Directors Books

A wonderful book on a topic that had not been well covered, i.e., the history of New Taiwanese Cinema. Covered in detail are its origins as well as the motivations of different directors and how it all intertwined with Taiwan's political liberalization in the 1980s.

"Actors, away from their roles, are people, too." Stuart Oderman, a man I have tremendous admiration for, whisks his readers away from the "tabloid culture" that reiterates one junky story after the other and provides us with a breath of fresh air with his new book, Talking to the Piano Player. As stated in a previous review of mine, reading a book by Stuart Oderman, is, in a sense, reminiscent of finding an old photo album, and taking a much-needed vacation down memory lane. Stuart recalls and interviews a handful of silent film stars and filmmakers, recording their triumphs, tribulations, and tragedies in such an enthralling fashion that puts contemporary authors to shame. Mr. Oderman, requires his readers to listen, smell, taste, and feel the moment, taking a visual medium and transforming it into a roller coaster ride that you will never forget. During his adolescent years, a very mature Oderman would opt to go to theatres in New York City instead of attending school. Serendipitously, as fate would have it, he encountered silent film star Lillian Gish, during one of his theatre visits. He asked her if she knew Arthur Kleiner, a brilliant film accompanist who was playing there that day. Lillian Gish took Stuart's hand, and marched him down to Kleiner. She asked Arthur if he could give lessons to her new friend and Kleiner happily obliged. Stuart's career as a silent film pianist began. Subsequently, he was introduced to some of the most unforgettable people of this era, including, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Frank Capra, Marlene Dietrich, and many more. Talking to the Piano Player, a fine piece of writing, will resonate in the hearts and souls of every reader. Whether you love film or not, Talking to the Piano Player deserves to be part of your collection. 

Critic 2000

Television directors remain an enigma to most students of the mass media; traditionally, their function has been little understood by scholars and the viewing public. In this book, John Ravage studies the role of the director in the producer-dominated medium of commercial television. Built around lengthy interviews with twelve of the leading directors of commercial programs - representing all the genres of "prime time" - the book analyzes the major issues facing television, its past, present, and portents for the future, and the audience that watches it.

John W Ravage is assistant professor of broadcasting at the University of Wyoming. He has worked in commercial radio and television, and recently worked at Universal Studios in California. - from book's synopsis

This book is a collection of ideas, sketches, plots and "cuts" told by the modern master - Michelangelo Antonioni. Some of the novellas in the book (4 of them) made it into his latest movie "Beyond the Clouds"; most of the work is still to be realized on film. Reading this collection helped me to understand the Great Teatrology of the Antonioni's work - L'Aventurra, La Notte, Eclipse and Red Desert much better. Director is researching the same themes of loneliness, impossibility of love and connections in the modern world full of dehumanizing technology. Landscapes and architecture, subtle variations of mood, breeze and movement ... and sadness.

David Gies's in-depth analysis of Juan de Grimaldi is no doubt an essential contribution to the study of nineteenth-century Spain. He rescues with a wise balance of passion and objectivity a key figure in the birth and development of Spainish Romanticism, who was also deeply influential in the political realm.
Gies's work should be praised for the quality of its research, the seriousness of its approach, and the distance that he establishes with a figure that he nonetheless admires. "Theatre and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Spain" is the result of the admirable investigation of a dedicated scholar and fills with great critical skill an ominous gap in the study of Romantic Spain.
A must for everyone interested in nineteenth-century Spain, or, what amounts to the same thing, the complex and intriguing relations between politics and literature.

Dr. Drumin uses a thematic approach to the study of a selection of Hitchcock's work. The book is clearly grounded in the author's background as a professor of philosophy, and the writing is a little academically stilted in places, as befitting what appears to be a textbook (and at a textbook price). However, the book is highly readable, and at the same time, thorough and insightful. Scholars as well as fans will enjoy this book.

Dr. Drumin considers one of the main themes of Hitchcock's work to be the potential for evil that exists in every person. Most people have no problem suppressing this urge for evil, but some people turn into serial killers and other psychopaths. In many of his films, Hitchcock illustrates this theme by the concept of doubling. That is, there are two main characters in the film, one good and one bad, and they play off each other, with the bad character doing what the good character would do if he gave in to his evil urges, and with the hero often coming close to the edge. A couple of examples are young Charlie and Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt, and Guy and Bruno in Strangers on a Train. This unincarnated potential for evil is also present in minor characters, such as Joe and Herb in Shadow of a Doubt, who are constantly discussing how to commit the perfect murder; and the two dowagers at the reception in Strangers on a Train who talk about various ways to kill their husbands; none of these people would actually commit these crimes.

Dr. Drumin also comes to the conclusion that Hitchcock is an existentialist, and he talks at length on the topic. I have only the vaguest idea what existentialism means, so I can't comment on it.

The book looks at 15 films and one short-subject, apparently chosen for their narrative, thematic, and technical significance (14 of the features are the films studied in the author's 14-week Hitchcock course at King's College, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania). Dr. Drumin groups the films into pairs according to major theme, such as Rites of Passage, Monsters from the Id, and Metaphysical Excursions. He then takes apart each film, thoughtfully discussing the various themes and analyzing each major scene.

The films discussed are: The 39 Steps, Sabotage, Young and Innocent, Shadow of a Doubt, Notorious, Saboteur, Rope, Strangers on a Train, Stage Fright, Rear Window, Vertigo, The Birds, Frenzy, and North by Northwest, which are the films Dr. Drumin covers in his class. The book also discusses Suspicion and "Breakdown" (episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents).

Surprisingly, especially given the price, the book is replete with typographical errors, and even some factual errors (e.g., Stevie from Sabotage being referred to as Verloc's stepson though the boy is actually Verloc's brother-in-law).

This book is a worthy addition to the canon of critical and analytical works on the films of the Master of Suspense. I highly recommend it.

Thomas Clarke's most recent book is extremely interesting for students, practitioners and scholars.
Managerial hegemony, separation of ownership and control, agency theory, stewardship theory, stakeholder theory: the book contains excerpts from the most important articles which have contributed to the corporate governance debate.
Professor Clarke accompanies the readings with a long introduction in which he revisits and re-organizes the numerous theories. His approach in unbundling the 'governance mystique' is to insert the different thoeries in their historical, economic and regional context.
Often the Author only hints to his personal views, although these appear obvious towards the end of his introduction.
Can we really move towards a stakeholder theory? Does not the stakeholder theory operate at a different, policy-maker level, compared to the agency theory / corporate law level? Can directors really have a fiduciary duty not only towards shareholders but employees/stakeholders as well? What role can social capital and trust have in the future? Can ethics 'save us'?
The book is great reading, a fine synopsis of the current debate. I firmly recommend it.

I have the chance of actually being in Mrs. Nancy Smirl-Jorgensen and Mrs. Cathy Pfeiler's class, and I can tell you first hand, they are not only fabulous people, but I have great admiration for what they stand for as teachers in this world. I have never, in my entire choral career, meet teachers as dedicated to their work. This book is just another show of what they have accomplished, and it is full of useful tips for the new choir teacher. Anyone that wants to follow in their footsteps should begin with this book. If you leave from reading this book, and only learn one new thing, you'll have benefited from this book. I would definitely recommend it for anyone!

Entertaining I anticipated, but I am surprised to find Richard Monette's as-told-to memoir so revealing, sometimes really touching.

After all, This Rough Magic is a generously illustrated publication of the Stratford Festival of Canada, a collaboration with the Festival's director of literary services (David Prosser), and subtitled The Making of an Artistic Director.

But a vanity piece it is not, either corporate or personal. Rather it is, as Monette suggests, the far more interesting story of "how the shy, lonely French- and Italian-speaking child of non-artistic parents [and illiterate grandparents] came to be a Shakespearean actor and director and, ultimately, the head of North America's largest classical theatre company."

Showbusiness anecdotes I expected, and was rewarded with plenty, but the most memorable come out of the shadows.

"When I was little, [grandmother] Lucia would try to amuse me by reciting a rhyme in Italian about a cat that was married to a mouse. One day, the cat was chasing the mouse, which ran into a huge vat of spaghetti sauce. The cat then ate the sauce, with the mouse in it, and said `Como bono marita! [What a delicious husband!] Tipiti-tipiti-ta!' Whether the rhyme was traditional or of my grandmother's own composition I never found out, but the fact of her reciting it to me would always horrify me, because I knew what had happened to her daughter Carmen, the only one of her nine children who did not survive infancy. Giuseppina, a.k.a. Josephine, the eldest sister, had been carrying baby Carmen on one arm while tending to a huge pot of spaghetti sauce on the stove. as she leaned over to stir it, she accidentally lost her hold on the baby, who fell into the bubbling sauce and was scalded to death.

"... It was not until later that I began to understand how recasting life's tragedies into some form of storytelling, even just a nursery rhyme, could be a way of dealing with the unthinkable."

Introspection I had hoped for, but how rare and delightful that the pivots of personal growth (and setback) turn out to be the book's organizing principle rather than, say, chronology. In this it belongs with the greatest showbusiness memoirs I know -- Elia Kazan's A Life and Moss Hart's Act One, stories not of careers but of how creative work tested and changed these men and helped (or hindered) their dealing with other issues in their lives.

Some of the pivots are reminders of how seemingly minor events can cause major shifts. For example, a first meeting in New York with the friend of Vermont acquaintances, a devout Catholic who was trapped in a destructively unhappy marriage. Monette writes: "I had urged my mother many times to divorce my father, but she could never bring herself to take a step so radically at odds with the teachings of the Church. Curiously, it was this stranger's plight that finally triggered my loss of faith. Any religion, I thought, after talking to her, that inflicted this kind of pain was not something I wanted to be a part of. From that time on, except for funerals, I never went to church again."

Fortunately, the theatre was already replacing Monette's disintegrating family and relocating his sense of wonder.

He did not, however, give up his belief in commitment, for a hundred and fifty pages later he is writing: "I have, in fact, remained friends with almost all my former lovers, because I loved them as people ,,, I have a gift for falling in love -- perhaps because of the loneliness of my childhood, and my sense of having been abandoned as my parents succumbed to their demons -- and a gift for fidelity ... I have always been faithful to a fault: faithful in the sense of monogamy to whomever I was with at the time, and faithful to their memory afterward. This is not willpower; it's just something in my nature."

But something else in his nature was more stressful.

"I do believe my mother must have suspected that there was something unduly effeminate about me when I was a child. Perhaps that was why she made me burn my doll [when he was about to go to school for the first time]. In any case, when I was about 10 years old and she decided to give me a birds-and-the-bees talk, she started to discuss homosexuality. `If you're a fairy,' she said, ` you can never have babies.' ... So when, at the age of 13, I experienced my first nocturnal emission, I thought I was saved. I COULDN'T be gay."

And he recalled his grandmother Eva saying to him, "If all these fifis don't like women, why do they act like them?" Richard liked women, loved them, always would. He lost his virginity to one at 19, almost married another. For many years "I was able to go on convincing myself that I was, if not completely `straight,' at least functionally bisexual. If I wasn't perhaps a terribly good lover with women, I thought that was perhaps just because I didn't understand women's bodies. I understood men's bodies because I had one, but women's were more of a mystery." It took him until his latter 30s "to fully accept the fact that, on the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia. So to speak."

Unlike most memoirs, his does not dissipate into the doldrums of a more comfortable maturity, filling out the details of ongoing success and handing out responsible gratitude. Indeed, the pages devoted to the amazing range and remarkable triumphs of his work with Shakespeare may not quite exceed the number devoted to his less distinguished part in the troubled London production of Oh! Calcutta!, the arty sex-lib revue for which he put Shakespeare on hold in 1970 ... and which he generally disliked ... but which exorcized many of his demons and incinerated many of his repressions.

Monette remains a populist entertainer. Literarily this works, as have so many of his decisions, dramatically. (The 130 black-and-white pictures embedded in the text, plus 16 pages of color are just enrichment, for which I am also grateful. Likewise for the short heartfelt foreword by another great actor, the late William Hutt.)

This is a must-have for any Catholic religious educator. The author brilliantly takes you through the entire year of both adult and children's religious classes, offering ideas to improve any parish's Sunday school program. Because it is broken down by season, you get an easy-to-follow breakdown of ideas to make Lent, Advent and many other holy events more special to those wanting to learn. This should be a mandatory read for every Catholic religious educator and pastor. It's that good.