A journey behind the mask and into the mind of Gotham City’s Caped Crusader, timed for the summer 2012 release of The Dark Knight Rises Batman is one of the most compelling and enduring characters to come from the Golden Age of Comics, and interest in his story has only increased through countless incarnations since his first appearance in Detective Comics #27 in 1939. Why does this superhero without superpowers fascinate us? What does that fascination say about us? Batman and Psychology explores these and other intriguing questions about the masked vigilante, including: Does Batman have PTSD? Why does he fight crime? Why as a vigilante? Why the mask, the bat, and the underage partner? Why are his most intimate relationships with “bad girls” he ought to lock up? And why won't he kill that homicidal, green-haired clown? Gives you fresh insights into the complex inner world of Batman and Bruce Wayne and the life and characters of Gotham City Explains psychological theory and concepts through the lens of one of the world’s most popular comic book characters Written by a psychology professor and “Superherologist” (scholar of superheroes)

So many people watch films and yet so few know how to write a film well. Film writing is a very specific art form. Over the past twenty-something years Janet van Eeden made every mistake in the book and eventually turned to the experts. Using advice from screenwriting experts such as Robert McKee and Christopher Vogler, among many others, Janet van Eeden developed an effective approach to scriptwriting. Cut to the Chase breaks down the essentials of writing for film. Janet van Eeden shares her experience of writing feature films and short films, as well as her many years of lecturing, in this book. This user-friendly manual unlocks the world of scriptwriting for students. It includes a step-by-step writing programme, setting specific tasks after each chapter, so that the reader can build up their own film script. The reader is guided towards writing a well thought-out first draft script written to internationally acceptable standards.

Whoa, Brittania! Panic at the BBC! It¿s Christmas Eve, 1944. America's favorite singing cowboy Tex Riley and his troupe are late for a special holiday broadcast at the BBC. Out of desperation, Mabel, their tour manager, and Miles, the frantic young producer, grab whomever they can ¿ a snobby announcer, an amiable soundman, a passing soap opera actor ¿ slap them into costume, hand them scripts (after all, it's radio!) and shove them in front of the studio audience. The resulting performance is one England will never forget, full of Christmas songs and quirky cowboy tunes. This is the holiday version of Chaps!

Alexandra van de Kamp's Ricochet Script examines life as a plot slipping from our hands, veering in unexpected directions as years coalesce behind us. These poems bargain with time as a foreign, surreal, and elusive entity, where whole days can feel as if they were "written/in someone else's script." In vivid, at times playful musings, van de Kamp grapples with midlife, loss, and the strangeness of the body, while never forgetting the unrelenting beauty of being alive. These poems invoke a wide range of storylines, from Hitchcock's Lifeboat and spy thrillers to aging parents, to confront the unpredictable and ricocheting world. Alexandra van de Kamp tells us "I want to make sense of abundance." In her beautifully wrought poems, we experience the sheer delight of all the sights, smells, and sounds of this world. Yet few poets are as deft at simultaneously evoking the precarity and consequent tenderness of existence. Van de Kamp's is a world made magical through art. She is canny, funny, filmic, but she can also stop your heart with the sudden apprehension of how time moves through us, "coaxing us / to bear something so much larger than ourselves." --Sheila Black, co-editor of Beauty is a Verb, author of Iron Ardent

Summary Hello, Scratch! is a how-to book that helps parents and kids work together to learn programming skills by creating new versions of old retro-style arcade games with Scratch. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Technology Can 8-year-olds write computer programs? You bet they can! In Scratch, young coders use colorful blocks and a rich graphical environment to create programs. They can easily explore ideas like input and output, looping, branching, and conditionals. Scratch is a kid-friendly language created by MIT that is a safe and fun way to begin thinking like a programmer, without the complexity of a traditional programming language. About the Book Hello Scratch! guides young readers through five exciting games to help them take their first steps in programming. They'll experiment with key ideas about how a computer program works and enjoy the satisfaction of immediate success. These carefully designed projects give readers plenty of room to explore by imagining, tinkering, and personalizing as they learn. What's Inside Learn by experimentation Learn to think like a programmer Build five exciting, retro-style games Visualize the organization of a program About the Readers Written for kids 8-14. Perfect for independent learning or working with a parent or teacher. About the Authors Kids know how kids learn. Sadie and Gabriel Ford, 12-year-old twins and a formidable art and coding team, wrote this book with editing help from their mother, author Melissa Ford! Table of Contents PART 1 - SETTING UP THE ARCADE Getting to know your way around Scratch Becoming familiar with the Art Editor Meeting Scratch's key blocks through important coding concepts PART 2 - TURNING ON THE MACHINES Designing a two-player ball-and-paddle game Using conditionals to build a two-player ball-and-paddle game PART 3 - CODING AND PLAYING GAMES Designing a fixed shooter Using conditionals to build your fixed shooter Designing a one-player ball-and-paddle game Using variables to build your one-player ball-and-paddle game Designing a simple platformer Using X and Y coordinates to make a simple platformer Making a single-screen platformer Using arrays and simulating gravity in a single-screen platformer Becoming a game maker

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