American Smart Cinema
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Edinburgh University Press
Published:6th Jan '12
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
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.Connecting the 'smart' sensibility to issues of expressive irony, generational divide and therapeutic culture, this bold new book describes a recent critical tradition in commercial-independent American filmmaking by exploring the unstable tone and dysfunctional themes of such films as The Royal Tenenbaums, Adaptation, The Squid and the Whale, Palindromes, The Last Days of Disco, Flirt, Ghost World, Your Friends and Neighbors, Donnie Darko and The Savages. Acknowledging the loaded forms of expression employed by these films, American Smart Cinema provides new directions for their study by discussing the self-conscious approach taken to film historical discourses of authorship, narrative and genre. Examining the smart film's taste for 'blank' style and issues of middle-class identity, the book provides a comprehensive account of smart cinema as an aesthetic category while also considering the cultural and political factors that have guaranteed it critical and popular success.
A thought-provoking analysis of the thematic and formal qualities of a significant series of tendencies in American cinema beyond the mainstream, mixing detailed readings of individual films with consideration of broader cultural contexts in which they can be understood. -- Professor Geoff King
Over the past two decades, "Indie" cinema has become an almost unworkable category, applied indiscriminately to a body of films that demonstrate little to no economic or stylistic cohesion. In American Smart Cinema, Claire Perkins makes an important contribution toward mapping recent American filmmaking with greater critical precision, providing a detailed and insightful examination of the "smart film" in relation to its recurring interest in the politics of youth culture. It is a welcome addition for those interested in better understanding the unique tone and thematic obsessions of this particular wing of "Indie" production. -- Professor Jeffrey Sconce
Over the past two decades, "Indie" cinema has become an almost unworkable category, applied indiscriminately to a body of films that demonstrate little to no economic or stylistic cohesion. In American Smart Cinema, Claire Perkins makes an important contribution toward mapping recent American filmmaking with greater critical precision, providing a detailed and insightful examination of the "smart film" in relation to its recurring interest in the politics of youth culture. It is a welcome addition for those interested in better understanding the unique tone and thematic obsessions of this particular wing of "Indie" production. -- Professor Jeffrey Sconce
ISBN: 9780748640744
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
192 pages