The teenager, not present in the immediate post-war years, in the early 1950s suddenly became a financial force and a very visible part of American culture. That also meant clueless parents, disgusted older generations and horrified school teachers, as teenage delinquency and violence ostensibly exploded in the mid-fifties. It did not take long before movie […]
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Category: B. R. Film
Robots in American Popular Culture by Steve Carper (2019)
The idea of building, commanding and using artificial creatures, based on mechanical components that would assist mankind doing anything from work, transportation or pleasure goes back to very early stories of creation such as the Gilgamesh epic. And mythology from ancient Greece and other regions. That idea also demonstrates man’s wish to become the creator […]
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey & A Clockwork Orange. Book & DVD Sets by Alison Castle (ed.)
Two new books in Taschen‘s Making of a Masterpiece series go into detail on Stanley Kubrick‘s A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Edited by Alison Castle, who has published books on film, design and photography for many years in an excellent manner, the beautiful and richly pictured editions reveal many facts and maybe […]
Star Attractions: Twentieth-Century Movie Magazines and Global Fandom by T. J. Mcdonald and L. Lanck...
Ever since motion pictures became a crucial part of popular culture, certain consumers decided that simply watching those products and going to the theaters was not enough. Accordingly, editors of the earliest movie magazines quickly realized that gossip, behind-the-scenes talk and all sorts or rumors surrounding those new media stars obviously were at least as […]
Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and … by Iain McIntyre and Andrew Nett
The latest work edited by Iain McIntyre and Andrew Nette has the focus on pulp fiction published in English and connected to and influenced by the Counterculture and ideas of revolution. The emphasis is on “the long sixties,” meaning the aftermath of that truly revolutionary decade that was at work long into the 1970s, in […]
Superhero Thought Experiments: Comic Book Philosophy by C. Gavaler and N. Goldberg (2019)
The main thesis of this book will be of interest to both philosophers and comic book fans, as strange as it may sound at first. In an unusual effort, thought experiments done by philosophers (ancient and recent), and the stories behind many superhero comics are evaluated, and their many similarities revealed, as both groups play […]
Robots That Kill: Deadly Machines and Their Precursors in Myth, Folklore, Literature… by Judith A. M
In three parts, Judith Markowitz deals with the phenomenon of evil or rather, human-killing robots (and their creators) in the book at hand. In part 1, greed, revenge and furor are taken into consideration in cases why humans had to die by “the hands” of a robot, that was more or less only used as […]
Forbidden Hollywood: The Pre-Code Era (1930-1934): When Sin Ruled the Movies by Mark A. Vieira (2019...
Film studies introduced countless movie fans to genres and varieties of films that were once praised just by small groups of fans. It was usually decades after the initial film releases, that, for example, the fascination with film noir, certain types of the westerns, or screwball comedy went beyond the tiny groups of connoisseurs and […]
Disney’s Star Wars: Forces of Production, Promotion, and Reception by W. Proctor and R. McCulloch (e
The movie Star Wars (1977) and the evolving Star Wars universe never were just films or simple family entertainment. To many fans, seemingly it became a surrogate religion or a way of life. The merchandise, action figurines, literature or cartoon adaptations and spin-offs earned George Lucas and Lucasfilm fortune after fortune (he directed and produced […]