A new approach to a director whose contribution to cinema is often overshadowed his personal life, Polanski and Perception focuses on Roman Polanski's interest in the nature of perception and how this is manifested in his films. The incorporation of cognitive research into film theory is becoming increasingly widespread, with novel cinematic technologies and recent developments in digital projection making a strong grasp of perceptual psychology critical to fostering cognitive eng...

From 1945 to 1950, during the formative years of his career, Stanley Kubrick worked as a photojournalist for Look magazine. Offering a comprehensive examination of the work he produced during this period – before going on to become one of America’s most celebrated filmmakers – Stanley Kubrick at Look Magazine sheds new light on the aesthetic and ideological factors that shaped his artistic voice. Tracing the links between his photojournalism and films, Philippe Mather sho...

Known for his work as a performer and songwriter with the Birthday Party, the Bad Seeds and Grinderman, Australian artist Nick Cave has also pursued a variety of other projects, including writing and acting. Covering the full range of Cave's creative endeavours, this collection of critical essays provides a comprehensive overview of his multifaceted career. The contributors, who hail from an array of disciplines, consider Cave's work from many different angles, drawing on historical, psych...

When thirty-two women were hired as mounted police officers in 1974, it was a media sensation. After all, these were not the brawny heroes of Canadian history, or the dashing and handsome Mounties portrayed in over two hundred Hollywood movies. Women were thought to be afraid of guns and incapable of protecting themselves. Training officers at the RCMP’s academy wondered if the women were capable. Could they march? Could they lift weights? Would they cry? The original uniform (pumps, a pil...

For more than thirty years, David Cronenberg has made independent films such as Scanners and A History of Violence which aim to disturb, surprise, and challenge audiences. He has also repeatedly drawn on literary fiction for inspiration, adapting themes from authors like William Burroughs, J. G. Ballard, and Patrick McGrath for the big screen; David Cronenberg: Author or Filmmaker? is the first book to explore how underground and mainstream fiction have influence...

Over the past year, international and national media have been full of stories about protest movements and tumultuous social upheaval from Tunisia to California. But scholars have not yet fully addressed the connection between these movements and the media and communication channels through which their messages spread. Correcting that imbalance, Mediation and Protest Movements explores the nature of the relationship between protest movements, media representation, and communication strateg...

This volume contests the current higher educational paradigm of using objectives and outcomes as ways to measure learning. Instead, the contributors propose approaches to learning that draw upon the creative arts and humanities, including cinema, literature, dance, drama and visual art.

This book bridges the divide between the fields of power systems engineering and computer communication through the new field of power system information theory.Written by an expert with vast experience in the field, this book explores the smart grid from generation to consumption, both as it is planned today and how it will evolve tomorrow. The book focuses upon what differentiates the smart grid from the "traditional" power grid as it has been known for the last ...

This book is the first written by a film specialist to consider Stephen King’s television work in its own right, and rejects previous attempts to make the films and books fit rigid thematic categories. Browning examines what makes a written or visual text successful at evoking fear on a case-by-case basis, in a highly readable and engaging way. He also considers the relationship between the big and small screen. Why, for instance, are some TV versions more effective than movie adaptations ...

Emphasizing the new documentary cinema, this book features film-makers who belong to the generation born in the 1970s. Many of the interviewees were trained at the National Film School of Denmark’s now legendary Department of Documentary and Television. The term ‘new’ also captures tendencies that cut across the work of the film-makers. For example, for the generation in question, internationalization and the development of a new digital media culture are inevitable aspects of everyday lif...

Brian De Palma is perhaps best known as the director behind the gangster classic Scarface. Yet as ingrained as Scarface is in American popular culture, it is but one of a sizeable number of controversial films—many of which are consistently misread or ignored—directed by De Palma over his more than four-decade career.In Un-American Psycho, Chris Dumas places De Palma’s body of work in dialogue with the works of other provocative filmmakers, including Alfr...

After sixty surgeries at a cost of almost $200,000 to feminize and beautify her originally male body, transgendered Canadian artist Nina Arsenault has created a body of work emanating from her experiences that includes photographs, videos disseminated online, a website, a blog, several social networking presentation sites, stage plays, print media writing and performance of the body in both celebrity appearances and daily public life. Arsenault was born in rural Ontario in 1974 and until t...