Twelve articles concentrating on research in three non-traditional aspects of film: the film audience, motion picture economics and legal concerns relevant to film as a mass medium. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Why do so many of us enjoy being told frightening stories? What are some of the consequences that result from such exposure? In light of the considerable popularity of horror films over the last three decades, these questions have become the focus of growing attention for many scholars. However, research on audience preferences for, and reactions to, horror films has been performed eclectically by investigators from varied theoretical and methodological backgrounds. As a result, the information has not been effectively integrated. This volume was written to address this problem and to position the study of audience responses to frightening fiction as a significant research topic.

Today, thin films are near-ubiquitous and are utilised in a very wide range of industrially and scientifically important areas. These include familiar everyday instances such as anti-reflective coatings on ophthalmic lenses, smartphone optics, photovoltaics, decorative, and tool coatings. A range of somewhat more exotic applications also exists, such as astronomical instrumentation (e.g., ultra-low loss dielectric mirrors and beam splitters in gravitational wave detectors, such as laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatory (LIGO)), gas sensing, medical devices and implants, and accelerator coatings (e.g., coatings for the large hadron collider (LHC), and compact linear collider (CLIC) experiments at European organization for nuclear research (CERN)). This Special Issue will provide a platform for researchers working in any area within this highly diverse field to share and exchange their latest research findings. The Special Issue contains novel studies encompassing material characterisation techniques, a range of thin-film coating deposition processes and applications of such technology.

In what is becoming a series of annual volumes, researchers contribute to the study of cinema and mass communication by considering three nontraditional aspects of the industry. Among the 12 articles are discussions of the effect of horror movies on violence against women, the production of culture

Environmentalism and ecology are areas of rapid growth in academia and society at large. Screening Nature is the first comprehensive work that groups together the wide range of concerns in the field of cinema and the environment, and what could be termed “posthuman cinema.” It comprises key readings that highlight the centrality of nature and nonhuman animals to the cinematic medium, and to the language and institution of film. The book offers a fresh and timely intervention into contemporary film theory through a focus on the nonhuman environment as principal register in many filmic texts. Screening Nature offers an extensive resource for teachers, undergraduate students, and more advanced scholars on the intersections between the natural world and the worlds of film. It emphasizes the cross-cultural and geographically diverse relevance of the topic of cinema ecology.