Book Description
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Action/Spectacle Cinema
Author : Jose Arroyo
Publisher : British Film Institute
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 18,5 MB
Release : 2000
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN :
Action/Spectacle Cinema
Author : Jose Arroyo
Publisher : British Film Institute
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 47,66 MB
Release : 2000-06-26
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN :
Book Description
Often dismissed as 'High Concept' or 'popcorn', movies, this most popular of contemporary genres can and should, this book asserts, be taken seriously on its own terms. In doing so, questions of aesthetics are foregrounded and evaluative criteria are explored. This volume investigates relations between contemporary action cinema and television, cartoons, comics, special effects, and Theme Parks as well as the connection between related types of cinema such as neo-noir and the serial killer film. This first in a new series of Sight and Sound Readers includes case studies of such key figures as John Woo and Arnold Schwarzenegger and a wide range of articles that focus on some of the most successful films of the 90s (Speed, Jurassic Park, Titanic) and some of the most important directors (Cameron, Spielberg, Bigelow, Tarantino, Mann).
Action Speaks Louder
Author : Eric Lichtenfeld
Publisher : Wesleyan University Press
Page : 408 pages
File Size : 40,85 MB
Release : 2007-04-27
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780819568014
Book Description
An authoritative and entertaining history of the action film
The Action and Adventure Cinema
Author : Yvonne Tasker
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 431 pages
File Size : 23,70 MB
Release : 2004-08-19
Category : Education
ISBN : 1134564945
Book Description
Addressing areas such as genre, film history and style, action and spectacle, stars and bodies, action auteurs and the film industry, the reader covers both Hollywood and also European and Asian action cinema.
Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters
Author : Sheldon Hall
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
Page : 376 pages
File Size : 14,40 MB
Release : 2010
Category : Motion picture industry
ISBN : 9780814330081
Book Description
Considers the history of the American blockbuster-the large-scale, high-cost film-as it evolved from the 1890s to today.
A Companion to the Action Film
Author : James Kendrick
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 593 pages
File Size : 44,54 MB
Release : 2019-01-25
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1119100763
Book Description
An authoritative guide to the action-packed film genre With 24 incisive, cutting-edge contributions from esteemed scholars and critics, A Companion to the Action Filmprovides an authoritative and in-depth guide to this internationally popular and wide-ranging genre. As the first major anthology on the action film in more than a decade, the volume offers insights into the genre’s historical development, explores its production techniques and visual poetics, and provides reflections on the numerous social, cultural, and political issues it has and continues to embody. A Companion to the Action Film offers original research and critical analysis that examines the iconic characteristics of the genre, its visual aesthetics, and its narrative traits; considers the impact of major directors and stars on the genre’s evolution; puts the action film in dialogue with various technologies and other forms of media such as graphic novels and television; and maps out new avenues of critical study for the future. This important resource: Offers a definitive guide to the action film Contains insightful contributions from a wide range of international film experts and scholars Reviews the evolution of the genre from the silent era to today’s age of digital blockbusters Offers nuanced commentary and analysis of socio-cultural issues such as race, nationality, and gender in action films Written for scholars, teachers and students in film studies, film theory, film history, genre studies, and popular culture, A Companion to the Action Film is an essential guide to one of international cinema’s most important, popular, and influential genres.
The Orientation of Future Cinema
Author : Bruce Isaacs
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 42,62 MB
Release : 2013-02-14
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1623569133
Book Description
What is the fate of cinema in an age of new technologies, new aesthetic styles, new modes of cultural production and consumption? What becomes of cinema and a century-long history of the moving image when the theatre is outmoded as a social and aesthetic space, as celluloid gives over to digital technology, as the art-house and multiplex are overtaken by a proliferation of home entertainment systems? The Orientation of Future Cinema offers an ambitious and compelling argument for the continued life of cinema as image, narrative and experience. Commencing with Lumière’s Arrival of a Train at a Station, Bruce Isaacs confronts the threat of contemporary digital technologies and processes by returning to cinema’s complex history as a technological and industrial phenomenon. The technology of moving images has profoundly changed; and yet cinema materialises ever more forcefully in digital capture and augmentation, 3-D perception and affect, High Frame Rate cinema, and the evolution of spectacle as the dominant aesthetic mode in contemporary studio production.
The Hollywood Action and Adventure Film
Author : Yvonne Tasker
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 219 pages
File Size : 47,80 MB
Release : 2015-06-15
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 0470659246
Book Description
The Hollywood Action and Adventure Film presents a comprehensive overview and analysis of the history, myriad themes, and critical approaches to the action and adventure genre in American cinema. Draws on a wide range of examples, spanning the silent spectacles of early cinema to the iconic superheroes of 21st-century action films Features case studies revealing the genre’s diverse roots – from westerns and war films, to crime and espionage movies Explores a rich variety of aesthetic and thematic concerns that have come to define the genre, touching on themes such as the outsider hero, violence and redemption, and adventure as escape from the mundane Integrates discussion of gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality alongside genre history Provides a timely and richly revealing portrait of a powerful cinematic genre that has increasingly come to dominate the American cinematic landscape
Spectacular Bodies
Author : Yvonne Tasker
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 17,90 MB
Release : 2012-10-02
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 113487300X
Book Description
While films such as Rambo, Thelma and Louise and Basic Instinct have operated as major points of cultural reference in recent years, popular action cinema remains neglected within contemporary film criticism. Spectacular Bodies unravels the complexities and pleasures of a genre often dismissed as `obvious' in both its pleasure and its politics, arguing that these controversial films should be analysed and understood within a cinematic as well as a political context. Yvonne Tasker argues that today's action cinema not only responds to the shifts in gendered, sexual and racial identities which took place during the 1980s, but reflects the influences of other media such as the new video culture. Her detailed discussion of the homoeroticism surrounding the muscleman hero, the symbolic centrality of blackness within the crime narrative, and the changing status of women within the genre, addresses the constitution of these identities through the shifting categories of gender, class, race, sex, sexuality and nation. Spectacular Bodies also examines the ambivalence of supposedly secure categories of popular cinema, questioning the existing terms of film criticism in this area and addressing the complex pleasures of this neglected form.
Hollywood Action Films and Spatial Theory
Author : Nick Jones
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 181 pages
File Size : 29,58 MB
Release : 2015-03-02
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1317607139
Book Description
This book applies the discourse of the so-called ‘spatial turn’ to popular contemporary cinema, in particular the action sequences of twenty-first century Hollywood productions. Tackling a variety of spatial imaginations (contemporary iconic architecture; globalisation and non-places; phenomenological knowledge of place; consumerist spaces of commodity purchase; cyberspace), the diverse case studies not only detail the range of ways in which action sequences represent the challenge of surviving and acting in contemporary space, but also reveal the consistent qualities of spatial appropriation and spatial manipulation that define the form. Jones argues that action sequences dramatise the restrictions and possibilities of space, offering examples of radical spatial praxis through their depictions of spatial engagement, struggle and eventual transcendence.
