John McTiernan is one of the most influential action filmmakers of his generation. Educated at the American Film Institute and influenced by European cinematic style, he made his name with a trio of groundbreaking action films--Predator, Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October. His later output was a mixture of successes and failures, including Last Action Hero, one of the most colossal misfires in Hollywood history. His career and personal life unravelled when he was indicted and briefly imprisoned for involvement in a wiretapping scandal. Drawing on extensive research, the author covers McTiernan's tumultuous life and career, from his early triumphs through his extensive legal battles and his multiple attempts at a comeback.

John McTiernan is one of the most influential action filmmakers of his generation. Educated at the American Film Institute and influenced by European cinematic style, he made his name with a trio of groundbreaking action films--Predator, Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October. His later output was a mixture of successes and failures, including Last Action Hero, one of the most colossal misfires in Hollywood history. His career and personal life unravelled when he was indicted and briefly imprisoned for involvement in a wiretapping scandal. Drawing on extensive research, the author covers McTiernan's tumultuous life and career, from his early triumphs through his extensive legal battles and his multiple attempts at a comeback.

This book provides an eye-opening account of how we are using, misusing and abusing our planet's most vital resource.

Yippee-ki-yay . . . Discover the explosive story behind the creation of the Die Hard saga in this visually stunning, behind-the-scenes look at the adventures of detective John McClane. Thirty years after the release of the groundbreaking action film, Die Hard: The Ultimate Visual History takes an in-depth look at the entire Die Hard saga, from the original movie through to the hit sequels, comics, video games, and other extensions of hero John McClane’s story. Loosely based on Roderick Thorp’s novel Nothing Lasts Forever, Die Hard, released in 1988, saw Moonlighting star Bruce Willis seamlessly make the transition from TV success to movie stardom in a film so taut, explosive, and full of suspense that it would come to define the action movie genre for decades to come. Directed by John McTiernan (Predator), Die Hard also starred revered British stage actor Alan Rickman who turned lead villain Hans Gruber into a presence so deliciously malevolent, audiences didn’t know whether to love him or hate him. For the first time, Die Hard: The Ultimate Visual History tells the complete story of the making of Die Hard and its sequels, through exclusive interviews with the cast and crew of each film and a wealth of rare and unseen imagery, including set photography and concept art. Also exploring Die Hard comics, video games, and other merchandise, this book will tell the full story of the saga and its remarkable thirty-year legacy.

This book traces the effects of the feminist and civil rights movements in the construction of Hollywood action heroes. Starting in the late 1980s, action blockbusters regularly have featured masculine figures who choose love and community over the path of the stoic loner committed solely to duty. The American heroic quest of the past 25 years increasingly has involved a reclamation of home, creating a place for the Hero at the hearth, part of a more intimate community with less restrictive gender and racial boundaries. The author presents pieces of contemporary popular culture that create the complex mosaic of the present-day American heroic ideal. Hollywood popular films are examined that best represent the often painful shift from traditional heroic masculinity to a masculinity that is less "exceptional" and more vulnerable. There are also chapters on how issues of race and gender intersect with the new masculinity and on subgenres of 1990s films that also developed this postfeminist masculinity.

Performing Transversally expands on Bryan Reynolds' controversial transversal theory in exciting ways while offering groundbreaking analyses of Shakespeare's plays - Hamlet , Othello , Macbeth , Taming of the Shrew , Titus Andronicus , Henry V , The Tempest , and Coriolanus - and textual, filmic, and theatrical adaptations of them. With his collaborators, Reynolds challenges traditional readings of Shakespeare, re-evaluating the critical methodologies that characterize them, in regard to issues of cultural difference, authorship, representation, agency, and iconography. Reynolds demonstrates the value of his 'investigative-expansive mode,' outlining a 'transversal poetics' that points toward a critical future that is more aware of its subjective interconnectedness with the topics and audiences it seeks to engage than is reflected in most Shakespeare criticism and literary-cultural scholarship.

The A-Z includes: 250 key action movies rated and reviewed with detailed credit lists and behind-the-scenes information; a no-holds-barred guide to the greatest one-liners, comebacks and monologues in action movie history; top tens, a tough-as-nails trivia quiz and more.