Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By Scott Trudell
In the opening shots of Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad, a pair of khaki pants is suspended, for a tranquil moment, in the desert air. The pants are then unceremoniously run over by an RV methamphetamine lab with two murdered bodies in back. When the camper crashes into a ditch, the driver Walter White (played by Bryan Cranston) gets out.
Following last year’s release of On the Road, adapted by director Walter Salles from the legendary Jack Kerouac novel published in 1957, two more Beat Generation movies are on the way. Big Sur, a November release directed by Michael Polish, stars Jean-Marc Barr, Stana Katic, Anthony Edwards, and Radha Mitchell in a story based on Kerouac’s 1962 novel about his efforts to shake off inner demons at an isolated cabin near the California coast.
By Douglas Kerr
The ghost of Sherlock Holmes started life (if that’s the word) early. Conan Doyle sent the detective plunging over the Reichenbach Falls in the grip of Professor Moriarty in “The Final Problem,” published in the Strand magazine in December 1893. The following year, music-hall audiences were joining in the chorus of a popular song, written by Richard Morton and composed and sung by H. C. Barry.
June marks the end of a long season for professional basketball in the US—the National Basketball Association (NBA) playoff finals cap the end of a season that begins in October. American television broadcasts professional basketball games just as it does other major sports, and seeks to draw an audience for sports telecasts by dramatizing broadcasted games. To help draw audiences, many networks use dramatic theme music for the games.
By Arthur P. Shimamura
As a child, I encountered the Man of Steel in the Adventures of Superman, the 1950s TV series that I watched as morning reruns a decade later. My Superman was “faster than a speeding bullet” and fought for “truth, justice and the American way.” My 26-year-old son, Thomas, encountered a similarly invincible superhero in Superman: The Movie, the 1978 blockbuster which starred Christopher Reeve.
By Robin Rosenberg
I like Superman—as a character, as a superhero, as an embodiment of (certain) values. I looked forward to seeing Man of Steel this summer. Although I was disappointed, I’ll start with its strengths. Warning: Spoilers ahead.
By Suzanne Walker
The night I saw The Avengers for the first time, I took the train back to my apartment and immediately dashed off the following email to a friend of mine: “The Avengers was amazing, I can’t even describe it. Feeling strangely fearless about life, and my head is filled with too many intellectual thoughts about superheroes.”
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it another Superman-related blogpost to tie in with today’s release of Man of Steel? Hold on to the bulging blue bicep of Oxford University Press and prepare to gaze below in wonder as we take you on a ride over the past 80 years of Superman.
What do you get when you combine Hollywood, African American actors, gritty urban settings, sex, and a whole lot of action? Some would simply call it a recipe for box office success, but since the early 1970s, most people have known this filmmaking formula by the name “Blaxploitation.” Blaxploitation cinema occupies a fascinating place in the landscape of American pop culture.
By Arthur P. Shimamura
Our memories, in many ways, define who we are as an individual or at least who we think we are. In the recent documentary, Stories We Tell, filmmaker Sarah Polley presents her own tale of the search for her biological father. Through interviews with relative and friends, snapshots, and re-enactments of pertinent events that look like old home movies, the documentary moves like a real-life Rashomon, wherein bits of the “truth” are revealed from various points of views.
By Philip V. Bohlman and Dafni Tragaki
In the spirit of the Eurovision Song Contest motto for 2013 “We Are One,” we seek the common space afforded by dialogic reflections on the European unity that has inspired and eluded the Eurovision since 1956. We search to rescue stretto from the fragments of the largest and most spectacular popular-music competition in the world.
By Keith Gandal
The New Yorker’s predictably elitist and conservative review of Baz Lurhmann’s new movie has David Denby concluding with the following: “Will young audiences go for this movie, with its few good scenes and its discordant messiness? “
Arrested Development—the cult comedy set to rise from the dead on Netflix 26 May 2013—had its own distinctive language. It was a show of catchphrases: “I’ve made a huge mistake.” “No touching!” “I’m a monster!” “There’s always money in the Banana Stand.” “Steve Holt!” “Her?”
By Annie Leyman
Love it or hate it, you can’t deny that the Eurovision Song Contest has a unique appeal. Although often seen as tacky, extravagant and occasionally politically controversial, that doesn’t stop around 125 million people around the world watching it each year! It has helped to launch careers, in the cases of ABBA and Bucks Fizz, as well as destroy them (cast your memories back to Jemini, aka ‘nul points’).
By Alyn Shipton
When the first Eurovision Song Contest was broadcast in 1956, the BBC was so late in entering that it missed the competition deadline, so it was first shown in my native England in 1957. Nonetheless, it seems as if this curious example of pan-European co-operation, which started with seven countries and is now up to 40, has been around forever.
The build-up to Baz Luhrmann’s frenetic, chromatic interpretation of The Great Gatsby was a wild ride for those of us who live and breathe F. Scott Fitzgerald daily. One minute you’re grading end-of-the semester papers, the next you’re fielding phone calls from NPR or the Associated Press.