Smart Cinema, DVD Add-Ons and New Audience Pleasures (PDF)

PAT BRERETON Senior Lecturer and Associate Dean of Research in the School of Communications at Dublin City University, Ireland. His previous publications include Hollywood Utopia: Ecology in Contemporary American Cinema (2005), and A Historical Dictionary of Irish Cinema (co-edited, 2007). His work has also been widely published in journals.

'This book is using 'smart' in at least three ways in relation to cinema: first, in taking up ideas on smart films and their audiences, particularly as these have been articulated by Jeffrey Sconce, as the best way of thinking about a wide range of mostly independent films that rely and play on an assumed advanced cinematic literacy in their audience; second, in relation to the bonus material provided on DVDs, which constitutes not merely a form of marketing but also and more interestingly an educational resource and a site of additional pleasurable engagement with the films that it accompanies; and third, in thinking about the use of digital technologies at all levels of the film industry, including in relation to the nature and organization of content (narrative) that emphasize similarities with newer digital forms such as computer games. All these sense of smart are in play in the book, which makes a particular claim to originality in its focus on DVD add-ons.' - Denis Condon, National University of Ireland

'Through accessible and insightful close readings, Smart Cinema brings together movies from different countries, genres, and directors in order to show how how these films participate in the wider cultures of cinephilia. Brereton is especially sharp in his assessment of the role of DVD extras in promoting new modes of cinematic storytelling.'

- Chuck Tryon, Fayetteville State University, USA

'From Donnie Darko to Pixar, this is a fascinating and timely overview of 21st Century western cinema's defining feature: its smartness. Brereton gives new insights into the digital technologies, complex storytelling and savvy audiences that typify film culture today, through accessible analyses of Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, Be Kind Rewind, In Bruges, Inception and many others. As smart as the films it studies.'

- Ernest Mathijs, University of British Columbia, Canada