The Cinema of Béla Tarr: The Circle Closes (Directors' Cuts)

The Cinema of Béla Tarr is a critical analysis of the work of Hungary's most prominent and internationally best known film director, written by a scholar who has followed Bela Tarr's career through a close personal and professional relationship for more than twenty-five years. András Bálint Kovács traces the development of Tarr's themes, characters, and style, showing that almost all of his major stylistic and narrative innovations were already present in his early films and that through a conscious and meticulous recombination of and experimentation with these elements, Tarr arrived at his unique style. The significance of these films is that, beyond their aesthetic and historical value, they provide the most powerful vision of an entire region and its historical situation. Tarr's films express, in their universalistic language, the shared feelings of millions of Eastern Europeans.

The Road Movie: In Search of Meaning (Short Cuts)

Biographies & Memoirs

Archer, Neil

Arts & Literature

Wallflower Press

Though often seen as one of America's native cinematic genres, the road movie has lent itself to diverse international contexts and inspired a host of filmmakers. As analyzed in this study, from its most familiar origins in Hollywood the road movie has become a global film practice, whether as a vehicle for exploring the relationship between various national contexts and American cinema, as a means of narrating different national and continental histories, or as a form of individual filmmaking expression. Beginning with key films from Depression-era Hollywood and the New Hollywood of the late 1960s and then considering its wider effect on world cinemas, this volume maps the development and adaptability of an enduring genre, studying iconic films along the way.

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

Twenty-First-Century Hollywood looks into the contexts of studio film production in the new century in order to understand what shapes the style and content of present-day cinema. In an era dominated in box-office terms by the franchise and the family film, this book combines close textual readings and industrial analysis, illustrating why these kinds of movies are favored in the contemporary climate by producers and audiences alike. Neil Archer critically explores the narrative and aesthetic strategies at work in Hollywood’s most high-profile films, from Harry Potter, to Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, to The Lego Movie. Along the way, the book answers some often unexpected questions: Why is Hollywood nervous about flying saucers? Why might the cinematic auteur be Hollywood’s savior? And why are the most grown-up movies those made for children? As this study shows, like the films themselves, the answers to these questions are often complex and surprising.

Twenty-First-Century Hollywood: Rebooting the System (Short Cuts)

This in-depth study of one of the twenty-first century’s most acclaimed films, The Social Network: Youth Film 2.0 considers the contribution of David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s film to the understanding of ‘youth’ in a contemporary, digital age. 
The book starts by situating The Social Network within the contexts of ‘youth film’, arguing that it challenges and reshapes the boundaries of this genre by rethinking the notion of ‘youth’ itself in the present century. It goes on to consider in detail the aesthetics at work in the film, arguing for its critical and reflexive use of an ‘accelerated’ audio-visual style, in order to capture both the new visual regimes of the personal computer era, and the ethical and intellectual ambiguities of Facebook itself as a creation. Finally, it locates the film within the broader visual styles and fashion codes of a late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century consumer culture that incorporates and commodifies rebellion and dissent: qualities that underpinned Facebook’s emerging, paradoxical identity as at once the epitome of ‘hacker’ culture and also a multi-billion-dollar global company. 
Reframing the meaning of youth cinema, this volume in the Cinema and Youth Culture series is ideal for students, researchers and scholars of cinema studies, youth culture and digital cultures.

The Social Network: Youth Film 2.0 (Cinema and Youth Cultures)

Routledge

The Social Network (Cinema and Youth Cultures)

By the power of Greyskull! In their second big-screen collaboration after Shaun of the Dead (2004), with Hot Fuzz (2007) director and co-writer Edgar Wright and co-writer and star Simon Pegg took aim at the conventions of the Hollywood action movie, transplanting gratuitous slo-mo action sequences into the English village supermarket and local pub. In this first critical study of arguably the most influential British film-makers to emerge this century, Neil Archer considers to what extent a modestly funded film such as this can be considered 'British' at all, given its international success and distribution by an American studio, and how far that success depends upon what he calls its 'cultural specificity'. He considers the film as a parody of the action movie genre, and discusses exactly how parody works – not just in relation to the conventions of the action film but also in the depiction of English space. Exactly what and who is Hot Fuzz poking fun at?

Studying Hot Fuzz (Studying Films)

Liverpool University Press

Studying Hot Fuzz

Auteur

At the time of its release in 2007, The Bourne Ultimatum was described by one writer as the blockbuster it was 'okay to like'. What is it about this third entry in a Hollywood action franchise that satisfied both the cognoscenti and mass audiences? In Studying The Bourne Ultimatum, Neil Archer considers the film's status as "a serious blockbuster'"; compares rise of Jason Bourne in relation to the decline of another J.B. – James Bond; analyzes how the dynamics of the action thriller are used to depict the covert operations of US intelligence forces across the world; looks closely at the action sequences, focusing on their style and technological innovation; and considers the film's questioning of responsibility and culpability, asking whether – against the backdrop of the "War on Terror"– it plays as a critique of American foreign policy, but also as a redemption for its soldiers.

Studying The Bourne Ultimatum (Studying Films)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Archer, Neil. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Archer, Neil

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Archer, Neil. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Road Movie: In Search of Meaning (Short Cuts)

The Road Movie: In Search of Meaning (Short Cuts)

Twenty-First-Century Hollywood: Rebooting the System (Short Cuts)

The Social Network: Youth Film 2.0 (Cinema and Youth Cultures)

The Social Network (Cinema and Youth Cultures)

Studying Hot Fuzz (Studying Films)

Studying Hot Fuzz

Studying The Bourne Ultimatum (Studying Films)