Buch, Englisch, 472 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 702 g
On the Necessity of Film Canons
Buch, Englisch, 472 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 702 g
ISBN: 978-0-8018-8971-4
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press
In his astute and deeply informed film reviews and essays, Jonathan Rosenbaum regularly provides new and brilliant insights into the cinema as art, entertainment, and commerce. Guided by a personal canon of great films, Rosenbaum sees, in the ongoing hostility toward the idea of a canon shared by many within the field of film studies, a missed opportunity both to shape the discussion about cinema and to help inform and guide casual and serious filmgoers alike.
In Essential Cinema, Rosenbaum forcefully argues that canons of great films are more necessary than ever, given that film culture today is dominated by advertising executives, sixty-second film reviewers, and other players in the Hollywood publicity machine who champion mediocre films at the expense of genuinely imaginative and challenging works. He proposes specific definitions of excellence in film art through the creation a personal canon of both well-known and obscure movies from around the world and suggests ways in which other canons might be similarly constructed.
Essential Cinema offers in-depth assessments of an astonishing range of films: established classics such as Rear Window, M, and Greed; ambitious but flawed works like The Thin Red Line and Breaking the Waves; eccentric masterpieces from around the world, including Irma Vep and Archangel; and recent films that have bitterly divided critics and viewers, among them Eyes Wide Shut and A.I. He also explores the careers of such diverse filmmakers as Robert Altman, Raúl Ruiz, Frank Tashlin, Elaine May, Sam Fuller, Terrence Davies, Edward Yang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Orson Welles. In conclusion, Rosenbaum offers his own film canon of 1,000 key works from the beginning of cinema to the present day. A cogent and provocative argument about the art of film, Essential Cinema is also a fiercely independent reference book of must-see movies for film lovers everywhere.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
Weitere Infos & Material
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I. Classics
Fables of the Reconstruction: The Four-Hour Greed
Fascinating Rhythms: M
The Color of Paradise: Jour de fête
Backyard Ethics: Hitchcock's Rear Window
Songs in the Key of Everyday Life: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
A Tale of the Wind: Joris Ivens's Last Testament
Kira Muratova's Home Truths: The Asthenic Syndrome
The Importance of Being Sarcastic: Sátántangó
Blush
The Ceremony
Thieves
True Grit: Rosetta
II. Special Problems
Malick's Progress
Improvisations and Interactions in Altmanville, with an Afterword: Nashville
Mixed Emotions: Breaking the Waves
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control
The Sweet Cheat: Time Regained
James Benning's Four Corners
Overrated Solutions: L'humanité
The Sound of German: Straub-Huillet's The Death of Empedocles
Beyond the Clouds: Return to Beauty
Reality and History as the Apotheosis of Southern Sleaze: Phil Karlson's The Phenix City Story
Is Ozu Slow?
The Human Tough: Decalogue and Fargo
III. Other Canons, Other Canonizers
Lfie Intimidates Art: Irma Vep
Stanley Kwan's Actress: Writing History in Quicksand
Critical Distance: Godard's Contempt
Remember Amnesia? (Guy Maddin's Archangel), with an Afterword: Ten Years Later (Please Watch Carefully: The Heart of the World)
Ragged but Right: Rivette's Up Down Fragile
Critic with a Camera: Marker on Tarkovsky
Riddles of a Spinx: From the Journals of Jean Seberg
International Harvest: National Film Histories on Video
International Sampler: Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Not the Same Old Song and Dance: The Young Girls of Rochefort
Flaming Creatures and Scotch Tape
Ruiz Hopping and Buried Treasures: Twelve Selected Global Sites
IV. Disputable Contenders
Back in Style: Bertolucci's Besieged
The Young One: Buñuel's Neglected Masterpiece
In Dreams Begin Responsibilities: Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut
The Best of Both Worlds: A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Under the Chador: The Day I Became a Woman
Chains of Ignorance: Charles Burnett's Nightjohn
Good Vibrations: Waking Life
Hell on Wheels: Taxi Driver
Meat, John, Dough: Pretty Woman
Tashlinesque
Weird and Wonderful: Takeshi Kitano's Kikujiro
Corpus Callosum
V. Filmmakers
Mann of the West
Otto Preminger
Nicholas Ray
Exiles in Modernity: Films by Edward Yang
Hou Hsiao-hsien: Becoming Taiwanese
The Countercultural Histories of Rudy Wurlitzer
Sam Fuller: The Words of an Innocent Warrior
The Mysterious Elaine May: Hiding in Plain Sight
Visionary Agitprop: I Am Cuba
The Battle over Orson Welles
License to Feel: Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Neon Bible
Death and Life: Landscapes of the Soul—The Cinema of AlexanderDovzhenko
Appendix: 1,000 Favorites (A Personal Canon)
Index
