The Big Top On The Big Screen PDF Download

Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download The Big Top On The Big Screen PDF full book. Access full book title The Big Top On The Big Screen.

The Big Top on the Big Screen

The Big Top on the Big Screen
Author: Teresa Cutler-Broyles
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2020-01-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1476671184

Download The Big Top on the Big Screen Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle

Circuses and film are a natural pairing, and the new essays making up this volume begin the exploration of how these two forms of entertainment have often worked together to create a spectacle of onscreen alchemy. The films discussed herein are an eclectic group, ranging from early silent comedies to animated, 21st century examples, in which circuses serve as liminal or carnivalesque spaces wherein characters--and by extension audience members--can confront issues as far-reaching as labor relations, sensuality, identity, ethics, and more. The circus as discussed in these essays encompasses the big top, the midway, the sideshow and the freak show; it becomes backdrop, character, catalyst and setting; and it is welcoming, malicious or terrifying. Circus performers are family, friends, foe or all of the above. And film is the medium that brings it all together. This volume starts the conversation about how circuses and film can combine to form productive, exciting spaces where almost anything can happen.


Fall of the Big Top

Fall of the Big Top
Author: David Lewis Hammarstrom
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2016-04-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1476608350

Download Fall of the Big Top Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle

Once an eagerly awaited spectacle, the traveling circus--that miracle of red wagons, trumpeting elephants and spangled trapeze artists that slipped into town at dawn and disappeared by midnight--has all but vanished from the American landscape. This work explores circus history from 1793 to the present and addresses the forces of modern culture (such as the popularity of Cirque du Soleil, and pressure from the animal rights movement) that are pushing big top shows toward what the author calls "circus ballet." Numerous photographs and in-depth interviews conducted with show owners, performers and directors enrich the narrative. Overall, the book reveals a sobering contrast between circuses of yesterday and today, even as it honors the outstanding performers who created, and have sustained, the enduring appeal of the circus.


Big Top Boss

Big Top Boss
Author: David Hammarstrom
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 414
Release: 1994-01-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780252064050

Download Big Top Boss Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle

This first balanced picture of circus king John Ringling North explored the remarkable career of the man who ran Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Baily for thirty years. David Lewis Hammarstrom details how North guided the circus through adversities ranging from depressions and wars to crippling labor strikes and rapidly changing trends in American entertainment. Hammarstrom interviewed a host of circus figures including North himself; his formers, directors, and department heads who were involved with the circus when North owned and operated it.


In the Shadow of the Big Top

In the Shadow of the Big Top
Author: Maureen Brunsdale
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2023-05-10
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1538172119

Download In the Shadow of the Big Top Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle

A thrilling behind-the-scenes biography of the Ringling brothers’ chief henchman. Art Concello wasn’t born into the circus. But he was in the right place at the right time, becoming one of the world’s best trapeze artists before transforming himself into a shrewd circus businessman. In the Shadow of the Big Top: The Life of Ringling's Unlikely Circus Savior details Concello’s fateful path from flyer, to manager, to owner. Against the backdrop of the golden age of the American circus, this book goes beyond the showmanship displayed in the ring to reveal how the circus could both thrill a crowd and make incredible money—and exposes the human toll extracted for doing so. Maureen Brunsdale not only tells Art’s incredible life story, but also that of his wife, an orphan-turned-acrobat who was determined to never be left behind in a career every bit as terrifying and electrifying as her husband’s. The first-ever biography of Concello, In the Shadow of the Big Top draws back the curtain on the inner workings of the circus and casts a light on the man who shaped not only Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, but the circus industry as a whole.


The Big Screen

The Big Screen
Author: David Thomson
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 1010
Release: 2012-10-16
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1466827718

Download The Big Screen Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle

The Big Screen tells the enthralling story of the movies: their rise and spread, their remarkable influence over us, and the technology that made the screen—smaller now, but ever more ubiquitous—as important as the images it carries. The Big Screen is not another history of the movies. Rather, it is a wide-ranging narrative about the movies and their signal role in modern life. At first, film was a waking dream, the gift of appearance delivered for a nickel to huddled masses sitting in the dark. But soon, and abruptly, movies began transforming our societies and our perceptions of the world. The celebrated film authority David Thomson takes us around the globe, through time, and across many media—moving from Eadweard Muybridge to Steve Jobs, from Sunrise to I Love Lucy, from John Wayne to George Clooney, from television commercials to streaming video—to tell the complex, gripping, paradoxical story of the movies. He tracks the ways we were initially enchanted by movies as imitations of life—the stories, the stars, the look—and how we allowed them to show us how to live. At the same time, movies, offering a seductive escape from everyday reality and its responsibilities, have made it possible for us to evade life altogether. The entranced audience has become a model for powerless and anxiety-ridden citizens trying to pursue happiness and dodge terror by sitting quietly in a dark room. Does the big screen take us out into the world, or merely mesmerize us? That is Thomson's question in this grand adventure of a book. Books about the movies are often aimed at film buffs, but this passionate and provocative feat of storytelling is vital to anyone trying to make sense of the age of screens—the age that, more than ever, we are living in.


Encountering Pennywise

Encountering Pennywise
Author: Whitney S. May
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 151
Release: 2022-09-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1496842243

Download Encountering Pennywise Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle

Contributions by Amylou Ahava, Jeff Ambrose, Daniel P. Compora, Penny Crofts, Keith Currie, Erin Giannini, Whitney S. May, Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns, Diganta Roy, Hannah Lina Schneeberger, Shannon S. Shaw, Maria Wiegel, and Margaret J. Yankovich First published in 1986, Stephen King’s novel IT forever changed the legacy of the literary clown. The subject of a TV miniseries and a two-part film adaptation and the inspiration for a resurgence of the evil clown figure in popular culture, IT's influence is undeniable, yet scholarship to date is almost exclusively devoted to the adaptations rather than the novel itself. Encountering Pennywise: Critical Perspectives on Stephen King’s “IT” considers the pronounced cultural fluctuations of IT's legacies by centering the novel within the theoretical frameworks that animate it and ensure its literary and cultural persistence. The collection explores the ways the novel, so like its antagonist, replicates (or disavows) the icons of various canons and categories in order to accomplish specific psychological and cultural work. Gathering the work of scholars from diverse professional and disciplinary vantage points, editor Whitney S. May has curated an anthology that spans discussions of American surveillance culture, intergenerational conflict, the legacies of settler colonialism and Native American representation, serial-killer fanaticism, and more. In this volume, we read the protagonists’ constellations of countermoves against Pennywise as productive outlines of critique effectuated by the richness of the clown’s reflective power. The essays are therefore thematically arranged into a series of four categories of “counter”—countercurrents, countercultures, counterclaims, and counterfeits—where each supplies a specific critical lens through which to view Pennywise’s disruptions of both culture and cultural critique.


God on the Big Screen

God on the Big Screen
Author: Terry Lindvall
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2019-08-13
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1479892610

Download God on the Big Screen Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle

Links film history with church history over the past century, illuminating America’s broader relationship with religious currents over time Moments of prayer have been represented in Hollywood movies since the silent era, appearing unexpectedly in films as diverse as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Frankenstein, Amistad, Easy Rider, Talladega Nights, and Alien 3, as well as in religiously inspired classics such as Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments. Here, Terry Lindvall examines how films have reflected, and sometimes sought to prescribe, ideas about how one ought to pray. He surveys the landscape of those films that employ prayer in their narratives, beginning with the silent era and moving through the uplifting and inspirational movies of the Great Depression and World War II, the cynical, anti-establishment films of the 60s and 70s, and the sci-fi and fantasy blockbusters of today. Lindvall considers how the presentation of cinematic prayer varies across race, age, and gender, and places the use of prayer in film in historical context, shedding light on the religious currents at play during those time periods. God on the Big Screen demonstrates that the way prayer is presented in film during each historical period tells us a great deal about America’s broader relationship with religion.


Hooked in Film

Hooked in Film
Author: John Markert
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2013-05-23
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 081089131X

Download Hooked in Film Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle

Though drug use was widespread in the nineteenth century, the negative influence of narcotics was mostly unknown. Cinema of the early twentieth century was instrumental in making viewers aware of the harmful effects of drugs. Throughout the decades, images of drugs such as marijuana, LSD, and heroin in films impacted—both negatively and positively—the national perception of their use. In fact, the use, popularity, and opinion of certain drugs often follow their status on the big screen. In Hooked in Film, John Markerttakes a close look at the correlation between social policies and the public view of drugs and their portrayals in film. In this volume, Markert examines the changing social attitudes toward illegal drugs and their cinematic depictions from as early as the 1894 film Chinese Opium Den to the present. The first section of this book focuses on the demonization of drugs between 1900 and 1959, followed by an assessment of marijuana on the big screen after 1960, when the drug was shown as part of everyday life with no serious consequences. Post-1960 depictions of heroin use, which have remained consistently negative, are also analyzed. Markert then takes a close look at the portrayals of powdered cocaine after the 1960s and the emergence of crack in the mid-1980s. Finally, Markert discusses hallucinogens, Ecstasy, and methamphetamines and their roles on the big screen. Tracking hundreds of films spanning more than a century, Hooked in Film looks at camp classics like Reefer Madness, comedies such as Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke, Dazed and Confused, and Pineapple Express, and dramas, including Panic in Needle Park and Requiem for a Dream. Scholars and students of cinema, popular culture, media studies, and sociology will find this book a valuable examination of how cinematic portrayals of drugs have changed over time, and how those images have influenced public perception of drugs and even public policy.


Faith, Film and Philosophy

Faith, Film and Philosophy
Author: R. Douglas Geivett
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2009-09-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830875182

Download Faith, Film and Philosophy Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle

"Those who tell stories rule society." Plato So who today are our principal storytellers? Not philosophers, but filmmakers. For those who know both the enormous entertainment potential and the culture-shaping power of film, this book will stir mind and imagination. For great stories freight world-sized ideas, ideas worthy of contemplation and conversation. Great cinema inspires wonder. But another philosopher, Aristotle, reminds us that wonder is the true source of philosophy. So perhaps Plato or Aristotle might have a shot at ruling society, even today--if they took an interest in film. These fourteen essays consider classic and current films together with several major philosophical themes, all within the context of Christian faith: (1) the human condition, (2) the human mind and the nature of knowing, (3) the moral life, and (4) faith and religion. Citizen Kane, Big Fish and Pretty Woman contribute to an in-depth consideration of the human condition. The Truman Show, The Matrix, Being John Malkovich and It's a Wonderful Life, among others, illuminate reflection on the human mind and the nature of knowing. Looking at the moral life, contributors interact with such notable films as Pleasantville, Bowling for Columbine, Mystic River and The Silence of the Lambs. The final section pursues the theme of faith and religion traced through a number of Hong Kong martial arts films, Contact, 2001: A Space Odyssey and U2's music documentary Rattle and Hum. A veritable film festival for all those who want to nurture the wonder of philosophical inquiry and the love of Christian theology through an engagement with the big ideas on the big screen.