No comments about Ballet Beyond Tradition.

5 comments about The Other Side of Ethel Mertz: The Life Story of Vivian Vance.

1. A great little book on a woman we never heard much about. I've always wondered about her personal life - WOW - more painful than I imagined. Wish she got her Hollywood Star before she died. She worked really hard only to be a second banana, but we loved her, and boy - was she good!!!



2. I loved this book. I've read several books on Lucille Ball and this was a very cool opportunity to read about her famous sidekick. I have to say, I have a whole new view on Ethel now!



3. Book was in very good shape. I would buy another book from this vendor. The only thing I had trouble with was that it took a little longer then I expected to receive in mail.



4. Glad I got a chance to check this book out...it was very interesting as I'd heard about some of the tiffs between them but never really got into it. While I am sure a few different takes on her life/their lives could also fill in the missing pieces..its a good read and provides the rest of the story to the generally heroic and sweentened up picture often given about Ms. Ball and the whole show in general. They were all each and as a group irreplacable and perhaps may have never really understood their "fate" or "destiny" in the place of American life at the time. What a wonderfully talented, funny, and brillant pair and team of actress/actors they were. While all was not well on the show or in that era as with any...to this day they can make you laugh your head off without the crudeness so many comdieans and shows resort to today. The effort and work put into such show outdoes shows today by far. They were great at what they did for the time that they did it. It was also very sobering to read a human real or truer side to them as the pollyannaness of television lives can sometimes rub off on the viewers. Reading it though I could not help feel a sort of sadness ; Ms. Vance..never really being happy. Perhaps its just the way it was told or written. I would like to read other books about her/them to get a more indepth idea. In any case..I recommend taking a spin with this book.



5. When I ran across a softback edition of this book, I was floored. I had no idea a book had been written about Vivian Vance. Where had I been? I bought it thinking ,well, it'll be superficial at best. Boy, was I wrong. This is an excellent, in depth and very revealing life story of one of television's best loved ladies. Alvin Walker and Frank Castelluccio have written one of the best biographies on a legend I've ever read. And Vivian Vance is a legend, if an often overlooked one. From her humble showbiz beginnings, to a Broadway career, to her fateful reading with Lucille Ball for the part of Ethel Mertz---I could not put this book down. Vivian Vance came to life on those pages and I learned that there's a lot more to a "second banana" than just the character they play. Vance never escaped her role as Ethel, but she lived a full and complete life worthy of this book and was a more accomplished actress than given credit for. Her years of baffling mental problems, the estrangement with her mother, her extensive stage work, her often rocky relationship with Lucille Ball (not to overlook William Frawley) are all here as well as the huge amount of humanitarian work she did for mental health later in life. This is a highly recommended read for anyone who loved watching Ethel as well as Lucy. It reveals the fascinating woman behind the "mask" of Ethel Mertz, a landmark television icon and an American showbiz legend known as Vivian Vance.

4 comments about Herakleitos and Diogenes.

1. It's a collection of quotes with some very terse history. Personally, this book is of no use to me, but if you like quote lists, then you'll love it.



2. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The fragments of Heraclitus (or, Herakleitos) and Diogenes are a collection of the remains of their now-lost works, joined to various sayings attributed to them by other ancient philosophers both in their own day and later. This is basically a collection of translated aphorisms - 124 of which belong to Heraclitus, and 124 of which belong to Diogenes. Each philosopher's fragments are given a brief introduction - although, for reasons unstated by the author, the introduction to Diogenes is almost 3 times as long as that for Heraclitus - and, in a few places, some explanatory notes are given for the translation. I was disappointed that the translator, Guy Davenport, gave no information whatsoever about the manuscripts that he used for the translations here, or any information about the history of the texts that he used for the translation. Although I do not know Greek, it would have been nice to at least have some of this sort of background material.
   
   Neither set of fragments has any systematic organization; there is no narrative to follow. However, within the writings of Heraclitus one is given a sense of the permeability of all existence, and that the world we know is not a stable place. He has a tremendous sense of the instability of life, and he expresses this with some very poetic images: "One cannot step twice into the same river, for the water into which you first stepped as moved on" (# 21); "There is a new sun for every day" (# 36). Some of the aphorisms are much food for thought; others are more humorous: "Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine reveals it" (# 53). All of them are worth reading, and if one chooses to make connections between them - if fire is the destruction of all things and pride is like fire, is he trying to say that pride will destroy us? - then one can come up with some interesting insights.
   
   The fragments of Diogenes are of a very different flavor than Heraclitus's musings. Diogenes, as one reviewer put it below (quite brilliantly, I might add), really can be considered history's first punk. He was certainly an iconoclast, and he seems to have reveled in it. However, he also came up with some genuinely fascinating ideas that we still repeat today - "I am a citizen of the world" (# 7) and "Practice makes perfect" (# 119). He also stated, hundreds of years before St. Paul, that "Love of money is the marketplace of every evil" (# 78). Predictably, some of his musings are humorous - "Go into any whorehouse and learn the worthlessness of the expensive" (# 36) - but some are also quite quarrelsome; Diogenes seems to have had a considerable dislike for Plato, in particular.
   
   Readings this book might take you a full hour. However, there are considerations in these pages worth mulling over for years, and perhaps even a lifetime. This, of course, is exactly what philosophy is supposed to be.



3. Sharp and concise are how these translations come across. Compared with recent translations like Brooks Haxton's (Heraclitus) and Luis Navia's (Diogenes the Cynic), Davenport's work will stand the test of time. Highly recommended.
   
   Extracts: A Field Guide for Iconoclasts
   
   The Cloud Reckoner



4. Before grunge, before punk, before monks renouncing this "evil world" for the purity of the desert, there was Diogenes. If Plato codified and, to some extent, "created" Western philosophy, then Diogenes lit a stink bomb at Plato's Academy and sent all the earnest young students scrambling for fresh air: what they didn't realize was that Diogenes WAS that fresh air. Listen to his dismissal of the great man of the West: "Plato winces when I track dust across his rugs: he knows that I'm walking on his vanity." And how about his summary of the state of Greek culture in the mid-fourth century B.C.E.: "Men nowhere, but real boys at Sparta." Nor did his satiric bite exempt his own condition: "When I die, throw me to the wolves. I'm used to it." How many of Plato's dialogues deliver a message as direct as this one?: "I threw away my cup when I saw a child drinking from his hands at the trough." In pithy saying after saying, Diogenes makes it clear that he has "broken through" to the freedom of being owned neither by his possessions nor by society's limitations, all of which is in some sly way conveyed by his opening [in Davenport's translation] salvo: "I have come to debase the coinage." And, oh yes, this translation includes all the meaningful fragments of Herakleitos as well. But once you have read Diogenes, Herakleitos will seem like the stodgiest old coot you've ever heard of, except maybe for Plato. [Updated versions of these translations are also available in Davenport's 7 GREEKS, which also includes the "complete" works of Sappho, Archilochos, Alkman, Anakreon and Herondas.]

2 comments about Psychiatry and the Cinema.

1. As a psychiatrist and also a great movie fan, I always eagered for a book which reviews movies from the viewpoint of 'pschoanalysis'. At last I found this book. What I liked most about this book is that it covers recent movies, like 'Good Will Hunting' or '12 Monkeys', which are my favorites. The stories of the reflected images and their changes throughout the film history of the psychiatrists who appeared in the movies were also interesting.



2. As a psychiatrist and also a great movie fan, I always eagered for a book which reviews movies from the viewpoint of 'pschoanalysis'. At last I found this book. What I liked most about this book is that it covers recent movies, like 'Good Will Hunting' or '12 Monkeys', which are my favorites. The stories of the reflected images and their changes throughout the film history of the psychiatrists who appeared in the movies were also interesting.

2 comments about Disney's Beauty and the Beast: A CELEBRATION OF THE BROADWAY MUSICAL.

1. This book was a real treat going through. Loaded with photographs, it tells the story as a script, shows the design of the characters, and then shows the special effects, sets, and other cool stuff. It's a great soveneir of the musical, and if you haven't it's a great book to read to experience the musical if you can't experience it on Broadway



2. This book is excellent. It is filled with gorgeous pictures from the Broadway musical. It also contains the complete lyrics and a story line of how the actual musical was produced. This is a definite for any musical theatre fan!

2 comments about Envisioning Dance on Film and Video.

1. finding this book on the shelf of my local uni. was a great joy. the dvd is worth the price alone.
   finding good documentation of video dance is hard in israel. outside of the standard library this has some very importent work. footage length is about 3-6 minutes long, some pieces of footage could be longer bt mostly the editing was genteel.



2. If the interaction of dance and film/video intrigues you, you will want this book and DVD. It's not an encyclopedia or a textbook on the topic. On the contrary, it's more like a college symposium; most of the chapters are designed to convince you that the writer is an authority, without giving away the whole store. Use this book as you would an atlas or a National Geographic article before going on your own journey.

5 comments about Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian.

1. This is a wonderful book loaded with beautiful pictures, both candids and stills (proof that black and white photography is just as visually arresting as color photography, if not more so), together with chapters about Harold's feature films, his early life, an interview he had with members of the AFI late in his life, Greenacres (the fairytale-like estate he built for his family), his relationship with his wife Mildred Davis, his later years, and the author's memories of Harold. Suzanne Lloyd was raised by her grandparents, so this was a real labor of love, one which produced a very classy book. Sometimes it seems like all celebrity bios, particularly ones written by close family members, are either total hack jobs or total sugarcoating, but this one shows honesty and evenhandedness. For example, Suzanne, in the chapter on her grandparents' romance and eventual marriage, mentions that even though they did have one of Hollywood's longest marriages, a marriage which is also considered one of Hollywood's happiest, Harold did cheat on Mildred and have affairs (such as with his leading lady Jobyna Ralston). This is rather shocking information, esp. because their marriage is often held up as one of the rare few happy ones from Hollywood, but Suzanne conveys this information in an evenhanded way instead of making excuses for it or demonising Harold. (Though honestly, by today's standards, Harold's extramarital exploits seem rather tame.) And this couldn't have been easy to do, considering she was talking about her beloved grandfather being unfaithful to her equally beloved grandmother. Throughout the book, she gives a balanced portrayal of her grandfather, and though he did have faults, like any normal human being, he still comes across as a really nice guy, a class act, a consummate professional, a truly talented comedian, someone who really cared about his fans, particularly from the younger generation, someone who did an awful lot of good things for child burn victims (and other children in general) in the hospitals run by his fraternal organisation the Shriners.
   
   My only complaint about this book is that it wasn't long enough! I wanted to read even more about all of these great films and to see even more pictures. I also wished the filmograhy had listed which of these films are lost and which survive. Obviously all of Harold's silent and sound features are still with us, as are all of his three-reelers and many of his later two-reelers, but I would have liked to have seen a listing of which of his Glasses Character two-reelers are lost and which are extant, and particularly would have liked to have seen a listing of which of the 14 Lonesome Lukes are the ones still known to survive. Still, all told, this is a fabulous book, a great addition to either your coffeetable or your own personal library on the bookshelf.



2. Harold Lloyd is often called "The Third Genius," though in his day he was as popular as either Keaton or Chaplin, and reportedly made more films than the two of them combined (a claim I've read, but which stretches creudulity, considering how few of them survive...). This big rich book, co-authored by Lloyd's granddaughter, is ripe with photos, and, while not precisely a biography, paints a warm and impressive portrait of this devoted artist and his work. I give it 4 stars only because its size means you won't be carrying it on the bus or even to bed-- it is definitely a living room book; one to show to friends. and enjoy over coffee.



3. Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian by Jeffret Vance and Suzanne Lloyd is a brand new fantastic book on the life of a master comedian and filmmaker. This is truly a great book and I urge you to buy it. If in the past you've only been familiar with the films of Chaplin and Keaton, please buy this book to find out how much Lloyd actually inspired Chaplin and Keaton's films. Harold Lloyd was not only a great actor, but he and his cameraman Walter Lundin created various great camera angles and innovations. Harold Lloyd's Masterpieces such as GRANDMA'S BOY (1922), SAFETY LAST! (1923), GIRL SHY (1924), THE FRESHMAN (1925), THE KID BROTHER (1927) and SPEEDY (1928) are just as spectacular today as the day they were filmed. Harold Lloyd's "talkie films" have known to be not so good however Harold did make 3 great films in the 30s called MOVIE CRAZY (1932), THE CAT'S PAW (1934), and THE MILKY WAY (1936). Harold Lloyd then drifted away from filmmaking to pursue other interests until the 60s when he re-released some of his films in to two compilation films and so forth.

   Harold Lloyd will forever be my favourite cinema genius and go ahead and buy this book and hopefully his films will be released on DVD as soon as possible.




4. Jeffry Vance and Suzanne Lloyd (Harold's granddaughter) have put together a fascinating book on Harold Lloyd's films and life. Always considered one of the "big three" silent film comedians, it has been difficult to appreciate Lloyd because his films were rarely shown at revivals and on television. The release of this book and the showings of his films on TCM are starting a Harold Lloyd revival.

   This book features many large, beautiful photographs from the Lloyd estate. Many of these photos have never been published before. Jeffry Vance has written incisive reviews of each of Harold's features. He details important events about the making of the films, and why they were successful (or not). He also includes some surprising details about Harold's and Mildred Davis Lloyd's private life. Suzanne Lloyd has included a chapter of her remembrances of Harold. Finally, a long interview is included that Harold gave to the AFI before his death.

   If you are a fan of silent film comedies, you won't be able to put this book down.




5. Jeffry Vance and Suzanne Lloyd (Harold's granddaughter) have put together a fascinating book on Harold Lloyd's films and life. Always considered one of the "big three" silent film comedians, it has been difficult to appreciate Lloyd because his films were rarely shown at revivals and on television. The release of this book and the showings of his films on TCM are starting a Harold Lloyd revival.

   This book features many large, beautiful photographs from the Lloyd estate. Many of these photos have never been published before. Jeffry Vance has written incisive reviews of each of Harold's features. He details important events about the making of the films, and why they were successful (or not). He also includes some surprising details about Harold's and Mildred Davis Lloyd's private life. Suzanne Lloyd has included a chapter of her remembrances of Harold. Finally, a long interview is included that Harold gave to the AFI before his death.

   If you are a fan of silent film comedies, you won't be able to put this book down.

No comments about Student Workbook for Verderber/Verderber's The Challenge of Effective Speaking, 13th.

1 comments about Shakespeare's Sonnets & Poems (Folger Shakespeare Library).

1. Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,
   To thee I send this written embassage,
   To witness duty, not to show my wit.
   (Sonnet 26.)
   
   How to do justice to the legacy of literary history's greatest mind - moreover in such a limited review? Forget Goethe's "universal genius" and his rebel contemporary Schiller; forget the 19th century masters; forget contemporary literature: with the possible (!) exception of three Greek gentlemen named Aischylos, Sophocles and Euripides, a certain Frenchman called Poquelin (a/k/a Moliere), and that infamous Irishman Oscar Wilde, there's more wit in a single line of Shakespeare's than in an entire page of most other, even great, authors' works. And I'm not saying this in ignorance of, or in order to slight any other writer: it's precisely my admiration of the world's literary giants, past and present, that makes me appreciate Shakespeare even more -- and that although I'm aware that he repeatedly borrowed from pre-existing material and that even the (sole) authorship of the works published under his name isn't established beyond doubt. For ultimately, the only thing that matters to me is the brilliance of those works themselves; and quite honestly, the mysteries continuing to enshroud his person, to me, only enhance his larger-than-life stature.
   
   The precise dating of Shakespeare's sonnets -- like other poets', a response to the 1591 publication of Sir Philip Sidney's "Astrophil and Stella" -- is an even greater guessing game than that of his plays: although #138 and #144 (slightly modified) appeared in 1599's "Passionate Pilgrim," most were probably circulated privately, and written years before their first -- unauthorized, though still authoritative - 1609 publication; possibly beginning in 1592-1593.
   
   Format-wise, they adopt the Elizabethan fourteen-line-structure of three quatrains of iambic pentameters expressing a series of increasingly intense ideas, resolved in a closing couplet; with an abab-cdcd-efef-gg rhyme form. (Sole exceptions: #99 -- first quatrain amplified by one line -- #126 -- six couplets & only twelve lines total -- #145 -- written in tetrameter -- and #146 -- omission of the second line's beginning; the subject of a lasting debate.) Their order is thematic rather than chronological, although beyond the fact that the first 126 are addressed to a young man -- maybe the Earl of Pembroke or Southampton, maybe Sir Robert Dudley, the natural son of Queen Elizabeth's "Sweet Robin," the Earl of Leicester -- (the first seventeen, possibly commissioned by the addressee's family, pressing his marriage and production of an heir), and ##127-152 (or 127-133 and 147-152) to an exotic woman of questionable virtues only known as "The Dark Lady," even in that respect much remains unclear; including the nature of Shakespeare's relationship with the two main addressees, regarding which the sonnets' often ambiguous metaphors invoke much speculation. #145 is probably addressed to Shakespeare's wife; the closing couplet plays on her maiden name ("['I hate' from] hate away she threw And saved my life, [saying 'not you']:" "Hathaway -- Anne saved my life"), several others contain puns on the name Will and its double meaning(s) (exactly fourteen in the naughty #135: "Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will;" and seven in the similarly mischievous #136), and the last two draw on the then-popular Cupid theme. Sometimes, placement seems linked to contents, e.g., in #8 (music: an octave has eight notes), #12 and #60 (time: twelve hours to both day and night; sixty minutes to an hour); and in the famous #55, which praises poetry's everlasting power and as whose never-expressly-named subject Shakespeare himself emerges in a comparison with Horace's Ode 3.30 -- in turn written in first person singular and thus, denoting its own author as the builder of its "monument more lasting than bronze" ("Exegi monumentum aere perennius") -- as well as through the number "5"'s optical similarity to the letter "S," making the sonnet's number a shorthand reference for "5hake5peare" or "5hakespeare's 5onnets," echoed by numerous words containing an "S" in the text.
   
   Of indescribable linguistic beauty, elegance and complexity, Shakespeare's sonnets owe their timeless appeal to their supreme compositional values, the universality of their themes, and their keen insights into the human heart and soul; as much as their transcendence of the era's poetic conventions which, following Petrarch, heavily idealized the addressee's qualities: a form new and exciting twohundred years earlier, but encrusted in cliche in the late 1500s. Indeed, Shakespeare's "Dark Lady" Sonnet #130 owes its particular fame to its clever puns on that very style, which went overboard with references to its golden-haired, starry- (beamy-, sparkling, sunny-) eyed, cherry- (strawberry-, vermilion-, coral-) lipped, rosy- (crimson-, purple-, dawn-) cheeked, ivory- (lily-, carnation-, crystal-, silver-, snowy-, swan-white) skinned, pearl-teethed, honey- (nectar-, music-) tongued, goddess-like objects. "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;" the Bard countered, proceeded to describe her breasts as "dun," her hair as "black wires," and her breath as "reek[ing]," and denied her any divine or angelic attributes. "And yet," he concluded: "by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare."
   
   Arguably, Shakespeare's very choice of addressees (a young man -- also the subject of the famously romantic #18: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day;" the first of several sonnets promising his immortalization in poetry -- as well as the "Dark Lady," in turn introduced under the notion "black is beautiful" in #127) itself suggests a break with tradition; and compared to his contemporaries' poetry, even the equally-famous #116's on its face rather conventional praise of love's constancy ("Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments"), echoed in the poet's vow to vanquish time in #123, sounds fairly restrained. But ultimately, Shakespeare's sonnets -- like his entire work -- simply defy categorization. They are, as rival Ben Jonson acknowledged, written "for all time," just as the Bard himself immodestly claimed:
   
   'Gainst death and all oblivious enmity
   Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
   Even in the eyes of all posterity
   That wear this world out to the ending doom.
   (Sonnet 55.)

1 comments about Peter Pan: Or The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up - A Fantasy in Five Acts (Methuen Modern Plays S.).

1. In 1904 J.M. Barrie wrote & directed his new play "Peter Pan." In 1911 he wrote & printed the same story as a novel sometimes known as "Peter Pan" sometimes known as "Peter & Wendy." Since that time there has been much confusion between the 2 editions of "Peter Pan." This product is advertised as a "Fantasy in Five Acts" that is, a play. It is an excellent revised/adapted version of the original 1904 play. But if you are a REAL Peter Pan fan, you will also want to purchase the original 1904 version of the play, currently available in the Oxford Drama Series as "Peter Pan & Other Plays" by James M. Barrie. May this 100th anniversary of "The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up" inspire us all to "think lovely wonderful thoughts"!