Movies Books

Rarely, does one novel 'play' well to so many genres. "The Protege" encompasses mystery, thriller, horror, espionage, history, and to a degree, almost a 'spirituality'. It's at once, entertaining, provacative, and downright scary in its 'reality'. Yes, the book is graphic, but 'life' in these circles is graphic. To make it less so would leave it unbelievable.
Given the recent success of 'graphic' films for the sake of only the shock value, I would say the film producers should be looking at this story where 'graphics' are so frighteningly tickling 'truth'.
I commend Mr. Ross' ability to weave so many plot twists and such enticing characters without one instance of lost consistency. As a writer myself, an enviable gift.

Susan Haley, Author
RAINY DAY PEOPLE
FIBERS IN THE WEB

The Protégé -By Sam Ross


Movie executives where are you?

This is a must read book for those who enjoy a grisly police who-done-it. Even though the book has gruesome content, Sam Ross knows how to suck in his readers and take them for an International roller coaster ride. The twists and turns of "The Protégé" make it hard for one to lay the book down.

Emotions are on the rise as a reader feels they are part of incredible hunt for justice. Sam Ross has the making of a best selling author. I truly hope that his books become movies.

So watch out CSI, and Homicide Investigation shows, Sam Ross is on the loose and the man knows how to write.

I picked up this book not sure whether or not I would like it due to the graphic nature involved. AM I GLAD I GOT IT! This book has so many twists and turns that it is impossible to figure out the end before getting to it. I grew so attached to two of the characters that I even wrote to the author asking him to continue a storyline involving them!!! The dialogue is so realistic that I felt like I was part of a real murder/mystery plot. I can't really put into words how I feel about this book. Before reading it, Da Vinci Code was my favorite book but now having read The Protege I can't believe I thought Da Vinci Code was good because this book is absolutely fantastic! Enjoy it because I definitely did!

I read, Q & A: The Working Screenwriter, in one sitting (and that's rare for me--I start a book, get bored, return or sometimes not) and then a few hours later I read it through again. Both reads were enjoyable experiences (and I've booked marked several pages for future reference). I especially like that fact that the writers interviewed were not of the Shane Black or Joe Eszterhas fame level. It's important to represent Hollywood for what it is: a town of working stiffs. Sure, the "names" get the ink, but it's the working screenwriter who slugs it out, makes a tolerable living, and has a solid career. The lessons from Q & A: The Working Screenwriter, are valuable and practical and underscore what it really takes to have a career in this business. Aspiring and established writers alike will pull something useful from this book.

The Working Screenwriter delivers answers to some of the questions that wander in the minds of hopeful screenwriters. As an aspiring screenwriter myself, I found this book enlightening, and entertaining as well. The diversity of perspectives from the panel of screenwriters is more valuable than most people realize. Jim Vines does know this value, and shares it with us, in this must read book for the novice and the professional as well.

This book really does answer all the questions that a young (and even an experienced) writer has about the nuts & bolts experience of writing and selling a movie today. As a story analyist, the information about the writing process and how it differs from person to person was very useful to me and the mechanics of selling as well. I now feel more sympathy for the screenwriters' whose scripts I read. I highly recommend this book.

I bought these books for my 12yr old daughter. She's a huge POTC fan & has gobbled these books down. Now she has the whole set (9 in all). She enjoyed them immensely & wishes more were available.

My Son is 10 years old. I have been pushing him to read for a long time. He started out reading one, and ask me to buy the rest for him. he reads every night for 1hr. Just the other day I heard him say maybe he will read 2 hrs a night. I was so happy to hear that. I thought I could never break him away from all his Video games.

I am writing this review for my 7 year old son who has just finished reading the entire published set of the Jack Sparrow books. Here is what he has to say...They were all really cool. They had great endings, too. There are lots of creatures in each book like the evil mermaids in book two, mutated lizards in book four and the Krakan that is also in book two. They are really neat books and people should buy them.

What fascinates us about Reese Witherspoon? Is it what biographer Lauren Brown claims, that she's private in her dealings with the press and doesn't comport herself like the low rent Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan? I don't know. Is it that she's more quality than her competition and throws herself into roles like a modern-day Kim Stanley? Maybe. Brown's straightforward account of her work on learning the autoharp to play June Carter in I WALK THE LINE impresses the reader, and also I liked the way Mira Nair told Ryan to get Reese pregnant again so she would look more womanly and bosomy when Nair cast Reese as Becky Sharp in the ill-fated VANITY FAIR.

Brown structures her book as though nothing important happened in the world besides the ascent of Reese Witherspoon, and her research involves countless interviews with COSMO GIRL and TEEN PEOPLE, so the book suffers from not enough context perhaps. We learn that Reese's career was at a low ebb after she made ELECTION, she couldn't even get a part as the main character's best friend, and that's what forced her into accepting the part in LEGALLY BLONDE. Brown says that playing 'Elle' in LEGALLY BLONDE made everyone love Reese, but not me. She holds Reese above other actresses for her refusal to play in "teen movies," but what on earth is the sensationally awful CRUEL INTENTIONS if not the teen movie to end all teen movies? Well, it spawned GOSSIP GIRL, I suppose, but Reese, let's not pretend you took the part without realizing it was a teen movie? A novice director, Robert Luketic, sounded off to the press after the completion of LEGALLY BLONDE and said he was astounded at Reese's haughty and unpleasant manner throughout the shooting of the picture. "Movies are supposed to be fun," he complained, and Reese killed that practice stone cold dead. Maybe it's because she's so tiny, she's like a tempest in a teapot. Whatever it is, she's got something that makes all the little stars (Mark Wahlberg, Ryan Philippe, Jake Gyllenhall) go wild about her.

Brown compares her career to that of her no-good brother, the one who used to be her chauffeur and later was charged with sexual battery. In the family, she was "little Miss Type A," and he was "Little Misdemeanor." It is tough on an overachiever to have a brother who isn't as perfect as you are, but she's overcoming her shame and learning that there's more to life than just smelling the roses. Lauren Brown's other biographies are not as good as this one, but maybe that's because Emma Roberts and Lindsay Lohan are too young to make a good book. Whereas did you know that, after 9/11, it was to Reese Witherspoon that the nation turned when we wanted to have a little bit of fun in the wake of the Twin Towers disaster, so she was the first guest host of Saturday Night Live and she slayed us, as the comics say, with her improv bits.

Reading this well-researched bio made me want to watch all the Reese movies I missed, and it gave me a whole new appreciation for her career and character. I recommend it to anyone who's enjoyed her work.

Great book on Reese. Alot of chapters and information. If you're a fan of Reese, this book is highly recommended.

This is a great tool for therapy with individuals, groups, families, or to expand your own thinking when watching videos. I have used this book with clients of all ages and in parenting classes. Almost all my clients gained insight and were able to view their own issues more rationally after watching the suggested films. The Setting The Scene and Scripting For Therapy sections are particularly useful if you do not have a chance to view the film prior to recommending it. I am anxiously awaiting the sequel.

great source for counselors to use with clients......was recommended by a facilator at a conference on personality disorders. i would advise therapists to make use of it for self and clients....

Although intended for therapists, this insightful book about using movies to illuminate our own experiences, motives, and choices is very worthwhile for families. The descriptions of movies like "Field of Dreams," "Breaking Away," and "Dead Poet's Society" provide us with thoughtful and perceptive ways to apply what we see to our own lives. The stories of the patients who were able to understand, identify, and change old patterns after seeing them reflected in the films are exceptionally well presented, and the suggestions for aproaches to using the films are sensitive and illuminating. Any parent will benefit from reading this book to gain a better way of thinking about what we show our children and how we can use what we do show them to improve family understanding and communication.

This book is a great buy for anyone interested in Ridley Scott or in filmmaking in general. His interviews if looked at closely reveal mountains of filmmaking knowledge as it goes through most of his major motion pictures in a series of varying inteviews dating from around 70's to when the book was published. True film buffs might get a good bit of pleasure out of this text as well.

I've been a fan of Ridley Scott's films since I first began to study film as an art form and not just as something to do on a weekend. Your eyes are never bored, he constantly produces great images to take in and transport you to new worlds. The level of immersion he allows an audience to indulge in is amazing, there are not too many other filmmakers who are able to do this.

This interview book starts at his early beginnings at art school and his long and lucrative foray into the commercial world and proceeds chronologically through Matchstick Men. There is some mention of Kingdom of Heaven, but no heavy material, as this book was published around the same time this movie came out.

Although a couple of the articles were somewhat familiar to me, most were first time reads for me, and so the book was very fresh and informative. Some of his lesser known or less popular films like White Squall and 1492:Conquest of Paradise have some very good making-of articles and were the most surprising. Much is discussed about Alien, Blade Runner and Thelma and Louise, which is a given, but this doesn't diminish their interest.

What unfolds is a well drawn picture of a man who didn't start making features until he was nearly 40, whose film career has had its ups and downs over the last nearly three decades, yet who has not tired of making pictures that stretch over vast and small spaces and will hopefully continue to innovate and challenge audiences for years to come. I highly recommend this book for his fans, and for those who have taken even passing interest in his films.

I usually own all the movies directed by my favorite directors. Even their lesser achievements often prove to say a lot about them. And you usually get to understand the man (if not know them) through their filmography.
I must admit that I never thought of Ridley Scott as one of my favorite directors until I read this book. I never actually realized that I actually own all his movies! and the reason for that is because I was not always connecting the themes and constants all along his career. If you take Alien and Thelma&Louise, one could wonder what is the link between the 2 films. I am not saying that we should always try to connect every filmmaker's movie to his previous ones but after reading Ridley's interviews, I really started understanding the man's endeavour. All through the interviews, spreading from 1975 to 2000, he actually never discusses politics or mystical matters. He is a filmmaker with a pragmatic approach to his art. Coming with an art director background, he likes to build his movies. At some point, it is said he likes to create universe. And this is the connection between all of his movies: the sets speak for Ridley. He seems to take acting very seriously as well so he is not just painting on the surface; content does matter equally as the surface but Ridley works in subtle touches. He obviously demonstrates through the years that he leaves nothing to chance.
Highly recommanded.

I saw this play in London a year or so ago, then again at a festival in Toronto. Reading the text brought the entire experience vividly back to me ... I particularly loved the way the text seamlessly blends poetry and humor. And that the 'gay' subject matter is a springboard into something universal and accessible to just about everyone. A brilliant read, and a neat format, like having a little poetry chapbook in my pocket !

Godfrey Hamilton has created one of the defining works of gay theater with his play "Road Movie." At once uplifting and heartwrenching "Road Movie" is a journey of self-discovery for both the characters and the audience. The plot centers upon the experiences of Jeff, a gay man with AIDS. His search for emotional fulfillment in the face of an uncaring community and fatal disease is extraordinary and realistic.

Seeing an announcement for an upcoming stage production here in Los Angeles, I decided to read this text. What I read not only moved me, but Hamilton's use of romantic and phantastical landscapes took me on a journey I have never before experienced. Joel, a hard driving, hard drinking publicicty director drives across the US to a voice (a siren?) calling him to the shores of love. Along the way he encounters three very damaged and very strong women. Ma Diva, a condom distibuting mother, Myra, a diner-locked divorcee and Dharma a sad and wounded child of a hippie. The strength love and loss these women pass on to Joel serves as the spine of this incredible poem....play....landscape. Read This Book!

Filmmaker Pak provides not just the award-winning ROBOT STORIES screenplay, but four other tales which are all infused with considerations about technology. It's not only the futuristic settings which link these plots: it's an exploration of the problems between men and machines, the created and the natural worlds, which creates such a compelling dynamic in these motion pictures. Small black and white shots pepper the account, but it's the screenplays which are the heart of this fine title.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I hadn't seen the Robot Stories movie, but a friend of mine did and raved about it. I'd read a few of Pak's comics for Marvel, so I picked up the book and was actually blown away by the amount of thought Pak has put into not just that movie but his career of writing in general. He gives insightful introductions to his many scripts, which run the gamut from sarcastic short spoofs about sex to the recreation of the life of a pioneering surgeon, and finally to the sci-fi feature from the title.

This was the first time I've actually read a screenplay, and it is different than reading a novel. But the book gives some helpful tips to make the adjustment easier. After I while I got used to the format to where I could really visualize the actors and actresses talking to each other.

Somehow I think that is one of the points of the book: to make films more accessible and to inspire people to create their own vision. Pak touches upon a lot of issues: from the craft of writing and the challenges of making an independent film to the media images of Asian Americans (David Henry Hwang's foreword is excellent in this regard). So it has something that can appeal to most everybody. But ultimately, I found the collection to be oddly inspiring to the artist hidden in me, and has made me want to see Pak's movies.

Cliff's Notes Review:
+ 4 Awesome, distinct stories
+ Novel central theme "human emotions and robots"
+ Represents the Asian American/Mixed-Race Community without beating you over the head with issues.
+ Charming and Provocative like an independant film/Professional and polished like a high-budget studio film.

My Take:
Robot Stories is awesome. Its is broken up into a series of 4 charming shorties, each related around a theme of "how humans develop emotions when dealing with robots". Each story has a distinct perspective on this central theme. For example, one story is about a couple who wants to adopt a child, but must babysit a "robo-baby" to prove their worth as parents, while another is about a mother trying to re-connect to her sick son through his collection of toy robots. I think the final point that I'd like about Robot Stories and Greg Pak as a director was that he was able to represent the Asian American/Mixed Race characters in normal situations. While this may feel like a minor point, its refreshing. Its nice once in a while to see an Asian American on the big screen who isn't a Lucy Lu Dragon lady, or a Connie Chung newscaster, but as a normal protagonist whom i can identify with.

It's a refreshing change to see a tough, hard-bitten detective roaming Hawaii. Florida's had more than its share, and Baron Birtcher has finally brought a great one to polynesia. Great action scenes, and a surprise ending. This one is worth the money.

I read this in one sitting, and it really moves. I read a little bit of everything, but keep coming back to mysteries. This one is a standout.

Baron Birtcher proves with Ruby Tuesday, his second Mike Travis novel, that Roadhouse Blues, his first, was no fluke. We now have a Great New Series Writer amongst us. In this newest adventure, Mike Travis, Ex-L.A. homicide detective, sails his yacht from Southern California to Kona Hawaii, only to find trouble awaits. As was the case with his first novel, this book is very fast paced, with more twists and turns than you'll find on the Saddle road between Kona and Hilo. Having moved from Southern California to Kona himself, Baron not only takes us on a wild ride of emotions, but also adds the natural beauty of the Big Island. As is the case with most excellent reads, the end, although unexpected, comes way too soon. I'm already looking forward to the next Mike Travis novel,and another trip to the Big Island of Hawaii.
I suggest, that as is the case with most series, if possible they should be read in order.

This Shirley Temple Scrapbook is really a wonderful little treasure for all the Temple fans out there. As the name bestows, this book is fully loaded with all kinds of images of Shirley Temple. These photos range from publicity shots to movie scenes to private photo collections. Many I've never seen before.

Additionally, there are interesting little tidbits about Shirley's experiences while filming her movies. Also, there is a cronological listing of all her movies starting from her Baby Burlesque material all the way till A Kiss For Corliss, which was released in 1949. There is a short listing of plot as well as all the characters, producers, and directors for each movie.

Overall this is a very a nice and thorough visual document of Shirley Temple's amazing career. Her sparkle is well evident in many of these photos and proof of why she was such a success and why you will really enjoy this wonderful scrapbook.

If you're looking for that "everything you need and want to know about Shirley Temple" book, then this is the one for you!

Carefully divided between Shirley's personal life and her film career, the book's clever design displays the abundance of fabulous photos and text as if it were truly a scrapbook.

Loraine Burdick helps us get to know Shirley Temple the child star, the teenager, the young adult, the mother, the wife, and the ambassador.

Whether you are looking for a fun book to leaf through or a solid front-to-back read about Shirley Temple, this book is a must!

The Shirley Temple Scapebook is not only a great picture book but it gives a good deal of interesting detail about Shirley's life. I love the way Loraine Burdick takes information from several other resources and books about Shirley and combines them to create a broader picture. Thus, leaving you to your own opinion. It is wonderful to look through the scrapebook and relive old memories. I think the book would be appealing to both adoring fans and those with only mild interest. However, how many people can resist Shirley Temple. Enjoy. I highly recommend the book.