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Ghosts in the Machine: The Dark Heart of Pop Cinema

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Ghosts In The Machine: Speculating On The Dark Heart Of Pop Cinema is a compilation of diverse essays exploring movies as the modern equivalent of medieval folktales and antiquarian mythologies with respect to their influence on shaping contemporary language, cultural mores, and social expectations. Michael Atkinson draws upon his considerable expertise as a young film scholar and critic in drawing together his essays on "The Planet of the Apes" film cycle; the work of Cornell Wilde, road movies, film noir, rock biopics, live-action cartoons, the contributions of Ray Harryhausen, and a great deal more. Ghosts In The Machine is "must" reading for all students of film history, cinematic pop culture, and anyone else who has ever sat in a darkened theater absorbing the values, mores, customs, and ideas embedded in those flicking images up on the screen.

A little dash of Manny Farber with some Rock and roll in his heart, some academic grounding but not a lot of meaningless big words strung together by tired Marxists, you know who I mean.... Atkinson is informed and theoretical without ever getting pedantic or David Bordwell pompous. Humor is a must and Atkinson's wit could cut ice like butter. This book would get five stars for the Planet of the Apes piece alone, a masterwerke of gonzo film criticism if ever there was one.