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The ArtsNovember 2014Jacques Demy
by Darren Waldron, Diana Holmes, Robert Ingram
Saccharine for some, poignant for others, Jacques Demy's 'enchanted' world is familiar to generations of French audiences accustomed to watching Christmas repeats of his fairytale Peau d'âne (1970) or seeing Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac prance and pirouette in Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1966). Demy achieved international recognition with Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1963), which was awarded the Palme d'Or at Cannes. However, beneath the apparently sugary coating of his films lie more philosophical reflections on some of the most pressing issues that preoccupy Western societies, including affect, subjectivity, self/other relations and free will. This wide-ranging book addresses many of the key aspects of Demy's cinema, including his associations with the New Wave, his unique approach to musicals, his adaptations of fairytales, his representations of gender and sexuality and his legacy as an iconic director for generations of audiences and filmmakers. ;
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Children's & YAOwl Magic (13). The Mystery of the White Horse
by Ina Brandt/Irene Mohr
It’s just like a fairy tale. In the forest Flora stumbles on a little house with a garden that’s overgrown with roses. But the house is about to be sold. Not only that, but Flora learns from the owner’s daughter that a white horse has been living for a long time in the stable…but now he’s disappeared! Together with her magic owl Goldwing, Flora tries to find the terrified animal. Will the two of them manage to make their way through the jungle of roses and win the confidence of the white stallion?
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2024Why headless males are better lovers
Sex and reproduction in the animal kingdom
by Monika Niehaus / Michael Wink
"Sex sells" also applies to evolution. Without sex, there is no genetic variation, and without genetic variation, there is no natural selection and evolution. When it comes to sex and reproduction, all animals have things in common, but there are also many variations. In this game of the sexes, everything revolves around the conflicts of interest between females and males, the diversity of mating systems, matriarchal and patriarchal communities and the securing of paternity, whether through beauty, song and dance or violence.
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Religious subjects depicted in artOctober 2009Pyostryye skazki
By V. F. Odoyevsky
by Neil Cornwell
Odoyevsky's cycle of short stories, Pyostryye skazki (1833), is a transitional work between his writings of the 1820s (in particular his contributions to Mnemozina, 1824-5) and his mature period which culminated in Russkiye nochi (1844). Pyostryye skazki thus represents a romantic amalgam of elements drawn from fairy-tale and folklore, the fantastic and the society tale, serving didactic, satirical and whimsical purposes. The narration supposedly comes from an authorial alter ego, one Iriney Modestovich Gomozeyko, who occupies a place in Russian literature of the 1830s alongside Pushkin's Ivan Petrovich Belkin and Gogol's Rudyy Pan'ko. While individual stories from the cycle reappeared during the Soviet revival of interest in Odoyevsky, this edition, which includes an introduction, notes and a short bibliography, was the first integral (re)publication since 1833 of one of the basic texts of Russian Romanticism.
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The ArtsJune 2017Terry Gilliam
by Peter Marks
Terry Gilliam presents a sustained examination of one of cinema's most challenging and lauded auteurs, proposing fresh ways of seeing Gilliam that go beyond reductive readings of him as a gifted but manic fantasist. Analysing Gilliam's work over nearly four decades, from the brilliant anarchy of his Monty Python animations through the nightmarish masterpiece Brazil to the provocative Gothic horror of Tideland, it critically examines the variety and richness of Gilliam's sometimes troubled but always provocative output. The book situates Gilliam within the competing cultural contexts of the British, European and American film industries, examining his regular struggles against aesthetic and commercial pressures. He emerges as a passionate, immensely creative director, whose work encompasses a dizzying array of material: anarchic satire, childhood and adult fantasy, dystopia, romantic comedy, surrealism, road movie, fairy tale and the Gothic. The book charts how Gilliam interweaves these genres and forms to create magical interfaces between reality and the illuminating, frightening but liberating worlds of the imagination. Scrutinising the neglected importance of literature and adaptation in Gilliam's career, this study also observes him through the lenses of auteurism, genre, performance, design and national culture, explaining how someone born in Minnesota and raised in California came to be one of British television and film's most compelling figures.
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Teaching, Language & ReferenceNovember 2023David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the sun machine
by Nicholas Royle
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The ArtsAugust 2009Terry Gilliam
by Peter Marks, Brian McFarlane, Neil Sinyard
Terry Gilliam presents a sustained examination of one of cinema's most challenging and lauded auteurs, proposing fresh ways of seeing Gilliam that go beyond reductive readings of him as a gifted but manic fantasist. Analysing Gilliam's work over nearly four decades, from the brilliant anarchy of his Monty Python animations through the nightmarish masterpiece Brazil to the provocative Gothic horror of Tideland, it critically examines the variety and richness of Gilliam's sometimes troubled but always provocative output. The book situates Gilliam within the competing cultural contexts of the British, European and American film industries, examining his regular struggles against aesthetic and commercial pressures. He emerges as a passionate, immensely creative director, whose work encompasses a dizzying array of material: anarchic satire, childhood and adult fantasy, dystopia, romantic comedy, surrealism, road movie, fairy tale and the Gothic. The book charts how Gilliam interweaves these genres and forms to create magical interfaces between reality and the illuminating, frightening but liberating worlds of the imagination. Scrutinising the neglected importance of literature and adaptation in Gilliam's career, this study also observes him through the lenses of auteurism, genre, performance, design and national culture, explaining how someone born in Minnesota and raised in California came to be one of British television and film's most compelling figures. ;
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Children's & YAHeart of Mist
by Katrin Lange
A girl torn between two brothers. Regardless of which one she falls in love with it will be disastrous for the other. Christopher and Adrian have sworn that no girl will ever come between them again, because there is a sleeping monster inside Adrian, just waiting to hurt his brother. But then Jessa comes to High Moor Grange… Jessa would do anything to find her sister Alice, who has been registered as missing for five years. High Moor Grange is the first clue she has been given after all this time – but apart from a ruin shrouded in mist, all she finds there are the owners of this dilapidated manor house. Jessa suspects that they both know more about Alice’s disappearance than they admit. Christopher wants nothing more than to be rid of her, and constantly gets on her nerves with his arrogance – and even his warm-hearted brother Adrian seems to be harbouring some secrets. Jessica knows that she ought to stay away from the twin brothers, because instead of finding answers at High Moor Grange, she finds herself in danger of losing her heart in a battle against a 200-year-old curse. Dark, irresistible and deeply romantic – a modern Beauty and the Beast story by the queen of emotions!
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Children's & YATerra (3). Collapse
by Jennifer Alice Jager
Remorselessly dark and shattering, Earth’s war against humankind is intensifying, and the end of the world is nigh! Chaos reigns over Planet Earth, and devastating natural disasters have sent millions of people to their death, while the survivors live in fear. In Tokyo there is only one person who has survived the destructive rage of Terra Mater. But Ayumi knows that something far worse awaits her than the ruins all around her. In a vision she has clearly seen what Terra Mater is planning. And so Ayumi has no choice: she must conquer her fear and join the natural spirits in trying to close down the Elekreen power station. Only she, Liam, Addy and Younes can save humanity.
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Children's & YATerra (4). Afterglow
by Jennifer Alice Jager
Humankind’s battle against Nature is entering its decisive stage. Once more the explosive showdown of the apocalyptic TERRA series keeps the reader in breathless suspense. Humanity appears to be on the brink of destruction. Vast areas of land have been wiped off the face of the Earth, vegetation has reconquered its living space, but Terra Mater has by no means finished with the human bacillus. The hate-filled spirit of Nature that is claiming Younes’ body for itself, and wants to see all humans destroyed, gives him undreamt-of powers, but it also threatens to set him, his little sister and Chloe against one another. But there is even more at stake: if Younes and the other children from his visions (he had dreams about the other kids) do not stop Terra Mater soon from fulfilling her plans, every single human being will disappear from the planet. In order to prevent that from happening, they must come face to face with raging Mother Earth, and must not only conquer their fear but must also look Death in the eye.
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The ArtsFebruary 2022"I am Jugoslovenka!"
Feminist performance politics during and after Yugoslav Socialism
by Jasmina Tumbas, Amelia Jones, Marsha Meskimmon
"I am Jugoslovenka" argues that queer-feminist artistic and political resistance were paradoxically enabled by socialist Yugoslavia's unique history of patriarchy and women's emancipation. Spanning performance and conceptual art, video works, film and pop music, lesbian activism and press photos of female snipers in the Yugoslav wars, the book analyses feminist resistance in a range of performative actions that manifest the radical embodiment of Yugoslavia's anti-fascist, transnational and feminist legacies. It covers celebrated and lesser-known artists from the 1970s to today, including Marina Abramovic, Sanja Ivekovic, Vlasta Delimar, Tanja Ostojic, Selma Selman and Helena Janecic, along with music legends Lepa Brena and Esma Redzepova. "I am Jugoslovenka" tells a unique story of women's resistance through the intersection of feminism, socialism and nationalism in East European visual culture.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJune 2012Cultures and caricatures of British imperial aviation
Passengers, pilots, publicity
by Gordon Pirie, Andrew Thompson, John Mackenzie
The new activity of trans-continental civil flying in the 1930s is a useful vantage point for viewing the extension of British imperial attitudes and practices. Cultures and caricatures of British imperial aviation examines the experiences of those (mostly men) who flew solo or with a companion (racing or for leisure), who were airline passengers (doing colonial administration, business or research), or who flew as civilian air and ground crews. For airborne elites, flying was a modern and often enviable way of managing, using and experiencing empire. On the ground, aviation was a device for asserting old empire: adventure and modernity were accompanied by supremacism. At the time, however, British civil imperial flying was presented romantically in books, magazines and exhibitions. Eighty years on, imperial flying is still remembered, reproduced and re-enacted in caricature. ;
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Film theory & criticismFebruary 2014The Encyclopedia of British Film
Fourth edition
by Edited by Brian McFarlane
With well over 6,300 articles, including over 500 new entries, this fourth edition of The Encyclopedia of British Film is a fully updated invaluable reference guide to the British film industry. It is the most authoritative volume yet, stretching from the inception of the industry to the present day, with detailed listings of the producers, directors, actors and studios behind a century or so of great British cinema. Brian McFarlane's meticulously researched guide is the definitive companion for anyone interested in the world of film. Previous editions have sold many thousands of copies and this fourth edition will be an essential work of reference for enthusiasts interested in the history of British cinema, and for universities and libraries.
