As the most successful movie franchise in history, Star Wars has generated millions of fans worldwide, not to mention the billions of dollar revenue it created already. Soon after the first movie release, critics and academics began their study of the background, intentions and inspirations of the saga. This project until today remains mostly incomplete, […]
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Tag: Cold War
Film Noir and Los Angeles: Urban History and the Dark Imaginary by Sean W. Maher (2022)
Movies of the film noir genre, shot in the US, usually had two favorite locations when it came to large cities and a setting that would breathe the air of crime, provide sinister plots, gunmen and desperate main characters: the pictures were either set in New York City or Los Angeles. As with Los Angeles, […]
Space Exploration on Film by Paul Meehan (2022)
With science-fiction movies as part of everyday film culture as stream, DVD or in theaters today, we may forget the humble beginnings of the genre, and with respect to countless technical obstacles of space missions could wonder how films, some almost a century ago, confronted these problems in their times. Paul Meehan’s title stresses “science […]
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 […]
Deconstructing Dr. Strangelove: The Secret History of Nuclear War Films by Sean M. Maloney (2020)
The Cold War, with all of its threats and visions of mass destruction and apocalyptic scenarios appears far away these days. However, when the menace of nuclear weapons that possibly would be fired if wrong decisions were made by a few incompetent men in the military back in the 1960s, stories, novels and mostly movies […]
Pulp Empire: The Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism by Paul S. Hirsch (2021)
Comic books as media today would not raise much attention if they featured heavy use of violence or representations of vigilantes who take the law into their own hands. On the contrary, the media now is deeply absorbed into the popular canon of the US. “The comic book, whether in the form of a collectible […]
Demographic Angst: Cultural Narratives and American Films of the 1950s by Alan Nadel (2017)
Alan Nadel, probably best known for his expert writings on the Atomic Age and American everyday life in the 1950s, has come up with another study of that period. A time when not just the permanent fears of a hot war or Soviet invasion were present, but also strange (or possibly communist) activities from your […]
Monsters in the Machine: Science Fiction Film and the Militarization of America … by Steffen Hantke
The 1950s and 1960s were the decades when science-fiction movies boomed and during that time not so much technology, but disgust, shock, fear, basically all aspects of horror and horror movies, were used instead to give science fiction movies a certain direction by presenting miniature or giant creatures, mutants and every kind or harrowing creature […]
Invasion USA: Anti-Communist Movies of the 1950s and 1960s by David J. Hogan (2017)
With motion pictures as one of the most powerful instruments to display the enemies’ (i.e. the USSR’s) efforts to destroy the trust of the American people in their country in the mid-1950s, a number of movies by US studios were produced. The plots centered mostly around Soviet spies, communist agents or Americans, who had lost […]