Dear Screen-L:


The University of California Press  is pleased to announce the publication of:

The Frodo Franchise: The Lord of the Rings and Modern Hollywood
Now available in paperback!

Kristin Thompson is an Honorary Fellow at the University of 
Wisconsin, Madison. Her many books include Film Art: An Introduction 
and Film History: An Introduction (both with David Bordwell) and 
Storytelling in the New Hollywood.

http://go.ucpress.edu/FrodoFranchise

"Once in a lifetime." The phrase comes up over and over from the 
people who worked on Peter Jackson's _The Lord of the Rings. _The 
film's seventeen Oscars, record-setting earnings, huge fan base, and 
hundreds of ancillary products attest to its importance and to the 
fact that _Rings _is far more than a film. Its makers seized a 
crucial moment in Hollywood-the special effects digital revolution 
plus the rise of "infotainment" and the Internet-to satisfy the 
trilogy's fans while fostering a huge new international audience. The 
resulting franchise of franchises has earned billions of dollars to 
date with no end in sight. Kristin Thompson interviewed seventy-six 
people to examine the movie's scripting and design and the new 
technologies deployed to produce the films, video games, and DVDs. 
She demonstrates the impact _Rings _had on the companies that made 
it, on the fantasy genre, on New Zealand, and on independent cinema. 
In fast-paced, compulsively readable prose, she affirms Jackson's 
_Rings _ as one the most important films ever made.

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Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the
University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu