From a decidedly inauspicious start as a low-rated television series in the 1960s that was cancelled after three seasons, Star Trek has grown to a multi-billion dollar industry of spin-off series, feature films, and merchandise. Fueling the ever-expanding franchise are some of the most rabid and loyal fans in the universe, known affectionately as Trekkies. Perhaps no other community so typifies fandom as the devoted aficionados of the Star Trek television series, motion pictures, novels, comic books, and conventions. Indeed, in many respects, Star Trek fans created modern fan culture and conti... View More...
Never before have comics seemed so popular or diversified, proliferating across a broad spectrum of genres, experimenting with a variety of techniques, and gaining recognition as a legitimate, rich form of art. Maaheen Ahmed examines this trend by taking up philosopher Umberto Eco's notion of the open work of art, whereby the reader--or listener or viewer, as the case may be--is offered several possibilities of interpretation in a cohesive narrative and aesthetic structure. Ahmed delineates the visual, literary, and other medium-specific features used by comics to form open rather than closed ... View More...
Good killers are hard to find. But the CIA has no trouble finding the legendary TV producer and game show king Chuck Barris. In Bad Grass Never Dies, Barris picks up the fast-paced intrigue in Hollywood, where his emotional life lies in ruins, his career careens out of control, and he can't get a break anyplace he turns. Then one day a high-ranking CIA boss appears unannounced on Barris' doorstep. The CIA needs the cooperation of a Mexican terrorist, and Barris is ordered to recruit the killer as a paid assassin. Complicating matters is the fact that this same assassin is responsible for the d... View More...
When the first television was demonstrated in 1927, a headline in "The New York Times "read, OC Like a Photo Come to Life.OCO It was a momentous occasion. But the power of television wasnOCOt fully harnessed until the 1950s, when the medium was, as Eric Burns says, OC At its most preoccupying, its most life-altering.OCO And Burns, a former NBC News correspondent who is an Emmy-winner for his broadcast writing," "knows about the impact of television.a"Invasion of the Mind Snatchers "chronicles the influence of television that was watched daily by the baby boomer generation. As kids became spell... View More...
Geoff Dyer's earlier book on film, Zona, was about Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, so it was perhaps inevitable that he should next devote his unique critical and stylistic energies to Brian G. Hutton's Where Eagles Dare. A thrilling Alpine adventure starring a magnificent, bleary-eyed Richard Burton and a dynamically lethargic Clint Eastwood, Where Eagles Dare is the apex of 1960s war movies, by turns enjoyable and preposterous. 'Broadsword Calling Danny Boy' is Geoff Dyer's hilarious tribute to a film he has loved since childhood: it's a scene-by-scene analysis--or should that be send-up?--tak... View More...
Until now, celebrated photographer Robert Frank's daring and unconventional work as a filmmaker has not been awarded the critical notice it deserves. In this timely volume, George Kouvaros surveys Frank's films and videos and places them in the larger context of experimentation in American art and literature since World War II.Born in 1924, Frank emigrated from Switzerland to the United States in 1947 and quickly made his mark as a photojournalist. A 1955 Guggenheim Foundation fellowship allowed him to travel across the country, photographing aspects of American life that had previously receiv... View More...
Bioart -- art that uses either living materials (such as bacteria or transgenic organisms) or more traditional materials to comment on, or even transform, biotechnological practice -- now receives enormous media attention. Yet despite this attention, bioart is frequently misunderstood. Bioart and the Vitality of Media is the first comprehensive theoretical account of the art form, situating it in the contexts of art history, laboratory practice, and media theory.Mitchell begins by sketching a brief history of bioart in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, describing the artistic, scientif... View More...
In the Blink of an Eye is celebrated film editor Walter Murch's vivid, multifaceted, thought -- provoking essay on film editing. Starting with what might be the most basic editing question -- Why do cuts work? -- Murch treats the reader to a wonderful ride through the aesthetics and practical concerns of cutting film. Along the way, he offers his unique insights on such subjects as continuity and discontinuity in editing, dreaming, and reality; criteria for a good cut; the blink of the eye as an emotional cue; digital editing; and much more. In this second edition, Murch reconsiders and comple... View More...
The U.S. victims' rights movement has transformed the way that violent crime is understood and represented in the United States. It has expanded the concept of victimhood to include family members and others close to direct victims, and it has argued that these secondary victims may be further traumatized through their encounters with insensitive journalists and the cold, impersonal nature of the criminal justice system. This concept of extended victimization has come to dominate representations of crime and the American criminal justice system. In Second Wounds, Carrie A. Rentschler examines ... View More...
WHEN A YOUNG WRITER named Lorne Michaels talked NBC executives into taking a chance on a new weekend late-night comedy series, nobody really knew what to expect-not even Michaels. But Saturday Night Live, launched in 1975 and still thriving today, would change the face of television. It introduced brash new stars with names like Belushi, Radner, Chase, and Murray; trashed taboos that had inhibited TV for decades; and had such an impact on American life, laughter, and politics that even presidents of the United States had to take notice. Now, Pulitzer Prize-winner Tom Shales and bestselling aut... View More...
The complete, uncensored history of the award-winning The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, as told by its correspondents, writers, and host. For almost seventeen years, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart brilliantly redefined the borders between television comedy, political satire, and opinionated news coverage. It launched the careers of some of today's most significant comedians, highlighted the hypocrisies of the powerful, and garnered 23 Emmys. Now the show's behind-the-scenes gags, controversies, and camaraderie will be chronicled by the players themselves, from legendary host Jon Stewart to t... View More...
One of Fran ois Truffaut's most poignantly memorable films, Jules and Jim, adapted a novel by the French writer and art collector Henri-Pierre Roch. The characters and events of the 1960s film were based on a real-life romantic triangle, begun in the summer of 1920, which involved Roch himself, the German-Jewish writer Franz Hessel, and his wife, the journalist Helen Grund. Drawing on this film and others by Truffaut, Robert Stam provides the first in-depth examination of the multifaceted relationship between Truffaut and Roch. In the process, he provides a unique lens through which to unders... View More...
In Global Communications, International Affairs and the Media since 1945, Philip M. Taylor traces the increased involvement of the media in issues of peace and especially war from the nineteenth century to the present day. He analyzes the nature, role and impact of communications within the international arena since 1945 and how communications interacts with foreign policy in practice rather than in theory. Using studies which include the Gul War and Vietnam, Taylor details the contemporary problems reporting while at the same time providing a comprehensive historical context. View More...
Dziga Vertov was one of the greatest innovators of Soviet cinema. The radical complexity of his work--in both sound and silent forms--has given it a central place within contemporary theoretical inquiry. Vertov's writings, collected here, range from calculated manifestos setting forth his heroic vision of film's potential to dark ruminations on the inactivity forced upon him by the bureaucratization of the Soviet state. View More...
When Hitchcock's Films was first published, it became known as a book on film that came to be considered a necessary text in the Hitchcock bibliography. This work includes eighteen essays and a chapter on Marnie titled Does Mark Cure Marnie? Or, 'You Freud, Me Hitchcock.' View More...
