Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2014 -

Documentary film has been reinventing itself for several decades.  MacDonald (Hamilton College and Harvard) introduces the reader to filmmakers who have sought to redefine the shape and mission of documentary film in those years.  In 20 interviews, MacDonald explores these filmmakers' efforts to reform and refocus the genre.  His interviews are carefully arrangedboth in their order and in the way that he directs his questionsso as to reveal a history that reaches back to the 1970s.  His questions tease out the influence that filmmakers like Stan Brakhage, Peter Kubelka, James Benning, and Richard Rogers had on subsequent generations, especially those who passed through MIT and particularly Harvard.  In this sense, this volume completes work MacDonald began inAmerican Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary: The Cambridge Turn (CH, Nov'13, 51-1378).  MacDonald's mastery, developed in five previous interview collections and multiple other books, of the landscape of documentary and experimental film is evident: he gently shapes the material as he allows his participants space to speak revealingly of the practical and theoretical bases of documentary in this critical period.  A required resource for those interested in documentary or avant-garde film.Summing Up: Essential. All readers.

A deeply ambitious, richly detailed book, Fiery Cinema offers nothing less than an overview of the development and history of the Chinese film industry from its beginnings in the silent era to the end of WW II. Bao (film, media, and Chinese studies, Univ. of California, Berkeley) is not content to simply discuss the films themselves; she also considers theaters, posters, radio programs, newspaper advertisements, and other competing forms of media in early-20th-century China that created an entire cinematic world of representation and reception and resulted in the construction of mass audiences.  Bao examines how the films shaped, and at the same time reflected, Chinese culture at what might be termed the dawn of modernism.  She shows how nationalism, politics, and the birth of the Chinese star system created a wholly immersive world that allowed people to see themselves projected on the screen and at the same time questioned those images, particularly as the conflict with Japan deepened in the early 1940s.  Liberally illustrated with frame grabs, theater diagrams, publicity materials, and news photographs, this carefully researched bookabout a part of cinema history that deserves much greater explorationis a landmark study for understanding Chinese cinema.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.

Flicker: Your Brain on Movies is a remarkable book, one of the most original and intriguing inquiries into the cinematic process in recent memory.  Not a film scholar per se, Zacks (psychology and radiology, Washington Univ., St. Louis) is interested in how the movies workhow the brain processes the images one sees in rapid succession when one views a film; how persistence of vision makes the entire illusion of the cinema possible; how cuts work; how editing strategies fool the viewer; how time and space can be altered at will by filmmakers to meet their needs; how films trigger memories, emotions, and even violence in spectators; how 3-D works.  In short, he is interested in how the entire process of sensory overload that constitutes a film is perceived by the human brain.  Echoing C. W. Ceram's classicArchaeology of the Cinema (Eng. tr., 1965) and Geoffrey O'Brien's more recentThe Phantom Empire: Movies in the Mind of the 20th Century (CH, Feb'94, 31-3160), this brilliant, straightforward, accessible study examines both the mechanisms and the emotional and social impact of the cinema, delving into the science and mystery of the moving image and coming back with fascinating insights.Summing Up: Essential. All readers.

The first comprehensive scholarly study of films made in or about the African and Balkan colonies of Mussolini's fascist empire, this book is genuinely groundbreaking and exceptionally insightful.  Ben-Ghiat (New York Univ.) reconfigures understanding of Italian film history and illuminates both the dream of imperial domination that motivated Mussolini and his cohorts for more than 20 years and the ways in which the Italian film industry of the period was enmeshed in fascist dogma.  A balanced, judicious historian, she displays her wealth of archival knowledge and interpretive skills in a clear, straightforward narrative that proves utterly enthralling.  The first of the book's eight chapters provides the critical frame and major themes of the study, which include masculinity in empire films, spectatorship, and cinema as a technology of imperial conquest.  Subsequent chapters engage with specific films as well as broad issues.  In the last chapter, Ben-Ghiat provides a fascinating discussion of Roberto Rossellini, the "father of neorealist cinema," in terms of his fictionalized documentary work for the Italian Navy Cinema Center during the war.  In an epilogue, she investigates, among other important issues, the "closeting" of empire cinema in the postWW II era.  This masterful study opens wide the closet door, providing access to a wealth of cinematic culture and history.Summing Up: Essential. All readers

Written by established scholars, the carefully researched essays in this fine collection range in quality from very good to excellent and in topic from character types and plot motifs to the uses of sound, music, and visual stylistics.  Explored are unofficial female detection as a recurring motif; film noir as "fundamentally about gender and society"; theme music in conjunction with romance (e.g.,Out of the Past and The Blue Gardenia); sound in noir as "auditory spectacle"; Jerry Wald, Adrian Scott, and Mark Hellinger and their influence on noir production; the careers of blacklisted directors who fled the US in the 1950s to make careers in England (Joseph Losey) and France (Jules Dassin); plot patterns and visual motifs, as linked themes of "labor, leisure, and loyalty," in heist films of the 1950s (notably The Asphalt Jungle and The Killing).  In the final essay, Miklitsch (English and literature, Ohio Univ.) defends the canonical choice of Stranger on the Third Floor (1939) as the alpha noir film and Odds against Tomorrow(1959) as the omega film (or possibly the first neo-noir).  An invaluable resource for anyone interested in film noir.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

The election of Barack Obama in 2008 as the US's first African American president was a remarkable historic event.  In the euphoria of the moment certain pundits imagined that the US had entered a postracial age, and racism was over.  The deaths of Oscar Grant and Trayvon Martin soon shattered the myth of a new golden age in race relations.  The films that have emerged in the supposed postracial age of Obama show that the US is still haunted by the ghost of racism, and that the land is troubled by issues of class and corporate excess.  It is profoundly ironic that in an era that imagines we have transcended race the film industry producedDjango,12 Years aSlave,The Help,The Butler,andFruitvale Station.  Popular discontent with the great recession and the concentration of wealth in the hands of the 1 percent is reflected in futuristic films such asTheHunger Games.  Rebellion against tyranny can be inferred in the success ofRise of the Planet of the Apes.  Izzo (English, Shaw Univ.) has put together a superb, compelling collection of film criticism. A tour de force.Summing Up: Essential. All readers.

Armes (emer., Middlesex Univ., UK) has been a major film critic, theorist, and historian for decades, always turning out excellent work on a variety of film topics, with an emphasis on international cinema.  Prior publications includeAfrican Filmmaking: North and South of the Sahara(2006),Dictionary of African Filmmakers(2008), andArab Filmmaking of the Middle East (2010) as well as books on French cinema and British cinema.  From this exemplary scholar comes another excellent book, which is every bit as definitive, detailed, and authoritative as his other works.  Starting off with a section on Arab filmmakers, especially women directors, Armes globe hops through the cinema of Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco, Syria, Egypt, and numerous other Arab nations, exploring themes such as modes of production and the role of the state and private industry in film.  The author also offers detailed analyses of films, as well as career profiles of younger Arab directors, most of whom are completely unknown in the West.  Imbued with a spirit of constant discovery, superbly organized and even-handedly written,New Voices in Arab Cinema instantly becomes the go-to book on the subject and is an absolutely essential volume for any serious collection.Summing Up: Essential. All readers.

Nollywood Stars is a revelation.  It will introduce readers to one of the most significant global centers of film production, Nigeria, and to a film culture that is significantly different from that of Hollywood and so leads one to question the seminal institutions of filmmaking.  Though Tsika (Queens College, CUNY) focuses on the notion of stardom in Nollywood, the volume encapsulates so much more.  The author interrogates the use of technology in Nollywood film production; the relationship between corporate globalism (in particular the telecommunications industry) and Nollywood actors and actresses; the pirating of Western iconsBeyoncé, Rihanna, Lady Gagain Nigerian film production; and the Nollywood industry's lack, or one may argue discouragement, of child stardom.  Tsikas book is theoretical as well as explanatory.  He questions long-held assumptions, such as the inferiority of VHS as a technology and whether a globalized personality can really be pirated when it is already so pervasive.  Most significantly, he destroys Western preconceptions of African cultural production, particularly its relationship to a global economy.  This is an important work.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

In this excellent book, Jacobson (Univ. of Toronto) blends history and theory to create a landmark study of the very first film studiosEdison Studios, Georges Méliès's Star Film Company, and Pathé Frères, among others.  The author considers the aesthetics of creating and then shooting in a studio spacefor example, decisions made with respect to backgrounds and props, use of natural light to illuminate a complete artificial worldand how changing audience expectations forced the studios to embrace realism as the years passed.  From Thomas Edisons primitive experiments in a tar paper shack, a facility dubbed Black Maria that revolved on a pivot anchored in the ground to best catch the rays of the sun, to Mélièss exotic fantasies, which abandoned all pretense of realism in favor of special effects and spectacle, Jacobsons study is firmly anchored in factual detail.  But the author never misses an opportunity to discuss how decisions made by filmmakers during this era had long-ranging consequences for the studio system as a whole, setting a standard for cinematic non-realism that persists to the present day.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

Honoring the 100th anniversary of Technicolor, Layton and Pierce have written a groundbreaking history of its first 20 years.  Thoroughly researched in archival collectionsEastman Houses Technicolor Corporate Archive, Academy Library, New York Public Library, USC, UCLA, MITthe book documents the growth of Technicolor from a clumsy, two-color additive process (1917) to a sophisticated, three-color format (1935) that became one of the most famous motion picture trade names of all time.  The authors explain that the secret of the companys success lay, first, in its crucial decision to grow the process through four stages of development, what cofounder Daniel Comstock called a progressive step development, in which each technological stage built on the previous stage.  In addition Herbert, Technicolor's dynamic president, had the ability to assemble and maintain a group of extremely patient investors (Technicolor did not earn a profit until 1929).  This book combines first-rate corporate history with a detailed technological and financial account of the development of two-color cinematography in the 1920s.  Lavishly illustrated with 428 images (some 260 of them in color), this volume could serve as a coffee-table book.  But it is alsothe definitive history of Technicolor.Summing Up: Essential. All readers.

Walker (film studies, Salisbury Univ.) builds on recent scholarly attention to film music and sound by critics and academics such as Claudia Gorbman; Kathryn Kalinak; Rick Altman; and, particularly, James Buhler, David Neumeyer, and Rob Deemer (authors ofHearing the Movies, 2010).  She effectively synthesizes a range of theoretical approaches with the study of film sound.  Using the rubrics of genre studies, postcolonialism, feminism, psychoanalysis, and queer theory, the author responds to the increasing emphasis on sound tracks within film scholarship and university curricula with a multidisciplinary analysis.  Though the book is geared toward those already familiar with some of the terminology and methodology of recent scholarship, Walker's writing style is accessible, so anyone interested in challenging the visual chauvinism of much other scholarship (Walker quoting Kalinak) will find this study engaging and illuminating.  In addition to contextualizing and synthesizing her analysis theoretically, Walker situates her primary textsThe Searchers,Dead Man,Rabbit-Proof Fence,Ten Canoes,To Have and Have Not,The Piano,Bigger Than Life,Shutter Island,Rebecca, andHeavenly Creaturesin terms of both history and the industry.  This expertly researched book is a must read for those interested in film studies.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.

In this utterly compelling book, Herbert (screen arts and cultures, Univ. of Michigan) outlines the rise and fall of the numerous video stores that encouraged videocassette and DVD culture, making films accessible to millions of viewers who otherwise would never have had the chance to see them.  More than that, Herbert mourns the passing of the video store as a shared community space where renters could shop at their leisure, make decisions without consulting a computer database, and interact with one another by offering personal suggestions, thus creating a cinephilic culture.  All of that is gone now, replaced by the relentless assault ofAmazonandNetflix, whose computer-created suggestions actually narrow the publics access to films.  And print movie guides, such asLeonard Maltins Movie Guide (first published in 1969), have been replaced by Col Needhams onlineInternetMovie Database(launched in 1990).  Herbert's impassioned, sad, angry, superbly researched, deeply thoughtful book demonstrates conclusively that when viewers lost video rental stores, they lost a large measure of freedom of choice in film viewing.  Written in a clear, clean, accessible style, this is a masterful study of a cultural moment whose time has come and gone.Summing Up: Essential. All readers.