This collection of essays analyzes film representations of the Crusades, other medieval East/West encounters, and the modern inheritance of encounters between orientalist fantasy and apocalyptic conspiracy. From studies of the filmic representations of popular figures such as El Cid, Roland, Richard I, and Saladin to examinations of such topics as Templar romance and the role of set design, location and landscape, the essays make significant contributions to our understanding of orientalist medievalism in film. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

A behind-the-camera portrait of the late George Stevens' 1965 "Holyland," which he built in Utah's Monument Valley in order to film The Greatest Story Ever Told.Darby reveals startling details of the final surgery that scarred the film, along with the critiques that deeply wounded Stevens.

This volume offers a literary and cultural history of the idea of crusading over the last millennium.

The author examines how celebrities influence American voting habits and discusses whether the lifestyles of President Barack Obama's celebrity supporters match their voiced opinions on political policies.

The New Hollywood of the late 1960s and 1970s is among the most exciting and influential periods in the history of film. This book explores how the new wave of historical films were profoundly shaped by the controversies and concerns of the present.

Using film as a lens though which we can witness the global transformations in politics, economy, culture, and communication, this book analyzes Hollywood's shift in its depictions of China and Tibet.

A fascinating look at Hollywood’s most turbulent decade and the demise of the studio system—set against the boom of the post–World War II years, the Cold War, and the atomic age—and the movies that reflected the seismic shifts Hollywood in the 1950s was a period when the film industry both set conventions and broke norms and traditions—from Cinerama, CinemaScope, and VistaVision to the epic film and lavish musical. It was a decade that saw the rise of the anti-hero; the smoldering, the hidden, and the unspoken; teenagers gone wild in the streets; the sacred and the profane; the revolution of the Method; the socially conscious; the implosion of the studios; the end of the production code; and the invasion of the ultimate body snatcher: the “small screen” television. Here is Eisenhower’s America—seemingly complacent, conformity-ridden revealed in Vincente Minnelli’s Father of the Bride, Walt Disney’s Cinderella, and Brigadoon, among others. And here is its darkening, resonant landscape, beset by conflict, discontent, and anxiety (The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Asphalt Jungle, A Place in the Sun, Touch of Evil, It Came From Outer Space) . . . an America on the verge of cultural, political and sexual revolt, busting up and breaking out (East of Eden, From Here to Eternity, On the Waterfront, Sweet Smell of Success, The Wild One, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Jailhouse Rock). An important, riveting look at our nation at its peak as a world power and at the political, cultural, sexual upheavals it endured, reflected and explored in the quintessential American art form.

Our heroine in Part One of the Muslim Romance Trilogy—The Year I Learned to Text; Why Am I Having Sex with a Muslim in My Basement?— actress/comedian/realtor Julie, returns and is now sixty-two. Her Marriage Islam-Style husband is forty. Her chemical addiction to the black-eyed, always-tardy Persian Prince remains insatiable, as her two loyal dogs and opinionated cat watch it all go down. When the honeymooners’ salacious pillow talk turns to Taliban training camps, dropping walls on homosexuals, and killing Republican presidents, conservative Julie must choose between love of country and the greatest physical and spiritual connection she’s ever known. “A truly out-of-the-box articulate storyteller, if Ms. Montague has not yet succeeded in having the Ayatollahs issue a fatwa against her, she surely will be successful this time. Juliet’s hysterically funny romantic satire will soon become a collector’s item when Jihad Honeymoon in Hollywood is banned along with the author, when she is placed in the informal witness program along with Salman Rushdie. Be sure to take home Book No. 2 in The Muslim Romance Trilogy today, so you can say you knew her when.”- Steven Emerson,author of American Jihad; the Terrorists Living Among Us. “The Fifty Shades of Grey Trilogy is an unintentionally humorous lap cat compared to the Bengal cougar of this long-awaited sequel to The Year I Learned to Text; Why Am I Having Sex with a Muslim in My Basement? Juliet Montague continues to weave more colorful erotic tales in this intentionally funny, heartbreaking saga of love gone wrong.”- C. Stephen Foster,author of Awakening the Actor Within

Drawing on new archival research into Hollywood production history and detailed analysis of individual films, Hollywood and the Invention of England examines the surprising affinity for the English past in Hollywood cinema. Stubbs asks why Hollywood filmmakers have so frequently drawn on images and narratives depicting English history, and why films of this type have resonated with audiences in America. Beginning with an overview of the cultural interaction between American film and English historical culture, the book proceeds to chart the major filmmaking cycles which characterise Hollywood's engagement with the English past from the 1930s to the present, assessing the value of English-themed films in the American film industry while also placing them in a broader historical context.