Skip to main content

Hollywood’s Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World by Ross Melnick

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 […]

The Science of Sci-Fi Cinema: Essays on the Art and Principles of Ten Films by Vincent Piturro (ed.)...

Originally conceived in 2010 as a short-lived project to pair a film enthusiast with the respective scientific expert on the film’s subject after presenting a science fiction movie, the idea of dialogue and curiosity, in cooperation with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, still is around today. And with each film presentation hosted by […]

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 […]

Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950–1985 by Andrew Nette and Iain McInty

Kicking off roughly in the early 1950s, British and American science fiction authors of the new breed, labeled New Wave later, brought massive changes to the genre and changed the way the future of mankind was perceived. They spoke for a growing readership that was hungry for new visions and speculative prospects, now being prepared […]

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media, Netflix, or any Internet-based platform consulted to watch movies, documentaries or series, may look a bit outdated at first sight, Broadcasting Hollywood actually is a highly interesting study, as it chronicles how we, as audiences, originally “learned” […]

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 […]

The Modern Myths: Adventures in the Machinery of the Popular Imagination by Philip Ball (2021)

The days when (ancient) myths – be they Greek, Nordic or from whatever region – were rather important to man as they served as guidelines and offered counsel are long gone; or so it seems. Because popular culture has created books, tales and stories that are inhabited by artificial men, werewolves, vampires, ghost hunters or […]

Representations of Working-Class Masculinities in Post-War British Culture: The Left Behind by Matth...

When considering his main subjects, author Matthew Crowley emphasizes that there are many different ways to live a certain working-class masculinity, as there never was just one single “traditional” experience or one simple, unified path that would lead to such an experience for every English male working-class person in the mid-20th century. In his study […]