Cinematic Appeals follows the effect of technological innovation on the cinema experience, specifically the introduction of widescreen and stereoscopic 3D systems in the 1950s, the rise of digital cinema in the 1990s, and the transition to digital 3D since 2005. Widescreen films drew the spectator into the world of the screen, enabling larger-than-life close-ups of already larger-than-life actors. The technology fostered the illusion of physically entering a film, enhancing the semblance of realism. Alternatively, the digital era was less concerned with manipulating the viewer’s physical response and more with generating information flow, awe, disorientation, and the disintegration of spatial boundaries. This study ultimately shows how cinematic technology and the human experience shape and respond to each other over time. Films discussed include Elia Kazan’s East of Eden (1955), Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999), The Matrix (1999), and Thomas Vinterberg’s Dogme film The Celebration (1998).

Cinematic Appeals follows the effect of technological innovation on the cinema experience, specifically the introduction of widescreen and stereoscopic 3D systems in the 1950s, the rise of digital cinema in the 1990s, and the transition to digital 3D since 2005. Widescreen cinema promised to draw the viewer into the world of the screen, enabling larger-than-life close-ups of already larger-than-life actors. This technology fostered the illusion of physically entering a film, enhancing the semblance of realism. Alternatively, the digital era was less concerned with the viewer's physical response and more with information flow, awe, and the reevaluation of spatiality and embodiment. This study ultimately shows how cinematic technology and the human experience shape and respond to each other over time.

Many films and novels defy our ability to make sense of the plot. While puzzling storytelling, strange incongruities, inviting enigmas and persistent ambiguities have been central to the effects of many literary and cinematic traditions, a great deal of contemporary films and television series bring such qualities to the mainstream—but wherein lies the attractiveness of perplexing works of fiction? This collected volume offers the first comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and trans-medial approach to the question of cognitive challenge in narrative art, bringing together psychological, philosophical, formal-historical, and empirical perspectives from leading scholars across these fields.

Cinematic Howling presents a refreshingly unorthodox framework for feminist film studies. Instead of criticizing mainstream movies from feminist perspectives, Hoi Cheu focuses on women's filmmaking itself. Integrating systems theory and feminist aesthetics in his close readings of films and screenplays by women, he considers how women engage the process of storytelling in cinema. The importance of these films, he argues, is not merely that they reflect women's perceptions, but that they have the power to reframe experiences and, consequently, to transform life. A major contribution to feminist scholarship that will appeal to scholars of both gender and film, Cinematic Howling is written in an approachable and inviting style, full of vivid examples and attention to detail, which will suit both undergraduate and graduate courses in gender, film, and cultural studies.

Films evoke broad moods and cue particular emotions that can be broadly shared as well as individually experienced. Although the experience of emotion is central to the viewing of movies, film studies have neglected to focus attention on the emotions, relying instead on vague psychoanalytic concepts of desire. Movies, Emotion, and Mood synthesizes recent research on emotion in cognitive psychology and neurology in an effort to provide a more nuanced understanding of how film evokes emotion.

The Cold War was as much a battle of ideas as a series of military and diplomatic confrontations, and movies were a prime battleground for this cultural combat. As Tony Shaw and Denise Youngblood show, Hollywood sought to export American ideals in movies like Rambo, and the Soviet film industry fought back by showcasing Communist ideals in a positive light, primarily for their own citizens. The two camps traded cinematic blows for more than four decades. The first book-length comparative survey of cinema's vital role in disseminating Cold War ideologies, Shaw and Youngblood's study focuses on ten films—five American and five Soviet—that in both obvious and subtle ways provided a crucial outlet for the global "debate" between democratic and communist ideologies. For each nation, the authors outline industry leaders, structure, audiences, politics, and international reach and explore the varied relationships linking each film industry to its respective government. They then present five comparative case studies, each pairing an American with a Soviet film: Man on a Tightrope with The Meeting on the Elbe; Roman Holiday with Spring on Zarechnaya Street; Fail-Safe with Nine Days in One Year; Bananas with Officers; Rambo: First Blood Part II with Incident at Map Grid 36-80. Shaw breathes new life into familiar American films by Elia Kazan and Woody Allen, while Youngblood helps readers comprehend Soviet films most have never seen. Collectively, their commentaries track the Cold War in its entirety—from its formative phase through periods of thaw and self-doubt to the resurgence of mutual animosity during the Reagan years-and enable readers to identify competing core propaganda themes such as decadence versus morality, technology versus humanity, and freedom versus authority. As the authors show, such themes blurred notions regarding "propaganda" and "entertainment," terms that were often interchangeable and mutually reinforcing during the Cold War. Featuring engaging commentary and evocative images from the films discussed, Cinematic Cold War offers a shrewd analysis of how the silver screen functioned on both sides of the Iron Curtain. As such it should have great appeal for anyone interested in the Cold War or the cinematic arts.