Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History (Religion and Postmodernism Series)

Book Description

Sensible Ecstasy investigates the attraction to excessive forms of mysticism among twentieth-century French intellectuals and demonstrates the work that the figure of the mystic does for these thinkers. With special attention to Georges Bataille, Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Lacan, and Luce Irigaray, Amy Hollywood asks why resolutely secular, even anti-Christian intellectuals are drawn to affective, bodily, and widely denigrated forms of mysticism.

What is particular to these thinkers, Hollywood reveals, is their attention to forms of mysticism associated with women. They regard mystics such as Angela of Foligno, Hadewijch, and Teresa of Avila not as emotionally excessive or escapist, but as unique in their ability to think outside of the restrictive oppositions that continue to afflict our understanding of subjectivity, the body, and sexual difference. Mystics such as these, like their twentieth-century descendants, bridge the gaps between action and contemplation, emotion and reason, and body and soul, offering new ways of thinking about language and the limits of representation.

Troy: From Homer's Iliad to Hollywood Epic

Average customer rating:

Interesting

Troy: From Homer's Iliad to Hollywood Epic

Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

History & Criticism | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

Greece | Ancient | History | Subjects | Books

Greek | Classics | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Big Screen Rome
Spartacus: Film and History
The Trojan War: A New History
Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece
Gladiator: Film and History

ASIN: 1405131829

Book Description

This is the first book to examine systematically Wolfgang Petersen 's epic film Troy from archaeological, literary, cultural, and cinematic perspectives. The collection addresses the most important aspects of the film: its use of Homer 's Iliad and the myth of the Trojan War, its presentation of Bronze-Age archaeology, its modern political overtones, and its place in film history with regard to both previous epics on the Trojan War and the director 's own earlier work.The book explains why, despite or perhaps because of the liberties the film takes with ancient myth, literature, and archaeology, Troy has found huge worldwide audiences. For those who wish to explore the subject further, the book includes an annotated list of feature films and television films and series episodes on the Trojan War.

Customer Reviews:

Interesting.......2007-07-09

INteresting group of essays looking at the movie and the legend that inspired it. My favorite was on Briseis and all the aspects of her personality that were really Cassandra!

The Trouble with Men: Masculinities in European and Hollywood Cinema

Average customer rating:

The Trouble with Men: Masculinities in European and Hollywood Cinema

Manufacturer: Wallflower Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

History & Criticism | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

Male Subjectivity at the Margins

ASIN: 1904764088

Book Description

The Trouble with Men is a collection of original essays focusing on masculinity and film, particularly the representation of European masculinity. Spilt into four sections - stars, class and race, fathers and bodies - areas covered include the Carmen films, Yiddish cinema, romantic comedy and beur cinema. National cinemas discussed include Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain and France, and featured films include Gladiator, Batman, Billy Elliot, Notting Hill and Fight Club. Michael Caine's status as a working class hero is featured alongside Gene Kelly and camp, and Alain Delon's spectacular masculinity.

Censored Screams: The British Ban on Hollywood Horror in the Thirties

Average customer rating:

Censored Screams: The British Ban on Hollywood Horror in the Thirties
Tom Johnson
Manufacturer: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0786427310

Product Description

As Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931) ushered in the golden age of horror films in the United States, studios and distributors were faced with a major problem in their number one overseas market: the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) were demanding extensive cuts, enforcing age restrictions, and banning outright many of Hollywoods horror movies. The issue most often used to limit the showing of horror films was their unsuitability to children. With that in mind, the BBFC developed specific film codesthe A (for adults) and the H (for horrific), both of which restricted viewing to those 16 or olderand then applied them liberally. This work examines how and why horror films were censored or banned in the United Kingdom, and the part these actions played in ending Hollywoods golden age of horror.

Average customer rating:

Braveheart: From Hollywood to Hollyrood
Lin Anderson
Manufacturer: Luath Press Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Irish | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

History & Criticism | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

Scotland | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

Medieval | World | History | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Braveheart

ASIN: 1842820664

Book Description

Braveheart reached a global audience with its powerful re-telling of the almost forgotten story of William Wallace and his struggle to defend Scotland's freedom. Described as ?the most politically influential movie of the 20th century?, it also had a part to play in the political change that swept Scotland, mobilising public opinion to aid the return of a Scottish Parliament after a gap of 300 years. Braveheart: From Hollywood to Holyrood is the first book about this movie phenomenon, discussing the life and legacy of William Wallace through the modern image of the hero as presented in the film. Written with the co-operation of Randall Wallace, author of the screenplay and novelisation of Braveheart, and including never before published photographs, this is the long-awaited handbook for Braveheart fans around the world.

European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood (Amsterdam University Press - Film Culture in Transition)

Average customer rating:

European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood (Amsterdam University Press - Film Culture in Transition)
Thomas Elsaesser
Manufacturer: Amsterdam University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

Industry | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

Sports & Entertainment | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Theorising National Cinema
The New European Cinema: Redrawing the Map (Film and Culture Series)
The Future of the Image
Film Fables (Talking Images)
The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies

ASIN: 9053565949

Book Description

Has European cinema, in the age of globalization, lost contact not only with
the world at large, but with its own audiences? Between the thriving
festival circuit and the obligatory late-night television slot, is there
still a public or a public sphere for European films? Can the cinema be the
appropriate medium for a multicultural Europe and its migrating multitudes?
Is there a division of representational labor, with Hollywood providing
stars and spectacle, the Asian countries exotic color and choreographed
action, and Europe a sense of history, place and memory?

This collection of essays by an acclaimed film scholar examines how
independent filmmaking in Europe has been reinventing itself since the 1990s,
faced by renewed competition from Hollywood and the challenges posed to
national cinemas by the fall of the Wall in 1989. Elsaesser reassesses the
debates and presents a broader framework for understanding the
forces at work since the 1960s. These include the interface of "world
cinema" and the rise of Asian cinemas, the importance of the international
film festival circuit, the role of television, and the changing
aesthetics of auteur cinema. New audiences have different allegiances, and
new technologies enable networks to reshape identities, but European cinema
still has an important function in setting critical and creative agendas,
even as its economic and institutional bases are in transition.

Average customer rating:

A wonderful book
Timeless and Authentic
A Remarkable Book with an Unforgettable Voice
Richie's Picks: SAMMY & JULIANA IN HOLLYWOOD
Couldn't put it down

Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood
Benjamin Alire Saenz
Manufacturer: Cinco Puntos Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Issues | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Violence | Social Issues | Teens | Subjects | Books

General | Literature & Fiction | Teens | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Under the Wolf, Under the Dog
Realm of Possibility
Carry Me Like Water
Speak
In Perfect Light: A Novel

ASIN: 0938317814

Book Description

The "Hollywood" where Sammy Santos and Juliana Rios live is not the West Coast one, the one with all the glitz and glitter. This Hollywood is a tough barrio at the edge of a small town in southern New Mexico. Sammy and this friends-members of the 1969 high school graduating class-face a world of racism, dress codes, war in Vietnam and barrio violence. In the summer before his senior year begins, Sammy falls in love with Juliana, a girl whose tough veneer disguises a world of hurt. By summer's end, Juliana is dead. Sammy grieves, and in his grief, the memory of Juliana becomes his guide through this difficult year. Sammy is a smart kid, but he's angry. He's angry about Juliana's death, he's angry about the poverty his father and his sister must endure, he's angry at his high school and its thinly disguised gringo racism, and he's angry he might not be able to go to college. Benjamin Alire Saenz, evoking the bittersweet ambience found in such novels as McMurtry's The Last Picture Show, captures the essence of what it meant to grow up Chicano in small-town America in the late 1960s.

Benjamin Alire Saenz-novelist, poet, essayist and writer of children's books-is at the forefront of the emerging Latino literatures. He has received both the Wallace Stegner Fellowship and the Lannan Fellowship, and is a recipient of the American Book Award. Born Mexican-American Catholic in the rural community of Picacho, New Mexico, he now teaches at the University of Texas at El Paso, and considers himself a "fronterizo," a person of the border.

Customer Reviews:

A wonderful book.......2006-01-05

I really enjoyed this book, but I think its a shame that they are marketing it as Young Adult. This is a book that deserves a wider audience than just teens, as many adults will be able to relate due to the era.

Timeless and Authentic.......2005-08-02

"We have plans. Then something happens." Sammy has plans: to go to college, to get out of the barrio, to love Juliana. Although Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood takes place in the Hollywood barrio of Las Cruces, New Mexico, in 1968/69, it is a timeless story of teen hopes and fears, love and loss, and what it is like to grow up poor and of color. Sammy, called The Librarian by his friends for his scholarly ways, falls in love with Juliana the summer before his senior year. By summer's end, she has died tragically and senselessly, and Sammy "[doesn't] care. Not about anything. Not anymore." But despite his anger and the pain of his loss, the demands of his friends and his family only increase in his senior year and Sammy is pulled into their lives. These are real teenagers, who drink, party, take drugs, have sex, swear, push the limits of school administrations and the law. Sammy agrees to be campaign manager for Gigi who is running for student body president on a platform of "shakin' up the school." Some of his friends face the draft and service in Vietnam, and everyone knows that poor Hispanic boys of Hollywood come back in pine boxes. Two friends are brutally beaten for being gay. One friend dies of heroin addiction. His father is injured in an automobile accident. Things happen.
Sammy maneuvers through the minefields of student elections, drugs, protests, racism homophobia, and loss and finds a resiliency he doesn't know he has. Like all teenagers, he thinks his life will start when he gets to college. But he is deeply involved in the life of Hollywood. Saenz has found an authentic voice in Sammy who is full of the angst and confusion of all teenagers but is also perceptive, sensitive and compassionate. This is a beautifully realized story of what it meant in 1968 to grow up in the barrio. Today, teens growing up in the ghettos face the same problems Sammy and his friends faced.

A Remarkable Book with an Unforgettable Voice.......2005-01-08

This novel covers a year in the life of a Hispanic teenager living in a Florida barrio in the late sixties. The voice of Sammy, the main character, is authentic and his personality is vivid and lovable. I was rooting for him from page one through the end.

The author also captures the flavor of the barrio and Sammy's high school through wonderful portrayals of Sammy's girlfriend Juliana, his Hispanic and Jewish friends, his caring family, and his next door neighbor. They practically step off the page.

Finally, the book, through portrayals of Vietnam soldiers, school protests, and diminishing hemlines, makes the late sixties come alive.

Sammy and Juliana is a wonderful novel.

Richie's Picks: SAMMY & JULIANA IN HOLLYWOOD.......2004-12-04

In 1968, during the summer preceding his senior year at Las Cruces High School in southern New Mexico, seventeen-year-old Sammy Santos hooks up with Juliana Rios. The powerful and achingly tragic story Sammy recounts of Juliana and that summer is but a mere preface in this stunning ode to growing up in the barrio--a neighborhood that some joker has named Hollywood. I alternately laughed, cheered, and cried as Sammy and his Hollywood friends encounter the prejudices, the Church, the hormones, the War, the drugs, the violence, the music, the aspirations, and the dress code, while making their way through that year both inside and outside of the barrio. If I had to choose a single "top" book from the 200+ new books for teens that I've read in 2004, SAMMY & JULIANA IN HOLLYWOOD would be the one.

Couldn't put it down.......2004-09-28

This is a book I highly recommend. I got it in the mail on Sat and finished it by the next day.
It can be at times very depressing to read, in that Catcher in the Rye type of way. The difference is that Sammy isn't born into a life of privelege, and his obstacles extend beyond his own wonderings. His immidiate world is filled with economic and social harship.
Sammy goes through so much that you can't even imagine what else could possibly happen, but you want to be there with him when it does. It is very honest, vivid and well-written. My only negative criticism: there's a part that seems to be chronologically out of order...I was a lit major in college, so I am very picky.

Average customer rating:

Beyond Hollywood's Grasp
Harry Waldman
Manufacturer: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Entertainers | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Direction & Production | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Reference | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0810828413

Book Description

Recounts the period in which American directors, stars, and technicians ventured beyond America's shores to first make films abroad. But out of sight, they were quickly forgotten, or worse, ignored back home, though as a group they produced more than 200 films in 30 years.This is the story of those films--illustrated with 60 rarely seen stills--and the filmmakers who created them.

Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria After the Second World War

Average customer rating:

Good Case Study of American Expansionist Cultural Policy Vis-A-Vis Media Technology. The Colonial Metaphor is a Stretch
Great analysis, Interesting writing

Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria After the Second World War
Reinhold Wagnleitner
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Americas | History | Subjects | Books

Austria | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

Hungary | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Irresistible Empire: Americas Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe
Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society)
The American Enemy: The History of French Anti-Americanism
Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization
Spreading the American Dream: American Economic & Cultural Expansion 1890-1945 (American Century)

ASIN: 0807844551

Book Description

Reinhold Wagnleitner argues that cultural propaganda played an enormous part in integrating Austrians and other Europeans into the American sphere during the Cold War. In Coca-Colonization and the Cold War, he shows that 'Americanization' was the result not only of market forces and consumerism but also of systematic planning on the part of the United States.

Wagnleitner traces the intimate relationship between the political and economic reconstruction of a democratic Austria and the parallel process of cultural assimilation. Initially, U.S. cultural programs had been developed to impress Europeans with the achievements of American high culture. However, popular culture was more readily accepted, at least among the young, who were the primary target group of the propaganda campaign. The prevalence of Coca-Cola and rock 'n' roll are just two examples addressed by Wagnleitner. Soon, the cultural hegemony of the United States became visible in nearly all quarters of Austrian life: the press, advertising, comics, literature, education, radio, music, theater, and fashion. Hollywood proved particularly effective in spreading American cultural ideals. For Europeans, says Wagnleitner, the result was a second discovery of America.

This book is a translation of the Austrian edition, published in 1991, which won the Ludwig Jedlicka Memorial Prize.

Customer Reviews:

Good Case Study of American Expansionist Cultural Policy Vis-A-Vis Media Technology. The Colonial Metaphor is a Stretch.......2006-04-03

In Coca-Colonization and the Cold War, Reinhold Wagnleitner traces the evolution of an American foreign policy of cultural imperialism and its success in post World War II Austria. This success is rooted in American influence on periodicals, radio, literature, education, drama, music, and film. The author contends that Europe and the United States should be part of the same political analytic and in important ways constitute a common cultural bloc. He sees World War I as a tipping point where the expansion of American exports into Europe is necessarily followed by American culture. The expansion of American media monopoly is closely tied to its rise as a global superpower. The text even suggests that some American cultural trends, like a belief in choice through consumerism and science as the engine of social progress, matured in Europe a generation before they matured in the United States.

Coca-Colonization can draw parallels with two books that proceeded it, John W. Dower's Embracing Defeat and Tom Engelhardt's The End of Victory Culture. Like Dower, Wagnleitner confronts American cultural expansion as a policy aim in the occupation of a war torn nation. He also documents the reification of American occupiers and their country of origin. Like Engelhardt, Wagnleitner weaves together political history and personal childhood experience in telling the story of the Cold War through American popular culture. Unlike Engelhardt, Wagnleitner is less interested in biography and more interested in policy and policy actors. Unlike both, Coca-Colonization emphasizes the technological infrastructure of media distribution as an adjunct to cultural policy.

After comprehensively making a case for the common yoke of America and Europe, Wagnletiner's "colonialism" comes off as a "civil-colonialism" at best. While he finds it ironic in chapter one that America was a European colony that became a cultural imperialist in Europe, he is not Frantz Fanon. The colonialism he refers to (from the seventeenth thru the twentieth centuries) is quite different than the colonialism which exploits political subjects and inscribes power in the psychology of inferiority and mutilated kinship ties. Wagnleitner's colonialism is not one of balls and chains but rather bread and circuses. Perhaps this is what is missing from Coca-Colonization. While it is impressive in relating European and American cultural history, and even more impressive in documenting the American cultural-industrial-policy complex, it speaks of American colonialism in Austria without speaking of being an exploited people. It is as though there was a wild party across the Atlantic which Austrian children suddenly found themselves immersed in and liking. Is this the same as the historical experience of American Indians or Australian Aboriginals who may have also found themselves drinking Coca-Cola?

If the author does not see this distinction in appropriating colonialism as a term, how can he animate it in his consideration of American foreign policy? It should be noted that as a translated work, this review treads one step removed from the project's indigenous nomenclature. The credibility of this engagement with debates in the translated language is constrained. Still, as Austrian children reveled alongside American children in rock-n-roll, blue jeans, anti-Vietnam sit-ins, movies, logos, new left counterculture and individual expression, Coca Colonization does a fabulous job at explaining this as a policy outcome. It just yearns for a comparison with other "colonial" experiences and in discussing American "colonization" of Austria, it does not question the meta-narrative of World War II American liberation with a ten-foot pole. It is also lacking in its consideration of race, gender, and class in the American cultural products which it documents.

Great analysis, Interesting writing.......2000-04-10

Wagnleitner does a great job of taking the reader through Western Austria's change from an ex-Nazi state to a miniature US "wannabe." The author also discusses the discrepancy between the percieved American culture and actual American culture. He furthers the discussion by examining the role that cultural imperialism has played in the history of the world. Overall, it was a great look at an issue which remained a hot one in Europe for decades (and still is in France, of course).

Hollywood and Europe: Economics, Culture, National Identity 1945-95 (Ucla Film and Television Archive Studies in History, Criticism, and Theory)

Average customer rating:

Hollywood and Europe: Economics, Culture, National Identity 1945-95 (Ucla Film and Television Archive Studies in History, Criticism, and Theory)

Manufacturer: British Film Institute
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

History & Criticism | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

20th Century | World | History | Subjects | Books

Sports & Entertainment | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0851705979

Book Description

Since the end of the First World War, anguished voices have been raised in Europe about the need to counter Hollywood's domination of the movie marketplace.The concern has been for the balance of payments, for the protections of the indigenous industry, and for the preservation of national identity. Hollywood and Europe presents the responses of an international and distinguished group of scholars and academics to these concerns.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books