Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
The Great Gatsby is one of the best-known American novels, but weirdly, and strangely reflective of Gatsby himself, one of the least understood. The much-awaited Baz Lurhmann version of The Great Gatsby opens in the United States tomorrow, and like Gatsby himself — as a new trailer reminds us — the novel is “guarding secrets.”
By Ashley N. Gearhardt
Gooey chocolate and scoops of mouth-watering chocolate ice cream. Steaming hot golden French fries. Children see thousands of commercials each year designed to increase their desire for foods high in sugar, fat, and salt like those mentioned above. Yet, we know almost nothing about how this advertising onslaught might be affecting the brain.
By Kimberly Hernandez
The new television show Hannibal resurrects Thomas Harris’s famous serial killer and offers a few new surprises bound to shock both newcomers and longtime fans of Dr. Lecter. So while you’re catching up on the latest incarnation of the series, why not brush up on criminology facts or learn something new about cannibalism?
By Alana Podolsky
On 3 May 1913, Raja Harishchandra, the first Indian feature-length film, premiered. Since then, India’s film industry, mostly known as Bollywood but operating outside of Bollywood’s Mumbai base as well, has become the world’s most prolific film industry — 1325 films were produced in 2008.
By Ron Rodman
The death of Annette Funicello this month set off a wave of nostalgia among baby boomers who remember her as the star of the “Mouseketeers” of the original Mickey Mouse Club (MMC). MMC was the brainchild of Walt Disney, studio founder, entertainer, and entrepreneur, originally as a means of promoting the then new Disneyland, which opened in Anaheim, California on 17 July 1955.
By Maureen Duffy
Journalists want to report the news not be the news. But in the case of Ann Curry, the former Today show co-host who was pushed into stepping down from the co-anchor slot last June, she has become the news. New York Times reporter Brian Stelter’s recent feature article about morning television and the toxic culture at NBC’s Today show provides more than enough information to conclude that Ann Curry was a target of workplace mobbing.
Every year, around mid-April, music lovers await the news that the BBC proms schedule has been announced. We look forward to the old favourites, the new commissions, the excited atmosphere, and some of the best performers in the world. When summer arrives, scores of people—young and old alike—travel to London to visit the Royal Albert Hall and be part of this great British tradition.
By James Tweedie
The legendary film critic Roger Ebert passed away last Thursday at the age of 70, after a recurrence of cancer. Ebert’s career in journalism spanned almost six decades, beginning when he was named the first movie reviewer for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1967. By 1975 he was a nationally recognized critic and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
By Dr Catherine Haworth
The dangerous dames, fall-guy private eyes, and psychologically unstable heroes and villains who roam the streets of the 1940s crime film have often been linked with anxieties surrounding changing roles for men and women in the years around World War II. Although appearing less regularly, the evolution of the ‘working-girl’ detective character can also be connected with these shifts in gendered identity.
The long-awaited third season of Game of Thrones premiers on HBO 31 March 2013 and Oxford University Press has everything you need to get ready, whether you’re looking to brush up on your dragon lore, forge your own Valyrian steel, or learn about some of the most dramatic real-life succession fights culled from our archives.
For Black History Month, I wrote about an American Television pioneer: Nat “King” Cole, who was the first African American to host a television show. Since many have dubbed March as “National Women’s Month,” I focus on another pioneer of early television, Dinah Shore.
By Arthur Shimamura
Like the great and powerful Oz, filmmakers conceal themselves behind a screen and offer a mesmerizing experience that engages our sights, thoughts, and emotions. They have developed an assortment of magical “tricks” of acting, staging, sound, camera movement, and editing that create a sort of sleight of mind. These techniques have been discovered largely through trial and error, and thus we have very little understanding of how they actually work on our psyche.
By Steve Pratt and Emma Croager
Most adults won’t be familiar with the music video You Make Me Feel by Cobra Starship, as it has much greater appeal to young people. There is little doubt however that the overwhelming majority of adults would quickly identify the product placement in the video. The commercial intent of the product placement in this example is self-evident.
We’re very pleased to annouce the winner of the Very Short Film competition 2013. The Very Short Film competition was launched in partnership with The Guardian in October 2012.
By Lucy Fischer
During my childhood, there were only two “award” shows that I watched religiously. One was the Miss America Pageant (I am, after all, “of a certain age”) and the other was the Oscars. I abandoned the former long before its demise (as a card-carrying feminist) but the latter has remained on my viewing schedule. In fact, it is often one of the few programs I still watch “live” given that my TV viewing is entirely DVR-dependent.
One definition of a classic book is a work which inspires repeated metamorphoses. Romeo and Juliet, Gulliver’s Travels, Frankenstein, Dracula, The Great Gatsby don’t just wait in their original forms to be watched or read, but continually migrate from one medium to another: painting, opera, melodrama, dramatization, film, comic-strip. New technologies inspire further reincarnations