Books in the Quick Takes: Movies & Popular Culture series

Explores the intersection between movies, reality, and fantasy; between subjective and objective representation. The book shows that surreal fantasies ground their images, sounds, and narratives in quotidian reality. On the other hand, even the most realistic documentaries rely on creative structures that are products of the human imagination.

Describes the traditional formulas that have made sports movies such crowd-pleasers, including stock figures like the disgraced athlete on a quest for redemption, or the wise old coaches who help mentor the heroes to victory. Lester Friedman also explores how the genre's attitudes have changed over time.

Explores how this genre serves as a source for modern-day myths, sometimes even incorporating ancient mythic figures like Thor and Wonder Woman's Amazons, while engaging with the questions that haunt a post-9/11 world: How do we define heroism and morality today? How far are we willing to go when fighting terror? How can we resist a dystopian state?

Tracking the revitalization of the British horror film industry over the past two decades, media expert Steven Gerrard investigates why audiences have flocked to these movies. Offering in-depth analysis of numerous films, this book takes readers on a lively tour of the genre's highlights, while provocatively exploring how these films reflect viewers' gravest fears about the state of the nation.

Presents an eclectic look at the many manifestations of rock in motion pictures, from teen-oriented B-movies to Hollywood blockbusters to avant-garde meditations to reverent biopics to animated shorts to performance documentaries. Acclaimed film critic David Sterritt considers the diverse ways that filmmakers have regarded rock 'n' roll.

In Digital Music Videos, Steven Shaviro surveys a wide range of music videos, highlighting some of their most striking innovations. In sampling and reworking a century's worth of movies and other pop culture artifacts, these videos create a whole new digital world for the music industry that offers a plethora of visions and sounds never before encountered.

The Walt Disney Company has grown into a diversified global media giant, but is it still possible to identify a coherent Disney ethos? Examining everything from theme parks to merchandising to animation to live-action films, Disney Culture proposes that they all follow a core corporate philosophy dating back to the 1920s.

Charts the transformation zombies into pop culture icons, exploring their enormous appeal to viewers in the twenty-first century. It traces the evolution of the living dead on film, and surveys the present cinematic landscape, in which zombies have overrun every imaginable genre from the indie comedy to the teen romance. The book also maps the recent outbreaks of zombies on television.

New African Cinema examines the pressing social, cultural, economic, and historical issues explored by African filmmakers in the new millennium by offering an overview of the development of postcolonial African cinema as it has evolved since the 1960s into the new medium, known as "new African cinema," it is today.

Takes a long view on the figure of the femme fatale, exploring her style, language, and stories from silent cinema to contemporary television. Julie Grossman explores the notions of female ambition, frustration, and intelligence that undergird the power and fascination of the femme fatale across time and media.

Considers how new technologies have revolutionized the medium, while investigating the continuities that might remain from filmmaking's analogue era. In the process, this book raises provocative questions about the status of realism in a pixel-generated digital medium whose scenes often defy the laws of physics.