A comprehensive overview of the film industry in Hollywood today, Contemporary Hollywood Cinema brings together leading international cinema scholars to explore the technology, institutions, film makers and movies of contemporary American film making.

List if illustrations and permissions, Notes on contributors, Acknowledgements, Introduction, PART I. Hollywood historiography, 1. Theses on the philosophy of Hollywood history, 2. 'Nobody knows everything': post-classical historiographies and consolidated entertainment, PART II. Economics, industry and institutions, 3. Hollywood corporate business practice and periodizing contemporary film history, 4. 'A major presence in all of the world's important markets': the globalization of Hollywood in the 1990s, 5. The formation of the 'major independent': Miramax, New Line and the New Hollywood, 6. To the rear of the back end: the economics of independent cinema, PART III. Aesthetics and technology, 7. From Bwana Devil to Batman Forever: technology in contemporary Hollywood cinema, 8. Widescreen composition in the age of television, 9. The classical film score forever? Batman, Batman Returns and post-classical film music, 10. A cry in the dark: the role of post-classical film sound, 11. A close encounter with Raiders oj the Lost Ark: notes on narrative aspects of the New Hollywood blockbuster, 12. Storytelling: classical Hollywood cinema and classical narrative, 13. Specularity and engulfment: Francis Ford Coppola and Bram Stoker's Dracula, PART IV. Audience, address and ideology, 14. Hollywood and independent black cinema, 15. No fixed address: the women's picture from Outrage to Blue Steel, 16. New Hollywood's new women: murder in mind - Sarah and Margie, 17. Censorship and narrative indeterminacy in Basic Instinct: 'You won't learn anything from me I don't want you to know', 18. Rich and strange: the yuppie horror film, 19. Would you take your child to see this film? The cultural and social work of the family-adventure movie, Select biblio8raphy, Index