To understand the impact movies and in particularly the American movie industry has had since the 1920s, not just the messages, directors or entertaining subjects of the films have been important, but also the manner how the product film has been presented all over the world. For that purpose, the well-known website Cinema Treasures has […]
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Tag: American Studies
Triumph Over Containment: American Film in the 1950s by Robert P. Kolker (2021)
There are very many books on both the American post-war years and the films of the long 1950s, usually with the emphasis on a genre or a sociological topic. The book at hand, however, has a somewhat special approach, as it is preoccupied with the decade and its implications on the American public, as experienced […]
The Blues Dream of Billy Boy Arnold by Billy Boy Arnold and Kim Field (2021)
There are very few masters of the harmonica (or “harp” as the instrument is called colloquially by musicians) that had a lasting impression on rock music, as English and American groups in the 1960s during the Beat era covered many blues originals that featured a harp. Among the most prominent players, we find Little Walter […]
Hollywood’s Melodramatic Imagination: Film Noir, the Western and Other Genres … by Geoff Mayer (2022
In four chapters, author Geoff Mayer dives deep into the meaning and the many faces of the melodrama, highlighting several aspects and decades that made audiences familiar with the endless confrontation of virtue against reckless action, true love against intrigue or simply “good” versus “bad” characters, parties or companies. Here we learn about the main […]
Broadcasting Hollywood: The Struggle Over Feature Films on Early TV by Jennifer Porst (2021)
Even if the topic of Porst’s book, with regard to today’s video watching agenda that includes streaming media, Netflix, or any Internet-based platform consulted to watch movies, documentaries or series, may look a bit outdated at first sight, Broadcasting Hollywood actually is a highly interesting study, as it chronicles how we, as audiences, originally “learned” […]
Star Trek, History and Us: Reflections of the Present and Past Throughout the Franchise by A.J. Blac...
To talk about present-day science fiction realms and the impact fictional stories had on popular culture or the way people imagined a better future without touching on Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek is hardly possible. When the first episodes of the show were broadcast in 1966, they were immediately recognized as basically an action and entertainment […]
Toys in the Age of Wonder: Science Fiction, Society and the Symbolism of Play by Mark Rich (2020)
As it has happened so often before, fiction by authors of early wonder and adventure tales, such as H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, William Rice Burroughs, and others, have provided man (and particularly children and youngsters) with hopes and fantasies about machines that feature technology not yet been invented to dream a […]
Interpreting Star Wars: Reading a Modern Film Franchise by Miles Booy (2021)
Over the years, more than a handful of books on George Lucas’ Star Wars epic have been written that evaluated, criticized and interpreted the film franchise. When in 1977 Star Wars was first presented, several significant film critics identified a number of central aspects, roles, ideologies or an American perspective on it. The main aspects […]
Deconstructing Dr. Strangelove: The Secret History of Nuclear War Films by Sean M. Maloney (2020)
The Cold War, with all of its threats and visions of mass destruction and apocalyptic scenarios appears far away these days. However, when the menace of nuclear weapons that possibly would be launched if wrong decisions were made by a few incompetent men in the military back in the 1960s, stories, novels and mostly movies […]