His books include Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters (co-written with Steve Neale) which Jim Whalley called "an important addition to work considering popular film and film industries".[2][3] He also wrote Zulu: With Some Guts Behind It about the 1964 film.[4]
Biography
Sheldon teaches in the Film Studies department at Sheffield Hallam University, where he has taught since 1997. He was previously a lecturer at the University of Northumbria. He had been a freelance journalist and lecturer based in the North East of England, and was for eleven years the film and theatre critic of the major regional newspaper, the Northern Echo.[1] Sheldon has also recorded audio commentaries for DVDs and contributed to Channel 4 and BBC Four documentaries.[5]
How the West Was Won: History, Spectacle and the American Mountains’, in Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye (eds.), The Movie Book of the Western (London: Studio Vista, 1996)
"The Wrong Sort of Cinema: Refashioning the Heritage Film Debate", in Robert Murphy (ed.), The British Cinema Book (Second Edition, BFI Publishing, 2001), ISBN0-85170-851-X, pp. 191–99. (To be revised and expanded in 2007.)
"Monkey Feathers: Defending Zulu", in Claire Monk and Amy Sargeant (eds), British Historical Cinema (Routledge, 2002) ISBN0-415-23810-2, pp. 110–28.
"Tall Revenue Features: The Genealogy of the Contemporary Blockbuster", in Steve Neale (ed.), Genre and Contemporary Hollywood (BFI Publishing, 2002), ISBN0-85170-887-0, pp. 11–26.
"Carpenter’s Widescreen Style", in Ian Conrich and David Woods (eds), The Cinema of John Carpenter: The Technique of Terror (Wallflower Press, 2004), ISBN1-904764-14-2, pp. 66–77.
"Twentieth Century Fox in the 1960s", "Blockbusters in the 1970s" and "The Sound of Music", in Linda Ruth Williams and Michael Hammond (eds), Contemporary American Cinema (McGraw-Hill/ Open University Press, 2006), ISBN0-335-21831-8, pp. 26–28, 46-49, 164-81.
Six entries in Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau (eds), Journeys of Desire: European Actors in Hollywood (BFI Publishing, 2006), ISBN1-84457-124-6, pp. 170, 196-98, 240, 276-77, 336-37, 469.
Thirty-nine entries in Robert Murphy (ed.), Directors in British and Irish Cinema: A Reference Guide (BFI Publishing, 2006), ISBN1-84457-126-2.
Three chapters in Ian Cameron (ed.), Unexplored Hitchcock (Moffat: Cameron and Hollis, forthcoming).
Journal articles
"Selling Religion: How to Market a Biblical Epic", Film History, 14: 2 (2002), pp. 170–85.
"Dial M for Murder", Film History, 16: 2 (2004), pp. 243–55.
"Rodoslovlje modernog blockbustera", Hrvatski filmski Ljetopis, 40 (2004) pp. 5–16 (Croatian translation of ‘Tall Revenue Features’ [see above] in Neale, Genre and Contemporary Hollywood).
Review article, "British Social Realism: In Print and on DVD", in Viewfinder, no. 54 (March 2004), pp. 8–10.
Book reviews, "British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit Grit" and "J. Lee Thompson", both in Journal of British Cinema and Television, 1:2 (2004), pp. 306–09, 321-24.
"The Hills Are Alive in East Anglia: The Sound of Music Comes to Norwich", Picture House, no. 30 (2005), pp. 34–39.
Book review, "ABC: The First Name in Entertainment", et al., Journal of British Cinema and Television, 3:1 (2006), pp. 188–91.
^Whalley, Jim (2011). "Review of Sheldon Hall and Steve Neale, Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History". New Review of Film and Television Studies. 9 (2): 241–245. doi:10.1080/17400309.2011.556952. S2CID191624887.
^Smith, Roslin (2013). "Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters: a Hollywood History by Sheldon Hall and Steve Neale (review)". Journal of Film and Video. 65 (1): 100–101. doi:10.5406/jfilmvideo.65.1-2.0100.