Showing posts with label cultural studies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cultural studies. Show all posts

Playing to the World's Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV Review

Playing to the World's Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV
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Playing to the World's Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV ReviewI write this from Los Angeles, which has the Hollywood film industry. It has dominated world cinema since its inception. Yet in this book, Curtin suggests that the expansion of Chinese film and TV might one day make it a serious global cultural competitor.
He analyses the current geographic distribution of Chinese output. Until recently, it was mostly Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. While mainland China had been making movies for decades, the hitherto insular nature of the Chinese economy relegated its film output to mostly China itself. But the burgeoning rise of the overall economy and its opening to global trade has also expanded the scope of Chinese films. This is perhaps the most interesting part of the book. Much of the future projected growth emanates from China.
The quality of the films is also described as rapidly improving. Due to larger budgets, which in turn is a functioning of greater real spending power by Chinese audiences. It has meant that the cheesy, low budget kung fu and romance films are increasingly sidelined.
The discussions about Singapore and Taiwan are interesting, certainly. But those are largely saturated (and small) markets.
The only missing feature of the book is the minimal discussion about animation. The technology for this is now largely available to Chinese studios. While the latest animation techniques are still dominated by American studios, there might be a trend of diminishing returns. Thus, there might be good prospects for a global Chinese animation industry. Akin perhaps to Japanese anime.Playing to the World's Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV OverviewIn this provocative analysis of screen industries in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, Michael Curtin delineates the globalizing pressures and opportunities that since the 1980s have dramatically transformed the terrain of Chinese film and television, including the end of the cold war, the rise of the World Trade Organization, the escalation of democracy movements, and the emergence of an East Asian youth culture. Reaching beyond national frameworks, Curtin examines the prospect of a global Chinese audience that will include more viewers than in the United States and Europe combined. He draws on in-depth interviews with a diverse array of media executives plus a wealth of historical material to argue that this vast and increasingly wealthy market is likely to shake the very foundations of Hollywood's century-long hegemony.Playing to the World's Biggest Audience profiles the leading Chinese commercial studios and telecasters, and delves into the operations of Western conglomerates extending their reach into Asia. Advancing a dynamic and integrative theory of media capital, this innovative book explains the histories and strategies of screen enterprises that aim to become central players in the Global China market and offers an alternative perspective to recent debates about cultural globalization.

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A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors: From the Silent Era to the Present Day Review

A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors: From the Silent Era to the Present Day
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A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors: From the Silent Era to the Present Day ReviewThis is an excellent reference work for anyone who has even a passing interest in Japanese cinema. Jacoby structures the book well, proceeding through all of the major Japanese directors (and many minor ones) in alphabetical order. For each director's entry, he provides a broad career overview - offering his own opinions of the major films - then includes a filmography. While I don't agree with absolutely all of his statements, his opinions are always interesting to read and well-informed, and it's nice to get a fresh (to me) perspective on such classic Japanese filmmakers as Kobayashi, Kurosawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi...
Another striking thing about this book is that Jacoby isn't snobby about which directors he includes. So he has "classical" directors like Mizoguchi in here, and also genre directors like Ishiro Honda of "Godzilla" fame and Takashi Miike. His willingness to cover drama, horror, science fiction, and gangster films in a single volume makes him more open-minded than most other aficionados of Japanese cinema, who tend to limit themselves to one or two genres. (Indeed, rare is the critic who enjoys both Tokyo Story and The Mysterians, as I do.) Another highlight is that Jacoby includes some useful appendices, such as an overview of the major Japanese film studios and a list of historical eras in Japan (handy for figuring out when all these samurai movies are supposed to take place).
Of course, since the book covers a lot of ground, Jacoby doesn't delve too deeply into any one director's work. Even "big guns" like Ozu and Kurosawa have short entries; and while Jacoby has room to challenge some common theories about Ozu, he doesn't have quite enough room to properly develop his counter-theories. Also, like most handbooks, this can get a little dry if you try to read it all in one go; I prefer to sample individual entries whenever I feel like it.
Overall, this is good stuff, and I look forward to using this book to track down the more obscure classics of Japanese cinema. As a pointless aside, many of the movies covered in this book have very amusing titles (in translation), on the order of: "Ninja Mountain Attack Saga: Duel by Autumn Moonlight!" Just thought I'd mention that, because it gave me a few chuckles.A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors: From the Silent Era to the Present Day Overview
This important work fills the need for a reasonably priced yet comprehensive volume on major directors in the history of Japanese film. With clear insight and without academic jargon, Jacoby examines the works of over 150 filmmakers to uncover what makes their films worth watching.

Included are artistic profiles of everyone from Yutaka Abe to Isao Yukisada, including masters like Kinji Fukasaku, Juzo Itami, Akira Kurosawa, Takashi Miike, Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, and Yoji Yamada. Each entry includes a critical summary and filmography, making this book an essential reference and guide.

UK-based Alexander Jacoby is a writer and researcher on Japanese film.


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Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music, Revised Edition Review

Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music, Revised Edition
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Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music, Revised Edition ReviewAlthough being a scholarly work, fully footnoted and with a complete bibliograpy this book, unlike much of academic production, is a great read.
I enjoyed it immensly.
It is a good companion to Michael Channan's book on the same topic."Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording and Its Effects on Music".
If you are interested in the history of recording or just curious about how what we listen to came to be the way it is this book will delight you.Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music, Revised Edition OverviewFully revised and updated, this new edition of Mark Katz's award-winning text adds coverage of mashups and Auto-Tune, explores recent developments in file-sharing, and includes an expanded conclusion and bibliography. Find illustrative sound and film clips www.ucpress.edu/go/capturingsound

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