Neil Alexander Walker's Books

A Grammar of Southern Pomo

By: Neil Alexander Walker

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A title in the Recovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. A Grammar of Southern Pomo is the first comprehensive description of the Southern Pomo language, which lost its last fluent speaker in 2014. Southern Pomo is one of seven Pomoan languages once spoken in the vicinity of Clear Lake and the Russian River drainage of California. Prior to European contact, a third of all Pomoan peoples spoke Southern Pomo, and descendants of these speakers are scattered across several present-day reservations. These descendants have recently initiated efforts to revitalize the language. The unique culture of Southern Pomo speakers is embedded in the language in several ways. There are separate words for the many different species of oak trees and their different acorns, which were the people’s staple cuisine. The kinship system is unusually rich both semantically and morphologically, with terms marked for possession, generation, number, and case. Verbs similarly encode the ancient interactions of speakers with their land in more than a dozen directional suffixes indicating specific paths of movement. A Grammar of Southern Pomo sheds new light on a relatively unknown Indigenous California speech community. In many instances Neil Alexander Walker discusses phenomena that are rare or entirely unattested outside the language and challenges long-standing ideas about what human speech communities can create and pass on to children as well as the degree to which culture and place are inextricably woven into language.

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Page Count

435

Publisher

University of Nebraska Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1496217659

ISBN 13

9781496217653

Jack Clayton

By: Neil Sinyard

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Jack Clayton

By: Neil Sinyard

In François Truffaut’s opinion The Innocents was ‘the best English film after Hitchcock goes to America’. Tennessee Williams said of The Great Gatsby: ‘a film whose artistry even surpassed the original novel’. The maker of both films was Jack Clayton, one of the finest English directors of the post-war era and perhaps best remembered for the trail-blazing Room at the Top which brought a new sexual frankness and social realism to the British screen. This is the first full-length critical study of Clayton's work. The author has been able to consult and quote from the director's own private papers which illuminate Clayton’s creative practices and artistic intentions. In addition to fresh analyses of the individual films, the book contains new material on Clayton's many unrealised projects and valuably includes his previously unpublished short story ‘The Enchantment’ – as poignant and revealing as the films themselves. This is a personal and fascinating account of the career and achievement of an important, much-loved director that should appeal to students and film enthusiasts.

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304

Publisher

Manchester University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1526141493

ISBN 13

9781526141491

Beyond a Joke

Parody in English Film and Television Comedy

By: Neil Archer

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Beyond a Joke

Parody in English Film and Television Comedy

By: Neil Archer

At the opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics, a global audience of nearly one billion viewers were treated to the unprecedented sight of James Bond meeting Queen Elizabeth II. Shortly after, the 'Queen' hurled herself out of a helicopter, her Union Jack parachute guiding her down to the Olympic Stadium. What it is about moments such as these that define both a particular idea of Britishness and a particular type of British film comedy? How has British cinema exploited parody as a means of negotiating its sense of identity? How does this function within a globalized marketplace and in the face of dominant Hollywood cinema? Beyond a Joke explores the myriad ways British film culture has used forms of parody, from the 1960s to the present day. It provides a contextual and textual analysis of a range of works that, while popular, have only rarely been the subject of serious academic attention – from Morecambe and Wise to Shaun of the Dead to the London 2012 Olympics' opening ceremony. Combining the methodologies both of film history and film theory, Beyond a Joke locates parody within specific industrial and cultural moments, while also looking in detail at the aesthetics of parody as a mode. Ultimately, such works are shown to be a form of culturally specific film or televisual product for exporting to the global market, in which 'Britishness', shaped in self-mocking and ironic terms, becomes the selling point. Written in an accessible style and illustrated throughout with a diverse range of examples, Beyond a Joke is the first book to explore parody within a specifically British context and makes an invaluable contribution to the scholarship on both British and global film culture.

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Page Count

282

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1786720906

ISBN 13

9781786720900

Cinema and Brexit

The Politics of Popular English Film

By: Neil Archer

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Cinema and Brexit

The Politics of Popular English Film

By: Neil Archer

Neil Archer's original study makes a timely and politically-engaged intervention in debates about national cinema and national identity. Structured around key examples of 'culturally English cinema' in the years up to and following the UK's 2016 vote to leave the European Union, Cinema and Brexit looks to make sense of the peculiarities and paradoxes marking this era of filmmaking. At the same time as providing a contextual and analytical reading of 21st century filmmaking in Britain, Archer raises critical questions about popular national cinema, and how Brexit has cast both light and shadow over this body of films. Central to Archer's argument is the idea that Brexit represents not just a critical moment in how we will understand future film production, but also in how we will understand production of the recent past. Using as a point of departure the London Olympics opening ceremony of 2012, Cinema and Brexit considers the tensions inherent in a wide range of films, including Skyfall (2012), Dunkirk (2017), Their Finest (2017), Darkest Hour (2017), The Crown (Netflix, 2016), Paddington (2014), Paddington 2 (2017), Never Let Me Go (2011), Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016), The Trip (2010), The Inbetweeners Movie (2011), Mr. Bean's Holiday (2007), The World's End (2013), Sightseers (2012), One Day (2011), Attack the Block (2011), King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) and The Kid Who Would be King (2019). Archer examines the complex national narratives and representations these films expound, situating his analyses within the broader commercial contexts of film production beyond Hollywood, highlighting the negotiations or contradictions at play between the industrial imperatives of contemporary films and the varied circumstances in which they are made. Considering some of the ways a popular and globally-minded English cinema is finding means to work alongside and through the contexts of Brexit, he questions what are the stakes for, and possibilities of, a global 'culturally English cinema' in 2019 and beyond.

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Page Count

305

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1350104485

ISBN 13

9781350104488

The Indian and Pacific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1768–1820, Volume 5

By: Neil Chambers

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The Indian and Pacific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1768–1820, Volume 5

By: Neil Chambers

Following his participation in James Cook's circumnavigation in HMS Endeavour (1768-71), Joseph Banks developed an extensive global network of scientists and explorers. His correspondence shows how he developed effective working links with the British Admiralty and with the generation of naval officers who sailed after Cook. Volume 5 Letters 1798–1801

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Page Count

528

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1315475960

ISBN 13

9781315475967

Writing and America

By: Gavin Cologne-Brookes,Neil Sammells,David Timms

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Writing and America

By: Gavin Cologne-Brookes,Neil Sammells,David Timms

Writing and America surveys the writing genres that have contributed to the American notions of America . Essays from scholars from both side of the Atlantic chart the range of responses to American nationhood from colonial times to the present and include dissenting responses from communities such as native American, black and feminist writers. Case studies from writers such as James Fenimore Cooper and William Carlos Williams provide a framework for discussions on topics such as colonial notions of America as the promised land, the discourses of nationhood in the republic, the sense of nationhood in American historiography, and the formation of the American Canon. Draws upon extracts from the American Bills of Rights and the Constitution as examples of different types of writing.

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Page Count

298

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1315504359

ISBN 13

9781315504353

A Wonderful Heart

The Films of William Wyler

By: Neil Sinyard

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A Wonderful Heart

The Films of William Wyler

By: Neil Sinyard

Revered by his cinematic peers, William Wyler (1902-1981) was one of the most honored and successful directors of Hollywood's Golden Age, with such classics as Dead End, Wuthering Heights, The Little Foxes, Roman Holiday and Ben-Hur. He won three directing Oscars and elicited over a dozen Oscar-winning performances from his actors. Such exacting performers as Bette Davis, Laurence Olivier and Charlton Heston counted him the best director they had worked with. Yet during the era of the "auteur" theory his films fell out of fashion, lacking, it was said, a distinctive stylistic and thematic signature. This new critical study of Wyler's work, the first in more than thirty years, challenges the notion of Wyler's impersonality and offers a comprehensive reappraisal of his work, particularly of the underrated postwar films. It also provides a rebuttal of the auteurist criticism whose rigid categorization of directors cannot adequately encompass the range of someone like Wyler, who put substance above style and had a breadth of human understanding that was not reducible to a cluster of characteristic themes. Supported by archival research in Los Angeles, the book traces the important milestones in Wyler's career, the context of his films, the importance of legendary producer Sam Goldwyn, his distinguished war record and his principled opposition to blacklisting during the McCarthy era.

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Page Count

258

Publisher

McFarland

Published Date

ISBN 10

0786435739

ISBN 13

9780786435739

The Best of Disney

By: Neil Sinyard

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The Best of Disney

By: Neil Sinyard

This comprehensive volume celebrates the innovative studio that gave birth to Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Snow White, Bambi and many other animated favorites.

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Page Count

192

Publisher

Gramercy

Published Date

ISBN 10

051765346X

ISBN 13

9780517653463

What Do I Read Next?

By: Neil Barron

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What Do I Read Next?

By: Neil Barron

By identifying similarities in various books, this annual selection guide helps readers to independently choose titles of interest published in the last year.Each entry describes a separate book, listing everything readers need to know to make selections. Arranged by author within six genre sections, detailed entries provide: Title Publisher and publication dateSeriesNames and descriptions of charactersTime period and geographical settingReview citationsStory typesBrief plot summarySelected other books by the authorSimilar books by different authorsAuthor, title, series, character name, character description, time period, geographic setting and genre/sub-genre indexes are included to facilitate research.

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Page Count

744

Publisher

Gale Cengage

Published Date

ISBN 10

0787690228

ISBN 13

9780787690229

Book's by Neil Alexander Walker

A Grammar of Southern Pomo

A Grammar of Southern Pomo

Jack Clayton

Jack Clayton

Beyond a Joke

Beyond a Joke

Cinema and Brexit

Cinema and Brexit

The Indian and Pacific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1768–1820, Volume 5

The Indian and Pacific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1768–1820, Volume 5

Writing and America

Writing and America

A Wonderful Heart

A Wonderful Heart

The Best of Disney

The Best of Disney

What Do I Read Next?

What Do I Read Next?

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