Search results for ""Thames Hudson Ltd""

Quentin Tarantino is one of the most influential and distinctive filmmakers at work in the world today. His films are so admired that nearly every one he makes becomes an instant cult classic. Here, Tom Shone presents in-depth commentaries on each of the ten films Tarantino has directed, from Reservoir Dogs to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, as well as looking at his early life, acting career, and his indisputable talent for scriptwriting. Illustrated with more than two hundred film stills and behind-the-scenes images, Tarantino: A Retrospective is a tribute to the great auteur’s unique talent.

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People who saw the first moving pictures at the end of the nineteenth century were delighted by a new art that communicated without words – yet they were also alarmed to be witnessing events in a strange, mute, spectral realm, where the laws of time and space were suspended and magical transformations could occur. Some early commentators hailed cinema as a blessing and praised it for resurrecting the dead; others likened it to a hypnotic trance or a hallucinogenic drug. The medium has always been excited by speed, and it enjoys sending the body on furious kinetic chases; at the same time, it stealthily probes our minds, invading our dreams and titillating our desires. Although this is an art kindled by light and inflamed by colour, it is nurtured by darkness and can reduce life to an insubstantial shadow play. Either way, as Peter Conrad argues in this brilliant book, the movie camera has given us new eyes and changed forever our view of reality. The Mysteries of Cinema sets out to map this ambiguous territory by taking readers on a thematic roller-coaster ride through movie history. Directors and critics speculate about the nature of cinematic vision, and there are contributions to the debate from writers like Kafka, Virginia Woolf and Joan Didion, artists including Salvador Dalí, George Grosz and Fernand Léger, and the composers Arnold Schoenberg and Dmitri Shostakovich. The book begins from the audacious innovations of silent film, and examines the influence of French surrealism and German expressionism; it accounts for the appeal of Hollywood genres like the Western, the horror film and the musical, and ends by considering the fate of the moving image in our visually glutted society. Combining contagious enthusiasm with an eye for the subjective quirks of filmmakers and the allure of favourite performers, Conrad delivers an astonishing addition to the literature on the seventh art. With 61 illustrations

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Landscape architect and designer Tom Stuart-Smith began his practice in London in 1998. Known for contrasting built forms with naturalistic planting, he has designed gardens, parks and landscapes in Europe, India, Morocco, the United States and the Caribbean. With clients such as the Royal Horticultural Society, the Royal Academy of Arts, and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, Stuart-Smith has established himself as the United Kingdom’s leading landscape architect. Featuring twenty-four of Stuart-Smith’s gardens from around the world, this book is the first major overview of his career. Through four essays by the designer, readers will learn about his inspirations and methods, while also marvelling at the beauty of his designs. Each garden is accompanied by an overview drawing, spectacular commissioned photography, and text by leading garden writer Tim Richardson. Offering rare insights and ideas on planting, design and landscaping, this book is a must-have for garden lovers and gardening professionals. Offering unique insights into landscape design and planting, this book will provide inspiration and ideas for garden-lovers and professionals, opening up imaginative possibilities for designing spaces from the smallest to the grandest. With 275 illustrations

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In the course of a career spanning more than fifty years, Posy Simmonds has become one of Britain’s best-known satirical cartoonists. She is also as a much-loved author and artist of widely translated children’s books and graphic novels. These include Fred, animated in 1996 into the Oscar-nominated short film Famous Fred, and Gemma Bovery and Tamara Drewe, both adapted into films, increasing her international fame. Simmonds once described her job on a census form as ‘a visual engineer’. Her extraordinary precision of drawing, her powers of observation and her sharp but welltempered wit have made her one the Britain’s most sophisticated innovators, renowned especially for expanding the scope and subtlety of comics. This is the first book to explore Simmonds’s life and work from her early childhood to the present day. In a series of interviews with Paul Gravett she offered insights into her creative process and provided unprecedented access to her ‘workroom’ and archives containing sketchbooks and rare or never-before-seen artworks. A portrait emerges of Posy Simmonds as a chronicler and critic of contemporary British society and a storyteller in words and pictures of rare perception and humanity.

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The talent behind Radiohead’s iconic artwork reveals in his own words and for the first time the creative process that has driven his career and earned him a cult reputation.A restless and prolific figure, Stanley Donwood is widely regarded as one of the most important visual artists of his generation. His influential work for Radiohead spans many practices and ever-evolving aesthetics over a 23-year period, from music packaging to installations to print-making. Here, for the very first time, he reveals his personal notebooks, photographs, sketches and abandoned routes to iconic Radiohead artworks. Arranged chronologically, chapters are each dedicated to a major work – be it an album cover, promotional piece or a personal project – presented as a step-by-step working case study, from speculative ideas and sketches right through to Photoshop experiments and the finished piece. Accompanying narratives by Donwood explain the inspirations and stories behind his creative process and what it is like to work with the band, told with his typical razor-sharp humour and generosity of spirit. Featuring a treasury of archive material, this is the first deep dive into Donwood’s creative practice and the artistic freedom afforded to him by working for a major music act. There Will Be No Quiet is essential reading, and viewing, for fans of the band and anyone interested in the explosive mix of artistic accident, musical ingenuity and creative originality.

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This book is jam-packed with more stickers than there are prickles on a cactus. You’ll discover plants that are stinky, carnivorous and as old as a dinosaur and have all sorts of fun sticking them throughout the book. But wait, there’s more! You can also: • Design your own bouquet of flowers • Stick flies on the corpse flower • Play a game of Cherry Blossom Bingo

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In Why It’s Not All Rocket Science , Robert Cave examines 100 extraordinary projects, theories and experiments that have been conducted in the name of science. Some, including various nuclear tests, have attracted controversy and hostility; others, such as Johann Wilhelm Ritter’s erotic self-experiments with a voltaic pile, seem downright weird. But Cave demonstrates, thoroughly and informatively, that it is only by doggedly asking awkward questions, and paying close attention to the answers, that scientists have been able to make progress. From spider monkeys to human cyborgs, and from swimming in syrup to chaos theory, Cave places each experiment and discovery in its scientific context to present an entertaining guide to some of the most jaw-dropping entries in the history of science. Why It’s Not All Rocket Science contains chapters on the brain, the body, society and communications, planet Earth and the Universe, and to read it is to gain startling insights into why scientists seem to behave so oddly, and how their brilliant if sometimes bizarre work benefits all of society.

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