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The Blues Brothers : an epic friendship, the rise of improv, and the making of an American film classic
\"The story of the epic friendship between John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, the golden era of improv, and the making of a comedic film classic that helped shape our popular culture. \"They're not going to catch us,\" Dan Aykroyd, as Elwood Blues, tells his brother Jake, played by John Belushi. \"We're on a mission from God.\" So opens the musical action comedy The Blues Brothers, which hit theaters on June 20, 1980. Their scripted mission was to save a local Chicago orphanage. But Aykroyd, who conceived and wrote much of the film, had a greater mission: to honor the then-seemingly forgotten tradition of rhythm and blues, some of whose greatest artists--Aretha Franklin, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles--made the film as unforgettable as its wild car chases. Much delayed and vastly over budget, beset by mercurial and oft drugged-out stars, The Blues Brothers opened to outraged reviews. However, in the 44 years since, it has been acknowledged a classic: it has been inducted into the National Film Registry for its cultural significance, even declared a \"Catholic classic\" by the Church itself, and re-aired thousands of times on television to huge worldwide audiences. It is, undeniably, one of the most significant films of the 20th century. The story behind any classic is rich; the saga behind The Blues Brothers, as Daniel de Visé reveals, is epic, encompassing the colorful childhoods of Belushi and Aykroyd; the comedic revolution sparked by Harvard's Lampoon and Chicago's Second City; the birth and anecdote-rich, drug-filled early years of Saturday Night Live, where the Blues Brothers were born as an act amidst turmoil and rivalry; and, of course, the indelible behind-the-scenes narrative of how the film was made, scene by memorable scene. Based on original research and dozens of interviews probing the memories of principals from director John Landis and producer Bob Weiss to Aykroyd himself, The Blues Brothers illuminates an American masterpiece while vividly portraying the creative geniuses behind modern comedy\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Performing Brains on Screen
Performing Brains on Screen deals with film enactments and representations of the belief that human beings are essentially their brains, a belief that embodies one of the most influential modern ways of understanding the human. Films have performed brains in two chief ways: by turning physical brains into protagonists, as in the \"brain movies\" of the 1950s, which show terrestrial or extra-terrestrial disembodied brains carrying out their evil intentions; or by giving brains that remain unseen inside someone's head an explicitly major role, as in brain transplantation films or their successors since the 1980s, in which brain contents are transferred and manipulated by means of information technology. Through an analysis of filmic genres and particular movies, Performing Brains on Screen documents this neglected filmic universe, and demonstrates how the cinema has functioned as a cultural space where a core notion of the contemporary world has been rehearsed and problematized.
eBook
The Mysterious Romance of Murder
From Sherlock Holmes to Sam Spade; Nick and Nora Charles to Nero
Wolfe and Archie Goodwin; Harry Lime to Gilda, Madeleine Elster,
and other femmes fatales-crime and crime solving in fiction and
film captivate us. Why do we keep returning to Agatha Christie's
ingenious puzzles and Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled murder
mysteries? What do spy thrillers teach us, and what accounts for
the renewed popularity of morally ambiguous noirs? In The
Mysterious Romance of Murder , the poet and critic David Lehman
explores a wide variety of outstanding books and movies-some famous
(The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity), some known mainly to
aficionados-with style, wit, and passion.
Lehman revisits the smoke-filled jazz clubs from the classic
noir films of the 1940s, the iconic set pieces that defined
Hitchcock's America, the interwar intrigue of Eric Ambler's best
fictions, and the intensity of attraction between Humphrey Bogart
and Lauren Bacall, Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer, Cary Grant and
Ingrid Bergman. He also considers the evocative elements of
noir-cigarettes, cocktails, wisecracks, and jazz standards-and
offers five original noir poems (including a pantoum inspired by
the 1944 film Laura) and ironic astrological profiles of Barbara
Stanwyck, Marlene Dietrich, and Graham Greene. Written by a
connoisseur with an uncanny feel for the language and mood of
mystery, espionage, and noir, The Mysterious Romance of
Murder will delight fans of the genre and newcomers alike.
eBook
Impossible Puzzle Films
Narrative complexity is a trend in contemporary cinema. Since the late 1990s there has been a palpable increase in complex storytelling in movies. But how and why do complex movies create perplexity and confusion? How do we engage with these challenges? And what makes complex stories so attractive? By blending film studies, narrative theory and cognitive sciences, Kiss and Wilemsen look into the relation between complex storytelling and the mind. Analysing the effects that different complex narratives have on viewers, the book addresses how films like Donnie Darko, Mulholland Drive and Primer strategically create complexity and confusion, using the specific category of the impossible puzzle film to examine movies that use baffling paradoxes, impossible loops, and unresolved ambiguities in their stories and storytelling. By looking at how these films play on our mind's blind spots, this innovative book explains their viewing effects in terms of the mental state of cognitive dissonance that they evoke.
eBook
Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers
Examining the significance of women's work in popular film genres, Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers sheds light on women's contribution to genre cinema through an exploration of filmmakers like Kathryn Bigelow, Diablo Cody, Sofia Coppola and Kelly Reichard.
eBook
Transmedia Terrors in Post-TV Horror
In the twenty-first century horror television has spread across the digital TV landscape, garnering mainstream appeal. Located within a transmedia matrix, Transmedia Terrors in Post-TV Horror triangulates this boom across screen content, industry practices, and online participatory cultures. Understanding the genre within a post-TV paradigm, the book readdresses what is horror television, analysing not only broadcast TV and streaming platforms but also portals such as YouTube, Twitch.TV, and apps. The book also investigates complex digital media ecologies, blurring distinctions between niche and general audience viewing practices, and fostering new circulation pathways for horror television from around the world. Undertaking netnography, the book further offers an innovative model - abject spectrums - to empirically explore myriad audience responses to TV horror, manifesting in various participatory practices including writing, imagery, and crafts. As such, the book greatly expands what is considered horror television, its formatting and circulation, and the transmedia materiality of audience engagement.
eBook
The French road movie
The traditionally American genre of the road movie has been explored and reconfigured in the French context since the later 1960s. Comparative in its approach, this book studies the inter-relationship between American and French culture and cinemas, and in the process considers and challenges histories of the road movie. It combines film history with film theory methodologies, analysing transformations in social, political and film-industrial contexts alongside changing perspectives on the meaning and possibilities of film. At once chronological and thematic in structure, The French Road Movie provides in each chapter a comprehensive introduction to key themes emerging from the genre in the French context – liberty, identity and citizenship, masculinity, femininity, border-crossing – followed by detailed, innovative and often revisionist readings of the chosen films. Through these readings the author justifies the place of the road genre within French cinema histories and reinvigorates this often neglected and misunderstood area of study.
eBook
Monstrous Beings and Media Cultures
Monstrous Beings of Media Cultures examines the monsters and sinister creatures that spawn from folk horror, Gothic fiction, and from various sectors of media cultures. The collection illuminates how folk monsters form across different art and media traditions, and interrogates the 21C revitalization of “folk” as both a cultural formation and aesthetic mode. The essays explore how combinations of vernacular and institutional creative processes shape the folkloric and/or folkoresque attributes of monstrous beings, their popularity, and the contexts in which they are received.
While it focuses on 21C permutations of folk monstrosity, the collection is transhistorical in approach, featuring chapters that focus on contemporary folk monsters, historical antecedents, and the pre-C21st art and media traditions that shaped enduring monstrous beings. The collection also illuminates how folk monsters and folk “horror” travel across cultures, media, and time periods, and how iconic monsters are tethered to yet repeatedly become unanchored from material and regional contexts.
eBook
Girlfriends and Postfeminist Sisterhood
From Mean Girl to BFF, Girlfriends and Postfeminist Sisterhood explores female sociality in postfeminist popular culture. Focusing on a range of media forms, Alison Winch reveals how women are increasingly encouraged to strategically bond by controlling each other's body image through 'the girlfriend gaze'.
eBook
American Smart Cinema
American Smart Cinema examines a contemporary type of US filmmaking that exists at the intersection of mainstream, art and independent cinema and often gives rise to absurd, darkly comic and nihilistic effects.
eBook