James Phillips's Sternberg and Dietrich: The Phenomenology of Spectacle reappraises the cinematic collaboration between the Austrian-American filmmaker Josef von Sternberg (1894-1969) and the German-American actor Marlene Dietrich (1901-92). Considered by his contemporaries one of the most significant directors of interwar Hollywood, Sternberg made seven films with Dietrich that helped establish her as a style icon and star and entrenched his own reputation for extravagance and aesthetic spectacle. These films enriched the technical repertoire of the industry, challenged the sexual mores of the times and notoriously tried the patience of management at Paramount Studios. Sternberg and Dietrich: The Phenomenology of Spectacle demonstrates how under Sternberg's direction Paramount's sound stages became laboratories for novel thought experiments. Analysing in depth the last four films on which Sternberg and Dietrich worked together, Phillips reconstructs the "cinematic philosophy" that Sternberg claimed for himself in his autobiography and for whose fullest expression Dietrich was indispensable. This book makes a case for the originality and perceptiveness with which these films treat such issues as the nature of trust, the status of appearance, the standing of women, the ethics and politics of the image, and the relationship between cinema and the world. Sternberg and Dietrich: The Phenomenology of Spectacle reveals that more is at stake in these films than the showcasing of a new star and the confectionery of glamour: Dietrich emerges here as a woman who is at ease in the world without being at home in it, an image of autonomy whose critical potential has yet to be realized, let alone exhausted.

Sternberg and Dietrich: The Phenomenology of Spectacle

Biographies & Memoirs

Phillips, James

Arts & Literature

Oxford University Press

A remarkable new play about Cold-War betrayal and the quest for justice
 1953. In McCarthy's America, Jakob and Esther Rubenstein are betrayed and punished for an act of industrial espionage. Could this be the greatest miscarriage of justice of the twentieth century?1975. New York. Matthew Maddison meets Anna Levi in front of an art gallery photograph of Jakob and Esther sharing one final kiss before they part. Young, radical and falling in love, together they seek justice for the past.Inspired by a true story, The Rubenstein Kiss explores the mysterious corridors of history to reveal the anguish of a family and a quest for atonement.Publication coincides with the play's premiere at London's Hampstead Theatre on 17 November 2005.'a commendably assured first play ... vividly captures the interlocking nature of sexual and ideological passion' Guardian'This is a bracingly ambitious piece, encompassing the tension between personal and political morality, between idealism and pragmatism, and the power of the past to shape individuals. Astutely and compassionately, Phillips explores each bend in the road that led to the Rubensteins' deaths ... A stimulating debut work of real scope.' The Times

The Rubenstein Kiss (Modern Plays)

Literature & Fiction

Dramas & Plays

Methuen Drama

Heidegger's Volk: Between National Socialism and Poetry (Cultural Memory in the Present)

In 1933 the philosopher Martin Heidegger declared his allegiance to Hitler. Ever since, scholars have asked to what extent his work is implicated in Nazism. To address this question properly involves neither conflating Nazism and the continuing philosophical project that is Heidegger's legacy, nor absolving Heidegger and, in the process, turning a deaf ear to what he himself called the philosophical motivations for his political engagement. It is important to establish the terms on which Heidegger aligned himself with National Socialism. On the basis of an untimely but by no means unprecedented understanding of the mission of the German people, the philosopher first joined but then also criticized the movement. An exposition of Heidegger's conception of Volk hence can and must treat its merits and deficiencies as a response to the enduring impasse in contemporary political philosophy of the dilemma between liberalism and authoritarianism.

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Stanford University Press

In 1933 the philosopher Martin Heidegger declared his allegiance to Hitler. Ever since, scholars have asked to what extent his work is implicated in Nazism. To address this question properly involves neither conflating Nazism and the continuing philosophical project that is Heidegger's legacy, nor absolving Heidegger and, in the process, turning a deaf ear to what he himself called the philosophical motivations for his political engagement. It is important to establish the terms on which Heidegger aligned himself with National Socialism. On the basis of an untimely but by no means unprecedented understanding of the mission of the German people, the philosopher first joined but then also criticized the movement. An exposition of Heidegger's conception of Volk hence can and must treat its merits and deficiencies as a response to the enduring impasse in contemporary political philosophy of the dilemma between liberalism and authoritarianism.

The Equivocation of Reason: Kleist Reading Kant asks how the literary works of the German writer Heinrich von Kleist might be considered a critique and elaboration of Kantian philosophy. In 1801, the twenty-three-year-old Kleist, attributing his loss of confidence in our knowledge of the world to his reading of Kant, turned from science to literature. Kleist ignored Kant's apology of the sciences to focus on the philosopher's doctrine of the unknowability of things in themselves. From that point on, Kleist's writings relate confrontations with points of hermeneutic resistance. Truth is no longer that which the sciences establish; only the disappointment of every interpretation attests to the continued sway of truth. Though he adheres to Kant's definition of Reason as the faculty that addresses things in themselves, Kleist sees no need for its critique and discipline in the name of the reasonableness (prudence and common sense) of the experience of the natural sciences. Setting transcendental Reason at odds with empirical reasonableness, Kleist releases Kant's ethics and doctrine of the sublime from the moderating pull of their examples.

The Equivocation of Reason: Kleist Reading Kant

History

A caution to Great Britain and her colonies

BENEZET, ANTHONY

Europe

Nabu Press

What CATCH 22 was to the insanity of war, TEECH is to the academic lunacy rampant in (and on behalf of!) today's American school systems.Satire is alive and well in James Phillips's riotous, irreverent, harshly-comic, and all too often tragically-true novel starring the 'Yossarian' of the academic world, substitute teacher Gregorian Chant. Encountering bizarre bureaucratic disasters and the administrators, academicians, and politicians who create them, Gregory Chant is anti-hero guide to the ludicrous behavior and manipulative politics now prevalent throughout American education.An outstanding teacher in his own right, but beginning to suspect he has become the greatest lunatic of them all, Gregory stumbles upon a plot to undermine the entire educational process in America - and, in turn, destroy OUR children. But if he's as crazy as everyone else, can he do anything about it?If you enjoy 'going back to basics' madness and mayhem and don't mind a few surprising ironies and idiocies along the way, TEECH is your cup of satire.

Teech

Contemporary

AuthorHouse

You look otherworldly. Like all my girls. This will make you a queen. Like years ago and people wore clothes like weapons, like weapons against poor people, because even is you were hungry how could you raise your fist against what looked like a god? But I can make things that are weapons against day to day stuff.A girl has watched McQueen's Mayfair house for eleven consecutive days. Tonight, she climbs down from her watching tree and breaks into his house, to steal a dress, to become someone special. He catches her, but, instead of calling the police, they embark together on a journey through London and into his heart. The play captures the fairy-story landscape of McQueen's mind - the landscape seen in his immortal shows - where, with a dress, an urchin can become an Amazon and where beauty might just help us survive the night. McQueen is a journey into the visionary imagination and dark dream world of Alexander McQueen, fashion's greatest contemporary artist.James Phillips's play received its world premiere at St James Theatre, London, on 12 May 2015.

McQueen: or Lee and Beauty (Modern Plays)

Arts & Photography

Graphic Design

Wolley is a bookworm who loves reading at his local library with his best friend Wilma the bookworm. When a young bookworm visits the library for the first time, Wolley learns to help him find the perfect book.

Wolley the Bookworm

Children's Books

Early Learning

Proving Press

Indian Cooking

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Regional & International

Bizzybee Publishing

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Books by Phillips, James