The Cinema of Terry Gilliam: It's a Mad World Jeff Birkenstein 9780231165358

Terry Gilliam has been making movies for more than forty years, and this volume analyzes a selection of his thrilling directorial work, from his early films with Monty Python to The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnussus (2009). The frenetic genius, auteur, and social critic continues to create indelible images on screen--if, that is, he can get funding for his next project. Featuring eleven original essays from an international group of scholars, this collection argues that when Gilliam makes a movie, he goes to war: against Hollywood caution and convention, against American hyper-consumerism and imperial militarism, against narrative vapidity and spoon-fed mediocrity, and against the brutalizing notion and cruel vision of the "American Dream."

About the Author
Jeff Birkenstein is associate professor of English at Saint Martin's University. With Anna Froula and Karen Randell, he is coeditor of Reframing 9/11: Film, Pop Culture, and the "War on Terror." Anna Froula is assistant professor of film studies at East Carolina University and associate editor of Cinema Journal. She has published on war trauma and gender in such journals as Changing English, Cinema Journal, and The Journal of War and Culture Studies, and in the collection Iraq War Cultures.A Karen Randell is professor of film and culture at Southampton Solent University. She is coeditor of five books including The War Body on Screen and Screening the Dark Side of Love: From Euro-Horror to American Cinema. She has also been published in Screen and Cinema Journal.

Reviews
A wonderfully rich collection of essays; thought-provoking, insightful, and poetic in equal measure. Gilliam emerges as an auteur of magic and melancholy, a trickster of the night, a genius of the moving image. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the power of the directorial vision. -- Sean Redmond, Deakin University A lively set of informed and informative essays that offers an array of new perspectives. This collection adds materially to the critical understanding of one of modern cinema's most intriguing and challenging directors -- Peter Marks, University of Sydney A superb examination of a maverick artist... Highly recommended. Choice



Book Information
ISBN 9780231165358
Author Jeff Birkenstein
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Wallflower Press
Publisher Columbia University Press
Series Directors' Cuts