City Flicks

The growth of Indian film production, the significance of cinema in Indian society within and beyond India, and the rapid expansion of Indian cities and the urban lifestyle are closely linked phenomena. The relationship between cinema and modernity in the Indian context is both complex and multifaceted, and in this volume, some of the leading names in film and cultural studies explore its many dimensions. The introductory essay sets the parameters of the discussions to follow, analysing the interfaces between cinematic representation, globalization and city life. The essays range from discussions of urbanity and film language to realism and the Indian city in Bengali film of the 1940s; from the cultural resonances of popular Hindi film songs and the idea of the 'city' to realism and fantasy in cinematic representations of metropolitan Indian life; from cinematic aspects of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children to genre, narrative form and film style in contemporary Indian urban action films; from the complexities of female spectatorship for the urban vigilantism of Telugu heroine Vijayasanthi, to an analysis of the current primacy of 'Bollywood' in today's media-driven urban environment; and finally, to the cultural impact and influence of Indian films in diaspora communities in Fiji, Australia, Nigeria and South Africa. Dealing as it does with the intersection of vital contemporary cultural phenomena-cinema, the city, and the modern-these thought provoking essays are a valuable addition to current scholarship in the field.

This illustrated guide is unique. Fans of Miami Vice, Scarface, Burn Notice, and 80s Miami movies will appreciate it. The guide will also interest students of Miami history and Art Deco as well as those nostalgic about Miami in the 80s. It explains for the first time that these shows are really a time capsule of long gone Miami scenes. They serve as a record of when Miami was 1980s America on steroids. Burn Notice, an innovative show in its own right, followed Miami Vice's lead. When compared to similar scenes from Vice, recent TV shows reveal the distinctiveness of the 80s. These TV shows also provide a window into today's Miami. The guide shows where views of long gone iconic locations and typical Miami scenes can be found on the DVDs. The value of Miami Vice to South Florida is explained. Personal observations are provided by the author who lived there during the Vice years. All music played on Miami Vice is listed as well as key locations in all Vice, movies, and recent TV episodes.

Provides a road map of the scholarship on modern Hindi cinema in India, with an emphasis on understanding the interplay between cinema and colonialism, nationalism, and globalization. This book attends to issues of capitalism, nationalism, orientalism, and modernity through understandings of race, gender and sexuality, religion, and politics.

A visual history of 100 years of filmmaking in New York City, featuring exclusive interviews with NYC filmmakers Fun City Cinema gives readers an in-depth look at how the rise, fall, and resurrection of New York City was captured and chronicled in ten iconic Gotham films across ten decades: The Jazz Singer (1927), King Kong (1933), The Naked City (1948), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Taxi Driver (1976), Wall Street (1987), Kids (1995), 25th Hour (2002), and Frances Ha (2012). A visual history of a great American city in flux, Fun City Cinema reveals how these classic films and legendary filmmakers took their inspiration from New York City’s grittiness and splendor, creating what we can now view as “accidental documentaries” of the city’s modes and moods. In addition to the extensively researched and reported text, the book includes both historical photographs and production materials, as well as still-frames, behind-the-scenes photos, posters, and original interviews with Noah Baumbach, Larry Clark, Greta Gerwig, Walter Hill, Jerry Schatzberg, Martin Scorsese, Susan Seidelman, Oliver Stone, and Jennifer Westfeldt. Extensive "Now Playing" sidebars spotlight a handful of each decade’s additional films of note.

From starry-eyed fans with dreams of fame to cotton entrepreneurs turned movie moguls, the Bombay film industry has historically energized a range of practices and practitioners, playing a crucial and compelling role in the life of modern India. Bombay Hustle presents an ambitious history of Indian cinema as a history of material practice, bringing new insights to studies of media, modernity, and the late colonial city. Drawing on original archival research and an innovative transdisciplinary approach, Debashree Mukherjee offers a panoramic portrait of the consolidation of the Bombay film industry during the talkie transition of the 1920s–1940s. In the decades leading up to independence in 1947, Bombay became synonymous with marketplace thrills, industrial strikes, and modernist experimentation. Its burgeoning film industry embodied Bombay’s spirit of “hustle,” gathering together and spewing out the many different energies and emotions that characterized the city. Bombay Hustle examines diverse sites of film production—finance, pre-production paperwork, casting, screenwriting, acting, stunts—to show how speculative excitement jostled against desires for scientific management in an industry premised on the struggle between contingency and control. Mukherjee develops the concept of a “cine-ecology” in order to examine the bodies, technologies, and environments that collectively shaped the production and circulation of cinematic meaning in this time. The book thus brings into view a range of marginalized film workers, their labor and experiences; forgotten film studios, their technical practices and aesthetic visions; and overlooked connections among media practices, geographical particularities, and historical exigencies.

This title explores the shadowy world of the short, pornographic cut-piece clips that appear in some films in Bangladesh and examines their place in South Asian film culture. It provides a portrait of the production, consumption and cinematic pleasures of stray celluloid and shines a light on Bangladesh's state-owned film industry and popular practices of the obscene. The book also reframes conceptual approaches to South Asian cinema and film culture, drawing on media anthropology to decode the cultural contradictions of Bangladesh since the 1990s.

Cities have always been arenas of social and symbolic conflict. As places of encounter between different classes, ethnic groups, and lifestyles, cities play the role of powerful integrators; yet on the other hand urban contexts are the ideal setting for marginalization and violence. The struggle over control of urban spaces is an ambivalent mode of sociation: while producing themselves, groups produce exclusive spaces and then, in turn, use the boundaries they have created to define themselves. This volume presents major urban conflicts and analyzes modes of negotiation against the theoretical background of postcolonialism.

Catholicism was all over movie screens in 2004. Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was at the center of a media firestorm for months. A priest was a crucial character in the Academy Award-winning Million Dollar Baby. Everyone, it seemed, was talking about how religious stories should be represented, marketed, and received. Catholic characters, spaces, and rituals have been stock features in popular films since the silent era. An intensely visual religion with a well-defined ritual and authority system, Catholicism lends itself to the drama and pageantry of film. Moviegoers watch as Catholic visionaries interact with the supernatural, priests counsel their flocks, reformers fight for social justice, and bishops wield authoritarian power. Rather than being marginal to American popular culture, Catholic people, places, and rituals are all central to the world of the movie. Catholics in the Movies begins with an introductory essay that orients readers to the ways that films appear in culture and describes the broad trends that can be seen in the movies' hundred-year history of representing Catholics. Each chapter is written by a noted scholar of American religion who concentrates on one movie engaging important historical, artistic, and religious issues. Each then places the film within American cultural and social history, discusses the film as an expression of Catholic concerns of the period, and relates the film to others of its genre. Tracing the story of American Catholic history through popular films, Catholics in the Movies should be a valuable resource for anyone interested in American Catholicism and religion and film.