The Ultimate Stallone Reader: Sylvester Stallone as Star, Icon, Auteur

by Chris Holmlund (Editor)

Overview

Sylvester Stallone has been a defining part of American film for nearly four decades. He has made an impact on world entertainment in a surprisingly diverse range of capacities – as actor, writer, producer, and director – all while maintaining a monolithic presence. With The Ultimate Stallone Reader, this icon finally receives concerted academic attention. Eleven original essays by internationally-known scholars examine Stallone's contributions to mainstream cinema, independent film, and television. This volume also offers innovative approaches to star, gender, and celebrity studies, performance analysis, genre criticism, industry and reception inquiry, and the question of what it means to be an auteur. Ultimately, The Ultimate Stallone Reader investigates the place that Sylvester Stallone occupies within an industry and a culture that have both undergone much evolution, and how his work has reflected and even driven these changes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231850643
Publisher:	WallFlower Press
Publication date:	04/14/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Chris Holmlund is Arts and Sciences Excellence Professor of Cinema Studies and French at the University of Tennessee. She is the author of Impossible Bodies (2002), editor of American Cinema of the 1990s (2008), co-editor of Contemporary American Independent Film (2005) and Between the Sheets, In the Streets: Queer, Lesbian, Gay Documentary (1997).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Presenting Stallone/Stallone Presents, by Chris Holmlund
Staying Alive: Stallone, Authorship and Contemporary Hollywood Aesthetics, by Paul Ramaeker
Logic is the Cure, Meet the Disease: The Melos of Cobra, by Scott Higgins
I, of the Tiger: Self and Self-Obsession in the Rocky Series, by Eric Lichtenfeld
Stallone and Hollywood in Transition, by Mark Gallagher
Adventures in Acting: Stallone the Performer, by Chris Holmlund
Stallone's Stomach: Cop Land and the Weight of Actorly Legitimisation, by Paul McDonald
The Rocky Effect: Sylvester Stallone as Sport Hero, by Alexandra Keller & Frazer Ward
'Who wouldn't want a body like that?': Masculinity, Muscularity and Male Audiences for the Films of Sylvester Stallone, by Ian Huffer
Sylvester Stallone and John Rambo's Trek across Asia: Politics, Performance and American Empire, by Gina Marchetti
Stallone, Ageing and Action Authenticity, by Yvonne Tasker
Filmography
Index

Editorial Reviews

This wide-ranging collection of perceptive and provocative essays turns the iconic figure and films of Sylvester Stallone into a dynamic conversation not only about Stallone himself but also about key issues and debates in cinema culture today.

Timothy Corrigan