In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a wave of TV shows, first on premium cable channels like HBO and then basic cable networks like FX and AMC, dramatically stretched television's inventiveness, emotional resonance and ambition. Shows such as The Wire, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Deadwood, The Shield tackled issues of life and death, love and sexuality, addiction, race, violence and existential boredom. Television shows became the place to go to see stories of the triumph and betrayals of the American Dream at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This revolution happened at the hands of a new breed of auteur: the all-powerful writer-show runner. These were men nearly as complicated, idiosyncratic, and "difficult" as the conflicted protagonists that defined the genre. Given the chance to make art in a maligned medium, they fell upon the opportunity with unchecked ambition. Difficult Men features extensive interviews with all the major players, including David Chase and James Gandolfini (The Sopranos), David Simon, Dominic West and Ed Burns (The Wire), Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad), Matthew Weiner and Jon Hamm (Mad Men), David Milch (NYPD Blue, Deadwood) and Alan Ball (Six Feet Under), in addition to dozens of other writers, directors, studio executives and actors. Martin takes us behind the scenes of our favourite shows, delivering never-before-heard story after story and revealing how TV has emerged from the shadow of film to become a truly significant and influential part of our culture. Brett Martin is the author of The Supranos: The Book(2007). His work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Food and Wine and Vanity Fair. Difficult Men is an insightful history of popular US TV drama which traces the emergence of shows such as The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men and The Wire, and explores their engagement with important social issues around love, sexuality, race and violence.

Yugoslavia, Black Wave, film, polemics, socialism, The Sixties

Ways of Remembering tells a story about the relationship between secular law and religious violence by studying the memorialisation of the 2002 Gujarat pogrom—postcolonial India's most litigated and mediatized event of anti-Muslim mass violence. By reading judgments and films on the pogrom through a novel interpretive framework, the book argues that the shared narrative of law and cinema engenders ways of remembering the pogrom in which the rationality of secular law offers a resolution to the irrationality of religious violence. In the public's collective memory, the force of this rationality simultaneously condemns and normalises violence against Muslims while exonerating secular law from its role in enabling the pogrom, thus keeping the violent (legal) order against India's Muslim citizens intact. The book contends that in foregrounding law's aesthetic dimensions we see the discursive ways in which secular law organizes violence and presents itself as the panacea for that very violence.

In 1997, as George Lucas worked to complete early drafts for "Star Wars: "Episode I "The Phantom Menace," he enlisted the talents of some of the greatest storyboard artists of the modern era to illustrate conceptual storyboards that would inform the development of the final shooting script, as well as the finished film. Working from Lucas's ideas for scenes and sequences, these artists produced beautiful drawings that helped lay the foundations for the worlds, characters, and shots of the "Star Wars" Prequel Trilogy. Together, these conceptual storyboards show early takes on favorite scenes; alternate, unused approaches to character designs and environments; and entirely different approaches to key moments. Like wordless comic books, they have an energy and rhythm all their own that is fascinating to explore.
Now, for the first time, Lucasfilm has opened its archives to present the best of the conceptual storyboards for Episodes I, II, and III. "Star Wars Storyboards: The Prequel Trilogy" collects the best storyboards from all three films together in one striking volume. Throughout this book, readers will find insight into how these conceptual storyboards helped to contribute both to the creation of the Prequel Trilogy and the expansion of the "Star Wars" universe.
Praise for Stars Wars Storyboards:
"We had no idea the "Star Wars" prequels could have been this good Overall, the book gave us a new appreciation for what could have been . . . Plus it's exceptionally gorgeous, and you should check it out." --i09

A guide through the many aspects of Wenders's groundbreaking film, employing archival research to bring out new insights into its making and its meanings. Filmed in 1986/87 in still-divided Berlin, Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire is both a utopian fairy tale and a fascinating time capsule of that late Cold War moment. Together with legendary French cinematographer Henri Alekan(who had worked on Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête of 1946, among many other films) and Austrian author Peter Handke (with whom he had collaborated before), Wenders created a multilayered filmic poem of dazzling complexity: the skies over Berlin are populated with angels bearing witness to its inhabitants' everyday concerns. One falls in love with a beautiful young woman, a trapeze artist in a traveling circus, and decides to forfeit his immortality. Wenders's groundbreaking film has been hailed as a paean to love, a rumination on the continued presence in Berlin of the troubled German history, as well as an homage to the life-affirming power of the cinematic imagination.Christian Rogowski guides the reader through the film's many aspects, using archival research to bring out new insights into its making and its meanings. Christian Rogowski is G. Armour Craig Professor in Language andLiterature in the Department of German at Amherst College.

This book discusses the theatrical history of Talawa, the work of Dr Yvonne Brewster OBE, her contribution to the genre of contemporary black British theatre generally, and her founding and subsequent directing of Talawa from 1986 to 2001. The analysis details how Brewster's theatre helped forge a black British identity in Britain, both on and off the British stage, through its strategic presentation of black language and culture in performance. Following explanations of definitions and sociolinguistic methodology in Chapter One: Voicing an Identity, Talawa's theatrical roots are shown in Chapter Two: Post Traumatic Slavery Disorder, to have begun in Africa, developed in Jamaica and further progressed by British Caribbean post war artists in Britain. In Chapter Three: A Stanger in Non-Paradise, Brewster's early life, her significant contribution to contemporary black British theatre, her founding of Talawa and the company's three year residency in the West End are discussed. Talawa's work is then explored by genre as follows; Chapter Four: The Island Plays highlights Talawa's Caribbean productions. These are; An Echo In The Bone, Maskarade, The Black Jacobins, The Dragon Can't Dance, The Lion and Beef No Chicken. In Chapter Five: The Black South, Talawa's American productions; The Love Space Demands, From The Mississippi Delta and Flyin' West point to the relevance of African American work to Talawa's audience. Chapter Six: Stay in Your Box illustrates Brewster's ground breaking work in the British classical genre. The productions discussed are; Anthony and Cleopatra, King Lear, Tis Pity She's a Whore, The Importance of Being Earnest and Othello. The book ends with Chapter Seven: Don't Tell Massa. Brewster and her work at Talawa are summed up, followed by an insight into her final attempt to secure a permanent home for black theatre in Britain.

More Doctor Who and Philosophy is a completely new collection of chapters, additional to Doctor Who and Philosophy (2010), by the same editors. Since that first Doctor Who and Philosophy, much has happened in the Whoniverse: a new and controversial regeneration of the Doctor, multiple new companions, a few creepy new enemies of both the Doctor and planet Earth. New questions have been raised and new questioners have come along, so there are plenty of new topics for philosophical scrutiny. Is the "impossible" girl really impossible? Is there anything wrong with an inter-species lesbian relationship (the kids weren't quite ready for that in 1963, but no one blinks an eye in 2015)? Can it really be right for the Doctor to lie and to selectively forget? We even have two authors who have figured out how to build a TARDIS -- instructions included! An added feature of this awesome new volume is that the editors have reached out to insiders of Who fandom, people who run hugely successful Who conventions, play in Who-inspired bands, and run wildly popular podcasts and websites, to share their privileged insights into why the Doctor is so philosophically deep.

Deep Focus is a series of film books with a fresh approach. Take the smartest, liveliest writers in contemporary letters and let them loose on the most vital and popular corners of cinema history: midnight movies, the New Hollywood of the sixties and seventies, film noir, screwball comedies, international cult classics, and more. Passionate and idiosyncratic, each volume of Deep Focus is long-form criticism that's relentlessly provocative and entertaining. Kicking off the series is Jonathan Lethem's take on They Live, John Carpenter's 1988 classic amalgam of deliberate B-movie, sci-fi, horror, anti-Yuppie agitprop. Lethem exfoliates Carpenter's paranoid satire in a series of penetrating, free-associational forays into the context of a story that peels the human masks off the ghoulish overlords of capitalism. His field of reference spans classic Hollywood cinema and science fiction, as well as popular music and contemporary art and theory. Taking into consideration the work of Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, James Brown, Fredric Jameson, Shepard Fairey, Philip K. Dick, Alfred Hitchcock, and Edgar Allan Poe, not to mention the role of wrestlers--including They Live star "Rowdy" Roddy Piper--in contemporary culture, Lethem's They Live provides a wholly original perspective on Carpenter's subversive classic.

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. Ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and more. Add some extra savour, zest, or zing to your correspondence with these quality notecards, each of which is illustrated with a different colour engraving of a herb or spice from 18th and 19th century sources. The perfect stationery for the cook, gardener, or gourmand in your life.

Cities are synonymous with the production and consumption of culture. It is their material and human cultural infrastructure that also makes them archives and works of art. The Cultural Infrastructure of Cities critically re-examines the relationship between the urban and its cultures. It expands our understanding of the concept of urban cultural infrastructure and highlights the foundational role of culture to the materiality and sociality of urban life and the governance of cities. The book begins with a theoretical overview of the cultural and infrastructural turns in urban studies scholarship. It then explores definitions of cultural infrastructure and its “hard� and “soft� dimensions before critically considering the vulnerabilities generated in the cultural sector by the Covid-19 pandemic. Chapters are organised in four thematic sections focusing on aspects of producing, performing, consuming and collecting culture, which feature detailed case studies from 17 cities across the global North and South. This book will be of interest not only to students and scholars of urban studies, but also to policy-makers planning and creating cultural infrastructures as well as those working in cultural institutions and creative industries.

As an invitation to interrogate the secular modality of art, the book unsettles both the categories of 'art' and 'secular' in their theoretical and historical implications It questions the temporal, spatial, and cultural binaries between the 'sacred' and the 'secular' that have shaped art historical scholarship as well as artistic practice. Thinking from the south, all the essays here are anchored in a conception of a region – one fissured by histories of partition, state formations, and religious nationalisms but still offering a collective site from which to speak to the disciplines of art and the knowledge worlds in which they are embedded. The book asks: How do we complicate the religious designations of pre-modern art and architecture and the new forms of their resurgence in contemporary iconographies and monuments? How do we re-conceptualize the public and the political, as fiery contestations and new curatorial practices reconfigure the meaning of art in the proliferating spaces of museums, galleries, biennales and festivals? How do we understand South Asian art's deep entanglements with the politics of the present?

Immersing the audience in sound and light Nikita Gale's END OF SUBJECT subverts understandings of viewership by prompting spectators to question their subjecthood within 52 Walker's site-specific installation. Creating an aurally and visually rich environment, Gale engages with the architecture of the surrounding space, stimulating all senses through site-specific installation and muses on the boundaries of performance art. Considering and fracturing the physical space of the installation, the artist employs abolitionist ideology and institutional critique to simultaneously rupture and rebuild facets of the art institution. With an introduction by Ebony L. Haynes and a suite of poems by Harmony Holiday, this publication considers Gale's multidisciplinary approach to address historical hierarchies of visibility. A text by the esteemed artist Andrea Fraser offers reflections on the various interventions at play during a gathering held in the exhibition.

Philip Guston always had eminent artist friends. Tireless in his quest for the unknown, the still undiscovered, Guston engaged poets and literati in intense dialogues that, starting in the sixties, led to fruitful collaborations - including the creation of numerous illustrations and cover images for works by poets such as William Corbett, Bill Berkson, and Clark Coolidge. In his "poempictures," Guston ultimately turned to producing interactions of text and drawings - as responses to poems by his writer friends or as independent works that incorporated selected lines of poetry.

Following Tate’s recent Winter (2019) publication, this new selection of works examines of the most beautiful, transformative and amusing expressions of the autumn season drawn from Tate’s collection. Divided into key themes – ‘Fields of Gold’, ‘A Bountiful Harvest’, ‘Leisure’, ‘Symbolism’, ‘Bump in the Night’ and ‘Abstraction’ – this little book considers how the traditional season of harvest and falling leaves has influenced artists over centuries. Works of art – including paintings, drawings, sculptures, illustrations and installations – are punctuated by brief captions adding background detail or additional information about the art, artists and their subjects. Featured artists include: Barbara Hepworth, Salvador Dalí, Peter Brook, Jeff Wall, Vanessa Bell, Stanley Spencer, Winifred Nicholson, John SInger Sargent, Eileen Agar and Edward Burra. Sometimes traditional, sometimes contemporary, often beautiful and occasionally telling, placed together these beautiful images create a fascinating and enlightening journey through the visual portrayal of autumn in Western art.

Model of a Summer Camp is an intriguing object with a range of stories to tell. Originating in the Sakha (Yakutia) region of far northeastern Russia, it depicts a yhyakh celebration – a festival of huge cultural importance to the region. This concise book takes a detailed look at the object, revealing the intricacies of the yhyakh and the model’s fascinating journey from Siberia to the British Museum. The recent resurgence of interest around the model is also explored, where creative responses and research have enriched our understanding of its stories.

This book gives readers the opportunity to learn about a unique object in the British Museum’s Collection and the rich heritage of Sakha (Yakutia).

Like other filmmakers in post-WWII Hollywood, John Ford (already a three-time Best Directing Oscar winner), longed for the freedom and independence to make his own films, away from the dictates of studio executives. Then, in 1946, Ford and producer Merian C. Cooper (King Kong) decided to form their own production company, Argosy Productions. But their first venture was a financial flop, burdening the new company with heavy debt. Ford turned to the Western genre to help his flagging company, adapting James Warner Bellah’s short story, “Massacre.� Fort Apache, released in 1948, starring John Wayne, Henry Fonda and Shirley Temple, was popular at the box office and with film critics. The following year, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, was released to a positive critical reception a brisk business at the box office. This film was the only one in the cavalry trilogy shot in Technicolor, going on to win the Academy Award for Best Cinematography. Rio Grande (1950), the final film in the triad, was produced by Republic Pictures (the first of a three-picture deal with Argosy Productions) and marked the first pairing of John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. Because of the film’s box office success, Republic Pictures greenlit Ford’s dream project, The Quiet Man (1952). John Ford’s cavalry trilogy is considered some of his finest work, although Ford always claimed he never intended to make a trilogy. The reality is the first two films were produced to financially help his company, while the final one served as a means to getting his dream project produced. John Ford’s Cavalry Trilogy illuminates how each film was made, from pre-production to its theatrical release. Along the way, readers learn why Ford loved his favorite location (Monument Valley), how various stunts were achieved, and how Ford used his unique style in various scenes (called a “Fordian touch� by film critics and scholars). In addition, each film includes an analysis of Ford’s scene construction and character development. Illustrated with numerous behind-the-scenes photographs, many which have never been published before, and screen captures from the cutting room floor, this book is the ultimate gift for John Ford fans and readers who love to discover the grit and glamour of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Euripides' Iphigeneia among the Taurians has been a popular and influential text from antiquity onwards. It is a suspenseful drama set on the Black Sea coast in what is now Crimea, which explores themes of family loyalty, Greeks and barbarians, and the nature of the gods. The plot combines an unrecognised meeting between Iphigeneia, now a priestess of Artemis among the Taurians, and her brother Orestes, who with his friend Pylades has been captured and brought to her for sacrifice, with an exciting escape attempt for all three, ultimately brought about by divine intervention. This edition includes a full Introduction to the literary and production aspects of the play, while the Commentary elucidates problems of language as well as interpretation. These combine to make the play fully accessible to intermediate-level undergraduates and graduate students wishing to read it in the original Greek.