1 comments about Costumes, Accessories, Props, And Stage Illusions Made Easy.

1. Usually Meriwether's fine guides are aimed to kids and young adult - but Costumes, Accessories, Props And Stage Illusions Made Easy is too important to limit to teens alone: it offers any aspiring stage crew the tools needed to create quality stages and dramatic acts. Chapters cover all aspects of making costumes and scenes, and will prove a perfect reference for beginning productions at any age level.

1 comments about Digital Moviemaking (Wadsworth Series in Broadcast and Production).

1. This text is a must for any beginning film student because it does a real good job about detailing film. However, it simplifies the term so it isn't so mind boggling to grasp. And the pictures and diagrams and examples really help you understand th production side of filming and what Videographers, Directors, Actors, Editors, Production Designers, do in filmmaking. A great read for anyone who wants to make television programs and or films.

1 comments about The Sanford Meisner Approach Workbook II : Emotional Freedom.

1. Larry Silverberg clarifies his mentor's theories and provides us with a systematic, effective approach to acting's emotional component. Gone are the exercises dealing with the actor's personal emotional trauma--no more teacher as therapist. Meisner's approach is in the "now" and works in the fertile field of the actor's imagination. With practice it works every time. Larry Silverberg has crafted a treasure.

5 comments about The Essential Guide to Planets and Moons (Star Wars).

1. The information on websites such as Wookiepedia is much better. It dosn't go in depth, and right now is quite outdated. I was expected maps of the galaxy and planets, but there were none, just a very small section of the planet. I would wait until the Star Wars Atlas (Which I'm extremely excited for) comes out.



2. This book can be helpful to hard core fans, but it is woefully incomplete and I was not impressed with the tiny artwork. One reviewer here hit it spot on when they said that this book should have focused more on what the planets were like (climate, ecology, civilizations,cultures, mini-history) rather than rehashing the stories from those worlds. It would have been nice if they had explained the meaning of "Agriworlds" And "Industrial Worlds" and their roles in the SW Galaxy. It would have been nice if they'd done the obvious and updated the book to include the Prequel worlds too. And while they were at it, some of the more intrieguing worlds from the obscure corners of the universe like Togoria, Renastasia, Dellallt, Grizmallt,Taris, Or Malachor V.(Heck- since they could included Rafa IV, they could have included some of these) Of corse if they expanded this in the way I'd like to see, it would be a huge richly illustrated tome indeed. But I'd buy it.



3. Although it is not officially a supplement, I found this book indispensable for gamemastering in the Star Wars Roleplaying Game. The fact is, there really isn't a better resource for finding new places to visit in the Star Wars Universe. Even if you're not into the RPG scene, however, this member of the 'Essential Guide' series is an excellent read.

   For some of those, namely the hardcore fans that have read every single Star Wars thing ever published (I cannot claim this title, as I've only read about half of it all) this book might seem a bit redundant. All of the locations are taken from either film or literature, so if you've read all the literature it follows that you'll have seen all of the 100 worlds depicted here at least once. Nevertheless, it is useful to have all of this information in one place, in case you forgot just which world the Ugnaughts come from (Umgul) or how to spell "Mrlsst." The Star Wars Encyclopedia and Guide to the SW Universe have all of this information as well... somewhere. The problem is you have to remember what you were looking for to find it. This book simplifies matters if you just have to know, but can't recall any of it.

   For those who are NOT hardcore fans or could care less that Wild Boetays can be found on Garos IV, you probably won't find this guide more than moderately amusing. The other ones in the series (Characters, Vehicles and Vessels, and Weapons and Tech, to name a few) might be more diverting. But for those who are serious about Star Wars (you know who you are) the Guide to Planets and Moons is a really cheap thrill.




4. This book is very cool.There are 200 planets in this book.But there are way more planets then this.



5. This book is helpful for those who haven't read a certain Star Wars book, but come across one of the planets in that book mentioned in some other book. However, with all the new books coming out right now, you'll find that this book is pretty useless for them.

2 comments about A Number.

1. Churchill is never one to shy from difficult subjects, and this play is no different. Here she explores the emotional (as well as legal) aspects of cloning and what identity really means. In each section, Father meets with three of his "sons", all clones, to try to hammer out their complicated relationship with him, his "original" son, and to each other. A good read. Would be OK for college or professional production, but high schools and community productions wouldn't be able to pull it off.



2. On a routine visit to hospital, Bernard receives some shocking news: he's been cloned. When he confronts his father, he finds out it's worse: he is just one in an unknown number of genetically identical sons. But is Bernard the original or a copy? Does it matter? And what's going to happen when two other versions come knocking at the door? "A Number" takes the ethical labyrinth of genetic engineering, and the timeless debate over nature versus nurture, and reconstitutes them as a bracing family drama. As Bernard and his "brothers" wrestle with a range of very human responses to the news - shock, anger, horror and delight - their anxious father ducks and weaves, grudgingly revealing their histories and the anguished choices he's made. The play's themes might be borrowed from science fiction and philosophy, but its scale is confrontingly domestic. There are no speeches, no grand pronouncements, no finely honed philosophical dialogues here. It consists almost entirely of the halting, taciturn exchanges that usually pass for conversation between men, especially fathers and sons. This makes the issues real for us. It grounds them in the eternal questions and doubts that hover over every child and every parent who wishes they could cancel their mistakes. "A Number" looks fearlessly at what is often left over when the excitement of new science fades: damaged people. In this case, they must confront not only what's been done to them, but the more terrifying issue of just what they actually are. By extension, it's something we're invited to ponder about ourselves. As one "son" reminds us: "We've got ninety-nine percent the same genes as any other person. We've got ninety percent the same genes as a chimpanzee. We've got thirty percent the same as a lettuce." So what makes me different? What is it that makes me, me? What accounts for that look in the eyes, the set of the shoulders, the scowl or the smile that allows a father to distinguish between his genetically identical sons? We can create life in a petri dish, but do we actually know what it is? It's a chilling question, and one that may well be unanswerable. But as Caryl Churchill shows in this spare, harrowing and above all humane play, those kind of questions are precisely the ones worth asking.

1 comments about Who Is Maria Tallchief? (Who Was...?).

1. Although I purchased this book for my children, I could not put it down.
   
   I had never hear Maria Tallchief's story. We get a very balanced view of her life. It tells of the hardships she endured without overemphasizing them. It is a very honest book and does not hide what some might find to be the uncomfortable events of her life.
   
   Yet, while the authors include hardships, they focus on her successes and how the various choices and people in her life had a part in helping her succeed. Her father was an alcoholic, but they portray him as a whole person. Her mother was very driven in her desire to see her daughters succeed, but the reader still has compassion for her.
   
   I love how Maria remained friends with Balanchine after their divorce.
   
   I admire how she did not let prejudice stop her from trying to build a bridge between the two cultures in which she lived.
   
   Due to some of the content, you may want to read the book to your younger children. This way you can discuss some of the difficult events together. But there is no way the information is written in a rough or gratuitous manner. I highly recommend this book.

5 comments about Long After Midnight at the Niño Bien: A Yanquis Missteps in Argentina.

1. The author has talent and knows how to write. However, he does not manage to go even a little bit beyond the usual stereotypes about Argentina. It may have been too easy for him to fall to the temptation of using the same template over and over again when he was working for Reuters during those years when the Argentinian economy collapsed, and the world showed a sudden, albeit passing, interest in that country's fate: this book is just that same template more elaborated and expanded. Although the author seems to be a perceptive young man and seems to have spent some effort researching the country's history, he wasn't able to come up with an understanding beyond the cliche. That's at least my humble opinion, having spent 25 years of my life in that country. I still give this book three stars because it's entertaining and it taught me a couple of things about Discepolo and the tango.



2. 
   
   Books and blogs by women about their tango experiences/epiphanies in Buenos Aires proliferate yearly. (OK, so I'm one of those women.)
   
   It's refreshing to read a story about a foreigner in Buenos Aires written by a man. Sure, we've had the cheap and disgusting Kiss and Tango by Marina Palmer, and the interesting pre-crisis Bad Times in Buenos Aires by Miranda France, among many others, but now we have something entirely different: Brian Winter's Long After Midnight at the Nino Bien; a Yanqui's Missteps in Argentina.
   
   Not a memoir, but rather a well-written attempt to make 21st century readers understand the why-and-wherefores of the Buenos Aires of today. It's not an excuse for the author to delve into his emotional past, or to write about sexual encounters, nor does he do any reflection--the main aspect of a memoir. It's an impressionistic travelogue with fantasy characters--think Wizard of Oz or Star Wars set in South America with lots of illuminating and witty historical citations.
   
   Young Mr. Winter (a recent college grad who floats to Argentina hoping to find a job) also writes about his experience as a tango dancer wannabe. He relates preposterous scenes with fictitious milongueros, but I believe these scenes, while accurately conveying feelings and emotions if not truths, are not from his experience but from research and imagination. He is a fantastic researcher, as well as a hell of a writer. And he's funny, too!
   
   He wanted to write an essay about Buenos Aires, and how then could he leave out tango, even if he knew nothing and cared less about it? His Mafia round table of wise old milongueros allow for exposition and stories about Argentina's history, the influence of the gauchos, the corruption of the politicians, the legacy of Peron and Evita. Miller quotes tangos and the gaucho poem, Martin Fierro. He quotes and relates and integrates, all with humor and a great turn of phrase, and it makes for enjoyable reading, and a history lesson too.
   
   But I do know about the milongas, the milongueros, and certainly, about Nino Bien, the "decaying bar" of the title. His stories of cartoon characters like El Nene, El Dandi, El Chino 1 & 2, and El Tigre entertain and maybe enlighten. Certainly it's not the habit of real milongueros, or anyone else in a milonga, to drink frozen strawberry daiquiris at La Ideal or Nino Bien, let alone wear white terrycloth suits with orange shirts and pink scarves and lead ganchos and barridas. While he has the tango facts and details mostly all wrong, he nevertheless zeros in on the mood, effect and the result. The milonga is an easy target for satire.
   
   Yes, there are countless factual errors in the tango telling, and lots of mistakes in Castellano and Buenos Aires geography, but from my fact checking on the internet, Miller's tales of political corruption, battles, presidents, and gauchos all seem to ring true. I especially enjoyed the story of the depressed tango lyricist Discepolo and his mis-alignment with the government, and his artistic crashes with the tango god himself, Carlos Gardel.
   
   So let's not read this book as a personal memoir, or as history, but rather as a fable of life and times in Buenos Aires from 2000-2004 from a foreigner's perspective. Despite its flaws in accuracy, there's much to be learned here, as well as several laughs and a couple of hours of entertaining reading.



3. LONG AFTER MIDNIGHT AT THE NINO BIEN: A YANQUI'S MISSTEPS IN ARGENTINA tells of an American who decides on a whim to move to Argentina and learn to tango - his quest to shine in the tango hall with a group of elderly men who move like Enrique Iglesias and his quest to understand the tango leads to a deeper cultural appreciation of Argentina as a whole: an appreciation which comes to life in a book highly recommended for a range of collections: those surveying international dance in general, tango in particular, or Latin American or Argentinean culture as a whole.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch



4. This book makes Argentina come alive with real people and lively dialogue. I've read a lot about Argentina's social, political and economic crises, but the country never really came together for me until I read this book. Argentina, like the tango, is a sad thought you can dance to. Of course, it's a foreigner's perspective, but a fresh one from a young man who jumped into the whirl of Argentine life without preconceptions and writes about it with a refreshing honesty and lack of pretense.



5. As a Latina who was married to an Argentinean for many years and spent some time in Argentina in both the capital, Buenos Aires, and city of Mendoza in the wine country, I looked forward to reading this book. On the plus side, some of it is wryly humorous, and the author's chronicle of the history of the tango in Argentina is somewhat interesting. The author also captures some of the flavor of Argentina and gives a very decent account of its unstable political history.
   
   Some of the characters described in the book, old tango instructors with whom the author hung out during his stay in Argentina, are colorful, and the author gives the reader a taste of the passion that the tango arouses and of its place in the culture of Argentina. I also felt that these very same characters that the author professed were his friends were probably secretly laughing at the author, a lumbering Texan who wanted to learn about the tango, and would say just about anything to him just for effect, whether or not it was true.
   
   Moreover, some of the author's conclusions are those that only a Yanqui would devise, as I did not feel that they derived from a real understanding of Argentina or its people, given his limited scope of reference. Also, a few of the translations in the book were off the mark, which I found to be annoying. I also found the quality of the writing to be rather pedestrian, overall. Still, there is a modicum of enjoyment to be gotten from this book by those interested in other cultures or in the tango.

2 comments about Let's Dance: The Complete Book and DVD of Ballroom Dance Instruction for Weddings, Parties, Fitness, and Fun (Let's Dance).

1. Instruction for beginers. Beatiful video, but I cant follow it dancing. If I want to dance well, I need a real instructor. If you go to beginers dance class you can get here some very useful basic information to upgrade your knowlege.



2. This is a good basic instruction book for the beginner with two left feet. The DVD was defective because it did not play the waltz instructions and I returned it once. When the replacement was also defective, I just kept it.

5 comments about The Art of Star Wars, Episode I - The Phantom Menace.

1. Probably the best one in the Star Wars Art series, it shows a great amount of the concept art of what became the look of an entirely "new" Star Wars galaxy.
   
   Forget the technological look of the original trilogy. The lavish look of the planets shown in the new movies started at this point. It was a more spectacular age for the galaxy and the paintings show it.
   
   While it is certainly not McQuarrie, Chiang and the other artists do justice to his legacy.
   
   Only the art of the original Star Wars can be compared to the scope and breadth of the art displayed in this book. After all, the other four episodes built upon what was already created for the Phantom Menace and a New Hope.
   
   A must have for any Star Wars and fantasy art enthusiast.



2. Forward by Doug Chiang. This volume (48 pages) contains an excerpt from the book written by Jonathan Bresman. It also contains concept sketches, storyboards and full color illustrations by various artists, among them Doug Chiang, depicting scenes and characters from the movie Episode I: The Phantom Menace.
   
   From the preface: " This book offers a behind-the-scenes look at the lengths the art department went in its construction of George Lukas' universe. The evolutionary stages for each major character, vehicle, and planet are displayed so that the reader can get a sense of how the film was painstakingly sculpted, and finally, how a new style of filmmaking was founded."
   
   This excerpt focuses on how sketches combine and evolve in the development of ideas into the final concepts for characters and other elements in the film.
   
   Staple bound. A Del Ray Book; Ballantine Publishing Group.



3. Sellers are using this page to sell a book that is actually titled: THE ART OF STAR WARS EPISODE I: an excerpt of the book written by Jonathan Bresman. The ISBN matches this work, which is only 44 pages in length and was given away with the purchase of a VHS version of the Phantom Menace. The way Amazon lists this book can be misleading because they refer to it as the paperback edition in the review which claims it is a massive volume with over 600 illustrations. They are actually referring to another edition of the book... the TRADE PAPERBACK EDITION. This error has caused me a lot of fuss with two of the used book traders here at Amazon. Know that you are not buying the 200+ page oversize work with this webpage.



4. I would never have thought that I would stoop so low in nerd-dom and buy a book like this, but there is more to being a nerd than simply obsessing over your favorite fantasies.

   I love Star Wars, hate the Phantom Menace. And yet way back when the VHS release was going on, I too crowded into a Media Play at 12 in the morning with my buddy and his wife to get my advanced Widescreen Collector's copy. DVD has since come and taken away any significance to that item, but what did come along with it was a little booklet featuring excerpts from "The Art of Star Wars; Episode I." For a long time this little booklet and I rarely parted, and I thought I was so priviledged to have this particular booklet and that it would one day be a rarity.

   Imagine my surprise when I discovered THIS book, the actual Art of Star Wars. Not only does it have everything in my booklet, but it presents conceptual art from all corners of the movie. There's so much to look at, and so much that is fascinating to look at, you can't help spend hours just looking.

   The book is hard-bound, with pages made from such high-quality paper, it will make you turn them with tweezers, they feel so expensive. The art is presented in chronological order with the film, so that reading it cover-to-cover is almost like watching the film. For most of the artwork, a little background information is provided in the corner next to a numerical key denoting which works belong to which artists.

   As for the quality of reproduction; I am rarely satisfied when something I've drawn is scanned onto a color-copier, which often is the best option for reproducing them. I still lose something in the translation from pad to paper, a little bit of hue here, some shading here, depth of line there. However, in this book there is nothing lost. (Nothing is lost, or the originals must be stunning to look at!) The artwork shows you just why the movie relies so much on visuals (and not on strength of character or plot). Artists Doug Chiang, Ian McCaig, and Terry Whitlatch to name a few, are so skilled at vividness, their works immediately juice your imagination into action. Looking at concepts for space-ships, you can almost hear them fly.

   The emphasis is on Doug Chiang and Ian McCaig, one a brilliant architectural and mechanical artist, the other a genius at characters and costumes. Whitlatch seems to handle most of the aliens, while gorgeous matte-paintings by Doug Chiang depict, in color, some of the more finalised concepts.

   If you are a fan of Star Wars, this book is a must for any in-depth knowledge of how things developed behing the scenes. For film scholars, I would also recommend this book, for the glimpse it provides into the realm of pre-production, especially for you film scholars who have never set foot onto a film studio, or a design office.

   For fellow artists, I can only say that these works inspire to improve my technique and work even harder at my art. It's always the test of an artist when he runs into someone who is superior; does the work make you want to quit art, or make you want to improve? This stuff will make you choose the latter.




5. I loved the art Ralph McQuarrie did for the first three Star Wars movies, and in the Art of Episode I, Doug Chiang takes the torch and does an awesome job. His grand scale works are so appealing and detailed, I loved it.

   The character concept work in intriguing, there is a lot of evolutionary type paintings which I like a lot. The Sith work is fascinating.

   The one draw back to the book was the lack of explaination each work had. I would have liked more insight as to what the artist was thinking, what Lucas liked and what he disliked. That wasn't in this version as much as I would have liked. But overall, one to own.

No comments about Modern Dance Terminology: The ABC's of Modern Dance as Defined by its Originators.