Leonard Maltin’s Classic Movie Guide includes more than 7,000 capsule reviews of classic movies, including: The Birth of a Nation (1915), Gone With the Wind (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940), High Noon (1952), and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967). In addition, this unique volume also offers a star and director index, a full listing of classic movies on DVD, and Leonard Maltin’s unique Top Ten lists. The result is an authoritative, dynamic guide to the classics no film aficionado should be without.

    A fresh, dynamic reboot of the franchise, Batman Begins explored Bruce Wayne's evolution from billionaire orphan to Gotham City's dark avenger. The film deconstructed the super-hero genre and put an indelible stamp on it – Nolan's character-driven, hard-edged realism gave Batman a new, "real-world" origin story.A 2008 sequel, The Dark Knight, took those compelling foundations and raised the stakes, pitting Batman against a deranged master criminal, the Joker (Heath Ledger, whose performance won him a posthumous Academy Award® for Best Supporting Actor), in an all-out war for Gotham's soul. At once a sprawling crime epic, a rumination on moral relativism, and a blockbuster action film, The Dark Knight expanded the scope and depth of Batman Begins and broke box-office records.Now, the final film in The Dark Knight Trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises, brings Nolan's Batman saga to an end. An epic disaster movie on a global scale, The Dark Knight Rises blends the tragic, character-driven roots of Batman Begins with the thrilling action and thematic complexity of The Dark Knight.The Art and Making of The Dark Knight Trilogy tells the complete behind-the-scenes story of these three monumental films. Based on in-depth interviews with Nolan and all of the films’ key cast and crew - including cowriters David S. Goyer and Jonathan Nolan, cinematographer Wally Pfister, and composer Hans Zimmer - and supported by lavish art and never-before-seen photography, the book reveals the creative development and design behind The Dark Knight Trilogy. Each chapter is devoted to a separate step of the filmmaking process, highlighting how Nolan's vision and working methods - favoring repertory-style casting, tenets of classicla drama, and practical effects - helped make the definitive Batman for a new generation.

    These images would prove so powerful and evocative that they would eventually define the look of Peter Jackson's movie trilogy and earn him a coveted Academy Award.The book is filled with more than 150 of his sketches and early conceptual pieces showing how the project progressed from idea to finished art. It also contains a selection of full-page paintings reproduced in full color, together with numerous examples of previously unseen conceptual art produced for the films and many new works drawn specially for this book.The Lord of the Rings Sketchbook provides a fascinating insight into the imagination of the man who painted Tolkien's vision, first on the page and then in three dimensions on the movie screen. It will also be of interest to many of the thousands of people who have bought the illustrated Lord of the Rings as well as to budding artists who want to unlock the secrets of book illustration.

    New in this edition are entries to describe such film hits as "Lord of the Rings", "Mystic River", "Fahrenheit 9/11", and "Million Dollar Baby". But in fact, this volume's team of critics goes back to 1902, describing such films as "The Great Train Robbery", and progressing chronologically across the decades to cover the best cinematic dramas, comedies, westerns, musicals, suspense and horror films, gangster classics, "films noirs", sci-fi epics, documentaries, and adaptations of novels and stage plays made by filmmakers around the world. Movie fans will find descriptions of great musicals like "Singing in the Rain", westerns like "High Noon", science-fiction classics like "Star Wars", dramas like "Chinatown" and "Schindler's List", and international classics from master directors who include Fellini, Antonioni, Resnais, Truffaut, Eisenstein, Kurosawa, and many others.Each entry includes a full list of cast and credits, awards won by the film, an essay summarizing the story line and screen-history, and still shots of the film's memorable scenes. At the back of the book, both an alphabetical index and a genre index will help readers find any film they're looking for. The book is illustrated with hundreds of movie still shots in color and black and white.

    To commemorate its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2014, The Making of Gone With The Wind presents more than 600 items from the archives of David O. Selznick, the film’s producer, and his business partner John Hay “Jock” Whitney, which are housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. These rarely seen materials, which are also being featured in a major 2014 exhibition at the Ransom Center, offer fans and film historians alike a must-have behind-the-camera view of the production of this classic.Before a single frame of film was shot, Gone With The Wind was embroiled in controversy. There were serious concerns about how the film would depict race and violence in the Old South during the Civil War and Reconstruction. While Clark Gable was almost everyone’s choice to play Rhett Butler, there was no clear favorite for Scarlett O’Hara. And then there was the huge challenge of turning Margaret Mitchell’s Pulitzer Prize–winning epic into a manageable screenplay and producing it at a reasonable cost. The Making of Gone With The Wind tells these and other surprising stories with fascinating items from the Selznick archive, including on-set photographs, storyboards, correspondence and fan mail, production records, audition footage, gowns worn by Vivien Leigh as Scarlett, and Selznick’s own notoriously detailed memos.This inside view of the decisions and creative choices that shaped the production reaffirm that Gone With The Wind is perhaps the quintessential film of Hollywood’s Golden Age and illustrate why it remains influential and controversial decades after it was released.

    His career boasts an incredible array of projects from designing cars to drafting architectural renderings, but he is most famous for his work as a concept artist on some of the most visually arresting films in the history of cinema. Since working on Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1978 as a production illustrator Syd Mead has always aimed to render “reality ahead of schedule,” creating evocative designs that marry believable content with a neofuturistic form. It is this ability to predict technological potential that has helped Mead create such a distinctive and influential aesthetic. From his work with Ridley Scott on Blade Runner, to his striking designs for the light cycles in Tron, to his imposing concept art for the U.S.S. Sulaco in James Cameron’s Aliens, Syd Mead has played a pivotal role in shaping cinema’s vision of the future. The Movie Art of Syd Mead: Visual Futurist represents the most extensive collection of Mead’s visionary work ever printed, compiling hundreds of images, sketches and concept arts from a career spanning almost 40 years, many of which have never been seen in print before. Each entry provides a unique insight into the processes involved in Mead’s practice as well as illuminating the behind-the-scenes work involved in creating a fully realized, cinematic depiction of the future. With such a plethora of images from the many genre-defining films Mead has worked on, this is essential reading for film fans, artists and futurologists alike.

    During the process of being translated into a Disney film, Beauty and the Beast had several false starts. It was originally conceived as an eighteenth-century period piece, directed by the British husband-and-wife team of Richard and Jill Purdum. After some changes, two new directors, Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale, were put in charge of the project. Although he was initially reluctant to do another animated film after The Little Mermaid, the late Howard Ashman came on board shortly after the new directors did. Over many months, the characters and story evolved further, but there were many changes, and wrong turns. Sequences were created, reworked, cut, and added as the film gradually emerged, like a statue from a block of marble. After all of the ups and downs, Beauty and the Beast was released in 1991 to rave reviews and record-breaking box-office business. The film was widely hailed as a technical and aesthetic breakthrough and remains the only animated feature ever to be nominated for an Oscar for best picture. This authoritative book features interviews with artists, voice-over actors, and executives, and transcripts of meetings and story sessions. Illustrations abound throughout, including sketches, caricatures, sequences of animation drawings, and preliminary artwork from discarded scenes. This book will be a must-have for any fan of the "Tale as Old as Time."

    The Showtime TV series was created by John Logan and executive produced by Logan and Sam Mendes and stars Josh Hartnett (Sin City), Eva Green (Casino Royale), Billie Piper (Doctor Who) and Timothy Dalton (License to Kill).

    This is both one man's remarkable story and an essential guide for anyone who has a celluloid story to tell and the dreams and determination to see it through.  Part production diary, part how-to manual, Rodriguez unveils how he was able to make his influential first film on only a $7,000 budget.  Also included is the appendix, 'The Ten Minute Film Course,” a tell-all on how to save thousands of dollars on film school and teach yourself the ropes of film production, directing, and screenwriting.

    It is fitting, then, that the companion book to his movie Sleepy Hollow is a big and beautiful hardback, full of images that range from quietly eerie to eye-popping. The book contains Burton's sketches, paintings from production designer Rick Heinrichs and costume designer Colleen Atwood, and dozens of stills from the film itself. All of this is juxtaposed with Andrew Kevin Walker's screenplay of Washington Irving's story. The result is a unique opportunity to see how a film comes together. Bare words on a page result in Burton's quirky roughs, which are fleshed out into more detailed paintings by Burton and the production team. Finally it all comes together in photographs of the end product. In addition to an engrossing screenplay (Careful! It's far from a direct cribbing of the original story, so see the movie before reading too far if you don't want the plot spoiled), the reader gets to see the evolution of Ichabod's binocular glasses and creepy yet strangely charming autopsy instruments. The book as a whole illustrates one of the most interesting aspects of Burton's vision--frightening images are clearly meant to be seen as beautiful at the same time. The Art of Sleepy Hollow is entertaining on several levels: as a good story, as a step-by-step tour of the way a film's design comes together, and as a fascinating picture book for grownups. --Ali Davis

    Bringing together the rarest art and artifacts from three decades of TMNT comics, TV shows, and films, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Visual History leaves no shell unturned!

    Now, James Monaco offers a revised and rewritten third edition incorporating every major aspect of this dynamic medium right up to the present.Looking at film from many vantage points, How to Read a Film: Movies, Media, Multimedia explores the medium as both art and craft, sensibility and science, tradition and technology. After examining film's close relation to such other narrative media as the novel, painting, photography, television, and even music, Monaco discusses those elements necessary to understand how films convey meaning and, more importantly, how we can best discern all that a film is attempting to communicate.In a key departure from the book's previous editions, the new and still-evolving digital context of film is now emphasized throughout How to Read a Film. A new chapter on multimedia brings media criticism into the twenty-first century with a thorough discussion of topics like virtual reality, cyberspace, and the proximity of both to film. Monaco has likewise doubled the size and scope of his Film and Media: A Chronology appendix. The book also features a new introduction, an expanded bibliography, and hundreds of illustrative black-and-white film stills and diagrams. It is a must for all film students, media buffs, and movie fans.

    Welcome to the wise and wonderful world of everyone’s favourite bear.Paddington Bear is a beacon of happiness – well meaning, funny and always kind.Explore Paddington’s unique and universal take on life in this very special collection of warm words about friendship, family, love, laughter … and everything in between.

    In Fairies he turns his considerable talent to capturing in breathtaking images characters from such beloved stories as Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the wizard Merlin and his muse the intoxicating Nimue, mermaids of the deep as well as his interpretation of fairies from Celtic and Japanese mythology.

    The poster art from the noir era has a bold look and an iconography all its own. During noir's golden age, studios commissioned these arresting illustrations for even the lowliest "B" thriller. The Art of Noir is the first book to present this striking artwork in a lavishly produced, large-format, full-color volume. The more than 300 dazzling posters and other promotional material range from the classics to rare archive films such as The Devil Thumbs a Ride and Blonde Kiss. With rare offerings from around the world and background information on the illustrators, The Art of Noir is the ultimate companion for movie buffs and collectors, as well as artists and designers.