(Ebook) The End of Cinema as We Know It: American Film in the Nineties by Jon Lewis ISBN 9780814751619, 9780814751602, 0814751601, 081475161X

(Ebook) The End of Cinema as We Know It: American Film in the Nineties by Jon Lewis ISBN 9780814751619, 9780814751602, 0814751601, 081475161X

Films, some of which are not exactly "films" anymore, can now be projected in a wide variety of ways on screens in revamped high-tech theaters, on big, high-resolution TVs, on little screens in minivans and laptops. But with all this new gear, all these new ways of viewing films, are we necessarily getting different, better movies? 

The thirty-four brief essays in The End of Cinema as We Know It attend a variety of topics, from film censorship and preservation to the changing structure and status of independent cinema from the continued importance of celebrity and stardom to the sudden importance of alternative video. 

While many of the contributors explore in detail the pictures that captured the attention of the nineties film audience, such as Jurassic Park, Eyes Wide Shut, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, The Wedding Banquet, The Matrix, Independence Day, Gods and Monsters, The Nutty Professor, and Kids, several essays consider works that fall outside the category of film as it is conventionally defined the home "movie" of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee's honeymoon and the amateur video of the LAPD beating of Rodney King. 

Examining key films and filmmakers, the corporate players and industry trends, film styles and audio-visual technologies, the contributors to this volume spell out the end of cinema in terms of irony, cynicism and exhaustion, religious fundamentalism and fanaticism, and the decline of what we once used to call film culture. 

Contributors include: Paul Arthur, Wheeler Winston Dixon, Thomas Doherty, Thomas Elsaesser, Krin Gabbard, Henry Giroux, Heather Hendershot, Jan-Christopher Hook, Alexandra Juhasz, Ch