Classless
Classless

Author: Carl Neville

Publisher: John Hunt Publishing

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 93

ISBN-13: 1846943809

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Why has mainstream British film been so unrepresentative of the changes in British society over the past twenty years? Classless looks at the erasure of key issues of class and class struggle in recent British film as well as the flattening out of the rich variety of English social types into the bland middle-mass of Love Actually. By analysing a number of key films and emergent genres the ideological character of the Major years on into the false dawn of Blairism and Cool Brittania will be elaborated, and it will be argued that even works that are ostensibly subversive, such as Danny Boyle's Trainspotting serve to promote the underlying myths of neo-liberalism. The films under discussion will range from Steven Frear's The Queen to Jonathon Glazer's Sexy Beast The book will also consider popular genres such as the recent Football Hooligan films along with more recondite works by a handful of auteurs.

Historical Dictionary of British Cinema
Historical Dictionary of British Cinema

Author: Alan Burton

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2013-07-11

Total Pages: 586

ISBN-13: 0810880261

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British cinema has been around from the very birth of motion pictures, from black-and-white to color, from talkies to sound, and now 3D, it has been making a major contribution to world cinema. Many of its actors and directors have stayed at home but others ventured abroad, like Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock. Today it is still going strong, the only real competition to Hollywood, turning out films which appeal not only to Brits, just think of Bridget Jones, while busily adding to franchises like James Bond and Harry Potter. So this Historical Dictionary of British Cinema has a lot of ground to cover. This it does with over 300 dictionary entries informing us about significant actors, producers and directors, outstanding films and serials, organizations and studios, different films genres from comedy to horror, and memorable films, among other things. Two appendixes provide lists of award-winners. Meanwhile, the chronology covers over a century of history. These parts provide the details, countless details, while the introduction offers the big story. And the extensive bibliography points toward other sources of information.

Studying the British Crime Film
Studying the British Crime Film

Author: Paul Elliott

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2014-10-01

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 0993071775

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Ever since its inception, British cinema has been obsessed with crime and the criminal. One of the first narrative films to be produced in Britain, the Hepworth's 1905 short Rescued by Rover, was a fast-paced, quick-edited tale of abduction and kidnap, and the first British sound film, Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (1930), centered on murder and criminal guilt. For a genre seemingly so important to the British cinematic character, there is little direct theoretical or historical work focused on it. The Britain of British cinema is often written about in terms of national history, ethnic diversity, or cultural tradition, yet very rarely in terms of its criminal tendencies and dark underbelly. This volume assumes that, to know how British cinema truly works, it is necessary to pull back the veneer of the costume piece, the historical drama, and the rom-com and glimpse at what is underneath. For every Brief Encounter (1945) there is a Brighton Rock (2010), for every Notting Hill (1999) there is a Long Good Friday (1980).

From Self-fulfilment to Survival of the Fittest
From Self-fulfilment to Survival of the Fittest

Author: Ewa Mazierska

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2015-01-01

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 1782384871

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Contrary to the assumption that Western and Eastern European economies and cinemas were very different from each other, they actually had much in common. After the Second World War both the East and the West adopted a mixed system, containing elements of both socialism and capitalism, and from the 1980s on the whole of Europe, albeit at an uneven speed, followed the neoliberal agenda. This book examines how the economic systems of the East and West impacted labor by focusing on the representation of work in European cinema. Using a Marxist perspective, it compares the situation of workers in Western and Eastern Europe as represented in both auteurist and popular films, including those of Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson, Jean-Luc Godard, Andrzej Wajda, DušanMakavejev, Jerzy Skolimowski, the Dardenne Brothers, Ulrich Seidl and many others.

Oasis' Definitely Maybe
Oasis' Definitely Maybe

Author: Alex Niven

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2014-05-08

Total Pages: 141

ISBN-13: 1623568838

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Oasis's incendiary 1994 debut album Definitely Maybe managed to summarize almost the entire history of post-fifties guitar music from Chuck Berry to My Bloody Valentine in a way that seemed effortless. But this remarkable album was also a social document that came closer to narrating the collective hopes and dreams of a people than any other record of the last quarter century. In a Britain that had just undergone the most damaging period of social upheaval in a century under the Thatcher government, Noel Gallagher ventriloquized slogans of burning communitarian optimism through the mouth of his brother Liam and the playing of the other Oasis 'everymen': Paul McGuigan, Paul Arthurs and Tony McCarroll. On Definitely Maybe, Oasis communicated a timeworn message of idealism and hope against the odds, but one that had special resonance in a society where the widening gap between high and low demanded a newly superhuman kind of leaping. Alex Niven charts the astonishing rise of Oasis in the mid 1990s and celebrates the life-affirming, communal force of songs such as “Live Forever,” “Supersonic,” and “Cigarettes & Alcohol.” In doing so, he seeks to reposition Oasis in relation to their Britpop peers and explore one of the most controversial pop-cultural narratives of the last thirty years.

The British Football Film
The British Football Film

Author: Stephen Glynn

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-05-03

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 3319777270

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This book constitutes the first full volume dedicated to an academic analysis of British football as depicted on film. From early single-camera silents to its current multi-screen mediations, the repeated treatment of football in British cinema points to the game’s importance not only in the everyday rhythms of national life but also, and especially, its immutable place in the British imaginary landscape. Through close textual analysis together with production and reception histories, this book explores the ways in which professional footballers, amateur players and supporters (the devoted and the demonized) have been represented on the British screen. As well as addressing the joys and sorrows the game necessarily engenders, British football is shown to function as an accessible structure to explore wider issues such as class, race, gender and even the whole notion of ‘Britishness’.

The New Scottish Cinema
The New Scottish Cinema

Author: Jonathan Murray

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2015-03-31

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 085773962X

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From a near standing start in the 1970s, the emergence and expansion of an aesthetically and culturally distinctive Scottish cinema proved to be one of the most significant developments within late-twentieth and early twenty-first-century British film culture. Individual Scottish films and filmmakers have attracted notable amounts of critical attention as a result. The New Scottish Cinema, however, is the first book to trace Scottish film culture's industrial, creative and critical evolution in comprehensive detail across a forty-year period. On the one hand, it invites readers to reconsider the known - films such as Shallow Grave, Ratcatcher, The Magdalene Sisters, Young Adam, Red Road and The Last King of Scotland. On the other, it uncovers the overlooked, from the 1980s comedic film makers who followed in the footsteps of Bill Forsyth to the variety of present-day Scottish film making - a body of work that encompasses explorations of multiculturalism, exploitation of the macabre and much else in between.In addition to analysing an eclectic range of films and filmmakers, The New Scottish Cinema also examines the diverse industrial, institutional and cultural contexts which have allowed Scottish film to evolve and grow since the 1970s, and relates these to the images of Scotland which artists have put on screen. In so doing, the book narrates a story of interest to any student of contemporary British film.

British Comedy Cinema
British Comedy Cinema

Author: I.Q. Hunter

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-05-04

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1136508376

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British comedy cinema has been a mainstay of domestic production since the beginning of the last Century and arguably the most popular and important genre in British film history. This edited volume will offer the first comprehensive account of the rich and popular history of British comedy cinema from silent slapstick and satire to contemporary romantic comedy. Using a loosely chronological approach, essays cover successive decades of the 20th and 21st Century with a combination of case studies on key personalities, production cycles and studio output along with fresh approaches to issues of class and gender representation. It will present new research on familiar comedy cycles such as the Ealing Comedies and Carry On films as well as the largely undocumented silent period along with the rise of television spin offs from the 1970s and the development of animated comedy from 1915 to the present. Films covered include: St Trinians, A Fish Called Wanda, Brassed Off, Local Hero, The Full Monty, Four Lions and In the Loop. Contributors: Melanie Bell, Alan Burton, James Chapman, Richard Dacre, Ian Hunter, James Leggott, Sharon Lockyer, Andy Medhurst, Lawrence Napper, Tim O’Sullivan, Laraine Porter, Justin Smith, Sarah Street, Peter Waymark, Paul Wells

Reader's Guide to British History
Reader's Guide to British History

Author: D. M. Loades

Publisher: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 872

ISBN-13:

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"A masterful attempt to describe the historical secondary literature of the British Isles -- from prehistory to the present day -- the set is comprised of substantial essays of 1,000 to 3,000 words each on a wide array of subjects -- all written by pre-eminent scholars in language accessible to beginning students and advanced researchers. Each listed essay title is given a thorough annotation."--"The Top 20 Reference Titles of the Year," American Libraries, May 2004.

British Cinema, Past and Present
British Cinema, Past and Present

Author: Justine Ashby

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-13

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 1135125155

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British Cinema: Past and Present responds to the commercial and critical success of British film in the 1990s. Providing a historical perspective to the contemporary resurgence of British cinema, this unique anthology brings together leading international scholars to investigate the rich diversity of British film production, from the early sound period of the 1930s to the present day. The contributors address: * British Cinema Studies and the concept of national cinema * the distribution and reception of British films in the US and Europe * key genres, movements and cycles of British cinema in the 1940s, 50s and 60s * questions of authorship and agency, with case studies of individual studios, stars, producers and directors * trends in British cinema, from propaganda films of the Second World War to the New Wave and the 'Swinging London' films of the Sixties * the representation of marginalised communities in films such as Trainspotting and The Full Monty * the evolution of social realism from Saturday Night, Sunday Morning to Nil By Mouth * changing approaches to Northern Ireland and the Troubles in films like The Long Good Friday and Alan Clarke's Elephant * contemporary 'art' and 'quality' cinema, from heritage drama to the work of Peter Greenaway, Derek Jarman, Terence Davies and Patrick Keiller.