Movies Books

There's quite a debate going on in these reviews, so let me return to the main point of these reviews and state that this is an excellent story and well worth reading. As others have pointed out, in adapting the book to a movie, Barbra STreisand made substantive changes in the story, changes that Singer himself did not approve of. It's definitely worth going back to the original text and reading the story as written.

The story is not only a moving tale of the bind a Jewish woman of late 19th or early 20th century Poland puts herself into in order to fulfill her need to study and learn, but a rich portrayal of both the joys and strictures of that society that is now gone (as are so many of Singer's stories). It helps to know something of Judaism to understand many of the references in the story but it is not critical to the reader's empathy with Yentl/Anshel's position.

And yes, the character as portrayed in the book is undoubtedly portrayed as what we would now call transgendered. It is not simply that Yentl wants to study Torah, because if that were the case she could marry Avigdor and continue to study with him; Avigdor offers her this option. She herself says she is not one or the other. I also love Singer's implied explanation for transgender identity as being that of a soul of one sex incarnated in the body of the other. It makes a deep kind of sense to me in both a spiritual and experiential way, and adds another dimension to this story.

This book is very short, really a novella, and is illustrated with interesting woodcuts that portray both moments from the story, and various Jewish ritual objects like spice boxes and the pointers used to read Torah scrolls. Do seek this book and other works of Singer's out, you won't regret it!

I first read this story way back when it first came out -- long before Streisand turned it into a third-wave feminist polemic. (Which, by the way, upset the author, I.B. Singer, so much that he tries to stop production. Unfortunately, he did not have artistic control over the film rights to his story, and so this travesty of his work was produced and lives on in infamy.) Upon re-reading it, I still think it is about a transgender person, not a feminist.

The reviewer here who said that another reviewer "should be shot" (such violent intolerance!) for claiming that Yentl was transgender by making a reference to "even heaven makes mistakes" obviously did not read the book -- because that's word-for-word what Yentl's father tells her on page 8. The story also clearly states that Yentl has "the soul of a man." (page 8 also). So, I suggest ignoring those PC polemicists who are talking about the movie only, which is VERY DIFFERENT from the book, and has ITS OWN PAGE for reviews! (If you haven't read the book, why are you reviewing here in the first place?)

Singer was writing in the 1960s. He wrote respectfully of Jewish culture in this story. He did not mock it the way Streisand later did in her movie. The book has no barkers shouting "Story books for women, holy books for men," and as far as I know, nobody even did that in real life. The line is anti-Hasidic propaganda, as is much of the movie. Streisand's film is a comedy. Singer's story is serious drama.

In the book, When Yentl says, "I wasn't created for plucking feathers and chattering with females," (page 47) is she really speaking like a radical 20th-century feminist about social roles -- or is she speaking literally, on a mystical spiritual level? If she were merely objecting to "plucking feathers" (woman's work) why does she also object to "chattering with females" -- and why use the word "females," as if to stress this is about GENDER? I think she means that she was not created to be a woman, period, regardless of roles. She certainly does not object when her father tells her that she has a man's soul and that "even heaven makes mistakes."

She reaffirms this transgender identity on page 49, where Avigdor asks her, "Tell me the truth, are you a heretic?" Yentl answers, "God forbid!" Clearly, she believes in Orthodox Judaism and respects it, IN SPITE OF her personal dilemma. As their discussion continues: "... All Anshel's [Yentl's] explanations seemed to point to one thing: she had the soul of a man in a woman's body." How much plainer can you get?

But today, in the 2000s, being a female-to-male transgender person is no longer politically correct in the feminist movement. Since the days when Singer wrote this story, the radical feminists have trashed and reviled female-to-male (FTM) transgender people for being "politically incorrect" to the point that they (the feminists) simply cannot stomach the idea that THIS IS WHAT SINGER WAS WRITING ABOUT!!!!!

Yentl doesn't act like a feminist in the book. She doesn't go out campaigning for women's rights. On the other hand, she does enjoy cross-dressing: "On Sabbath afternoons, when her father slept, she would dress up in his trousers, his fringed garment, his silk coat, his skullcap, his velvet hat, and study her reflection in the mirror." (page 8) She also secretly smoked her father's pipe. These are not feminist behaviors, they are transvestite / transgender behaviors.

Yes, there were restrictions against women in the 1850s (which, by the way, is the time frame for this story. Keep in mind that gentile universities didn't accept women back then, either.) But that is NOT the reason that Yentl crosses over to live as a man. If she were merely a disgruntled woman wanting "male privilege," why did she choose to live as a man even after divorcing Hadass? In the Streisand movie she goes back to dressing as a woman and takes a ship to America where, presumably, she will be "free." But that scene IS NOT IN THE BOOK! In the book, she lives out her life as the man, Anshel. Exactly as an FTM transgender person would do.

Regarding the debate here about whether Yentl was a feminist or a transsexual, I weigh in on the transgender side -- for all the reasons other reviewers have already listed here, and which I have also discussed on my Hasidism FAQ website. So I won't reinvent the wheel in this review. I agree that the movie was definitely a feminist statement, but the book, well, that's another story altogether.

We should remember that before the movie, there was the stage play. It followed the book pretty closely, (which the movie did not!) and was very popular in lesbian and avant garde theaters. When I saw the play performed in the 1970s, Yentl was played as the Jewish version of a "butch" lesbian. (In terms of social roles, not machismo. The ideal Jewish male in the timeframe of this story was a scholar, not a redneck.) In the play, like in the book, Yentl remains living as the man Anshel in Eastern Europe. In the movie, Streisand changed this very important point and had Yentl revert to wearing women's clothes and then going to America.

So nu, what was the relationship between Yentl/Anshel and Avigdor? They were study partners -- chaverim in Hebrew -- a relationship that doesn't seem to exist outside of the Orthodox Jewish community, so here's some background. The Talmud is written in dialogue mode with different rabbis agreeing and disagreeing on various points of Jewish law and theology. Talmud is traditionally studied out loud, by two people hotly debating, going point-by-point over the discussions on the page together. In the traditional yeshiva world -- even today -- the schools are not co-ed. So naturally, your study partner is going to be the same sex as yourself. And very often, your study partner is also your very best friend. You not only sit together in school, you confide in each other, hang out together, encourage each other in life's struggles, etc. And this can be a very close relationship. But it's not sexual. It's male bonding. If Anshel had joined the army, then he and Avigdor would have been "buddies" who fought battles together.

Anshel loves Avigdor, yes. But as a study partner, not a lover. What Anshel misses in Avigdor when he changes study halls is not sexual attraction, it's their learning together. Nobody else in the yeshiva is as serious or as brilliant a student as Avigdor. Nobody else is an intellectual match for Anshel -- and so, he studies alone.

When Anshel reveals to Avigdor that s/he is really the woman Yentl, Avigdor suggests that they could get married and still study together -- but Yentl/Anshel says no. S/he tells him that s/he is "neither one [sex] nor the other" and that s/he has "the soul of a man in the body of a woman." This teaches us that Yentl DID INDEED have a gender identity crisis. If she had just wanted to study Talmud, if she were in love with Avigdor, she could have married him and that would be that. But she chose instead to remain living as Anshel for the rest of her life, even without Avigdor. In other words, she chose loneliness and loss of friendship over going back to living as a woman -- a choice that many a real transsexual has also made.

Now, one issue that has not come up yet in the debate here is this: What exactly did I.B. Singer mean by "the SOUL of a man in the body of a woman?" Is this used figuratively, i.e., with "soul" meaning interests, ideas, disposition? Or did Singer mean it literally -- that the eternal soul of Yentl was male, trapped in a female body? If it was figurative, then why does Yentl's father explain it by telling her "even heaven makes mistakes?" I think it is meant literally -- that a male soul has incarnated in the female body named Yentl. Perhaps it was reincarnation (Singer did believe in that.) This was/is one explanation in kabbalah (Jewish mysticm) for what we now call, in scientific terms, "gender dysphoria."

When Singer was writing in the 1960s, "gender dysphoria" was assumed to be caused by a mismatch of social roles, such as a girl being raised as a tomboy. And that's how Singer portrayed Yentl, with her father teaching her "male" things. But even today, when women are free (in Western countries at least) to openly pursue any type of studies or career or lifestyle they want, there are STILL female-to-male (FTM) transsexuals who claim to have male souls trapped in female bodies. Many of them were NOT raised as tomboys, either. The issue for them is not social roles, it's gender identity.

Recent research seems to indicate that this inner conflict is caused by a difference in brain structure. (Nature, not nurture.) Apparently, there is a part of the brain that is hard-wired to "feel" male or female -- and if this is out of sync with the rest of the body, you have a transgendered person. Had Singer known this in his day, he might have focused less on Yentl's dislike of sewing and cooking (the so-called "women's work"), and more on her inner identity crisis about feeling male. But he was a man of his times and he used the literary devices available then. When he wrote this story in 1962, DNA had not even been discovered, and there were no MRI machines to map the activities of the living brain. He assumed (wrongly) that a Yentl became what s/he was because of how she was raised. 21st-century readers need to keep this in mind when they read this story.

The movie does attack the issues of feminism - albeit somewhat unrealistically. Yes, as one reviewer put, there are many restrictions on Chasidic women (and men!), but not necessarily in an oppressive manner. The laws of Judaism are really quite complex (and no I am not orthodox). Nevertheless, I believe the book is a story about s transsexual, Yentl (Anshel) who felt as though she were a man in a woman's body. Incidentally, she was brilliant and capable of the complex studies of the Talmud, but the book has very little to do with feminism or oppression of women.
Nevertheless, it is an excellent read, highly recommended. For the period on which it was written, Singer was very much ahead of his time in tackling such an issue.

The IBS short story (but not the movie) certainly IS about a transsexual. Tha character, Yentle/Anshel, is a woman who wants to be a man, and the study of Talmud is a major part of it only because Singer used 19th-early Eastern Europe as a setting. While Yentl is briliant and enjoys studying the Talmud this is not why she gets into her situation. Rather it's a literary mechanism. Singer clearly describes Yentl as a man inside a woman's body, and the reason why Talmud is emphasized is because of the setting in an eastern european jewish community. That is what the most respected men did in that culture; in modern Israel, it would be piloting an F-16 in the air force.

Although Yentl had studied secretly with her father, there were things that she had been hiding even from him: while he slept on shabbat afternoons she would dress up in his clothing, and smoke his pipe. She had not one female friend, then on the morning after the night when Anshel had married Haddass, the parents of Haddass held of the bed sheet and saw the blood. Singer writes that "Anshel had found a way to deflower Haddass", and that Haddass being so innocent and in love with Anshel hadn't realized that what was supposed to happen had not happened. IN OTHER WORDS...something happened SEXUALLY between Yentl/Anshel and Haddass, such that Haddass' hymen ruptured. Singer leaves the precise mechanism to the imagination, but it stands to reason that it was not the spilling of wine on the sheet as occured in the movie. It the short story it is actual blood. It seems hard to imagine but keep in mind that it is a culture wherein young women might never be told much if anything about sex before their marriage, the expectation being that they would find out from their husbands. Moreover the marriage goes on for several months with Haddass believing that her marriage is within a standard deviation of the norm.

It's just not conceivable that Yentl/Anshel is doing this -being intimate with Haddass via petting or whatever for several months - because of a heterosexual attraction to Avigdor. Then finally when she reveals herself to him and he suggest that they (Avigdor and Yentl) marry she says it wouldn't be good and that she's "neither one [gender] nor the other". And so she continues dressing as a man. She does not take a ship to another country as in the movie which would have been the right thing to do had she wanted to live as a woman and study the Talmud. She could have done that in western europe or america, but in the book she didn't and went on living as a man.

This is going to be short because english is not my first language.

This is an excellent study on the action genre. I never thought somebody could analize action movies like this.

Lichtenfeld has worked both in making films and as a film critic and commentator, including doing extra features for DVDs of several action films. He sees this popular film genre as "derived from the Western, film noir, and the police procedural (with special guest appearances made by the disaster film and others [with an evolution] quite analogous to the horror film." Though many films depict violence and mayhem, the action film is distinguished in that it ushered in a "new violence [which] would be deployed more to pleasure audiences than to jar them." This "new violence" came about from a shift in standards marking a "New Hollywood" and related changes in structures and pacing of films and cinematographic techniques such as lingering on the violence by slow-motion and close-ups. It is these and other elements, not merely the violence and plotting, which account for the new genre of the action film. The cluster of elements reflected changes in the culture's psychic relationship with violence and what it looked for in entertainment. Bonnie and Clyde is pointed to as a seminal action film, with the films Billy Jack, Shaft, and The French Connection closely related to it in paving the way for the action film by demonstrating its popularity and giving guidance for filmmakers. Advertising, publicity, and marketing of action films has as much a part in the author's multifaceted study of this major contemporary film genre as film history, film editing, and cinematography. References to numerous action films over the past couple of decades make for enjoyable as well as engaging and stimulating reading.

Useful because it shows there is a deeper level of impact than just the shoot 'em up bang-bang to the typical action picture.

Lichtenfeld's book is required reading for anyone interested in the contemporary action film. Beyond its obvious merit as the best book available on the genre, I can recommend it as a model of genre criticism. I've used this as a text in my course on action cinema at Wesleyan where I teach it as an exemplar of genre studies. Lichtenfeld offers a compelling thesis about the genre's popular/cultural appeal without losing sight of industrial imperatives. This book does much to balance to often overly theoretical writing on the subject by offering a grounded, historically-minded account. Moreover, Lichtenfeld's critical observations are spot on, and his descriptions of scenes and sequences will send you back to the films again and again. The additions to the new edition further shore up his argument and expand the scope of films. It is also a fun read!

Being both a lover of film and a student of history, you can imagine my interest in this book. Who can deny the impact movies have had on the 20th (and now 21st) century? And what type of film most exemplifies what movies are capable of? Action, brother. Action.

I was introduced to this book and this author through a radio talk show I heard recently. Mr. Lichtenfeld came across as extremely intelligent, likeable and very knowledgeable about his subject matter. I immediately ordered the book from Amazon.

I read it through in one weekend (it's so accessible to even non-film students) and I couldn't believe how much I learned about movies that I had watched over and over again all my life. Mr. Lichtenfeld treats the topic with reverence without once losing the joy of what makes these movies great: the characters, the chases, the explosions and, of course, the lines. His breakdowns of each landmark film and his separation of them into specific categories makes it so easy to follow the development of the action genre over the last half century.

Even the bad films (my apologies, Mr. Seagal), of which there are many, are used as examples of the importance and social influence this genre has had on recent generations. They're all in here: science fiction, superhero actioners and even westerns, of which I have a particular fondness, are discussed.

I will pass this book on to my other film-loving friends with my highest recommendation. And now I'm off to watch 'Lethal Weapon' for the 56th time, albeit with a new outlook.

Finally action movies get their due! It's about time.

If you don't know this book, buy it immediately. It takes American film criticism up to about 1970 and coincides with the time Sarris was involved with the (real) Village Voice, Jonas Mekas, American Cahiers,and the founding of the NY Film Festival and the national society of film critics. It took me about five years of reading his reviews until I finally got it - Sarris had understood that the most profound thoughts and themes were played out with style and panache by genre filmmakers with personal obsessions and ideas that did not require Western Union to spell it out.

There's some things to quibble about (I never could see why he thought so highly of Blake Edwards, but I keep trying because I trust his insight. Even Sarris can change his mind as he did on Billy Wilder a few years back).

If you are a film buff and have not discovered his work (also recommended:
Confessions of a Cultist; The John Ford Mystery Book; You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet are among the best) start here. That goes double if you experience guilty pleasure and see things no one else does in people like Anthony Mann, Michael Powell, Sam Fuller, Max Ophuls, Budd Boetticher or James Whale. I have often given this book as a gift to film loving friends. It opens a world of discovery and rapport when a friends "gets it" and suddenly, you both have a shared sensibility and frame of reference.
Also, check out his website for yearly top ten lists and also the work of his wife Molly Haskell (especially good on Howard Hawks).

This volume parses the good guys from the bad guys, tells you whom you should love and why, and summarily dismisses the ones not worth taking seriously. In other words, for good or bad, it arms you, as will no other film book ever written, with a set of eloquently-stated prejudices that may seal off certain directors from your serious consideration for all time. (It would be too glib to say that this is the books best and worst point.) Suffice to say, it has taken years for me to tear down the wall Sarris built between me, as a budding cinephile, and William Wyler, Billy Wilder, John Huston and even John Frankenheimer, for that matter. (These are just a few of the ones I think he was, or may have been, wrong about.)

But I love this book and always find it worth picking up to reread a few entries, for two or three reasons that never grow old:

1) Sarris IS an absolutely remarkable writer. His prose bristles with alternately apt and acid phrases and insights. The parallel between Ambrose Bierce and Sarris has grown on me through the years. (I think it was Sarris who brought currency to the word "pretentious"-- possibly THE serious put-down word from the 70s to the 90s, possibly to the present-- by the way. He used it with unerring surgical delicacy, as a bludgeon.)

2) He is hard to argue with in his negative evaluation of certain other respected directors. Thirty-five years ago, Sarris renounced Kubrick, noting, in typical form, that the very fact that he made one film every 5 years seemed to be all the proof his advocates needed of his integrity. Ouch! And he said that Kubrick is the director of the best coming attractions in the business.

This last is highly prophetic of the present general situation, when Hollywood has made a sort of science of over-selling weak films with absurdly hyperbolic trailers that often have little to do with the tone or experience of the films they advertise. This comment indicates also how much of Sarris is audaciously arguable, and out of synch with conservative academia re Kubrick and just about everything else. --Not a bad thing, as far as I am concerned.) And I think he was also decades ahead of the curve in recognizing Keaton as Chaplin's better.

3) He has been, for decades, an antidote to Pauline Kael. Period.

If you know the directors covered well enough to take it all with a grain of salt where needed, this book is probably the best read on movies and their directors from the second and third quarters of the 20th Century that will ever be written. THE great mapping out of this seminal period by the auteur theorys chief surveyor-- and a fun and drolly amusing place to pick up your snazzy-looking anti-philistine, anti-pretentious attitude off-the-rack.

There are few books on cinema that are more important than this title. To any serious student of film this book is perhaps the only book that you will refer to as long as you watch films.

Extolling the virtues of The American Cinema would be too hard. Beside being an invaluable reference for cinema between 1929-1968, it also contains wonderful peices of film theory. Because of this The American Cinema can be read a few pages at a time or you can completely dwelve into the material. No matter the method, Sarris will engage you in a meaningful dialogue of film. Film literature is rarely able to be this give and take. Those with an above average inclination toward cinema should purchase.

When it first appeared in the late '60s, Sarris' book was literally memorized by critics, students and teachers. It provided a root approach to discussing film, quickly absorbed, and readily shaped to one's personal tastes. A beautiful combination of reference and aesthetic, it ushered in the era of "the director as superstar," and was completely absorbed by everyone in film. Unfortunately, its absorption was so complete, the author, Mr. Sarris, was for the most part uncredited and unrewarded.

My boyfriend bought this book for me 22 years ago and it has followed me around through seven changes of address. I can honestly say that but for this book, I don't think I would have read Crime and Punishment or The Grapes of Wrath. I wanted to be sure I was getting all the jokes. It was funny in 1984 and it is still funny.

To save the Cleavers from the network axe, past and contemporary literary giants pour forth their own "episodes" for the Beave and crew. Everyone's character --including Eddie Haskell--gets fleshed out in ways you'll never see on Nickelodeon. Personal favorites include Tennessee William's turn on Miss Landers and June. Brilliant and absurdly funny blend of high prose and Americana 50's schmaltz. Made me laugh out loud at every read.

When I first read the Dostoevsky episode ("Hey, Wally, do you think it's OK to kill an old lady?" "I don't know, Beav. We haven't gotten that far in civics."), I was in convulsions. This is the funniest book in the history of Western Civilization, even funnier than "The Lazlo Letters," and that's saying something. That it is out of print is some kind of culture crime.

In an attempt to save "Leave It To Beaver" from going off the air in 1963, famous authors submit scripts hoping their influence will persuade the network from dumping the show. Scripts include "Lady Cleaver's Beaver" by D. H. Lawrence, "Beavermorphosis" by Franz Kafka (where Theodore actually transforms into a giant beaver), and my personal favorite "And Thus Spake Beaver" by Nietzche ... "And Beaver descended alone from the house encountering no one, and all at once there stood before him Larry Mondello who bit into an apple. And thus spake Beaver unto Larry Mondello, 'Shared cookies make a friend, not getting in trouble together', and he punched Larry Mondello in the stomach." If you love the Beave and love Literary Parodies, you'll love this book.

Wow -- it's nice to see that there are other people out there who have read this book and loved it as much as I did. I bought the book when it first came out in 1985 and I was in college. I almost peed my pants reading it in the bookstore, so I figured I'd better buy it before they threw me out. I still have it on my shelf, and it's provided countless hours of amusement ever since. About the only books I would consider funnier than this one are George Ade's "Fables in Slang" and "More Fables in Slang", which are sadly almost unknown today. They should really reprint this, because it's as hilarious today as it was almost 15 years ago.

If you like reading celebrity autobiographies, and you even have a passing interest in this actress, don't miss this book. It really is a very engrossing read. She speaks of her life in a very honest and forthcoming fashion, and she has had quite an interesting life, the most dramatic part being the blacklisting of her actor husband, Larry Parks, in the 1950's, and her "guilt by association."

Also, if you happen to be a fan of either Lloyd, Beau, and/or Jeff Bridges, you should know that Betty and Larry are/were(Larry is deceased) very close to this family -- Betty is Jeff Bridges' godmother.

So, if you know Betty from her movie work (she tells such a funny story about Frank Sinatra, from when they were filming "On the Town"), her stage work, or her TV work on "All in the Family" and "Laverne and Shirley," I think you will more than appreciate this book.

I hope you read this and enjoy it as much as I did!

betty garrett was the best in those mgm movies and she could have been so much more famous

I like Betty Garrett very much! From Laverne & Shirley, All In The Family-very funny! I like that the book is her autobiography! I can't wait to read all about the life & times of the lovely Betty Garrett! I also have David L. Lander's autobiography & the unofficial Penny Marshall book! Any one who's a fan of "Laverne & Shirley" e-mail me @: tiff_lisatony7@yahoo.com. We can chat about Betty, Penny, David, Cindy, Michael, Phil, & evrything else related to "Laverne & Shirley".

I have loved the movies of both Betty Garrett and Larry Parks for years, and now feel that I have read their love story. Betty's descriptions of her multi-faceted career and personal life were written with humor, warmth, and love. She and Larry endured the 'unofficial' blacklist and other obstacles together, and showed what "in good times and in bad" really meant. I admire and adore them both even more now. Her book is a wonderful read and her career isn't even over.

Betty's wit, wisdom and reflections prove that there's a lot more to her than a pretty face and wise-cracks. Talent, sensitivity and grace make her a beautiful author with something important to say. Show business enthusiasts and historians alike will greatly enjoy her story. And, since her career is enjoying a recent resurgence, we can only hope she'll write a sequel, soon!

This book is a shortened version of the TV episode, "Blue's Big Birthday." It's interactive, as well as has the clue game of, "What does Blue want for her birthday?" Like the show, it features Steve, Blue, and the gang, and introduces Blue's turtle, Turquoise--although Blue doesn't name her in the book.

This is pure "Blues Clues," pure and simple. Blue is having a birthday and we are asked to give a hand. The format is like that of the excellent TV show. The art work is quite well done, the text simple and easy for the little ones to follow. This is a fun book to read with your preschooler. This entire series is quite good and I do recommend them quite highly.

It's party-time for Blue --- it's her birthday! The "Blue's Clues" house is fully decorated, with plenty of balloons, confetti and more. We arrive just a little early, so we help to get everything ready for the party. And there's a game of Blue's Clues as well --- Blue needs a present.

This is a good story --- it's a lot like the TV show and the text is readable, but sufficiently complex that it should keep kids that are used to the level of the TV show engaged. Kids will also enjoy seeing Steve, Blue and all the fun party stuff.

I got this for my little boy's 3rd birthday. He loves Blue, and loved this book. We read it every night, and every night he loves to find Blue's clues and show me all the things he remembered about the story.
Great buy!!!

This a great book. If you kids love Blue's Clue. They will love this book.

There is also a wonderful video that goes along with this book. It is wonderful. Blue's Clues - Blue's Birthday

This book is one of the ultimate companions to the blockbuster show of the same title.

In a day and age when show creators and producers have gotten into the habit of talking down to their ausiences, Whedon again breaks the mold by sharing the direct scripts with us, the loyal fans.

I remember how happy I was when I heard that BTVS was going to be a television series and this book brought back the early euhphoria that I experienced with the revival. Thank you again Joss for everything.

Of course it's not all in the dialogue. You've got great acting, directing, editing, costuming, etc. HOWEVER, the Buffy writers obviously not only love what they do, but are also very good at it.

The pop culture references mingle freely with the historical. Renaissance Poetry class was never so much fun.

These scripts give you a chance to catch anything you might have missed the first time around. It's peppy. Is Poppy a word? Well, I know it's a word, but is it a word the way I mean it? Anyhow, I would recommend this book for any Buffy fan.

Watching "Buffy" T.V. series or cassettes is huge enjoyment already. Reading this script brought pure delight: sharp wit, self-derogatory under-/overstatements, punch and speed - this script is, quite definitely, for lovers of language. Stage directions, as indicated between parts of dialogue,are about as savoury as dialogue itself. I've just one reservation:I suppose, to really relish this book as it should be relished, one should obviously have seen related episodes on either TV or cassette. One then remembers Charisma Carpenter's studied drawl, Sarah Gellar's brisk deadpan humour, and Nicholas Brendon's fantastic "fool's faces". Only then does one realize, not just how good the writing is, but also, how brilliantly the whole cast has done its job. Yes, this definitely does show just how brilliant the whole "Buffy" act was - and still is. Can we PLEASE have scriptbooks of what follows?!...

The good news is that original shooting scripts of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" are available, as in this volume offering up the first six episodes of Season One. But the bad news, relatively speaking, is that we just get the scripts without any extras. The pages are your traditional Courier style font (including the title page), and while the pages are not in blue, pink, green, yellow, goldenrod and salmon to reflect the various revisions, if you follow the revision dates on the top of the pages you can figure that part out. Therefore, while I appreciate having the original scripts in front of my while watching the episodes so I can see what has been deleted/added/changed (these are not transcripts; big difference), I would have really liked to have a bit more such as introductions by the writers talking about the genesis of the script ideas or problems they had to overcoming in putting the script into production, beyond the production notes and stage directions. Certainly some of what I am looking for can be found in "The Watcher's Guide," which covers the show's first two seasons, but given how first-rate the BtVS companion volumes have been I am rather surprised this is a comparatively bare bones effort.

Included in this volume for those of you who do not have the first 100 episodes totally memorized are "Welcome to the Hellmouth" and "The Harvest," both written by series creator Joss Whedon, "Witch" by Dana Reston, "Teacher's Pet" by David Greenwalt, "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date" by Rob Des Hotel and Dean Batali, and "The Pack" by Matt Kiene and Joe Reinkemeyer. After the two-part pilot these other episodes reflect a time when the Buffy mythos was just starting to get organized. After all, Buffy has yet to find out about Angel's true nature and the emphasis is on how high school is a living hell if you are a teenager, but even more so when you are perched on the Hellmouth. Besides, once you get the first half of Season One you have to pick up the second half as well. Then there is Season Two...

It's valuable for fans of Buffy, full of hints and descriptions that make the tv episodes even more enjoyable; it's also a very cool book for anyone interested in writing tv scripts who're curious about the format, or looking for insight into how to blend comedy and suspense and juggle an excellent ensemble cast without shortchanging anyone.

The message of the novel and film adaptation are essentially the same:
if you deny your true self, you will be left feeling empty and unfulfilled in life. You cannot give in to fear or society's definitions of who and what you should be at any point in your life. Scorsese and writer Richard Price took a lot of liberties with the story for the film adaptation. I like what they did, but I found the novel The Color of Money compelling for somewhat different reasons.

Tevis does a wonderful job of updating his Fast Eddie Felson character from the original novel, The Hustler, and the opening scenes in this book where Minnesota Fats "coaches" a middle-aged and tired Felson are outstanding. I have even more appreciation for Fats than I did in The Hustler, and it's unfortunate that Scorsese and Price choose not to include him in the movie.

Tevis has a great understanding of what drives certain people to excel at something as opposed to just getting by in life. The winner's mentality is at the heart of this novel -- as it was in The Hustler -- but now the idea is centered more around not giving up, despite what society tells each of us about what we can or cannot do (based on factors such as age, etc.).

Felson's midlife crisis is the bane of his existence, and it is only the acceptance of who he is and what he loves to do that can deliver him from his ennui. Relationships and suburban comforts are merely distractions for Felson. He needs to get back into the game that made him touch greatness when he was in his 20s.

For fans of The Hustler, this is a great compliment. If you've seen the movie a bunch of times, you will still discover a fresh story here. The angle is a bit different, and Tevis' perceptions about what it takes to rise about mediocrity are priceless.

Classic novel by a classic writer.

I'm a big fan of the movie, particularly the first restaurant scene with it's triangle of small timer, scheming girlfriend, and semi-retired hustler. But, thought the book was MUCH better. I enjoy his writing style, and although the ones I've read were on short side (Hustler, Queens Gambit, and COM), he always seems to draw me into the story. His writing is always anchored in the drama of recognizing/overcoming the psychology of self doubt and making ones way to redemption and/or self improvement. Highly recommend the book.

Great book -- maybe better than the Hustler. Ignore the movie. This is a handbook for living. It didn't change my life but it would have if i read it when i was 15. Will make an excellent bar mitzvah gift.

If you enjoyed the movie "The Color of Money" try the book from which it is loosely based. Not giving anything away, there is no Tom Cruise character, nor his movie girlfriend. If you are an "early to mid-boomer" you may especially relate to this work even if your eyes glaze over at the mention of "pool". If you read/saw "The Hustler", even better.

I have to admit I'm a fan of Scorcese's film sharing the same title, but these are two completely different stories. I was shocked at how little the two have in common, which is almost nothing.

Tevis's book paints a very different picture of Fast Eddie in the 80's. Tevis shows us a dejected man who let years of his life just pass by idly while he ran a small pool hall, as opposed to Scorcese's Fast Eddie who had become a successful liquor salesman (ironically, Tevis's Felson failed as a salesman). Not only that, the Vince character (and his t-shirt) does not really exist in Tevis's book - Felson does not take on a prodigy at all. Even Fats is back in the book.

All this drivel I've written here is to encourage you to read the book. A completely different story than what the movie offers, but one more plausibly in line with The Hustler (the book). As usual, Tevis is deft at writing the intricacies of pool and the psyche that surrounds it.

This was a lot of fun for getting down into the intricacies of some of the sketches. You catch things that make you laugh at the memory of watching them.

I've seen "Monty Python's Flying Circus" so many times that I can recite long stretches of it. But those guys are always using weird accents and manic deliveries ("My neeples explode with delight!"), and sometimes they're hard to understad.

Fortunately for those times, Python fans have "The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus: All the Words," a series from the second half of the classic comedy skit show. These are only trascripts (a bit lacking in details), but still enormous fun and full of delightfully quotable lines ("And now my lords, my ladies... your LUPINS!").

It opes with the weird "Conquistador Coffee" sketch, in which a boss berates his employee for changing the brand's name to Conquistador Instant Leprosy. ("The tingling fresh coffee that brings you exciting new cholera, mange, dropsy, the clap, hard pad, and athlete's foot." "It was a soft sell, sir.")

And then it contains plenty of others: the cheese shop with no cheese, films with giant teeth, spam spam spam, cannibal undertakers, Njorl's it's-not-that-terrible saga, the BBC's financial troubles, the Money Programme, the pantomime horse, hairdressers climbing Everest, the war against pornography, Gumbys, Dennis Moore, kamikaze highlanders, and the golden age of ballooning ("I am so excited I can hardly wash!").

The dialogue to each one is carefully outlined, with each character identified as being played by one of the guys (like "Interviewer (JOHN)"), although we usually don't get to hear much about Terry Gilliam's mad animations. Most of these episodes are one long continuing sketch that spills from one scenario to the next, but occasionally we'll have different ones patched together.

These guys had a rare, crazy talent -- these sketches are crammed with glorious dialogue ("Drop your panties, Sir William. I cannot wait till lunchtime") and bizarre insults ("you cloth-eared heap of anteater's catarrh"). Not much description of the action in places, although in a few we get plenty of detail when it's called for (such as the weirdness convention).

The problem is that this should only be read after you've seen the series. If you don't, it all seems like a befuddling string of of stream-of-consciousness comedy numbers, full of in-jokes and surreal twists. You have a better chance of finding Ilchester in a cheese shop than understanding this without seeing the skits first.

In case you couldn't understand what Eric Idle was bibbling in one episode, or John Cleese was screaming in another, "The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus: All the Words Volume 2" will tell you what is going on. No time to lose!

This item was purchased for my daughter and she absolutely loved it. It was received in good order and in a timely manner

The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus: All the Words, Volume 2 is the second half of a set containing the scripts of the entire series (45 episodes). This book, volume 2, contains scripts for episode 24: "How not to be seen" through episode 45: "Party Political Broadcast". This book is more fun than an endless supply of "lupins". Both volumes make great companions to the MPFC video/dvd collection ("There you go, can't be bad.") and also unlike the DVDs, there are no edits, these are the original words. So that horrible "m" word that Graham said in episode 31: "The All England Summarize Proust Competition" is in this book. Enjoy!

Yours etc., Brigadier Mainwaring Smith Smith Smith etc., Deceased etc.

FYI-This is the same as the review of Volume 1. There was no real sense in distinguishing the two.

As a fan of MPFC since it first aired on PBS in 1973, these two volumes sort of put a cap on a 30 year fascination with the team. Maybe like me, you've watched every Python-Marathon or taped every show, but having these scripts really is the icing on the cake.

What's striking to me is the simplicity of the scripts. When you watch the episodes, the gags seem so complicated. Then to see The Dead Parrot sketch reduced to just a few pages, you realize how brilliant those guys were in terms of compression, and in terms of acting. An added plus, for me at least, was to finally see the words and phrases that I never quite "got" because they were unique to British English. From there, I logged on to a few websites on British slang and, boy, I realized what MPFC got away with...some of it was pretty raunchy. Anyway, this is two-volume set is priceless for any fan.

A theatre writer, Riccardo Molteni, cannot write anymore because his wife, Emilia, does not love him anymore. Moreover, she despises him, all of a sudden.

The search for the reasons which led to this sudden change of feelings, makes Moravia rewrite a modern versin of Ulyse's myth. In a few words, Penelope did not love Ulyse anymore, though she remained faithful to him even before he left for Troja. Why did she not love him? Because the king's behaviour was not masculine enough towards her admirers at the court.
Therefore, Ulyse wins his wife's contempt and consequently leaves for Troja to free himself in a way. After the war, he postpones sine die his return to Ithaca, obessed by the same thing: Penelope's contempt.

When he finally decides to go back home, he knows he has no other solution but to violently kill all Penelope's admirers, in order to get her admiration and love.

And this is how Homer can be well combined with Freud. The moravian style, vivid and direct, manifests itself in this novel, keeping alive the pleasure of your reading.

I think Alberto Moravia is one of the greatest Italian writers of all times. All his novels deal with important issues our society has to face, problems we all have. Many of us will recognize ourselves in his characters.

It will be a very challenging reading that will make you ask a lot of questions about yourself and your life. Enjoy it!

After a second reading of Contempt, I feel compelled to call the short, tautly written novel a masterpiece. Told from the perspective of a neurotic egotist, the narrator accounts how he "sacrificed" his literary writing career to debase himself in the tawdry task of writing screenplays so that he can afford to lavish his wife with a bigger more opulent living quarters. The narrator convinces himself that not only does his wife not appreciate his "sacrifice," but that she no longer loves him. It's horrifying to read this narcissist's account of his marital disintegration because you begin to realize that he is projecting his own lack of love toward his wife (a pefectly fine, loving woman) and you realize that he is so emotionally arrested that he is incapable of loving anyone. Further, a close reading reveals that the narrator never sacrificed his writing career for his wife's opulent tastes, but rather is debasng his writing talents for his own greedy materialistic acquistion.

Many see Moravia's novel as the quintessential example of "modernism," the movement that emphasizes the human limitation for self-understanding and the understanding of others. Also, the novel explores Freudian themes of projection, paranoia, and the powers of the unconscious.

The novel is fast-paced save for a few chapters where the writer and director indulge in long-winded discussions about the mythical exposition of their film but overall the novel is a real page-turner full of suspense and psychological realism.

If you enjoy this suspensful novel told from the point of view of an unreliable narrator, I recommend Asylum by Patrick McGrath, Despair by Vladimir Nabokov, and The Horned Man by James Lasdun.

somehow there is a new found celebration for contempt and everything associated with it. a year and a half ago, godard's contempt was finally re-released; a couple of months ago, two new books about casa malaparte allowed us to view the importance of the film's setting, most notably capri and it's culture, but now this new publication of moravia's contempt will allow everyone to view the masterpiece it truly represents.

Finally, someone had the common decency to reprint Moravia in translation. And they also picked the best titles. Il Disprezzo (The Contempt) is the best, most honest, unflinching look at the disintegration of a relationship that I have ever read. Last released in the States in the 1950's under the title A Ghost at Noon, this is the same excellent translation by Angus Davidson, who translated almost all of the authors works up until his death in 1990. If you've ever experienced the conclusion of a long-term relationship and for some masochistic reason want to remember what it was like, this is the book for you. I guess that's not a ringing endorsement. But trust me, Moravia's penchant for psychological details is so devastatingly on-point, you'll find yourself nodding nauseatingly at the pathetic delusions and convoluted rationalizations taking place between the couple. It should be noted that this isn't the book's only focus. Quite uncharacteristically, Moravia tackles popular culture and the highbrow-lowbrow dichotomy in a darkly humorous fashion. I haven't seen Godard's film adaptation but I understand that it is an incredible achievement in itself.

Moravia's writing which I would not have encountered were it not for these elegant new paperback versions of his work is open to the bone. His honest revelations through his all too human characters are poignant, pointed, and penetrating. To any one interested in looking deep inside themeselves and their relationships: I recommend Contempt. Prepare to squirm.