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One of the most innovative films ever made, Sam Peckinpah's motion picture The Wild Bunch was released in 1969. From the outset, the film was considered controversial because of its powerful, graphic, and direct depiction of violence, but it was also praised for its lush photography, intricate camera work, and cutting-edge editing. Peckinpah's tale of an ill-fated, aging outlaw gang bound by a code of honor is often regarded as one of the most complex and impactful Westerns in American cinematic history. The issues dealt with in this groundbreaking film—violence, morality, friendship, and the legacy of American ambition and compromise—are just as relevant today as when the film first opened. To acknowledge the significance of The Wild Bunch, this collection brings together some of the leading Peckinpah scholars and critics to examine what many consider to be the director's greatest work. The book's nine essays cover an array of topics. Explored are the function of violence in the film and how its depiction is radically different from what is seen in other movies, the background of the film's production, the European response to the film's view of human nature, and the strong sense of the Texas/Mexico milieu surrounding the film's action.
One of the most innovative films ever made, Sam Peckinpah's motion picture The Wild Bunch was released in 1969. From the outset, the film was considered controversial because of its powerful, graphic, and direct depiction of violence, but it was also praised for its lush photography, intricate camera work, and cutting-edge editing. Peckinpah's tale of an ill-fated, aging outlaw gang bound by a code of honor is often regarded as one of the most complex and impactful Westerns in American cinematic history. The issues dealt with in this groundbreaking film—violence, morality, friendship, and the legacy of American ambition and compromise—are just as relevant today as when the film first opened. To acknowledge the significance of The Wild Bunch, this collection brings together some of the leading Peckinpah scholars and critics to examine what many consider to be the director's greatest work. The book's nine essays cover an array of topics. Explored are the function of violence in the film and how its depiction is radically different from what is seen in other movies, the background of the film's production, the European response to the film's view of human nature, and the strong sense of the Texas/Mexico milieu surrounding the film's action.
Examines how popular culture has shaped the ways Americans define their "interests" in the Middle East. Author McAlister argues that U.S. foreign policy, while grounded in material and military realities, is also developed in a cultural context. American understandings of the region are framed by narratives that draw on religious belief, news media accounts, and popular culture. This book skillfully weaves readings of film, media, and music with a rigorous analysis of U.S. foreign policy, race politics, and religious history.--From publisher description.
Putting a recognizable face on contemporary American cynicism
Enter once more the world of Roland Deschain—and the world of the Dark Tower…presented in this stunning third graphic novel of The Drawing of the Three series that will unlock the doorways to terrifying secrets and bold storytelling as part of the dark fantasy masterwork and magnum opus from #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King. “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” With these unforgettable words, millions of readers were introduced to Stephen King’s iconic character Roland Deschain of Gilead. Roland is the last of his kind, a “gunslinger” charged with protecting whatever goodness and light remains in his world—a world that “moved on,” as they say. In this desolate reality—a dangerous land filled with ancient technology and deadly magic, and yet one that mirrors our own in frightening ways—Roland is on a spellbinding and soul-shattering quest to locate and somehow save the mystical nexus of all worlds, all universes: the Dark Tower. Now, in the graphic novel series adaptation Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three, originally published by Marvel Comics in single-issue form and creatively overseen by Stephen King himself, the full story of Roland’s saga continues. Sumptuously drawn by Piotr Kowalski, Jonathan Marks, Juanan Ramirez, and Cory Hamscher, plotted by longtime Stephen King expert Robin Furth, and scripted by New York Times bestselling author Peter David, The Lady of Shadows is an extraordinary and terrifying journey—ultimately introducing a generation of new readers to Stephen King’s modern literary classic The Dark Tower, while giving longtime fans thrilling adventures transformed from his blockbuster novels.
This book aims to enhance our appreciation of the modernity of the classical cultures and, conversely, of cinema's debt to ancient Greece and Rome. It explores filmic perspectives on the ancient verbal and visual arts and applies what is often referred to as pre-cinema and what Sergei Eisenstein called cinematism: that paintings, statues, and literature anticipate modern visual technologies. The motion of bodies depicted in static arts and the vividness of epic ecphrases point to modern features of storytelling, while Plato's Cave Allegory and Zeno's Arrow Paradox have been related to film exhibition and projection since the early days of cinema. The book additionally demonstrates the extensive influence of antiquity on an age dominated by moving-image media, as with stagings of Odysseus' arrow shot through twelve axes or depictions of the Golden Fleece. Chapters interpret numerous European and American silent and sound films and some television productions and digital videos.
**One of the BrooklynRail's Best Books of 2017** "Nicorvo is a bracingly original writer and a joy to read." —Dennis Lehane "A desperate masterpiece of a debut" that tells a huge-hearted American saga—of love, violence, war, conspiracy and the aftermath of them all." —Bonnie Jo Campbell "Nicorvo’s muscular and energetic prose will stun readers with its poignancy, while providing a punch to the solar plexus." —Booklist (Starred Review) "A dash of Coetzee, a dram of Delillo, but mostly just the complicated compassion of Jay Nicorvo. The Standard Grand is a brutally beautiful novel." —Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted "It seems possible that Nicorvo has ingested all the darkness of this life and now breathes fire.” Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City When an Army trucker goes AWOL before her third deployment, she ends up sleeping in Central Park. There, she meets a Vietnam vet and widower who inherited a tumbledown Borscht Belt resort. Converted into a halfway house for homeless veterans, the Standard—and its two thousand acres over the Marcellus Shale Formation—is coveted by a Houston-based multinational company. Toward what end, only a corporate executive knows. With three violent acts at its center—a mauling, a shooting, a mysterious death decades in the past—and set largely in the Catskills, The Standard Grand spans an epic year in the lives of its diverse cast: a female veteran protagonist, a Mesoamerican lesbian landman, a mercenary security contractor keeping secrets and seeking answers, a conspiratorial gang of combat vets fighting to get peaceably by, and a cougar—along with appearances by Sammy Davis, Jr. and Senator Al Franken. All of the characters—soldiers, civilians—struggle to discover that what matters most is not that they’ve caused no harm, but how they make amends for the harm they’ve caused. Jay Baron Nicorvo's The Standard Grand confronts a glaring cultural omission: the absence of women in our war stories. Like the best of its characters—who aspire more to goodness than greatness—this American novel hopes to darn a hole or two in the frayed national fabric.
The making of David Lean's Ryan's Daughter in Dingle, Ireland, between 1968 and 1970, is shrouded in myth and sensational stories. Robert Mitchum and the glamour and mischief of 1960s Hollywood, the Irish climate, the studio system, and one of film's greatest auteurs all converged to make a troubled and fabled production in an unsuspecting town in County Kerry. Fifty years on, Paul Benedict Rowan has written the definitive account of one of the great movie follies and its unique place in cinematic and Irish history. Painstakingly researched over fifteen years, Ryan's Daughter: The Making of an Irish Epic charts the tumultuous filming of this iconic piece of cinema. Bringing together exclusive cast and crew interviews, a wealth of previously unseen archival material, and extraordinary accounts of the local people who took Lean and his epic to their hearts, this fast-paced, entertaining, and often jaw-dropping narrative is everything you ever wanted to know about David Lean's great 'fillum' and its tragic aftermath.
When considering the best dancers in Hollywood's history, some obvious names come to mind—Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and Bill Robinson. Yet often overlooked is one of the most gifted and creative dancers of all time, Eleanor Powell. Powell's effervescent style, unmatched technical prowess in tap, and free-flowing musicality led MGM to build top-rate musicals around her unique talents, including Born to Dance (1936) with James Stewart and Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940) with Fred Astaire, in which she became known as the only female tap dancer capable of challenging him. In a male-dominated industry, her fierce drive for perfection, sometimes to her detriment, earned her a place as one of the most accomplished performers in vaudeville, Broadway, and film. Powell's grace, precision, and power established her as one of the greatest American dancers. In 1943, she married actor Glenn Ford and largely stepped away from the spotlight for the duration of their tumultuous marriage. After their divorce, Powell made a courageous comeback, successfully performing in Las Vegas and on the nightclub circuit. Cancer claimed her life at the age of sixty-nine. Eleanor Powell: Born to Dance by Paula Broussard and Lisa Royère is an all-encompassing work following the American dance legend from her premature birth and upbringing by a single parent in Springfield, Massachusetts, to her first Broadway performance at age fifteen, through her days as a blazing icon in the world of Hollywood, and finally, to her inspiring comeback. With access to rare documents, letters, and production files, as well as insights drawn from their own personal relationships with Powell, Broussard and Royère offer a thoroughly researched, comprehensive, and fascinating look at an incredibly talented and unforgettable woman.
Winner of the 2022 Peter C. Rollins Book Award and the 2022 Browne Best Edited Reference/Primary Source Work in Popular and American Culture Award In Vitagraph: America's First Great Motion Picture Studio, Andrew A. Erish provides a comprehensive examination and reassessment of the company most responsible for defining and popularizing the American movie. This history challenges long-accepted Hollywood mythology that Paramount and Fox invented the feature film, that Universal created the star system, and that these companies, along with MGM and Warner Bros., developed motion pictures into a multimillion-dollar business. In fact, the truth about Vitagraph is far more interesting than the myths that later moguls propagated about themselves. Established in 1897 by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith, Vitagraph was the leading producer of motion pictures for much of the silent era. Vitagraph established America's studio system, a division of labor utilizing specialized craftspeople and artists and developed fundamental aspects of American movies, from framing, lighting, and performance style to emphasizing character-driven comedy and drama in stories that respected and sometimes poked fun at every demographic of Vitagraph's vast audience. For most of its existence America's most influential studio was headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, before relocating to Hollywood. A historically rigorous and thorough account of the most influential producer of American motion pictures during the silent era, Erish draws on valuable primary material long overlooked by other historians to introduce readers to the fascinating, forgotten pioneers of Vitagraph.