"The Queer Biopic returns to the historical moment of the AIDS crisis and the emergence of New Queer Cinema to investigate the phenomena of queer biopic films produced during the late 1980s-early 1990s. More specifically, the book asks why queer filmmakers repeatedly produced biographical films of queer individuals living and dead throughout the years surrounding the AIDS crisis. While film critics and historian typically treat the biopic as a conservative, if not cliché, genre, queer filmmakers have frequently used the biopic to tell stories of queer lives. This project pays particular attention to the genre's queer resonances, opening up the biopic's historical connections to projects of education, public health, and social hygiene, along with the production of a shared history and national identity. Queer filmmakers' engagement with the biopic evokes the genre's history of building life through the portrayal of lives worthy of admiration and emulation, but it also points to another biopic history, that of representing lives damaged. By portraying lives damaged by inconceivable loss, queer filmmakers challenge the illusion of a coherent self presumably reinforced by the biopic genre and in doing so, their films open up the potential for new means of connection and relationality. The book features fresh readings of the cinema of Derek Jarman, John Greyson, Todd Haynes, Barbara Hammer, and Tom Kalin. By calling for a reappraisal of the queer biopic, the book also calls for a reappraisal of New Queer Cinema's legacy and its influence of contemporary queer film"--

Looking at contemporary film and television, this book explores how popular genres frame our understanding of on-screen performance. Previous studies of screen performance have tended to fix upon star actors, directors, or programme makers, or they have concentrated upon particular training and acting styles. Moving outside of these confines, this book provides a truly interdisciplinary account of performance in film and television and examines a much neglected area in our understanding of how popular genres and performance intersect on screen. Each chapter concentrates upon a particular genre or draws upon generic case studies in examining the significance of screen performance. Individual chapters examine contemporary film noir, horror, the biopic, drama-documentary, the western, science fiction, comedy performance in ‘spoof news’ programmes and the television ‘sit com’ and popular Bollywood films.

Remarkable and Reassuring Stories from the Spirit World. Written by spiritual medium Jenny Crawford, Spirit of Love is filled with messages of love that will help heal the hearts of those grieving the loss of a loved one. This collection presents true accounts of soul rescue work, guardian angels, and spirit sense of humor. It tells how the spirit world orchestrates meetings between those on both sides of the veil, and how we can all receive spirit communications just by opening our minds and hearts. A question and answer chapter covers everything from animal communication to free will to dream visits from those who have crossed over. Heartwarming and hopeful, these stories will help you gain an understanding of the other side, and enhance your own healing and spiritual growth.

Just Images: Ethics and the Cinematic charts current developments within the field of ethics and the role it plays in the study of moving images. It is the first collection of essays of its kind that brings together articles by film and media scholars from three continents, and provides multiple points of engagement of film with present and past histories, politics, myth making, and with core aspects of human subjectivity. The essays cover a wide range of topics, such as the European Union; Europe during World War II and after; film genres; the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; early American history, and recent catastrophic events. The collection includes an introductory chapter by Thomas Elsaesser as well as chapters by Kristian Feigelson, Régine-Mihal Friedman, Nurith Gertz and Gal Hermoni, Anton Kaes, Gertrud Koch, Odeya Kohen-Raz, Lihi Nagler, Judd Ne’eman, Bill Nichols, and Janet Walker. The contributors offer different approaches to the issue of film and ethics and ask whether there are specific characteristics of the moving image, or of film scholarship, that relate to ethical issues; and how discussing the engagement of both narrative and documentary film with representations of the Other, trauma, terrorism, the Holocaust, and the Palestinian–Israeli conflict may contribute to the re-shaping of past and current thoughts on these subjects.

Music industry pros and legions of fans wanting to know more about their favorite artists will find authoritative answers in this indispensable reference source.

No one raises an eyebrow if you suggest that a guy who arranges his furniture just so, rolls his eyes in exaggerated disbelief, likes techno music or show tunes, and knows all of Bette Davis's best lines by heart might, just possibly, be gay. But if you assert that male homosexuality is a cultural practice, expressive of a unique subjectivity and a distinctive relation to mainstream society, people will immediately protest. Such an idea, they will say, is just a stereotype-ridiculously simplistic, politically irresponsible, and morally suspect. The world acknowledges gay male culture as a fact but denies it as a truth. David Halperin, a pioneer of LGBTQ studies, dares to suggest that gayness is a specific way of being that gay men must learn from one another in order to become who they are. Inspired by the notorious undergraduate course of the same title that Halperin taught at the University of Michigan, provoking cries of outrage from both the right-wing media and the gay press, How To Be Gay traces gay men's cultural difference to the social meaning of style. Far from being deterred by stereotypes, Halperin concludes that the genius of gay culture resides in some of its most despised features: its aestheticism, snobbery, melodrama, adoration of glamour, caricatures of women, and obsession with mothers. The insights, impertinence, and unfazed critical intelligence displayed by gay culture, Halperin argues, have much to offer the heterosexual mainstream.