Britton on Film

Britton on Film
Author: Andrew Britton
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 564
Release: 2009
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780814333631

"Renowned film scholar and editor Barry Keith Grant has assembled all of Britton's published essays of film criticism and theory for this volume, spanning the late 1970s to the early 1990s. The essays are arranged by theme: Hollywood cinema, Hollywood movies, European cinema, and film and cultural theory. In all, twenty-eight essays consider such varied films as Hitchcock's Spellbound, Jaws, The Exorcist, and Mandingo and topics as diverse as formalism, camp, psychoanalysis, imperialism, and feminism. Included are such well-known and important pieces as "Blissing Out: The Politics of Reaganite Entertainment" and "Sideshows: Hollywood in Vietnam," among the most perceptive discussions of these two periods of Hollywood history yet published. In addition, Britton's critiques of the ideology of Screen and Wisconsin formalism display his uncommon grasp of theory even when arguing against prevailing critical trends."

Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Hepburn
Author: Andrew Britton
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2003
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780231132770

Of all the major Hollywood stars, Katharine Hepburn was the least conventional, conforming to none of the stereotypes of female superstardom. She was not an exotic outsider in Hollywood like Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich; nor was she a victim of the studios like Judy Garland or Marilyn Monroe; and she was certainly not a creature of the system like Joan Crawford and Lana Turner. Instead, she always appeared intelligent, willful and independent, able to develop her own persona within the confines of the studio system. Andrew Britton proposes a feminist reading of Hepburn's films, arguing that her persona raises problems about class, female sexuality, and women's oppression that strain to the limits the conventions of a cinema ultimately committed to the reassertion of bourgeois gender roles. Hepburn's work is also used to explore more general issues, such as the functioning of the star system. This is one of the very few analyses of American cinema to focus on a film star rather than a director or a genre and as such is essential reading for anyone interested in the movies. First published in the United Kingdom twenty years ago, this lavishly illustrated new edition features a foreword by the noted film critic Robin Wood.

Onscreen and Undercover

Onscreen and Undercover
Author: Wesley Britton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2006-10-30
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0313086508

Wes Britton's Spy Television (2004) was an overview of espionage on the small screen from 1951 to 2002. His Beyond Bond: Spies in Fiction and Film (2004) wove spy literature, movies, radio, comics, and other popular media together with what the public knew about actual espionage to show the interrelationships between genres and approaches in the past century. Onscreen and Undercover, the last book in Britton's Spy Trilogy, provides a history of spies on the large screen, with an emphasis on the stories these films present. Since the days of the silent documentary short, spying has been a staple of the movie business. It has been the subject of thrillers, melodramas, political films, romances, and endless parodies as well. But despite the developing mistrust of the spy as a figure of hope and good works, the variable relationship between real spying and screen spying over the past 100 years sheds light on how we live, what we fear, who we admire, and what we want our culture—and our world—to become. Onscreen and Undercover describes now forgotten trends, traces surprising themes, and spotlights the major contributions of directors, actors, and other American and English artists. The focus is on movies, on and off camera. In a 1989 National Public Radio interview, famed author John Le Carre said a spy must be entertaining. Spies have to interest potential sources, and be able to draw people in to succeed in recruiting informants. In that spirit, Wes Britton now offers Onscreen and Undercover.

1001 Running Tips

1001 Running Tips
Author: Robbie Britton
Publisher: Vertebrate Publishing
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2021-11-15
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 183981067X

1001 Running Tips by Robbie Britton is a light-hearted and informative guide to all kinds of running. This is no standard instruction manual – it is much more useful than that. This is a huge collection of small tips to make a real difference to your running, whether you're just starting out and aiming to run for 30 minutes without stopping or if you're training for your first marathon – this book will improve your running. The myriad of topics featured include starting out, setting goals, training plans, injury, nutrition, safety, kit, running with your dog, navigation, sleep deprivation, running in all weathers, racing, fell running and music. Robbie's unique and accessible style will keep you entertained and, most importantly, he'll motivate you to keep enjoying running, overcome obstacles getting in your way and to become the best runner you can!

Threatcon Delta

Threatcon Delta
Author: Andrew Britton
Publisher: Kensington Books
Total Pages: 528
Release: 2014
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0786032197

Ryan Kealey has no doubt that the forces seeking to tip this teetering world into chaos are just getting better. Better equipped, better organized, and, most terrifying of all, more patient. And despite all the ELINT, the all-seeing electronic intelligence gathered at Langley, nothing stops a devastating attack from ripping through the heart of San Antonio, Texas.

At Work in the Iron Cage

At Work in the Iron Cage
Author: Dana M. Britton
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2003-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0814798845

In this first comparative analysis of men's and women's prisons, Dana Britton identifies the factors that influence the genderization of the American workplace, a process that often leaves women in lower-paying jobs with less prestige and responsibility.

The Language and Style of Film Criticism

The Language and Style of Film Criticism
Author: Andrew Klevan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2011-04-26
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1136728287

The Language and Style of Film Criticism brings together original essays from an international range of academics and film critics highlighting the achievements, complexities and potential of film criticism. In recent years, in contrast to the theoretical, historical and cultural study of film, film criticism has been relatively marginalised, especially within the academy. This book highlights the distinctiveness of film criticism and addresses ways in which it can take a more central place within the academy and develop in dynamic ways outside it. The Language and Style of Film Criticism is essential reading for academics, teachers, students and journalists who wish to understand and appreciate the language and style of film criticism.

The Time of Our Lives

The Time of Our Lives
Author: Siân Lincoln
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2013-03-18
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0814336256

Fans of the movie and students and scholars of cultural, performance, and film history will appreciate the insight in The Time of Our Lives.

Spectacular Bodies

Spectacular Bodies
Author: Yvonne Tasker
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2012-10-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 113487300X

While films such as Rambo, Thelma and Louise and Basic Instinct have operated as major points of cultural reference in recent years, popular action cinema remains neglected within contemporary film criticism. Spectacular Bodies unravels the complexities and pleasures of a genre often dismissed as `obvious' in both its pleasure and its politics, arguing that these controversial films should be analysed and understood within a cinematic as well as a political context. Yvonne Tasker argues that today's action cinema not only responds to the shifts in gendered, sexual and racial identities which took place during the 1980s, but reflects the influences of other media such as the new video culture. Her detailed discussion of the homoeroticism surrounding the muscleman hero, the symbolic centrality of blackness within the crime narrative, and the changing status of women within the genre, addresses the constitution of these identities through the shifting categories of gender, class, race, sex, sexuality and nation. Spectacular Bodies also examines the ambivalence of supposedly secure categories of popular cinema, questioning the existing terms of film criticism in this area and addressing the complex pleasures of this neglected form.

The Worlds of Back to the Future

The Worlds of Back to the Future
Author: Sorcha Ní Fhlainn
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0786457651

A critical examination of the cultural, cinematic, and historical contexts of the Back to the Future trilogy, this book provides a multi-focal representation of the trilogy from several interdisciplinary fields, including philosophy, literature, music, pop culture, and media and gender studies. Topics include sexual symbolism in the trilogy and the oedipal plotting of the first film; nostalgia and the suburban dream in the cultural climate of the 1980s; generic play and performance throughout the trilogy; the emotional and narrative force provided by the films' renowned musical scores; the trilogy's post-modern references and allusions to the Western genre; female representations across the trilogy; and the Lacanian philosophical constructs in the characterizations of Doc Brown and George and Marty McFly.