The Triumph of the Thriller

The Triumph of the Thriller PDF Author: Patrick Anderson
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
"In his provocative, caustic, and often hilarious survey of today's popular fiction, Anderson shows us who the best thriller writers are - and the worst. He shows how Michael Connelly was inspired by Raymond Chandler, how George Pelecanos toiled in obscurity while he mastered his craft, how Sue Grafton created the first great woman private eye, and how Thomas Harris transformed an insane cannibal into the charming man of the world who made FBI agent Clarice Starling his lover."--BOOK JACKET.

The Triumph of the Thriller

The Triumph of the Thriller PDF Author: Patrick Anderson
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book Here

Book Description
"In his provocative, caustic, and often hilarious survey of today's popular fiction, Anderson shows us who the best thriller writers are - and the worst. He shows how Michael Connelly was inspired by Raymond Chandler, how George Pelecanos toiled in obscurity while he mastered his craft, how Sue Grafton created the first great woman private eye, and how Thomas Harris transformed an insane cannibal into the charming man of the world who made FBI agent Clarice Starling his lover."--BOOK JACKET.

A Companion to Crime Fiction

A Companion to Crime Fiction PDF Author: Charles J. Rzepka
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119675774
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 648

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Book Description
A Companion to Crime Fiction presents the definitive guide to this popular genre from its origins in the eighteenth century to the present day A collection of forty-seven newly commissioned essays from a team of leading scholars across the globe make this Companion the definitive guide to crime fiction Follows the development of the genre from its origins in the eighteenth century through to its phenomenal present day popularity Features full-length critical essays on the most significant authors and film-makers, from Arthur Conan Doyle and Dashiell Hammett to Alfred Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese exploring the ways in which they have shaped and influenced the field Includes extensive references to the most up-to-date scholarship, and a comprehensive bibliography

The Narrative Reader

The Narrative Reader PDF Author: Martin McQuillan
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415205320
Category : Narration (Rhetoric)
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
The Narrative Reader provides a comprehensive survey of theories of narrative from Plato to Post-Structuralism. The broad selection of texts demonstrate the extent to which narrative permeates the entire field of literature & culture

Teaching Space, Place, and Literature

Teaching Space, Place, and Literature PDF Author: Robert T. Tally Jr.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351693972
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Space, place and mapping have become key concepts in literary and cultural studies. The transformational effects of postcolonialism, globalization, and the rise of ever more advanced information technologies helped to push space and spatiality into the foreground, as traditional spatial or geographic limits are erased or redrawn. Teaching Space, Place and Literature surveys a broad expanse of literary critical, theoretical, historical territories, as it presents both an introduction to teaching spatial literary studies and an essential guide to scholarly research. Divided into sections on key concepts and issues; teaching strategies; urban spaces; place, race and gender and spatiality, periods and genres, this comprehensive book is the ideal way to approach the teaching of space and place in the humanities classroom.

The End of Meaning

The End of Meaning PDF Author: Matthew Gumpert
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443839434
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 565

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Book Description
The specter of the apocalypse has always been a semiotic fantasy: only at the end of all things will their true meaning be revealed. Our long romance with catastrophe is inseparable from the Western hermeneutical tradition: our search for an elusive truth, one that can only be uncovered through the interminable work of interpretation. Catastrophe terrifies and tantalizes to the extent it promises an end to this task. 9/11 is this book’s beginning, but not its end. Here, it seemed, was the apocalypse America had long been waiting for; until it became just another event. And, indeed, the real lesson of 9/11 may be that catastrophe is the purest form of the event. From the poetry of classical Greece to the popular culture of contemporary America, The End of Meaning seeks to demonstrate that catastrophe, precisely as the notion of the sui generis, has always been generic. This is not a book on the great catastrophes of the West; it offers no canon of catastrophe, no history of the catastrophic. The End of Meaning asks, instead, what if meaning itself is a catastrophe?

The Rebirth of Suspense

The Rebirth of Suspense PDF Author: Rick Warner
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231559526
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
Typically, films are suspenseful when they keep us on the edge of our seats, when glimpses of a turning doorknob, a ticking clock, or a looming silhouette quicken our pulses. Exemplified by Alfred Hitchcock’s masterworks and the countless thrillers they influenced, such films captivate viewers with propulsive plots that spur emotional investment in the fates of protagonists. Suspense might therefore seem to be a curious concept to associate with art films featuring muted characters, serene landscapes, and unrushed rhythms, in which plot is secondary to mood and tone. This ambitious and wide-ranging book offers a redefinition of suspense by considering its unlikely incarnations in the contemporary films that have been called “slow cinema.” Rick Warner shows how slowness builds suspense through atmospheric immersion, narrative sparseness, and the withholding of information, causing viewers to oscillate among boredom, curiosity, and dread. He focuses on works in which suspense arises where the boundaries between art cinema and popular genres—such as horror, thriller, science fiction, and gothic melodrama—become indefinite, including Chantal Akerman’s La captive, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves, Lucrecia Martel’s Zama, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Creepy, and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return. Warner investigates the pivotal role of sound in generating suspense and traces how the experience of suspense has changed in the era of digital streaming. The Rebirth of Suspense develops a fresh theory, history, typology, and analysis of suspense that casts new light on the workings of films across global cinema.

Jane Campion

Jane Campion PDF Author: Hilary Radner
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814334324
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
An innovative collection of original essays on Jane Campion, renowned female auteur filmmaker. In Jane Campion: Cinema, Nation, Identity a diverse group of contributors challenge the view that Campion's body of work lacks coherence or unity to instead examine the important characteristics and themes that underlie it. Editors Hilary Radner, Alistair Fox, and Irène Bessière have compiled rich, original scholarship on Campion's oeuvre to probe issues previously neglected by scholars--like her debt to New Zealand sources and her personal views of family dynamics--and those that benefit from additional insight--such as her place in the feminist filmmaking tradition. This volume also investigates Campion's distinct cinematic style in light of these issues to examine the source of her enduring cross-cultural and international appeal. Contributors in the first section explore the creation of subjectivity and identity in Campion's films, which include well-known works like The Piano and Holy Smoke, to trace the unique perspectives of Campion's characters and Campion herself as director. In the second section, essays analyze Campion's close relationship with literature and argue that the singular vision in her literary adaptations stems from her New Zealand background and her personal mythology. Contributors in the third section argue that while Campion devotes considerable attention to the evocation of feminine internal space, she also uses the symbolic potential of her external physical locations to register what is taking place in the inner life of her characters and reflect their search for personal fulfillment. A final group of essays presents a variety of responses to Campion's films, demonstrating that Campion is a highly personal and idiosyncratic director who nonetheless manages to fascinate viewers across a broad cultural spectrum. Taken together, contributors in Jane Campion: Cinema, Nation, Identity present a compelling analysis of Campion's status as a leading female filmmaker with close attention to her distinctive cinematic style and particular mise-en-scène. The collective nature of this volume will appeal to students and teachers of film, literature, and gender studies, as well as fans of Campion's work.

Alternative Scriptwriting

Alternative Scriptwriting PDF Author: Ken Dancyger
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1136053611
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
Learn the rules of scriptwriting, and then how to successfully break them.Unlike other screenwriting books, this unique guide pushes you to challenge yourself and break free of tired, formulaic writing--bending or breaking the rules of storytelling as we know them. Like the best-selling previous editions, seasoned authors Dancyger and Rush explore alternative approaches to the traditional three-act story structure, going beyond teaching you "how to tell a story" by teaching you how to write against conventional formulas to produce original, exciting material. The pages are filled with an international range of contemporary and classic cinema examples to inspire and instruct. New to this edition. New chapter on the newly popular genres of feature documentary, long-form television serials, non-linear stories, satire, fable, and docudrama. New chapter on multiple-threaded long form, serial television scripts. New chapter on genre and a new chapter on how genre’s very form is flexible to a narrative. New chapter on character development. New case studies, including an in-depth case study of the dark side of the fable, focusing on The Wizard of Oz and Pan’s Labyrinth.

Journalists in Film

Journalists in Film PDF Author: Brian McNair
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748634487
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
A study of the representation of journalists on film and what this tells us about society's relationship with journalism and news media.

Welcome to Fear City

Welcome to Fear City PDF Author: Nathan Holmes
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 143847122X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
2019 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title The early 1970s were a moment of transformation for both the American city and its cinema. As intensified suburbanization, racial division, deindustrialization, and decaying infrastructure cast the future of the city in doubt, detective films, blaxploitation, police procedurals, and heist films confronted spectators with contemporary scenes from urban streets. Welcome to Fear City argues that the location-shot crime films of the 1970s were part of a larger cultural ambivalence felt toward urban life, evident in popular magazines, architectural discourse, urban sociology, and visual culture. Yet they also helped to reinvigorate the city as a site of variegated experience and a positively disordered public life—in stark contrast to the socially homogenous and spatially ordered suburbs. Discussing the design of parking garages and street lighting, the dynamics of mugging, panoramas of ruin, and the optics of undercover police operations in such films as Klute, The French Connection, Detroit 9000, Death Wish, and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Nathan Holmes demonstrates that crime genres did not simply mirror urban settings and social realities, but actively produced and circulated new ideas about the shifting surfaces of public culture.