The Perfect Vehicle: What It Is About Motorcycles

The Perfect Vehicle: What It Is About Motorcycles PDF Author: Melissa Holbrook Pierson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393078361
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
"This book, a polished, winding meditation on the theory and fractiousness of motorcycles, celebrates both their eccentric history and the wary pleasures of touring."—The New Yorker In a book that is "a must for anyone who has loved a motorcycle" (Oliver Sacks), Melissa Pierson captures in vivid, writerly prose the mysterious attractions of motorcycling. She sifts through myth and hyperbole: misrepresentations about danger, about the type of people who ride and why they do so. The Perfect Vehicle is not a mere recitation of facts, nor is it a polemic or apologia. Its vivid historical accounts-the beginnings of the machine, the often hidden tradition of women who ride, the tale of the defiant ones who taunt death on the racetrack-are intertwined with Pierson's own story, which, in itself, shows that although you may think you know what kind of person rides a motorcycle, you probably don't.

The Perfect Vehicle: What It Is About Motorcycles

The Perfect Vehicle: What It Is About Motorcycles PDF Author: Melissa Holbrook Pierson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393078361
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book Here

Book Description
"This book, a polished, winding meditation on the theory and fractiousness of motorcycles, celebrates both their eccentric history and the wary pleasures of touring."—The New Yorker In a book that is "a must for anyone who has loved a motorcycle" (Oliver Sacks), Melissa Pierson captures in vivid, writerly prose the mysterious attractions of motorcycling. She sifts through myth and hyperbole: misrepresentations about danger, about the type of people who ride and why they do so. The Perfect Vehicle is not a mere recitation of facts, nor is it a polemic or apologia. Its vivid historical accounts-the beginnings of the machine, the often hidden tradition of women who ride, the tale of the defiant ones who taunt death on the racetrack-are intertwined with Pierson's own story, which, in itself, shows that although you may think you know what kind of person rides a motorcycle, you probably don't.

Performing in Comedy

Performing in Comedy PDF Author: Ian Wilkie
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317429281
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Ian Wilkie contends that comic acting is a distinct art form, and as such demands a unique skillset. By exploring the ways in which performance choices and improvised moments can work in conjunction with texts themselves, Performing in Comedy offers an indispensable practical tool for enhancing comic performance. This volume is a must-read for any actors, directors or students who work with comic texts. Wilkie synthesises theories and principles of comedy with practical tips, and re-evaluates the ways in which these ideas can be used by the performer. Most importantly, these skills – timing, focus, awareness – are teachable rather than being innate talents. Exercises, interviews and guides to further resources enhance this comprehensive exploration of comic acting.

Kill All Your Darlings

Kill All Your Darlings PDF Author: Luc Sante
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1459618726
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
In his books and in a string of wide-ranging and inventive essays, Luc Sante has shown himself to be not only one of our pre-eminent stylists, but also a critic of uncommon power and range. Kill All Your Darlings is the first collection of Sante's...

Double Trouble

Double Trouble PDF Author: Greil Marcus
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1466827726
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
From the critic who knows music and culture like no other, a fascinating look at two outsiders who epitomize America's fractured self-image In June of 1992, when all polls showed Bill Clinton didn't have a chance, he took his saxophone onto the Arsenio Hall Show, put on dark glasses, and blew "Heartbreak Hotel." Greil Marcus, one of America's most imaginative and insightful critics, was the first to name this as the moment that turned Clinton's campaign around--and to make sense of why. In Double Trouble, drawing on pieces he published from 1992 to 2000, Marcus explores the remarkable and illuminating kinship between Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley. In a cultural landscape where ideals and choices are increasingly compromised and commodified, the constantly mutating representations of Clinton and Elvis embody the American struggle over purity and corruption, fear and desire. Focusing as well on Hillary Clinton, Nirvana, Sinéad O'Connor, Andy Warhol, Roger Clinton, and especially Bob Dylan, Marcus pursues the question of how culture is made and how, through culture, people remake themselves. The result is a unique and essential book about the final decade of the twentieth century.

Historical Dictionary of Film Noir

Historical Dictionary of Film Noir PDF Author: Andrew Spicer
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810873788
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 533

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Book Description
Film noir_literally 'black cinema'_is the label customarily given to a group of black and white American films, mostly crime thrillers, made between 1940 and 1959. Today there is considerable dispute about what are the shared features that classify a noir film, and therefore which films should be included in this category. These problems are partly caused because film noir is a retrospective label that was not used in the 1940s or 1950s by the film industry as a production category and therefore its existence and features cannot be established through reference to trade documents. The Historical Dictionary of Film Noir is a comprehensive guide that ranges from 1940 to present day neo-noir. It consists of a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, a filmography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on every aspect of film noir and neo-noir, including key films, personnel (actors, cinematographers, composers, directors, producers, set designers, and writers), themes, issues, influences, visual style, cycles of films (e.g. amnesiac noirs), the representation of the city and gender, other forms (comics/graphic novels, television, and videogames), and noir's presence in world cinema. It is an essential reference work for all those interested in this important cultural phenomenon.

The Genius of Language

The Genius of Language PDF Author: Wendy Lesser
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307485390
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Fifteen outstanding writers answered editor Wendy Lesser’s call for original essays on the subject of language–the one they grew up with, and the English in which they write.Despite American assumptions about polite Chinese discourse, Amy Tan believes that there was nothing discreet about the Chinese language with which she grew up. Leonard Michaels spoke only Yiddish until he was five, and still found its traces in his English language writing. Belgian-born Luc Sante loved his French Tintin and his Sartre, but only in English could he find “words of one syllable” that evoke American bars and bus stops. And although Louis Begley writes novels in English and addresses family members in Polish, he still speaks French with his wife–the language of their courtship. As intimate as one’s dreams, as private as a secret identity, these essays examine and reveal the writers’ pride, pain, and pleasure in learning a new tongue, revisiting an old one, and reconciling the joys and frustrations of each.

The Television Genre Book

The Television Genre Book PDF Author: Glen Creeber
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1839022108
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 602

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Book Description
In this new edition of The Television Genre Book, leading international scholars have come together to offer an accessible and comprehensive update to the debates, issues and concerns of the field. As television continues to evolve rapidly, this new edition reflects the ways in which TV has transformed in recent years, particularly with the emergence of online streaming services such as Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max and Amazon Prime. It also includes a new chapter on sports TV, and expanded coverage of horror, political thrillers, Nordic noir, historical documentary and docu-drama. With analyses of popular shows like Stranger Things, Killing Eve, The Crown, Chernobyl, Black Mirror, Fleabag, Breaking Bad and RuPaul's Drag Race, this book offers a comprehensive understanding of television genre for scholars and students alike.

Sensing the Past

Sensing the Past PDF Author: Jim Cullen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199323887
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
How do perceptions of the past--not just of particular events, but of the trajectory of history as a whole--shape our experience of the world? Sensing the Past tackles this question with an unlikely source of historical insight--the work of six major Hollywood stars: Clint Eastwood, Daniel Day-Lewis, Denzel Washington, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, and Jodie Foster. By focusing on the career choices made by these iconic actors, Cullen uncovers a discrete set of historical narratives, revealing the surprising ways historical forces shape our understanding of the world.

Look, a Negro!

Look, a Negro! PDF Author: Robert Gooding-Williams
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317973224
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
In Look, a Negro!, political theorist Robert Gooding-Williams imaginatively and impressively unpacks fundamental questions around race and racism. Inspired by Frantz Fanon's famous description of the profound effect of being singled out by a white child with the words Look, a Negro!, his book is an insightful, rich and unusually wide-ranging work of social criticism. These essays engage themes that have dominated debates on race and racial identity in recent years: the workings of racial ideology (including the interplay of gender and sexuality in the articulation of racial ideology), the viability of social constructionist theories of race, the significance of Afrocentrism and multiculturalism for democracy, the place of black identity in the imagination and articulation of America's inheritance of philosophy, and the conceptualization of African-American politics in post-segregation America. Look, a Negro! will be of interest to philosophers, political theorists, critical race theorists, students of cultural studies and film, and readers concerned with the continuing importance of race-consciousness to democratic culture in the United States.

Theorizing Film Acting

Theorizing Film Acting PDF Author: Aaron Taylor
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415509513
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
This comprehensive collection provides theoretical accounts of the grounds and phenomenon of film acting. The volume features entries by some of the most prominent scholars on film acting who collectively represent the various theoretical traditions that constitute the discipline of film studies. Each section proposes novel ways of considering the recurring motifs in academic enquiries into film acting, including: (1) the mutually contingent problematic of description and interpretation, (2) the intricacies of bodily dynamics and their reception by audiences, (3) the significance of star performance, and (4) the impact of evolving technologies and film styles on acting traditions.