Relatively, the screenplay is 173 pages and the film diary by Russell Jackson (not Branagh) is 34 pages. Branagh does furnish a short introduction. In addition there are about 30 pages of absolutely beautiful stills from the film and the filming. There are certainly better reading versions of Hamlet available, the screenplay is the full Shakespeare play so there's not much to analyze as regards to editing, the diary is not from a prominent member of the cast or crew (a filmographer I think but I am not sure of his role in this specific film), the color photographs included are spectacular and leave me wanting more but they generally are on the small side. Maybe it is handy to mark lines or scenes that are of particular interest... Mostly, I like it more for the memory of the movie (spectacular!!!) than for the book itself so unless you are an equally avid fan the book may disappoint.

Hamlet is arguably the best play that Shakespeare ever wrote. This play has intrigue and misery and death everything that makes it Shakespeare but not only that it is more interesting not only in plot but in language than all the other plays. If you are not use to reading Shakespeare then you may have trouble understanding everything that is going on in this play.

The character of Hamlet is so interesting because his misery can be interpreted in so many different forms. Hamlet's misery can be construed as his frustration over his father's death or his love for Ophelia, or just adolescent misery in general. The fact that it can be all of these things just makes it more interesting because in each way the play can be read in different ways.

Hamlet seems so noble in his efforts to expose his uncle as a murderer but he is also a murderer because he murders Polonias. This event in turn makes Ophelia mad and she then commits suicide and therefore her brother blames Hamlet so there is double guilt for Hamlet.

In the end of the play I believe that Hamlet is so tortured not only with his own guilt but also his misery of all of the other factors such as his mother that he actually wants to die. But he had to kill Claudius in order to feel ready to die because then he would have done his duty and avenged his father's death.
My favorite part in the play is where Hamlet devises the play to his own benefit to confirm that Claudius is really the killer and that the ghost was really his father and not the devil.

This play is great fun to read and play out in your mind. If you want to see a good video version of this play rent the version that stars Mel Gibson. This is my favorite Shakespeare play and always will be.

This version of "Hamlet", brought to the screen (and page) by Branagh, is great fun to read, owing to the humorous "inner monologues" inserted by the author into the text. Although they do sound "twentieth century-ish", they fit perfectly between the lines. In this case, "reading between the lines" was most enjoyable!

Cymbeline was a British king in Roman times ( Augustus Caesar's time).
Devices used in the Play:
1) a woman plays a man/ boy role ( several of his plays : As You Like it,
Twelfth Night))
2) a deception by a villain to lie the virtue of a Lady ( Much Ado about
Nothing)
3) Princes kidnapped and brought up as common men ( I don't know if he
uses this in other plays)
4) poison that causes a coma ( Romeo and Juliet)
5) a Prince who is a vile fool ( used in his historical plays)
6) a Queen who is a plotter and evil ( Macbeth)
7) a Prince who kills another Prince and it redeemed by his hidden
identity
8) a Prince sentenced to hang by mistake
9) a King who condemns his daughter wrongly ( King Lear)
One wonders how much of this is historical fact and how much pure fiction.
With all this scheming in the plot , it should be a very successful
play.
It is a total flop!
What it comes out is seeming unreal and contrived.
You get that happy ending feel that is so much in his comedies
but it has a very false feeling to it.
That's probably why Cymbeline isn't performed much.
If he hadn't gone for all these at once it might have worked, but the
result is that you see the playwright as ....
If anyone wants to take the air out of a Shakespeare pedant,
this is the play to do it with! He makes Shaw and Eugene O'neil l
look good. He even make Rogers and Hammerstein and Gilbert and
Sullivan look better, ha, ha...
This play is not Shakespeare's finest hour!

"Cymbeline" is my favourite Shakespeare play. It's also probably his loopiest. It has three plots, managing to drag in a banishment, a murder, a wicked queen, a moment of almost sheer pornography, a full-on battle between the Romans and the British, a spunky heroine, her jealous but not-really-all-that-bad husband, some fantastic poetry and Jupiter himself descending out of heaven on an eagle to tell the husband to pull his finger out and get looking for his wife. Finally, just when your head is spinning with all the cross-purposes and dangling resolutions, Shakespeare pulls it all together with shameless neatness and everybody lives happily ever after. Except for the wicked queen, and her son, who had his head cut off in Act 4.

"Cymbeline" is, then, completely nuts, but it manages also to be very moving. Quentin Tarantino once described his method as "placing genre characters in real-life situations" - Shakespeare pulls off the far more rewarding trick of placing realistic characters in genre situations. Kicking off with one of the most brazen bits of expository dialogue he ever created, not even bothering to give the two lords who have to explain the back story an ounce of personality, Shakespeare quickly recovers full control and races through his long, complex and deeply implausible narrative at a headlong pace. The play is outrageously theatrical, and yet intensely observed. Imogen's reaction on reading her husband's false accusation of her infidelity is a riveting mixture of hurt and anger; she goes through as much tragedy as a Juliet, yet is less inclined to buckle and snap under the pressure. When she wakes up next to a headless body that she believes to be her husband, her aria of grief is one of the finest WS ever wrote. No less impressive is her plucky determination to get on with her life, rather than follow her hubby into the grave.

Posthumus, the hubby in question, is made of less attractive stuff, but when he comes to believe that Imogen is dead, as he ordered (this play is full of people getting things wrong and suffering for it), he rejects his earlier jealousy and starts to redeem himself a tad. There's a vicious misogyny near the heart of this play, as Shakespeare biographer Park Honan observed, kept in balance by a hatred of violence against women. The oafish prince Cloten, who lusts after Imogen, is a truly repellent piece of work, without even the intelligence of Iago or the horrified panic of Macbeth; his plan to kill Posthumus and rape Imogen before her husband's body is just about as squalid and vindictive as we expect of this louse, and when a long-lost son of the king (don't even _ask_) lops Cloten's head off, there are cheers all round.

Shakespeare sends himself up all through "Cymbeline". I wonder if the almost ludicrously informative opening exposition scene isn't a bit of a gag on his part, but when a tired and angry Posthumus breaks into rhyming couplets, then catches himself and observes "You have put me into rhyme", we know that Shakespeare is having us on a little. Likewise, the final scene, when all is resolved, goes totally over the top in its piling-on "But-what-of-such-and-such?" and "My-Lord-I-forgot-to-mention" moments.

Yet the moments of terror and pity are deep enough to make the jokiness feel truly earned. When Imogen is laid to rest and her adoptive brothers recite "Fear no more the heat o' the sun" over her body, it's as affecting as any moment in the canon. That she isn't actually dead, we don't find out until a few moments later, but it's still a great moment.

Playful, confusing, enigmatic, funny and shot through with a frightening darkness, this is another top job by the Stratford boy. Well done.

A combination of "Romeo and Juliet," "Much Ado About Nothing," "As You Like It," and "King Lear?" Well somehow, Shakespeare made it work. Like "Romeo and Juliet" we have a protagonist (Imogen) who falls under her father's rages because she will not marry who he wants her to. Like "Much Ado About Nothing," we have a villain (Iachimo) who tries to convince a man (Posthumus) that the woman he loves is full of infidelity. Like "As You Like It," we have exiled people who praise life in the wilderness and a woman who disguises herself as a man to search for her family in the wilderness. Like "King Lear," we have a king who's rages and miscaculated judgement lead to disastorous consequences. What else is there? Only beautiful language, multiple plots, an evil queen who tries to undermind the king, an action filled war, suspense, a dream with visions of Pagan gods, and a beautiful scene of reconciliation at the end. While this is certainly one of Shakespeare's longer plays, it is well worth the time.

Huber's book is a frightening look at what happens when critical, life-influencing decisions for our society are made by a group of people (juries) who's most analytical candidates are rejected in order to provide plaintiffs and their counsel with windfalls.

The concept that all ideas deserve equal attention and truth or falsehood will always be shown in court is flat-out wrong. This book is the "how." Read "Atlas Shrugged" for the why.

A must read for any person involved with the product realization process. The only way to protect you and your company against junk science when you are hauled into court with your product or service is to understand that junk science exists and to be prepared to provide real and concrete data to support the validity of your design, not simply close your eyes to their opinions and say "There is nothing wrong".

Several of the companies mentioned in the book were severally damaged by what this books talks about. A number of excellent products have been taken of the market never to come back and more will never see the light of day because of those who have no other desire that to either make money or push their unsubstantiated agendas have been allowed to take advantage of our tort court systems in the USA.

Yes, some not so good products also have been taken off the market but for the wrong reasons. This too keeps other excellent products locked away in the closet.

In our increasingly technological world lack of understanding in science and technology along of this issues by both sides of the junk science debate will only result in more witch-hunts and more tilting at windmills.

To be successful in life one cannot simply allow them selves to be a victim, we must understand the world around us. No matter how good it really is, everything has a cost, everything has a dark side, but even with these costs and risks that do exist we must address the real issues and not simply make someone pay for the downside of life just because they can.

As a person who has been a non-corporate scientist for 25 years, I strongly endorse this text. It walks the reader through the many hideously-flawed legal "arguments" that have set the stage for travesties of justice, based on scientific misinformation and distortion through the years. Most of the American public (and the lawyers who toady to it) wants to believe what it believes on the basis of intuition and supposition rather than objective evidence, and Huber shows why this is an altogether-invalid approach. The reviewer who gave this book a one-star rating is a plaintiff's attorney-- I would "make book" on that.

After a slightly slow start this book takes off making a lot off fun of those who believe in vice all knowing super intelligent aliens. Also one gets a bit of a hilarious alien perspective of our world, i.e. those who like to see a litle fun being made of Hollywood may get a few laughs. In addition, those believing in alien conspiracies get to know one thing that these bigheaded, bigeyed, small, gray ones ultimately may be doing over here.

Since I like both the authors I decidec to pick up this book. Despite a somewhat slow beginning, this was an excellent book. The wonderfully thoughtout alien that is just not a human in an alien suit is a William H. Keith hallmark. Delightful Alien aliens make this book a keeper. The advanced technology is not used as a crutch to cover a lack of story. This book gets better the second time around, and I found things that I missed the first go 'round. While somewhat implausable, the suspension of disbelief is complete, and you find yourself identifying with the various aliens in this hilarious romp through Hollywood's darker side. Well worth the price.

I'm a fan of Sci-Fi, although not particularly interested in Babylon5. But Pete's an old friend so I thought I'd give his book a try. It takes a little while to get started, but it's great entertainment once you do. The Hollywood and standard space alien cliches are wonderful targets for satire. What emerges is a warm and amusing story. The alien-on-earth and human-in-space storylines were juggled very well. I really had a great time with this one. Way to go, Pete!

I expected a careful, general overview of the various uses of technology in music. This book is clearly for a classroom that uses Macs and the specific software indicated. There is not one entry for Finale, nor microphone/recording techniques. The book is pretentious in its organization (academic music ed. types) and woefully lacking in providing the required general overview of concepts, and prefers to teach specific software applications, many of which are not mainstream.

Not exactly the greatest book I've ever owned...the computer background information is woeful (I found 3 glaring mistakes in 70 pages of material by just skimming). The book has generally good information on the software it covers and a pretty good intro to MIDI.

This is a great resource for a lot of people. Whethr you are a music teacher looking to enhance your music teachning with some technology, or you are a professor wanting a textbook for a music technology class you are teaching, this book has something worth-while. David B. Williams and Peter R. Webster are veterans in the field with many years' experience.

Maybe I missed the fine-print or something, but this book isn't what I was expecting, really, or what I was looking for. The book doesn't get three stars because it's bad -- it's not a bad book -- but because I think, well, the title is a sort of false advertising. When I picked up the book, I was expecting essays by successful writers about how they broke into the business of screenwriting ... inspirational-type stuff. Instead, what the book contains are stories about:

"The first time I ...

"... sold a tv-pilot after working for fifteen years as a staff-writer for a highly successful television show."

Or ...

"The first time I ...

"... adapted one of my highly sucessful stage plays into a screenplay."

And so on.

Many of the personal essays are interesting, some are funny, and the book is worth reading, if what you want to read are the kind of mildly amusing, sometimes hopeful essays contained in this book. If what you want is a book of essays by highly successful screenwriters about how the broke into the business, you'll find little (although some) of that here.

For anyone who's ever wanted to get paid for it, you ought to read this book. Especially wonderful for those who follow the Who's Who of Hollywood writers, and how they struggled. The foreword by William Goldman is especially charming as is the closing anecdote by Steve Zaillian, which I found touching. Audrey Wells' tale is flippant and funny as is Pamela Gray's.

One of the things I'd like to do in my life is write a screenplay. I haven't actually done it yet, and I have no idea what the process is like. But this book was a very interesting read. It has given me a renewed sense of hope. Some of the writers' stories in this book are like fairy tales to the hopeful screenwriters, and some of the stories show the reality to us. Reading these has helped me learn what to expect--because I understand that most of these writers were lucky, and that's a lot of what it takes to make it in Hollywood. Let's hope I have it.

Also, I must point out that the forward by William Goldman was worth the price of the book all by itself. I thought I was going to die laughing. I think I read the whole thing out loud to my roommate.

All in all, this is a wonderful book, with many memorable and hopeful stories.

The title of this book suggests that there is to be presented in these pages some new "evidence" to the argument that someone other than WS wrote the Shakespeare plays. But there is so little that holds water here that it is quite literally laughable. From misquoating some passages, to misinterpreting meanings of words and/or wording, and only quoating a small fraction of a famous open letter and then shading the meanings to suit her evidence, the author makes her research seem sullied. Her anti-Stratfordian bias runs rampant. If one would believe her, a glovers son couldn't write the greatest plays in history, but the son of an illiterate shoemaker could. As interesting as this book is, it leaves one with a feeling that there is no reason for this sort of hero-worshipping claptrap. Mr. Sam's or Mr Schoenbaum's Shakespeare books are much better.

I had to hunt this down after catching her speak in the incredible PBS/Frontline documentary that left not a doubt in my mind as to Shakespeare's non-authorship. Unbelievable omissions: no public mourning of WS, no mention of "playwright" in his death register. All we know is he left Stratford fuctionally illiterate two years before Marlowe's "death," and returned a few decades later filthy rich. Marlowe, by the way, was "killed" by his patron's servant (convenient) only days before he was scheduled to be executed by the Church in very nasty ways. There are records of him living in Italy to the ripe old age of 63.

This makes a very convincing case that WH was not the author of the plays and Marlowe was. Wraight very skilfully guides the reader through the new evidence.

The great strength of this book is in highlighting the ethos of Southern gentlemen like Willy Pegram. Carmichael demonstrates that men like Pegram were engaged in a holy war and as such, performed heroic feats on the battlefield. So if you're one of those people who are still facinated by "the cause" of this war, then this is a book for you. If you're looking for a book on Confederate artillery tactics, techniques, and procedures, however, you'll have to look elsewhere.

I found this book a very interesting read. In it, Peter Carmichael describes the military career of the young Confederate officer, William Pegram. The books gives a nice overview of his successful role in the Army of Northern Virginia as an artillery officer. Most of the text chronicles Pegram's swift rise through the ranks as he boldly leads his men, cannons, horses and caissons on the battlefield. Mr. Carmichael uses many of Pegram's letters home to tell his story. More importantly, Pegram's view of the war, slavery, and the Confederate Cause, come through as well.

Mr. Carmichael does a fantastic job of revealing how some of the young Confederate officers like Pegram viewed the Civil War. Since most Civil War books focus more on the Generals than the junior officers who actually fought the battles, I felt that this book really brought a new perspective to my understanding of the conflict.

I do not recommend this book for those who do not already possess a good understanding of the Civil War. Instead, I highly recommend this book to anyone who has gained an appreciation for the war, and is looking to find out more about its participants. This book really opened my eyes about "the Southern Cause", and how it meant different things to different people.

More than just a blood-and-guts biography of a incredibly brave young officer, this book provides really very interesting insight into the minds and motives of educated Southern twentysomethings before and during the war. This is a fine offering from one of the better young historians working today.

I teach a class of 2nd graders this book is even too childish for them. I don't even think that this book deserves a star, but it looks like i have to give it one so I did.

I think this book is very creative but there is nothing to do with the animals when you finish them. and so i just put them in a drawer.

I bought this book for my son,who just turned 8. He had wanted to make animals out of pipe cleaners, they had done this at school. He really liked this book. I liked it because it comes with enough pipe cleaners to make everything in the book. It really does! The pictures are step by step and really clear. We had a lot of fun with this book.

Peter Reese was a soldier and rightfully concentrates on the military career of William Wallace. As a responsible scholar he also acknowledges the dearth of contemporary records of what actually happened during the Scottish wars of independence. Although some may find it annoying or confusing, the author is understandably forced to cite his sources so that he may present the material in the most objective form as possible. In a sense, the book is more scholarly than biographic, building upon the writings of previous Wallace biographers who also must have been challenged by the lack of records from the period. Despite this, he deduces from common sense and the trends of the era to portray what Wallace's life may have been like. His honesty is proof that history should be learned from sources other than Hollywood.

There are a few weaknesses, however. The maps were helpful but somewhat incomplete. Major towns and fiefdoms mentioned throughout the book cannot be found in the maps of Scotland. The diagrams of Stirling and Falkirk are great but lack some important details (they might've sacrificed detail for greater area). Nonetheless these are minor points compared to the one factor I found very problematic. The author makes sweeping assumptions several times throughout his work, mostly concerning the character and essence of a certain people or race. Though cultures have strong mores or habits, that does not apply to entire peoples who may undergo several cultural transformations. In his assumptions the author stands dangerously close to stereotyping, however harmless his conclusions.

Overall the book is a well-researched and honest account of Scotland's famed freedom fighter. The bibliography at the end is interesting in and of itself. It certainly moves one to explore further the mystery of William Wallace, a true nationalist.

For a cut and paste biography, this book does an excellent job of conveying facts (or offering up what may be facts) and making it plain that certain things are under speculation. It offers different opinions from different sources, but lacks personal touch. It wasn't emotionally engaging in the least, unless you care more about dates than the man himself.

Peter Reese's book is highly recommended because:

a) It is divided into logical sections.

b) It covers both the life of Wallace and the aftermath right up to the date of publication (1996).

c) It is very strong on the military aspects of Wallace's life and campaigns.

d) It sets Wallace's life into the context of Scotland at that time.

e) It is very well written, avoids going into unnecessary detail, and makes the important points.

The epilogue is slightly out of date now as a lot has happened in Scotland since 1996 i.e. the devolution referendum in 1997 and the establishment of the new Scottish Parliament in 1999.

In summary, one of the best Wallace biographies - we recommend it very strongly. [MacBraveHeart May, 1999]