Scorsese’s Alibis? Scorsese’s Men: Melancholia and the Mob by Mark Nicholls Tim Groves October 2004 Book Reviews Male melancholy, according to Adrian Martin, is one of those places where cinema has a rendezvous with its destiny. Perhaps this is why cinephiles oft...
The Outsider Auteur? Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris by Ginette Vincendeau Adrian Danks July 2004 Book Reviews In the opening pages of the aptly titled Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris, Ginette Vincendeau discusses the photograph of Melville that grac...
Looking for a Common Ground: Cinema of the Other Europe: The Industry and Artistry of East Central European Film by Dina Iordanova Ewa Mazierska July 2004 Book Reviews The last decade saw an increasing number of publications devoted to the cinemas of the ex-Soviet Bloc. However, most of these concentrated either on a...
Skimming the Surface: Walkabout by Louis Nowra Dan Edwards July 2004 Book Reviews The Australian Screen Classics series provides an invaluable space for the examination, celebration and critique of our national film heritage. Like t...
Can Theory See the City? Screening the City edited by Tony Fitzmaurice and Mark Shiel Bill Stamets July 2004 Book Reviews Theorising the city and cinema is an irresistible project for academics in many disciplines. In the 1997 collection of essays The Cinematic City, edit...
A City Under the Influence: The Place of the Audience: Cultural Geographies of Film Consumption by Mark Jancovich and Lucy Faire with Sarah Stubbings Maria Walsh July 2004 Book Reviews The notion of “place” in The Place of the Audience: Cultural Geographies of Film Consumption revolves around two sites, the architectural site of film...
From Leotards to Lyotard: Pandora’s Box: Essays in Film Theory by Barbara Creed Tara Brabazon July 2004 Book Reviews Most of the time, I am extremely glad to have completed postgraduate degrees in the 1990s. It was certainly a strange time. Jane Fonda's leotards were...
For Criticism (Again): Movie Love in the Fifties by James Harvey William D. Routt July 2004 Book Reviews See the bottom of the page for a list of all films mentioned in this review. This is a terrific book. No, it is more than that. It is one of the be...
Against Cinephiliphobia: Movie Mutations: The Changing Face of World Cinephilia edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum and Adrian Martin Benjamin Halligan July 2004 Book Reviews The disappointment of Peter Cowie's recent Revolution! The Explosion of World Cinema in the '60s (1) is in the failure of the book to capture the evol...
To Each Their Own: Multiple Modernities: Cinemas and Popular Media in Transcultural East Asia edited by Jenny Kwok Wah Lau Brian Hu July 2004 Book Reviews The blanket terms “Asian cinema” and “East Asian cinema” tend to elide the distinctive ways individual nations, regions, and cities have represented t...
Energy Unleashed: Leos Carax by Fergus Daly and Garin Dowd Tony McKibbin April 2004 Book Reviews Fergus Daly and Garin Dowd's book is on the one hand a study of Leos Carax's work; on the other an attempt, if you like, to make British criticism mor...
A Science of Pleasure: Screen Couple Chemistry: The Power of 2 by Martha P. Nochimson Lesley Chow April 2004 Book Reviews The unique excitement of this book is in the way it dares to apply science and truth to the watching of films. Film studies has never had much use for...
The Mirror of Memory: African Film and the Question of Criticism Niels Buch-Jepsen April 2004 Book Reviews Internationally, African film has long been considered an “exotic dish that can only be ordered as a side order and not the main course” (Haile Gerima...
Film Theory in Translation: Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes edited by Chris Berry Linda Rui Feng April 2004 Book Reviews The compiler of any volume of critical essays on Chinese films will inevitably encounter a number of challenges. For one thing, there is the question ...
Chaos and Control: The Cinema of Emir Kusturica: Notes from the Underground by Goran Gocic Tony McKibbin April 2004 Book Reviews Some filmmakers' work possess such vitality the films have the effect of energising or frazzling the viewer. This is often because the world created h...
From London to Xanadu: Dickens and the Dream of Cinema by Grahame Smith Ken Mogg April 2004 Book Reviews When young Pip, the would-be hero of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations (1862), first arrives in London, he seeks out the address of Jaggers the law...
An Endless Number of Great Deeds: Film Front Weimar: Representations of the First World War in German Films of the Weimar Period (1919-1933) by Bernadette Kester Jay Weissberg April 2004 Book Reviews As a concept, this war will surely only ever be portrayed in the arts as a time-dictated, great and insanely bloody event… (1) – Gerrit Engelke As t...
Japanese Documentary Film: The Meiji Era Through Hiroshima by Abe Mark Nornes Freda Freiberg February 2004 Book Reviews (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003) Film scholars have rightly become sceptical about the value of books published under the imprint...
Monte Hellman: His Life and Films by Brad Stevens Noel King February 2004 Book Reviews (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2002) What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author...
Soundscape: The School of Sound Lectures 1998-2001 edited by Larry Sider, Diane Freeman, and Jerry Sider Jeff Smith February 2004 Book Reviews (London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2003) In 1998, Jerry Sider and Diane Freeman founded the School of Sound in an effort to draw scholarly and...
Underground USA: Filmmaking Beyond the Hollywood Canon edited by Xavier Mendik and Steven Jay Schneider Brian L. Frye February 2004 Book Reviews (London: Wallflower Press, 2002) The non-obviousness requirement was once the bête noire of patent law. Many a brilliant invention looks quite obvi...
Film in South East Asia: Views from the Region edited by David Hanan James Brown February 2004 Book Reviews (Hanoi: SEAPAVAA, 2001) Given the paucity of English language literature regarding South East Asian cinema, this rather erratic anthology contribut...
Kung Fu Cult Masters – From Bruce Lee To Crouching Tiger by Leon Hunt Peter Gravestock December 2003 Book Reviews (London: Wallflower Press, 2003) When film academics direct their attention to the martial arts film, the tone of their writing often becomes wistf...
The Matrix of Visual Culture – Working with Deleuze in Film Theory by Patricia Pisters Patricia MacCormack December 2003 Book Reviews (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003) The premise of this book positions it within a disturbing paradigm shift in current academic and philos...
A City of Sadness by Bérénice Reynaud Stephen Teo December 2003 Book Reviews (London: British Film Institute, 2002) Bérénice Reynaud's study of Hou Hsiao-hsien's A City of Sadness is a welcome addition to the BFI's “Modern C...
The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive by Mary Ann Doane Meredith Morse December 2003 Book Reviews (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 2002) The achievement of modernity's temporality, as exemplified by the development o...
Film Factories?: A Review of Genre and Contemporary Hollywood edited by Steve Neale Robert Briggs December 2003 Book Reviews What is a "genre", anyway? This review essay asks whether current film scholarship has gone too far in focusing on questions of political economy at the expense of aesthetics.
Special Effects: Still in Search of Wonder by Michele Pierson John McGowan-Hartmann October 2003 Book Reviews (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002) In the Wachowski brothers' latest Matrix instalment, The Matrix Reloaded (2003), a featured scene prese...
Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film by Giuliana Bruno Maria Walsh October 2003 Book Reviews (New York: Verso, 2002) In Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film, Giuliana Bruno wanders through the "field screens" of cinemat...
Land of a Thousand Balconies: Discoveries and Confessions of a B-Movie Archaeologist by Jack Stevenson Jim Knox October 2003 Book Reviews (Manchester: Headpress/Critical Visions, 2003) Jack Stevenson's work as a writer and curator will already be familiar to many Senses of Cinema read...
Confessions of a Film Hater Dan Harper October 2003 Book Reviews David Thomson's film criticism continues to incite passion and debate. Harper takes a chilly view of the latest edition of his New Biographical Dictionary of Film...
Speed and Light: David Thomson on Film Lesley Chow October 2003 Book Reviews ...but this second assessment argues that despite his foibles, Thomson remains unrivalled as a describer of the film-viewing experience.
Cinema of Interruptions: Action Genres in Contemporary Indian Cinema by Lalitha Gopalan Megan Carrigy October 2003 Book Reviews (London: British Film Institute, 2002) Lalitha Gopalan's introduction begins with a fine proposal: that the cinema proposes to us. This opening pro...
National Identity on the Road: A Review of The Mad Max Movies by Adrian Martin Harriet Margolis October 2003 Book Reviews (Strawberry Hills: Currency Press & Canberra: ScreenSound Australia, 2003) Currency Press and ScreenSound are to be commended for publishing th...
Revolving Worlds: Availing Postcolonial Renditions in East-West Encounters – Franco-Asian Cinema and Literature by Sylvie Blum-Reid Elizabeth Wright October 2003 Book Reviews (London: Wallflower, 2003) East-West Encounters – Franco-Asian cinema and literature saliently delivers a thorough reading of Franco-Asian filmic a...
Visconti Revisited Take 2: Luchino Visconti by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith Benjamin Halligan July 2003 Book Reviews (Third edition, London: BFI, 2003) The received wisdom on Luchino Visconti involves citing his apparently contradictory nature as the basis for the...
