This analysis of images of science and technology from popular films of the 1980s and 1990s argues that films as diverse as the science fiction film Jurassic Park contribute to popular understandings of science and technology.

»Our society has undergone a paradigm shift. In the information age, you and I are the alpha males,« Dr Leonard Hofstadter, experimental physicist and protagonist of the hit sitcom »The Big Bang Theory«, assures himself and his fellow scientists. The success of this and similar formats in American popular culture proves his point: Science has finally discovered the formula for cool. This interdisciplinary study examines how »cool«, a key aesthetic and affective category in the American imagination, informs contemporary representations of technoscience. Analyzing selected audiovisual productions, Judith Kohlenberger sheds light on current processes of interaction between science and popular culture, two pivotal sources for change in post-industrial America.

Bringing together leading and emerging scholars, this book argues for the significance of theory for reading texts written and produced for young people. Integrating perspectives from across feminism, ecocriticism, postcolonialism and poststructuralism, it demonstrates how these inform approaches to a range of contemporary literature and film.

Throughout Disney's phenomenally successful run in the entertainment industry, the company has negotiated the use of cutting-edge film and media technologies that, J. P. Telotte argues, have proven fundamental to the company's identity. Disney's technological developments include the use of stereophonic surround sound for Fantasia, experimentation with wide-screen technology, inaugural adoption of three-strip Technicolor film, and early efforts at fostering depth in the animated image. Telotte also chronicles Disney's partnership with television, development of the theme park, and depiction of technology in science fiction narratives. An in-depth discussion of Disney's shift into digital filmmaking with its Pixar partnership and an emphasis on digital special effects in live-action films, such as the Pirates of the Caribbean series, also highlight the studio's historical investment in technology. By exploring the technological context for Disney creations throughout its history, The Mouse Machine illuminates Disney's extraordinary growth into one of the largest and most influential media and entertainment companies in the world. Hardback is unjacketed.

Recent years have witnessed an explosion of interest in the 'spatialities of cinema' across the social sciences and humanities, yet to date critical inquiry has tended to explore this issue as a question of the 'city' and the 'urban'. For the first time, leading scholars in geography, film and cultural studies have been drawn together to explore the multiple ways in ideas of cinema and countryside are co-produced: how 'film makes rural' and 'rural makes film'. From the expanse of the American great west to the mountainous landscapes of North Korea, Cinematic Countrysides draws on a range of popular and alternative film genres to demonstrate how film texts come to prefigure expectations of rural social space, and how these representations come to shape, and be shaped by, the material and embodied circumstances of 'lived' rural experience. At the heart of this volume's varied apprehensions of the 'cinematic countryside' is a concern to argue that ideas of rurality in film are central to wider questions of 'modernity' and 'tradition', 'self' and 'other', 'nationhood' and 'globalisation', and crucially, ones that are central to an account of the 'cinematic city'.

A study of Denis Villeneuve’s genre-transcendent film. In Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016), scientists must decipher the language of and peacefully communicate with aliens who have landed on Earth before the world’s military attacks. In this first book-length study of the film, scholar David Roche argues that it is one of the most important films of this century, and the most brilliant science fiction film since Blade Runner. Roche posits Arrival as a blockbuster with artistic ambitions—an argument supported by the film’s several Academy Award nominations—and looks closely at how the film engages with theoretical questions posed by contemporary film studies and philosophy alike. Each section explores a central aspect of the film: its status as an auteur adaptation; its relation to the science fiction genre; its themes of communication on narrative and meta-narrative levels; its aesthetics of time and space; and the political and ethical questions it raises. Ultimately, Roche declares Arrival a unique, multifaceted experience in the world of hard science fiction films, placing it in context with works like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Contact while also examining how it bridges the gap between genre and art house cinema.

Exploring the depiction of violence and related issues in Hollywood productions, this book focuses on the motivations and cultural politics of violence on the big screen, as well as its effects on viewers and society as a whole.