With the advent of the Great Depression, Hollywood discovered new characters and fresh labels of films that displayed the effects of the economic struggle on various types of individuals, be it the small-time crook, the innocent and wrongly accused businessman, the farmer or the simple secretary. All of them had to face new obstacles in […]
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Author: Dr. A. Ebert
The Myth of the Superhero by Marco Arnaudo (2013)
When the comic artists of Marvel, DC Comics and other inventors of superheroes, avengers and their allies equipped with supernatural powers or technical gadgets designed their unique subjects, they had – willingly or not – a number of models to build a legend around: Greek, Jewish, Roman, or Nordic mythology. While each superhero is equipped […]
The Starday Story. The House That Country Music Built by Nathan D. Gibson (2011)
Starday Records, one of the most influential, if not the American ‘roots’ label has a long and detailed story to tell. It took Nathan D. Gibson, a scholar, musician and country music fan, to collect all the details, numbers, personal histories, legends and private accounts of the many artists and the few executives at Starday […]
Dian Hanson’s History of Pin-up Magazines Vols. 1-3 (2013)
Just like many other popular forms of entertainment the pin-up magazine, or men’s magazine, did not just appear at the newsstand overnight, but had a long way to go from secretly sold and distributed smut and photographic sheet collections (like the “French postcards”) to the now very common form of glossy magazine centered on naked […]
Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream by Mark Osteen (2013)
By choosing the rather bleak Edmund Goulding noir classic Nightmare Alley (1947) as the namesake for his new book, author Mark Osteen surprises with his fresh approach to films noir. He concentrates on the major antagonists, so to speak, of the American dream, and the American pursuit of happiness, a constitutional right in a way. […]
Ragged But Right. Black Traveling Shows, “Coon Songs,” and … by Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff (2012)
For several decades, a very distinctive form of African American minstrel show was the most popular form of entertainment for black audiences in the South, its fame covering almost the entire country by and by. The beginning of this art form (that was in parts of the country available until the late 1940s) and its […]
Mystery Movie Series of 1930s Hollywood by Ron Backer (2012)
There was a time when mystery stories were not written for the screen exclusively but were meant to be published and read by an audience. These texts, however, were the foundations for almost all the major mystery series listed in Backer’s book; as were some of the best film noir movies prior to Hollywood’s remodeling […]
Siegfried Kracauer’s American Writings by J. von Molke (2012)
When Siegfried Kracauer and his wife Lili in 1941 finally could escape the Nazi regime and left for New York fleeing Marseilles via Portugal the future of film criticism would have a fresh start … or have its initial start, depending on your point of view. Sharing the fate of many of today’s intellectuals and […]
The Golden Age of DC Comics 1935-1956 by Paul Levitz (2013)
Shazzamm! Phew!! This is one absolutely stunning edition of the early days of DC Comics. That is, if you are interested in the history, the concepts, the authors, the many inventors and most of all the legacy of the great comic artists at DC Comics. Then the heavy volume may just be what you have […]