Offscreen Notes
Sex and Violence 2nd Edition
Regular Offscreen contributor Roberto Curti has released his fourth book, Stanley Kubrick: Rapina a mano armata, a close formal-textual analysis of Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing. Although the book is smallish at 155 pages and restricts itself to the one film, it is ambitious in breadth, contextualising the film within film noir (both classic film noir made before the film later neo-noir) and Kubrick’s other works (and critical history). In the same year, 2007, Curti has seen the release of the second edtion his co-authored (with Tommaso La Selva) book Sex and Violence, which was reviewed here in Offscreen. The second edition is not simply a touch-up but a major revision, with approximately 130 extra pages (620 up from 490). Chapter 7 on extreme Asian cinema and the concluding chapter 10 have been rewritten from scratch and considerably lengthened. The final chapter has been completely updated to incorporate the cycle of recent ‘survivalist’ and ‘hardcore’ (or ‘hardgore’) horror (Fred Vogel’s August Underground trilogy, Hostel, Wolf Creek, etc.). Sections have been added on Greek cinema, Brazilian sexploitation (the pornochanchadas), and Ken Russell. An indispensable book has become even more so.
