"40 years ago as a graduate student I wrote a book about Spaghetti Westerns, called 10,000 Ways to Die. It's an embarrassing tome when I look at it now: full of half-assed semiotics and other attenuated academic nonsense. In the intervening period I have had the interesting experience of being a film director. So now, when I watch these films, I'm looking at them from a different perspective. A professional perspective, maybe . . . I'm thinking about what the filmmakers intended, ...

The enormously puzzling TV series The Prisoner has developed a rapt cult following, and has often been described as "surreal" or "Kafkaesque." In I Am (Not) a Number, Cox takes an opposing view. While the series has surreal elements, he believes it provides the answers to all the questions which have confounded viewers: who is Number 6? Who runs The Village? Who—or what—is Number 1? According to Cox, the key is to view the series in the order in which the episodes were ma...

President John F. Kennedy was said to have been murdered by a lone crazed gunman in a Dallas motorcade a half-century ago. The accused killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, was also murdered under mysterious circumstances just a couple days later.Alex Cox, like most of the American public, does not buy into the moth-eaten establishment tale about the regicide. The President and the Provocateur is not the usual conspiracy volume, and is structured almost like the film Rashomon

Emerging filmmakers need to know the basics of their art form: the language of the camera, and lenses, the different crew roles, the formats, the aspect ratios. They also need to know some bare-bones theory: what an auteur is, what montage is, what genres are. But, even more urgently, young filmmakers need answers to their questions—What lens was used? How did they do that effect? Who paid for that picture? How did they get it past the censor? Most important, Alex Cox believes that all fil...

Centuries have passed and time has taken its toll on Mars. Conflict burns across the landscape. A war of supremacy and genocide at the hands of a brutal despot has brought the planet to the edge of collapse. A search party has finally located an aged John Carter and Dejah Thoris, living in quiet seclusion on a desert moon, in perpetual mourning for their lost son. How could they be Mars' last hope? Introducing a John Carter story like you've never seen before, from co-writers Brian Wood (S...

The enormously puzzling TV series The Prisoner has developed a rapt cult following, and has often been described as 'surreal' or 'Kafkaesque.'Alex Cox watched all the episodes of The Prisoner on their first broadcast, at the ripe old age of thirteen. In I Am (Not) a Number, Cox believes he provides the answers to all the questions which have engrossed and confounded viewers including:Who is ...

The enormously puzzling TV series The Prisoner has developed a rapt cult following, and has often been described as 'surreal' or 'Kafkaesque.'Alex Cox watched all the episodes of The Prisoner on their first broadcast, at the ripe old age of thirteen. In I Am (Not) a Number, Cox believes he provides the answers to all the questions which have engrossed and confounded viewers including:Who is ...

Before he gave us the “one of a kind classic” (The Wall Street Journal) memoir On Writing, Stephen King wrote a nonfiction masterpiece in Danse Macabre, “one of the best books on American popular culture” (Philadelphia Inquirer).From the author of dozens of #1 New York Times bestsellers and the creator of many unforgettable movies comes a vivid, intelligent, and nostalgic journey through three decades of horror as experi...

"A joyful celebration of fan love. Unofficial episode guides don't come much more engaging than this" (Benjamin Cook, co-author of Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale).Doctor Who was already the world's longest-running science fiction series when it returned in 2005 to huge success. Enormously popular, the BBC show encompasses multiple other genres, from horror to comedy to action and historical adventure, and is loved for its uniquely British wit and c...

Crime fiction is the single most popular genre in international publishing and Australia has some of the finest practitioners when it comes to walking the mean streets and nailing the bad guys.Whether you're a fan of crime fiction, true crime or a would-be crime writer, this collection of essays will provide laughter, understanding, insight, ideas, advice and hopefully some inspiration. Learn about Shane Maloney's near-death experience in a freezer, Leigh Redhead's adventures as a ...

"Like being thrown the keys to the TARDIS with a temporal map to visit all those not-to-be-missed adventures in time and space" (Phil Ford, Doctor Who writer).Ever since its premiere on November 23, 1963, Doctor Who has been a television phenomenon. This companion guide presents the top fifty stories from the show's first fifty years—examining every corner of the imaginative, humorous, and sometimes scary universe that has made Doctor Who...

For nearly twenty-five years The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror has been the world's leading annual anthology dedicated solely to showcasing the best in contemporary horror fiction. Comprising the most outstanding new short fiction by both contemporary masters of horror and exciting newcomers, this multiple award-winning series also offers an overview of the year in horror, a comprehensive necrology of recent obituaries, and an indispensable directory of contact details for dedic...