Category Archives: Uncategorized

Cinema of Discomfort cover, due date

I now have a cover image for my new book, The Cinema of Discomfort, which is due out in either October or November (only in expensive hardback initially, unfortunately). This is the updated cover blub: How do we understand types … Continue reading

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Things that don’t quite fit the film itself

What to do when faced with that awkward academic situation when you read an article in a major journal that seems very relevant to exactly something you are working on; you draft a line from this and then watch the … Continue reading

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Quality Hollywood, and beyond

My current project is a book on the notion of the ‘quality’ film in contemporary Hollywood, for which I now have a contract, titled Quality Hollywood: Markers of Distinction in Contemporary Studio Production. I’ve posted some thoughts on issues relating to … Continue reading

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Zero reference to The Colonial Present

Been meaning to post something about Zero Dark Thirty for some time and Oscar-eve seems as good an excuse as any. Even if it’s not an indie film, it has some characteristics of the ‘quality’ or Indiewood end of the spectrum, … Continue reading

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Cultural hierarchies and Game of Thrones

I’m very interested at the moment in cultural hierarchies – the ways in which cultural products are differently valued, in prevailing systems of taste judgement – and have been thinking about this in various ways, including how it applies to … Continue reading

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Indie 2.0 cover design

Now got a cover design for my new book, Indie 2.0: Change and Continuity in Contemporary American Indie Film, due out early next year:

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‘How to fake being an indie auteur’: indie and the notion of the contrived

I like this tongue-in cheek article from Suzanne Ballantyne, head of programming of the Raindance Film Festival: How to Fake Being An Indie Auteur part one and part two. It’s a witty satire of a number of indie cliches, but painfully close … Continue reading

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Digital knocked by Nolan, but not by those who can’t afford anything else

Christopher Nolan has been bashing digital filmmaking, as he’s rather accustomed to do. There’s an interesting response to this from some indie filmmakers canvassed by the Latin Heat Entertainment website, here. The gist is that they put Nolan’s comment – that … Continue reading

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Indie panel tomorrow

I’m giving a paper and chairing a panel on American indie film tomorrow at the Film and Media 2012 conference in London. For anyone who might be interested, the panel is titled ‘Contemporary American Independent Cinema: Change or Continuity’. I’ll … Continue reading

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Cultural hierarchies

Cultural hierarchies, through which different media forms are for various reasons given higher status, can appear fixed and unbending. But far from always. One of the themes of Newman and Levine’s Legitimating Television, on which I posted below, is the way … Continue reading

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