From Frank Miller to Zack Snyder, and Return: Contemporary Superhero Comics and Post-Classical Hollywood

Film adaptations of superhero comic-books offer a particularly rich case study to analyse narrative strategies of contemporary Hollywood cinema. The serial structures adopted by the comics they are based on, as well as their use of the spectacular potential of the image, provide a successful model for current audiovisual productions. Without completely abandoning classical techniques, these adaptations try to find a new balance between narrative and digital phantasmagoria. This paper discusses some significant examples of this genre, including adaptations of classical DC and Marvel franchises and more recent series, as well as other comic-book influenced films such as The Matrix and Unbreakable.

Spectacle and value in classical Hollywood cinema

This is a primarily meta-critical essay and is in direct dialogue with the argument presented in my essay on Gone with the Wind (published in 'Screen'). Here, however, the emphasis is much more on the challenge my definition of spectacle represents for important traditions of film analysis, particularly ‘mise-en-scène criticism’. I argue for the possibility of spectacle to form part of the ‘organic’ whole of a film’s texture and form, while noting the challenge the concept represents (by dint of certain ideological associations and its taint of commercialism) with ‘organicist’ traditions of interpretative film analysis.

Contemporary Hollywood And The Attention Economy

This thesis had two goals: to explore the transformation of Hollywood from the 1930s to present, and to investigate how Contemporary Hollywood functions in a growing attention economy. Evident in the types of films that it produces as well as its evolving industrial structure, Contemporary Hollywood significantly differs from the Classical Hollywood of the 1930s. New digital technologies like surround sound and computer-generated imagery (CGI) have allowed studios to create a different type of film like the blockbuster and to have more extensive control over their films. Additionally, growing exhibition and distribution platforms have also fundamentally altered the industrial landscape of Hollywood. In order to combat this more egalitarian distribution system, Contemporary Hollywood has turned to conglomeratization. But, what has caused such a radical shift in the form and function of Contemporary Hollywood and its films? This thesis argues that Hollywood is failing to thrive in this new media landscape¿not because of changing technologies¿but because of a changing consumer. Richard Lanham theorizes that we are living in a growing attention economy, where human attention is the most valuable commodity in such an information-saturated society. For the current consumer, there is near-constant media over-stimulation: he or she is exposed to any number of screens (mobile phones, laptops, tablets, televisions, etc.) at any given time. Because we can access anything from anywhere at anytime, we¿ve become somewhat schizophrenic and impatient in terms of the media that we consume in our lives.

Spectacle/gender/history: the case of Gone with the Wind

The essay asserts that, since pioneering work in the 1970s and 80s (in Screen in particular), the study of classical Hollywood cinema has failed adequately to acknowledge and understand the role of spectacle therein. This essay outlines theoretical but, even more, practical understandings of particular kinds of spectacle; they are susceptible to the practice of close analysis. Seeking to discuss spectacle in precise terms and in particular contexts, I define two kinds of spectacle associated with the historical film: ‘the decor of history’ and ‘the spectacular vista’. The example of Gone with the Wind illustrates the interrelationship between these two kinds of spectacle and their associations with particular ideas of femininity and masculinity. This gendering of spectacle is related to ‘the historical gaze’, a performative gesture that exemplifies the wider rhetoric of historical films, in their seeking to address the historical knowledge of the film spectator and to uphold a vision of history as being driven by powerful men, aware of their own destiny. Over the course of the three famous hilltop scenes in Gone with the Wind, one can plot Scarlett O'Hara's increased access to this kind of foresight and fortitude coded as ‘masculine’. This character arc can also be traced through Scarlett's shifting place within the film's use of spectacle: she begins the film wholly preoccupied with the domestic world of lavish parties and beautiful gowns; however, after her encounter with cataclysmic history visualized as a vast, terrible spectacle (the fall of Atlanta), Scarlett assumes the role occupied by her broken and emasculated father.

Space, authenticity and utopia in the hip-hop teen dance film

The dance film flourished in the 2000s in the form of the hip-hop teen dance film. Such films as Save the Last Dance (Thomas Carter, 2001), Honey (Billy Woodruff, 2002) and Step Up (Anne Fletcher, 2006) drew on hip-hop’s dominance of the mainstream music industry and combined the teen film’s pre-existing social problem and musical narratives. Yet various tension were created by their interweaving of representations of post-industrial city youth with the utopian sensibilities of the classical Hollywood musical. Their narratives celebrated hip-hop performance, and depicted dance’s ability to bridge cultural boundaries and bring together couples and communities. These films used hip-hop to define space and identity yet often constructed divisions within their soundscapes, limiting hip-hop’s expressive potential. This article explores the cycle’s celebration of, yet struggle with, hip-hop through examining select films’ interactions between soundscape, narrative and form. It will engage with these films’ attempts to marry the representational, narrative and aesthetic meanings of hip-hop culture with the form and ideologies of the musical genre, particularly the tensions and continuities that arise from their engagement with the genre’s utopian qualities identified by Richard Dyer (1985). Yet whilst these films illustrate the tensions and challenges of combining hip-hop culture and the musical genre, they also demonstrate an effective integration of hip-hop soundscape and the dancing body in their depiction of dance, highlighting both form’s aesthetics of layering, rupture and flow (Rose, 1994: 22).

O cinema ibérico e os óscares: razões para a não selecção dos filmes portugueses ao óscar de melhor filme em língua estrangeira, através da análise comparativa entre as cinematografias de Espanha, Portugal e o modelo de produção de Hollywood

Dissertação apresentada à Escola Superior de Comunicação Social como parte dos requisitos para obtenção de grau de mestre em Audiovisual e Multimédia.

Aesthetical and narrative uses of the trench in the Hollywood cinema of 1918-1930

Throughout history of painting, the representation of landscape has been considered a laboratory for the human gaze on the world. The First World War and its new approach to the battlefield altered deeply the classical forms of representation, and replaced them with a mechanised and fragmentary vision, which was related with the development of photography and cinema. As Vicente J. Benet has analysed, Hollywod cinema used these deep changes in its filmic versions of the conflict, although it organised them following a narrative logic. In this text we intend to study how the battlefield and, particularly, the trench, are inserted in this logic of the history of landscape painting. We do so through some Hollywood films from the period 1918-1930. Firstly, we approach the trench as a composition value which can structure the image and guide the camera movement. In the second place, we study how it creates a dialog between its inside, melodrama scenery, and the outside, battlefield and danger. In both cases, we conclude that the trench as a form and as a narrative element plays a structuring and integrative role with the storytelling logic.

The cinema of Kathryn Bigelow : Hollywood transgressor

Kathryn Bigelow has undoubtedly been one of Hollywood's most significant female players, well known in popular terms for films such as Point Breakand Blue Steel, yet relatively unexplored in academia. Soundbites about women and guns and speculation about the role of ex-husband James Cameron ( Aliens, Titanic) in her career have often helped obscure rather than elucidate an understanding of her work. This collection explores how Bigelow can be seen to provide a point of intersection to a whole range of issues at the forefront of contemporary film studies and of the transformation of Hollywood into a post-classical cinema machine, with a particular emphasis on her most ambitious and controversial picture, Strange Days. Her place within new Hollywood is as a filmmaker that blurs genre conventions, reinscribes gender identites, and produces a breathless cinema of attractions.

Hollywood y Eisenstein filman multitudes : Representaciones cinematográficas de la conciencia social y la experiencia de clase

El artículo analiza las representaciones fílmicas de la conciencia social y la experiencia de clase, en relación a varias series de películas del cine clásico, tanto europeo como hollywoodense, que ponen en escena a sujetos sociales colectivos y conflictos sociales. Se intenta responder a la pregunta sobre la posibilidad y alcances de la representación visual y fílmica de las categorías teóricas de las ciencias sociales En esta dirección se examina la homogeneización de las masas en la epopeya de multitudes anónimas en la época del cine mudo, en el cine épico-histórico de la Italia fascista y en las superproducciones históricas estadounidenses de los años cincuenta, así como la aparición fílmica del sujeto histórico proletariado en el cine de la vanguardia rusa de la década de 1920 y su preocupación por filmar expresamente la conciencia revolucionaria y los conflictos de concientización.

Hollywood y Eisenstein filman multitudes : Representaciones cinematográficas de la conciencia social y la experiencia de clase

El artículo analiza las representaciones fílmicas de la conciencia social y la experiencia de clase, en relación a varias series de películas del cine clásico, tanto europeo como hollywoodense, que ponen en escena a sujetos sociales colectivos y conflictos sociales. Se intenta responder a la pregunta sobre la posibilidad y alcances de la representación visual y fílmica de las categorías teóricas de las ciencias sociales En esta dirección se examina la homogeneización de las masas en la epopeya de multitudes anónimas en la época del cine mudo, en el cine épico-histórico de la Italia fascista y en las superproducciones históricas estadounidenses de los años cincuenta, así como la aparición fílmica del sujeto histórico proletariado en el cine de la vanguardia rusa de la década de 1920 y su preocupación por filmar expresamente la conciencia revolucionaria y los conflictos de concientización.

Hollywood y Eisenstein filman multitudes : Representaciones cinematográficas de la conciencia social y la experiencia de clase

El artículo analiza las representaciones fílmicas de la conciencia social y la experiencia de clase, en relación a varias series de películas del cine clásico, tanto europeo como hollywoodense, que ponen en escena a sujetos sociales colectivos y conflictos sociales. Se intenta responder a la pregunta sobre la posibilidad y alcances de la representación visual y fílmica de las categorías teóricas de las ciencias sociales En esta dirección se examina la homogeneización de las masas en la epopeya de multitudes anónimas en la época del cine mudo, en el cine épico-histórico de la Italia fascista y en las superproducciones históricas estadounidenses de los años cincuenta, así como la aparición fílmica del sujeto histórico proletariado en el cine de la vanguardia rusa de la década de 1920 y su preocupación por filmar expresamente la conciencia revolucionaria y los conflictos de concientización.

Hollywood dominance : will it continue?

Hollywood has dominated the global film business since the First World War. Economic formulas used by governments to assess levels of industry dominance typically measure market share to establish the degree of industry concentration. The business literature reveals that a marketing orientation strongly correlates with superior market performance and that market leaders that possess a set of six superior marketing capabilities are able to continually outperform rival firms. This paper argues that the historical evidence shows that the Hollywood Majors have consistently outperformed rival firms and rival film industries in each of those six marketing capabilities and that unless rivals develop a similarly integrated and cohesive strategic marketing management approach to the movie business and match the Major studios’ superior capabilities, then Hollywood’s dominance will continue. This paper also proposes that in cyberspace, whilst the Internet does provide a channel that democratises film distribution, the flat landscape of the world wide web means that in order to stand out from the clutter of millions of cyber-voices seeking attention, independent film companies need to possess superior strategic marketing management capabilities and develop effective e-marketing strategies to find a niche, attract a loyal online audience and prosper. However, mirroring a recent CIA report forecasting a multi-polar world economy, this paper also argues that potentially serious longer-term rivals are emerging and will increasingly take a larger slice of an expanding global box office as India, China and other major developing economies and their respective cultural channels grow and achieve economic parity with or surpass the advanced western economies. Thus, in terms of global market share over time, Hollywood’s slice of the pie will comparatively diminish in an emerging multi-polar movie business.