How is crime represented in art cinema? And how can this be understood in the context of global sociopolitical and film-industrial trends? Crime might be shown or lurk only at the edges. It might be left unresolved or unexplained. Arthouse crimes can be petty and small scale or raise big questions associated with the arthouse sector: political issues, the nature of humanity, truth and knowability.Arthouse Crime Scenes is the first book to address the relationship between a...

New Hollywood extends from the radical gestures of the 'Hollywood Renaissance' of the late 1960s and early 1970s to the current dominance of the corporate blockbuster. Geoff King covers new Hollywood dynamically and accessibly in this thoroughly modern introductory text. He discusses diverse films as well as the film-makers and film companies, focusing on the interactions between the film texts, their social contexts and the industry producing them. Using examples across Hollywood and its ...

How do we understand types of cinema that offer experiences of discomfort, awkwardness or disquieting uncertainty? This book examines a number of examples of such work at the heart of contemporary art and indie film. While the commercial mainstream tends to offer comforting viewing experiences – or moments of discomfort that exist largely to be overcome – The Cinema of Discomfort analyses films in which discomfort is offered in a sustained manner. Cinema of this kind confronts us ...

Art cinema occupies a space in the film landscape that is accorded a particular kind of value. From films that claim the status of harsh realism to others which embody aspects of the tradition of modernism or the poetic, art cinema encompasses a variety of work from across the globe. But how is art cinema positioned in the film marketplace, or by critics and in academic analysis? Exactly what kinds of cultural value are attributed to films of this type and how can this be explained? This b...

Geoff King started at the bottom of the sales ladder—selling pest control products on the streets of South London. After this inauspicious start, he climbed steadily through the ranks of professional service organisations until he reached the top of the ladder. By the end of his in-house career, he was routinely selling multi-million pound deals in outsourcing services for multinationals. He now works as a freelance consultant on sales methods and strategies.

What defines 'quality' in contemporary Hollywood film? Although often seen as inhospitable to such work, the studios of the blockbuster-franchise era continue to produce features that make claims to higher status. Films such as The Social Network, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Mystic River are marked as distinctive from the mainstream norm. But how exactly, and how are such qualities mixed with more familiar Hollywood ingredients, as found in larger doses i...

The independent sector has produced many of the most distinctive films to have appeared in the US in recent decades. From 'Sex, Lies and Videotape' in the 1980s to 'The Blair Witch Project' and New Queer Cinema in the 1990s and the ultra-low budget digital video features of the 2000s, indie films have thrived, creating a body of work that stands out from the dominant Hollywood mainstream. But what exactly is 'independent' cinema? This, the first book to examine the question in detail, argu...

Hollywood special effects offer spectacular creations or re-creations that make claims to our attention on the grounds of their ‘incredible-seeming reality’. They can appear both ‘incredible’ and ‘real’, their appeal based on their ability to ‘convince’—to appear real in terms such as detail and texture—and on their status as fabricated spectacle, to be admired as such. At a seemingly very different end of the audio-visual media spectrum, ‘reality’ television offers the spectacle of, suppo...

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I have written this book to record my experiences at a few of the places that I have worked around the World, and to make some kind of official record of my working life. I am an engineer and specialist industrial welding is my trade. I have lived and worked all over the World, with the primitive tribes of Papua New Guinea, the rough and tough lumberjacks of Canada, the oil rich but war torn Kuwait, the lawless towns of South Africa, Malaysian deserts, Australia, New Zealand, and everywher...

Fact: In 1866, a set of documents was placed in the library of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. They are still there and are known to contain a secret about the lineage of the current British royal family. In 1913 a young man returns to England from America and discovers he is the rightful heir to King Arthur’s crown but an establishment conspiracy frames him for the murder of his cousins. This is a story about heaving bodices and swashbuckling swordfights in a desperate stru...

How do you like your weirdness? A subtle nudge towards the untoward? A quick zap of zany? Or a full-on assault of aberration? Whatever your taste, you'll find it here, and many more strains of strange that you didn't suspect existed. From magic rain to a talking (severed) head, extraordinary eggs to belligerent birds, the stories in this collection enter the rabbit hole to explore its hidden corners and winding ways. Through all the variety, what they have in common is originality, creativ...