Matthew Solomon

Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination: Georges Melies's Trip to the Moon [with Dvd] Matthew Solomon

Brief Description: Accompanying disc includes two versions of the film: a reconstructed version accompanied by an original 1903 score and a recently rediscovered color-tinted version; both have optional audio commentaries by the editor. Table of Contents: List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. A Trip to the Movies: Georges Melies, Filmmaker and Magician (1861-1938) 2. Theatricality, Narrativity, and Trickality: Reevaluating the Cinema of Georges Melies 3. A Trip to the Moon: A Composite Film 4. First-Footing on the Moon: Melies's Debt to Verne and Wells and His Influence in Great Britain 5. "Distance Does Not Exist" Melies, le Cinema, and the Moon 6. Shooting into Outer Space: Reframing Modern Vision 7. A Trip to the Moon as Feerie 8. A Trip to the Moon as an American Phenomenon 9. A Trip to the Fair; or, Moon-Walking in Space 10. The Stars Might Be Smiling: A Feminist Forage into a Famous Film 11. Impossible Voyages and Extraordinary Adventures in Early Science Fiction Cinema: From Robida to Melies and Marcel Fabre 12. No One-Way Ticket to the Moon Appendix A Fantastical . . . Trip to the Moon Georges Melies, "Answer to Questionary [sic]" Georges Melies, "The Marvelous in the Cinema" Georges Melies, "The Importance of the Script" List of Contributors IndexReview Quotes: Matthew Solomon deserves much credit for making the point that the study of an individual film by a range of scholars ought to find a larger place among the more traditional auteur and genre studies. Film History This superbly conceived collection enhances understanding of a keystone film Excellent early-cinema scholars illuminate [Melies s] articulate artistic credo and his meticulous and inventive practice of the new art form A necessary addition to comprehensive film collections. CHOICE This is a welcome addition to the field of early film history. It does that wonderful thing that the best film histories do it points out the relevance of its subject to areas beyond cinema studies. In this case the focus on one filmmaker affords a deeper understanding of not only Melies and the context of his work, but also its impact on aesthetic and critical debates ranging from the avant-garde of the early twentieth century to those concerning technology and vision in the twenty-first century. Michael Hammond, author of The Big Show: British Cinema Culture in the Great War, 1914 1918 While focusing on A Trip to the Moon, the book highlights such diverse issues as the film s artistic sources, its historical reception over time, its place within the career of Melies, and its relation to other works of cinema. Lucy Fischer, author of Designing Women: Cinema, Art Deco, and the Female FormBiographical Note: Matthew Solomon is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. He is the author of Disappearing Tricks: Silent Films, Houdini, and the New Magic of the Twentieth Century. Publisher Marketing: Best moving pictures I ever saw. Thus did one Vaudeville theater manager describe Georges Melies s A Trip to the Moon [Le Voyage dans la lune], after it was screened for enthusiastic audiences in October 1902. Cinema s first true blockbuster, A Trip to the Moon still inspires such superlatives and continues to be widely viewed on DVD, on the Internet, and in countless film courses. In Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination, leading film scholars examine Melies s landmark film in detail, demonstrating its many crucial connecions to literature, popular culture, and visual culture of the time, as well as its long afterlife in more recent films, television, and music videos. Together, these essays make clear that Melies was not only a major filmmaker but also a key figure in the emergence of modern spectacle and the birth of the modern cinematic imagination, and by bringing interdisciplinary methodologies of early cinema studies to bear on A Trip to the Moon, the contributors also open up much larger questions about aesthetics, media, and modernity. In his introduction, Matthew Solomon traces the convoluted provenance of the film s multiple versions and its key place in the historiography of cinema, and an appendix contains a useful dossier of primary-source documents that contextualize the film s production, along with translations of two major articles written by Melies himself. Included with the book is a critical edition DVD containing two versions of the film: a reconstructed version (finally presented at the speed specified in Melies s catalogs) accompanied by an original 1903 score and a recently rediscovered color-tinted version; both have optional audio commentaries by the editor. Review Citations:

Choice 10/01/2011 (EAN 9781438435800, Paperback)

Reference and Research Bk News 08/01/2011 pg. 181 (EAN 9781438435800, Paperback)

Choice 10/01/2011 (EAN 9781438435817, Hardcover)

Contributor Bio:  Solomon, Matthew Matthew Solomon is an associate professor of cinema studies in the Department of Media Culture at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York.