No matter how a casting for British Hammer Film Productions – Europe’s epicenter of crude horror and gothic films between the 1950s and 1970s – ended, to be invited in the first place, as an actress, you had to be extremely beautiful with a bosomy figure to remember. And even if those women on the […]
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Category: B. R. Film
Hollywood’s Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World by Ross Melnick
To understand the impact movies and in particular the American movie industry had since the 1920s, not just the messages, directors or entertaining subjects of the films were important, but also the manner how the product film was presented all over the world. For that purpose, the well-known website Cinema Treasures has collected data and […]
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 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 […]
Music in Cinema by Michel Chion (2021)
For those interested not only in the finished product “motion picture,” but to the students and fans who consider movie audio and its use an art form, the name Michel Chion will definitively sound familiar. The French scholar, filmmaker, and composer who has written more than thirty titles on the topics sound, film and music […]
The Return of Twin Peaks: Squaring the Circle by Franck Boulègue (2021)
There is little doubt that the TV show Twin Peaks, the brainchild of David Lynch and Mark Frost, was a very special project. This was true for the original series (1990 – 1991) that consisted of two seasons and left millions of enthusiasts hunger for conclusions, as many open threads remained and in the show […]
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” […]