Fantasy film; a critical introduction.
Walters (film and television studies, the U. of Birmingham, UK) describes different styles of the genre of fantasy film while simultaneously addressing major themes and issues of film studies more generally, such as authorship and genre, childhood and entertainment, imagination and interiority, and style and coherence. The author seeks to demonstrate the qualities that the genre of fantasy has to offer the academic study of film, and vice versa. Chapters on seven different areas in film studies place fantasy within the wider context of academic debates surrounding film; many of the arguments presented rely on the work of scholars whose work may have little or no connection to concepts of fantasy. The author discusses examples from films such as The Lord of the Rings, The Bourne Identity, X-Men, ET, Freaky Friday, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. The book is distributed in the US by Palgrave Macmillan. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)