Book Description
In Recreational Terror, Isabel Cristina Pinedo analyzes how the contemporary horror film produces recreational terror as a pleasurable encounter with violence and danger for female spectators. She challenges the conventional wisdom that violent horror films can only degrade women and incite violence, and contends instead that the contemporary horror film speaks to the cultural need to express rage and terror in the midst of social upheaval.
Through interpretations of a number of horror films including The Thing, The Wizard of Gore, The Stepfather, and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Pinedo looks at how the postmodern elements of the contemporary horror film produce the conditions for recreational terror.
Customer Reviews:
Isabel Pinedo as drinking and movie-watching buddy........2006-10-17
Isabel Cristina Pinedo, Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing (State University of New York Press, 1997)
Imagine yourself (assuming you're not one) a hardcore horror film fan, a kind of horror film Trekkie. The kind of person who can spout filmographies from all the big directors and extemporize on, say, the similarities in the subtexts of John Carpenter's The Thing and Craig McMahon's Machined, while taking a five-minute detour in the middle to compare and contrast the differences between Carpenter's and Howard Hawks' visions of the original story on which both versions of The Thing are based (you, of course, know that that story is John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?"), and how you can tie them all in to Brad Anderson's The Machinist with ease.
Now, aren't you the kind of person who would think to yourself, "man, it would be great to see a feminist reading of Dario Argento's The Stendahl Syndrome!"?
You won't get a reading of Argento here, which I think is one of the book's major failings-- Argento is the kind of director who just begs a feminist interpretation-- but you get a bunch of other interesting stuff, certainly enough to make this book well worth your time (again assuming you're that hardcore horror film geek). You will also find Pinedo failing one of the great acid tests of any critic who deals in horror film-- waxing poetic on the racial overtones of Night of the Living Dead without even hinting that she's aware that they're all accidental. (The casting of Ben Jones was, for all intents and purposes, an accident; Romero and Russo did not specify the race of the character in the script.) But that's not nearly enough to drag down the book's high points. As usual, many of them come in the form of tactful, pistols-at-ten-paces style attacks on other critics whom Pinedo believes have completely missed the mark when interpreting films she is also addressing. This is the kind of stuff that makes books of cultural criticism fun, and you'll get a nice dose of it here (if you want the juicy stuff first, skip forward to Chapter 4 before reading the entire book).
Getting past all that, though, there's the meat of the book to consider, in which Pinedo answers the question of why a woman, and specifically a feminist, would be interested in watching (or, heaven forbid, enjoying) horror films. Needless to say, since we're all human, some of her defenses and discoveries necessarily apply to others who enjoy the occasional blood-soaked good time. As with most critical works, one sometimes gets the feeling that perhaps this is all being overthought, but that doesn't make it any less interesting. Worth a read. You get the feeling it would be a lot of fun to watch horror movies with Pinedo and discuss them afterwards. I'm off to rent The Stendahl Syndrome. ** ½
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The Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort
Peter Galassi
Manufacturer: Museum of Modern Art
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0810960974 |
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Aaron Siskind: Pleasures and terrors
Carl Chiarenza
Manufacturer: Little, Brown in association with Center for Creative Photography
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William Eggleston's Guide
ASIN: 0821215221 |
Book Description
The world's greatest collection of sea survival stories ever! All true! All Terrifying! Over 30 fantastic adventures. Call your mates - these tales are for the tellin'!
* The fearless navyman who fought off multiple shark attacks... with his bare fists!
* The sole survivor who had to rip out nails from his leaky raft to make a fish hook... with his teeth!
* The lost fisherman who was frozen stuck inside a wild swinging buoy... and lived to tell about it!
* The two marooned Englishmen who refused to speak to each other for years... because they were never formally introduced!
* A large crystal bottle haunts a cargo ship for a hundred years with erie music... It was filled with chiming bones!
* Is the blue fish a man killer?... We have the facts!
* The tortured sailors who went mad after eating ... You know what!
* The psychic dog who refused to board a ship... that was destined never to return!
* The suffering of Miss Ann Saunders... and why her fiance suffered even more!
Plus twenty more thrilling stories, unknown marine facts and entertaining sea poems and quotes.
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- The pleasures of another's terror
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Terrors of Pleasure
Manufacturer: Audio Literature
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Binding: Audio Cassette
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ASIN: 1574530844 |
Customer Reviews:
The pleasures of another's terror.......2002-06-12
This is a tale for anyone who's bought or is about to buy a house. Gray creates a nightmare for himself in buying a rundown, white trash hovel - a story which just when you think he can't make matter worse for himself he does.
Gray's monologue's are brilliant constructions of autobiography and metaphor and this is no exception.
You'll have to listen to it all the way through in one sitting, as just as Gray's hysteria builds so will your laughter.
Highlights include an answerphone message from the seller, who in trying to cover up a lie only makes the lie more apparent, and Gray's audition for a movie of the week.
Much better than the HBO TV version, and a good introduction to Gray's work.
Book Description
Rich Larson. Steve Fastner. Two men who certainly know how to treat a lady. Put her in an impossible situation filled with vile aliens and sulferous demons, armned with little more than a piece of sharpened steel and fierce determination. Oh, and make sure she's wearing as little as possible of course! It's with this sly sense of humor and wonderous attention to detail that these two warped geniuses have created hundreds of magnificicent fantasy illustrations, and thousands of die-hard fans. Kiss of Death is the latest collection of their work, and good girls never looked so naughty - or well-armed! KOD also contains a full color section that showcases their remarkable paintings.
Customer Reviews:
AN OLDER COLLECTION FROM THE DYNAMIC DUO.......2005-09-21
The word genius is thrown around awfully lightly these days so I won't use it here. Instead I'll use brilliant to describe the art of Fastner & Larson, still going strong after more than 25 years. It's hard to nail down just what it is about the pair that I like so much...I think it's the humor they inject, often uproarious, and often quite subtly into their work.
Kiss of Death is a collection of much of the duo's earlier works from the 1980's and early 1990's. It collects some magnificent pieces from many of their portfolios over the years such as "Daughters of the Disk" from 1988. You'll get a rare glimpse at a solo portfolio by Rich Larson called "Angels of Death" and it's interesting to see Larson's gorgeous pencils and inks without Fastner's trademark airbrush. "Petz" is a portfolio featuring sexy warrior women and their beasties, "Clan of the Claw" is a prehistoric set with scantily clad cave women battling Dinosaurs.
In the "Seven of Swords" portfolio, a fantastic collection of Swordswomen, SQ productions gives us a chance to see the illustrations take shape from rough, preliminary sketches, to the final, completed piece, and all the steps in between, less you think it just came easy to these guys.
While the bulk of the book is in (glorious) black & white, there is a color section in the middle including a dazzling, 1950's-style "B" movie alien menace painting with a woman running for her life from a blob-like creature. A holiday painting features a lovely swordswoman in Santa Miniskirt, hugging the literal North Pole, while razor-fanged reindeer battle to the death with pirate elves.
For you spanking fans there are the usual giddily humorous corporal punishment pieces that the pair is so well known (and worshipped) for. One interesting thing I learned about from Kiss of Death is that SQP took over the art direction for Fleetway Comcis/Quality Comics. This led to Rich doing a number of covers for the hugely popular British Scf-Fi character, Judge Dredd. Many of these unbelievable covers are reprinted in this collection.
Kiss of Death is a different collection than the more recent Little Black Book and other Fastner & Larson collections from SQP. It's more straight-up Sci-Fi and Fantasy than the more recent books which are more pin-up oriented. It's a great collection for their legions of fans who may be unfamiliar with their older work.
Reviewed by Tim Janson
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The Unknown 1930s: An Alternative History of the British Cinema, 1929- 1939 (Cinema and Society)
Manufacturer: I. B. Tauris
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 186064628X |
Book Description
A group of film historians chart a map of 1930s British cinema. They reassess the films, stars, genres, and directors omitted from accounts of the decade, and they evaluate its forgotten and recently discovered films. The book includes assessments of the British shocker and the British musical, popular 1930s genres, and views of cinema and national identity.
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The Unknown 1930s: An Alternative History of the British Cinema, 1929-39 (Cinema and Society)
Manufacturer: I B Tauris & Co Ltd
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1860643035 |
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Cineaste, published by Cineaste Publishers, Inc. on September 22, 1999. The length of the article is 2386 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: The Unknown 1930s: An Alternative History of the British Cinema, 1929-1939.
Author: John Cunningham
Publication:
Cineaste (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 22, 1999
Publisher: Cineaste Publishers, Inc.
Volume: 24
Issue: 4
Page: 54
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
From the master chronicler of the marvelous and the confounding–author of Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder–here is a much-anticipated new collection of more than twenty pieces from the past two decades, the majority of which have never before been gathered together in book form.
Lawrence Weschler is not simply a superb reporter, essayist, and cultural observer; he is also an uncanny collector and connector of wonders. In Vermeer in Bosnia, whether he is reporting on the aftermath of the Yugoslav wars (and noticing, for example, how centuries earlier Vermeer had had to invent the peace and serenity we so prize in his work today from a youth during which all of Europe had been as ravaged as Bosnia) or dissecting the special quality of light in his beloved hometown of Los Angeles, Weschler’s perceptions are often startling, his insights both fresh and profound.
Included here is Weschler’s remarkable profile of Roman Polanski–written years before the release of The Pianist, yet all but predicting the director’s confrontation with the Holocaust in that film–alongside an equally celebrated portrait of Ed Weinberger, a young designer crushed and yet hardly bowed by an extreme form of Parkinson’s disease. Here is Weschler limning his own experience as the grandson of an eminent Weimar-era composer, and then as the befuddled father of an eminently fetching daughter. Here is Weschler on Art Spiegelman, David Hockney, Ed Kienholz, and Wislawa Szymborska.
Here, in short, are some of the most dazzling pieces from Lawrence Weschler’s own brimming cabinet of marvels.
Customer Reviews:
A Serious Man Who's Good Company.......2005-01-05
Three of the Wechsler books I own were bought at the beginning of bus trips from South Station, Boston, so to me the New Yorker writer is more of a Hub hero than Johnny Damon or Joe Perry. If you can't make it to Barbara's Books, you won't go wrong online with this, but you might consider one of his slimmer volumes (Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder for the art, A Miracle A Universe for the justice) as an introduction to this worthy compilation.
Wise, Enthralling, Insightful.......2004-12-09
In this collection of his essays, written over the past two decades, Lawrence Weschler reports on the summits and troughs of human endeavor. He's often wise, sometimes enthralling, and always insightful.
The opening essay, "Vermeer in Bosnia," is worth the price of the book by itself. The setting is The Hague during the Yugoslavian War Crimes tribunal. He contrasts horrifying testimony about war criminals with the career of the famous Dutch artist Jan Vermeer, whose paintings are on display in a nearby museum. Weschler shows us that Vermeer's greatest achievement was to imagine a world of stillness and serenity at a time when all of Europe was being torn apart by national hatreds and religious persecution, and then to will that world into existence through his art. Those magnificent paintings are more than technical triumphs; they are triumphs of the human spirit. The distance between Vermeer and the murderers, rapists and torturers on trial is heartbreaking. Weschler makes us see Vermeer in a new light, and makes us feel in a new way the unique burdens of being human.
The second essay in this section uses Shakespeare's Henry V to shed light on the Serbian massacre of thousands of Muslims at Srebrenica. The final essay, "Aristotle in Belgrade" reports on Serbian students using the great philosopher as a propaganda weapon against the state police. Unlike Aristotle, though, these students and the rest of the Serbian citizenry abandoned moral discrimination and particularity in favor of dogma and propaganda. Thinking in slogans led to a collective madness that drove the Serbs to commit unspeakable atrocities and then refuse to take responsibility for their actions. Given the current situation in the Middle East, these essays are timely warnings as well as valuable historical records.
Three Polish Survivor Stories, include portraits of film director Roman Polanski, graphic novelist Art Speigelman, and publisher Jerzy Urban. The Polanski essay is fascinating for its psychological portrait of a man who survives by simultaneously mining and jettisoning his past. The most intriguing essay is about Urban, a Jewish boy who survived anti-Semitic persecution to become a young anti-government radical, and, as an older man, a much-reviled government spokesperson for the regime of General Jarulzelski. After that regime collapsed, Urban transformed yet again, this time into a highly successful purveyor of tabloid smut. A cynical, unassimilated survivor through all of it, Urban comes across as both victim and brilliant manipulator of Poland's tortuous postwar politics.
The Grandfathers and Daughters section contains six pieces that include Weschler's daughter as well as his grandfather, the composer Ernst Toch. Unlike the big screen portrayals in the rest of the book, the writing here has the narrower appeal of home movies: some heartwarming moments, but more meaningful to the family than the rest of us.
The most captivating of the Three LA Pieces is "The Light of LA," which is a paean to its clarity and consistency and, paradoxically, its enfolding softness. By interviewing artists, cinematographers, climatologists and astronomers, Weschler lovingly deconstructs the interpenetration of light and air that occurs in LA, a place where the desert, the ocean and tons of industrial particulate matter all meet. The other two pieces are a nostalgic ride with the artist Robert Irwin through LA in the Forties, and a first person account of the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
The final section, Three Portraits of Artists, contains two beautifully made works of narrative art. "True to Life: David Hockney's Photocollages," begins with Hockney picking up a point and shoot Polaroid camera to make some quick collages. What starts as an attempt to introduce a temporal dimension to still photography evolves into a deep exploration of the nature of perception. Hockney's historical guidepost is the cubist way of seeing pioneered by Picasso and Braque. The Cubists realized that fragmenting an image forced a viewer to take more time to truly see it. Hockney progresses from fragmenting a photographic image to removing the fixed edges of the rectangular photos "because there are no edges to seeing." Next, he places himself in the pictures because seeing also involves where the viewer is in relation to what's being seen. Finally he tries to remove the static nature of the object being viewed by introducing different time sequences in the same collage. (Weschler helpfully provides reproductions of the photocollages he's describing.) It's an exhilarating ride through the mind of a major artist working on nothing less than "the revitalization of depiction."
The final essay, "A Parkinsonian Passion," covers the unique career of Ed Weinberger. Weinberger was a classics major turned successful investment banker who in his early forties was stricken with Parkinson's disease. A keen, driven mind was suddenly trapped in a balky, sputtering body. Weinberger turned his considerable mathematical abilities to designing furniture whose specifications had tolerances as precise of those of aircraft or other sophisticated machines. His most useful tool turned out to be the carpenter Scott Schmidt, who built the pieces that Weinberger designed.
As his body grows increasingly beyond his control, Weinberger strains for greater precision and perfection in his art. Doing this work helped focus his body and gave him a way to strike back against the oppressive inexorability of his disease. Like Vermeer in the opening essay, Weinberger's story is one of spiritual as well as artistic triumph.
Like Hockney and Weinberger, Weschler is an artist who makes us see familiar things in a new way.
Thinking About the Unimaginable.......2004-11-23
I'd admired the writing of Lawrence Weschler for years through his writing for The New Yorker. (And it's WESCHLER, not WECHSLER as I'd misread it for the longest time.) He is one of the better essayists around and has some of the qualities that make that possible: an insatiable curiosity, the drive to pursue a topic to its inmost meaning, a mind that makes connections between seemingly disparate notions, an ability to empathize with people he writes about, a drive to explore almost unimaginably emotionally powerful situations, and a graceful prose style. This book collects twenty or so more-or-less unrelated pieces written over twenty years and on a variety of subjects. He has grouped them, however, into related areas: A Balkan Triptych, Three Polish Survivor Stories, Grandfathers and Daughters, Three L.A. Stories, Three Portraits of Artists, and a postlude, 'A Final Vermeer Convergence.'
The title piece, 'Vermeer in Bosnia,' is about the Hague War Crimes tribunal and derives its title from the tribunal judge who day in and day out has to listen and look at evidences of the horrors of the genocidal acts taking place in the former Yugoslavia; he confesses that he restores his peace of mind by going to visit the Vermeers at the nearby Mauritshuis Museum. This theme of the horror of war and racial intolerance (and the human emotional interconnections in spite of them) runs through the entire book. Roman Polanski's chaotic childhood in WWII Poland. Graphic novelist ('Maus') Art Spiegelman's parents' physical escape from concentration camps but their inability to escape in their minds. The story of Weschler's own grandfather, the celebrated Austrian composer Ernst Toch and his repeated relocations due to the political situation in Europe. (As primarily a classical music CD reviewer, I have reviewed recordings of music by Toch which is having a resurgence, but had had no idea until I read Weschler's piece about him that he was the composer's grandson. There is a short piece about a since recorded major work of his, a Passover choral work, 'Cantata of the Bitter Herbs,' which is available here at Amazon.)
There are also pieces that celebrate the ineffable connection between fathers and their daughters (or grandfathers and granddaughters). There's a charming piece (from the NPR program 'This American life') about his own daughter's firm belief in the existence of the Borrowers (Mary Norton's children's book characters). I had to chuckle because the Borrowers live at our house, too. There are pieces about Weschler's own beloved Los Angeles in an article about an LA native's high school years, about the unique quality of the light in LA, and his own (and others') experience of the Northridge earthquake.
Finally, there are three wonderful pieces about artists David Hockney, Edward Kienholz and most remarkable of all, Ed Weinberger, who is all but paralyzed by a particularly vicious form of Parkinsonism but who continues to turn out the most meticulously crafted three-dimensional pieces with the help of an extraordinarily talented younger artist, Scott Schmidt. (Weinberger was the inspiration for Robert de Niro's character in the movie 'Awakenings.')
This is a book to dip into at leisure, but be prepared to find yourself engaged, even entranced, while you are also being shocked, horrified, amused and moved.
Scott Morrison
Book Description
And that's just the beginning: Adobe's official Classroom in a Book training series guides you through all of the program's features, tools, and techniques--both old and new--using hands-on projects and end-of-chapter review questions to make sure the newly acquired knowledge sticks! If you're a beginner, you'll want to read the book from cover to cover for a start-to-finish explanation of how it all works; all of you FrameMaker experts can skip right to the information you need. From the basics (such as character and paragraph formatting) to more advanced tasks (like cross-referencing text and creating indexes)--
Adobe FrameMaker 7.0 Classroom in a Book covers it all.
Books:
- Reiki: The Legacy of Dr. Usui (Shangri-La (Twin Lakes, Wis.).)
- Risking It All: My Student, My Lover, My Story
- Shark Tank: A Novel
- Something's Not Right: One Family's Struggle with Learning Disabilities
- Southern Histories: Public, Personal, and Sacred (Georgia Southern University Jack N. & Addie D. Averitt Lecture Series)
- Stephen Girard: His Life and Legacy
- Success on the Step: Flying with Kenmore Air
- Taxation: British Finance ACT, 1998
- Taxation of International Transactions: Materials, Texts And Problems (American Casebook Series)
- Taxation of International Transactions: Materials, Texts And Problems (American Casebook Series)
Books Index
Books Home
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The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film (Texas Film and Media Studies Series)
Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film
The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (Popular Fictions Series)
The Naked And The Undead
Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold: Horror Films and the American Movie Business, 1953-1968
