Friday, November 30, 2012

Essential Supernatural Out Now

Insight Editions has recently released the following:

Knight, Nicholas, and Christopher Cerasi. The Essential Supernatural: On the Road with Sam and Dean Winchester. Foreword Eric Kripke. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2012. Print. 978-1-60887-145-2

Profusely illustrated, this over-sized book serves as both a guide to and celebration of the first seven seasons of the Supernatural television series. The book includes a wealth of photographs from the show, commentary by the cast and crew, and a variety of extras for the fans. The book concludes with predictions for the upcoming season eight and a short episode guide devoted to seasons one through seven.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Little Mermaid News

Disney has released the following advertisement for an upcoming release of The Little Mermaid (1989), the film that ushered in the Disney Renaissance:




Peter Pan Diamond Edition

Disney has announced as February 2013 release of a new edition of the classic film Peter Pan. It will be available to own on Blu-ray. No word yet on the extras, but the following trailer is now featured on Disney's various websites:

JPC for August 2012

I seem to have missed posting this over the summer:

The Journal of Popular Culture (access at Wiley Online Library)
Volume 45, Number 4
August 2012
Pages 685–920


Editorial
Editorial: Something Wonderful This Way Came (pages 685–686)

Gary Hoppenstand

Guest Editorial
Deep Culture (pages 687–694)
Margaret J. King

Articles

Going Places: The Pleasures of Production and Imperial Visual Cultures in the Stratemeyer Syndicate's The Moving Picture Boys (pages 695–711)
Stephen M. Charbonneau

Chuck Versus the Machine: The Intersection of Biology, Technology, and Identity on Chuck (pages 712–726)
Joseph J. Darowski

“I Was Just Doing a Little Joke There”: Irony and the Paradoxes of the Sitcom in The Office (pages 727–748)
Eric Detweiler

Resistive Radio: African Americans’ Evolving Portrayal and Participation from Broadcasting to Narrowcasting (pages 749–768)
Judy L. Isaksen

Like Sportive Birds: The Girl Aviators Series and the Culture of Flight in America, 1911–12 (pages 769–788)
Lisa M. Stepanski

Transnational Transformations: A Gender Analysis of Japanese Manga Featuring Unexpected Bodily Transformations (pages 789–806)
June M. Madeley

Light for Light's Sake: Thomas Kinkade and the Meaning of Style (pages 807–827)
Julia Mason

“Say, Who Are You Anyway?”: Clowns, Childhood, and Madness in The Character of Harpo Marx (pages 828–845)
Richard Niland

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner: The Web of Racial, Class, and Gender Constructions in late 1960s America (pages 846–861)
Anne Gray Perrin

Haunted Infocosms and Prosthetic Gods: Gibsonian Cyberspace and Renaissance Arts of Memory (pages 862–882)
Joel Elliot Slotkin

The Coexistence of Folk and Popular Culture as Vehicles of Social and Historical Activism: Transformation of the Bumba-meu-boi in Northeast Brazil (pages 883–901)
Meredith W. Watts and Simone Linhares Ferro


Book Reviews

Indie: An American Film Culture. Michael Z. Newman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. 296 pp. $26.50 paperback. (pages 902–905)
Michael Civille

Cameras into the Wild: A History of Early Wildlife and Expedition Filmmaking, 1895–1928. Palle Petterson. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011. 236 pp. $45.00 paperback. (pages 905–908)
John M. Kinder

Reel Power: Hollywood Cinema and American Supremacy. Matthew Alford. London: Pluto Press, 2010. 224 pp. $25.00 paperback. (pages 908–910)
Irene Garza

Haunted Ground: Journeys through a Paranormal America. Darryl V. Caterine. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2011. 199 pp. $34.95 cloth. (pages 910–912)
Christopher Blythe

Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights. Robin Bernstein. New York: New York University Press, 2011. 318 pp. $22.80 paperback. (pages 913–915)
Meredith A. Bak

Football/Soccer: History and Tactics. Jaime Orejan. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011. 256 pp. $34.95 paperback. (pages 915–917)
Yuya Kiuchi

Affirmative Reaction: New Formations of White Masculinity. Hamilton Carroll. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. 221 pp. $21.80 paperback. (pages 917–920)
Shelleen Greene

Modern Monsters on Film

Another set of trailers for new and upcoming films:






Monday, November 19, 2012

The Croods?

Here's another upcoming film:


Upcoming Fantasy Films

The blog is in need of much updating (especially a post on NEPCA last month), but, in the meantime, I've been intrigued by some of the latest trailers featuring innovative takes on fictional and legendary heroes:


Monday, November 5, 2012

Return to Middle-earth with Brian Sibley

In anticipation of the release next month of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has released Brian Sibley's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: Official Movie Guide. As with Sibley's earlier volumes on The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the book offers an extensively well-illustrated look at the making of the film and includes much commentary from the cast and crew. Details as follows:


The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Official Movie Guide 
By Brian Sibley
Publication Date:2012-11-06
Price: $14.95
Format: Trade Paper, 192 pages
Trim Size: 8 5/8 x 11 1/4
Also available as: Fixed Layout E-Book


ISBN-13/ EAN:9780547898551
ISBN-10:054789855X


Book Description

Enter Bilbo Baggins’ world through exclusive interviews with director Peter Jackson, Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen and all the principal cast and filmmakers, who share film-making secrets and tales of what it was actually like making movie magic in Middle-earth.

Lavishly illustrated with hundreds of behind-the-scenes photos of the actors, locations, sets, creatures and costumes, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Official Movie Guide has been produced in collaboration with the filmmakers who have brought J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic novel into breathtaking three-dimensional life.


Mythlore Fall/Winter 2012

The latest number of Mythlore is available for purchase from The Mythopoeic Society. Contents as follows:

Mythlore 119/120
Volume 31, Issue 1/2
2012 Fall/Winter
204 pages

Table of Contents

Editorial
—Janet Brennan Croft

Yggdrasil and the Stave Church
—G. Ronald Murphy, S.J.

The Inklings Remembered: A Conversation with Colin Havard
—Justin T. Noetzel and Matthew R. Bardowell

The Steward, The King, and the Queen: Fealty and Love in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and in Sir Orfeo
—Sue Bridgwater

Charles Williams’s Anti-Modernist Descent into Hell
—Lydia R. Browning

The Wondrous Orientalism of Lord Dunsany: Traditional and Non-traditional Orientalist Narratives in The Book of Wonder and Tales of Wonder
—Alyssa House-Thomas

Reciprocal Colonization in the Irish Fairy Tales of Lord Dunsany
—Erin L. Sheley

Changing the Story: Transformations of Myth in Yeats’s Poem “Cuchulain’s Fight with the Sea”
—Roxanne Bodsworth

Grief Poignant as Joy: Dyscatastrophe and Eucatastrophe in A Song of Fire and Ice
—Susan Johnston


Reviews

Burdge, Anthony S., Jessica Burke, and Kristine Larsen, eds. The Mythological Dimensions of Neil Gaiman. (Reviewed by Birns, N.)

Fastitocalon: Studies in Fantasticism Ancient to Modern. #2.1&2 (2011). (Reviewed by Croft, J.B.)
Frankel, Valerie Estelle. Buffy and the Heroine’s Journey: Vampire Slayer as Feminine Chosen One. (Reviewed by Croft, J.B.)

Hiley, Margaret. The Loss and the Silence: Aspects of Modernism in the Works of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. (Reviewed by Ordway, H.)

Honegger, Thomas, ed. Tolkien in Translation. (Reviewed by Sims, H.J.)

Honegger, Thomas, ed. Translating Tolkien: Text and Film. (Reviewed by Brown, S.)

Jennbert, Kristina. Animals and Humans: Recurrent Symbiosis in Archaeology and Old Norse Religion. (Reviewed by Auger, E.E.)

Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society. #53 (Spring 2012). (Reviewed by Croft, J.B.)

North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies. #30 (2011). (Reviewed by Croft, J.B.)

Reno, Frank D. Arthurian Figures of History and Legend: A Biographical Dictionary. (Reviewed by Williams, D.T.)

Sandner, David. Critical Discourses on the Fantastic, 1712-1831. (Reviewed by Young, J.)

Stirling, Kirsten. Peter Pan’s Shadows in the Literary Imagination. (Reviewed by Wiggins, K.M.)

Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review. #9 (2012). (Reviewed by Croft, J.B.)

Trout, Paul A. Deadly Powers: Animal Predators and the Mythic Imagination. (Reviewed by Walker, L.)

Wolfe, Judith and B.N. Wolfe, eds. C.S. Lewis and the Church: Essays in Honour of Walter Hooper. (Reviewed by Christopher, J.R.)

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Monsters at Williams-Sonoma

Described as depicting Frankenstein's Monster, Spooky Jack-o'-Lantern, and Black Cat, the following items labelled "Personalized Halloween Totes" were featured as catalog/Internet exclusives in the September 2012 edition of the Williams-Sonoma catalog. They are now unavailable but were said to be both hand-made and imported. The items sold for $19.99 each.

The Frankenstein's Monster is especially interesting as he is depicted as both green and scarred (two elements of iconography from the Karloffian model) but is missing the usual set of neck bolts. He is also very cute for a "monster".