While the work of Sofia Coppola is sometimes dismissed as being stereotypically feminine and placing more focus on spectacle over substance, Sofia Coppola and Generation X (So Far): Anxious and Effervescent draws attention to common characteristics present in Coppola’s films to present an authorial signature and aesthetic that are both familiar yet evocative of Generation X’s perception in the public consciousness. In analyzing Coppola’s films from The Virgin Suicides (1999) to Priscilla (2023), this book argues that her filmography acts as a reflection of her generation’s evolving mindset and self-image from its initial rise to prominence during the late 1980s to its current sentiment of discomfort with its fading influence.

When Steven Soderbergh exploded onto movie screens with sex, lies, and videotape in 1989, it represented more than the arrival of an important new director--it heralded the arrival of an entire generation of important new directors. Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction), Kevin Smith (Dogma), David Fincher (Fight Club), M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense), Ben Stiller (Reality Bites), Michael Bay (Pearl Harbor), and dozens of others are all members of Generation X, the much talked about but much misunderstood successors to baby boomers. This book is a critical study of the films directed by Gen Xers and how those directors have been influenced by their generational identity. While Generation X as a whole sometimes seems to lack direction, its filmmakers have devoted their careers to making powerful statements about contemporary society and their generation's role in it. Each section of the book deals with an aspect of Gen X filmmaking, including the influence of popular culture, postmodern narrative devices, "slackerdom" and the lack of direction, disenfranchisement and nihilism, the ever-evolving role of technology, gender issues and sexuality, the question of race, the influence of older filmmakers, and visions of the future.

She has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award and two Golden Globes, and in 2004 became the first ever American woman to be nominated for a Best Director Oscar. From The Virgin Suicides to The Bling Ring, her work carves out new spaces for the expression of female subjectivity that embraces rather than rejects femininity. Fiona Handyside here considers the careful counter-balance of vulnerability with the possibilities and pleasures of being female in Coppola's films - albeit for the white and the privileged - through their recurrent themes of girlhood, fame, power, sex and celebrity. Chapters reveal a post-feminist aesthetic that offers sustained, intimate engagements with female characters. These characters inhabit luminous worlds of girlish adornments, light and sparkle and yet find homes in unexpected places from hotels to swimming pools, palaces to strip clubs: resisting stereotypes and the ordinary. In this original study, Handyside brings critical attention to a rare female auteur and in so doing contributes to important analyses of post-feminism, authorship in film, and the growing field of girlhood studies.

An illustrated critical survey of Academy Award–winning writer and director Sofia Coppola’s career, covering everything from her groundbreaking music videos through her latest films In the two decades since her first feature film was released, Sofia Coppola has created a tonally diverse, meticulously crafted, and unapologetically hyperfeminine aesthetic across a wide range of multimedia work. Her films explore untenable relationships and the euphoria and heartbreak these entail, and Coppola develops these themes deftly and with discernment across her movies and music videos. From The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette to Lost in Translation and The Beguiled, Coppola’s award-nominated filmography is also unique in how its consistent visual aesthetic is informed by and in conversation with contemporary fine art and photography. Sofia Coppola offers a rich and intimate look at the overarching stylistic and thematic components of Coppola's work. In addition to critical essays about Coppola's filmography, the book will include interviews with some of her closest collaborators, including musician Jean-Benoît Dunckel and costume designer Nancy Steiner, along with a foreword by Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher. It engages with her creative output while celebrating her talent as an imagemaker and storyteller. Along the way, readers meet again a cast of characters mired in the ennui of missed connections: loneliness, frustrated creativity, rebellious adolescence, and the double-edged knife of celebrity, all captured by the emotional, intimate power of the female gaze.

The Bloomsbury Handbook to Sofia Coppola offers the first comprehensive overview of the director's impressive oeuvre. It includes individual chapters on her films, including The Virgin Suicides (1999), Lost in Translation (2003), Marie Antoinette (2006), Somewhere (2010), The Bling Ring (2013), The Beguiled (2017), and On the Rocks (2020). While focused on her films, contributors also consider Coppola's shorter works for television, commercials and music videos, as well as explorations of the distinct elements of her signature style: cinematography, production/costume design, music, and editing. Additional chapters provide insights into the influences on her work, its popular and scholarly reception, and interpretations of key themes and issues. The international team of contributors includes leading scholars of film, music, fashion, celebrity and gender studies, visual and material culture, reception studies, as well as industry professionals. Their interdisciplinary insights capture the complexities of Coppola's work and its cultural significance.

Screening Generation X: The Politics and Popular Memory of Youth in Contemporary Cinema examines popular representations of Generation X in American and British film. In arguing that the various constructions of youth are marked by major cultural shifts and societal inequalities, it analyzes the iconic 'Gen X' figures ranging from the slacker, the teenage time traveller, and third wave feminists, to the oeuvre of Molly Ringwald and Richard Linklater. This book explores the important cultural work performed by films that mediate the experiences of Generation X and critiques the ongoing marginalization of the youth who struggle to find their identity and a voice in increasingly unstable times. Specific analyses of such films as Pump Up the Volume, The Breakfast Club, Heathers, Donnie Darko and Waking Life are used to illustrate the research.

Generation X includes individuals born roughly between 1961 and 1981. This generation has faced major advances in technology, environmental degradation, and widening economic injustice, all of which affect libraries and librarians. This collection of critical essays highlights the special challenges that face Generation X librarians. Topics covered include management and leadership, rapidly changing technology, social attitudes and stereotypes within popular culture, and how Generation X librarians have responded to or developed in response to those themes. This work fills many of the gaps present in the professional literature on librarianship and our younger generations.

New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.

The biographical film or biopic is a staple of film production in all major film industries and yet, within film studies, its generic, aesthetic, and cultural significance has remained underexplored. The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture fills this gap, conceptualizing the biopic with a particular eye toward the "life" of the genre internationally. New theoretical approaches combine with specially commissioned chapters on contemporary biographical film production in India, Italy, South Korea, France, Russia, Great Britain, and the US, in order to present a selective but well-rounded portrait of the biopic’s place in film culture. From Marie Antoinette to The Social Network, the pieces in this volume critically examine the place of the biopic within ongoing debates about how cinema can and should represent history and "real lives." Contributors discuss the biopic’s grounding in the conventions of the historical film, and explore the genre’s defining traits as well as its potential for innovation. The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture expands the critical boundaries of this evolving, versatile genre.