Product Description: This work offers a critical, colorful and informative examination of different types of monster movies, spanning the silent period to today. Chapter One focuses on dragons, dinosaurs, and other scaly giants from films like 1953's The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, an impressive stop-motion production that ushered in a new era of atomic-spawned monster films...read more

Product Description: In 2008 the youtube video documenting the emotional reunion between two men and Christian the Lion became a worldwide sensation. Key themes of the essays in Captured: the Animal within Culture are encapsulated in Christian's story: the implications of the physical and cultural capture of animals...read more

Product Description: Simone Weil once wrote that "the vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence," establishing a relationship between vulnerability, beauty, and existence transcending the separation of species...read more

- Bold, captivating graphics- Short, engaging sentences- Interesting facts sprinkled throughout

Americans have had a long-standing love affair with the wilderness. As cities grew and frontiers disappeared, film emerged to feed an insatiable curiosity about wildlife. The camera promised to bring us into contact with the animal world, undetected and unarmed. Yet the camera's penetration of this world has inevitably brought human artifice and technology into the picture as well. In the first major analysis of American nature films in the twentieth century, Gregg Mitman shows how our cultural values, scientific needs, and new technologies produced the images that have shaped our contemporary view of wildlife. Like the museum and the zoo, the nature film sought to recreate the experience of unspoiled nature while appealing to a popular audience, through a blend of scientific research and commercial promotion, education and entertainment, authenticity and artifice. Travelogue-expedition films, like Teddy Roosevelt's African safari, catered to upper- and middle-class patrons who were intrigued by the exotic and entertained by the thrill of big-game hunting and collecting. The proliferation of nature movies and television shows in the 1950s, such as Disney's True-Life Adventures and Marlin Perkins's Wild Kingdom, made nature familiar and accessible to America's baby-boom generation, fostering the environmental activism of the latter part of the twentieth century. Reel Nature reveals the shifting conventions of nature films and their enormous impact on our perceptions of, and politics about, the environment. Whether crafted to elicit thrills or to educate audiences about the real-life drama of threatened wildlife, nature films then and now reveal much about the yearnings of Americans to be both close to nature and yet distinctly apart.

Product Description: Cartoonists and animators have given animals human characteristics for so long that audiences are now accustomed to seeing Bugs Bunny singing opera and Mickey Mouse walking his dog Pluto.The Animated Bestiary critically evaluates the depiction of animals in cartoons and animation more generally...read more

Exciting narratives of horses performing amazing--and sometimes heroic--acts are paired with action photos to help children appreciate horses' intelligence and gentle personalities as they learn how different breeds are trained to work alongside people.

A noted Hollywood animal behaviorist describes how he developed affection training, and recounts the lions, chimpanzees, bears, bulls, orangutans, elephants, and tigers he has trained for motion pictures, television shows, and commercials. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

From Dumbo and Simba to the 101 Dalmatians, Disney's collection of beloved animal characters is presented together in a beautifully illustrated guide that features in-depth character profiles, cutaway artwork, and scenes from the animals' films.

Product Description: One day, Ralph Helfer, a celebrated animal behaviorist, received a surprising phone call. His close friends had found a young lion near death by the Zambezi River in Zambia and had rescued him and brought him back to the States. Ralph had often spoken of wanting to raise a lion from a young age -- he had been developing a philosophy of training animals based on love instead of fear, which he termed "affection training...read more

Offers advice on evaluating and uncovering a pet's hidden star quality; provides proven training techniques; discusses auditions, portfolios, and marketing; and introduces famous animal actors.

Discusses the use of animals in films and television, their training and care both on and off the set, and the American Humane Association's monitoring of their treatment. (view table of contents)

Profiles the animals throughout movie and television history who have played such roles as Arnold, Asta, Mr. Ed, Flicka, Wishbone, and Trigger

Product Description: Book by Javna, John

Offers behind-the-scenes glimpses of the animal stars of the movies and television, their trainers, and their human co-stars, revealing how they are taught to perform and what it is like to work with them

Presents a behind-the-scenes account of the techniques and trials of training various animals who have appeared in Disney productions.