Dear SCREEN-L Subscribers,
We hope the following titles will be of interest to you. With apologies for cross-posting.
David Lynch Swerves
Uncertainty from Lost Highway to Inland Empire
Martha P. Nochimson
"...the most disruptive work of Lynch criticism I've yet read. [... Nochimson] has no compunction about taking on the giants of Lynch criticism [and] explodes the existing critical (near-)consensus on the structures of Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr., stating plainly, "These characters are not dreaming. [...] The richness of Nochimson's writing, the thoroughness of her interpretation, and her assured stance in opposition to the canon of Lynch criticism to date all make David Lynch Swerves a must-read for anyone interested in the films of David Lynch. Or, for that matter, the state of film criticism in American culture. If criticism at its best is a form of revelation, then this is practically a new gospel."- House of SpeakEasy
Beginning with Lost Highway, director David Lynch "swerved" in a new direction, one in which very disorienting images of the physical world take center stage in his films. Seeking to understand this unusual emphasis in his work, noted Lynch scholar Martha Nochimson engaged Lynch in a long conversation of unprecedented openness, during which he shared his vision of the physical world as an uncertain place that masks important universal realities. He described how he derives this vision from the Holy Vedas of the Hindu religion, as well as from his layman's fascination with modern physics.
With this deep insight, Nochimson forges a startlingly original template for analyzing Lynch's later films-the seemingly unlikely combination of the spiritual landscape envisioned in the Holy Vedas and the material landscape evoked by quantum mechanics and relativity. In David Lynch Swerves, Nochimson navigates the complexities of Lost Highway, The Straight Story, Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire with uncanny skill, shedding light on the beauty of their organic compositions; their thematic critiques of the immense dangers of modern materialism; and their hopeful conceptions of human potential. She concludes with excerpts from the wide-ranging interview in which Lynch discussed his vision with her, as well as an interview with Columbia University physicist David Albert, who was one of Nochimson's principal tutors in the discipline of quantum physics.
University of Texas Press
May 2014 295pp 51 b&w photos 9780292762060 PB £16.99 now only £12.74 when you quote CS1114FIME when you order
http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/david-lynch-swerves
Another Steven Soderbergh Experience
Authorship and Contemporary Hollywood
Mark Gallagher
How do we determine authorship in film, and what happens when we look in-depth at the creative activity of living filmmakers rather than approach their work through the abstract prism of auteur theory? Mark Gallagher uses Steven Soderbergh's career as a lens through which to re-view screen authorship and offer a new model that acknowledges the fundamentally collaborative nature of authorial work and its circulation. Working in film, television, and digital video, Soderbergh is the most prolific and protean filmmaker in contemporary American cinema. At the same time, his activity typifies contemporary screen industry practice, in which production entities, distribution platforms, and creative labor increasingly cross-pollinate.
Gallagher investigates Soderbergh's work on such films as The Limey, Erin Brockovich, Ocean's Eleven and its sequels, Solaris, The Good German, Che, and The Informant!, as well as on the K Street television series. Dispensing with classical auteurist models, he positions Soderbergh and authorship in terms of collaborative production, location filming activity, dealmaking and distribution, textual representation, genre and adaptation work, critical reception, and other industrial and cultural phenomena. Gallagher also addresses Soderbergh's role as standard-bearer for U.S. independent cinema following 1989's Sex, Lies and Videotape, as well as his cinephilic dialogues with different forms of U.S. and international cinema from the 1920s through the 1970s. Including an extensive new interview with the filmmaker, Another Steven Soderbergh Experience demonstrates how industries and institutions cultivate, recognize, and challenge creative screen artists.
University of Texas Press
May 2014 336pp 11 b&w photos 9780292762077 PB £19.99 now only £14.99 when you quote CS1114FIME when you order
http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/another-steven-soderbergh-experience
Experimental Latin American Cinema
History and Aesthetics
Cynthia Tompkins
"Clearly organized and thoroughly researched, the book boasts a useful scholarly apparatus."-D. West, emeritus, University of Idaho, Choice
While there are numerous film studies that focus on one particular grouping of films-by nationality, by era, or by technique-here is the first single volume that incorporates all of the above, offering a broad overview of experimental Latin American film produced over the last twenty years.
Analyzing seventeen recent films by eleven different filmmakers from Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Paraguay, and Peru, Cynthia Tompkins uses a comparative approach that finds commonalities among the disparate works in terms of their influences, aesthetics, and techniques. Tompkins introduces each film first in its sociohistorical context before summarizing it and then subverting its canonical interpretation. Pivotal to her close readings of the films and their convergences as a collective cinema is Tompkins's application of Deleuzian film theory and the concept of the time-image as it pertains to the treatment of time and repetition. Tompkins also explores such topics as the theme of decolonization, the consistent use of montage, paratactically structured narratives, and the fusion of documentary conventions and neorealism with drama. An invaluable contribution to any dialogue on the avant-garde in general and to filmmaking both in and out of Latin America, Experimental Latin American Cinema is also a welcome and insightful addition to Latin American studies as a whole.
University of Texas Press
May 2014 306pp 74 b&w photos 9780292762091 PB £19.99 now only £14.99 when you quote CS1114FIME when you order
http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/experimental-latin-american-cinema
Queer Bergman
Sexuality, Gender, and the European Art Cinema
Daniel Humphrey
One of the twentieth century's most important filmmakers-indeed one of its most important and influential artists-Ingmar Bergman and his films have been examined from almost every possible perspective, including their remarkable portrayals of women and their searing dramatizations of gender dynamics. Curiously however, especially considering the Swedish filmmaker's numerous and intriguing comments on the subject, no study has focused on the undeniably queer characteristics present throughout this nominally straight auteur's body of work; indeed, they have barely been noted.
Queer Bergman makes a bold and convincing argument that Ingmar Bergman's work can best be thought of as profoundly queer in nature. Using persuasive historical evidence, including Bergman's own on-the-record (though stubbornly ignored) remarks alluding to his own homosexual identifications, as well as the discourse of queer theory, Daniel Humphrey brings into focus the director's radical denunciation of heteronormative values, his savage and darkly humorous deconstructions of gender roles, and his work's trenchant, if also deeply conflicted, attacks on homophobically constructed forms of patriarchic authority. Adding an important chapter to the current discourse on GLBT/queer historiography, Humphrey also explores the unaddressed historical connections between post-World War II American queer culture and a concurrently vibrant European art cinema, proving that particular interrelationship to be as profound as the better documented associations between gay men and Hollywood musicals, queer spectators and the horror film, lesbians and gothic fiction, and others.
University of Texas Press
May 2014 234pp 31 b&w photos 9780292762084 PB £16.99 now only £12.74 when you quote CS1114FIME when you order
http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/queer-bergman
Twentieth Century-Fox
The Zanuck-Skouras Years, 1935-1965
Peter Lev
When the Fox Film Corporation merged with Twentieth Century Pictures in 1935, the company posed little threat to industry juggernauts such as Paramount and MGM. In the years that followed however, guided by executives Darryl F. Zanuck and Spyros Skouras, it soon emerged as one of the most important studios. Though working from separate offices in New York and Los Angeles and often of two different minds, the two men navigated Twentieth Century-Fox through the trials of the World War II boom, the birth of television, the Hollywood Blacklist, and more to an era of exceptional success, which included what was then the highest grossing movie of all time, The Sound of Music.
Twentieth Century-Fox is a comprehensive examination of the studio's transformation during the Zanuck-Skouras era. Instead of limiting his scope to the Hollywood production studio, Lev also delves into the corporate strategies, distribution models, government relations, and technological innovations that were the responsibilities of the New York headquarters. Moving chronologically, he examines the corporate history before analyzing individual films produced by Twentieth Century-Fox during that period. Drawn largely from original archival research, Twentieth Century-Fox offers not only enlightening analyses and new insights into the films and the history of the company, but also affords the reader a unique perspective from which to view the evolution of the entire film industry.
University of Texas Press
May 2014 326pp 29 b&w photos 9780292762107 PB £19.99 now only £14.99 when you quote CS1114FIME when you order
http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/twentieth-century-fox
The Year's Work at the Zombie Research Center
Edited by Edward P. Comentale & Aaron Jaffe
"An intelligent and highly engaging collection that will appeal to legions of zombie fans, to students in the humanities, and to scholars working in fields that have already been affected by or are now preparing for the zombie apocalypse. It blends entertaining, illuminating, and accessible readings of zombies and zombie culture with unique interventions made from authoritative positions of expertise." -Julian Murphet, author of Multimedia Modernism: Literature and the Anglo-American Avant-Garde
They have stalked the horizons of our culture, wreaked havoc on moribund concepts of dead and not dead, threatened our sense of identity, and endangered our personal safety. Now zombies have emerged from the lurking shadows of society's fringes to wander the sacred halls of the academy, feasting on tender minds and hurling rot across our intellectual landscape. It is time to unite in common cause, to shore up defenses, firm up critical and analytical resources, and fortify crumbling lines of inquiry. Responding to this call, Brain Workers from the Zombie Research Center poke and prod the rotting corpus of zombie culture trying to make sense of cult classics and the unstoppable growth of new and even more disturbing work. They exhume "zombie theory" and decaying historical documents from America, Europe, and the Caribbean in order to unearth the zombie world and arm readers with the brain tools necessary for everyday survival. Readers will see that zombie culture today "lives" in shapes as mutable as a zombie horde-and is often just as violent.
Indiana University Press
September 2014 544pp 53 b&w illus. 9780253013873 PB £16.99 now only £12.74 when you quote CS1114FIME<http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/the-years-work-at-the-zombie-research-center> when you order
http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/the-years-work-at-the-zombie-research-center
UK Postage and Packing £2.95, Europe £4.50
(PLEASE QUOTE REF NUMBER: CS1114FIME<http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/> for discount)
To order a copy please contact Marston on +44(0)1235 465500 or email [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
or visit our website:
http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/
where you can also receive your discount
*Offer excludes the USA, South America and Australasia.
Follow us on Twitter @CAP_Ltd<http://twitter.com/#!/CAP_Ltd> or Facebook Combined Academic-Publishers<http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sfrm=1#!/CombinedAcademicPublishers>
----
For past messages, visit the Screen-L Archives:
https://listserv.ua.edu/archives/screen-l.html
|