Explore This Month's E-Resources - School of Film and Television: March 2024

Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Written by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

Hail, Caesar! is the story of Eddie Mannix, tireless pursuer of the interests of fictional Capitol Pictures, circa 1951. He is the ultimate studio fixer and – since the studio is his world – the ultimate earthly one. There is no star scandal he cannot cover up, no studio misstep he cannot repair, no sin he cannot make right. His powers are tested, though, when production on the studio's most expensive picture ever – biblical epic Hail, Caesar! – is halted by the kidnapping of its star. The kidnappers are a mysterious gaggle seeking not just ransom but the destruction of everything Eddie Mannix lives for, and everything he lives by.

by Jeremi Szaniawski (ed)

Taking at its starting point the idea that Kubrick’s cinema has constituted an intellectual, cerebral, and philosophical maze in which many filmmakers (as well as thinkers and a substantial fringe of the general public) have gotten lost at one point or another, this collection looks at the legacy of Kubrick’s films in the 21st century.

The main avenues investigated are as follows: a look at Kubrick’s influence on his most illustrious followers (Paul Thomas Anderson, the Coen Brothers, Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott, and Lars von Trier, to name a few); Kubrick in critical reception; Kubrick in stylistic (camera movements, set designs, music), thematic (artificial intelligence, new frontiers— large and small), aesthetic (the question of genre, pastiche, stereoscopy) and political terms (paranoia, democracy and secret societies, conspiracy theories).

The contributions coalesce around the concept of a Kubrickian substrate, rich and complex, which permeates our Western cultural landscape very much to this day, informing and sometimes announcing/reflecting it in twisted ways, 21 years after the director’s death.

by Gregory Frame and Nathan Abrams (eds)

As a period of film history, The American New Wave (ordinarily understood as beginning in 1967 and ending in 1980) remains a preoccupation for scholars and audiences alike. In traditional accounts, it is considered to be bookended by two periods of conservatism, and viewed as a (brief) period of explosive creativity within the Hollywood system. From Bonnie and Clyde to Heaven’s Gate, it produced films that continue to be watched, discussed, analysed and poured over.

It has, however, also become rigidly defined as a cinema of director-auteurs who made a number of aesthetically and politically significant films. This has led to marginalization and exclusion of many important artists and filmmakers, as well as a temporal rigidity about what and who is considered part of the ‘New Wave proper’. This collection seeks to reinvigorate debate around this area of film history. It also looks in part to demonstrate the legacy of aesthetic experimentation and political radicalism after 1980 as part of the ‘legacy’ of the New Wave. Thanks to important new work that questions received scholarly wisdom, reveals previously marginalised filmmakers (and the films they made), considers new genres, personnel, and films under the banner of ‘New Wave, New Hollywood’, and reevaluates the traditional approaches and perspectives on the films that have enjoyed most critical attention, New Wave, New Hollywood: Reassessment, Recovery, Legacy looks to begin a new discussion about Hollywood cinema after 1967.

Directed by Christopher Nolan
Written by Christopher Nolan

Dunkirk dramatizes one of the momentous events of the twentieth-century – the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk, telling the tale by land, sea, and sky. The film opens as hundreds of thousands of British and Allied troops are surrounded by enemy forces. Trapped on the beach with their backs to the sea, they face an impossible situation as the enemy closes in.

by Barry Keith Grant

In 100 American Horror Films, Barry Keith Grant presents entries on 100 films from one of American cinema's longest-standing, most diverse and most popular genres, representing its rich history from the silent era - D.W. Griffith's The Avenging Conscience of 1915 - to contemporary productions - Jordan Peele's 2017 Get Out.

In his introduction, Grant provides an overview of the genre’s history, a context for the films addressed in the individual entries, and discusses the specific relations between American culture and horror. All of the entries are informed by the question of what makes the specific film being discussed a horror film, the importance of its place within the history of the genre, and, where relevant, the film is also contextualized within specifically American culture and history. Each entry also considers the film’s most salient textual features, provides important insight into its production, and offers both established and original critical insight and interpretation.

The 100 films selected for inclusion represent the broadest historical range, and are drawn from every decade of American film-making, movies from major and minor studios, examples of the different types or subgenres of horror, such as psychological thriller, monster terror, gothic horror, home invasion, torture porn, and parody, as well as the different types of horror monsters, including werewolves, vampires, zombies, mummies, mutants, ghosts, and serial killers.