Continuum Film and Media

Dungeons, Dragons, and Digital Denizens or My Avatar, Meet Your Avatar

I’ve been spending the last fifteen minutes trying to brainstorm various clever ways to introduce myself, but maybe simplest is best: Hi, I’m Kaitlin. I’m the new Editorial Assistant in Film, Media and Music Studies here at Continuum. Katie (I call her Chief) has asked me to start blogging about the Film and Media Studies list, which is awesome because it means I can sit at my desk reading about movies and video games and no one can accuse me of slacking.

More importantly, it gives me an opportunity to become  familiar with the books on our list, such as (segue alert): Dungeons, Dragons, and Digital Denizens: The Digital Role Playing Game, which  is the first volume  in a new series called Approaches to Digital Game Studies. Editors Gerald A. Voorhees, Joshua Call and Katie Whitlock will “examine the medium of digital games and bring together a range of voices from different disciplines to ask questions fundamental to game studies.”

Game studies is a relatively new field, and one in which the opportunity exists not just for learning, but for creating dialogue about the field of study itself. It’s part of the series editors’ final goal to foster this discussion. They have chosen to use game genre as a sticking place: “Rather than limiting the dialogue, this should serve to aid in deepening the conversation about the nature of genre in digital games as well as providing an entrée for those who want to enter game studies through the lens of the gameplay they recognize and feel kinship towards.” Which is all a way of saying that this is a great opportunity for video game nerds and scholarly nerds to come together to start talking about what digital gaming means in both practical and intellectual terms.

In this first title in the series, the editors gathered together a series of essays on the digital role-playing game and its many facets, including temporality, identity, multiculturalism and government, among others. “Dungeons, Dragons, and Digital Denizens is an exceptionally coherent and well-integrated collection,” says Bart Simon (Associate Profesor, Director, Centre of Technoculture, Art and Games, Concordia University, Canada). For more info on the series, or to order the book, click the cover above. Happy gaming!

In Boston...again

Seems like Boston can't get enough of the academic conferences this year - so we're back again, this week - Wednesday the 11th - Saturday the 14th - at the Copley Marriott Hotel. Come say hello, buy some books and enjoy this featured speaker: PCA/ACA speaker

Come visit us at SCMS in Boston this week!

Continuum/Bloomsbury will be attending this year's Society of Cinema and Media Studies conference, held in Boston at the Boston Park Plaza. The book exhibit is open this Thursday through Saturday early afternoon. Please stop by and say hello or chat with me (Katie Gallof, acquisitions editor for film and media studies) or my marketing colleague - John Mark Boling. We're both extremely friendly. See below for some visual stimulation:

Happy New Year, Valentine's Day, President's Day, etc...and Digital Poetry

You might have noticed that we haven't posted in a while - or might not - these blog stats aren't looking too good...apologies. But, it's a new year and we're going to change that!

There have been many awesome books that have recently published - so do please check out our website http://www.continuumbooks.com/subject/details.aspx? They range from Kristevan film theory and horror in american cinema after 9/11 to music and sound in Hitchcock's films and digital game genres.

For the purposes of this post - let's talk about New Directions in Digital Poetry - the first book in our International Texts in Critical Media Aesthetics series, founded by Francisco J. Ricardo. Its goal is to provide a platform for new scholarship in the area of electronic art and literature, to be presented from the perspective of critical aesthetics – philosophical positions dedicated to the problem of how and whether technology as a medium for art and literature simultaneously makes reference to and differs from the use of more traditional media and methods for these expressive practices.

We had a lovely launch for the book at the start of February, at the Bowery Poetry Club, in the East Village, NYC. Here is a link to the event - enjoy the music, readings and the multiple new directions of digital poetry.

http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Funkhouser-New-Directions-2012.php

Interview with Roberto Avant-Mier, author of Rock the Nation

The blog New Books in Popular Music recently posted an in-depth interview with Roberto Avant-Mier about his book Rock the Nation: Latin/o Identities and the Latin Rock Diaspora, published by Continuum last year. As interviewer Matt Smith-Lahrman notes, Avant-Mier "challenges the traditional historical notion of rock and roll and rock being the result of the converging of white and African-American musics only. Instead, he argues, the history of rock is replete with Latin/o culture. Included in his story are the Mexico-based border radio stations listened to by many early blues, country and rock and roll artists, the zoot-suited pachuco culture popular among Latino/as in the 1940s and 1950s, the Latin/o influence on the classic garage rock of the 1960s, the birth of Mexican rock and its relation to Onda literature in the 1970s and eighties, the dearth of Latino/as in the global punk rock movement of the nineties and, finally, a discussion of Latin/o rock in the twenty-first century." Whew!

Read the short article and listen to the full hour-long interview here.

Nazisploitation!

Whether they're saving Hitler's brain or fighting Indiana Jones for the Ark of the Covenant, Nazis have been running rampant across movie screens for decades now, in films that don't always lend their historical subject matter the gravity it demands. Remarkably, Nazisploitation!: The Nazi Image in Low-Brow Cinema and Culture, now available from COntinuum in the US and coming to the UK in January, is the first book-length study to explore the intersections of National Socialism and popular visual culture. Editors Daniel H. Magilow (Assistant Professor of German, University of Tennessee, USA), Kristin T. Vander Lugt (Assistant Professor of German, Iowa State University, USA) and Elizabeth Bridges (Assistant Professor of German, Rhodes College, USA) have collected essays from a brilliant line-up of scholars that examine the history, aesthetic strategies and political implications of the translation of Nazi iconography into low-brow, 'sleazy' entertainment, from Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS to Inglourious Basterds. Fascinating reading for scholars and cult film fans alike!

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Praise for Nazisploitation!:

"Here is, finally, a collection brave enough to discuss one of the last remaining taboos in film studies. This collection has prepared with the utmost care by a committed team of international scholars and critics. From revaluations of The Night Porter and Salon Kitty to interrogations of Inglorious Basterds and from underwater Nazi-zombies to Indiana Jones, this is a fascinating book that dares to tackle head-on the nastiness of its subject's implications while alerting the reader to the impact one cycle of films has on all of film culture." -- Ernest Mathijs, University of British Columbia, Canada

"Nazis have occupied global popular culture for some seventy years now, not only as the villains of World War II and perennial Oscar bait for Hollywood, but also as the site of perverse psychosexual fixations both high and low. In a series of provocative essays, Nazisploitation! examines the oddly and even alarmingly enduring presence of the Nazi across a variety of media, opening and important, if at times difficult, dialogue about this continuing fascination with the iconography of the Third Reich." -- Jeffrey Sconce, Northwestern University, USA

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For more on Hollywood's fascination with Nazis, be sure to also check out this blog post at HTML Giant.

Conversations With Clint at the Park Slope Brooklyn Barnes and Noble, December 1st

“Out of nowhere comes a great book on the Clint Eastwood of 30 years ago, when, more than just a big star, he was a divisive symbol of American populist justice. Their fluid, far-reaching conversation should have been put in a time capsule. Happily it was.” —Chris Fujiwara, Sight & Sound

“This is what happens when an artist interviews an artist: Nelson’s acute critical engagement with Eastwood’s films yields more insight from the moviemaker than any reader could have hoped for. Can a collection of interviews be called poignantly brilliant? This one is.” —Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly

“This book is a miracle.” —Jonathan Lethem, from his introduction

Kevin Avery is also the author of Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson.

For more information about both books, visit kevinavery.com.

 

Mark Masse and Trauma Journalism at Syracuse University

Mark Masse will be at Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Journalism on Thursday, November 17 at 7:00pm, in the Halmi Screening Room, Newhouse III, Room 141.  You can click the following link to view a press release for the book. Download Trauma Journalism PR US

David Smay on Sixties Horror Films

It's always nice to see writing from 33 1/3 authors pop up elsewhere. David Smay, author of Tom Waits' Swordfishtrombones, is doing a series of pieces on early sixties horror films for hilowbrow.com.

A film still from Blood and Roses

Did you know that Psycho, Peeping Tom, Black Sunday and Eyes Without a Face all came out in 1960 alone?

Here's an excerpt of the first installment, and a link to the full piece.
http://hilobrow.com/2011/10/31/early-60s-horror-1/

"In 1960 alone, Psycho, Peeping Tom, Black Sunday, and Eyes Without a Face played in theaters. Yet that clutch of five-star masterpieces only represents a fraction of that year’s important work which also saw the Japanese vision of hell, Jigoku, two Hammer horrors in The Brides of Dracula and Two Faces of Dr. Jeckyll, Roger Corman’s first gothic, The Fall of the House of Usher as well as his cult cheapie Little Shop of Horrors, Roger Vadim’s Blood and Roses, and Village of the Damned.

There was really no way to see this happening as it occurred. Psycho dominated both the box office and the mainstream press, and the avid and active horror fandom of the time was too busy looking backward in a happy wallowing glut of old horror movies on television. Even as late as the ’80s with Stephen King’s Danse Macabre and the ’90s with David Skaal’s The Horror Show that early 1960s era was seen as a period of horror quatschification, the uncanny cozily commodified by “Monster Mash” and Famous Monsters of Filmland, horror hosts like Ghoulardi and model kits of The Mummy.

The years between 1960 and 1963 not only saw an unprecedented explosion of masterful film horror, but it was also the golden age of the television horror anthology with great work airing on The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, One Step Beyond and the Boris Karloff-hosted Thriller. Even Roald Dahl hosted his own series for one season in 1961, Way Out. If you think of Psycho as the Never Mind the Bollocks of the era, with Black Sunday as The Ramones’ Leave Home, you can see the shorter, sharper shocks of TV horror as the ceaseless spew of fantastic punks singles by Stiff Little Fingers and The Ruts and The Only Ones. (By this analogy, The Twilight Zone stands as the great singles band of the era. In short, it’s the Buzzcocks’ Singles Going Steady.)" -David Smay

And here's the second section which just went up today, where Smay talks about The Haunting, Italo Calvino, Val Lewton and Sir Walter Scott:

http://hilobrow.com/2011/11/08/early-60s-horror-2/

Smay will be doing about two installments a week covering movies like The Innocents, NIght Tide, Blood and Roses, Burn, Witch Burn (based on Fritz Leiber's great Conjure Wife) and others. 

Remembering Norman Corwin (May 3, 1910 - October 18, 2011)

I had never heard of Norman Corwin until I met with Professors Michael C. Keith and Bob Lochte, about a different project on radio, in 2008. Mike had mentioned in passing that he had stumbled upon something quite rare- the never before published diary of Norman Corwin's trip around the world after World War II. Even though I wasn't familiar with this radio giant, I knew this had to be published. [it eventually was, in 2009: Norman Corwin's One World Flight, edited by Michael C. Keith and Mary Ann Watson].

It wasn't until March 2010, when I happened to be in Los Angeles for a conference, that we met in person. We had dinner at the top of the Westin hotel, steak and lobster, and he regaled me with stories of his past. I couldn't believe I was eating a meal with such a figure! He was so kind, and brought me one of his books (even though I had brought my own copy of 'Norman Corwin's One World Flight' for him to sign) and he happily inscribed both.

What I couldn't get over was his gratitude. He's Norman Corwin and he's thanking me for helping him with his book? Even after a lifetime of awards and public life, I didn't expect this kindness. He was such an extraordinary man, but all I can confidently tell you is of our one meal together. Read this post by Leonard Matlin, who knew him personally and professionally - and perhaps you will begin to understand the impact this man has had on radio history and history in general.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/leonardmaltin/archives/2011/10/19/farewell_to_a_giant_norman_corwin/

He holds a special place in my heart, as my author and as my friend.

 

update: 10/21/2011 -- I just received news from Norman's caregiver - the kind Cristian Borjas - that KCET will be honoring Norman on October 29th (next saturday).

Starting at 8:00 PM, we'll air Les Guthman's documentary "Corwin" followed by the 1969 KCET production "The Plot to Overthrow Christmas".

We aired the latter film a few years ago when Mr. Corwin was celebrating his 100th birthday.  Val Zavala's interview with Mr. Corwin opens and closes "The Plot to Overthrow Christmas