Perverse Titillation

Perverse Titillation
Author: Danny Shipka
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2011-07-25
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0786486090

The exploitation film industry of Italy, Spain and France during the height of its popularity from 1960 to 1980 is the focus of this entertaining history. With subject matter running the gamut from Italian zombies to Spanish werewolves to French lesbian vampires, the shocking and profoundly entertaining motion pictures of the "Eurocult" genre are discussed from the standpoint of the films and the filmmakers, including such internationally celebrated auteurs as Mario Bava, Jess Franco, Jean Rollin and Paul Naschy. The Eurocult phenomenon is also examined in relation to the influences that European culture and environment have had on the world of exploitation cinema. The author's insight and expertise contribute to a greater understanding of what made these films special--and why they have remained so popular to later generations.

Macro Socio-economics: From Theory to Activism

Macro Socio-economics: From Theory to Activism
Author: David Sciulli
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2016-09-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1315481391

Contributors to this volume respond to the normative capsule framing economic behaviour that Amitai Etzioni has explored. The text also looks at his works on organisations, public policy, socio-economics and communitarianism.

Pamela Tiffin

Pamela Tiffin
Author: Tom Lisanti
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2015-10-06
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0786496614

Dark-haired 60s cult pop icon Pamela Tiffin debuted in Summer and Smoke (1961) and was a scene-stealing comedienne opposite James Cagney in Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three (1961) before becoming the queen of teenage drive-in movies in State Fair (1963), Come Fly with Me (1963), For Those Who Think Young (1964), The Lively Set (1964) and The Pleasure Seekers (1964). After landing a sexy adult role opposite Paul Newman in Harper (1966), she went blonde and ran away to Italy to star in such films as Kiss the Other Sheik (1968), The Fifth Cord (1971) and Deaf Smith & Johnny Ears (1973). This thoroughly researched career retrospective pays tribute to the talented Tiffin, hailed by Cagney for her "remarkable flair for comedy," and addresses why she did not achieve superstardom. Interviews with co-stars, including Franco Nero, and film historians offer a behind-the-scenes look at her most popular films.

TOTalitarian ARTs

TOTalitarian ARTs
Author: Mark Epstein
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 470
Release: 2017-03-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1443879541

This collection represents a tool to broaden and deepen our geographical, institutional, and historical understanding of the term totalitarianism. Is totalitarianism only found in ‘other’ societies? How come, then, it emerged historically in ‘ours’ first? How come it developed in so many countries either in Western Europe (Italy, Germany, Portugal, and Spain) or under implicit Western forms of coercion (Latin America)? How do relations between individual(s), mass and the visual arts relate to totalitarian trends? These are among the questions this book asks about totalitarianism. The volume does not impose a ‘one size fits all’ interpretation, but opens new spaces for debate on the connection between the visual arts and mass-culture in totalitarian societies. From the Mediterranean to Scandinavia, from Western Europe to Latin America, from the fascism of the early 20th century to contemporary forms of totalitarian control, and from cinema to architecture, the chapters included in TotArt bring expertise, historical sensibility and political awareness to bear on this varied range of phenomena. This collection offers international contributions on visual, performing and plastic arts. The chapters range from examination of comics to study of YouTube videos and American newsreels, from Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Uruguayan cinemas to more contemporary American films and TV series, from painters and sculptors to the study of urban spaces.

Lost in the Dark

Lost in the Dark
Author: Brad Weismann
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2021-04-22
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1496833252

Two horror films were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2018, and one of them—The Shape of Water—won. Since 1990, the production of horror films has risen exponentially worldwide, and in 2013, horror films earned an estimated $400 million in ticket sales. Horror has long been the most popular film genre, and more horror movies have been made than any other kind. We need them. We need to be scared, to test ourselves, laugh inappropriately, scream, and flinch. We need to get through them and come out, blinking, still in one piece. Lost in the Dark: A World History of Horror Film is a straightforward history written for the general reader and student that can serve as a comprehensive reference work. The volume provides a general introduction to the genre, serves as a guidebook to its film highlights, and celebrates its practitioners, trends, and stories. Starting with silent-era horror films and ending with 2020’s The Invisible Man, Lost in the Dark looks at decades of horror movies. Author Brad Weismann covers such topics as the roots of horror in literature and art, monster movies, B-movies, the destruction of the American censorship system, international horror, torture porn, zombies, horror comedies, horror in the new millennium, and critical reception of modern horror. A sweeping survey that doesn’t scrimp on details, Lost in the Dark is sure to satisfy both the curious and the completist.

The Global Vampire

The Global Vampire
Author: Cait Coker
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2020-01-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1476637334

The media vampire has roots throughout the world, far beyond the shores of the usual Dracula-inspired Anglo-American archetypes. Depending on text and context, the vampire is a figure of anxiety and comfort, humor and fear, desire and revulsion. These dichotomies gesture the enduring prevalence of the vampire in mass culture; it can no longer articulate a single feeling or response, bound by time and geography, but is many things to many people. With a global perspective, this collection of essays offers something new and different: a much needed counter-narrative of the vampire's evolution in popular culture. Divided by geography, this text emphasizes the vampiric as a globetrotting citizen du monde rather than an isolated monster.

Alternative Communities in Hispanic Literature and Culture

Alternative Communities in Hispanic Literature and Culture
Author: Luis H. Castañeda
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2016-09-23
Genre:
ISBN: 1443812781

What are Hispanic alternative communities and how are they represented in literature, film, and popular music? This book studies the fictional representation of circles of artists and intellectuals, youth gangs, musical bands, packs of marginal urban dwellers, groups of immigrants, and other diverse associations that share the common trait of being small and subversive collectives, perhaps akin to secret societies plotting to take control of society. These groups usually exist within a larger and established community – typically, the nation-state – though maintaining with it complicated relations of rivalry, criticism, outright violence, and other forms of antagonism. Thus “alternative communities” represent the “other side” of official institutions, by constituting dystopias that condemn the status quo, or by building utopias that point to new social arrangements. In the Hispanic world – a broad, transatlantic space that includes Spain and Spanish America – alternative communities have existed since the 19th century, a time of nation-building for Spanish American countries, all the way to the 21st century, when hybrid, postnational, and cosmopolitan communities begin to appear. The seventeen chapters brought together in this volume, which constitutes the first systematic approach to Hispanic alternative communities, tackle this complex cultural phenomenon from diverse critical perspectives.

The Cinematography of Roger Corman

The Cinematography of Roger Corman
Author: Pawel Aleksandrowicz
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2016-09-23
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 144384361X

Roger Corman is an ambiguous artistic figure. On the one hand, he is notorious for shooting and producing his films quickly, cheaply and with blatant disregard for safety measures, which, together with his ability to issue a dozen new films every year and his impressive filmography, have earned him the titles of “shlockmeister” and “the King of the B’s” among film journalists. On the other hand, he became the youngest American director to be given a film retrospective at the prestigious Cinématèque Française in Paris, one of his directorial efforts – House of Usher – was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him with an Academy Honorary Award “for his rich engendering of films and filmmakers.” This book investigates this duality and explores whether Corman is indeed a shlockmeister or an artist whose works are worthy of the highest cinema awards. The scope of analysis is limited to his directorial efforts “only” – still encompassing 50 features – excluding the 400 films he produced. The methodology adopted here is based on the auteur theory in its structuralist version by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith and Peter Wollen, and focuses on three areas of interest: work ethic – personal elements in the films, personal control over and commitment to the production process outside direction; themes – topics and concerns common for many of the films regardless of the genre; and style – recurring stylistic motifs and elements in the camerawork, editing, and framing.

The Italian Cinema Book

The Italian Cinema Book
Author: Peter Bondanella
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2019-07-25
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1839020253

THE ITALIAN CINEMA BOOK is an essential guide to the most important historical, aesthetic and cultural aspects of Italian cinema, from 1895 to the present day. With contributions from 39 leading international scholars, the book is structured around six chronologically organised sections: THE SILENT ERA (1895–22) THE BIRTH OF THE TALKIES AND THE FASCIST ERA (1922–45) POSTWAR CINEMATIC CULTURE (1945–59) THE GOLDEN AGE OF ITALIAN CINEMA (1960–80) AN AGE OF CRISIS, TRANSITION AND CONSOLIDATION (1981 TO THE PRESENT) NEW DIRECTIONS IN CRITICAL APPROACHES TO ITALIAN CINEMA Acutely aware of the contemporary 'rethinking' of Italian cinema history, Peter Bondanella has brought together a diverse range of essays which represent the cutting edge of Italian film theory and criticism. This provocative collection will provide the film student, scholar or enthusiast with a comprehensive understanding of the major developments in what might be called twentieth-century Italy's greatest and most original art form.