This is the first major book-length study of the work of Australian film-maker Baz Luhrmann, one of the most exciting and controversial personalities working in World Cinema today. Luhrmann's reputation as an innovator rests on the evidence of the three films known as the Red Curtain Trilogy: "Strictly Ballroom" (1992), "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet" (1996) and "Moulin Rouge " (2001), which together demonstrate the development of a highly distinctive style and brand.
Pam Cook, who was given unprecedented access to the Luhrmann private archives, explores the genesis of the Red Curtain aesthetic, from Luhrmann's early experience in theatre and opera to his collaborative working methods and unique production set-up. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Luhrmann and his chief collaborator, designer Catherine Martin, she traces the roots of their work in an increasingly globalised Australian film culture, investigating the relationship of their company Bazmark to the Hollywood studio Twentieth Century-Fox, and the influences on their style and production methods. At the book's heart are substantial analyses of the spectacular Red Curtain films and the historical epic "Australia" (2008). This lively and original study of one of contemporary cinema's most fascinating figures will appeal to film scholars, cultural historians and Luhrmann enthusiasts alike.

Belfast, Beirut and Berlin are notorious for their internal boundaries and borders. As symbols for political disunion, the three cities have inspired scriptwriters and directors from diverse cultural backgrounds. Despite their different histories, they share a wide range of features central to divided cities. In each city, particular territories take on specific symbolic and psychological meanings. Following a comparative approach, this book concentrates on the cinematographic representations of Belfast, Beirut and Berlin. Filmmakers are in constant search for new ways in order to engage with urban division. Making use of a variety of genres reaching from thriller to comedy, they explore the three cities' internal and external borders, as well as the psychological boundaries existing between citizens belonging to different communities. Among the characters featuring in films set in Belfast, Berlin and Beirut we may count dangerous gunmen, prisoners' wives, soldiers and snipers, but also comic Stasi-members, punk aficionados and fake nuns. The various characters contribute to the creation of a multifaceted image of city limits in troubled times.

Marvel Studios has provided some of the biggest worldwide cinematic hits of the last eight years, from Iron Man (2008) to the record-breaking The Avengers (2012), and beyond. Having announced plans to extend its production of connected texts in cinema, network and online television until at least 2028, the new aesthetic patterns brought about by Marvel's 'shared' media universe demand analysis and understanding. The Marvel Studios Phenomenon evaluates the studio's identity, as well as its status within the structures of parent Disney. In a new set of readings of key texts such as Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the thematics of superhero fiction and the role of fandom are considered. The authors identify milestones from Marvel's complex and controversial business history, allowing us to appraise its industrial status: from a comic publisher keen to exploit its intellectual property, to an independent producer, to successful subsidiary of a vast entertainment empire.

The Multilingual Screen is the first edited volume to offer a wide-ranging exploration of the place of multilingualism in cinema, investigating the ways in which linguistic difference and exchange have shaped, and continue to shape, the medium's history. Moving across a vast array of geographical, historical, and theoretical contexts-from Japanese colonial filmmaking to the French New Wave to contemporary artists' moving image-the essays collected here address the aesthetic, political, and industrial significance of multilingualism in film production and reception. In grouping these works together, The Multilingual Screen discerns and emphasizes the areas of study most crucial to forging a renewed understanding of the relationship between cinema and language diversity. In particular, it reassesses the methodologies and frameworks that have influenced the study of filmic multilingualism to propose that its force is also, and perhaps counterintuitively, a silent one. While most studies of the subject have explored linguistic difference as a largely audible phenomenon-manifested through polyglot dialogues, or through the translation of monolingual dialogues for international audiences-The Multilingual Screen traces some of its unheard histories, contributing to a new field of inquiry based on an attentiveness to multilingualism's work beyond the soundtrack.

This wide-ranging interdisciplinary collection-the first of its kind-invites us to reconsider the politics and scope of the Roots phenomenon of the 1970s. Alex Haley's 1976 book was a publishing sensation, selling over a million copies in its first year and winning a National Book Award and a special Pulitzer Prize. The 1977 television adaptation was more than a blockbuster miniseries-it was a galvanizing national event, drawing a record-shattering viewership, earning thirty-eight Emmy nominations, and changing overnight the discourse on race, civil rights, and slavery. These essays-from emerging and established scholars in history, sociology, film, and media studies-interrogate Roots, assessing the ways that the book and its dramatization recast representations of slavery, labor, and the black family; reflected on the promise of freedom and civil rights; and engaged discourses of race, gender, violence, and power in the United States and abroad. Taken together, the essays ask us to reconsider the limitations and possibilities of this work, which, although dogged by controversy, must be understood as one of the most extraordinary media events of the late twentieth century, a cultural touchstone of enduring significance.

The Art of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge is the only book to provide an inside look at the magic behind the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge themed lands at Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort, documenting the art and innovations that led to the creation of Galaxy’s Edge. Featuring hundreds of full-color concept artworks, sketches, blueprints, photographs, and more, the book will reveal Walt Disney Imagineering’s creative process.

Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge invites guests to explore Black Spire Outpost, located on the remote Outer Rim planet Batuu―a spaceport bustling with First Order and Resistance activity where guests can interact with droids, creatures, and fan-favorite characters. Alongside Black Spire Outpost’s vibrant cantina and marketplace, a new and original score composed by John Williams accompanies guests as they seek out the land’s two major attractions: Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, which allows guests to commandeer the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, and Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, in which guests find themselves in the crossfire of a ferocious battle between the Resistance and the First Order.

Exclusive interviews with the key creative minds who shaped the lands’ design provide commentary on what it’s like to dream and then build a life-size Star Wars adventure.

Plus, the book offers an inside look at the upcoming Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser experience, a first-of-its-kind immersive two-night adventure.

When a work of art shows an interest in its own status as a work of art-either by reference to itself or to other works-we have become accustomed to calling this move "meta." While scholars and critics have, for decades, acknowledged reflexivity in films, it is only in Metacinema, for the first time, that a group of leading and emerging film theorists join to enthusiastically debate the meanings and implications of the meta for cinema. In new essays on generative films, including Rear Window, 8 1/2, Holy Motors, Funny Games, Fight Club, and Clouds of Sils Maria, contributors chart, explore, and advance the ways in which metacinema is at once a mode of filmmaking and a heuristic for studying cinematic attributes. What results is not just an engagement with certain practices and concepts in widespread use in the movies (from Hollywood to global cinema, from documentary to the experimental and avant-garde), but also the development of a veritable and vital new genre of film studies. With more and more films expressing reflexivity, recursion, reference to other films, mise-en-abime, seriality, and exhibiting related intertextual and intermedial traits, the time is overdue for the kind of capacious yet nuanced critical study found in Metacinema.