There are many different approaches to the analysis of film noir, since film studies today deal with almost any facet, be it technical, stylistic or director specific. Dennis Broe, however, has the emphasis on the social-cultural and most of all the working-class aspects of these films. He locates the origins of film noir to a […]
The Bronze Age of DC Comics by Paul Levitz (2015)
The third volume of the DC chronicles is out and shows the company’s changing face and politics in the years 1970-1984. As the Golden Age and the Silver Age were focused on the development of DC comics until the year 1970, the current edition is labeled the “Bronze Age“ and demonstrates how the comic artists […]
Connecting Detectives: The Influence of 19th Century Sleuth Fiction… by Lewis D. Moore (2015)
Not only in detective fiction the issue of motive and “just how” things were finally done is of interest, the same questions (and more like them) are relevant in the simple analysis of literary traditions in which the authors of that fiction could benefit from. Lewis Moore tries to find complementary, similar behavior and continuing […]
Rock ‘N’ Film. Cinema’s Dance With Popular Music by David E. James (2016)
While already in the 1940s the Hollywood musical artistically integrated film, acting, dancing and singing, it also had another very important feature. “With sound, the movies had become the major means of disseminating popular songs, both those composed for Broadway musicals that were subsequently filmed and those written by the studio’s own teams of lyricists.” […]
Columbia Noir: A Complete Filmography, 1940-1962 by Gene Blottner (2015)
Columbia Pictures, today a part of Sony Pictures Entertainment, has released literally tons of movies. Of those, Gene Blottner lists a selection of altogether 169 pictures, and they are all associated with film noir in one way or another, while they are from the genres of Westerns, science-fiction, drama, detective story, comedy or horror movie. […]
Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music by Barry Mazor (2015)
This very musical biography is the classical blueprint for a music biopic or future TV series, although this has not yet been realized by the film industry. Mazor’s extensive research project on music marketer and Okeh Records producer Ralph Peer is the exciting story of a young clerk working both in shipping and in his […]
Mitchum, Mexico and the Good Neighbours Era by Liam White (2014)
Luckily, there are a great number of famous noir films, and many good actors that left their mark on the whole genre. Nevertheless, author White approaches those films mainly as plain detective movies and drama, very much the way they were labeled when they came out. In his opinion there are certain features that can […]
Anxiety Muted. American Film Music … by Stanley C. Pelkey and Anthony Bushard (eds.) (2015)
In this volume the thirteen contributors research how in audiovisual media of the 1950s and 1960s (TV and cinema), the modern anxieties about conformity, urbanization, gender and family were represented audibly, that is, in sound of any kind or the lack thereof. This could be the soundtrack, music used in the media, but also all […]
Birth of an Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of American Animation by Nicholas Sammond (2...
The mere mention of the word ”minstrelsy“ brings back numerous unpleasant, racist, stereotypical and humiliating issues of the past. It is interesting to find out then, that many of the most popular cartoon characters were actually modeled on or even continued the line of minstrelsy characters: the most popular would be Walt Disney’s (early) Mickey […]