Product Description: With its gothic tale of a troubled teen haunted by visions of a figure in a Halloween rabbit suit, Donnie Darko was among the first cult movie phenomena of the twenty-first century, making debut director Richard Kelly Hollywood hot property before he reached his thirtieth birthday...read more

What exactly is film comedy and what is the basis for its widespread appeal? Film Comedy uses formal, socio-historical and industrial perspectives to answer this question. What, for example, is the basis of the appeal of gross-out comedy in films such as There's Something About Mary and American Pie? What is the relationship between comedy and narrative, from early silent slapstick to the performance of actors such as Steve Martin and Jim Carrey? How has romantic comedy changed, or remained the same, from the 1930s to today? What happens when comedy is put to more serious ends in satire ranging from works produced under communism in Eastern Europe and Cuba to Hollywood features such as Bullworth and Wag the Dog? To what extent is comedy nation-specific? And what is the role of comic relief in Hollywood action movies and black comedy such as American Psycho and Man Bites Dog.

Indiewood is the place where Hollywood and the American independent sector meet, where lines blur and two very different kinds of cinema come together in a striking blend of creativity and commerce. This is an arena in which innovative, sometimes challenging cinema reaches out to the mainstream. Or, alternatively, a zone of duplicity and compromise in which the ‘true’ heritage of the indie sector is co-opted as an offshoot of Hollywood.Indiewood is the first book to provide objective analysis of this distinctive region of the contemporary American film landscape. Case studies include the work of Quentin Tarantino, Charlie Kaufman and Steven Soderbergh and the output of the studio ""specialist"" divisions Miramax and Focus Features.From the stylized violence and cult film referencing of Kill Bill to the literary resonances of Shakespeare in Love and from the mind-bending scripts of Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) to Soderbergh’s Traffic and Solaris, Geoff King examines the way Indiewood features combine mainstream with more unconventional features in an attempt to have it both ways: to remain accessible while offering markers of distinction designed to appeal to more particular, niche-audience constituencies.

A study of the mappings used to impose meaning on the world, this text argues that maps create rather than merely represent the ground on which they rest. From the history of cartography to the mappings culture, sexuality and nation, it draws on a range of materials including mappings imposed in the colonial settlement of America, the Cold War, Vietnam and the events since the collapse of the Soviet bloc. The book argues for a deconstruction of the opposition between map and territory to allow dominant mappings to be challenged, their contours redrawn and new grids imposed.

What is "New Hollywood"? The "art" cinema of the Hollywood "Renaissance" or the corporate controlled blockbuster? The introverted world of Travis Bickle or the action heroics of Indiana Jones, Buzz Lightyear, and Maximus the Gladiator? Innovative departures from the "classical" Hollywood style or superficial glitz, special effects, and borrowings from MTV? Wholesale change or important continuities with Hollywood's past? The answer suggested by Geoff King in New Hollywood Cinema is all of these and more. He examines New Hollywood from three main perspectives: film style, industry, and the social-historical context. Each is considered in its own right, sometimes resulting in different ways of defining New Hollywood. But one of the book's central arguments is that a combination of these approaches is needed if we are to understand the latest incarnations of the cinema that continues to dominate the global market.King looks at the Hollywood "Renaissance" from the late 1960s to the late 1970s, industrial factors shaping the construction of the corporate blockbuster, the role of auteur directors, genre and stardom in New Hollywood, narrative and spectacle in the contemporary blockbuster, and the relationship between production for the big and small screens.Case studies considered include Taxi Driver, Godzilla, and Gladiator, tracing the roots of New Hollywood from the 1950s to the start of the twenty-first century.

What defines 'quality' in contemporary Hollywood film? Although often seen as inhospitable to such work, the studios of the blockbuster-franchise era continue to produce features that make claims to higher status. Films such as The Social Network, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Mystic River are marked as distinctive from the mainstream norm. But how exactly, and how are such qualities mixed with more familiar Hollywood ingredients, as found in larger doses in other examples such as Blood Diamond and the blockbuster-scale Inception? Quality Hollywood is the first book to address these issues, featuring close analysis of case study films, critical responses and the wider notions of cultural value on which these draw. Geoff King argues that such films retain a presence as a minority strand of studio output. The reasons for this combine factors relating to economics, the power of certain filmmakers and Hollywood’s investment in its own prestige.

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Does your job involve selling services? Would you like to increase your numbers so that you regularly meet, and indeed beat, your sales targets? Of course you would. And this is the book that will help you make that happen. It will give you all the practical skills you need to excel in selling your company's services. It offers a whole host of tips, guidelines and background information that is useful, immediately applicable, grounded in common sense but not commonly known. The Secrets of Selling is the first book to bring this vital knowledge together in one place. Clearly, concisely and engagingly written, you will wonder what you ever did without it. No one would deny that selling is hard. But if you get it right, you can really shine. This book shows you how to win work consistently, from new clients as well as existing ones. If you follow the advice in The Secrets of Selling, you will have as much sales knowledge as the very best and most experienced sales people.

Product Description: 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...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: 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...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Lively and accessible in style, this book is written for both an academic readership and the wider audience of gamers and those interested in popular culture.