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Author: Scott Higgins
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813563305
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
Long before Batman, Flash Gordon, or the Lone Ranger were the stars of their own TV shows, they had dedicated audiences watching their adventures each week. The difference was that this action took place on the big screen, in short adventure serials whose exciting cliffhangers compelled the young audience to return to the theater every seven days. Matinee Melodrama is the first book about the adventure serial as a distinct artform, one that uniquely encouraged audience participation and imaginative play. Media scholar Scott Higgins proposes that the serial’s incoherent plotting and reliance on formula, far from being faults, should be understood as some of its most appealing attributes, helping to spawn an active fan culture. Further, he suggests these serials laid the groundwork not only for modern-day cinematic blockbusters like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, but also for all kinds of interactive media that combine spectacle, storytelling, and play. As it identifies key elements of the serial form—from stock characters to cliffhangers—Matinee Melodrama delves deeply into questions about the nature of suspense, the aesthetics of action, and the potentials of formulaic narrative. Yet it also provides readers with a loving look at everything from Zorro’s Fighting Legion to Daredevils of the Red Circle, conveying exactly why these films continue to thrill and enthrall their fans.
Author: Scott Higgins
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813563305
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Get Book Here
Book Description
Long before Batman, Flash Gordon, or the Lone Ranger were the stars of their own TV shows, they had dedicated audiences watching their adventures each week. The difference was that this action took place on the big screen, in short adventure serials whose exciting cliffhangers compelled the young audience to return to the theater every seven days. Matinee Melodrama is the first book about the adventure serial as a distinct artform, one that uniquely encouraged audience participation and imaginative play. Media scholar Scott Higgins proposes that the serial’s incoherent plotting and reliance on formula, far from being faults, should be understood as some of its most appealing attributes, helping to spawn an active fan culture. Further, he suggests these serials laid the groundwork not only for modern-day cinematic blockbusters like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, but also for all kinds of interactive media that combine spectacle, storytelling, and play. As it identifies key elements of the serial form—from stock characters to cliffhangers—Matinee Melodrama delves deeply into questions about the nature of suspense, the aesthetics of action, and the potentials of formulaic narrative. Yet it also provides readers with a loving look at everything from Zorro’s Fighting Legion to Daredevils of the Red Circle, conveying exactly why these films continue to thrill and enthrall their fans.
Author: Cyrus R.K. Patell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350100595
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 281
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Book Description
From A New Hope to The Rise of Skywalker and beyond, this book offers the first complete assessment and philosophical exploration of the Star Wars universe. Lucasfilm examines the ways in which these iconic films were shaped by global cultural mythologies and world cinema, as well as philosophical ideas from the fields of aesthetics and political theory, and now serve as a platform for public philosophy. Cyrus R. K. Patell also looks at how this ever-expanding universe of cultural products and enterprises became a global brand and asks: can a corporate entity be considered a “filmmaker and philosopher”? More than any other film franchise, Lucasfilm's Star Wars has become part of the global cultural imagination. The new generation of Lucasfilm artists is full of passionate fans of the Star Wars universe, who have now been given the chance to build on George Lucas's oeuvre. Within these pages, Patell explores what it means for films and their creators to become part of cultural history in this unprecedented way.
Author: Adam Barkman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498572316
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
This book offers a comprehensive, academic and detailed study of the works of James Cameron, whose films include successful productions such as the first two Terminator films (1984-91), Aliens (1986), Titanic (1997), and Avatar (2009), but also lesser known films such as Piranha 2: The Spawning (1981), The Abyss (1989), and True Lies (1994), and a series of documentaries on the depths of the ocean or on the tomb of Christ. Cameronʼs major productions have an immense and enduring popularity throughout the globe and have attracted both public and critical attention. This volume investigates several distinct areas of Cameronʼs works and addresses the different approaches and topics invited by the multidimensionality of the subject itself: the philosophical, the artistic, the socio-cultural and the personal. The methodologies adopted by the contributors differ significantly from each other, thus offering the reader a variegated and compelling picture of Cameronʼs oeuvre. Contrary to the numerous volumes published in the past on the subject, each chapter offers specific case studies that have been previously ignored, or only partially mentioned, by other scholars.
Author: Jim Cox
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786416318
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
Frank and Anne Hummert brought at least 125 separate series to the airwaves. The production dynasty over which they presided extended far beyond the serialized melodrama that became their trademark. Their genres also included music, mystery, juvenile adventure, quiz, sports, news, comedy and dramatic theater. The Hummerts tried to appeal to everyone's tastes and probably influenced more old time radio listeners than anyone else. By the 1940s the twosome controlled four and a half hours of the national weekday broadcast schedule. This book explores the private lives and professional dealings of broadcasting's most prolific creator-producers. There are five appendices: a list of all broadcast series that were created, adapted, supervised, augmented or influenced by the Hummerts; a list of the most active players among radio producers stemming from the Golden Age and their best-remembered titles; a collection of statements attributed to Frank or Anne that express their philosophy of broadcast programming; a chronology of defining moments in the Hummerts' lives; and three sample programming schedules that give the reader a clear understanding of the Hummerts' involvement in radio producing.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 528
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Book Description
Author: Charlie Michael
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474424244
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
The digitised spectacles conjured by a word like `blockbuster' may create a certain cognitive dissonance with received ideas about French cinema - long celebrated as a model for philosophical, economic and aesthetic resistance to globalised popular culture. While the Gallic `cultural exception' remains a forceful current to this day, this book shows how the onslaught of Hollywood mega-franchises and new media platforms since the 1980s has also provoked an overtly commercialised response from French producers eager to redefine the stakes and scope of their own traditions. Cutting across a swath of recent French-produced cinema, French Blockbusters offers the first book-length consideration of the theoretical implications, historical impact and cultural consequences of recent popular films that are rapidly changing what it means to make - or to see - a `French' film today. From English-language action vehicles like Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (Besson, 2017) to revisionist historical films like Of Gods and Men (Beauvois, 2011) and crowd-pleasing comedies like Intouchables (Toledano & Nakache, 2011), the variously filiated `local blockbusters' from contemporary France brim with the seeds of cultural contradiction, but also with the energy of a forceful counter-history
Author: Jim Cox
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476607389
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 376
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Book Description
That "kindly old investigator," Mr. Keen, sought missing persons and unraveled crimes longer than any other fictional detective ever heard or seen on the air. For 18 years (1937-1955) and 1690 nationwide broadcasts, Keen and his faithful assistant Mike Clancy kept listeners coming back for more. The nearest competitor, Nick Carter, Master Detective, ran for 726 broadcasts. This definitive history recounts the actors and creators behind the series, the changes the show underwent, and the development of the Mr. Keen character. A complete episode guide details all of the program's 1,690 broadcasts.
Author: Blair Davis
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813588790
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 151
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Book Description
Comic Book Movies explores how this genre serves as a source for modern-day myths, sometimes even incorporating ancient mythic figures like Thor and Wonder Woman’s Amazons, while engaging with the questions that haunt a post-9/11 world: How do we define heroism and morality today? How far are we willing to go when fighting terror? How can we resist a dystopian state? Film scholar Blair Davis also considers how the genre’s visual style is equally important as its weighty themes, and he details how advances in digital effects have allowed filmmakers to incorporate elements of comic book art in innovative ways. As he reveals, comic book movies have inspired just as many innovations to Hollywood’s business model, with film franchises and transmedia storytelling helping to ensure that the genre will continue its reign over popular culture for years to come.
Author: Clare Pettitt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192566172
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
Serial Forms: The Unfinished Project of Modernity, 1815–1848 proposes an entirely new way of reading the transition into the modern. It is the first book in a series of three which will take the reader up to the end of the First World War, moving from a focus on London to a global perspective. Serial Forms sets out the theoretical and historical basis for all three volumes. It suggests that, as a serial news culture and a stadial historicism developed together between 1815 and 1848, seriality became the dominant form of the nineteenth century. Through serial newsprint, illustrations, performances, and shows, the past and the contemporary moment enter into public visibility together. Serial Forms argues that it is through seriality that the social is represented as increasingly politically urgent. The insistent rhythm of the serial reorganizes time, recalibrates and rescales the social, and will prepare the way for the 1848 revolutions which are the subject of the next book. By placing their work back into the messy print and performance culture from which it originally appeared, Serial Forms is able to produce new and exciting readings of familiar authors such as Scott, Byron, Dickens, and Gaskell. Rather than offering a rarefied intellectual history or chopping up the period into ‘Romantic’ and ‘Victorian’, Clare Pettitt tracks the development of communications technologies and their impact on the ways in which time, history and virtuality are imagined.
Author: Ariane Hudelet
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000201252
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 285
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Book Description
This collective book analyzes seriality as a major phenomenon increasingly connecting audiovisual narratives (cinematic films and television series) in the 20th and 21st centuries. The book historicizes and contextualizes the notion of seriality, combining narratological, aesthetic, industrial, philosophical, and political perspectives, showing how seriality as a paradigm informs media convergence and resides at the core of cinema and television history. By associating theoretical considerations and close readings of specific works, as well as diachronic and synchronic approaches, this volume offers a complex panorama of issues related to seriality including audience engagement, intertextuality and transmediality, cultural legitimacy, authorship, and medium specificity in remakes, adaptations, sequels, and reboots. Written by a team of international scholars, this book highlights a diversity of methodologies that will be of interest to scholars and doctoral students across disciplinary areas such as media studies, film studies, literature, aesthetics, and cultural studies. It will also interest students attending classes on serial audiovisual narratives and will appeal to fans of the series it addresses, such as Fargo, Twin Peaks, The Hunger Games, Bates Motel, and Sherlock.
