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“In its original run on HBO, The Sopranos mattered, and it matters still,” Dana Polan asserts early in this analysis of the hit show, in which he sets out to clarify the impact and importance of the series in both its cultural and media-industry contexts. A renowned film and TV scholar, Polan combines a close and extended reading of the show itself—and of select episodes and scenes—with broader attention to the social landscape with which it is in dialogue. For Polan, The Sopranos is a work of playful irony that complicates simplistic attempts to grasp its meanings and values. The show seductively beckons the viewer into an amoral universe, hinting at ways to make sense of its ethica...
With the phenomenal success of 'The Piano' (1993), Jane Campion became revered by many as the leading female film director of the 1990s. In this book, Dana Polan examines the phenomenon of 'The Piano' and how it develops from the early shorts and first features which evoke an often surreal and critical distanced style of looking at everyday issues. Looking at all of Campion's work before and since, including 'Holy Smoke' (1999), which returned again to the battleground of gender politics, the author concludes his survey of the director's work by offering some hypotheses about the erotic thriller 'The Cut' (2001) whilst asking what variety of approaches to the study of directors might now be fruitful.
Introduction -- Engineering The great escape : from book to film (and in-between) -- Tunneling in : The great escape : style, theme, and structure -- After-lives -- Appendix : "It really happened".
Dana Polan considers what made Julia Childs TV show, The French Chef, so popular during its original broadcast and such enduring influences on American cooking, American television, and American culture since then.
With the phenomenal success of 'The Piano' (1993), Jane Campion became revered by many as the leading female film director of the 1990s. In this book, Dana Polan examines the phenomenon of 'The Piano' and how it develops from the early shorts and first features which evoke an often surreal and critical distanced style of looking at everyday issues. Looking at all of Campion's work before and since, including 'Holy Smoke' (1999), which returned again to the battleground of gender politics, the author concludes his survey of the director's work by offering some hypotheses about the erotic thriller 'The Cut' (2001) whilst asking what variety of approaches to the study of directors might now be fruitful.
Dana Polan sets out to unlock the style and technique of 'Pulp Fiction'. He shows how broad Tarantino's points of reference are, and analyzes the narrative accomplishment and complexity. In addition, Polan argues that macho attitudes celebrated in film are much more complex than they seem.
Corrigan argues that in the past 25 years the increased conglomerization of film production/distribution companies and the rise of VCR, satellite, and cable television technologies have altered the way films are made and how we view them. The result is a growing internationalization of national cinema cultures and an increasing fragmentation of the audience. Video has reduced the movie to private and domestic performance. At the same time, audiences are bombarded with a surfeit of images that leaves them with a battered sense of their place in history and culture. Corrigan notes that, combined with what many critics have recognized as the growing incoherence in film texts, these facts make it more meaningful to discuss films not as texts but as multiple cultural and commercial processes constructed by increasingly specialized audiences. ISBN 0-8135-1667-6: $36.00.
VOLUME 2: "Movies and Methods," Volume II, captures the developments that have given history and genre studies imaginative new models and indicates how feminist, structuralist, and psychoanalytic approaches to film have achieved fresh, valuable insights. In his thoughtful introduction, Nichols provides a context for the paradoxes that confront film studies today. He shows how shared methods and approaches continue to stimulate much of the best writing about film, points to common problems most critics and theorists have tried to resolve, and describes the internal contraditions that have restricted the usefulness of post-structuralism. Mini-introductions place each essay in a larger context ...