The Cinema of Steven Soderbergh

Andrew deWaard; R. Colin Tait

Andrew deWaard and R. Colin Tait

The Cinema of Steven Soderbergh

Indie Sex, Corporate Lies, and Digital Videotape

In: Directors' Cuts

With contributions by: Thomas Schatz

Columbia University Press | 2013

https://doi.org/10.7312/dewa16550

Overview
Contents

About this book

The industry's only director-cinematographer-screenwriter-producer-actor-editor, Steven Soderbergh is contemporary Hollywood's most innovative and prolific filmmaker. A Palme d'or and Academy Award-winner, Soderbergh has directed nearly thirty films, including political provocations, digital experiments, esoteric documentaries, global blockbusters, and a series of atypical genre films. This volume considers its slippery subject from several perspectives, analyzing Soderbergh as an expressive auteur of art cinema and genre fare, as a politically-motivated guerrilla filmmaker, and as a Hollywood insider. Combining a detective's approach to investigating the truth with a criminal's alternative value system, Soderbergh's films tackle social justice in a corporate world, embodying dozens of cinematic trends and forms advanced in the past twenty-five years. His career demonstrates the richness of contemporary American cinema, and this study gives his complex oeuvre the in-depth analysis it deserves.

Author information

Andrew deWaard is a PhD student at UCLA, whose recent work regards media industries, digital humanities and screen synergy. His latest work can be viewed at andrewdewaard.com

R. Colin Tait is a PhD Candidate at UT Austin, whose recent publications include work on genre cycles, television, authorship and Robert De Niro. His latest work can be viewed at rcolintait.com

Thomas Schatz, is Professor in the Radio-Television-Film Department at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written four books on American film (and edited many others), including The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era and Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s. His recent scholarly works include lead essays in The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry (2008), Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies (2009), and Volume IV: 1976 to the Present, in Blackwell's History of American Film (2010).

Reviews

[An] excellent book on this maverick, shape-shifting filmmaker.... Immaculately researched and illustrated with frame blowups throughout the text, the volume is an important contribution to the field.... Highly recommended.

Frontmatter Free access PDF PDF	i
Contents Free access PDF PDF	v
Acknowledgements Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	vi
Preface Thomas Schatz Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	xi
Introduction Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	1
PART ONE: AUTHOR, BRAND, GUERRILLA
1. The Dialectical Signature: Soderbergh as Classical Auteur Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	13
2. Impresario of Indiewood: Soderbergh as Sellebrity Auteur Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	37
3. Corporate Revolutionary: Soderbergh as Guerrilla Auteur Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	57
PART TWO: HISTORY, MEMORY, TEXT
4. Searching Low and High: The Limey and the Schizophrenic Detective Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	75
5. Returning to the Scene of the Crime: Solaris and the Psychoanalytic Detective Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	89
6. The (Bl)end of History: The Good German and the Intertextual Detective Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	100
PART THREE: CRIME, CAPITAL, GLOBALISATION
7. Genre and Capital: New Crime Wave in the 1990s Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	115
8. The Ethical Heist: Competing Modes of Capital in the Ocean’s Trilogy Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	131
9. Trafficking Social Change: The Global Social Problem Film in the 2000s Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	147
Conclusion Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	164
Filmography Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	167
Bibliography Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	177
Index Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	187

The Cinema of Steven Soderbergh

Indie Sex, Corporate Lies, and Digital Videotape

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