From the revered classics of Akira Kurosawa to the modern marvels of Takeshi Kitano, the films that have emerged from Japan represent a national cinema that has gained worldwide admiration & appreciation. ” The Directory of World Cinema: Japan” provides an insight into the cinema of Japan through reviews of significant titles & case studies of leading directors, alongside explorations of the cultural & industrial origins of key genres. As the inaugural volume of an ambitious new series from Intellect documenting world cinema, the directory aims to play a part in moving intelligent, scholarly criticism beyond the academy by building a forum for the study of film that relies on a disciplined theoretical base. It takes the form of an A
- Z collection of reviews, longer essays, & research resources, accompanied by fifty film stills highlighting significant films & players. The cinematic lineage of samurai warriors, yakuza enforcers, & atomic monsters take their place alongside the politically charged works of the Japanese new wave, making this a truly comprehensive volume.
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Be they musicals or melodramas, war movies or animation, Russian films have a long & fascinating history of addressing the major social & political events of their time. From Sergei Eisenstein`s anti-tsarist drama, ” The Battleship Potemkin”, to socialist realism, to the post-glasnost thematic explosion, this volume explores the socio-political impact of the cinema of Russia & the former Soviet Union. Introductory essays establish key players & situate important genres within their cultural & industrial milieus, while reviews & case studies analyze individual titles in considerable depth. For the film studies scholar, or for all those who love Russian cinema & want to learn more, ” Directory of World Cinema: Russia” will be an essential companion. ...

Georgie Jutland has lost her way. Living with a fisherman she doesn`t love, feeling alienated from her neighbours, she spends her nights in a blur of vodka & pointless loitering in cyberspace. Until one morning, in the boozy pre-dawn gloom, she looks up from her computer screen to see a shadow on the beach below her. Luther Fox, the local poacher. Jinx. Outcast. So begins an unlikely alliance. Set in the wild landscape of Western Australia, this is a novel about the odds of breaking with the past, a journey across landscapes within & without, & a love story about people stifled by grief, regret & lost dreams. ...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE` Compelling` Independent` Beautiful` Sunday Telegraph Georgie Jutland is a mess. At forty, with her career in ruins, she finds herself stranded with a man she doesn`t love & two kids whose dead mother she can never replace. She spends her days in isolated tedium & her nights in a blur of vodka & self-recrimination. Until, early one morning, she sees a shadow drifting up the beach below her house. It is Luther Fox, an outcast, a man on the run from his own past. & now here he is stepping into Georgie`s life. He brings hope, maybe even love, but also danger... Dirt Music by Tim Winton is a novel about the power of love. ...

Murdo, a teenager obsessed with music, dreams of a life beyond his Scottish island home. His dad Tom has recently lost his wife & stumbles towards the future, terrified of losing control of what remains of his family life Both are in search of something as they set out on an expedition into the American South. As they travel they encounter a new world & we discover whether the hopes of youth can conquer the fears of age. Dirt Road is a major novel exploring the brevity of life, the agonising demands of love & the lure of the open road. It is also a beautiful book about the power of music & all that it can offer. ...

This is the entertaining biography of Edward VII & his playboy lifestyle, by Stephen Clarke, author of 1000 Years of Annoying the French & A Year in the Merde. Despite fierce opposition from his mother, Queen Victoria, Edward VII was always passionately in love with France. He had affairs with the most famous Parisian actresses, courtesans & can-can dancers. He spoke French more elegantly than English. He was the first ever guest to climb the Eiffel Tower with Gustave Eiffel, in defiance of an official English ban on his visit. He turned his French seduction skills into the diplomatic prowess that sealed the Entente Cordiale. A quintessentially English king? Pas du tout! Stephen Clarke argues that as ` Dirty Bertie`, Edward learned all the essentials in life from the French. ...

Pedro Juan Gutiérrez`s Dirty Havana Trilogy tells the story of Pedro Juan, an ex-radio journalist who wanders from one odd job to the next, half-disgusted & half-fascinated by his predicament. Working as a garbage-man, dealing on the black market, selling marijuana, & hustling lady tourists off the streets, Pedro Juan throws himself wholeheartedly into the pleasures of the flesh in his squalid surroundings: drink, sex & more sex. These novels are many things: visceral & unforgettably picaresque, a damning portrait of vice & poverty in a third-world country, & an insane journey into the condemned soul of a sexual deviant- the title itself is probably responsible for Pedro Juan Gutiérrez’s reputation as the master of ‘dirty realism’. You can easily sense from reading the text that this is written by someone very close to the core of the material- Havana itself. Living in Havana, Gutiérrez began to work selling ice cream & newspapers when he was eleven years old; he was a soldier, swimming & kayak instructor, agricultural worker, technician in construction, technical designer, radio speaker & journalist for 26 years. Not only this, but nowadays he is a painter, sculptor & author of several poetry books. Gutiérrez depicts life in the shady alleys of Havana with his unadorned style- without taking any political stance, his books describe contemporary Cuba in an unembellished way, & his life most certainly informs this style. ...

In Victorian London, filth was everywhere: horse traffic filled the streets with dung, household rubbish went uncollected, cesspools brimmed with ”night soil, ” graveyards teemed with rotting corpses, the air itself was choked with smoke. In this intimately visceral book, Lee Jackson guides us through the underbelly of the Victorian metropolis, introducing us to the men & women who struggled to stem a rising tide of pollution & dirt, & the forces that opposed them. Through thematic chapters, Jackson describes how Victorian reformers met with both triumph & disaster. Full of individual stories & overlooked details--from the dustmen who grew rich from recycling, to the peculiar history of the public toilet--this riveting book gives us a fresh insight into the minutiae of daily life & the wider challenges posed by the unprecedented growth of the Victorian capital. ...

GET D!RTY! Next time you`re traveling or just chattin` in Spanish with your friends, drop the textbook formality & bust out with expressions they never teach you in school, including: * cool slang * funny insults * explicit sex terms * raw swear words Dirty Spanish teaches the casual expressions heard every day on the streets of Spain & Latin America: * What`s up? ` Que tal? * I`m shitfaced. Estoy mamado. * Check out all the hotties!! Mirale las bomboncitas! * Will you suck me off? ` Me lo chuparias? * I have the runs. Yo tengo un chorrillo. * What a motherfucker!! Que conchesuma! * That forward is legit. Es chevere ese delantero. ...

In 1789, Alexander Mackenzie traveled 1200 miles on the immense river in Canada that now bears his name, in search of the fabled Northwest Passage that had eluded mariners for hundreds of years. In 2016, the acclaimed memoirist Brian Castner retraced Mackenzie`s route by canoe in a grueling journey -- & discovered the Passage he could not find. Disappointment River is a dual historical narrative & travel memoir that at once transports readers back to the heroic age of North American exploration & places them in a still rugged but increasingly fragile Arctic wilderness in the process of profound alteration by the dual forces of globalization & climate change. Fourteen years before Lewis & Clark, Mackenzie set off to cross the continent of North America with a team of voyageurs & Chipewyan guides, to find a trade route to the riches of the East. What he found was a river that he named ” Disappointment.” Mackenzie died thinking he had failed. He was wrong. In this book, Brian Castner not only retells the story of Mackenzie`s epic voyages in vivid prose, he personally retraces his travels, battling exhaustion, exposure, mosquitoes, white water rapids & the threat of bears. He transports readers to a world rarely glimpsed in the media, of tar sands, thawing permafrost, remote indigenous villages &, at the end, a wide open Arctic Ocean that could become a far-northern Mississippi of barges & pipelines & oil money. ...