Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster (Cinema and Society) - Hardcover

King, Geoff

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1860645720 ISBN 13: 9781860645723

Publisher: I.B.Tauris, 2001

Synopsis

What makes today's Hollywood films so successful? Is it the sheer scale of special effects that gives films like ""Jurassic Park"" or ""The Matrix"" their mass audience appeal? Geoff King looks at the underexplored dynamic relationship between narrative and spectacle in contemporary Hollywood cinema. He uses the myth of the American frontier against a range of Hollywood filmsand drawes examples from the digital-effects-based and virtual-reality spectacles, space fictions, action films, war epics and disaster films that now dominate cinema.

About this title

About the Author:

Geoff King is Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at Brunel University.

From Library Journal:

How do the creators of big-budget Hollywood blockbuster films like Titanic and Armageddon maintain the balance of narrative and spectacle in their films? What happens when one aspect overwhelms the other? Do more successful films maintain both equally? King (film and TV studies, Brunel Univ., U.K.; Mapping Reality: An Exploration of Cultural Cartographies) considers these questions in his curiously complex examination of what makes the current crop of epic films work. At the same time, he takes into account the effect of frontier mythology on the most triumphant of these films. His argument here is sketchy at best but still has merit, implying, for example, that Westerns worked with American moviegoers because they traditionally identified with films that pitted an idealistic, questing hero against a villain who attempted to thwart him. King admits that the spectacle/frontier mythology connection is "slippery," yet he must be commended for blazing a trail into largely unexplored film theory. Recommended for academic library film and media collections.DDavid M. Lisa, Wayne P.L., NJ
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: I.B.Tauris
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1860645720
• ISBN 13: 9781860645723
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256