Join Amazon Prime and get unlimited Free One-Day Delivery. Already a member? Sign in.

 

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
   
More Buying Choices
29 used & new from £14.00
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
Contemporary American Cinema
 
 
Share your own customer images
Search inside this book

Contemporary American Cinema (Paperback)

by Linda Ruth Williams (Author), Michael Hammond (Author) "THE YEARS FROM 1965 to 1970 were an exceptionally intense period of change in American cinema, during which the old studio system, now commonly referred..." (more)
5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
RRP: £27.99
Price: £26.59 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £1.40 (5%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.

Want guaranteed delivery by Tuesday, July 14? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details
16 new from £21.00 13 used from £14.00
Other Editions: RRP: Our Price: Other Offers:
Hardcover £65.00 £65.00 3 used & new from £65.00

Frequently Bought Together

Contemporary American Cinema + Contemporary Hollywood Cinema + Film Theory Goes to the Movies: Cultural Analysis of Contemporary Film (AFI Film Readers)
Price For All Three: £64.57

Show availability and shipping details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Contemporary Hollywood Cinema

Contemporary Hollywood Cinema

by Steve Neale
4.0 out of 5 stars (1)  £19.94
Film Theory Goes to the Movies: Cultural Analysis of Contemporary Film (AFI Film Readers)

Film Theory Goes to the Movies: Cultural Analysis of Contemporary Film (AFI Film Readers)

by Jim Collins
£18.04
New Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction

New Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction

by Geoff King
4.5 out of 5 stars (2)  £13.29
German National Cinema (National Cinemas)

German National Cinema (National Cinemas)

by Sabine Hake
£18.04
The Cult Film Reader

The Cult Film Reader

by Ernest Mathijs
£22.79
› Explore similar items

Product details

  • Paperback: 584 pages
  • Publisher: Open University Press; illustrated edition edition (1 May 2006)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0335218318
  • ISBN-13: 978-0335218318
  • Product Dimensions: 24.4 x 19 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 379,550 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

  • See Complete Table of Contents

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested in These Sponsored Links

  (What is this?)
Multimedia Computer
   www.acer.co.uk/timeline    Watch all your Movies with an 8-hr battery life w/ Intel® Centrino® 2 
Contemporary
   mydeco.com    UK's largest selection of home furniture from top brands 
Cinema
   www.fantario.com    New & used Books: Find low priced offers for Cinema 
  
 

Product Description

Product Description

The first complete study of mainstream and nontraditional film since 1960

Indispensable to film students and general readers interested in this art form, Contemporary American Cinema culls together the writings of the world's leading film scholars to provide the first comprehensive introduction to postclassical American film. Heavily illustrated with more than 50 color and black-and-white stills, it takes a close look at all aspects of the genre, including influential movies, directors, producers, and actors.

This unique and accessible resource includes two Tables of Contents, allowing readers to research chronologically or thematically. In addition, it includes a glossary of important terms, suggestions for further reading, sample essay questions, and a filmography. Subjects include:

  • Decline of the early studio system
  • Rise of American new-wave cinema
  • Parallel histories of independent and underground cinema
  • Black cinema--from the "blaxploitation" era of the 1970s to the 1990s
  • Full history of the American blockbuster
  • Uses and effects of new film making technologies
  • America's ever-changing audiences
  • Key genres and industry statistics


About the Author

Linda Ruth Williams and Michael Hammond are senior lecturers in film at the University of Southampton, United Kingdom.

Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
THE YEARS FROM 1965 to 1970 were an exceptionally intense period of change in American cinema, during which the old studio system, now commonly referred to as "Classical Hollywood", was finally swept away by a tide of social and industrial changes whose combined power was arguably the most traumatic experience that Hollywood had ever encountered. Read the first page
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Search inside this book:

Tag this product

 (What's this?)
Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.
Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Contemporary American Cinema
85% buy the item featured on this page:
Contemporary American Cinema 5.0 out of 5 stars (2)
£26.59
Contemporary Hollywood Cinema
9% buy
Contemporary Hollywood Cinema 4.0 out of 5 stars (1)
£19.94
New Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction
6% buy
New Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction 4.5 out of 5 stars (2)
£13.29
Explore similar items
 

Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
5 star:
 (2)
4 star:    (0)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
5.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, 23 Mar 2009
By H. Burn (London_UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
A really good book with lots of information about Contemporary American cinema. I needed it for a film studies course and wont be selling it on after i finish, as its a really interesting read. Reccomended.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An Outstanding Survey of Contemporary American Cinema, 22 Mar 2007
By David A. Andrews "amateur" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Contemporary American Cinema is what it says it is: an overview of post-1960 American cinema that is so thorough and so clear that it will be useful to all film specialists and accessible to virtually all film students. This book is also authoritative, bringing together an all-star lineup of critics and scholars in one fairly compact volume. It was this lineup that convinced me, a reader with avid interest in film and media studies but not a teacher or student per se, to buy the book in the first place. What has made this purchase truly economical is not only the weight of information conveyed by the book but the efficiency with which the book conveys it. Contemporary American Cinema will remind you of what you know even as it tells you something fresh, smart, and disruptive in every new paragraph: and all without knee-breaking trips to the library.

Any review of this book must, then, include a review of its editors and contributors, many of whom are luminaries in film and media studies. (See the list below.) Given that most of these individuals are located in the United Kingdom rather than in the United States, it is worth asking whether it is wise to turn to so many non-American voices when studying American cinema. My short answer: good grief, yes! One of the best aspects of this book is that it provides the sociopolitical contexts that American textbooks often ignore or marginalize. As it happens, American cinema may be even more compelling viewed from the outside--if, that is, there is any true "outside" to American cinema, given that it is so often a global commodity from inception to consumption.

Another thing to notice about this group of contributors is its variety. Such diversity affords Contemporary American Cinema its truly outstanding coverage of the field. One of the book's unifying messages, if that is the right word, is the necessity of specialized integration. To understand what American cinema is all about, this book suggests, readers must confront it in as much breadth and depth as possible, while jettisoning value judgments regarding authenticity, aesthetic value, and the like. This is easier said than done, of course, but readers have a better shot of approaching an ideal of specialized integration if they own a book in which the contributors specialize in many forms and many approaches--and if said contributors are committed to summarizing the detail of what they know in the clearest, most communally oriented prose.

As a result, this survey dismantles preconceptions rooted in partial visions and in elitist valuations. Contemporary American cinema, it seems, is equally blockbuster spectacle and "underground" spectacle. It is equally the modernist narratives of "the Hollywood Renaissance" (e.g., Bonnie and Clyde) and the more traditional narratives of "family entertainment" (e.g., The Love Bug). It is simultaneously "blaxploitation," New Queer Cinema, and "smart cinema." It is an evolving array of documentary practices. It is, moreover, the low-budget horror of cult cinema (from Night of the Living Dead to Eraserhead), the mid-budget horror of neo-noir (from Looking for Mr. Goodbar to Body Heat), and the high-budget horror of the disaster movie (from The Poseidon Adventure to The Towering Inferno). It is changing uses of sex-and-gender codes. It is changing technologies and viewer routines. It is a highly unstable collection of rival definitions (of "auteurism," of "independent," of "Hollywood," and so on). It is, moreover, a blizzard of economic figures and an ever-fluctuating set of corporate nameplates. It is all these interlinked data and so many others. And it is all irreducible.

Some notes on the organization of this book. Contemporary American Cinema is divided into four overarching sections that are based on the four decades under examination, with some necessary "bleeding across" these artificial period boundaries. Each of these four sections is then divided into four-to-seven chapters as written by different experts. These chapters provide each writer the most space to delve into the films and filmmakers of each decade--and to explore the critical, cultural, and political contexts that enmesh these films, filmmakers, and decades. Each chapter is, in turn, "interrupted" by short capsule essays devoted to key genres or movements, key films, or key players. At the end of each period section is a set of helpful ancillary materials: box-office figures, award winners, suggestions for reading, and questions for discussion. And at the end of the book as a whole, the editors have included a glossary, a bibliography, a filmography, and an index. What is more, Contemporary American Cinema is amply illustrated with color plates and with black-and-white prints. I found the capsule essays particularly enjoyable. Because of their brevity, I expected these short essays to sacrifice content for ease-of-use. But I found no discernible drop-off in substance relative to the chapters. The capsules break up the chapters by focusing attention on single ideas, objects, or individuals--and they provide some of the book's most astute commentary.

Which parts did I find most useful? That's hard to say. Each of the seven chapters on the 1990s had clear strengths, with the pieces by Geoff King ("Spectacle and Narrative in the Contemporary Blockbuster"), Barbara Klinger ("Home Viewing, New Technologies and DVD"), Michael Hammond ("New Black Cinema"), Michele Aaron ("New Queer Cinema"), Yvonne Tasker ("Women in Contemporary US Action Cinema"), and Jeffrey Sconce ("Smart Cinema") proving indispensable. My only regret with these pieces is that I didn't read them years ago. This section also includes fine capsule essays by Hammond, Tasker, Linda Ruth Williams, and Mark Kermode, among others. In the earlier sections, I found the chapters by Michael O'Pray ("American Underground Cinema of the 1960s"), Steve Neale ("Revising the Hollywood Renaissance"), Eithne Quinn and Peter Krämer ("Blaxploitation"), Stephen Prince ("Hollywood in the Age of Reagan"), Jim Hillier ("US Independent Cinema since the 1980s"), Krämer ("Disney and Family Entertainment"), and Williams ("Women in Recent US Cinema") to be excellent. These sections also contain insightful capsule essays. Williams on auteurism and on Taxi Driver; Hammond on Richard Pryor; Kermode on Miramax and on Heaven's Gate; Helen Hanson on Psycho; Kim Newman on Roger Corman and on Night of the Living Dead; Christine Cornea on the Hollywood musical: the list is long and diverse.

In sum, the editors of this book are to be congratulated on their selection of contributor material and on their creation of a structure that keeps readers moving along a fairly broad span of years. If you are a teacher of contemporary American cinema, you should assign this book, pronto. But even if you are in my position--which is to say in no position, thus harshly cut off from the strange and beautiful world of desk copies--you should get this book in paperback. It compresses a wealth of important recent scholarship into one readerly whole and thus represents an incredible value.

Contemporary American Cinema. McGraw-Hill Education/Open University Press. 2006. Editors: Linda Ruth Williams and Michael Hammond. Contributors: Michele Aaron, Christine Cornea, Sheldon Hall, Michael Hammond, Helen Hanson, Jim Hillier, Susan Jeffords, Jonathan Kahana, Mark Kermode, Geoff King, Barbara Klinger, Peter Krämer, Steve Neale, Kim Newman, Michael O'Pray, Carl Plantinga, Stephen Prince, Eithne Quinn, James Russell, Jeffrey Sconce, Mark Shiel, Peter Stanfield, Yvonne Tasker, Linda Ruth Williams, Brian Winston, and Patricia Zimmerman.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

 Beta (What's this?)
This product's forum (0 discussions)
  Discussion Replies Latest Post
  No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
  [Cancel]


Active discussions in related forums
   
Related forums

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Feedback

The Body Shop

The Body Shop - Vitamin C Skin Boost
Protect and boost your glow with The Body Shop Vitamin C Skin Boost.

›Shop The Body Shop

  

Beauty without the Beast

Olay Regenerist Daily 3 Point Treatment Cream
From au naturel to party glam, we have all the best names in cosmetics and skincare.

›Discover Beauty at Amazon.co.uk

  

Boys Smell

Lynx Africa Body Spray and After Shave Gift set
But we make sure they smell good...

›Discover male grooming at Amazon.co.uk

  

Treat Someone

Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificates--available in any amount from £5 to £500 With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is).

›Learn more about Gift Certificates

  
Ad

Where's My Stuff?

Delivery and Returns

Need Help?

Your Recent History

  (What's this?)
You have no recently viewed items or searches.

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.

Look to the right column to find helpful suggestions for your shopping session.
Continue Shopping: Top Sellers
The Girl Who Played with Fire
The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
4.5 out of 5 stars (73)£3.86
 Breaking Dawn (Twilight Saga)
Breaking Dawn (Twilight Saga) by Stephenie Meyer
4.1 out of 5 stars (462)£6.49
 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
4.1 out of 5 stars (164)£3.99
 The Host
The Host by Stephenie Meyer
4.2 out of 5 stars (80)£3.86

amazon.co.uk Amazon Home
International Sites:  United States  |  Germany  |  France  |  Japan  |  Canada  |  China
Business Programs: Sell on Amazon  |  Fulfilment by Amazon  |  Join Associates  |  Join Advantage
Customer Service  |  Help  |  View Basket  |  Your Account
About Amazon.co.uk  |  Careers at Amazon
Conditions of Use & Sale |  Privacy Notice  © 1996-2009, Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates