This enormous and exhaustive reference book has entries on every major and minor director of science fiction films from the inception of cinema (circa 1895) through 1998. For each director there is a complete filmography including television work, a career summary, a critical assessment, and behind-the-scenes production information. Seventy-nine directors are covered in especially lengthy entries and a short history of the science fiction film genre is also included.
This enormous and exhaustive reference book has entries on every major and minor director of science fiction films from the inception of cinema (circa 1895) through 1998. For each director there is a complete filmography including television work, a career summary, a critical assessment, and behind-the-scenes production information. Seventy-nine directors are covered in especially lengthy entries and a short history of the science fiction film genre is also included.
A comprehensive guide to science fiction films, which analyzes and contextualizes the most important examples of the genre, from Un voyage dans la lune (1902), to The Road (2009).
While film and television seem to be closely allied screen media, our feature films and television series have seldom been successfully adapted across those screens. In fact, rather than functioning as portals, those allied media often seem, quite literally, screens that filter out something that made the source work so popular in its original form. Differences in budget, running times, cast, viewing habits, screen size and shape all come into play, and this volume’s aim is to track a number of popular texts in the course of their adaptive journeys across the screens in order to sketch the workings of that cross-media adaptation. For its specific examples, the volume draws on a single genre—science fiction—not only because it is one of the most popular today in either film or television, but also because it is arguably the most self-conscious of contemporary genres, and thus one that most obviously frames the terms of these technological adaptations. The essays included here mine that reflexive character, in both highly successful and in failed efforts at cross-media adaption, to help us understand what film and television achieve in screening science fiction, and to reveal some of the key issues involved in all of our efforts to navigate the various screens that have become part of contemporary culture.
From 1928 through 1982, when Columbia Pictures Corporation was a traded stock company, the studio released some of the most famous and popular films dealing with horror, science fiction and fantasy. This volume covers more than 200 Columbia feature films within these genres, among them Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and The Revenge of Frankenstein. Also discussed in depth are the vehicles of such horror icons as Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and John Carradine. Additionally highlighted are several of Columbia's lesser known genre efforts, including the Boston Blackie and Crime Doctor series, such individual features as By Whose Hand?, Cry of the Werewolf, Devil Goddess, Terror of the Tongs and The Creeping Flesh, and dozens of the studio's short subjects, serials and made-for-television movies.
This book interrogates the relations between nostalgias of today and past utopias in the context of the space age of the 20th century and its cinematic representations in the USSR and in post-Soviet Russia. Once an enthusiastic projection, then a promising and uncanny present, and eventually an assemblage of nostalgic signifiers, in the history of world cinema, this space age has been linked primarily to the genre of science fiction. Here, aspects of the space age such as humanity’s imminent expansion to space, interplanetary travel, contact with extraterrestrial intelligence, and intergalactic governance and economy were both celebrated and critically interrogated as cosmopolitan ideals and nation-branding strategies. This book presents the contemporary relevance of this genre as heritage and legacy, archive and canon, and a nest of forgotten ideals and warnings, as well as nostalgic anchoring points. The author analyzes over 30 Soviet science fiction films, foregrounding their structures of utopia and their evolution over time, in order to trace both their transnational positionalities, transmedial resonance, and impact on post-Soviet Russian films about the space age. Concepts, crucial to the understanding of space futures of the past, such as utopianism, otherness, liminality, and no(w)stalgia are activated to draw out the fictional tenants of the memory of the Soviet space age, and to establish the limits and potentialities of Soviet (exra)terraformative ambitions.
The SCI-FI FILM FIESTA eBook series is intended as a salute to the pioneering work of science fiction film makers. May future generations have the privilege of enjoying your work and never stop wondering....What if? The classic science fiction films from the 1950s in this volume 8 “Big Bugs and Crazy Critters” of the Sci-Fi Film Fiesta eBook series, deal with forces of nature going haywire and seeming to strike back at humanity with a veritable menagerie of colossal critters, reminding us just how insignificant and powerless we are in the face of forces over which we really have little control. If humanity is not more careful, it could very well be…..The Beginning of the End!
From reviews of the third edition: “Film Genre Reader III lives up to the high expectations set by its predecessors, providing an accessible and relatively comprehensive look at genre studies. The anthology’s consideration of the advantages and challenges of genre studies, as well as its inclusion of various film genres and methodological approaches, presents a pedagogically useful overview.” —Scope Since 1986, Film Genre Reader has been the standard reference and classroom text for the study of genre in film, with more than 25,000 copies sold. Barry Keith Grant has again revised and updated the book to reflect the most recent developments in genre study. This fourth edition adds new essays on genre definition and cycles, action movies, science fiction, and heritage films, along with a comprehensive and updated bibliography. The volume includes more than thirty essays by some of film’s most distinguished critics and scholars of popular cinema, including Charles Ramírez Berg, John G. Cawelti, Celestino Deleyto, David Desser, Thomas Elsaesser, Steve Neale, Thomas Schatz, Paul Schrader, Vivian Sobchack, Janet Staiger, Linda Williams, and Robin Wood.
Science fiction is at the intersection of numerous fields. It is a literature which draws on popular culture, and which engages in speculation about science, history, and all types of social relations. This volume brings together essays by scholars and practitioners of science fiction, which look at the genre from these different angles. After an introduction to the nature of science fiction, historical chapters trace science fiction from Thomas More to more recent years, including a chapter on film and television. The second section introduces four important critical approaches to science fiction drawing their theoretical inspiration from Marxism, postmodernism, feminism and queer theory. The final and largest section of the book looks at various themes and sub-genres of science fiction. A number of well-known science fiction writers contribute to this volume, including Gwyneth Jones, Ken MacLeod, Brian Stableford Andy Duncan, James Gunn, Joan Slonczewski, and Damien Broderick.
