A dynamic investigation of processes of cultural reproduction – remaking and remodelling – which considers a wide range of film adaptations, remakes and fan productions from various industrial, textual and critical perspectives.

Cyberpunk and Cyberculture explores the work of a wide range of writers- Acker, Cadigan, Rucker, Shierley, Sterling, Williams and, of course, Gibson - setting their work in the context of science fiction, other literary genres, genre cinema - from Metropolis to Terminator to The Matrix - and contemporary work on the culture of technology.

Some films should never have been made. They are too unsettling, too dangerous, too challenging, too outrageous and even too badly made to be let loose on unsuspecting audiences. Yet these films, from the shocking Cannibal Holocaust to the apocalyptic Donnie Darko, from the destructive Tetsuo to the awfully bad The Room, from the hilarious This Is Spinal Tap to the campy Showgirls, from the asylum of Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari to the circus of Freaks, from the gangs of The Warriors to the gangsters of In Bruges and from the flamboyant Rocky Horror Picture Show to the ultimate cool of The Big Lebowski, have all garnered passionate fan followings. Cult cinema has made tragic misfits, monsters and cyborgs, such as Edward Scissorhands or Blade Runner's replicants, heroes of our times. 100 Cult Films explains why these figures continue to inspire fans around the globe. Cult film experts Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik round up the most cultish of giallo, blaxploitation, anime, sexploitation, zombie, vampire and werewolf films, exploring both the cults that live hidden inside the underground (Nekromantik, Café Flesh) and the cult side of the mainstream (Dirty Dancing, The Lord of the Rings, and even The Sound of Music). 100 Cult Films is a true trip around the world, providing a lively and illuminating guide to films from more than a dozen countries, across nine decades, representing a wide range of genres and key cult directors such as David Cronenberg, Terry Gilliam and David Lynch. Drawing on exclusive interviews with some of the world's most iconic cult creators and performers, including Dario Argento, Pupi Avati, Alex Cox, Ruggero Deodato, Jesús Franco, Lloyd Kaufman, Harry Kümel, H. G. Lewis, Christina Lindberg, Takashi Miike, Franco Nero, George A. Romero and Brian Yuzna, and featuring a foreword by cult director Joe Dante, 100 Cult Films is your ultimate ticket to the midnight movie show.

In the age of "complex Tv", of social networking and massive consumption of transmedia narratives, a myriad short-lived phenomena surround films and TV programs raising questions about the endurance of a fictional world and other mediatized discourse over a long arc of time. The life of media products can change direction depending on the variability of paratextual materials and activities such as online commentaries and forums, promos and trailers, disposable merchandise and gadgets, grassroots video production, archives, and gaming. This book examines the tension between permanence and obsolescence in the production and experience of media byproducts analysing the affections and meanings they convey and uncovering the machineries of their persistence or disposal. Paratexts, which have long been considered only ancillary to a central text, interfere instead with textual politics by influencing the viewers’ fidelity (or infidelity) to a product and affecting a fictional world’s "life expectancy". Scholars in the fields of film studies, media studies, memory and cultural studies are here called to observe these byproducts' temporalities (their short form and/or long temporal extention, their nostalgic politics or future projections) and assess their increasing influence on our use of the past and present, on our temporal experience, and, consequently, on our social and political self-positioning through the media.

What happens when a film is remade in another national context? How do notions of translation, adaptation and localisation help us understand the cultural dynamics of these shifts, and in what ways does a transnational perspective offer us a deeper understanding of film remaking? Bringing together a range of international scholars, Transnational Film Remakes is the first edited collection to specifically focus on the phenomenon of cross-cultural remakes. Using a variety of case studies, from Hong Kong remakes of Japanese cinema to Bollywood remakes of Australian television, this book provides an analysis of cinematic remaking that moves beyond Hollywood to address the truly global nature of this phenomenon. Looking at iconic contemporary titles such as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Oldboy, as well as classics like La Bete Humaine and La Chienne, this book interrogates the fluid and dynamic ways in which texts are adapted and reworked across national borders to provide a distinctive new model for understanding these global cultural borrowings.

With sequels, prequels, remakes, spin-offs, or copies of successful films or franchises dominating film and television production, it sometimes seems as if Hollywood is incapable of making an original film or TV show. These textual pluralities or multiplicities—while loved by fans who flock to them in droves—tend to be dismissed by critics and scholars as markers of the death of high culture. Cycles, Sequels, Spin-offs, Remakes, and Reboots takes the opposite view, surveying a wide range of international media multiplicities for the first time to elucidate their importance for audiences, industrial practices, and popular culture. The essays in this volume offer a broad picture of the ways in which cinema and television have used multiplicities to streamline the production process, and to capitalize on and exploit viewer interest in previously successful and/or sensational story properties. An impressive lineup of established and emerging scholars talk seriously about forms of multiplicity that are rarely discussed as such, including direct-to-DVD films made in Nigeria, cross-cultural Japanese horror remakes, YouTube fan-generated trailer mash-ups, and 1970s animal revenge films. They show how considering the particular bonds that tie texts to one another allows us to understand more about the audiences for these texts and why they crave a version of the same story (or character or subject) over and over again. These findings demonstrate that, far from being lowbrow art, multiplicities are actually doing important cultural work that is very worthy of serious study.

A figure from ancient folklore, the doppelganger--in fiction a character's sinister look-alike--continues to appear in literature, television and film. The modern-day version (of the Doppelganger, or "double-goer" in German) is typically depicted in a form adapted to reflect present-day social anxieties. Focusing on a broad range of narratives, the author explores 21st century representations in novels (such as Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry, Jose Saramago's The Double), television shows (Orphan Black, Battlestar Galactica, Ringer) and movies (The Island, The Prestige, Oblivion).

This book offers an in-depth exploration of science fiction literature's varied use of psychological discourses, beginning at the birth of modern psychology in the late nineteenth century and condluding wtith the ascendance of neuroscience in the late twnetieth century.

The 2018 Netflix series Altered Carbon is a vital contribution to the cyberpunk renaissance, among such titles as Snowpiercer or Blade Runner 2049. This collection of new essays answers the question: is this increasing popularity of cyberpunk a sign of recognition of the genre's transgressive aspects, such as a stark critique of capitalism, or is it the opposite--a sign of the genre's failure to successfully criticize modernity? The contributors consider the series as taking on current issues, from a critique of neoliberalism, through the ethical aspects of biotechnology, up to thanatology. They provoke questions about what it means to be human in a world in which death does not exist. Essays evaluate the surging popularity of the series and cyberpunk at large from a variety of critical perspectives, shedding new light on a challenging and inventive series.