Astaire by Numbers looks at every second of dancing Fred Astaire committed to film in the studio era--all six hours, thirty-four minutes, and fifty seconds. Using a quantitative digital humanities approach, as well as previously untapped production records, author Todd Decker takes the reader onto the set and into the rehearsal halls and editing rooms where Astaire created his seemingly perfect film dances. Watching closely in this way reveals how Astaire used the technically soph...

In Hymns for the Fallen, Todd Decker listens closely to forty years of Hollywood combat films produced after Vietnam. Ever a noisy genre, post-Vietnam war films have deployed music and sound to place the audience in the midst of battle and to provoke reflection on the experience of combat. Considering landmark movies—such as Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, Black Hawk Down, The Hurt Locker, and American Sniper...

Fred Astaire: one of the great jazz artists of the twentieth century? Astaire is best known for his brilliant dancing in the movie musicals of the 1930s, but in Music Makes Me, Todd Decker argues that Astaire’s work as a dancer and choreographer —particularly in the realm of tap dancing—made a significant contribution to the art of jazz. Decker examines the full range of Astaire’s work in filmed and recorded media, from a 1926 recording with George Gershwin to his 1970 blues styli...

In Rethinking American Music, Tara Browner and Thomas L. Riis curate essays that offer an eclectic survey of current music scholarship. Ranging from Tin Pan Alley to Thelonious Monk to hip hop, the contributors go beyond repertory and biography to explore four critical yet overlooked areas: the impact of performance; patronage's role in creating music and finding a place to play it; personal identity; and the ways cultural and ethnographic circumstances determine the music that emerges fro...

A Broadway classic, a call to action, and an incredibly malleable popular song, "Ol' Man River" is not your typical musical theater standard. Written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II in the 1920s for Show Boat, "Ol Man River" perfectly blends two seemingly incongruous traits-the gravity of a Negro spiritual and the crowd-pleasing power of a Broadway anthem. Inspired by the voice of African American singer Paul Robeson, who adopted the tune for his own goals as an activist, "Ol' Man ...

A survey of the history of musical theater in the United States. This ebook is a static version of an article from Grove Music Online, a continuously updated online resource, offering comprehensive coverage of the world’s music written by leading scholars. For more information, visit www.oxfordmusiconline.com.

Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical tells the full story of the making and remaking of the most important musical in Broadway history. Drawing on exhaustive archival research and including much new information from early draft scripts and scores, this book reveals how Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern created Show Boat in the crucible of the Jazz Age to fit the talents of the show's original 1927 cast. After showing how major figures such as Paul Robeson ...

A "meticulous history" of the classic suspense film based on exclusive interviews with the director, writers, cast, and crew ( The New York Times Book Review).First released in June 1960, Psycho altered the landscape of horror films forever. But just as compelling as the movie itself is the story behind it, which has been adapted as a movie starring Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock, Helen Mirren as his wife Alma Reville, and Scarlett Johansson as Jane...

Monaco's book was an instant classic when it first came out, and with new sections in its anniversary edition, is more essential than ever. A landmark in media studies, it is unique in its sophisticated understanding of both the art and technology of film. Molly Haskell, criticWhen it was first published in 1977, HOW TO READ A FILM established itself as a genuine classic in film studies and has been considered by many to be the source on film and media.Monaco's original boo...

David Morrell isnt only an acclaimed thriller author and the creator of Rambo in his novel First Blood. Hes also a former professor of American Studies who writes in-depth profiles about film and music legends.Frank Sinatras dramatic life sometimes upstaged his genius. Although he was the greatest interpretive singer of the recording era, some commentators emphasize his boozing, brawling, and womanizing rather than his brilliance as a performer, or else they take his brilliance for granted...

Françoise Mouly, an editor and publisher of uncommon taste and creativity, and an artist in her own right, has spent nearly four decades transforming comics. With her husband, Art Spiegelman, Mouly founded the landmark magazine RAW, which showcased artists such as Chris Ware, Charles Burns and Sue Coe, and, along with Spiegelman's Maus, brought an avant-garde sensibility to the popular art form. As art editor of the New Yorker since 1993, Mouly has remade the face of that venerable magazin...

A veteran film critic offers a lively, opinionated guide to thinking and talking about movies -- from Casablanca to CluelessWhether we are trying to impress a date after an art house film screening or discussing Oscar nominations among friends, we all need ways to look at and talk about movies. But with so much variety between an Alfred Hitchcock thriller and a Nora Ephron romantic comedy, how can everyday viewers determine what makes a good movie...