The Girls in the Back Room: Looking at the Lesbian Bar by Kelly Hankin Gaye Naismith October 2002 Book Reviews (Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002) This book explores the representation of lesbian bars across various genres of film and i...
Moved By Animation – Animation: Genre and Authorship by Paul Wells Bill Schaffer July 2002 Book Reviews (London: Wallflower, 2002) As Chuck Jones reminds us on the back cover of Norman Klein's Seven Minutes (for my money, still the best book on the ar...
Left in the Dark: Film Reviews and Essays, 1988-2001 by Stuart Klawans Julien Lapointe July 2002 Book Reviews (Nation Books/Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002) Tension marks the allure of superior criticism – ideally, there should be a conflict between text and su...
The Film Minister – Goebbels and the Cinema in the ‘Third Reich’ by Felix Moeller Jonathan Dawson July 2002 Book Reviews (Stuttgart/London: Edition Axel Menges, 2000) “It is my ultimate goal to establish the German film as the dominant cultural world power.” - Joseph G...
For the Sake of Argument: Responding to Jake Wilson Sylvia Lawson July 2002 Book Reviews I write to thank Senses of Cinema and Jake Wilson for giving my current book, How Simone de Beauvoir Died in Australia, the kind of serious and ex...
Ivan the Terrible by Yuri Tsivian (BFI Classics, 2002); October by Richard Taylor (BFI Classics, 2002) Helen Grace July 2002 Book Reviews In the concluding paragraph of Citizen Kane (BFI Classics, 1992), Laura Mulvey argues that this film has, built into its structure, the need to think ...
Unpacking Clothes: A Review of Costume and Cinema: Dress Codes in Popular Film by Sarah Street Tamar Jeffers July 2002 Book Reviews It is only shallow people who fail to judge by appearances. - Oscar Wilde Wilde's epigram is apt when considering Sarah Street's Costume and cinema ...
Atom Egoyan by Carole Desbarats, Jacinto Lageira, Danièle Rivière, Paul Virilio Maria San Filippo May 2002 Book Reviews It seems nothing short of extraordinary that no book-length study of Atom Egoyan by English-language scholars has been published to date. Exhibit A: F...
A Hundred Years of Japanese Film: A Concise History, with a Selective Guide to Videos and DVDs by Donald Richie Darrell William Davis May 2002 Book Reviews Donald Richie's long-awaited new book, A Hundred Years of Japanese Film: A Concise History, with a Selective Guide to Videos and DVDs (Tokyo: Kodansha...
Far from Woomera: Reading Sylvia Lawson in Australia: A Response to How Simone de Beauvoir Died in Australia – Stories and Essays by Sylvia Lawson Jake Wilson May 2002 Book Reviews A revealing, sensitive response to Lawson's latest work of stories and essays.
“Crossing cultures, cinematic and other”: A Review of Laleen Jayamanne’s Toward Cinema and Its Double: Cross-Cultural Mimesis Therese Davis May 2002 Book Reviews Davis praises this recent book, and its rethinking of the relation between film and film criticism.
Tsai Ming-Liang by Jean-Pierre Rehm, Olivier Joyard, and Danièle Rivière Tara Forrest May 2002 Book Reviews In the opening article of the first book to date dedicated to the work of Taiwan-based filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang, Jean-Pierre Rehm claims that the tit...
Reading The Funnies: Essays on Comic Strips (Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics Books 2001) by Donald Phelps William D. Routt March 2002 Book Reviews A lively appreciation of Phelps' latest book on early American comic strips and an astute appraisal of his unique and stylised prose.
Bruno Dumont (Dis Voir, 2001) by Philippe Tancelin, Sébastien Ors and Valérie Jouve Maximilian Le Cain March 2002 Book Reviews Though Dumont's current filmography comprises only two films, Max argues a book length study is certainly not premature.
Experimental Cinema in the Digital Age (BFI 2001) by Malcolm Le Grice Brian L. Frye March 2002 Book Reviews Ever since 1891, when Thomas Alva Edison – the quintessential American – became the inventor of the motion picture rather than his brilliant English e...
Kubrick’s Cinema Odyssey by Michael Chion (BFI Publishing: London, 2001) Trans. by Claudia Gorbman Lee Hill March 2002 Book Reviews As a lapsed science fiction fan, I find it frustrating (and not a little depressing) that in spite of the genre's dominance of Hollywood and the incre...
Cultural Interfaces and the Aesthetics of (Dis)continuity – A Review of Lev Manovich’s The Language of New Media Darren Tofts March 2002 Book Reviews (Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press, 2001) Hmm. Another book about “new media”. I'd like to think that one day I'll be remembered as the scrooge w...
Belle de Jour (BFI Film Classics, London, 2001), by Michael Wood Jonathan Dawson March 2002 Book Reviews Luis Buñuel's movies, beginning of course with Un Chien Andalou (1928), that ur-surrealist film for all seasons, defy category, logic, good taste and ...
John Ford Made Westerns: Filming the Legend in the Sound Era (Indiana University Press, 2001) eds. Gaylyn Studlar and Matthew Bernstein David Boyd December 2001 Book Reviews The title of this volume alludes to what is probably the best-known anecdote of John Ford's career. Rising at a Directors Guild meeting in 1950 to spe...
American Films of the 70s: Conflicting Visions (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2000) by Peter Lev Maria San Filippo November 2001 Book Reviews The 1970s have rightly been called the last golden age of American cinema, a reference not only to Hollywood and independent movies of this era but al...
Encore Hollywood – Remaking French Cinema by Lucy Mazdon (London, BFI, 2000) Jonathan Dawson November 2001 Book Reviews The new BFI series has quickly established itself as one of the more sensible ways into Screen Studies after the florid excesses of post-structuralism...
Post-War Cinema and Modernity: A Film Reader (eds.) John Orr and Olga Taxidou (Edinburgh University Press/Unireps, 2000) Richard Armstrong November 2001 Book Reviews Touch of Evil is “about a nice couple from Hollywood movies who stumble into a film by Orson Welles.” (1) Terry Comito's arresting line is a colourful...
Distrusting Desire – A Review of The Money Shot: Sex, Cinema And Censorship by Jane Mills (Annandale: Pluto Press, 2001) Jake Wilson November 2001 Book Reviews A review of the recent book, The Money Shot, and a wider and thought-provoking discussion of art and criticism.
Imperfection Gilberto Perez September 2001 Book Reviews Part review of recent books on Cassavetes and part discussion of the fiction-documentary, art-life binaries and notions of performance operative in Cassavetes' cinema.
Meet John Cassavetes Christos Tsiolkas September 2001 Book Reviews A review of Ray Carney's recent books on Cassavetes and a heartfelt homage to the director.
A Very Dangerous Citizen: Abraham Lincoln Polonsky And The Hollywood Left by Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner Brad Stevens July 2001 Book Reviews (University of California Press, 2001) Despite the recent revival of interest in his work, Abraham Polonsky remains an unjustly neglected figure. P...
Identifying Film Scoring: Hearing Film – Tracking Identifications in Contemporary Hollywood Film Music by Anahid Kassabian Rebecca Coyle July 2001 Book Reviews (New York/London: Routledge, 2001) The argument often made about film music and film sound books is that they are scarce when compared with books o...
The Eloquence of the Vulgar: Language, Cinema and the Politics of Culture by Colin MacCabe Hilary Radner July 2001 Book Reviews (British Film Institute, 1999) The Eloquence of the Vulgar, a collection of essays by Colin MacCabe recently published by the British Film Institut...
Personal Memories: A Review of Citizen Sarris Keith Uhlich June 2001 Book Reviews This latest book pays tribute to legendary American critic Andrew Sarris.
Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Conspire to Limit What Films We Can See by Jonathan Rosenbaum Steve Erickson December 2000 Book Reviews (A Cappella Books. 814 North Franklin Street; Chicago, IL. 60610) Reading Jonathan Rosenbaum's reviews on a weekly basis in The Chicago Reader, one...
WR: Mysteries of the Organism by Raymond Durgnat Benjamin Halligan December 2000 Book Reviews (BFI London 1999) An early book by Raymond Durgnat - a monograph published in 1963 by Motion Publications (London) - was called Nouvelle Vague: the...
Hong Kong Cinema Books Reviewed Steve Erickson September 2000 Book Reviews Steve Erickson reviews two important books that begin the task of documenting and analysing this dynamic cinema: David Bordwell's Planet Hong Kong and John Charles' The Hong Kong Filmography, 1977-1997.
Cinephilia and Monstrosity: The Problem of Cinema in Deleuze’s Cinema Books Claire Perkins July 2000 Book Reviews Reflections on Deleuze's film theory and philosophy.
The Alfred Hitchcock Story by Ken Mogg Bill Krohn April 2000 Book Reviews There are many books on Hitch around - this one is written by the author of The MacGuffin.
The Devil Finds Work by James Baldwin M. C. Zenner April 2000 Book Reviews Baldwin's book was published in the '70s, but it is probably one of the best film books around.
