Michael Jackson was the King of Pop and a noted entertainer, humanitarian, and philanthropist. Michael Jackson was always under the scrutiny of the media when in public. On June 25, 2009, Michael Jackson was pronounced dead from cardiac arrest at approximately 2:26 pm MST at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical Center. There is so much conflicting information concerning whether Michael was a drug addict or not. Michael Jackson had many trials and tribulations over the past twenty years which have caused him much heartache and pain. The media has ostracized and ridiculed the entertainer whenever possible. He was an entertainer that loved to develop illusions for his stage presentations and videos which “fooled” his audiences. Michael always wanted to have a normal life for him and his children in which they could enjoy the simple things in life without the scrutiny of the public and media. Michael has proven to be worth more in death than in life. With all the publicity for his death, there is still no real physical evidence Michael Jackson is really deceased. Therefore, there is the possibility Michael inadvertently created the “illusion” of his own death.

This book critically examines how Walt Disney Animation Studios has depicted – and sometimes failed to depict – different forms of harming and objectifying non-human animals in their films. Each chapter addresses a different form of animal harm and objectification through the theories of speciesism, romanticism, and the ‘collapse of compassion’ effect, from farming, hunting and fishing, to clothing, work, and entertainment. Stanton lucidly presents the dichotomy between depictions of higher order, anthropomorphised and neotonised animal characters and that of lower-order species, showing furthermore how these depictions are closely linked to changing social attitudes about acceptable forms of animal harm. An engaging and novel contribution to the field of Critical Animal Studies, this book explores the use of animals not only in Disney’s best known animated films such as 101 Dalmatians, but also lesser known features including Home on the Range and Fun and Fancy Free. A quantitative appendix supplying data on how often each animal species appears and the amount of times animal harm or objectification is depicted in over fifty films provides an invaluable resource and addition to scholars working in both Disney and animal studies.

In Michael Jackson and the Quandary of a Black Identity, Sherrow O. Pinder explores the ways in which the late singer's racial identification process problematizes conceptualizations of race and the presentation of blackness that reduces blacks to a bodily mark. Pinder is particularly interested in how Michael Jackson simultaneously performs his racial identity and posits it against strict binary racial definitions, neither black nor white. While Jackson's self-fashioning deconstructs and challenges the corporeal notions of "natural bodies" and fixed identities, negative readings of the King of Pop fuel epithets such as "weird" or "freak," subjecting him to a form of antagonism that denies the black body its self-determination. Thus, for Jackson, racial identification becomes a deeply ambivalent process, which leads to the fragmentation of his identity into plural identities. Pinder shows how Jackson as a racialized subject is discursively confined to a "third space," a liminal space of ambivalence.

A kaleidoscopic tale inspired by a legend from the medieval Persian epic "Book of Kings" follows the coming-of-age of a feral Middle Eastern youth in New York City on the eve of the September 11 attacks. By the award-winning author of Sons and Other Flammable Objects. 25,000 first printing.

German cinema of the Third Reich, even a half-century after Hitler's demise, still provokes extreme reactions. "Never before and in no other country," observes director Wim Wenders, "have images and language been abused so unscrupulously as here, never before and nowhere else have they been debased so deeply as vehicles to transmit lies." More than a thousand German feature films that premiered during the reign of National Socialism survive as mementoes of what many regard as film history's darkest hour. As Eric Rentschler argues, however, cinema in the Third Reich emanated from a Ministry of Illusion and not from a Ministry of Fear. Party vehicles such as Hitler Youth Quex and anti-Semitic hate films such as Jew Süss may warrant the epithet "Nazi propaganda," but they amount to a mere fraction of the productions from this era. The vast majority of the epoch's films seemed to be "unpolitical"--melodramas, biopix, and frothy entertainments set in cozy urbane surroundings, places where one rarely sees a swastika or hears a "Sieg Heil." Minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels, Rentschler shows, endeavored to maximize film's seductive potential, to cloak party priorities in alluring cinematic shapes. Hitler and Goebbels were master showmen enamored of their media images, the Third Reich was a grand production, the Second World War a continuing movie of the week. The Nazis were movie mad, and the Third Reich was movie made. Rentschler's analysis of the sophisticated media culture of this period demonstrates in an unprecedented way the potent and destructive powers of fascination and fantasy. Nazi feature films--both as entities that unreeled in moviehouses during the regime and as productions that continue to enjoy wide attention today--show that entertainment is often much more than innocent pleasure.

Covering a time span of 1968 to 1998, and encompassing a spectrum of over 14,000 items across the history of the computer, console, accessories and software markets, the Vintropedia 2009 Price Guide is the definitive resource to a collector's needs.Included within are prices (in GBP), machine specifications, regions of origin, release dates, model names, publishing companies, old ads and more! Look no further than Vintropedia, a guide created by collectors, for collectors.

Michael Jackson Style is a dazzling style exploration of the King of Pop. Every visual aspect of Michael Jackson is shown. The result is a stunning photographic feast spanning nearly half a century. From his makeover as a little boy in the Jackson 5 at Motown, his early TV appearances and Saturday morning cartoon. His album images from Off the Wall to Thriller to Invincible and the outfits from all his record breaking World tours The origins of the crystal glove and the white socks. Working with stylist Rushka Bergman and designers Andre Kim and Andre van Pier as well as Balmain and Givenchy. How his dancing and clothing style has influenced other artists including Justin Timberlake, Beyonce.