Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art

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Looks like we got it all wrong

Great articles and fabulous photographs and drawings

Required Reading for the Maya Enthusiast

Understanding the Ooze of LIfe

Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art
Linda Schele , Mary Ellen Miller , and Justin Kerr
Manufacturer: George Braziller
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
Mayan | Ancient | History | Subjects | Books
General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 080761159X

Customer Reviews:

Looks like we got it all wrong.......2005-10-18

When I went through school the Maya were peace loving agriculturists that invented a lot of neat stuff, especially in astronomy and calendars. We even looked at some of the writing. To bad we did not look a little closer.

Look at the cover of the book ad you will see a Mayan pulling a rope with knots in it through his tongue. The also had plenty of blood thirsty rituals and rivalries with neighboring Mayans. Their underworld is a place full of farts.

I bought this book as part of an exhibit at Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth. I am still a member.

The book its self is oversized and has lots of glossy pictures. There are a lot of good references to other books and articles on the Myna.

After reading this book and getting a good overview of what Maya really is, you may want to find some of their writing "Popol Vuh : The Definitive Edition Of The Mayan Book Of The Dawn Of Life And The Glories Of" by Dennis Tedlock.

Great articles and fabulous photographs and drawings.......2004-03-13

It is nearly twenty years since this book was published in 1986 as part of an exhibition at the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas during the Texas Sesquicentennial. This book was and remains a triumph. We still mourn the loss of Linda Schele and are grateful the Mary Ellen Miller continues her work and teaching at Yale.

The book makes clear the Mayan Kings were not Emperors. They were rulers of city-states that competed with one another. They also had a spiritual role in the life of those they ruled. This book discusses how one became a Mayan King, life in the court, the role of bloodletting and visions (hallucinations?), warfare and human sacrifice, the all-important ballgame, the Mayan concept of afterlife and Xibalba, and the Mayan view of the cosmos. All fascinating topics and the articles are written quite well. I find them to be a captivating read.

The selection of images for the book is fabulous. This book can make a wonderful coffee table book, they are that beautiful. However, the articles are far superior to most books you find on coffee tables. I remember seeing Maya Blue (the shade that the Mayans painted on a great many of the monuments and sculptures) for the first time in this book. Having seen it in person since then I can tell you the shade is captured very faithfully in the photographs in this book.

Much has been written since 1986 and new discoveries and new examinations of existing discoveries deepen our understanding of the Maya. But this book still stands strong and valuable. It is not too technical for the general reader and still has value for the student. I am glad to have my copy on a shelf of favorite books.

Required Reading for the Maya Enthusiast.......2001-11-06

Mary Ellen Miller and the late Linda Schele put this book together in 1986. The field of Mayan studies is a fast-moving arena, and Mayanists already know a lot more now than they did when this book came out, but in my opinion this book is still the place to start if you want to begin learning about the Maya.

For one thing, the photography of the artwork is fantastic - the book is worth acquiring for that alone. Secondly, the commentary is by the greatest names in the field, including an introduction by Michael Coe. Thirdly, the book never strays from academic discipline, unlike a great deal of New Agey-type material written about the Maya. In fact, the book studiously avoids making any observations that cannot be substantiated - perhaps a reaction in the field of Mayan studies against the sometimes too pat assumptions that Eric Thompson made when he dominated the subject. Fourthly, it covers all the major cultural features of the Maya, providing abundant commentary on each piece of art portrayed. Last but not least, it tackles the thorny subject of Maya iconography. This is a field about which we already know a great deal more about now than we knew in 1986, but in fact if the book were written today there is probably very little that would actually be changed.

The book was printed in Japan, for some reason. No harm in that - the Japanese have a tradition, and a reputation, of producing quality bindings and excellent photographic reproductions, both of which are evident in this edition and which add to the quality of the book. I can't recommend it too highly to anyone interested in the Maya.

Understanding the Ooze of LIfe.......2000-04-26

The Blood of Kings by Linda Schele and MAry Ellen Miller was written on the occasion of the Kimbell Art Mesuem's exhibition of Maya Art in 1986. The hope was to draw attention to the rich legacy of Maya art along with a book that would give texture to these artistic recordings of the singificant ritual events in the lives of the Maya. What better way, since art has been our keyhole to understanding the magnificance of there thought, language, science and culture? Schele and Miller do an incredble job of focusing on these artifacts to bring us inside the current understanding of what th experts perceive the maya ritual and life to be about-- including the deciperment of the syllables of the maya language.

The book begins with a history of the road to understanding the Maya culture, complete with its meadering and diversions. This "age" delights in knowing that the Maya are filled with blood, both their own in bloodletting and those of captives that they sacrifice, unlike previous interpretations of a more peaceful existence. Blood, the ooze of life, was offered to eh gods in hopres that they would continue to give their ooze of sap, rain and other life-sustaining things. The book is based on 8 sections of art and interpretation: person, accession rites, courtly life, bloodletting, captives, the ballgame, and death, and the kingship of the Maya Cosmos. Of note as weel is the colors on p.158 where one can get an interpration of what the colors might have been in the Classic period.

In this book Coe prefaces the book commenting on the profound understandng that the world of the Maya is filled with notions of death. But the myth of the Mayas is that the hero twins went to the underworld and by trickery defeated death and those rose to take their place in the Mayan night sky. Perhaps these indiscernible Maya have continued to trick us as well in our attempts to traverse the road of their culture-- and their greatest preoccupation, enscribed on their ceramics and reliefs ---is not death, but life, in all its oozing forms.

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The Blood of Kings Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art
Linda Schele Mary Ellen Miller
Manufacturer: Kimbell Art Museum
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Mayan | Ancient | History | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B000MRFO5C

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Conceptography: Design/photography
John Hicks
Manufacturer: Creative Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0006C32JI

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Graphic SF Reader

ah, the wonder

This really is the first story-arc...

One of the better series in the superhero-genre

Please Take a Drive Around Astro City

Astro City Vol. 3: Family Album
Kurt Busiek , Brent Anderson , and Alex Ross
Manufacturer: Wildstorm
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Comics & Graphic Novels | Subjects | Books
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Astro City Vol. 2: Confession

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Supreme: The Story of the Year

ASIN: 1563895528

Customer Reviews:

Graphic SF Reader.......2007-09-03

The third of Kurt Busiek's Astro City collections is a little quieter. This focus is basically as the title suggest, on the family moments of some of the heroes of Astro City. This includes one of the First Family, and also Jack In The Box, as he decides which way that he wants to go with his life after an incident one night that shakes him up.

ah, the wonder.......2006-02-22

After all the dark and depressing stories by the big two (Marvel and DC)finally comics that stir the childhood wonder again. Of course these are very well written by adults.

This really is the first story-arc..........2003-03-20

This book contains the first story arch of Astro City. In the previous issues, it was literally issue to issue, no to be continued endings, but this has it. The first arch shows the life of a 10 year old girl who is a super hero and struggles to cope with how she is different from normal girls. The second is of Jack In The Box (the dude on the cover) and how his pregnant wife will have a child who might grow up hating his father for dying when he meets 3 people from potential futures. 2 of which were homocidal maniacs claiming to be his son.

One of the better series in the superhero-genre.......2001-08-30

Astro City is a city filled with superpowered beings. You can't walk from street to street without noticing at least one meta-human, if you're an inhabitant of the city. But not so like most 'superhero-titles' the focus here isn't only on the heroes and their deeds, but on the regular people who live (and try to cope with all the supernatural activities around them) there as well. It tells about their personal lives as well as about the events they all witness.
This Trade-Paperback is the first Astro City collection that collects issues from the ongoing series (#1-3 & #10-13, no loose ends there though).
The great thing about Astro City TPB's is that they both work for longtime readers as for people who are new to the title. For 'experienced' readers there are many recognizable (background-) characters, surroundings and situations that it feels familiair (without being repetitive), yet never the same. At the same time all those recognizable parts aren't vital points to the story-arcs so that new-comers will never feel like their missing out on something (and once they're through reading their first TPB and move on to another Astro City book THEIR party of recognition begins, without anything being spoiled in a previous book. No matter what order you read them in because they work as self-contained books as well). The issues in this book I'd like to advise to especially take a good look at are #10-12. Issue #10 is about a man called "The Junkman" who once managed to pull off the greatest bank-robbery in the history of Astro City. Only the one thing he wants most, recognition for it, he doesn't have. He decides to go back and do it again. Issues #11/12 are about one of the most famous characters of Astro City namely 'Jack-in-the-Box'. One evening he leaves home and he gets confronted with some persons from his 'possible futures'. An event which makes him rethink his activities, both private as professional.
Finally the volume is concluded with some pages filled with sketches of how the characters came to be what they are now AND the Alex Ross covers to the original issues which are collected in here.
Like I said in my review-title, I consider this one of the best titles in the genre where superheroes are involved. It's about superheroes AND about regular folks among them AND about the the lives these metahumans have apart from being heroes. Especially people who liked "Marvels" and Alan Moore's "Top Ten" will have a good time with this book, but it really should appeal to most other comicbook-readers as well, both superhero-fans as fans whose interest lies in the more 'serious' sub-genres. Really well-executed.

Please Take a Drive Around Astro City.......2000-02-12

Reading this collection of stories was like driving around Astro City and visting different members of it's community. First take a look at how a dad rasies his two girls in the city, and then look at a superhero as he faces the challenges of being a dad in the near future, then see how a little girl of a superhero family just wants to be treated like a normal kid. These are all family oriented stories, and they are another great example of Kurt Busiek's writing. Let;s have more please.!

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Astro City Family Album

ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1563895374

Book Description

From concept to character, from opening scene to finished script..

Here are easily understood guidelines to make film-writing accessible to novices and to help practiced writers improve their scripts. Syd Field pinpoints the structural and stylistic elements essential to every good screenplay. He presents a step-by-step, comprehensive technique for writing the script that will succeed.

-Why are the first ten pages of your script crucially important?

- How do you collaborate successfully with someone else?

-How do you adapt a novel, a play, or an article into a screenplay?

-How do you market your script?

Customer Reviews:

The Bible.......2007-09-29

If it didn't restate the same elements over and over I think this book would be about thirty pages long, but that aside it really is a fantastic resource. Something has to be said for those teachers who explain things in such a way that you believe you knew it all along (even though you didn't). I believe this is a must for not only screenwriters, but filmmakers in general. The basics can only make us stronger.

Hollywood of the 80s.......2007-08-17

I liked this book. Coupled with Syd Field's Screenwriter's Workbook, I managed to write a first draft of a screenplay. I've never been able to complete a play or screenplay before reading these books! This book gives you the background of screenplays and writing, plus his theory of what makes a good Hollywood screenplay. The workbook gives you a step by step process of writing one.

One drawback is that this book was written in the 80's. Sometimes it sounds so dated. The other drawback is it only explains one type of screenplay, the standard Hollywood 3-act narrative.

Overall, this book was a great help in writing a readable well structured screenplay.

As good as a screenwriters bible.......2007-07-15

If you are looking for a text on formats, this is not the book.

Fields presents a thinking man's guide to screen writing. He writes in an honest style that presents thoughtful ways to compose a screenplay based on experience and knowledge.

He talks about several concepts making up a screenplay and what and why the elements of it are. He teaches the value of preparation and research prior to putting pencil to paper. The defining and detailed examination of the three act paradigm of a screenplay are defined and re-examined throughout the book, adding up to a good grasp of the concept.

Used as a textbook in my class, it was extremely useful and helpful to us beginning students.

Mixed Feelings.......2007-07-12

To sum up my opinion of the book in a short sentence: it's not the most amazing book ever, but I don't regret having read it. The good side of it is that the three act structure and all sound like a good plan to start working on a script. It does help a tonload to be able to cover so much ground in such a short time and with such big lines. I won't deny that. The card system is quite nice too, but you don't need 300 pages to learn that.

The thing that struck me the most was how redundant Field could get. Seriously, there are entire blocks of sentences that you will read over and over again. At first I thought that sounded really bad... I mean, if you're a famous script-writer and all, your writing should reflect that. So I was confused. Then, and I don't know if that saves it or not, I figured that the repetition was perhaps not so bad, since it kept hammering the same basic things in your mind, and since that helps to remember. It's a bit like a class, I guess.

I'm not saying that Field can't write, however, I think he merely opted for a personal style, oral if you want, and I don't think it's any fair to criticise too much on this aspect as other critics did. He's not writing a novel, he's writing about screenplay and he's talking to you.

I didn't buy this because I wanted to write a movie, I was curious about the script as a form of writing. Now I feel secure enough to consider writing a whole movie even though I never intended to, and that's pretty cool, I have to admit.

On the flip side, I have my doubts about Syd Field. Now, maybe I'm a dumb person, but I wasn't able to find a single movie written by him. And he doesn't mention any of his own scripts! He mentions those of others, oh yes, that he does, but I can't recall him mentioning one of his own personal scripts. (My bad and apologies if he did and I didn't see or forgot.)

Syd Field hated "Pulp Fiction" when he first saw it. That's bad. I mean, if you can't see right off that "Pulp Fiction" is a great movie, moreover, as a specialist of films, then I worry. I saw it years ago when I was a teen and it struck me as special even though I was no film specialist. So I don't know. It seems that Field eventually liked it when he was able to put it in his 3 act structure, by dividing the stories as units onto themselves. Fine, but do you need that to enjoy a movie or think it's great? No. In fact, if you are rendered unable to enjoy a movie because of that, then it majorly worries me.

As to the 3-act theory itself, I think it's a great tool to use for structure and for the writing of a movie, but I wouldn't base everything on it more than that. See, I think anything has a beginning, middle, and end, and that you can find those 3 things anywhere. It's too vague to be really meaningful, although it can be useful. I see it as something like construction lines in drawing: you use them, but then you erase them. And I think that's also how Field sees it; he doesn't think of his "paradigm" as impossibly rigid.

Other thing that worried me about Field is that he claims to write biographies for his characters that encompass their parents, grandparents, and, yes, past lives. Alright, that can always give you cool ideas that you'd not think of if it hadn't been for the character's past life as a fisherman in Antarctica, but that sounds far-fetched.

There are other things in Field's style that antagonised me from the beginning. Cliché zen analogies and such didn't do much to make like the text, and repeating the same things without backing them up doesn't convince more.

Also, and maybe I'm dumb, but I would have started the book with the form of script-writing. That's the first thing you look at when you consider writing a script! That's what I bought the book for, originally. Very little of the book is consecrated to that, and it's among the final chapters.

So what's the result of my reading this book? Well, I feel like I could start working on an actual movie script right now, and that alone isn't so bad, but I don't know that another book couldn't have done the same. The read itself wasn't too bad, although the redundancy can get seriously annoying. I also felt like the chapters weren't properly delimited, like you'd talk of a topic in this chapter and 4 chapters further, you find yourself reading about the same thing again.

I would recommend that to anyone who's interesting in scrip-writing, but be careful. It does give you a good basis for working up the spine of a script, and that's what the book was written for, so even though I gave it only 3 stars, I'd still recommend it (for lack of a better, since I never read anything else on script-writing).

Repetitious and Ramblings.......2007-05-28

I bought this book on a recomendation and appeared to be the best on the shelf. Syd Field has a very irritating writing style that is filled with convoluted ramblings and repeats himself quite often. There is a difference between driving a point home and repeating yourself and Syd appears to have used the copy/paste method as every page or so he states the same thing over and over and over again using the same wording. At first it seemed like he was just trying to drive a point home but after reading about 30 pages and having read the same sentance about 40 times it just got frustrating.

With that said, there is some great information in this book but you have to fight through it. The great information may be worth it in the end but really, he needs an editor/publisher that will stand up and tell him that it needs to be fixed.

This really can be a great book and is packed with useful info - but I have docked the rating because you have to force read and deal with near constant repetition.

Screenplay the Foundations of Screenwriting a step-by-Step guide from Concept to Finished Script

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Screenplay the Foundations of Screenwriting a step-by-Step guide from Concept to Finished Script
Syd Field
Manufacturer: Dell
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000LDQUPU

Book Description

A complete guide to establishing an accountable psychiatric music therapy program, the manual is indexed according to chronological age, sex, and degree of illness of patients. Features:* 200 patient problems most frequently treated using music therapy * 800 music therapy interventions categorized according to type of patient problem * 354 interventions for use in music assessment * Psychiatric music therapy intake assessment questionnaires for adults, adolescents and children * Individualized clinical forms for - writing multimodal music therapy profiles - writing goals and objectives - writing music therapy intervention plans - writing music therapy implementation strategies - measuring and charting patient progress - writing progress reports * Case studies utilizing the above clinical forms * Hypothetical cases for practice in using the clinical forms

Multimodal Psychiatric Music Therapy for Adults, Adolescents & Children: A Clinical Manual

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Multimodal Psychiatric Music Therapy for Adults, Adolescents & Children: A Clinical Manual
Michael D. Cassity
Manufacturer: Mmb Music
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0964360209

Book Description

Re- Entering the Sign brings together an array of perspectives from contemporary Russian scholars and artists on the radical cultural changes that have accompanied the collapse of familiar social, political, and economic structures in the former Soviet Union. The essays and artistic manifestoes offer a variety of responses to the intense cultural questioning that resulted from a remarkable historical period as former Soviet society reentered both its own historical conversations as well as larger global discussions about culture.

The collection was conceived at an international conference on language and the arts, "Language, Consciousness, and Society," whose organizers aimed to initiate dialogue within an international community of scholars and artists, to open a public arena for the confluence of new voices, including native voices long denied open access to the public sphere in their own country. The concerns raised in these essays continue to provoke debate in contemporary Russian culture.

Russian luminaries include Mikhail Epstein and Arcady Dragomoshchenko on topics such as Russian postmodernism, the state of contemporary artistic culture, comparisons of Soviet literature with new Russian literature, and underground cinema.

The book will appeal to students and scholars of comparative literature and film, to cultural critics interested in cross- and trans-cultural approaches, and to theorists of the contemporary avant-garde.

Ellen E. Berry is Associate Professor of English and Director of Women's Studies, Bowling Green State University, and author of Curved Thought and Textual Wandering: Gertrude Stein's Postmodernism. Anesa Miller-Pogacar is Assistant Professor of Russian, Bowling Green State University.

Customer Reviews:

Two nice articles, nothing else worth having.......2005-02-27

This interesting little book is the Classic Files Magazine spotlight on the classic 1966-71 American television show, Dark Shadows. The best part of the book is a six page interview with Jonathan Frid (who played Barnabas Collins), which comes complete with six large black-and-white pictures. After that comes a copy of the original press release, an article on the show itself, a script from one of the episodes of the show, and a description of 130 episodes from the show.

Does that sound pretty good? Well, it's not as good as it sounds. At least with the script, it claims to be from The House of Dark Shadows, but I am not entirely certain of that, and it is incomplete. At one point it says "Continued," but it is not continued later in the book. Also, while the episode guide claims to be of episodes 1 through 130, #1 is the introduction of Barnabas Collins, and he did not join the show until much later.

So, is this book a complete waste of time? Well, not "complete." While I found the script and episode guide to be less than useful, I did enjoy the articles on Jonathan Frid and the show. So, if you are a massive Dark Shadows fan, I know that you will enjoy seeing the book - I just won't recommend spending too much money on it. Overall, I do not recommend this book.

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