Böcker av David Huckvale

Since the times of ancient Greece, popular culture has entertained stories of artificial humans. Our modern fears about the "otherness" of androids and human replicants have much in common with fears of the Doppelganger, a mythological harbinger of death. Throughout the twentieth century, "AI" technologies have developed at a rapid pace, bringing us face to face with these ancient fears in a modern context. Examining such films as The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet and Blade Runner, among others, this book charts cinema's fascination with artificial intelligence and the technological double, as well as the historical antecedents of the artificial human.

Since the early days of silent film accompaniment, the piano has played an integral part in the history of cinema. By examining depictions of the piano onscreen, readers will begin to understand not only the decline of the piano but also the decline of the idealistic culture to which it gave birth in the nineteenth century.

The aesthetic of body horror has its origins in the ideas of the Marquis de Sade and the existential philosophies of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. This book examines the relationship between these writers and the various manifestations of body horror in film.

English actor Dirk Bogarde dominated the films in which he starred. Exploring the tension between his matinee idol appeal and his own closeted sexuality, this book focuses on the wide variety of genres in which he worked, and the highly charged interaction between his life and his roles.

Film is a kind of magic, a world of shadows and light, where anything is possible and the dead come back to life. Movie Magick explores the way in which films have been inspired by Alesiter Crowley's famous definition of ""Magick"" as ""the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.

Friedrich Nietzsche regarded himself as the most musical philosopher--he played the piano, wrote his own compositions and espoused a philosophy encouraging all to dance for joy. Central to his life and his ideas were the music and personality of Richard Wagner, whom he both loved and loathed at different times of his life. Nietzsche had considerable influence on composers, many of whom employed Wagnerian sonorities to set his words and respond to his ideas. This book explores Nietzsche's relationship with Wagner, the influence of his writings on the music of Strauss, Mahler, Delius, Scriabin, Busoni and others, his place in Thomas Mann's critique of German Romantic music in the novel Doctor Faustus and his impact on 20th-century popular music.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton was a prolific and influential novelist, inspiring Edgar Allan Poe, H. Rider Haggard and Madame Blavatsky, among others. This book covers Bulwer-Lytton's novels in detail, exploring their influence on writers and film makers and, via Richard Wagner's operatic adaptation of Rienzi, the catastrophe of Adolf Hitler.

British literature often refers to pagan and classical themes through richly detailed landscapes that suggest more than a mere backdrop of physical features. This volume analyses the evocative language and aesthetics of landscapes in literature, film, television and music, and how ""psycho-geography"" is used to explore the influence of the past on the present.

Explores the origin of Gothic cinema in art and literature, tracing its connection to the Gothic revival in architecture, the Gothic novel, landscape, ruins, Egyptology, occultism, sexuality, the mythology of werewolves, the philosophy of Hegel, and many other aspects of the Romantic and Symbolist movements.

Tells how Hammer Films commissioned composers at the cutting-edge of European musical modernism to write their movie scores, introducing the avant-garde into popular culture via the enormously successful venue of horror film.

Edgar Allan Poe exerted a profound influence on many aspects of 20th-century culture, and continues to inspire composers, filmmakers, writers and artists. Alphabetically arranged, this book explores Poe's major works both in their own right and in terms of their impact on others, including Baudelaire, Debussy, Rachmaninoff and the Alan Parsons' Project, Roger Corman, Federico Fellini and Jean Epstein, and TV shows such as The Six Million Dollar Man.

Composers give a unique and powerful voice to stories on the big screen. Those who work principally with one genre may leave a unique imprint. James Bernard was one such composer. From 1952 to the late 1990s, he was one of horror''s definitive and distinctive voices, scoring many of Hammer''s best-known films, including Dracula. This is a critical biography of James Bernard. It is also a thorough and meticulous examination of his music, including its intricate mechanisms and the many sources of Bernard''s inspiration. Movie scores examined include The Quatermass Experiment, Quatermass 2, X--The Unknown, The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Kiss of the Vampire, She, and many others. A foreword by Ingrid Pitt, a glossary, a filmography, notes, bibliography and index complete the work.

Occult traditions have inspired musical ingenuity for centuries. From the Pythagorean concept of a music of the spheres to the occult subculture of 20th-century pop and rock, music has often attempted to express mystical states of mind, cosmic harmony, the demonic and the divine--nowhere more so, perhaps, than in the music for films such as The Mephisto Waltz, The Devil Rides Out, Star Trek, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Omen and The Exorcist. This survey explores how such film music works and uncovers its origins in Pythagorean and Platonic ideas about the divine order of the universe and its essentially numerical/musical nature. Chapters trace the influence of esoteric Freemasonry on Mozart and Beethoven, the birth of "demonic" music in the 19th century with composers such as Weber, Berlioz and Liszt, Wagner''s racial mysticism, Schoenberg''s numerical superstition, the impact of synesthesia on art music and film, the effect of theosophical ideas on composers such as Scriabin and Holst, supernatural opera and ballet, fairy music and, finally, popular music in the 1960s and ''70s.