Bøger af Peter Kramer

In December 1967, Time magazine put Bonnie and Clyde on its cover and proudly declared that Hollywood cinema was undergoing a 'renaissance'. For the next few years, a wide range of formally and thematically challenging films were produced at the very centre of the American film industry, often (but by no means always) combining success at the box office with huge critical acclaim, both then and later. This collection brings together acknowledged experts on American cinema to examine thirteen key films from the years 1966 to 1974, starting with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a major studio release which was in effect exempted from Hollywood's Production Code and thus helped to liberate American filmmaking from (self-)censorship. Long-standing taboos to do with sex, violence, race relations, drugs, politics, religion and much else could now be broken, often in conjunction with extensive stylistic experimentation. Whereas most previous scholarship has examined these developments through the prism of auteurism, with its tight focus on film directors and their oeuvres, the contributors to this collection also carefully examine production histories and processes. In doing so they pay particular attention to the economic underpinnings and collaborative nature of filmmaking, the influence of European art cinema as well as of exploitation, experimental and underground films, and the connections between cinema and other media (notably publishing, music and theatre). Several chapters show how the innovations of the Hollywood Renaissance relate to further changes in American cinema from the mid-1970s onwards.

Drawing on new research in the Stanley Kubrick Archive at the University of the Arts London, Kramer's study explores the production, marketing and reception as well as the themes and style of A Clockwork Orange against the backdrop of Kubrick's previous work and of wider developments in cinema, culture and society from the 1950s to the early 1970s.

This essential review of knife- and axe-throwing basics presents and analyzes the best throwing knives and axes on the current market, different throwing techniques, the basics of competition rules, legal issues to understand, and the general care of throwing knives and axes. The budding knife and axe thrower will also receive valuable tips for getting started in throwing and how to prepare physically and mentally for training, as well as your first competition.

Offering a fresh perspective on The General, arguably one of the most successful American films of the silent era, this insightful text analyses its initial critical reception and the thematic and stylistic characteristics of the film that made it difficult for critics to appreciate at the time, but led to its celebration by later generations.

This book examines how American Graffiti (1973), a low-budget and star-less teen comedy, became one of the highest grossing and most highly acclaimed films of all time in the United States, and one of the key expressions of the nostalgia wave washing over the country in the 1970s.

Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) is the definitive film about the nuclear age. Peter Kramer analyses its key scenes and complex production history, highlighting major themes such as Strangelove's Nazi past and the film's close relationship with real-world nuclear strategy and politics.