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The LEGO Movie 2 1 ST C E N T U RY F I L M E S S E N T I A L S
Dana Polan
In this first book on The LEGO Movie, renowned film and TV scholar Dana Polan shows how, through irony, savvy self-awareness, and knowingness about the culture industry, the blockbuster animated film makes for essential cinema
The LEGO Movie DANA POL AN
DAN A POL AN New York, New York Dana Polan is a professor of cinema studies in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and former president of the Society for Cinema Studies. He is the author of eight books in film and media studies, including The Sopranos and Pulp Fiction, and approximately two hundred essays and reviews.
21st Century Film Essentials
rel ease dat e | no ve m b e r 5 x 7 inches, 240 pages, 25 b&w photos
What happens when we set out to understand LEGO not just as a physical object but as an idea, an icon of modernity, an image —maybe even a moving image? To what extent can the LEGO brick fit into the multimedia landscape of popular culture, especially film culture, today? Launching from these questions, Dana Polan traces LEGO from thing to film and asserts that The LEGO Movie is an exemplar of key directions in mainstream cinema, combining the visceral impact of effects and spectacle with ironic self-awareness and savvy critique of mass culture as it reaches for new heights of creativity. Incorporating insights from conversations with producer Dan Lin and writer-directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, Polan examines the production and reception of The LEGO Movie and closely analyzes the film within popular culture at large and in relation to LEGO as a toy and commodity. He identifies the film’s particular stylistic and narrative qualities, its grasp of and response to the culture industry, and what makes it a distinctive work of animation among the seeming omnipresence of animation in Hollywood, and reveals why the blockbuster film, in all its silliness and seriousness, stands apart as a divergent cultural work.
ISBN 978-1-4773-2157-7 $21.95* | £16.99| C$32.95 paperback
ISBN 978-1-4773-2159-1 $21.95* e-book
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