Álex de la Iglesia, initially championed by Pedro Almodóvar, and at one time the enfant terrible of Spanish film, still makes film critics nervous. The director of some of the most important films of the Post-Franco era – Acción mutante, El día de la bestia, Muertos de risa – receives here the first full length study of his work. Breaking away from the pious tradition of acclaiming art-house auteurs, The cinema of Álex de la Iglesia tackles a new sort of beast: the popular auteur, who brin...

States of danger and deceit places key films (Z (1969), The Mattei Affair (1972), State of Siege (1972), The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (1975), Illustrious Corpses (1976)) and filmmakers (Costa-Gavras, Elio Petri, Francesco Rosi, Volker Schlöndorff) from across Europe into their historical, political and social contexts before considering the ways they have impacted upon politically engaged filmmakers since.Presented in a dos...

This book demonstrates, in contrast to statistics that show declining consumption of physical formats, that there has not been a mass shift towards purely digital media. Physical releases such as special editions, DVD box-sets and Blu-Rays are frequently promoted and sought out by consumers. And that past formats such as VHS, Laserdisc and HD-DVD make for sought-after collectible items. These trends are also found within particular genres and niche categories, such as documentary, educatio...

Chinese Cinemas: International Perspectives examines the impact the rapid expansion of Chinese filmmaking in mainland China has had on independent and popular Chinese cinemas both in and outside of China.While the large Chinese markets are coveted by Hollywood, the commercial film industry within the People’s Republic of China has undergone rapid expansion since the 1990s. Its own production, distribution and exhibition capacities have increased exponentially in the past 2...

This volume brings together writing on the topic of home media, and in particular releases described as appealing to ‘cult’ fans and audiences. Despite popular assumptions to the contrary, the distributors of physical media maintain a vivid presence in the digital age. Perhaps more so than any other category of film or media, this is especially the case with titles considered ‘cult’ and its related processes of distribution and exhibition. The chapters in this collection chart such uses an...

In this comprehensive textbook, now updated for its third edition, Jonathan Bignell provides students with a framework for understanding the key concepts and main approaches to Television Studies, including audience research, television history and broadcasting policy, and the analytical study of individual programmes.Features include:a glossary of key termskey terms defined in marginssuggestions for further reading...

Since the days of early television, video has been an indispensable part of culture, society, and moving-image media industries. Over the decades, it has been an avant-garde artistic medium, a high-tech consumer gadget, a format for watching movies at home, a force for democracy, and the ultimate, ubiquitous means of documenting reality. In the twenty-first century, video is the name we give all kinds of moving images. We know it as an adaptable medium that bridges analog and digital, amat...

Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status explores how and why television is gaining a new level of cultural respectability in the 21st century. Once looked down upon as a "plug-in drug" offering little redeeming social or artistic value, television is now said to be in a creative renaissance, with critics hailing the rise of Quality series such as Mad Men and 30 Rock. Likewise, DVDs and DVRs, web video, HDTV, and mobile devices have shifted ...

The early years of the twenty-first century have seen dramatic changes within the television industry. The development of the internet and mobile phone as platforms for content directly linked to television programming has offered a challenge to the television set’s status as the sole domestic access point to audio-visual dramatic content. Viewers can engage with ‘television’ without ever turning a television set on.Whilst there has already been some exploration of these changes, l...

Heralded as "the most significant invention [for film] since the coming of sound" (The Observer 2003), by 2005 DVD players were in approximately 84 million homes in the US, making it the "fastest selling item in history of US consumer electronics market" (McDonald 2007: 135). This book examines the phenomenal growth of DVDs in relation to the cultures, economies, texts, audiences and histories of film, television and new media.Film and Television After DVD brings ...

Packed with examples from classic and contemporary films, The Fundamentals of Animation presents each stage of the animation production process in an engaging visual style, whilst providing an historical and critical context for four core disciplines: drawn/cel; 2D/3D stop-motion; computer generated; and experimental animation.With insightful commentary from leading animators, Wells and Moore also introduce you to the many different career paths open to aspiring animators,...

This book compares production and consumption of Asian horror cinemas in different national contexts and their multidirectional dialogues with Hollywood and neighboring Asian cultures. Individual essays highlight common themes including technology, digital media, adolescent audience sensibilities, transnational co-productions, pan-Asian marketing techniques, and variations on good vs. evil evident in many Asian horror films. Contributors include Kevin Heffernan, Adam Knee, Chi-Yun Shin, Ch...