A History of Star Makers, Fabricators, and Gossip Mongers
The fan magazine has often been viewed simply as a publicity tool, a fluffy exercise in self-promotion by the film industry. But as an arbiter of good and bad taste, as a source of knowledge, and as a gateway to the fabled land of Hollywood and its stars, the American fan magazine represents a fascinating and indispensable chapter in journalism ......
From his earliest days working at the colossal movie studio MGM, at the young age of 24, Gilbert Adrian had a vision that would showcase a new era in costume design for the screen. So fresh were his ideas, so original were his designs, and so extraordinary the workmanship that Adrian quite rightly earned the elegant film credit sobriquet, "Gowns ......
D. W. Griffith, American Racism, and the Rise of Film Culture
For over a century, cinephiles and film scholars have had to grapple with an ugly artifact that sits at the beginnings of film history. D. W. Griffith's profoundly racist epic, The Birth of a Nation, inspired controversy and protest at its 1915 release and was defended as both a true history of Reconstruction (although it was based on fiction) and ......
!Se rueda! Advanced Spanish Through Films explores critical social issues through the lens of Spanish-speaking cinema. The book provides detailed analyses of emblematic films, each chosen for their illustrative portrayal of critical issues such as discrimination, healthcare inequities, and political unrest, highlighting cinema's role in reflecting ......
Claudette Colbert's mixture of beauty, sophistication, wit, and vivacity quickly made her one of the film industry's most famous and highest-paid stars of the 1930s and 1940s. Though she began her career on the New York stage, she was beloved for her roles in such films as Preston Sturges's The Palm Beach Story, Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra, and ......
How the sound of the female playback voice impacts Bollywood's cultural, musical, and cinematic environment. Drawing on sound studies and performance theory, scholar Shikha Jhingan explores the discursive nature of the female playback voice in Bombay film songs. Mapping the production, circulation, and reception of the voices of singing ......
Walter Brennan (1894-1974) was one of the greatest character actors in Hollywood history. He won three Academy Awards and became a national icon starring as Grandpa in The Real McCoys. He appeared in over two hundred motion pictures and became the subject of a Norman Rockwell painting, which celebrated the actor's unique role as the voice of the ......
In Unruly Comparison, Alvin K. Wong examines queerness in Hong Kong through a transdisciplinary analysis of Sinophone literature, cinema, visual culture, and civil society. Moving beyond Eurocentrism in queer theory and China-centrism in area studies, Wong frames Hong Kong as a model for global comparison by theorizing a method of unruly ......
In Unruly Comparison, Alvin K. Wong examines queerness in Hong Kong through a transdisciplinary analysis of Sinophone literature, cinema, visual culture, and civil society. Moving beyond Eurocentrism in queer theory and China-centrism in area studies, Wong frames Hong Kong as a model for global comparison by theorizing a method of unruly ......
