The definitive account of the motion picture phenomenon, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: The Ultimate Visual History is a must-have for fans of the beloved Steven Spielberg classic. Documenting the complete history of E.T., the book explores Spielberg's initial inspiration for the story, the challenging shoot, and the record-breaking success, as well as the film's endurance, examining the merchandising it inspired and the reasons E.T. holds a permanent place in the hearts of movie fans the world over. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: The Ultimate Visual History features exclusive interviews with key members of the creative team, including cast and crew. Filled with visual treasures, the book also includes rare and never-before-seen imagery from the Amblin Entertainment archives, including on-set photography, concept art, and storyboards, plus a wealth of removable insert items, such as annotated script pages, studio memos, preliminary sketches, and more. The perfect tribute to a film that defines movie magic, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: The Ultimate Visual History is the final word on a modern masterpiece.

What is artistic resonance and how can it be linked to one's life and one's art? This latest book of essays from legendary theatre director Anne Bogart, considers the creation of resonance in the artistic endeavour, with a focus on the performing arts. The word 'resonance' comes from the Latin meaning to 're-sound' or 'sound together'. From music to physics, resonance is a common thread that evokes a response and, in general, is understood as a quality that makes something personally meaningful and valuable. For Bogart, curiosity is a key personal quality to be nurtured throughout life and that very same curiosity, as an artist, thinker and human being. Creating pathways between performance theory, art history, neuroscience, music, architecture and the visual arts, and consistently forging new thought-paths, the writing draws upon Anne Bogart's own life and artistic journeys to illuminate potent philosophical ideas. Woven with personal anecdotes, stories and reflections, this is a book that will be of interest to any theatre artist and anyone who reflects on the power of the arts, of theatre-making and what it means to be engaged in the artistic process.

Tarot cards have been around since the Renaissance and have become increasingly popular in recent years, often due to their prevalence in popular culture. While Tarot means many different things to many different people, the cards somehow strike universal chords that can resonate through popular culture in the contexts of art, television, movies, even comic books. The symbolism within the cards, and the cards as symbols themselves, make Tarot an excellent device for the media of popular culture in numerous ways. They make horror movies scarier. They make paintings more provocative. They provide illustrative structure to comics and can establish the traits of television characters. The Cards: The Evolution and Power of Tarot begins with an extensive review of the history of Tarot from its roots as a game to its supposed connection to ancient Egyptian magic, through its place in secret societies, and to its current use in meditation and psychology. This section ends with an examination of the people who make up today's tarot community. Then, specific areas of popular culture-art, television, movies, and comics-are each given a chapter in which to survey the use of Tarot. In this section, author Patrick Maille analyzes such works as Deadpool, Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman, Disney's Haunted Mansion, Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows, The Andy Griffith Show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and King of the Hill. The cards are evocative images in their own right, but the mystical fascination they inspire makes them a fantastic tool to be used in our favorite shows and stories.

From much-loved documentary maker Louis Theroux comes a funny, heartfelt and entertaining account of his life and weird times in TV.

In 1994 fledgling journalist Louis Theroux was given a one-off gig on Michael Moore’s TV Nation, presenting a segment on apocalyptic religious sects. Gawky, socially awkward and totally unqualified, his first reaction to this exciting opportunity was panic. But he’d always been drawn to off-beat characters, so maybe his enthusiasm would carry the day. Or, you know, maybe it wouldn’t . . .

In Gotta Get Theroux This, Louis takes the reader on a joyous journey from his anxiety-prone childhood to his unexpectedly successful career. Nervously accepting the BBC’s offer of his own series, he went on to create an award-winning documentary style that has seen him immersed in the weird worlds of paranoid US militias and secretive pro-wrestlers, get under the skin of celebrities like Max Clifford and Chris Eubank and tackle gang culture in San Quentin prison, all the time wondering whether the same qualities that make him good at documentaries might also make him bad at life.

As Louis woos his beautiful wife Nancy and learns how to be a father, he also dares to take on the powerful Church of Scientology. Just as challenging is the revelation that one of his old subjects, Jimmy Savile, was a secret sexual predator, prompting him to question our understanding of how evil takes place. Filled with wry observation and self-deprecating humour, this is Louis at his most insightful and honest best.

In the wake of the 1688 revolution, England's transition to financial capitalism accelerated dramatically. Londoners witnessed the rise of credit-based currencies, securities markets, speculative bubbles, insurance schemes, and lotteries. Many understood these phenomena in terms shaped by their experience with another risky venture at the heart of London life: the public theater. Speculative Enterprise traces the links these observers drew between the operations of Drury Lane and Exchange Alley, including their hypercommercialism, dependence on collective opinion, and accessibility to people of different classes and genders.Mattie Burkert identifies a discursive ""theater-finance nexus"" at work in plays by Colley Cibber, Richard Steele, and Susanna Centlivre as well as in the vibrant eighteenth-century media landscape. As Burkert demonstrates, the stock market and the entertainment industry were recognized as deeply interconnected institutions that, when considered together, illuminated the nature of the public more broadly and gave rise to new modes of publicity and resistance. In telling this story, Speculative Enterprise combines methods from literary studies, theater and performance history, media theory, and work on print and material culture to provide a fresh understanding of the centrality of theater to public life in eighteenth-century London.

The era known as the Thaw (1953-64) was a crucial period in the history of the Soviet Union. It was a time when the legacies of Stalinism began to unravel and when brief moments of liberalisation saw dramatic changes to society. By exploring theatre productions, plays and cultural debates during the Thaw, this book sheds light on a society in flux, in which the cultural norms, values and hierarchies of the previous era were being rethought. Jesse Gardiner demonstrates that the revival of avant-garde theatre during the Thaw was part of a broader re-engagement with cultural forms that had been banned under Stalin. Plays and productions that had fallen victim to the censor were revived or reinvented, and their authors and directors rehabilitated alongside waves of others who had been repressed during the Stalinist purges. At the same time, new theatre companies and practitioners emerged who reinterpreted the stylized techniques of the avant-garde for a post-war generation. This book argues that the revival of avant-garde theatre was vital in allowing the Soviet public to reimagine its relationship to state power, the West and its own past. It permitted the rethinking of attitudes and prejudices, and led to calls for greater cultural diversity across society. Playwrights, directors and actors began to work in innovative ways, seeking out the theatre of the future by re-engaging with the proscribed forms of the past.