Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

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The point of no return

If a theater noob polled a group of theater fans on what classic musicals she must see to jumpstart her theater education, you would be hard pressed to find a fan without The Phantom of the Opera on their list. The show, which opened at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London on 9 October 1986, has left an undeniable impact on London’s West End, Broadway, and theater in general.

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50 years of James Bond in music

Few characters in the history of cinema, if any, are more iconic than Ian Fleming’s debonair super-spy, James Bond; few, too, can boast of any comparison to the equally iconic music which accompanies the intrepid agent 007’s exploits. Since the series’ beginning, the Bond films have been marked by exceptional music, including contributions from Paul McCartney, Shirley Bassey, Louis Armstrong and Madonna, and, of course, John Barry’s instantly recognizable “James Bond Theme.”

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West Side Story, 55 years later

Today marks the 55th anniversary of the Broadway premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. A racially charged retelling of Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story is set in the “blighted” West Side of 1950s Manhattan, the potent themes of star-crossed love and gang rivalry successfully translated from 16th century Italy to 20th century New York by book-writer Arthur Laurents and lyricist Steven Sondheim.

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New BBC drama ‘The Paradise’ & Oxford World’s Classics

Tonight sees the start of a major new drama series on BBC 1, The Paradise. Adapted from Zola’s novel The Ladies’ Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames) and set against the backdrop of the spectacular rise of the department store in the 1860s and 70s, the story follows the fortunes of a young girl from the provinces who starts work as a salesgirl in the shop, and her entanglement with the charismatic owner. Oxford World’s Classics is delighted to publish the tie-in edition of Zola’s novel, in a compelling translation by Brian Nelson.

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Keeping movies alive

Film is considered by some to be the most dominant art form of the twentieth century. It is many things, but it has become above all a means of telling stories through images and sounds.

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How do you remember 9/11?

By Patricia Aufderheide
Documentary film both creates and depends on memory, and our memories are often composed of other people’s. How do we remember public events? How do you remember 9/11? On this anniversary of 9/11, along with your own memories, you can delve into a treasure trove of international television covering the event.

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The greatest film ever made!

What is the greatest film ever made? In an attempt to answer this question the editors of the British Film Institute’s journal Sight and Sound conducts a poll of leading film critics, scholars and directors. The first poll took place in 1952, when Vittorio De Sica’s Italian Neorealist classic Bicycle Thieves (1948) was declared the winner. Sixty years later, and with nearly 850 critics, scholars and programmers contributing, the results of the 2012 poll have just been published.

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Behind the scenes at ‘OUP Studios’

The New York office’s 13th floor conference room — a quiet, large space with no outside light — functions surprisingly well as miniature studio. Within a few hours of the film crew arriving, the office chairs and table have been removed, a green screen unfurled, camera, lights, and mic all assembled, and the Publisher of Scholarly and Online Reference is sitting in the spotlight, prepped for his interview.

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Pablum for profit’s sake?

By William D. Romanowski
When Protestant evangelicals opened a Hollywood front in the late twentieth-century “culture wars,” the result was an odd mixture of moral reproach and commercialization of religion. To no avail, they famously protested MCA/Universal over The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and then joined conservative Catholics — outraged over the movie Priest (1995) — in a boycott of the Walt Disney Company, the world’s largest provider of family entertainment.

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The LPO, Minis, and an Olympic afterglow

This is my last blog on the music and TV broadcasts for the 2012 Olympic games — I promise. But I just saw a new video ad that I must share. In my last blog post, I noted the remarkable feat of the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), who, under the baton of Philip Sheppard, recorded the national anthems of all 205 participating nations in the Olympic games in a little under 52 hours of studio time.

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A Spice Girl Symphony: The Olympic Closing Ceremony

The 2012 Olympic games concluded on Sunday with choreographer Kim Gavin’s musical extravaganza. As with Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony, Gavin was intent on impressing his vision of British music to the world. To underscore its significance, he titled the closing “A Symphony of British Music.” This title was a peculiar choice considering that classical historical musicology considers the “symphony” as a specific genre of classical music: a serious multi-movement work composed by a renowned composer, and performed by an orchestra.

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The Oxford Companion to the London 2012 Opening Ceremony

Many questioned how the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games Opening Ceremony was going to make a mark after the spectacular Beijing Olympics only four years earlier. While Beijing presented the Chinese people moving as one body — dancing, marching, and presenting a united front to the world — the British answer was a chaotic and spirited ceremony, shifting from cricket matches to coordinated dance routines, Mr Bean’s comedic dream to a 100-foot Lord Voldemort.

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Where are the ‘Isles of Wonder?’

By Anthony Bale
Danny Boyle’s spectacular opening ceremony at the London Olympics on 27 July 2012 was entitled Isles of Wonder. As many will have noticed, it was shot through with references to the medieval and early-modern past. Mike Oldfield’s performance of In Dulce Jubilo, a 1970s reworking of a late-medieval German-Latin carol, provided one of the most exuberant moments. In Stratford, dancing nurses accompanied it. There were many references to and quotations from Shakespeare as well.

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Music and the Olympics: A Tale of Two Networks

Television networks use music to connect audience and program through theme music and short video spots called “promos. Themes and promos carry what media musicologist Philip Tagg calls “appellative functions”, which summon viewers to the television screen. With an event as big as the Olympics, television networks need to attract as large an audience as possible to maximize commercial ad revenue.

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James Bond at the London 2012 Opening Ceremony

By Jon Burlingame
When James Bond and Queen Elizabeth parachuted out of the helicopter (or appeared to) during Friday night’s opening ceremonies of the London Olympics, director Danny Boyle could think of only one piece of music to play: the “James Bond Theme.” And of all the dozens of recordings of 007′s signature music that have been made over the years, he chose the unmistakable original: John Barry’s recording of Monty Norman’s “James Bond Theme,” from the very first Bond adventure, Dr. No, which opened in British cinemas 50 years ago, in October 1962.

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The continuing life of science fiction

By David Seed
In 1998 Thomas M. Disch boldly declared in The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World that science fiction had become the main kind of fiction which was commenting on contemporary social reality. As a professional writer, we could object that Disch had a vested interest in making this assertion, but virtually every day news items confirm his argument that SF connects with an amazingly broad range of public issues.

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