Merely six months after the last XXL version of the Marvel Comics Library edition – featuring Spiderman – arrived, Taschen is out to surprise us again. This time with an equally massive edition of the most powerful superheroes that joined forces and became THE AVENGERS. Again, the first 20 (!) comic books that feature the […]
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Category: B. R. PopCulture
To Boldly Stay: Essays on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine by Sherry Ginn and Michael G. Cornelius (eds.) ...
When in 1993 the first episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9) aired, it was the beginning of a very unusual show, believed by many Star Trek fans to be the best window into the Federation cosmos. After 176 episodes, set in 2369-2375 and as such happening almost simultaneously to the timelines of Star […]
Rock’n’Roll Plays Itself: A Screen History by John Scanlan (2022)
When in the mid-1950s rock’n’roll as both commercial force and incarnation of teenage style invaded the charts and cinema screens, the new category was a bit too much for most common and well-aged (British and American) entertainment shows and representations on screen. In the early days, neither TV nor the film industry would grasp the […]
The Women of Hammer Horror: A Biographical Dictionary and Filmography by Robert Michael Cotter (2021...
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 […]
Rural Rhythm: The Story of Old-Time Country Music in 78 Records by Tony Russell (2021)
The label “Old-Time Music” refers to American-made music, instrumental and with vocals, that was performed nationwide in public and privately from roughly the early 1800s until the early 1940s, although it became mostly a regional style in the early 20th century. Those (basically all white) musical groups usually featured string instruments such as mandolins, banjos, […]
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 […]