Dana Polan

The LEGO Movie (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

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 within 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.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: University of Texas Press
• Seitenzahl: 216
• Erscheinungstermin: 6. Januar 2023
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781477321591
• Artikelnr.: 75663635

Autorenporträt

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.

Inhaltsangabe

Prologue
The World of Animation and the Animation of the World
The LEGO Movie as Savvy Cinema
Through the Rabbit Hole, into the LEGO-Verse
Falling into Narrative
The Extraordinary Ordinariness of LEGO
The Secret Life of Toys
Production History, Part 1: Project Development as LEGO Goes to the Movies
Production History, Part 2: The Animation Process
Production History, Part 3: The Screenwriter-Directors
Reception and After-Life
Coda
Acknowledgments
Notes
LEGO Bibliography
Index