Books by "David Steve Jacobs"
3 books found
Introduction: the way Hollywood told it -- The frenzy of five fat years; Interlude: Spring 1940: lessons from our town
Dylan Jacobs, Debbie and John John Rachel, Stuart Dauzart, and Phoebe Werner-Sury have been friends for a long time. The five of them share a special bond, and despite the ups and downs of life, they've stayed in touch. Now--on the eve of their thirty-second high school class reunion--the middle-aged friends relive their youth for one long weekend. For three fun-filled days, they leave behind worries about unplanned pregnancies, divorce, bankruptcy, substance abuse, bizarre baptisms, unfair kiddy glamour pageants, poorly fried catfish, and one freak accident caused by a fake pig. They recall the joy of the past, come to grips with the present, and celebrate the future. Set in central Louisiana, this humorous story reminds us that we should always take the time to stop and smell the bacon. "It's midlife crisis fried over easy and seasoned to hilarious perfection. This hysterical story proves that when life throws you a side of nasty pork--make jerky!" --Phaedra Parks, attorney, TV Personality, and author of Secrets of the Southern Belle "Southern Fried Life is a gumbo full of tragedies, love, laughter, bad behavior, honest mistakes, and friendships that will last forever." --Norman Korpi, artist, filmmaker, star of MTV's The Real World, and inventor of the Aero-Tray
Much of our time at the movies is spent in other people’s homes. Cinema is, after all, often about everyday life. Spectacle of Property is the first book to address the question of the ubiquitous conjuncture of the moving image and its domestic architecture. Arguing that in cinema we pay to occupy spaces we cannot occupy, John David Rhodes explores how the house in cinema both structures and criticizes fantasies of property and ownership. Rhodes tells the story of the ambivalent but powerful pleasure we take in looking at private property onscreen, analyzing the security and ease the house promises along with the horrible anxieties it produces. He begins by laying out a theory of film spectatorship that proposes the concept of the “spectator-tenant,” with reference to films such as Gone with the Wind and The Magnificent Ambersons. The book continues with three chapters that are each occupied with a different architectural style and the films that make use of it: the bungalow, the modernist house, and the shingle style house. Rhodes considers a variety of canonical films rarely analyzed side by side, such as Psycho in relation to Grey Gardens and Meet Me in St. Louis. Among the other films discussed are Meshes of the Afternoon, Mildred Pierce, A Star Is Born, Killer of Sheep, and A Single Man. Bringing together film history, film theory, and architectural history as no book has to date, Spectacle of Property marks a new milestone in examining cinema’s relationship to realism while leaving us vastly more informed about, if less at home inside, the houses we occupy at the movies.