Kubo And The Two Strings His Adventure Begins

A storybook based on the animated movie, Kubo and the Two Strings! ©2016 LAIKA Entertainment. All Rights Reserved.

A level 2 reader based on the animated movie, Kubo and the Two Strings! ©2016 LAIKA Entertainment. All Rights Reserved.

From LAIKA, the Academy Award®-nominated studio behind Coraline, ParaNorman, and The Boxtrolls, comes a new adventure set in a mythical ancient Japan. In Kubo and the Two Strings, scruffy, kind-hearted Kubo cares devotedly for his mother while eking out a humble living in their sleepy shoreside village. But when a spirit from the past appears, Kubo suddenly finds himself entwined in a violent struggle against gods and monsters. This fully illustrated book offers a behind-the-scenes view of the amazingly detailed artwork and unique stop-motion animation style involved in the film's creation.

Invisible Digital helps us makes sense of something we cannot see by presenting an innovative approach to digital images and digital culture. At its heart is a novel method for exploring software used in the creation of moving images as markers of converging cultural, organizational and technological influences. The three main case studies of Invisible Digital are the animated feature Moana (2016) and the computer games No Man's Sky (2016) and Everything (2017). All three were created using procedural techniques: simulation software for Moana, and procedural content generation for No Man's Sky and Everything. Production culture disclosures associated with procedural techniques often emphasize the influences of automated systems and their algorithms, making them ideal for a study that interrogates digital processes. The approach of Invisible Digital is informed by relational theories and the concept of entanglement based on materialist perspectives, combined with insights from work that more explicitly interrogates algorithms and algorithmic culture. Aylish Wood employs the notion of assemblages to introduce the concept of material-cultural narratives. Using this conceptual framework, she draws out material-cultural narratives for each case study to demonstrate what they reveal about software and digital culture. These analyses of software provide a widely applicable method through which moving image studies can contribute more fully to the wider and growing debates about algorithmic culture.

Once upon a time, science fiction was only in the future. It was the stuff of drive-ins and cheap double-bills. Then, with the ever-increasing rush of new, society-altering technologies, science fiction pushed its way to the present, and it busted out of the genre ghetto of science fiction and barged its way into the mainstream. What used to be mere fantasy (trips to the moon? Wristwatch radios? Supercomputers capable of learning?) are now everyday reality. Whether nostalgic for the future or fast-forwarding to the present, The Sci-Fi Movie Guide: The Universe of Film from Alien to Zardoz covers the broad and widening range of science-fiction movies. From the trashy to the epic, from the classics to today's blockbusters, this cinefile’s guidebook reviews nearly 1,000 of the biggest, baddest, and brightest from every age and genre of cinematic and TV science fiction. You’ll find more than just Star Wars, Star Trek, and Transformers, with reviews on many overlooked and under-appreciated gems and genres, such as ... • Monsters! Pacific Rim, Godzilla, The Thing, Creature from the Black Lagoon • Superheroes: Thor, Iron Man, X-Men, The Amazing Spider-man, Superman • Avant-garde masterpieces: Solaris, 2001, Brazil • and many, many more categories and movies!!

Two worlds collide in this epic retelling of the Trollhunters episode that started it all in the hit Netflix series from the limitless imagination of acclaimed filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and DreamWorks Animation. This novel includes never-before-told scenes! For the glory of Merlin, Daylight is mine to command! Fifteen-year-old Jim Lake is just an ordinary teenager. That is, of course, until he is chosen to be the first human protector of a secret world of Trolls living below his peaceful hometown of Arcadia. If Jim fails at his mission, humankind will cease to exist. The fate of the world rests on his shoulders. Can Jim be the Trollhunter and stay a normal kid at the same time? Probably not. But being normal was never really any fun anyway. Fans of the Netflix series are sure to be enthralled by this thrilling retelling of how Jim Lake’s amazing adventure began. Not only that, they can also learn details about Jim’s backstory and home life that aren’t included in the episode. The Adventure Begins is a must-read for all Trollhunters fans! This book includes full-color glossy inserts with images from the episode! DreamWorks Trollhunters © 2017 DreamWorks Animation LLC. All Rights Reserved.

In Children’s Books on the Big Screen, Meghann Meeusen goes beyond the traditional adaptation approach of comparing and contrasting the similarities of film and book versions of a text. By tracing a pattern across films for young viewers, Meeusen proposes that a consistent trend can be found in movies adapted from children’s and young adult books: that representations of binaries such as male/female, self/other, and adult/child become more strongly contrasted and more diametrically opposed in the film versions. The book describes this as binary polarization, suggesting that starker opposition between concepts leads to shifts in the messages that texts send, particularly when it comes to representations of gender, race, and childhood. After introducing why critics need a new way of thinking about children’s adapted texts, Children’s Books on the Big Screen uses middle-grade fantasy adaptations to explore the reason for binary polarization and looks at the results of polarized binaries in adolescent films and movies adapted from picture books. Meeusen also digs into instances when multiple films are adapted from a single source such as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and ends with pragmatic classroom application, suggesting teachers might utilize this theory to help students think critically about movies created by the Walt Disney corporation. Drawing from numerous popular contemporary examples, Children’s Books on the Big Screen posits a theory that can begin to explain what happens—and what is at stake—when children’s and young adult books are made into movies.