Customer Reviews:
Film: A Critical Introduction.......2007-09-12
Great book for a humanities class! I recommend it.
Great into to Cinema! Delivery quick and good condition.
A Superior, Well-Developed, Introductory Text . . ........2007-01-29
Whether you are a student or professor, there are a wide range of introductory film texts from which to choose -- it can be a bit overwhelming and a mistake is costly! This is especially true if you are the professor who is selecting an expensive text for your students (and they are all expensive) . . . you want provide them with a text worthy of the expense AND you do not want to invest additional hours photocopying material from other texts to compensate for less-than-fantastic chapters.
With this in mind, allow me to say that Pramaggoire and Wallis' text is the best I have ever encountered . . . bar none. I have used this text for over a year now, and the response has been extremely positive. It may initially seem irrelevant, but this text is extraordinary aesthetically appealing. Why is this important? Because we are talking about professors and students who have an interest in a VISUAL art. This text presents large, lush examples to compliment the text: not all texts invest this effort or expense. Moreover, the selected examples are spot-on . . . they are not randomly chosen BUT are the quintessential example of any given technique.
What makes this text great is both the organization (which others have mentioned) and the accessibility. Let's say you are not taking a formal class in film, you would have no problem reading this text solo. It is that understandable . . . and, let's face it, if an author cannot clearly explain an idea to a lay-person then he/she really do not know the subject. Pramaggoire and Wallis KNOW their subject.
And while there are several "well-written" texts on the market, not all incorporate contemporary examples. While Orson Wells and Ingmar Bergman are key to understanding film, one cannot successful base an introductory text on "The Greats." It simply does not engage the new student. Luckily, this text includes essential examples from film history as well as contemporary examples (like "Super Size Me," "Waking Life," "The Piano" and "Requiem for a Dream"). I am especially fond of the short analysis of Harron's "American Psycho" (an oft overlooked, cinematic masterpiece).
One final reason to select this text: while other writers are rehashing old critical approaches to film, Pramaggoire and Wallis select the most relevant and contemporary ones. They instruct readers on how to view a film in the context of race, gender, sexuality, class, and national identity: all of which are crucial to understanding film! Likewise, they address "film authorship" which is equally as valuable. The text is never bogged-down by jargon (many are) . . . nor is it heavy-handed in its approach. Unlike most texts, this one wants to be understood.
You will find texts with DVD-ROMs, texts with "writing" supplements, texts with online-course access, and other "bells and whistles" . . . but this text does not NEED any of that. (It seems the others are trying to compensate for their short-comings by including "bonus" material . . . but it just becomes MESSY!). I plan to continue using this text as a tool for teaching film . . . it is, BY FAR, the best on the market. It is "smart," beautiful, and completely accessible. Whether you are a professor seeking a new text or a lay-person looking to enhance your knowledge of film, you cannot go wrong with this work. Trust me, it is worth the price!!
Fabulous introduction!.......2006-01-19
This is not only the best introduction to film studies that I've found, it's also a model of how a textbook should be organized and written. After an opening chapter on plot structure and thematic analysis, it goes in-depth into the elements of film form, with chapters on narrative form, mise en scene, cinematography, editing, and sound. The final section includes chapters on documentary and avant-garde film, writing about film, social context, ideology, stardom, genre, film authorship, and the economics of the film industry. Everything is covered very in-depth and in detail, with lots of excellent examples and photos. There is also a helpful film glossary in back. The writing is model of clarity and organization. This textbook is notable for the way that writing instruction is integrated into the text. Each chapter concludes with brief essay which exemplifies the concepts and terms used in the chapter, and includes margin notes which discuss the formal and rhetorical features of a college essay, including organization, research, thesis statement, and so on. There is also a concise chapter devoted entirely to writing about film, including the different kinds of essays typically assigned by professors. Students who read carefully will be well prepared to write film analysis papers for their college classes. Since this is an introductory text, it doesn't try to give complete coverage to film history and film theory, although these topics are introduced. Film history and theory really need to be covered in separate books and classes, as the authors recognize.
As Reference & Textbook for "Intro to Film".......2005-08-26
As a current user of Giannetti's "Understanding Movies", I find this new text to be a breath of fresh air. First impressions: the initial page prior to the content is a splash-page still from Visconti's "The Leopard", a film that perhaps has seen recent resurgence of interest in the film community. Overall, the text tries to convey the thesis of "Film as Art & Cultural Phenomenon" with thorough examples & concise explanations. Also appreciated is the brief desc of "persistence of vision & the phi phenomenon" & other more operational/technical aspects of film, filming & projection equipment.
The book features examples of what could be student film analysis papers. It also goes about analyzing the road to writing essays with an adequate thesis statement.
The book's highlight is the Chapter on "Writing about Film", which will likely help students in their film journal writing & paper thesis formulation. There won't be an intro book to tell the entire "story" of film, but Prammagiore & Wallis's book provides a commendable "structure" with film stills that ties closely to their text.
If you're looking for a summary of general film history in intro film studies, I don't think you'll find it here. Still a highly recommended book for students of film.
Book Description
John W. Cones, whose real goal is to stimulate a long-term film industry reform movement, shows how the financial control of the film industry in the hands of the major studios and distributors actually translates into creative control of the industry.
Cones discusses the pros and cons of the debate relating to the industry’s so-called net profit problem and the way in which the distribution deal plays an integral part in that problem. He then breaks down five major film finance/distribution scenarios, explaining various distribution deals and suggesting ways of negotiating distribution.
Critically examining the specific terms of the distribution deal itself, Cones covers gross receipts exclusions, distributor fees, and distribution expenses. He also investigates the various forms of interest, issues of production costs, matters of creative control, and general contractual provisions.
For handy reference, Cones includes an extensive checklist for negotiating any feature film distribution deal. The list deals with distribution fees, distribution expenses, interest, production costs, creative control issues, general contractual provisions, distributor commitments, and the limits of negotiating. His nine appendixes present a "Motion Picture Industry Overview," "Profit Participation Audit Firms," "ADI (Top 50) Market Rankings," an "AFMA Member List, 1992–1993," a "Production-Financing/Distribution Agreement," a "Negative Pickup Distribution Agreement," a "Distribution Rights Acquisition Agreement," a "Distribution Agreement (Rent-a-Distributor Deal)," and a "Foreign Distribution Agreement."
Cones wrote this book for independent producers, executive and associate producers and their representatives, directors, actors, screenwriters, members of talent guilds, distributors, and entertainment, antitrust, and securities attorneys. Securities issuers and dealers, investment bankers, and money finders, investors, and financiers of every sort also will be interested. In addition, Cones suggests and hopes that the book will interest "Congress, their research staff, government regulators at the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and law enforcement officials such as the Los Angeles District Attorney and the U.S. Justice Department."
Customer Reviews:
A must-read.......2006-02-27
Though a little dated (not much has changed in the film industry), The Feature Film Distribution Deal is a must-read for every producer and every newly minted entertainment lawyer.
The author, a practising entertainment lawyer) covers typical/standard/boilerplate film industry deal contracts as issued by the big studios/distributors, and explains practically every line/item in them, and the definitions of the many contract terms.
BTW, ALL the terms of these contracts are rigged to screw independent producers out of net profit participaiton profits.
Then the author offers 'counter' negotiating points and the reasoning/arguments behind them.
He does state that success in using these counterproposals/arguments is limited due to the 'balance of power' between big studios and independent producers is tilted heavily in favour of the big studios.
The appendices are four distribution deal contracts. They're well worth the read, too, if only to familiarise oneself with them.
It is NOT a book to read quickly, but one to be read thoughtfully, to absorb and to learn the legal and business concepts in the contracts. The structure of each chapter makes this easy to do.
Encyclopedia of Bad Film Studio Business Practices.......2001-02-19
If you are mystified by "Hollywood accounting," this legal expose outlines over 80 clauses commonly found in feature film distribution contracts that might be considered unconscionable or immoral, revealing the formidible odds facing the "talent" side of the industry. A thorough explanation of why there's no "net" profit, and a sobering dose of reality for any creative person who believes they should be paid for making a good product. The introduction lists the LA DA's Office among those who should read it.
Average customer rating:
- A century of books, authors and polemics
- It bestrode the narrow world of learning like a colossus
- If the TLS did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it
- Thorough
- Stimulating survey of the TLS
|
Critical Times: The History of the Times Literary Supplement
Derwent May
Manufacturer: HarperCollins Publishers Limited
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ASIN: 0007114494 |
Book Description
A comprehensive and entertaining history of the Times Literary Supplement, this text is not only a "biography" of an institution, but it is a reflection of the changes in British literature and culture throughout the 20th century. From its first tenuous year in 1902 to its modern-day incarnation, the Times Literary Supplement has been home to an astonishing assemblage of outstanding writers. This work also reveals for the first time the identities of the journal's anonymous reviewers since 1902—a tradition which lasted until 1974. Derwent May, formerly of the TLS himself, also examines the ethos and aims of the paper's editors, management, and staff; and the controversies, quarrels, and relations between writers and critics.
Customer Reviews:
A century of books, authors and polemics.......2004-08-25
This voluminous work serves as a both a fascinating history of this most reputable literary magazine in the English language and as an indispensable reference work. It is filled with interesting information on the authors, the books and the literary concerns of a century.
The TLS was founded in 1902; editor Bruce Richmond established its position as the foremost literary/intellectual publication for English literary discourse in the years 1903 to 1937. Richmond believed that the TLS was for keen general readers and that its role was to help readers find the most worthwhile books.
Not all of its editors were drawn from Oxbridge circles, since Stanley Morrison (1945 - 1947) started out as typesetter, whilst Arthur Crook (1959 - 1974) began his career as a postal clerk. With some notable exceptions, the talents of gifted writers were recognized early by the TLS: Philip Larkin, Graham Greene, Saul Bellow and Proust.
The delicious polemics always added spice to the pages of TLS and the reader can get lost in the obscure and famous quarrels and outrageous observations of a variety of colourful literary figures. One hundred years of books, authors, editors and literary squabbles, who could ask for more? Critical Times is a landmark of English literary history and a must-have reference work.
It bestrode the narrow world of learning like a colossus.......2003-10-01
(Part II of II of review) With the accession after the Second World War of editor Alan Pryce-Jones, a social hummingbird of wide artistic interests and cosmopolitan friendships, the TLS began a broadening of its Continental and American exposure which continues to this day (Pryce-Jones pioneered in bringing to light, in English and German at once, the major work of the Austrian novelist Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities). The unceasing debates in its pages engaged a now-venerated mid-century generation of historians (A.J.P. Taylor, Hugh Trevor-Roper), philosophers (Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire), critics (William Empson, F.R. Leavis), novelists (Iris Murdoch, Kingsley Amis), and poets (Philip Larkin, Dylan Thomas), whose struggles to reshape their respective domains in the shadow of a European landscape fractured in the aftermath of the Nazi and Stalinist catastrophes, and a Britain shrunken in colonial power and wealth alike in the wake of the "American century" of the Cold War era, traced the contours of English intellectual life for decades to come. The most widely-remarked blind spot in the paper's coverage of political books, its regular assignment of Russian studies to the Cambridge don E.H. Carr, a historical determinist and "wave-of-the-future" cheerleader for the mammoth collectivising feats of Stalinist Russia, never lacked for opposition on the letters page, while dissenting Russianists along the periphery helped sustain its both-sides-now balance. By the late 1970s, though, the TLS had caught up fully with history, in the world of peril outside and in the academy, and many of the dissenters - Robert Conquest, Richard Pipes, Martin Malia, Adam Ulam, Leopold Labedz, Leonard Schapiro - became the eventual "old hands" within, restoring to full scholarly view the aggressive, ideological character of successive Soviet regimes - with left-leaning Cold War "structuralists" and "revisionists" taking their turn at the margins.
The debates over contributorial anonymity, a practice long defended by T.S. Eliot as a brake on egoistic self-indulgence by reviewers, and attacked alike as an evasion of accountability before the need to judge the credentials of the reviewer, ended in 1974 with the appearance of literary scholar John Gross as editor, who retired the practice to little dispute. With the mushrooming of academic literary studies since the 1960s, the TLS, with its twin missions to bridge the worlds of the specialist and the curious amateur, to bestride the narrow world of learning like a colossus, was forced to confront the parallel rise of literary theory, the often highly abstract, largely French-inspired host of interpretative techniques whose self-proclaimed "decentering" and "subversion" of traditional approaches to literature baffled and alienated much of the older literate public outside the green quadrangles of the campus. Here again, its "eclectic hospitality" saved it from the threat of suffocation by either side, sustaining a creative tension in printing reviews by critics who often found themselves knocked off their pedestals a few pages later in the same issue. Its editors had long excelled in translating into readability the prose of reviewers who, whatever their expertise and rigor across their diverse specialties, may have lacked the gift of smooth expression, ensuring that at the very least, contentious readers of varied allegiances would always emerge better informed as to the currents of thought swirling about them, having seen friend and foe alike at their Sunday best. Many of the most incisive TLS critiques of the new literary theorists in recent years have come from such up-to-date humanists of the left as the French-Bulgarian critic Tzvetan Todorov, who argued powerfully in a 1985 review that their epistemological nihilism and hermetic manner of expresssion tended unavoidably to render their ostensibly leftist political aspirations impotent in a world outside where genocide and poverty speak in voices of blinding clarity.
Small wonder, then, that a country known at its historic best for its sense of fair play and empirical common sense, and a capital which long served as the crossroads of the global trade in ideas, should have spawned the finest and most comprehensive intellectual weekly in the world's dominant language. In the photo section of his admirable tour of the hundred-year horizon of The Times Literary Supplement, Derwent May includes that most unmistakable imprimatur of cultural arrival, a cartoon from The New Yorker. It provides as fitting a cameo as any of the paper's character: A well-to-do matron, lady friend in tow, strolls past the booklined den in which her husband sits engrossed in a prize volume, nursing an aperitif. "It all started with that trial subscription to the TLS. Then came that Nigel Nicolson book, the smoking jacket and pipe, the pint of bitter, and, bingo, little West Tenth Street has become Bloomsbury."
If the TLS did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.......2003-09-27
Like the classic pre-First World War Eleventh Edition of The Encyclopaedia Britannica, to which it is in spirit a weekly high-journalistic descendant, The Times Literary Supplement of London is among those prime artifacts of the British Empire of the mind which, if they did not exist, we would find it necessary to invent. The TLS, as it is known to its small but influential audience - its circulation has seldom risen above 40,000 - throughout the Anglophone realm, has, thanks to a rigorously scholarly editorial and advertising policy we might label "highest-common-denominator", combined with a topical range approaching each week almost that of the old Britannica itself, secured a reputation over its first hundred years as the most authoritative general book review in English, a sort of Recording Angel of contemporary intellectual life.
As vital and relevant as ever on its hundredth anniversary, the paper that has been called "the mailbox of the British intelligentsia" and "the booklover's journal of record" has authorised former staffer and veteran English literary editor Derwent May to play Ancient Mariner among its editorial archives, and in Critical Times: The History of the Times Literary Supplement, he has done the centenarian weekly proud, with a panoramic and lucidly-written remembrance of the central literary, intellectual and ideological events of the century past, as seen through the eyes of writers and critics whose work was commissioned from, and in turn broadcast from, the city which was until quite recently the confident pivot of a global empire whose scholars, no less than its consuls, had blanketed the globe. May's work is faithfully descriptive and chronological throughout, with little evaluation or cultural-historical comparative analysis to frame it, but its ideal readers, those with a strong prior interest in the personalities and works it portrays, will discern several keys by its end which help unlock the mystique surrounding the TLS.
By 1902, the year of the journal's birth, its parent newspaper, the venerable Times of London, had long distinguished itself by its exhaustive coverage of both Parliament and such far-flung imperial dramas as the Crimean War, its correspondents often scooping by days the inner circle of the governing class for whom its vast and stately columns provided an almost-official daily ritual. The space constraints resulting vied with the rising worldwide flood of new books to be reviewed, and the TLS was launched separately to fill the breach. With the temporary exception of its early owner Lord Northcliffe, whose attempts just before his death to dumb it down in the interests of circulation and profit came to naught under the unyielding highmindedness of those early editors he christened "the Monks of Printing House Square," its half-dozen or so press-baron proprietors - present chief Rupert Murdoch included - have to their enduring credit treated it much like a prize literary orchid, granting it full editorial independence and forgiving its tendency to hover always, in the words of present editor Ferdinand Mount, "on the edge of profitability."
For its first seventy-two years, its contributors appeared unsigned - a holdover from a Victorian practice used by leading periodicals to convey a unified institutional authority - but knowing speculation over the identity of those penning its most biting scholarly critiques raged at all times among the tightly-knit ranks of English letters, spilling over into sly references in its contentious letters columns, which for decades have served historians, critics, philosophers and aggrieved authors alike as a sort of Internet avant la lettre, as they debate everything from the precise dating of Wordsworth manuscripts to the social roots of the English Civil War, weeks without end. In its dawning years, genteel Edwardian bookmen and classically-trained Etonians soon shared column space with such ascending lights of the modernist wave as Virginia Woolf and the young T.S. Eliot, who exclaimed to his mother "this is the highest honour possible in the critical world of literature." As their eminence grew and they came to publish many of their finest and most innovative essays therein, the Lit Supp, as it was then called, granted such arrived stars premiums over and above its famously stingy fees - which for decades were calibrated with a special pounds-per-column-inch ruler. Unlike the dozens of twentieth-century literary journals which have soared and crashed in its wake, wedded as they were to one or another movement, tendency or cultural moment whose days soon enough passed, the TLS has always sustained a refreshing independence from all trace of sectarian tendency, a steadfastly uncliquish refusal to play favorites in its reviewing of books, whether in the spheres of culture or politics - unlike its latter-day cross-Atlantic rivals The New York Review of Books, the home of Lincoln Center left-liberalism, or the London Review of Books, with its high-left Hampstead hauteur. While this "eclectic hospitality", in Mount's phrase, has made it a more-accurate cross-section of the true balance of forces in the world of ideas, a more complete and refreshing diet for the mind, ensuring its longevity, it has led on occasion to what must always appear in hindsight an unavoidable provinciality in time, that hit-or-miss note in contemporary reception which is inseparable from the rise and fall of literary reputation. The paper missed the boat on Ulysses and the early work of D.H. Lawrence, but found offsetting strengths in its glowingly perceptive reviews throughout the 1920s, by one Mme. Duclaux, of the successive installments of Marcel Proust's mammoth cycle A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, arguably the great 20th-century novel. Evelyn Waugh, though, was compelled upon the appearance of his first-reviewed book to write in sardonic correction, having seen himself described as "Miss Waugh," while Kenneth Grahame's children's classic The Wind in the Willows found itself evaluated by E.V. Lucas thus: "As a contribution to natural history the work is negligible." (Part I of II of review)
Thorough.......2002-08-12
I love books about books, and this is a book that is about a newspaper that is about books. Derwent May has written a 550-page tome (not including index and bibliography) tracing the 100-year history of the Times (of London) Literary Supplement. I once had a trial subscription to the TLS and enjoyed reading it but couldn't afford the subscription price. The best comparable thing we have in the U.S. is the New York Review of Books. (The NYRB, though it's less expensive, gives you only 20 issues a year while the TLS gives you 52.) The London Review of Books is not a good substitute: Fewer than half its pages are devoted to actual book reviews, and this periodical has the annoying habit of not following any rules for breaking words at the ends of lines. The New York Times Book Review is unsatisfactory because the reviews are too short. The New Republic is a good read if you want some politics and current events along with your book reviews. Amazon.com is a great place to get book reviews if you want the opinions of John and Mary Doe. But I digress.
May divides his book into convenient time periods. For each time period, he first discusses the people who were employed by the TLS, the format and format changes of the TLS during the period, and then the reviewers and important books reviewed. This last is the best part of each chapter, although the other parts are also interesting.
Two sections of photos show TLS personnel and reviewers and four photos of the TLS itself as its format changed over the years. I would have liked to see more photos of the paper itself.
The index could have been expanded to include the titles of books reviewed. One can't look up a favorite book to see if it was reviewed (and what was said about it) in the TLS.
On the whole, CRITICAL TIMES is a thoroughly enjoyable read.
Stimulating survey of the TLS.......2002-07-16
Founded in 1902, the TLS has sought to present the whole range of publishing and writing. Many of its contributors have shown great scholarship, imagination and independence of mind. May recalls that it has given us reviews of and by the 20th century's pre-eminent novelists writing in English, Henry James and Virginia Woolf. Recently it has opposed Critical Theory, and exposed the charlatans Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.
But May also shows us the TLS's bad traits of `gossip and gentility', the baleful effects of Eton, Oxford and clubbable `literary London'. So it has all too often been a fashion victim, persistently overrating very minor novelists, like Kingsley Amis and George Orwell. May himself does not mention Tony Harrison, our greatest living poet, or Penelope Fitzgerald, possibly our finest recent novelist. The TLS also helped to inflate the reputations of idealist thinkers like Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper, Noam Chomsky, Terry Eagleton and Roger Scruton.
May, like many of his subjects, often uses words to avoid judgement, to veil, not reveal, reality. For instance, he notes of Paul de Man, the Yale Professor who founded `deconstructionism' in the USA, that some of his work was `judged to be fascist in character', but he does not explain why. De Man wrote 104 articles for pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic newspapers in Belgium during World War Two!
All too often the TLS propounded the conventional Cold War pieties, without seriously examining the rational kernel of Communism. Consequently, the study of literature substituted for intelligent politics; literary squabbles were given more attention than genuine conflicts of interest.
The TLS is now edited by Ferdinand Mount, "educated, like so many of the earlier figures on the Literary Supplement, at Eton and Christ Church." He became the Daily Mail's chief leader writer, then head of Thatcher's Policy Unit, and more recently a political columnist on the Daily Telegraph. So don't expect much TLS criticism of the present conservative government!
Average customer rating:
- Television is NOT mindless entertainment!
|
Television: The Critical View
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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ASIN: 0195301161 |
Book Description
First published in 1976, Television: The Critical View set the foundation for the serious study of television, becoming the gold standard of anthologies in the field. With this seventh edition, editor Horace Newcomb has moved the book from one merely intended to legitimize the critical inquiry of television to a text that reflects how complex critical approaches to television have become today. Comprised of virtually all new selections that deal with both classic and contemporary programming, the seventh edition adds new material on television history, the reception context of television, and international programming such as Chinese soap operas and Brazilian telenovelas. Television: The Critical View remains a well established and critically acclaimed text essential for courses in critical studies, communication studies, cultural studies, media history, television criticism, television history, and broadcasting.
Customer Reviews:
Television is NOT mindless entertainment!.......2001-02-28
I was assigned this book in a college course on television as popular culture. I seriously struggled with the text at first, but luckily I didn't sell it back. After rereading it again, it has completely smashed the myth that nothing on television is culturally viable. Do not fall into the trap of believing there is no culture left in America. This book will teach how to engage your television in a way that is as mentally stimulating as anything I can imagine. Do yourself a favor and get this book! It might take you a couple reads, but it's well worth it. Enjoy. (I took points off for density, but I have the 5th ed.)
Product Description
On September 26, 1968, Hawaii Five-O premiered on CBS. The show's exotic locale and quality writing and acting made it a fixture in the network's line-up for the next 12 years. Today the detective series continues to be very popular in syndication. The show's history is covered first, focusing on its development and its stars. Complete casts and credits for all regulars are provided for each season; the episode guide gives the title, original air date, director, producer, guest stars, a detailed synopsis of each show, and information on Honolulu residents who appeared in it.
Customer Reviews:
A mediocre book.......2007-07-15
I've had the hardcover for quite awhile. It reads like a self-published fan book, which it probably is. It lacks real insight into what made the show special. The episode reviews are amateurish. Lots of "fan" comments and observations sprinkled throughout. Very little substance about the history and making of the show. Not recommended. If you want an ep. guide, get one online.
Great companion to the series DVDs (at last!!).......2007-04-22
Now that they are finally releasing the TV series on DVD (faster please!) this book is a great companion-the background stories, trivia and tidbits are terrific. It's fun watching the episodes to look for the things Ms. Rhodes mentions-the "looks", exchanges, dialogue, relationships, the music. It's also interesting to consider, as Ms Rhodes does, the issues that were raised by the series and how characters were treated, given the era and the nature of the show. There are summaries about the trials and tribulations of the series production and scheduling for each season, as well as for some significant episodes.
I remember some of the episodes from my childhood but have not seen the show in decades. I'm looking forward to reading up on the episodes, then watching them as more seasons are released in the future. I enjoyed reading Ms. Rhodes opinions and commentaries and am looking forward to comparing her throughts to mine.
As an episode guide the material is kind of sketchy; there is a very general description of each episode, and sometimes there are spoilers. A careful reader can intuit most of the episode plots, and there is more detailed plot information available elsewhere on-line.
I wish there were more photographs, especially candid ones and better quality reproduction. I would also love more anecdotes from the set (the cast and crew "talk story") and about life in the islands during production. But then maybe someone should write a history of production and pictorial guide; this is not that book. It is an episode-by-episode critical commentary (most a page or less in length), with an introduction to each season, and information about the cast of each episode and the crew for each season.
WORST "episode guide" I HAVE EVER SEEN!.......2006-08-10
Beware! This is NOT an episode guide. It is only commentary on all of the episodes. An episode guide SHOULD give a synopsis, or at least 2 or 3 lines describing the episode. This book lists each episode title with credits. Then it makes commentary on each episode and only in a rare few cases does it describe the episode. It assumes that you already know each episode. Descriptions of most of the episodes just don't exist in this book. What an expensive disappointment! Save your money and use internet episode guides for this great TV series.
A Very Good Effort of Karen Rhodes and we Hawai'i Five-0 fans are grateful.......2006-01-07
I could pick bones with some minor errors in here.
I think I know a bit more than Karen does on some
things, but overall (since I lived in Hawai'i and
attended U/H) it's a very thorough effort. Good
job Karen!
LET'S GET THE EPISODES ON DVD!!.......2004-12-23
Of all the Amazon releases I have been looking for, HAWAII FIVE-O, THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON, is without a doubt, the one DVD set I have been looking for over the years.
WHEN IS IT COMING TO DVD?, IT'S LONG OVERDUE!!
Book Description
New Documentary provides a comprehensive account of the last two decades of documentary filmmaking in the US, Britain and Europe. Bruzzi discusses key genres, filmmakers, and issues for the study of non-fiction film and television. Bruzzi discusses the relationship between recent, innovative examples of the genre and the more established canon of documentary. She also explores how issues of gender identity, queer theory, performance, "race" and spectatorship are important to our understanding of contemporary documentary.
Average customer rating:
- The ultimate sourcebook....almost
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The Stop-Motion Filmography: A Critical Guide to 297 Features Using Puppet Animation
Neil Pettigrew
Manufacturer: McFarland & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding
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ASIN: 0786404469 |
Book Description
This is a major McFarland reference work providing in-depth analyses of all puppet animation sequences in every film that has featured the process, including King Kong and Jason and the Argonauts. The focus is on how effective the sequence was and how it was executed. In addition to the analysis, each entry provides title, year of release, cast and production credits including producer, director, screenplay, director of photography, art director or production designer, music, stop-motion animators, armature builders, puppet makers, stop-motion cameramen, sequence supervisors, and more. Ratings of the film and of the effectiveness of its stop-motion sequences are also given.
Customer Reviews:
The ultimate sourcebook....almost.......1999-11-19
This HUGE (almost 850 pages) tome is the ultimate reference guide to the motion pictures that utilize the fine art of stop-motion photography. From the obvious (King Kong, Jason and The Argonauts) to the obscure (Winterbeast, Frostbiter), this covers them all. Almost. I did notice a few omissions, most notably the Lou Ferrigno HERCULES movies from the early 80's, both of which I believe employed this process. Also missing was Godzilla Vs. Destroyah, which used the process briefly, and Godzilla Vs. Biollante, which had test footage in this process (the book covers other films that stop-motion was only used as test footage for). It also misses a couple of movies that utilized footage from Planet of Dinosaurs (Galaxy of Dinosaurs and Time Tracers). But other than these minor gripes, the book is fascinating, full of great pictures of all the monsters you forgot about (remember the stop-motion creatures from Coneheads? Howard the Duck? Didn't think so. But you SHOULD.). A great buy at it's high price tag, and well worth every penny.
Book Description
'The contributors supply skilful overviews of the major critical approaches' Sight and Sound May 1998 international coverage ranges from pre-1930s Europe to contemporary 'Bollywood' musicals first class range of contributors from North America, Europe, Australia and Asia many chapters specially commissioned emphasis throughout on critical concepts, methods and debates learning aids include chapter summaries, critiques of individual films and further reading This text is an ideal course companion for undergraduate students studying film, media studies, cultural studies and literary theory. It is especially relevant to 2nd and 3rd year students taking options in World cinema, European cinema, and the impact of changing technologies.
Average customer rating:
- The best anthology of its kind
- "Not-to-be-missed anthology.... Highly recommended."
|
Pop Art: A Critical History (The Documents of Twentieth-Century Art)
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Similar Items:
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Pop Art (Movements in Modern Art)
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Pop Art (World of Art)
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Pop Art (Taschen 25th Anniversary)
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Pop Art: Colour Library (Phaidon Colour Library)
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Post-Pop Art (New Criticism Series, No. 1)
ASIN: 0520212436 |
Book Description
Pop Art: A Critical History chronicles one of the most controversial art movements of the century. The anthology draws from a great range of sources, from the leading art magazines and art historical journals to newspapers and news magazines such as the New York Times, Life, and Newsweek. What emerges from this rich cross-section of critical and journalistic commentary is a fascinating view of the tumultuous rise of Pop art and its establishment as a major force in contemporary art. A broad selection of articles traces the emergence of the movement itself in England and America, as seen through the eyes of the working critics of the day. The focus then narrows to present in-depth writings on the four major Pop artists: Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, and Andy Warhol, along with an examination of many other artists involved in the movement. From reviews of the very first shows of many of these artists to interviews with them, to news stories about their collectors and their lifestyles, Pop Art: A Critical History represents the most complete and coherent record of Pop art yet published. The book concludes with an invaluable chronology of the major '60s exhibitions by Pop artists. Among the contributors are Lawrence Alloway, John Coplans, Donald Judd, Max Kozloff, Gerald Nordland, Peter Plagens, Barbara Rose, Robert Rosenblum, John Russell, Gene Swenson, and Sidney Tillim.
Customer Reviews:
The best anthology of its kind.......2005-01-05
To put it briefly, I concur with the review from the Library Journal which the editor of the book quotes below. This is the best anthology of critical writing on Pop, and it largely supersedes previous ones such as Carol Mahsun's Pop Art: The Critical Dialogue. My only quibble is with the assertion in the editorial introduction that the work of Jim Dine and Tom Wesselmann is somehow "less incisive" (read "less impressive") than that of the "four-headed goliath named Lichtenstein-Oldenburg-Rosenquist-Warhol". It isn't, and neither is it less Pop than that of the goliath.
"Not-to-be-missed anthology.... Highly recommended.".......1997-10-08
As the editor of this anthology, I wanted to pass on another review that the book has just received. My own quibble with the review from Kirkus is that I don't really understand why they would think that a 400-plus-page anthology of historical articles would be "a cozy read." The purpose of the book is to give a broad and deep view of what critics, journalists and art historians thought about Pop as it developed. It's not meant to be a page turner. It's meant to be a reference work full of useful and interesting pieces, some academic, some not. Here, in its entirety, is what "Library Journal" said: "This not-to-be-missed anthology collects stimulating articles, interviews, and other texts defining 'the phenomenon of Pop.' Madoff contributes a fine introductory overview, then presents 94 critical articles, both negative and positive, on this brash, vulgar, and successful style. Most are culled from contemporary American art magazines and newspapers--sometimes offering monthly entries--during the height of the Pop era of the 1960s. Students and specialists alike will find overlooked or forgotten material here and will especially note that many early discussions still ring true today. The book is divided into five sections: the precursors; reviews of work done from 1962 to 1970; the major artists (Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Rosenquist, and Warhol); 11 artists on the periphery; and, finally, a few articles from the 1970s to 1990s. Discussions of single artists are most interesting, and Andy Warhol remains a standout. There is heavy reading but also journalistic stylings that will appeal to anyone interested in American culture of the Sixties. Highly recommended.--Mary Hamel-Schwulst, Towson State Univ., Md (LJ 10/1/97)"
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