Buon 2014

Buon anno a tutti!!!!!

Divertitevi, bevete (se non dovete guidare) e comportatevi bene (ma non troppo)!!!!!

Buon Natale!

Buon Natale a tutti i lettori di Cult Television!

Come ogni anno vi ricordo che siete ancora in tempo per qualche regalo solidale:

Emergency

Terres des Hommes

Save the Children

Medici senza Frontiere

Auguri!

Media Mutations 6

Segnalo l'appuntamento annuale con Media Mutations, conferenza organizzata dall'Università di Bologna (27/28 maggio 2014) dedicata ai modi di produzione e alle forme narrative della serialità televisiva contemporanea. 

Ecco il CFP:

Media Mutations 6. Modes of Production and Narrative Forms in the Contemporary TV Series.


Bologna, Dipartimento delle Arti, May 27th-28th, 2014


Invited keynote speaker: Catherine Johnson (University of Nottingham)

Media Mutations, the international conference on audiovisual media studies, comes to its sixth annual edition. This year’s theme is the relationship between modes of production and narrative forms in contemporary scripted television series in the United States and in Europe. The industrial structures of television, from labor organization to economic models of monetization, all shape the types of content that is created: the stories that the medium tells and the ways in which it tells them. This year’s conference seeks to explore changes brought in the past decade by new models of business, new technologies and new forms of integration within the media, and the resulting changes to television narratives.
We invite submissions that cover the following topics, favoring proposals that are able to intersect across different areas:

•   Narrative models and industrial structures: the influence of extratextual factors (organizational structures, institutional policies, production patterns, economic models and types of distribution) on the form and language of TV series.

•   New forms of monetization: the relationships between television series, ancillary products and branded extensions in a context of digitization and cross-media storytelling. What effect is the trend towards gamification having on TV series? What elements in series are highlighted by broadcasters according to diverse cross-platform monetization strategies? How is this influenced by contexts of distribution?

•   Genres: the impact of changing economic considerations in re-shaping subgenre traditions (dramas, sitcoms) and in inventing new genres and hybrid forms. To what extent does the TV series format, and its various genres and subgenres, influence and regulate audience expectations?

•   From TV watching to user experiences: the effects of the transition of media broadcasters from content providers to designers of user-oriented experiences based on scripted series. In what ways is added value provided to television texts? What kinds of new cross-media skills are required from TV professionals in the context of expansion of, and integration with, digital media content?

•   Global content flows and local contexts: the discourse of television as a national medium in the shaping of production cultures. In what ways is this discourse influenced by economic, technological and cultural changes? What is the role of production and distribution routines (i.e. dubbing, acquisition, promotion) in the modification (forms and identities) of original series into different local contexts?

•   Theoretical definitions: the identification of effective models in the contemporary milieu, thirty years after the Second Golden Age. The evolution of aesthetic and product-related definitions such as quality TV, high-concept series and narrative complexity.

The official languages of the conference are English and Italian. There will be no conference fee. Proposals of no more than 250 words (for 20-minute talks), should be sent to Luca Barra (luca.barra@unicatt.it), Leora Hadas (lhadas.uni@gmail.com) and Paolo Noto (paolo.noto2@unibo.it) by January the 27th 2014. Please attach a brief biography (maximum 150 words) and an optional selected bibliography (up to three titles) relevant to the conference theme.

Contemporary Horrors: Destabilizing a Cinematic Genre

Altra segnalazione per questa conferenze sull'Horror che si svolgerà presso l'Università di Chicago il 25 e 26 aprile 2014.

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The turn of the millennium has witnessed a uniquely dazzling renaissance in cinematic production within the horror genre. How do we account for the prolific production and prodigious diffusion of horror film since the turn of this last century?  From thematic topoi to cinematographic style, horror cinema of the past 10-15 years has witnessed numerous trends emerge, cross-pollinate internationally, and re-enter the genre in cycles of repetition and transformation accelerated by digital production and distribution technologies. And yet, the sheer proliferation and remarkable diversity of vital horror filmmaking makes defining the genre perhaps more challenging than ever before.

In the 21st century, as horror cinema has become more clearly than ever a global genre, those films that find their way to U.S. movie theaters represent only a small fraction of the total quantity made. Just as the vast majority of horror filmmaking now occurs independently of major studio support, practices of distribution and viewing have expanded and evolved with the internet making this impressive range of films available to fans around the world. One is left to question how structures of global information and capital (and strategies for evasion of such structures), affect the form and function of filmic negotiations of horror. In other words: What delineates horror as a genre in the 21st century? How have shock, fear, and the fantastic been defined in recent horror productions? If horror has become somehow an almost “universal” idiom of global experience, what unifies our senses of trauma? How are memory and melancholy supplanted by obscenity and anxiety?

To engage these and other questions, we welcome speakers who take diverse paths toward contemplation of the contemporary horror film and the questions it raises as a transnational cinematic genre.  A panel of independent horror filmmakers will convene to inaugurate the conference.  Adam Lowenstein, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and author of Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film, will provide the keynote.

Topics that may be considered include but are not limited to:

-        Gore and images of violence; body horror; torture porn/spectacle horror

-        Auteurs and auteurist approaches to genre; alternative collaborationist approaches

-        The significance of horror within contexts of national cinemas and the significance of national contexts for understanding international horror

-        Transnationalism and border-crossings (international co-productions, émigré filmmakers, transnational influences)

-        Remakes and genre formulae; translating and transducing horror across cultures and time

-        New forms/patterns of distribution and spectatorship; Methods of advertising and publicity

-        Queerness and gender issues in horror; the legacy of Carol Clover, Linda Williams, Robin Wood in horror criticism

-        The relationship of art-house cinema to genre (i.e. Haneke, Del Toro, Von Trier, Denis)

-        Monsters and monstrosity

-        The “found footage” film  (Paranormal Activity, [REC], Cloverfield, etc.); “home movies” and the unheimlich

-        Media in horror and “haunted media”; outdated medial artefacts between nostalgia and fear; the afterlife of formats

-        Models for independent production

-        The eroticization of the monstrous and the abject

-        Technologies of horror and horrific technics: instruments of para-transmission

-        Horrified psyches: anxiety, melancholy, depression, and affective models

-        Horror as Event

-        Speculative realism at the movies: the object’s ontology in the horror film.

Abstracts of a maximum of 200-250 words are due no later than February 1, 2014 by email to contemporaryhorrors.uchicago@gmail.com.

Mechanisms of Monstrosity Conference

Segnalo questa interessante conferenza che si svolgerà al Mansfield College di Oxford il prossimo 27 luglio 2014.

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This years Monsters and the Monstrous conference will focus on the mechanisms of monstrosity itself and the forms of othering and difference that cause a society, a culture and a historical moment to label someone or something as monstrous. As such, whilst iconic monsters such as Frankenstein’s Monster and Dracula can themselves be seen to embody a particular cultures sexual, racial, and even biological anxieties, we wish to focus on those forms of abjection that can be seen to have initiated or fueled such a “monstrous” response. Contemporary examples might include paedophiles, parents in the widest sense (mothers and usually step-fathers in particular) who kill their children, sex offenders and even immigrants. More recently, reactions to bankers, the perceived greed of corporations, and even natural phenomenon (global warming, tseunami’s, tornado’s) have elicited similar responses. Consequently it is both the groups, even phenomena, that are othered or seen to “polute” and destabilse the normalised “us” of society, and the reasons and mechanisms of why and how that we wish to explore.

These monstrous technologies, as labelled by some theorists, or what we might also call the mechanics of monstrosity are utilised by ideologies of patriarchy, nationalism, imperialism and capitalism, to name but a few, to victimise those that defy or exceed categorisation or that threaten to corrupt or dissolve the hetero-normative subject and the societal “I”. Whilst this points to the monsterisation of groups, or individuals that fail to belong to the “group,” due to their, gender, sexuality, disability or ethnicity, it also suggests the inherent monstrosity of the group, culture, ideology that creates and enforces such systems of demarcation and exclusion. As such the nature of the machinery of monstrosity created, maintained and disseminated by and throughout a particular culture will also be examined. It is also worth noting of course that whilst such mechanisms differentiate between those that are included and excluded, that even with the category of the “us” there are often further sub-divisions of purity and privilege, or what we might call “non-monstrosity.” Here then hierarchies of class, caste, gender and ability can be seen to be equally monsterising in the way it differentiates both inside and outside the category of “us”.

This call for proposals then asks for consideration of the above in relation to differing cultures and societies as well as specific historical moments that produced and utilised ideologies of monstrosity, in terms of sex, gender, ethnicity, disability, class etc., to delineate notions of societal inclusion and exclusion, and various hierarchies within them.

Examples of the above can be seen in, but are not exclusive to, the following categories:

Collective, Social, National- neighbours, enemies and outsiders – real and imaginary lands
- supernatural realms and spiritual otherness
- human, non-human and animal
- colonialism, post-colonialism and borderlands
- barbaric acts, piracy, cannibalism, genocide
- surveillance, control and dissemination

Gender and Sexuality- heteronormativity, male hierarchy, patriarchy, matriarchy and  feminism
- LGBTQ
- asexual, non-sexual, hermaphrodite and non-reproduction
- alternative sexual practices, pedophilia, bestiality, necrophilia

Individual, Internal- skin colour, hair colour, blemishes, tatoos, piercing
- fashion, costume, cosmetics and body enhancement
- customs, rites and religious practice
- disability, body difference, chronic conditions and mental health
- class, caste, age, language, dialect

Phenomena- natural disasters, acts of God, global warming and extreme weather
- ideological monsters, economic collapse/crisis and GM crops and foodstuffs
- media, internet and virtual spaces, hacking, trolling and bullying
- WMD’s, chemical weapons, warcrimes and enhanced torture

Proposals for panels and alternative forms of presentation are strongly encouraged on the above and any related topics.

In order to support and encourage interdisciplinarity engagement, it is our intention to create the possibility of starting dialogues between the parallel events running during this conference. Delegates are welcome to attend up to two sessions in each of the concurrent conferences. We also propose to produce cross-over sessions between these groups – and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between Monsters and the Monstrous and Sins, Vices and Virtues.

What to Send
Proposals will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word proposals should be submitted by Friday 14th February 2014. If a proposal is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper of no more than 3000 words should be submitted by Friday 16th May 2014. Proposals should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of proposal, f) up to 10 keywords.

E-mails should be entitled: Monsters12 Proposal Submission

All abstracts will be at least double blind peer reviewed. Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs .

Rob Fisher: m12@inter-disciplinary.net
Simon Bacon :simonmonster@inter-disciplinary.net

Almost Human della Fox

In un futuro non troppo lontano e molto violento i poliziotti sono affiancati da un partner androide. Il poliziotto John Kennex (Karl Urban) si risveglia dopo due anni di coma dopo un agguato di una organizzazione criminale ed è deciso a scoprire la verità sull'evento che ha ucciso un suo collega umano e gli ha fatto perdere una gamba. Con un nuovo arto robotico e un collega androide di vecchia generazione, Dorian (Michael Ealy), John rientra al servizio del suo capo Maldonado (Lili Taylor).

La democratizzazione della cultura: parliamo di Mooc

Prendo spunto da un artico pubblicato ieri sull'Huffington Post nel quale viene messo in evidenza come oggi la cultura sia alla portata di tutti. Servizi di condivisione legale di libri, musica e film che, a fronte di un piccolo prezzo (circa 30$ al mese) offrono accesso ad un numero di prodotti potenzialmente illimitato. Effettivamente, le cose sono cambiate parecchio inpochi anni. Mi sono laureata nel 2000 e per trovare libri sulla televisione americana (senza spendere un patrimonio ordinandoli da Amazon US) dovevo passare ore alla biblioteca della Rai o al Centro Sperimentale, prendendo appunti e facendo fotocopie. E non si trovavano tutte le fonti che si desideravano. Giorni e giorni persi solo per trovare i giusti riferimenti quando oggi basta un click per avere a portata di video migliaia di pagine nelle quali è possibile ricercare la parola chiave che ti interessa. Il tutto comodamente da casa.

Dracula della NBC

Esiste storia più nota di Dracula? Il romanzo gotico per eccellenza, scritto dall'irlandese Bram Stoker nel 1897 è probabilmente il più conosciuto, citato e adattato al cinema e alla tv. Anche chi non ha letto il romanzo ne conosce i personaggi, il tono, lo stile e i maggiori accadimenti. Gli adattamenti cinematografici hanno prodotto alcuni capolavori anche molto lontani tra loro come estetica: il Dracula di F.F.Coppola resta uno dei migliori, un gioiello barocco che è un continuo piacere visivo; il Nosferatu di F.W.Murnau è ancora oggi un capolavoro affascinante e misterioso; la versione di W.Herzog resta a distanza di anni angosciante e originale. E questo solo per citare tre dei numerosissimi adattamenti che sono stati realizzati negli anni da tutte le cinematografie nazionali e da tantissimi autori e registi di genere.

CFP A Fiend in the Furrows Conference - Queen’s University Belfast 2014

Segnalo questo interessante CFP:

‘A Fiend in the Furrows’ is a three-day conference in association with the School of English at Queen’s University Belfast, exploring British “folk horror” in literature, film, television, and music. The event will include academic papers, film screenings, musical performances, and readings.

Supernatural and horrific aspects of folklore inform the Gothic and weird writings of M.R. James, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood, where philosophical and religious certainties are haunted and challenged by the memory of older cultural traditions. Folklore has a profound and unsettling impact on the imaginative perception of landscape, identity, time and the past. Folk memory is often manifested as an intrusive and violent breach from an older repressed, ‘primitive’ or ‘barbarous’ state that transgresses the development of cultural order. Gothic and weird fictions are burgeoning as the focus of serious academic enquiry in philosophy and literary criticism, and the genres continue to have an impact on popular culture. Through the writing of Nigel Kneale and Alan Garner, among others, the tradition has influenced British horror cinema and television, being revived and reimagined in films such as Quatermass and the Pit (1967), The Devil Rides Out (1968), Witchfinder General (1968), Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), The Wicker Man (1973), and more recently in Ben Wheatley’s Kill List (2011) and A Field in England (2013). The conference will examine “folk horror” texts, films and music in their period context and the implications for British culture’s understanding of its own unsettled past. Proposals are welcomed for presentations that engage with various aspects of ‘folk horror’ from researchers in the disciplines of Literature, Film Studies, Music, Drama, History, Anthropology, Archaeology, Folklore, Geography, Art History, Philosophy and Theology. Presentation topics may include (but are not limited to):

• Late 19th century Gothic literature
• Early 20th century weird fiction
• Modernism and weird fiction
• The ghost story
• Contemporary horror and fantasy fiction
• Children’s literature
• Folklore collectors and redactors
• Folklore and the supernatural
• Primitivism, atavism, degeneration
• Rural and urban folklore
• Horror cinema and television
• Folkmusic

Please submit a 300 word abstract together with a brief biography to:
folkhorror@qub.ac.uk – by 1st June 2014.

The Blacklist della NBC

In una giornata come tante alla sede dell'FBI di Washington si costituisce uno dei ricercati sulla lista dei criminali più pericolosi: si tratta di Raymond Reddington, un ex agente che ormai da anni è passato dall'altra parte della barricata. Tranquillo e posato, "Red" chiede di poter incontrare la novella agente Elizabeth Keen che non ha nessun legame con lui, non lo conosce e non ha idea di ciò in cui verrà coinvolta. Nell'incontro tra i due emerge che Red è disposto ad aiutare l'FBI a catturare i "pesci grandi" del crimine, quelli dei quali non si conosce nemmeno l'esistenza. La strana coppia inizia la collaborazione sotto gli occhi poco convinti dei vertici dell'FBI.

Vampiri, supereroi e maghi. Metafore e percezione morale nella fiction fantastica di Antonella Albano

Segnalo volentieri questo nuovo libro di Antonella Albano Vampiri, supereroi e maghi. 

Il volume è una ampia e accurata analisi di alcune delle figure più amata della letteratura, del cinema e, in generale, della popular culture come maghi, vampiri e tante altre figure fantastiche. L'autrice - come evidenzia anche il sottotitolo del libro - ricerca la metafora che si cela dietro questi personaggi - da Buffy a Harry Potter passando per Frodo - per svelare la straordinaria complessità di queste figure e delle narrazioni che le racchiudono. 

Ripper Street della BBC

Alla fine dell'Ottocento, pochi mesi dopo la scomparsa di Jack lo Squartatore, a Londra vengono commessi una serie di omicidi che potrebbero ricondursi al famoso killer. Il commissario Reid, che non è riuscito a fermare lo squartatore, ricomincia le indagini.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine della Fox

La nuova sit-com della Fox Brooklyn Nine-Nine racconta le gesta di un gruppo di poliziotti di New York imbranati e pigri in un commissariato dove arriva il nuovo Boss, rigido e severo.

Ol3Media: Media Stardom

Segnalo il nuovo numero di Ol3Media dedicato al tema del Media Stardom. Di seguito l'indice:

Barbara Maio, Introduzione

Caterina Rossi, Divismo 2.0 tra corpo di massa e corpo d’autore: Robert Pattinson in Twilight e Cosmopolis

Clara Garavelli, A Shared Star Imagery: The Argentine Actor Ricardo Darín through Spanish Film Posters

Patricia Boyd, “I Got This: How I Changed My Ways and Lost What Weighed Me Down”: Re-construction of Jennifer Hudson’s “Star” Identity in American Weight Loss Advertisements

Michael Angelo Tata, Adventures in Meta-celebrity:

Andy Warhol and the Fame of Fame

Miriam Visalli, Marilyn contro Marilyn. Smash e la rilocazione del mito

Alberto Beltrame, Una leggenda d'artista, un divismo autorialista. Il paradigma Rossellini nella critica francese degli anni Cinquanta

Jeff Bush, The Face of Marylin

Chiara Checcaglini, Created by. L’autore-star nella serialità televisiva contemporanea

Barbara Maio, Sam Neill: un attore alla fine del mondo

Libri

The Crazy Ones della CBS

Padre e figlia dirigono una agenzia pubblicitaria a Chicago, agenzia che rischia di perdere il suo miglior cliente se non convinceranno una nota cantante a cantare il jingle della nuova campagna. Tra performance musicali e pubbliche umiliazioni la coppia porterà a casa il risultato. 

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - ABC

Questa settimana è andato in onda il pilot di Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., probabilmente la serie più attesa di questa nuova stagione televisiva. Dopo un solo episodio solitamente si possono fare solo piccole osservazioni e deduzioni ma AoS fa parte di un universo già ampiamente nella cultura popolare ed è legato al nome più accattivane dell'attuale panorama autoriale, Joss Whedon.

Sleepy Hollow della Fox

Nella cittadina di Sleepy Hollow Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison), professore ad Oxford e spia al servizio di George Washington, rimane ferito durante una battaglia con un cavaliere senza testa. 250 anni dopo si risveglia ai tempi nostri solo per scoprire che il cavaliere senza testa è tornato e che sta per riunire i quattro cavalieri dell'apocalisse. Crane dovrà cercare di fermarlo aiutato dalla poliziotta Archer (Nicole Beharie) che ha un passato travagliato da visioni e drammi familiari.

Peaky Blinders di BBC2

Nel 1919 una Birmingham grigia, violenta e in crisi economica vede le gesta della famiglia Shelby, una gang di fratelli, sorelle, cugini e parenti vari noti con il nome di "peaky blinders" dalla loro abitudine di portare una lametta nascosta della piegatura del cappello. Tommy è il più spietato della banda e vuole diventare il leader indiscusso ma in città arriva da Belfast un nuovo commissario di polizia, Campbell, pronto a tutto per fermare il crimine, spinto anche da Winston Churchill.

Italian Horror Cinema: an International Conference

Ancora una segnalazione per una conferenza che si preannuncia molto interessante!


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Italian Horror Cinema: an International Film Conference


The University of Bedfordshire, Luton, Friday 9th – Saturday 10th May 2014

In association with the second annual ‘Spaghetti Cinema’ Film Festival @spaghetticinema

Keynote speaker: Professor Peter Hutchings (Northumbria University).

Italian Film Studies increasingly situates its subject matter within discourses that complicate merely ‘national’ orientations, as is evident in scholarship surrounding the country’s wide array of horror films from the 1950s onwards. It has become common practice to examine in these films and their various cycles a tension between a culturally specific register pertaining to ‘Italian’ outlooks on the one hand, and cosmopolitan, transnational or ‘translocal’ flows of influence on the other. Spanning a period of traumatic socio-political upheaval, an ever-increasing importation of American fashions and styles, and lucrative international co-production models, Italian cinema’s various vampires, witches, zombies, cannibals and serial killers document the complexities of cultural moments finely perched between the local and the global.

This conference will offer delegates the opportunity to bring together diverse perspectives on the historical and political coordinates of Italian horror cinema. Encompassing the broad and porous cycles of gothic horror, gialli, zombie and cannibal films (among many others), the event will reconsider the heterogeneous strands of influence that feed into and out of these films, to examine negotiated, transitional and mobile Italian identities. 

Likely topics include:

▪   Cinematic / literary antecedents to Italian horror films.

▪   Studies of Italian horror cinema’s political / historical contexts.

▪   Transnational / transcultural routes of influence and cultural significance.

▪   Industrial histories (eg co-production funding structures, key production companies).

▪   Studies of domestic or international distribution patterns / reception.

▪   Considerations of individual films / trends.

▪   Translation studies / cultural translation.

▪   Italian horror auteurs / directors.

▪   The on-going global legacies of Italian horror.

▪   Italian horror cinema today.

We seek proposals for 20-minute papers, or for pre-constituted panels of three or four papers, that engage with any aspects of the above topic. Abstracts of no more than 300 words, along with a short biographical note, should be submitted for peer-review to spaghetticinema@beds.ac.uk by Friday January 17^th 2014.

The Department of Media Arts and Production, University of Bedfordshire, Park Square, Luton, Bedfordshire, LU1 3JU, UK.