, more documentaries are made and widely viewed than ever before, illuminating our increasingly fraught relationship with what's true in politics and culture. For most of our history, Americans have depended on motion pictures to bring the realities of the world into view. And yet the richly complex, ever-evolving relationship between nonfiction movies and American history is virtually unexplored. Screening Reality is a widescreen view of how American “truth” has been discovered, defined, projected, televised, and streamed during more than one hundred years of dramatic change, through World Wars I and II, the dawn of mass media, the social and political turmoil of the sixties and seventies, and the communications revolution that led to a twenty-first century of empowered yet divided Americans. In the telling, professional filmmaker Jon Wilkman draws on his own experience, as well as the stories of inventors, adventurers, journalists, entrepreneurs, artists, and activists who framed and filtered the world to inform, persuade, awe, and entertain. Interweaving American and motion picture history, and an inquiry into the nature of truth on screen, Screening Reality is essential and fascinating reading for anyone looking to expand an understanding of the American experience and today's truth-challenged times.

Download or read book ReFocus: The Films of Spike Jonze written by Kim Wilkins and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-29 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at Spike Jonze's ground-breaking work in both features and short forms, exploring the impact of his filmmaking across a range of philosophical and cultural discussions