John Muir
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English
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In the summer of 1984, a small, low-budget film came out of nowhere and unexpectedly debuted at the number one slot at the box office, unseating reigning champion Ghostbusters and making its star, Prince, a household name. By the end of the year, the film was a multiple-award winner, a trend setter in terms of fashion, and recognized on many prominent critical "top ten" lists. Purple Rain: Music on Film explores in detail the behind-the-scenes struggles...
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English
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The X-Files FAQ explores Chris Carter's popular 1990s science-fiction TV series, which aired on Fox for nine seasons and inspired spin-offs, including feature films, TV shows, toys, novels, and comic books. The book explores the series in terms of its historical context and analyzes how many of the episodes tackle the events of their time: the Clinton era. The X-Files FAQ also tallies the episodes that are based on true stories, selects touchstone...
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English
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In 1984, four comedians - Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Rob Reiner, and Harry Shearer - unleashed This Is Spinal Tap, the world's first "mock-rockumentary" and a joke that has lasted into the 21st century and inspired a generation of imitations. Now, award-winning film journalist John Kenneth Muir (An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith) escorts the reader through a quarter-century of heavy metal laughs, offering a detailed history of the film's...
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English
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Horror Films FAQ explores a century of ghoulish and grand horror cinema, gazing at the different characters, situations, settings, and themes featured in the horror film, from final girls, monstrous bogeymen, giant monsters and vampires to the recent torture porn and found footage formats. The book remembers the J-Horror remake trend of the 2000s, and examines the oft-repeated slasher format popularized by John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) and Friday...
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English
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In the year 2002, An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith was the first book to gaze at the cinema of one of New Jersey's favorite sons, the independent and controversial auteur of Clerks (1994), Mallrats (1995), Chasing Amy (1997), Dogma (1999) and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001). Now, a full decade after that successful original edition, award-winning author John Kenneth Muir returns to the View Askewniverse to consider Kevin Smith's second...
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English
Description
Providing a career-spanning view of everyone's favorite geek writer and director, Joss Whedon FAQ offers answers to fans' questions about one of the most significant pop culture auteurs of the past twenty-five years. The book gazes at Whedon's early work in Hollywood as a script doctor on films such “The Quick and the Dead” (1995) and “Waterworld” (1995), and follows his career as he became the cult-favorite creator of such sensations as “Buffy...