With sequels, prequels, remakes, spin-offs, or copies of successful films or franchises dominating film and television production, it sometimes seems as if Hollywood is incapable of making an original film or TV show. These textual pluralities or multiplicities—while loved by fans who flock to them in droves—tend to be dismissed by critics and scholars as markers of the death of high culture. Cycles, Sequels, Spin-offs, Remakes, and Reboots takes the opposite view, surveying a wide range of international media multiplicities for the first time to elucidate their importance for audiences, industrial practices, and popular culture. The essays in this volume offer a broad picture of the ways in which cinema and television have used multiplicities to streamline the production process, and to capitalize on and exploit viewer interest in previously successful and/or sensational story properties. An impressive lineup of established and emerging scholars talk seriously about forms of multiplicity that are rarely discussed as such, including direct-to-DVD films made in Nigeria, cross-cultural Japanese horror remakes, YouTube fan-generated trailer mash-ups, and 1970s animal revenge films. They show how considering the particular bonds that tie texts to one another allows us to understand more about the audiences for these texts and why they crave a version of the same story (or character or subject) over and over again. These findings demonstrate that, far from being lowbrow art, multiplicities are actually doing important cultural work that is very worthy of serious study.

This is the first book to provide a comprehensive and systematic account of the phenomenon of cinematic remaking. Drawing upon recent theories of genre and intertextuality, Film Remakes describes remaking as both an elastic concept and a complex situation, one enabled and limited by the interrelated roles and practices of industry, critics, and audiences. This approach to remaking is developed across three broad sections: the first deals with issues of production, including commerce and authors; the second considers genre, plots, and structures; and the third investigates issues of reception, including audiences and institutions.

About depictions of war in cinema.

This book undertakes a unique, coherent and comprehensive consideration of the depiction of naval warfare in the cinema. The films under discussion encompass all areas of naval operations in war, and highlight varying institutional and aesthetic responses to navies and the sea in popular culture. The examination of these films centres on their similarities to and differences from the conventions of the war genre and seeks to determine whether the distinctive characteristics of naval film narratives justify their categorisation as a separate genre or sub-genre in popular cinema. The explicit factual bases and drama-documentary style of many key naval films, such as In Which We Serve, They Were Expendable and Das Boot, also requires the consideration of these films as texts for popular historical transmission. Their frequent reinforcement of establishment views of the past, which derives from their conservative ideological position towards national and naval culture, makes these films key texts for the consideration of national cinemas as purveyors of contemporary history as popularly conceived by filmmakers and received by audiences.

This is the first book to provide a thorough examination of the British 'B' movie, from the war years to the 1960s. The authors draw on archival research, contemporary trade papers and interviews with key 'B' filmmakers to map the 'B' movie phenomenon both as artefact and as industry product, and as a reflection on their times.

The ‘Gainsborough melodramas’ were a mainstay of 1940s British cinema, and helped make the careers of such stars as Margaret Lockwood, James Mason and Stewart Granger. But what was unique about these films? And who were the directors behind them? This book presents four key filmmakers, each with his own talents and specialities. It traces their professional lives through the highs of the 1940s, when the popularity of Gainsborough films was at its peak, to the tougher decades that followed the genre’s decline. Featuring expert analysis of such films as The Man in Grey (1943), Madonna of the Seven Moons (1945) and The Upturned Glass (1947), alongside valuable historical context, the book constitutes the first extended examination of this group of directors. It combines critical acumen with readability, making it a valuable resource for students, lecturers and general readers alike.

Idols of the Odeons examines British film stardom in the post-war era, a time when Hollywood movies were increasingly supplanting the Pinewood/Elstree studio system. The book encompasses the careers of sixteen actors, including Stanley Baker, Diana Dors, Norman Wisdom, Hattie Jacques, Peter Finch and Peter Sellers. Such extremely diverse careers provide the opportunity to explore overlooked films, in addition to examining how the term ‘star’ could apply to a stalwart leading man, a Variety comic, a self-created ‘Vamp’ and a character actor. Above all, this is a book that celebrates, with idiosyncratic humour and warmth, how these actors accomplished much of their best work during the transitional period between the Rank/ABPC roster of stars and the US domination of the British film industry.