Cinematic Appeals: The Experience of New Movie Technologies (Film and Culture Series)

__Cinematic Appeals__ follows the effect of technological innovation on the cinema experience, specifically the introduction of widescreen and stereoscopic 3D systems in the 1950s, the rise of digital cinema in the 1990s, and the transition to digital 3D since 2005. Widescreen cinema promised to draw the viewer into the world of the screen, enabling larger-than-life close-ups of already larger-than-life actors. This technology fostered the illusion of physically entering a film, enhancing the semblance of realism. Alternatively, the digital era was less concerned with the viewer's physical response and more with information flow, awe, and the reevaluation of spatiality and embodiment. This study ultimately shows how cinematic technology and the human experience shape and respond to each other over time. Cinematic Appeals follows the effect of technological innovation on the cinema experience, specifically the introduction of widescreen and stereoscopic 3D systems in the 1950's, the rise of digital cinema in the 1990s, and the transition to digital 3D since 2005. Widescreen films drew the spectator into the world of the screen, enabling larger-than-life close-ups of already larger-than-life actors. The technology fostered the illusion of physically entering a film, enhancing the semblance of realism. Alternatively, the digital era was less concerned with manipulating the viewer's physical response Table of Contents 8 List of Illustrations 10 Acknowledgments 14 Introduction: Moving Machines 20 1. "Smothered In Baked Alaska" The Anxious Appeal of Widescreen Cinema 38 2. East of Eden in Cinemascope: Intimacy Writ Large 80 3. DIgital Cinema's Heterogeneous Appeal: Debates on Embodiment, Intersubjectivity, and Immediacy 110 4. Awe and Aggression: The Experience of Erasure in The Phantom Menace and The Celebration 160 5. Points of Convergence: Conceptualizing the Appeal of 3D Cinema Then and Now 198 Notes 246 Selected Bibliography 318 Index 338