How science fiction films in the 1950s were marketed and helped create the broader genre itself. For Hollywood, the golden age of science fiction was also an age of anxiety. Amid rising competition, fluid audience habits, and increasing government regulation, studios of the 1950s struggled to make and sell the kinds of films that once were surefire winners. These conditions, the leading media scholar J. P. Telotte argues, catalyzed the incredible rise of science fiction. Though science fiction films had existed since the earliest days of cinema, the SF genre as a whole continued to resist easy definition through the 1950s. In grappling with this developing genre, the industry began to consider new marketing approaches that viewed films as fluid texts and audiences as ever-changing. Drawing on trade reports, film reviews, pressbooks, trailers, and other archival materials, Selling Science Fiction Cinema reconstructs studio efforts to market a promising new genre and, in the process, shows how salesmanship influenced what that genre would become. Telotte uses such films as The Thing from Another World, Forbidden Planet, and The Blob, as well as the influx of Japanese monster movies, to explore the shifting ways in which the industry reframed the SF genre to market to no-longer static audience expectations. Science fiction transformed the way Hollywood does business, just as Hollywood transformed the meaning of science fiction.

Throughout Disney's phenomenally successful run in the entertainment industry, the company has negotiated the use of cutting-edge film and media technologies that, J. P. Telotte argues, have proven fundamental to the company's identity. Disney's technological developments include the use of stereophonic surround sound for Fantasia, experimentation with wide-screen technology, inaugural adoption of three-strip Technicolor film, and early efforts at fostering depth in the animated image. Telotte also chronicles Disney's partnership with television, development of the theme park, and depiction of technology in science-fiction narratives. An in-depth discussion of Disney's shift into digital filmmaking with its Pixar partnership and an emphasis on digital special effects in live-action films, such as the Pirates of the Caribbean series, also highlight the studio's historical investment in technology. By exploring the technological context for Disney creations throughout its history, The Mouse Machine illuminates Disney's extraordinary growth into one of the largest and most influential media and entertainment companies in the world. Hardbook is unjacketed.

Science fiction films present hypothetical futures, featuring imagined technological advancements--not yet realized but perhaps (more or less) plausible. Yet how much of what audiences see is within the bounds of possibility? Can we really envision what a black hole looks like? Can dinosaurs really be genetically re-engineered? Originating from an annual Science Fiction Film Series in Denver, Colorado, this volume of essays examines 10 films, with a focus on discerning the possible, the unlikely, and the purely science fictional. With essays by scientists in relevant fields, chapters provide analyses of the movies themselves, along with examination of the actual science (or lack thereof) in each film.

Examines one of the most enduring genres of Hollywood cinema: the science fiction film.

British Science Fiction Cinema is the first substantial study of a genre which, despite a sometimes troubled history, has produced some of the best British films, from the prewar classic Things to Come to Alien made in Britain by a British director. The contributors to this rich and provocative collection explore the diverse strangeness of British science fiction, from literary adaptions like Nineteen Eighty-Four and A Clockwork Orange to pulp fantasies and 'creature features' far removed from the acceptable face of British cinema. Through case studies of key films like The Day the Earth Caught Fire, contributors explore the unique themes and concerns of British science fiction, from the postwar boom years to more recent productions like Hardware, and examine how science fiction cinema drew on a variety of sources, from TV adaptions like Doctor Who and the Daleks, to the horror/sf crossovers produced from John Wyndham's cult novels The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned). How did budget restrictions encourage the use of the 'invasion narrative' in the 1950s films? And how did films such as Unearthly Stranger and Invasion reflect fears about the decline of Britain's economic and colonial power and the 'threat' of female sexuality? British Science Fiction Cinema celebrates the breadth and continuing vitality of British sf film-making, in both big-budget productions such as Brazil and Event Horizon and cult exploitation movies like Inseminoid and Lifeforce.

Science fiction films of the 1930s and 1940s were often set in dark laboratories that had strange looking glass containers with bubbling fluids and mad scientists conducting glandular and hormonal experiments. In the 1950s, films were more focused on radiation induced mutations. The 1960s and 1970s brought more sophisticated biological sciences to the movies and focused on such relatively new concepts as immunology, cyrobiology, and biochemistry. In the 1980s and 1990s, the focus of science fiction films has been DNA. This work of film criticism relates 71 science fiction films to the biological sciences. The author covers cell biology, pharmacology, endocrinology, hematology, and entomology, to name just a few topics. An analysis of each film includes a brief plot synopsis, the author's favorite quotations, the biological principles involved, the accuracy of the laboratory, and correct and incorrect biological information. In his analyses, the author sets out what would be required to achieve in real life the results seen in the movies and whether these experiments or events could actually happen.