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Españoles en el mundo ('Spaniards in the world') is a long-standing programme of Spain's television channel TVE1 ('La 1') that constructs contemporary Spanish identity in the registers of nationalism and cosmopolitanism as well as socio-economic class. The programme assumes the form of soft-focus journalism that is upbeat and apolitical. Episodes revolve around presenters visiting Spaniards who have settled in other countries to document their everyday lives. The analysis focuses on twelve episodes and presents evidence of a nationalist message of efficacious Spaniards fanning out into the world and prospering, personally and professionally, as their talents enable them to successfully integrate themselves as travellers abroad ('all the world has enjoyed Spaniards', one informant claims). At the same time, within the programme's gaze, nationalism is synergized by cosmopolitanism. The programme affirms (and even banalizes) cultural cosmopolitanism as Españoles en el mundo engages respectfully with other cultures – aside from some Orientalist moments discussed in the analysis. Whatever the merits of Españoles en el mundo in its openness to cultural cosmopolitanism and its affirmations of Spain's post-Franco generations' stepped-up engagement with other nations, the programme is also silent on the implications of the informants' predominantly professional, middle-class status as the ticket into the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Design by Ikea, Sara Kristoffersson (2014) London: Bloomsbury, 148 pp., ISBN: 9780857858146, p/bk, £19.98 The Black Irish Onscreen: Representing Black and Mixedrace Identities on Irish Film and Television, Zelie Asava (2013) Bern: Peter Lang, 213 pp., ISBN: 3034308396, p/bk, £36.00 The Cinema of Michael Winterbottom: Borders, Intimacy, Terror, Bruce Bennett (2014) 1st ed., London: Wallflower Press, 232 pp., ISBN: 9780231167376, p/bk, £18.50; ISBN: 9780231167369, h/bk, £33.50 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion of Romanian director Cristian Mungiu's internationally circulated 'popular highbrow' films - 4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile/Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days (2007); and Dupa dealuri/Beyond the Hills (2012) - is grounded in the auteur theory. In particular, the analysis telescopes in on the thematic motif of surveillance that animates the two films. At the same time, on a Foucauldian view, the motif plays out in distinct forms in each cinematic text. In Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days, surveillance in the late Ceaus¸escu-era is depicted as gaining expression through the internalized discipline of the monadic subject. In contrast, in the contemporaneous Beyond the Hills, surveillance implicates the practices of the pure community convened in distinction to an exiled other. Psychoanalytic concepts (primal crime, return of the repressed) are also summoned to tease out the social tensions in the films. Mungiu's work vigorously cross-­examines the official mythologies of national harmony; in other words, Mungiu may be construed as engaging with what Mike Wayne calls 'anti-national national cinema'. However laudable the practice of socially conscious critical film is, auto-problematization of 'peripheral' nations may also bring reproduction of marginalization in its train when the films circulate internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roald Dahl and Philosophy: A Little Nonsense Now and Then, Jacob M. Held (ed.) (2014) 1st ed., Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, 243 pp., ISBN: 9781442222526, p/bk, £11.95 Contemporary Romanian Cinema: The History of an Unexpected Miracle, Dominique Nasta (2013) 1st ed., London: Wallflower Press, 256 pp. ISBN: 9780231167451, p/bk, £18.00; ISBN: 9780231167444, h/bk, £55.00 From Communism to Capitalism: Nation and State in Romanian Cultural Production, Florentina C. Andreescu (2013) 1st ed., New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 200 pp., ISBN: 9781137276919, h/bk, £62.50 Sport and Film, Seán Crosson (2013) Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, ISBN: 9780415569927, h/bk; ISBN: 9780415569934, p/bk, £78.40/£22.87 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hedy Lamarr. The Most Beautiful Woman in Film, Ruth Barton (2010) Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 281 pp., ISBN 978-0-8131-2604-3, h/bk, $ 29.95 Destination Dictatorship, Justin cumbaugh (2009) Albany: State University of New York Press, 173 pp., ISBN: 978-1-4384-2665-5 (hbk) ($US70.00), 978-1-4384-2666-2 (pbk), $US23.95 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This investigation examines ¡Qué me dices! (What are you telling me!), an entry in Spain's prensa rosa (‘pink press’) ensemble. The celebrity- and female aesthetics-oriented magazine presents as staunchly apolitical as it resolutely ignores contemporary issues (e.g. the economy, immigration). However, I posit that ¡Qué me dices! channels a distinct political posture. The publication affirms celebrity as a form of meritocracy enacted to market specifications that bestows popularity on figures that resonate with mass audiences. ¡Qué me dices! is, nonetheless, silent on the production of celebrity via the media apparatuses of which it is a part. Where ideology and gender are concerned, ¡Qué me dices! is traditionalist in exhorting women to surveil their appearances and to make interventions with an eye toward attracting men; intensifying consumption to eradicate presumed personal defects is emphasised at the exclusion of other projects. Surveillance of celebrity also eases readers' participation in the ‘new’ information-based economy with its emphasis on obtaining customer details. Thus, a publication that refuses formal politics teems with political implications, particularly for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]