The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - Visual Companion


Jude Fisher - 2012
    Leaving the comfort of Bilbo’s home they must face many perils before they can claim their long-lost gold -- Trolls, Elves, Goblins, Wargs, and worse…Richly illustrated with more than 100 color photos from the film, and featuring a brand new fold-out map charting the journey from Bag End to Wilderland, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Visual Companion begins the Quest for the Lonely Mountain in spectacular style.

Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story


Thad Komorowski - 2013
    Through vigorous draftsmanship, charismatic voices, irreverent sight gags, crass humor, and stellar character acting, animation's most talented and disturbed artists created an entity for the Nickelodeon cable network that pulled the art form out of a 25-year rut. The world has never been quite the same since - and we're eternally grateful!Now you too can join the rollercoaster ride that is the fascinating, insane real-life story of art, money, and ego that gave birth to Ren Hoek and Stimpson J. Cat. History Eraser Buttons need not apply. No stone has been unturned, no magic nose goblins unpicked, in this extensively detailed history of the show that defined a generation and changed an entire medium.It's everything you wanted to know about Ren & Stimpy - but were afraid to ask!

The Secret History of Twin Peaks


Mark Frost - 2016
    From the co-creator of the landmark television series Twin Peaks comes a novel that deepens the mysteries of that iconic town in ways that not only enrich the original series but readies fans for the upcoming Showtime episodes.

Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema


Jamie Russell - 2005
    Covering hundreds of movies from America, Europe and Asia, this history chronicles the zombie's on-screen evolution from Caribbean bogeyman to flesh-eating corpse.

Horror Cinema


Jonathan Penner - 2008
    Depicting deep-rooted, even archetypal fears, while at the same time exploiting socially and culturally specific anxieties, cinematic horror is at once timeless and utterly of its time and place. This exciting visual history, which includes unique images from the David Del Valle archive, examines the genre in thematic, historical, and aesthetic terms, breaking it down into the following fundamental categories: Slashers & Serial Killers; Cannibals, Freaks & Hillbillys; Revenge of Nature & Environmental Horror; Sci-fi Horror; The Living Dead; Ghosts & Haunted Houses; Possession, Demons & Evil Tricksters; Voodoo, Cults & Satanists; Vampires & Werewolves; and The Monstrous-Feminine. Among the many films featured are classics such as Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Alien, The Exorcist, Dracula, and The Wicker Man.

Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror


Jason Zinoman - 2011
     Much has been written about the storied New Hollywood of the 1970s, but at the same time as Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppola were making their first classic movies, a parallel universe of directors gave birth to the modern horror film-aggressive, raw, and utterly original. Based on unprecedented access to the genre's major players, The New York Times's critic Jason Zinoman's Shock Value delivers the first definitive account of horror's golden age. By the late 1960s, horror was stuck in the past, confined mostly to drive-in theaters and exploitation houses, and shunned by critics. Shock Value tells the unlikely story of how the much-disparaged horror film became an ambitious art form while also conquering the multiplex. Directors such as Wes Craven, Roman Polanski, John Carpenter, and Brian De Palma- counterculture types operating largely outside the confines of Hollywood-revolutionized the genre, exploding taboos and bringing a gritty aesthetic, confrontational style, and political edge to horror. Zinoman recounts how these directors produced such classics as Rosemary's Baby, Carrie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Halloween, creating a template for horror that has been imitated relentlessly but whose originality has rarely been matched. This new kind of film dispensed with the old vampires and werewolves and instead assaulted audiences with portraits of serial killers, the dark side of suburbia, and a brand of nihilistic violence that had never been seen before. Shock Value tells the improbable stories behind the making of these movies, which were often directed by obsessive and insecure young men working on shoestring budgets, were funded by sketchy investors, and starred porn stars. But once The Exorcist became the highest grossing film in America, Hollywood took notice. The classic horror films of the 1970s have now spawned a billion-dollar industry, but they have also penetrated deep into the American consciousness. Quite literally, Zinoman reveals, these movies have taught us what to be afraid of. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of the most important artists in horror, Shock Value is an enthralling and personality-driven account of an overlooked but hugely influential golden age in American film.

They Live


Jonathan Lethem - 2010
    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.

The Sounds of Star Wars


J.W. Rinzler - 2010
    But how many of them would be able to identify the lion's roar used in the sound of the Millenium Falcon's engine? In this aurally astonishing and visually engaging book, New York Times best-selling author J. W. Rinzler reveals the illuminating history of the sounds that make the Star Wars universe so believable, as recounted by their creator, legendary sound designer Ben Burtt. An attached sound module with an exterior speaker and headphone jack lets readers listen to more than 250 unique sound effects, and more than 300 photographs illustrate the epic's many memorable scenes. From the first films to the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars series, The Sounds of Star Wars is Star Wars as you've never heard it before.

Bill Bryson Box Set: Three Vols. A Walk In The Woods, Notes From A Big Country, Notes From A Small Island


Bill Bryson
    A box set consisting of three Bill Bryson books, 'Notes from a Small Island', 'Notes from a Big Country' and 'A Walk in the Woods'.

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls


Peter Biskind - 1998
    This down-and-dirty romp through Hollywood in the 1970s introduces the young filmmakers--Coppola, Scorsese, Lucas, Spielberg, Altman, and Beatty--and recreates an era that transformed American culture forever.

Images


David Lynch - 1994
    200 b/w illustrations. Two 16-page 4-color inserts.

Inside HBO's Game of Thrones: Seasons 1 2 (Game of Thrones Book, Book about HBO Series)


Bryan Cogman - 2012
    This official companion book gives fans new ways to enter this fictional world and discover more about the beloved (and reviled) characters and the electrifying plotlines. Hundreds of set photos, production and costume designs, storyboards, and insider stories reveal how the show's creators translated George R. R. Martin's best-selling fantasy series into the world of Westeros. Featuring interviews with key actors and crew members that capture the best scripted and unscripted moments from the first two seasons, as well as a preface by George R. R. Martin, this special volume, bound in a lavishly debossed padded cover, offers exclusive access to this unprecedented television series.

Chas Addams Half-Baked Cookbook: Culinary Cartoons for the Humorously Famished


Charles Addams - 2005
    Hungry cannibals, witches gathering around a cauldron, or a king over his blackbird pie often populated his celebrated cartoons. And, of course, Morticia of the "Addams Family" was an avid cook, adding a touch of eye of newt or popping over to the neighbors for a cup of cyanide. So it should come as no wonder that in the 1960s Charles Addams was dabbling with a "cookbook" idea. Addams discovered and compiled some bizarre recipes from antiquated and out-of-the-way sources. These recipes have very Addams-like names, such as "Mushrooms Fester" or "Hearts Stuffed," and serve as a perfect complement to his drawings. Chas Addams™ Half-Baked Cookbook is a collection of his work on the world of food and eating, featuring many Addams drawings that have never been seen before, as well as some of his all-time classics.

Diablo Bestiary - The Book of Adria


Robert Brooks - 2018
    

The Art of Star Trek


Judith Reeves-Stevens - 1995
    Bizarre alien beings, breathtaking extraterrestrial landscapes, exotic costumes, state-of-the-art special effects, and remarkably convincing futuristic sets and props and equipment have brought Gene Roddenberry's inspiring vision to life before the public's awestruck eyes."The Art of Star Trek" is a one-of-a-kind gallery of Star Trek artwork, as well as tribute to the many artists, designers, and technicians whose diverse talents and imagination created the distinctive look of the Star Trek universe. Every incarnation of Star Trek is explored: The Original Series, The ANimated Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager, and the films -- with the complete behind-the-scenes story of Star Trek's design history.With hundreds of full-color illustrations and photographs, many from private collections, readers will at last be able to linger on Star Trek's rich visual legacy and trace the evolution of and images from their initial conceptions to their final form on television and film screens.Like all great works of art, the many sights and visual surprises of Star Trek have been built from scratch through a combination of inspiration and painstaking effort. "The Art of Star Trek" covers the entire universe of Star Trek artwork and production design to reveal how, in all of its various forms, Star Trek has allowed us to look boldly into the future and see what no one has seen before."The Art of Star Trek" is the art of pure imagination, the art of a bright, hopeful future, and the art of three remarkable decades on nonstop action and adventure. Lavishly illustrated, it is a book to be read and referred to time after time, as well as one that will become a cherished chronicle fo Star Trek's first thirty years.