The Vatican to Vegas: The History of Special Effects

Book Description

A richly illustrated journey through five centuries of optical illusions and other wonders.

Special effects...are coup de théatres, thunderclaps that shock you: a burst; an eruption; something small, like an insect down your back; a wall dissolving suddenly.—from The Vatican to Vegas

A guided tour through special-effects environments from 1550 to the present, Norman Klein's The Vatican to Vegas: The History of Special Effects demonstrates how Renaissance and early Baroque artists pioneered interactive, cinematic, and even digital environments. As in our era, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century illusion serviced a global culture and even relied on "software" of a kind: solid geometry for architecture, optics, sculpture, painting and theater. As if from a cryonic thaw, these forms have reemerged very clearly in recent decades. And to manage all this friendly disaster, modern special effects have evolved a unique grammar as precise as the rules of film, theater, and music. Klein reviews this syntax and demonstrates how special effects are not only a barometer for politics, myths of identity and economic relations, but an instructive parallel for understanding where our civilization may be headed next.

Customer Reviews:

A great literary stylist delivers a great book.......2005-12-08

I am shocked at the ignorance of the last reviewer. Norman Klein is one of the finest literary stylists in the English-speaking world. He is a novelist as well as a critic. I have followed his work carefully for many years. Probably no one but he could have delivered this level of scholarship in the spirit of a novel, with ironic essays woven even into the footnotes, with a structure that says the book itself is a Renaissance computer.
He is also famous for his lectures in Europe and the US, in a spirit that definitely does not make him simply a professor in the dull sense, not at all. He is a man of letters, and a public intellectual of the first order. This is a major book that already has been studied carefully in Europe, already has a complex, respectful literary answer published in Spain (in English, by working architects, not professors). Klein's work also has been used by animators at Disney, at The Simpsons. He helped train various animators with shows on Nikolodeon. There have been conferences based on his theories that drew visitors and speakers from across the arts. To repeat, he teaches and trains people in the arts and architecture.
It is truly shocking that people simply do not read enough, or carefully enough, to realize what is not traditional scholarship. This is utterly fresh,indeed a new direction in literature itself, by a man who writes across borders and forms.

Interesting ideas poorly written.......2005-12-03

Norman Klein is a professor and he writes like one! Meaning he doesn't seem to want to express his ideas simply because that would not be learned. This is ironic when he bemoans the powerful using "speacial effects" to deceive the huddled masses, that he couldn't write more clearly.

How to Write History.......2004-07-23

Belles Lettres as they too rarely come. Vatican to Vegas is like a key to the secret history of our times. Klein is proving himself one of our finest, most demanding, readable and original writers.

As a historian and cultural critic, Klein stands alone in his ability and will to cross academic categorizations. While his first two books constitute masterpieces within relatively close-focussed historical genres, Vatican to Vegas, in fact, categorizes itself as something larger, a book -- a ?Renaissance computer", able to link the odd, inter-disciplinary traces of its elusive but all-pervasive subject into the histories of technology, of the carnival, of art, of literature, of Western culture itself. It opens up the color and intensity of marginal histories, turning the 19th century novel of Zola and Balzac into the sort of book it never quite managed to form in the 20th.

We encounter socialist industrial history, Freudian self-consciousness, pop culture, anecdotal reminiscence. We achieve rich and total immersion in what remains Klein's constant theme -- the relation of illusion to the real, and the power this dialectic generates in the real, political world.

One of the best, most important books of the year.

An Unreadable Mish-Mash.......2004-06-24

After reading a review in Variety that made it sound like interesting history, I paid full price for this disappointing mess of a book. It is neither interesting, nor useful, nor the least bit engaging -- no structure, no flow and seriously lacking any evidence of an editor.

It has the slogging pace of a randomly jumbled collection of lecture notes and the author repeats himself endlessly. There is no sense of narrative development, no coherent thesis and, basically, no real point. I thoroughly advise you not to waste your money. For an engrossing account of similar subject matter, get "Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality" by Neil Gabler.

an ingenious, original, useful, groundbreaking work.......2004-06-17

Not only students and scholars of the history of art, architecture, film, animation, western culture can rejoice at the publication of Norman Klein's epic and illuminating history of special effects illusionism, from the 17th century to the present. This book also promises delight to the common reader interested and engaged with the peculiar culture our times. As spectacle morphs to ever stranger forms, Klein offers an invaluable set of tools for analyzing, understanding, critiquing and surviving its massive leveling wash.

Klein's thesis, that large-scale special effects consistently function within a dialectic of political power and powerlessness, not only newly opens important influential fields for his spectacular research and interdisciplinary penetrations, but delights, in a rich and novelistic narrative,sparkling with brilliant characters (Ben Jonson, Mary Shelley, Edgar A. Poe, Charles Babbage, Jules Verne, George W. Bush) and bubbling over with cascading, interconnected information. The writer also lays bare his own private history, how special effects intervened in his Coney Island Youth and his Los Angeles adulthood, as a useful, literary casestudy. Special Effects emerges not simply as a hegemonic tool of repression but as a perplexing and evolving field of invention, influence and ambitious expression still as liable to charm as depress.

In particular, Klein's research on the history of technology was of particular use and interest to me. But the book serves happily, with its brilliantly organized index and "search engine" as a hand-book of effects history and theory in all disciplines. Klein crosses boudaries between history, theory, sociology and literature, offering important new realizations without ever overlooking, or short-shrifting the achievements of scholars dedicated to those particular fields. Vatican to Vegas, indeed, offers a brilliant example of the promise that interdisciplinary engagement offers writers of the future. I haven't read Klein before, but I'm telling you, I'll start now.

I won't start praising the pictures, though they're fascinating.

Buy this book and nail it to your desk or bedside table. In our current "Electronic Baroque" (a key Kleinian term), it grows more and more relevant every day.

Average customer rating:
From the Vatican to Vegas: The History of Special Effects
Norman M. Klein
Manufacturer: New Press, The
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MHRR3E

Average customer rating:
Champlin on fine grain
Harry Champlin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B00005XC2M

Book Description

Mike Veeck runs six minor-league baseball teams, and for each of them he's drafted a business plan that begins with three simple words: 'Fun is good.' The fun-is-good philosophy not only has worked to make an evening at one of his ballparks-full of laughs, zany promotions, and free giveaways-enjoyable for everyone; it has transformed a half-dozen money-losing or start-up teams into a thriving $25 million business.

Customer Reviews:

Fun Is Good...Is Great!.......2006-09-04

What a great formula for business success! I love the philosophy behind this wonderful way to run a company and a career. Laughter is definitely more than the "Best Medicine" as this book shows....it can lead to higher profits and a real jump up the ladder of success!

You don't have to be a baseball fan to love this book!.......2005-12-17

When I was 10 years, I wrote Bill Veeck--the innovative baseball
promoter--a letter . . . he responded, and that began a period
of occasional letters that ended when he died several years
later . . . his creativity inspired me then--and still does to this day.

I still chuckle at some of the things that Veeck did to enliven
the game . . . he introduced exploding scoreboards, popularized
postgame fireworks and provided nurseries at the ballpark for
children . . . in addition, he staged special nights for every
group imaginable and was the first to popularize ballpark
giveways.

His son, Mike Veeck, has carried on his legacy with a series
of equally unique promotions that he writes about with co-author
Pete Williams in FUN IS GOOD . . . but you don't have to be a baseball fan to love this
book, in that the ideas contained can be applied to any
profession . . . or as the subtitle points out, you'll learn
HOW TO CREATE JOY & PASSION IN YOUR
WORKPLACE & CAREER.

Many times, authors promise outrageous things in their
titles and/or subtitles . . . this is not the case here;
Veeck and Williams actually show you how this can be
done in a step-by-step approach that's both easy to
follow and apply.

I kept jotting notes down as I read FUN IS GOOD, which is
always a good sign . . . it means that I plan to go back to use
much of it . . . the only negative to this practice is that it makes
it difficult to choose just a few ideas to share in this brief
review, in that there were so many . . . yet that said, these
tidbits did stand out:

* If you're someone still trying to find your way, let your passions
serve as your guide. Look for environments where people are having
fun. When I hire people, I seek out passionate folks with an array
of interests, no matter how eclectic. If I need an accountant, for
instance, I don't look for just someone with the proper credentials.
I go in search of an experienced accountant with other interests,
someone I know might not only be fun to be around by perhaps
have non accounting skills that might be valuable. Perhaps this
person is a fly-fisherman or guitar player. That kind of focus
and creativity manifests itself in the workplace

* Jim Lucas, who was the assistant general manager of our Charleston
RiverDogs team a few years ago, issued pins to 10 or 15 fans before
each game, with instructions to give them to employees who
provided great customer service. The 3 employees who collected
the most pins at the end of the season received cash prizes.
These pins cost us only about 60 cents apiece, but you would have
thought they were precious gemstones. Employees proudly
displayed them on hats and worked tirelessly to obtain them.
Since nobody knew who had the pins, everyone was treated
extraordinarily well by employees with upbeat attitude.

* You don't need a ballpark to try things like Mime-O-Vision. [Veeck
hired a bunch of mimes to reenact plays before instant replays
became popular.] Years ago, people would win shopping sprees
where they had 90 seconds to grab whatever they could. Pizzerias
would award a year's worth of pizza to the winner of a pie-eating
contest. My dad used to say that it's barely noteworthy to give
one bottle of beer to each of a thousand fans, but it's a big deal to give
a thousand bottles of beer to one lucky winner.

Looking for an idea holiday gift this upcoming season? You
certainly won't go wrong giving FUN IS GOOD to somebody
you care about . . . or want to inspire.

Fun is Good ... is Good.......2005-08-15

This book was penned by the man who was lambasted for his Disco demolition stunt in Cominsky Park. In the middle of a doubleheader, the promoters put a box of disco records in the middle of the field with a bomb. When it exploded, fans ran onto the field and commenced creating their own disco record explosions. This eventually caused the cancellation of the second game is considered a travesty in baseball lore.

However, it has become part of baseball lore. From a marketing standpoint, it was brilliant. How many marketing stunts have 25th anniversary DVDs?

This is a book about embracing failure, laughing, trying something new, and of course having fun. The book largely follows Mike Veeck and his father's philosophies and antics with baseball (and a few other businesses they tried). It's a fun book that those who are a little disgruntled or inspired with their workplace should read. Surely, you will find something that will make you laugh and improve your own workplace.

A book worth buying and a book worth giving.......2005-03-30

Baseball and writing about baseball are my passions and being passionate about something is the heart and soul of the new book by Mike Veeck (and Pete Williams), "Fun Is Good: How to Inject Joy & Passion Into Your Workplace & Career" published by Rodale Press and to be released early next month. The book is part business philosophy, part autobiography, part confessional, part homage to his late father Bill Veeck, part salute to his 12-year old daughter who is fighting blindness as the result of retinitis pigmentosa, part a baseball love story and all fun. Because fun is what Mike, like all the Veecks, is all about.

Mike writes, "Somehow in our haste to seize the American dream, we've sucked the fun, passion, and creativity out of the workplace." How many of you feel that way? I guess that's why so many people say that work sucks. But as Mike points out, "Fun isn't just good; it's a necessity." "If you're not having fun, it's nearly impossible to project the upbeat, positive attitude necessary to service clients effectively."

We know that's the trouble with baseball, don't we? Somehow it has becoming way to much about greed. We could handle it if were about drugs, sex, and rock and roll, at least that's fun. Mike writes that when his father Bill Veeck died in 1986, "we had him cremated so he wouldn't constantly be rolling in his grave."

In the workplace it's about passion, the right attitude and being happy at what you do. Mike encourages change and risk taking because if you're unhappy you can't afford to stay where you are. In addition, your role whether you are an Indian or a chief is to help create a workplace atmosphere that is fun, positive and risk taking. He writes, "How effectively you interact with coworkers sets the tone for the organization," because if you take a genuine interest in the people around you, you never know where it might lead.

I was particularly struck with this philosophical statement, "If you approach things with optimism and with the mentality that any obstacle can be overcome with good humor, preparation, brainpower, and a little bit of luck, nothing is outside the realm of possibility." It is that statement that clearly drives Mike's wonderful daughter. The book is filled with interviews and vignettes from business leaders in which they express, in their own words, how the importance of a "Fun is Good" philosophy has driven the success of their company. None is more powerful or moving than the section written by Rebecca Veeck who truly sums up much more than the philosophy of the book when she writes, "Fun is Good because that's the way life is supposed to be. It's the main feeling that we're supposed to have. I mean, if you're not having fun, what's the point?"

I will be giving this book to my daughter Elizabeth on her birthday on April 11 (the same date as Veeck's eldest, Night Train Veeck) because as she prepares to graduate college and face the real world she needs to know that if you treat every day like Opening Day than life will be fun, and fun is good.

Fun Is Good: How to Create Joy and Passion in Your Workplace and Career

Average customer rating:

Fun Is Good: How to Create Joy and Passion in Your Workplace and Career
Mike Veeck , and Pete Williams
Manufacturer: Rodale Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Business Life | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Workplace | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Customer Service | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Motivational | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 1594865213
Release Date: 2007-02-06

Book Description

Make work fun and you’ll create a culture of creativity where the best people will want to work and customers will want to spend their money. That is maverick marketing whiz Mike Veeck’s Fun Is Good philosophy in a nutshell. And in this book, he demonstrates how it has worked, not only to make an evening at one of his minor league ballparks—full of laughs, zany promotions, and free giveaways—enjoyable for everyone, but also how it can turn any organization into a thriving one.

Fun is Good: How to Create Joy & Passion in Your Workplace & Career (Unabridged)

Average customer rating:

Fun is Good: How to Create Joy & Passion in Your Workplace & Career (Unabridged)
Williams, Mike, Pete Veeck
Manufacturer: audible.com
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Download

Workplace | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B000JBWV16

Book Description

Beginning with the simple question, "Why did audiences grow silent?" Listening in Paris gives a spectator's-eye view of opera and concert life from the Old Regime to the Romantic era, describing the transformation in musical experience from social event to profound aesthetic encounter. James H. Johnson recreates the experience of audiences during these rich decades with brio and wit. Woven into the narrative is an analysis of the political, musical, and aesthetic factors that produced more engaged listening. Johnson shows the gradual pacification of audiences from loud and unruly listeners to the attentive public we know today.
Drawing from a wide range of sources--novels, memoirs, police files, personal correspondence, newspaper reviews, architectural plans, and the like--Johnson brings the performances to life: the hubbub of eighteenth-century opera, the exuberance of Revolutionary audiences, Napoleon's musical authoritarianism, the bourgeoisie's polite consideration. He singles out the music of Gluck, Haydn, Rossini, and Beethoven as especially important in forging new ways of hearing. This book's theoretical edge will appeal to cultural and intellectual historians in many fields and periods.

Customer Reviews:

Music History and More.......2000-06-13

This is a fascinating account of musical life in Paris between 1750 and 1850. Although Johnson is trying to discover why opera audiences became silent during this period, he has a lot more than just silence on his mind. The book explores the decline of aristocratic control over music and its take-over by bourgeois audiences; it also traces how music moved from being a cerebral experience to an emotional one. Johnson writes extremely well, and knows how to pick appropriate and witty anecdotes to keep the text moving along. This is one of the few books that both academic scholars and ordinary readers should be able to appreciate and enjoy; it is easily one of the best books on music history to come along in years, and fun to read as well.

Listening in Paris: A Cultural History.: An article from: Notes

Average customer rating:

Listening in Paris: A Cultural History.: An article from: Notes
Alessandra Lippucci
Manufacturer: Music Library Association, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Online Books | Books & Reading | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books

Science & Technology | Subjects | e-Docs | Formats | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Notes, published by Music Library Association, Inc. on March 1, 1998. The length of the article is 1416 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Listening in Paris: A Cultural History.
Author: Alessandra Lippucci
Publication: Notes (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 1998
Publisher: Music Library Association, Inc.
Volume: v54 Issue: n3 Page: p693(3)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

Playing Internet poker in real time against real opponents might just represent poker's brave new world. Whether for play-money or real money, it's an environment consisting of virtual tables, player icons representing you and your opponents, and specialized computer algorithms that randomly shuffle the "cards." It's a world where you can find a game day or night. Though it may be the wee hours of the morning in California, it's prime time in Europe, and someone, somewhere, is looking to play a little poker. But it's poker with a difference. The game is the same, to be sure, but technology does kick in -- sometimes in strange and unexpected ways. A reference as well as a tutorial, this book includes a CD with free poker software, and a special bonus chapter with 125 interactive hands to help you prepare to play the Internet games for fun or for profit.

Customer Reviews:

Reconsider..........2006-08-04

....will the reading of this book improve your game, personally as a semi Professional player that has participated in the WSOP, I would urge all new players to start off just playing for play money. To improve your tournament play you should play freerolls. If you find yourself, hitting a place, then it is time to play for real money online, not before.

truly Disappointed!.......2006-03-04

if you are a Mac comuter user or do not have access to a PC, don't get this book!

75% of this book requires that you have a Windows PC to follow the disk and makes the book completely useless it you have a MAC.
I bought this book online, and no where does it have a disclaimer saying this book is worthless if you don't have a PC.

This book is more of an info-mercial for Wilsons Turbo Poker.

I wasted my money on this book.
It would have been nice if the author had at least framed the Q&A so you didn't need the Disk to follow what he was talking about.

I'd give it a zero if I could!

For Rank Beginners Only.......2005-09-29

This book may be useful for someone that has absolutely no experience with online poker but in no way does the book seriously address how to "beat online poker games." It briefly discusses the rules of the most popular poker games and the mechanics of online play. The book is more concerned with discussing table etiquette than poker strategy. The title is very misleading.

Great beginners guide for online play!.......2004-12-03

Although the author is a well known, don't expect an advanced treatise on onlie play. What this is, however, is a good nuts & bolts guide for online play. Great for beginners and intermediate players who have want to transition from live to online play. Also servers as a good beginner's guide to limit Texas holdem. This is the most popular game being played online, at casinos, and in local card rooms. Learn this game and you can make a living anywhere in the world, online or live!

Save your money.......2004-10-12

I've purchased 5 poker books in the past few months and this is by far the poorest. It's Texas Holdem section doesnt go beyond pre-flop play - literally! No advice on what to do after flop, on turn, at river. It comes with a free CD which, from what I gathered, promotes an online poker site. My guess is that they are marketing the site. No real content in book.

(...)

Book Description

An emerging technology, high-definition television (HDTV) is expected to have dramatic effects on the communication and entertainment industries as well as on education and training methods, advertising, medicine, and other fields. With over 1,400 entries, this annotated bibliography allows the researcher to trace the development of the technology and to identify the economic, sociopolitical, and psychosocial issues raised by the advent of HDTV. Entries are arranged chronologically within topical chapters, providing both an organized method for tracking key issues and a point of departure for historical analysis. The book opens with a description of the general development of high-definition television. It then turns to the work of the Japanese and the Europeans, followed by a chapter on the work of the Americans. Chapter 4 covers the socioeconomic implications of HDTV, and chapter 5 is devoted to the development of standards. Articles on HDTV, film, and related program production appear in chapter 6, while chapter 7 covers HDTV and alternative delivery systems, including DBS, cable, and fiber optics. Notes on the journals cited, as well as an index, are also included.

High-Definition Television: An Annotated Multidisciplinary Bibliography, 1981-1992 (Bibliographies and Indexes in Science and Technology)

Average customer rating:

High-Definition Television: An Annotated Multidisciplinary Bibliography, 1981-1992 (Bibliographies and Indexes in Science and Technology)
Compiler-James E. Sudalnik; Compiler-Victoria A. Kuhl
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OTNUEU

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books