Comic Book INTENSITIES

Screenshot of the new issue header for INTENSITIES

Way back in the dim mists of online time (on January 23, 2013, to be precise), Film Studies For Free publicised its discovery of the new online incarnation of Intensities, the wonderful journal of cult media studies.

Not only are four existing issues of the journal freely available at its website, but a new issue has recently been published there, with lots of items of film studies related interest. The table of contents is pasted in below with links to these excellent items.

Of related interest: FSFF's entry on Studies of the Remediation of Films, Comics and Video Games.



INTENSITIES, Issue 5: Comic Book Intensities (Spring/Summer 2013) 

Articles

• Producing Transnational Cult Media- Neon Genesis Evangelion and Ghost in the Shell in Circulation – Brian Ruh
• Girls’ Fantasies, Freedom, and Brotherly Love- Incest Narratives in Shōjo Anime – Elizabeth Birmingham
• Depicting ordinary and nonstandard intimacies in public- Sex, romance and humour in women’s porn comics – Jackie Ruddock
• Architecture, Violence and Sensation- A Visitor’s Guide to Mega City One – Dan Smith
• The Joke’s On Him- Shamanism, Literary Magic, and the Textualization of Grant Morrison, Heath Ledger, and The Joker – Tim Bavlnka
• From Stories to Worlds- The Continuity of Marvel Superheroes from Comics to Film – David Sweeney
• Captain America, Watergate, and the Falcon- Rediscovering the American Dream? – Michael Ahmed

Intensive: Cult Media Review

• A Fatal Attraction- the fine line between eroticism and horror in Baba Yaga (Corrado Farina, 1973) – Adrian Smith
• Expressions of Fandom- Findings from a Psychological Survey of Cosplay and Costume Wear – Robin S. Rosenberg and Andrea M. Letamendi
• Karen Oughton interviews Fabrizio Federico, director of Black Biscuit (2011) – Karen Oughton

Studies of the Remediation of Films, Comics and Video Games

Transmedia Synergies - Remediating Films and Video Games from Matthias Stork on Vimeo.
See Matthias Stork's Mediascape, Winter 2013 essay 'Transmedia Synergies – Remediating Films and Video Games', which incorporates this video

                   The Video Game Film from Matthias Stork on Vimeo.

This mash-up is a playful offshoot of [Matthias Stork's] research project on the aesthetic intermediality of films and video games [e.g. see above]. Edgar Wright’s seminal film SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD (2010, Universal Pictures) effectively illustrates the audiovisual parallels and differences between the two media. It organically integrates the distinctive stylistic flourishes of video game play into the dominant cinematic texture, to the point that the film, particularly in its action sequences, evolves into a subjectively rendered (and relatable) gameplay experience. It thus represents a genuine video game film. This video essay seeks to foreground this affective dimension by heightening the aesthetic strategies of the film. And it is further intended as an homage to the director’s exceptional work.

"The Video Game Film" was made according to principles of Fair Use (or Fair Dealing), primarily with scholarly, critical, and educational aims. It was published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

             From the Panel to the Frame: Style and Scott Pilgrim from Drew Morton on Vimeo. Originally published at PressPlay with a great introduction by Matt Zoller Seitz

Film Studies For Free today presents an entry which has long been in preparation. It was originally conceived of especially as a showcase for the above, hugely innovative and informative video essay studies by Matthias Stork and Drew Morton. But it has grown into a veritable font of wonderful links to online and open access studies of the connections between films, comics and video games.

FSFF hopes you enjoy the below list, and if you'd like to add any, as yet missing open access studies to it, please just let this blog know about those in the comments. Thank you! [Please note: FSFF can't publish one submitted suggestion for a non-open access book in the field, one which has no free excerpts. Sorry about that. But, hopefully, that commercial publisher has an advertising budget to compensate for this little blog's interest in other forms of publishing. Thanks anyway.]

Game on!

• Charles R. Acland, 'Avatar as Technological Tentpole', Flow, January 2012
• Maaheen Ahmed and Martin Lund, 'Apocalypse Why? The Neutralisation of the Antichrist Motif in Three Comics Adaptations', SCAN, 9.1, 2012 
• Matthew Bolton, 'Fidelity and Period Aesthetics in Comics Adaptation', ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies. 6.1 (2011)
• Will Brooker, 'Maps of many worlds: Remembering computer game fandom in the 1980s', Transformative Works and Cultures, Vol 2 (2009)
• Liam Burke, ''Special Effect: Have film adaptations changed mainstream comics?'', SCAN, 9.1, 2012
• Rebecca Carlsen, 'Games as Transformative Works', Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 2, 2009
• Josep Catala, 'A Drawing of the World: Documentary and Comic Book', SCAN, 9.1, 2012
• Stacey Church, 'Remediation and Video Games: Bookwork in Dragon Age: Origins', Emergence: A Journal of Undergraduate Literary Criticism and Creative Research, Vol. 2, 2011
• Damian Duffy, 'Remasters of American Comics: Sequential art as new media in the transformative museum context', SCAN, 6.1, 2009
• Thomas Elsaesser, 'The Mind-Game Film' in Warren Buckland (ed), Puzzle Films (Oxford: Blackwell 2009)  
• Markku Eskelinen, 'The Gaming Situation', Game Studies, 1.1, 2001
• Jim Fleury, 'Revenge of the (Angry Video Game) Nerd: James Rolfe and Web 2.0 Fandom', Mediascape, Winter 2012
• Michael Fuchs, '“My name is Alan Wake. I’m a writer.”: Crafting Narrative Complexity in the Age of Transmedia Storytelling', Academia.edu, January 2012
• Robert Furze, 'Virtual Bliss, Analog Horrors: Reading the Imperfect Digital Image in Film and the Video Game', MiT7: Unstable Platforms: the Promise and Peril of Transition, 13-15 May 2011
• Lynn Gelfand, 'Moon Prism Power, Make-Up!': Sailor Moon and the Transformation of the Multiform Story in Modern Media', SCAN, 9.1, 2012
• Harrison Gish, 'Media Boundaries and Bullet Time: A Hard Boiled Fan Plays Stranglehold', Mediascape, Winter 2012
• Richard Grusin, 'Dvds, video games, and the cinema of interactions', Ilha do Desterro, No. 51, 2006
• Leon Gurevitch, 'The Cinemas of Interactions: Cinematics and the ‘Game Effect’ in the Age of Digital Attractions', Senses of Cinema, Issue 57, 2010
• Christopher Hayton, 'Charlton Comics' Monster Movie Adaptations', SCAN, 6.1, 2009
• Matthew Hepburn, 'The Technoludic Film: Remediation in Videograme to Film Adaptations', University of Warwick, Unpublished dissertation, January 2012 also see here
• Henry Jenkins, 'Game Design As Narrative Architecture',  in P. Harrington and N. Frup- Waldrop (Eds.), First Person. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002 and also at CMS / MIT, 2004
• Henry Jenkins, 'Transmedia Synergies: Remediating Films and Video Games', Confessions of an Aca-Fan, January 9, 2013
• Jesper Juul, 'Games Telling Stories? - A brief note on games and narratives', Game Studies, 1,1 2001
• Petri Lankoski, 'Goals, Affects, and Empathy in Games', Paper at the Conference on the Philosophy of Computer Games, Modena reggio Emilia, Italy, January 25-27, 2007 
• Petri Lankoski, Character-Driven Game Design (Aalto University, 2010)
• Simon Locke, 'Considering comics as medium, art, and culture - the case of From Hell', SCAN, 6.1, 2009
• Vyshali Manivannan, 'Interplay Amidst the Strangeness and the Charm: Under-language and the Attenuation of Meaning in the Film Adaptation of Watchmen', ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies. 5.4 (2011)
• Lev Manovich, 'What is Digital Cinema?', Manovich.net, 1995
• Lev Manovich, 'Cinema and Digital Media', in Jeffrey Shaw and Hans Peter Schwartz (eds), Perspectives of Media Art (1996)
• Lev Manovich, 'Moving Image Culture after Computerisation: an outline', 2003
• Patrick McEntaggart, 'Once Upon a Paradigm Shift: Interactive Storytelling in a New Media Context', Inter-Disciplinary.Net, 5th Global Conference, Salzburg, March 14, 2010
• Jane McGonigal, ʻ”This Is Not a Game”: Immersive Aesthetics and Collective Play [on The Beast/ the A.I game]', MelbourneDAC2003
• Tom Miller, 'Struggling With Godzilla: Unraveling the Symbolism in Toho’s Sci/Fi Films', Kaiju-Fan 10 (Winter), 1999
• Drew Morton, 'Sketching Under the Influence? Winsor McCay and the Question of Aesthetic Convergence Between Comic Strips and Film', Animation, 2010 
• Drew Morton, 'Comics to Film (And Halfway Back Again): A DVD Essay', FLOW, April 5, 2007
• Drew Morton, 'Godard’s Comic Strip Mise-en-Scène', Senses of Cinema, 53, 2009
• Drew Morton, David O’Grady and Jennifer Porst, 'Towards a New Genre of Video Game Play', Mediascape, Fall 2009
• Graham J. Murphy, 'Gotham (K)Nights: Utopianism, American Mythology, and Frank Miller's Bat(-topia)', ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies. 4.2 (2008)
• Janet H. Murray, 'The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies', DiGRA 2005, Vancouver, Canada, June 17, 2005
• Lizzie Nixon, 'I Focalize, You Focalize, We All Focalize Together: Audience Participation in Persepolis', Image and Narrative, 11.2, 2010
• Brian L. Ott, 'The Visceral Politics of V for Vendetta: On Political Affect in Cinema', eventually published in Critical Studies in Media Communication, Volume 27 Issue 1, March 2010
• Ágnes Petho, 'Intermediality in Film: A Historiography of Methodologies', Acta Univ. Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2 (2010) 39–72 
• Paul Petrovic, 'The Culturally Constituted Gaze: Fetishizing the Feminine from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen to Zack Snyder's Watchmen', ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies. 5.4 (2011)
• Michael J. Prince, ''HOWL: A Novel Graphic: Authenticity and Irony in Eric Drooker's Adaptations of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"' ', SCAN, 9.1, 2012
• William Proctor, ''Beginning Again: The Reboot Phenomenon in Comic Books and Film'', SCAN, 9.1, 2012
• Charlotte Pylyser, 'Rogue Paratexts: Epo's Graphic Classic Adaptations and the Jupien Effect', SCAN, 9.1, 2012  
• J.R. Roberto, 'Godzilla and the Second World War: A Study of the Allegorical Meaning in Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again' in Kaiju-Fan 5 (Spring), 1997
• Marie-Laure Ryan, 'Beyond Myth and Metaphor: The Case of Narrative in Digital Media', Game Studies, Volume 1, issue 1, 2001
• Marie-Laure Ryan, 'On Defining Narrative Media', Image and Narrative, 3.2, 2003
• Marie-Laure Ryan, 'Computer Games as Narrative: The Ludology versus Narrativism Controversy', Avatars of Story, at www.dichtung-digital.org/2006
• Kevin Schut, 'Technology tells a tale: digital games and narrative', Proceedings of Digra, 2003
• Jan Simons, 'Narrative, Games, and Theory', Game Studies, 7.1, 2007
• Matthew Stoddard, 'Ghost in the Shell, Cognitive Mapping, and the Desire for Communism', ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies. 5.2 (2010)
• Matthias Stork, 'In Touch with the Film Object: Cinephilia, the Video Essay, and Chaos Cinema', Frames, 1, 2012
• Matthias Stork, 'Transmedia Synergies – Remediating Films and Video Games', Mediascape, Winter 2013 
• Wanda Strauven, The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded (Amsterdam University Press, 2006)
• David Surman, 'Remediation and Cineliteracy: An Approach to Recent Popular Film', Academia.edu, [date unknown] also see here
• Jan-Noël Thon, 'Computer Games, Fictional Worlds, and Transmedia Storytelling: A Narratological Perspective', The Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, Oslo 2009
• Justine Toh, 'The tools and toys of (the) War (on Terror): Consumer desire, military fetish and regime change in Batman Begins', SCAN, 6.1, 2009

• Kevin Veale, '"Interactive Cinema" Is an Oxymoron, but May Not Always Be', Game Studies, Volume 12, issue 1, 2012

• Video Games: The State of the Field - A Discussion with Steve Mamber, Peter Lunenfeld, and Eddo Stern (March 28, 2011). Moderated by David O’Grady, Mediascape, Winter 2012 
• Mark Rowell Wallin, 'Myths, Monsters and Markets: Ethos, Identification, and the Video Game Adaptations of The Lord of the Rings', Game Studies, Volume 7, issue 1, 2007

New Issue of MEDIASCAPE Online on "History and Technology"

Frame grab from Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980), one of the subjects of Film Studies For Free's author's latest videographic film study in her new article 'Déjà-Viewing? Videographic Experiments in Intertextual Film Studies', which you can find in the newly published issue of Mediascape.

The much awaited Winter 2013 issue of MEDIASCAPE, UCLA's Journal of Cinema and Media, has just been published. There are two very fine articles on historical film archives by Christina Petersen and Bryan Sebok, as well as two excellent columns on related historiographical themes. Meanwhile, the META section boasts some very good, new video essay work by Matthias Stork, Alexandra Schroeder, and Clifford James Galiher and reflections on videographic and other digital film studies practices by great luminaries, such as Yuri Tsivian and Daria Khitrova, alongside those of much more ordinary mortals! There's also a highly informative interview with filmmaker Thom Andersen and some very interesting reviews to catch up with.

All contents are listed and linked to below. But, also, do check out MEDIASCAPE's occasional, but very high quality blog which publishes between journal issue releases. A good place to start is this entry: 'Mastering "The Master"' by Vincent Brook

MEDIASCAPE, Winter 2013

Editorial by Andy Myers and Andrew Young

Features

• The Crowd Mind: The Archival Legacy of the Payne Fund Studies’ Movies and Conduct (1933) by Christina Petersen
• Headline Hollywood: A discourse analysis of the Variety archive by Bryan Sebok

Columns

• Alex Haley’s Roots and Hyperreal Historiography by Randy Laist
• Transmission: Considering New Media and the Online Histories of HIV/AIDS by Christopher Garland

META

• What Happens When You Sleep? Multiple Layers of Voyeurism in the Paranormal Activity Trilogy by Alexandra Schroeder
• Déjà-Viewing? Videographic Experiments in Intertextual Film Studies by Catherine Grant
• The Three Fates of the Maltese Falcon: Hammet's Novel at Warner Bros. by Clifford James Galiher
• Photography and Fictionality by Jens Schröter
• Transmedia Synergies — Remediating Films and Video Games by Matthias Stork
• In Retrospect: 2012 Los Angeles Animation Festival by Kelly Lake
• “A Film is Alive During its Making” – An Interview with Filmmaker Thom Andersen by Matthias Stork
• On Cinemetrics, Video Essays, and Digital Scholarship – An Interview with Dr. Yuri Tsivian and Dr. Daria Khitrova by Matthias Stork

Reviews

• Total Archive: Picturing History from the Stereographic Library to the Digital Database by Brooke Belisle
• All The World’s A Video Wall: Technology, Humanity, and the Things in Between. Reviewing Chris Salter’s Entangled by Judith Kohlenberger and Samuel Zwaan
• Murder and Montage: Oliver Stone’s Hyperreal Period by Randy Laist
• Review of Useful Cinema by Andrew Myers
• Something Borrowed from the Past: Wedding Photography and Super 8mm by Paul Gansky

 

 

Conversations from the REMIX CINEMA Workshop

In conversation with Richard Misek at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

Film Studies For Free took a little break to meet a few deadlines in the last two weeks. Normal service resumes this week, thankfully.

In the next days, there will be an entry of links in memory of Theo Angelopoulos who sadly died last week. So, do please come back for that.

Today, though, FSFF posts links to some recently uploaded audio files which very valuably record great interviews with the contributors to an important workshop conference that took place last March at Oxford University.

The event explored the topic of Remix Cinema: the collaborative making, deconstruction and distribution of digital artefacts, and was part of a wider project exploring the role of audio-visual remix practices in contemporary digital culture.

Thanks to everyone taking part for making these excellent resources available to everyone working in the field.

• 2:50

  In conversation with Erlend Lavik at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011
• 2:55

  In conversation with Paolo Peverini at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011 

  
  
• 3:18

  In conversation with Irene Cassarino at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

• 2:48

  In conversation with Nicolás Alcalá at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

  2:51

  In conversation with Joan Carles Martorell at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

  2:53

  In conversation with Indrek Ibrus at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

• 3:07

  In conversation with Mette Birk and Owen Gallagher at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

  2:09

  In conversation with Rune Saugmann Andersen at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

  3:17

  In conversation with Maynou and Steele at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

  3:12

  In conversation with Marisol Salanova at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

• 2:45

  In conversation with Gabriel Menotti at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

  
  
• 2:30

  In conversation with Dave Griffiths at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

  3:05

  In conversation with Evelin Stermitz at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

  3:16

  In conversation with Daniel Chávez at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

• 3:00

  In conversation with Aurite Kouts at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

• 2:57

  In conversation with Toni Roig at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

• 2:08

  In conversation with Thijs van Exel at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

• 3:16

  In conversation with Sanna Marttila at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

• 2:34

  In conversation with Kati Hyyppa at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

• 3:12

  In conversation with Karin Wenz at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

• 2:53

  In conversation with Ethan Plaut at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

• 2:00

  In conversation with Annelies Termeer at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

• 3:17

  In conversation with Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss at the Remix Cinema Workshop 2011

Screen Attachments: new Issue of SCREENING THE PAST

Framegrab from Nuovo cinema Paradiso/Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988), a film which is the starting point of film theorist Francesco Casetti in his new article "Cinema Lost and Found"

Film Studies for Free rushes you the wonderful news that a special issue (no. 32) of Screening the Past has just gone online. The issue treats the topic of Screen Attachments and is edited by Catherine Fowler and Paola Voci. 

The obvious highlight is a brilliant article by Francesco Casetti, but a quick glance at all the other articles indicates a very high quality issue indeed. FSFF's own favourite is Fowler and Voci's study 'Brief Encounters: Theorizing Screen Attachments Outside the Movie Theatre', with its compelling use of Sara Ahmed's notion of orientation.

The Classics and Reruns section also has some real gems.

Screen Attachments

• "Screen Attachments: An Introduction" by Paola Voci and Catherine Fowler
• "Cinema Lost and Found: Trajectories of Relocation" by Francesco Casetti
• "DVD Screen Culture for Children: Theories of Play and Young Viewers" by Karin Beeler
• "Brief Encounters: Theorizing Screen Attachments Outside the Movie Theatre" by Catherine Fowler and Paola Voci
• "Fingers, Futures, Fates: Viewing Interactive Cinema in Kinoautomat and Sufferrosa"by Jenna Ng
• "Waterbodies: Moving-image installations at Termemilano Spa" by Adriano D′Aloia
• "A Minoritarian Digital Poetics of YouTube" by Eu Jin Chua 
• "Rethinking Screen Encounters: Cinema and Tamil Migrant Workers in Singapore" by Vijay Devada

Classics and Reruns

• The Artist as Ecologist by Gene Youngblood
• Cerebrum: Intermedia and the Human Sensorium by Gene Youngblood
• Intermedia Theatre  by Gene Youngblood
• What is Digital Cinema? by Lev Manovich

Reviews

• The Fall of Buster Keaton by Anna Gardner
• Guy Debord: Revolution in the Service of Poetry by David Ehrenstein
• Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia: Film Culture in Transition by Daniel Fairfax
• Television as Digital Media by Gin Chee Tong
• Twilight of the Idols by Jonathan Auerbach
• Drawn To Sound: Animation Film Music and Sonicity by Johnny Milner
• Terry Gilliam (British Film Makers) by Josh Nelson
• Cinema Beyond Film: Media Epistemology in the Modern Era by Meredith A. Bak
• The Documentary: Politics, Emotion, Culture by Mas Generis
• Scotland: Global Cinema: Genres, Modes and Identities by Miriam Ross
• Beyond Dolby (Stereo): Cinema in the Digital Sound Age by Mike Walsh
• The Right to Play Oneself: Looking Back on Documentary Film by Patricia Aufderheide
• Steven Soderbergh by Paul Ramaeker
• Celluloid Symphonies: Texts and Contexts in Film Music History by Roger Hillmann
• Marketing Modernity: Victorian Popular Shows and Early Cinema by Tom Salek
• Dark Borders: Film Noir and American Citizenship by Tony Williams
• Counter-Archive. Film, the Everyday, and Albert Kahn’s Archives de la Planète by Jan-Christopher Horak
• Yellow Future: Oriental Style in Hollywood Cinema by Gerald Sim