What happens when we set out to understand LEGO not just as a physical object but as an idea, an icon of modernity, an image-maybe even a moving image? To what extent can the LEGO brick fit into the multimedia landscape of popular culture, especially film culture, today? Launching from these questions, Dana Polan traces LEGO from thing to film and asserts that The LEGO Movie is an exemplar of key directions in mainstream cinema, combining the visceral impact of effects and spectacle with ironic self-awareness and savvy critique of mass culture as it reaches for new heights of creativity.

Incorporating insights from conversations with producer Dan Lin and writer-directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, Polan examines the production and reception of The LEGO Movie and closely analyzes the film within popular culture at large and in relation to LEGO as a toy and commodity. He identifies the film's particular stylistic and narrative qualities, its grasp of and response to the culture industry, and what makes it a distinctive work of animation within the seeming omnipresence of animation in Hollywood, and reveals why the blockbuster film, in all its silliness and seriousness, stands apart as a divergent cultural work.

About the Author
Dana Polan is a professor of cinema studies in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and former president of the Society for Cinema Studies. He is the author of eight books in film and media studies, including The Sopranos and Pulp Fiction, and approximately two hundred essays and reviews.

Reviews
Dana Polan is a master-builder of film criticism...[Polan] riffs on...The LEGO Movie with the speed, wit, dexterity, and precision of Wyldstyle, building new arguments by dissembling and reassembling one part of the film after another. It's a dazzling performance, as fast-paced and all-over-the-place as his subject-zigging-zagging this way and that-and comes together in one analytical set-piece after another. * PopMatters, "The Best Books of 2020: Non-Fiction" *
[The LEGO Movie] nails much of what makes Phil Lord and Chris Miller's blockbuster so smart. * The Film Stage *



Book Information
ISBN 9781477321577
Author Dana Polan
Format Paperback
Page Count 216
Imprint University of Texas Press
Publisher University of Texas Press
Weight(grams) 200g
Dimensions(mm) 178mm * 127mm * 18mm