Blackwell Publishing

Genre, gender, race, and world cinema.

The 25 essays, first published during the past couple decades, are intended to ease students who have had at least one introductory film course into sophisticated film analysis using contemporary issues as a transport medium. Among the topics are Fight Club as a symptom of the network society, cowgirl tales, Pocahontas and The Indian in the Cupboard, and cultural identity and diaspora in contemporary Hong Kong cinema. Students are considered mature enough not to need illustrations or an index. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Global theories of the arts and aesthetics.

Twelve essays make up this collection, which focuses on the theories and practices of arts around the world, with specific attention to those that have been ignored or marginalized by analytics or Anglo-American aesthetics and philosophy of art. It also aims to extend ideas about aesthetics and art. Some of the topics: Chinese visual artists and their use of contemporary forms of Western art, musical traditions in Vietnam, theories of Islamic art, the function of the gamelan in central Java, Japanese architecture, and Balinese aesthetics. Contributors are scholars of philosophy, art, aesthetics, and criticism, and are based around the world. There is no index. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The golden age of cinema; Hollywood, 1929-1945.

Those who sneer that Hollywood never had a golden age should peruse this to discover the innovations in scripting, cinematography, directing, acting, editing and visuals accomplished in a relatively low-tech age under working conditions that could only be described as gentrified slavery. Jewell (American film, U. of Southern California) gives good reasons for his enthusiasm, clearly describing the years when Hollywood did its best for a patronage beset with economic depression and war. Writing for the general reader, he describes Hollywood's response to ever-mounting social and political crises, methods of producing and exhibiting movies, innovations such as sound and color film production along with special effects, censorship and how studios got around it, innovations in narrative and style, genres such as the western or gangster flick and, of course, the women's film, and the star as business commodity. The photographs of productions in progress and publicity stills are fascinating. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The horror film; an introduction.

This accessible text introduces students and movie-goers to the horror film genre. Worland (cinema-television, Southern Methodist U.) provides a broad overview of cinematic horror from the 1920s to the present day and discusses the genre's place in American culture. He then takes a closer look at some significant films, including Frankenstein (1931), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992). Brief profiles of several prominent horror directors are found in the appendix. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Late antique and medieval art of the Mediterranean world.

Hoffman (art history, Tufts U., Boston, Mass.), a specialist in early Islamic art, has drawn from her long experience in the field to gather a fascinating collection of articles and chapters concerning the art of the Mediterranean, with a focus throughout on the shared characteristics of the art of the different religions and states in the area. The 21 selections are grouped into six topics, including late antiquity (with selections on Roman, Jewish, and Sasanian art), early non-classical art, luxury arts, and the later Mediterranean, when Venice, Norman Sicily, and the Islamic world were dominant. Among the scholars whose work is included are Henry Maguire, Lisa Golombek, Oleg Grabar, Jerrilynn Dodds, and William Tronzo. This will be a terrific resource for the art history classroom. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Material identities.

Art historians, architectural historians, and archaeologists explore how the activity of objects can be enrolled in the projection of public identities by looking at how the fabrication of identities are linked to the fabrication of the material world. Among their case studies are the Greek symposium, architectural style and identity in Egypt, and body ornamentation in later prehistoric Europe. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Museums after modernism; strategies of engagement.

Pollock (social and critical histories of art, U. of Leeds) and Zemans (arts and media administration, York U., Toronto) present a collection of essays by 13 international artists, curators, art historians, and cultural analysts exploring the museum, its time, its place, and its function now. The text includes discussions about art-making, curation, exhibition, display, special projects, access, publics, communities, histories, controversies, public reception, pedagogy, and readings of exhibitions and explorations of exhibitions as readings of contemporary culture. Collectively they explore in what sense the museum can become a public place, publicly responsible for stimulating and housing critical thinking in and through art. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Postwar Hollywood, 1946-1962.

Casper (American film, U. of Southern California) offers a substantial examination of Hollywood cinema in the two decades following WWII. He describes the changing characteristics of the business end of Hollywood as well as individual genres such as comedy and social satire as they were influenced by and responded to recent history; censorship; the McCarthy witch-hunts; racial struggles; and developments in visual and sound technology, style, and public interests (as embodied in films employing documentary and psychological-sociological realism). (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Renaissance art reconsidered; an anthology of primary sources.

Master Enguerrand Quarton agreed to depict all the estates of the world in the paradise of his altar piece. Purveyors of the new technology, printing, found the pope could drive a hard bargain. Lorenzo de' Medici's possessions included exquisite art and an ostrich egg. This collection of primary documents makes fascinating reading, covering drawing and workplace practice (including linear perspective, sculpture, architecture, panel painting, prints and printmaking), the intellectual state of artists and art education process, the places where art was done and patronized, the influence of class and wealth, and the impact of various markets, including the French royalty and the buyers of icons. Two particularly interesting collections include one on how art related to death and another on how, in later years, artists were called to reform and remove the images of the past. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Spartacus; film and history.

One of the costliest movies of its era, Stanley Kubrik's Spartacus (1960) featured an all-star cast and won several Academy Awards. Written to be accessible to both academic and general readers, this volume examines the film from a variety of historical, political, and cinematic perspectives. Eleven essays from historians and film scholars are followed by English translations of the principal ancient Roman sources on the slave revolt led by Spartacus. Winkler teaches classics at George Mason U. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Thinking through cinema; films as philosophy.

Including works by both film scholars and philosophers, Smith (film studies, U. of Kent, UK) and Wartenberg (philosophy, Mount Holyoke U., US) present seventeen papers take up the question of whether philosophy can take the form of, or be articulated through, film. In sections covering American, European, and avant-garde cinemas, the contributors display a wide range of approaches, topical concerns, and conclusions. Specific topics include transparency and twist in narrative fiction film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the morality of memory, Sartre's philosophy of nothingness and the modern melodrama, cinema and subjectivity in Krzysztof Kieslowski, and directing desire and female auteurship in the cinema of Catherine Breillat. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Timber designers' manual, 3d ed. (reprint, 2002)

This reference manual, a paperback reissue reprinted from the third edition published in 2002, covers the general and detailed design of structural timber, including shear deflection, creep, and dynamic and lateral stability considerations for flexural members. This edition is based on and updated to reflect the changes in British Standard BS 5268-2: 2002, "Code of Practice for permissible stress design, materials and workmanship," which brought design concepts closer to European practice and Eurocode 5, "Design of Timber Structures." The recent introduction of a range of composite solid timber sections and I-Beams from the US and Europe is reflected in chapters on thin web beams and structural composite lumber. Tables and coefficients are provided. The manual is meant for practicing engineers, civil engineering undergraduates, and timber manufacturers. Ozelton is a consulting engineer specializing in the design and detailing of all forms of timber engineering and timber frame construction in the UK. Baird is a Chartered Structural Engineer who has worked on BSI documents such as design code BS 5628. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)