Stanley Kubrick Companion

Customer Reviews:

Excellent analysis but not a complete survey........2000-06-19

This slim, yet concise book provides an excellent behind the scenes look at one of filmdom's most famous directors. James Howard has done an excellent job of demolishing the myths which surround Kubrick and presenting a fascinating portrait of a virtuoso whose eye for detail is arguably unsurpassed in film history. Howard reveals that Kubrick's slavish attention to details was such that he considered placing toothbrushes on the set of BARRY LYNDON which were authentic in details to those actually used in the nineteenth century.

My primary criticism of the book is that it was billed as "complete survey of Kubrick's career -- including EYES WIDE SHUT." Well, yes and no. Though the book did include a chapter on Kubrick's last film, I was disappointed to find that Howard had written the book before the film's release. Commentary on Kubrick's swansong are thus limited to rumors of the sort which Howard diligently sought to dispel in the earlier chapters of the book. Apparently, the book was rushed into publication to coincide with the release of EYES WIDE SHUT and to cash in on Kubrick's untimely death. If a second, revised edition were to be released (which included Howard's knowledgeable critique of Kubrick's last film) this book would merit four stars. Recommended with reservations.

Interesting yet slightly flawed overview of Kubrick's films.......2000-06-07

I would really love to give this book three and a half stars, but unfortunately that's not an option here. This book gives a detailed account of Kubrick's films, including history of the shooting, cast and crew comments, and excellent photos. The only problem I have with the book is the author's completely biased view of Kubrick. I understand that having a fan write the book makes perfect sense, but any quote that is of a vaguely negative nature toward Kubrick is treated with total horror and disdain. Kubrick was a genius -- there's no doubt about that -- but he was not perfect, and Howard refuses to acknowledge this.

That particular issue aside, this book is essential for anyone who's a fan of the late, great Stanley Kubrick.

Highly recommended for Stanley Kubrick's film fans........2000-06-04

James Howard's Stanley Kubrick Companion surveys all the films of Kubrick's career, including Eyes Wide Shut, his 1999 latest. Chapters examine plots, approaches, and styles unique to Kubrick's film projects. This is a highly recommended pick for students of film in general and science fiction film in particular.

Great Addition to Film Library--A Wealth of Info.......2000-05-13

This is the third book about Kubrick's work I have and all three are immense in information. This one is particularly good in that it has lots of good photos, is easily readable, and offers extensive information on all of Kubrick's films, right down to the insignificant details that other books overlook. Example: it recounts all of the projects that Kubrick planned on working on such as A.I and his long-awaited Napoleon film. It goes into tons of details about the making of each film, the critical reaction, Kubrick's little touches, follow-ups and other spin-offs each movie produced, in short everything about each of Kubrick's films. Also, complete and accurate summaries of each plot, cast and credits lists, lots of photos of the rarely-seen director and even much kind insight as to the director's personality and private life on his English estate. I was a little disappointed that Howard didn't wait another four or five months so he could include all of the details about Eyes Wide Shut as well, because now all that exists are rumors and info about the making of the film, but its distracting to read about the movie being top-secret when now it has long been out in the open. Anyway the book is packed with facts for any fan.

re previous review.......2000-04-29

Not really a review, this, but a comment on the review by Lee Hill.

Thanks, Lee for your review, and glad you enjoyed the book.

However, I might just correct one small point - I have not read either of the Kubrick biographies by John Baxter or Vincent LoBrutto (I deliberately avoided them, as they were published while I was working on my own book and I didn't want to be influenced by them one way or another), and I certainly don't mention either of these authors anywhere in my book.

If I do 'carp' about other biographers (and I hope I don't) then it is only at the laziness and inaccuracy which leads them to repeat unsubstantiated rumours and myths - something I deliberately aimed to dispel.

Anyway, please don't take this as a major complaint, and I do appreciate you taking the time to review the book.

(Incidentally, if it seems conceited that I gave the book a five star rating, I only did so because it is not possible to submit text without a rating attached, and you wouldn't expect me to give it a lousy review would you ?)

Book Description

Tracing culinary customs from the Stone Age to the stovetop range, from the raw to the nuked, this book elucidates the factors and myths shaping Americans' eating habits. The diversity of food habits and rituals is considered from a psychological perspective. Explored are questions such as Why does the working class prefer sweet drinks over bitter? Why do the affluent tend to roast their potatoes? and What is so comforting about macaroni and cheese anyway? The many contradictions of Americans' relationships with food are identified: food is both a primal source of sensual pleasure and a major cultural anxiety; Americans adore celebrity chefs, but no one cooks at home anymore; the gourmet health food industry is soaring, yet a longtime love affair with fast food endures. The future of food is also covered, including speculation about whether traditional meals will one day evolve into the mere popping of a nutrition capsule.

Customer Reviews:

Short enough to not make you angry.......2007-03-02

"How we eat" is a fairly uninteresting book that, happily, is breezily written, this making it fast to read and allowing the reader to find that there seems to be no point without undue waste of time and without becoming too angry at the lack of research or fact-checking (of minor points, such as the page 181 reference to Doc Marten boots).
The book comprises armchair musings on various aspects of food, heavily flavored with facile Freudian analyses (suitably lacking in rigor, as befits psychoanalytic "theory"), with some Marxian analysis thrown, but not well mixed, in.
Unfortunately, I really cannot think of any point in reading this book. I read it because I'd already bought it and carried it with me to bide the waiting time during a thorough medical exam. I wish I'd brought (and bought) something else.
The best thing about this book is the cover: the illustration by John Martin is stunning, but you can see it on this page, can't you?

Very nice, just not my thing.......2006-11-10

In this book, Leon Rappoport does an excellent job in introducing interesting insights into the "why" of food. His arguments are well organized and thought provoking. My interest on this subject is next to none so I personally didn't enjoy the book much, but for those interested in food and the psychology behind it, this is a great read.

Interesting, but not terribly original or detailed........2005-05-09

This is a fun little volume, written by a psychologist who clearly loves food. Rappoport hits many of the high points in academic research on the subject, from an interdisciplinary perspective. He writes clearly and with an up-beat, entertaining style. As another review mentioned, this would be a good book for a holiday at the beach; and if you're interested in a quick, light read on food, or a nice gloss on the subject of food from academic perspectives, this is a decent choice.

Unfortunately there is not much else to recommend, as the work is mostly derivative. Apparently our author has read Counihan and Van Esterik's _Food and Culture_ reader; a lot of what he mentions comes from essays they included there. Rappoport's summaries of these and other works and thinkers are somewhat lacking in detail and finesse: occasionally he's even downright wrong. He tends to present his findings as bald-faced assertions, lacking nuance, and doesn't provide any particularly interesting or insightful information that hasn't been said, many times before, elsewhere.

A decent read but lacking in detail and originality. On the whole one gets the impression that the author has undertaken a somewhat limited survey of part of the literature in the domain under consideration, and quickly written a book on the results, without the intervention of considered thought in between. A reasonable effort, but with nothing new to report. Not recommended.

A Feast for the Mind.......2005-02-02

An excellent read for anyone who eats food. You will gain a greater understanding of the complex relationship you have with food. The author has a wide background and has done extensive work in many fields. But hey, this is not a dry read. Wise humor peppers the pages making this book deliciously entertaining, insightful and helpful. I devoured it and would recommend it for gift giving, your summer vacation or weekend at the beach.
Dr Tim

Interesting exploration of an under-researched topic.......2003-08-20

This book is both thought-provoking and entertaining. As the author argues, despite the large role that food plays in our lives, there appears to be no unifying framework that can explain eating behavior. Despite the complexity, the author does a nice job of blending theory, empirical findings, history, and personal anecdotes. In the end, more questions are raised than are answered- a characteristic of a topic worth exploring.

Book Description

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 30th International Workshop on Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science, WG 2004, held in Bad Honnef, Germany in June 2004.

The 31 revised full papers presented together with 2 invited papers were carefully selected from 66 submissions during two rounds of reviewing and improvement. The papers are organized in topical sections on graph algorithms: trees; graph algorithms: recognition and decomposition; graph algorithms: various problems; optimization and approximation algorithms; parameterized complexity and exponential algorithms; counting, combinatorics, and optimization; applications in bioinformatics and graph drawing; and graph classes and NP-hard problems.

Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science: 31st International Workshop, WG 2005, Metz, France, June 23-25, 2005, Revised Selected Papers (Lecture Notes in Computer Science)

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Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science: 31st International Workshop, WG 2005, Metz, France, June 23-25, 2005, Revised Selected Papers (Lecture Notes in Computer Science)

Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 3540310002

Book Description

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 31st International Workshop on Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science, WG 2005, held in Metz, France in June 2005.

The 38 revised full papers presented together with 2 invited papers were carefully selected from 125 submissions. The papers provide a wealth of new results for various classes of graphs, graph computations, graph algorithms, and graph-theoretical applications in various fields. The workshop aims at uniting theory and practice by demonstrating how graph-theoretic concepts can be applied to various areas in Computer Science, or by extracting new problems from applications. The goal is to present recent research results and to identify and explore directions of future research.

Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science: 32nd International Workshop, WG 2006, Bergen, Norway, June 22-23, 2006, Revised Papers (Lecture Notes in Computer Science)

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Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science: 32nd International Workshop, WG 2006, Bergen, Norway, June 22-23, 2006, Revised Papers (Lecture Notes in Computer Science)

Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 32nd International Workshop on Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science, WG 2006, held in Bergen, Norway in June 2006.

The 30 revised full papers presented together with 1 invited paper were carefully selected from 91 submissions. The papers address all aspects of graph-theoretic concepts in computer science such as structural graph theory, sequential, parallel, and distributed graph and network algorithms and their complexity, graph grammars and graph rewriting systems, graph-based modeling, graph-drawing and layout, diagram methods, and graph-theoretical applications in various fields.

Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science

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Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science
L. Kucera
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 3540003312

Book Description

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 28th International Workshop on Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science, WG 2002, held in Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic in June 2002. The 36 revised full papers presented were carefully selected from initially 61 submissions during two rounds of reviewing and improvement. The papers provide a wealth of new results for various classes of graphs, graph computations, graph algorithms, and graph-theoretical applications in various fields.

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The Computer Concepts Coloring Book
Barry Glotzer
Manufacturer: Barnes & Noble
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OERCR6

Amazon.com

Of all the tasks programmers are asked to perform, storing, compressing, and retrieving information are some of the most challenging--and critical to many applications. Managing Gigabytes: Compressing and Indexing Documents and Images is a treasure trove of theory, practical illustration, and general discussion in this fascinating technical subject.

Ian Witten, Alistair Moffat, and Timothy Bell have updated their original work with this even more impressive second edition. This version adds recent techniques such as block-sorting, new indexing techniques, new lossless compression strategies, and many other elements to the mix. In short, this work is a comprehensive summary of text and image compression, indexing, and querying techniques. The history of relevant algorithm development is woven well with a practical discussion of challenges, pitfalls, and specific solutions.

This title is a textbook-style exposition on the topic, with its information organized very clearly into topics such as compression, indexing, and so forth. In addition to diagrams and example text transformations, the authors use "pseudo-code" to present algorithms in a language-independent manner wherever possible. They also supplement the reading with mg--their own implementation of the techniques. The mg C language source code is freely available on the Web.

Alone, this book is an impressive collection of information. Nevertheless, the authors list numerous titles for further reading in selected topics. Whether you're in the midst of application development and need solutions fast or are merely curious about how top-notch information management is done, this hardcover is an excellent investment. --Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered: Text compression models, including Huffman, LZW, and their variants; trends in information management; index creation and compression; image compression; performance issues; and overall system implementation.

Book Description

In this fully updated second edition of the highly acclaimed Managing Gigabytes, authors Witten, Moffat, and Bell continue to provide unparalleled coverage of state-of-the-art techniques for compressing and indexing data. Whatever your field, if you work with large quantities of information, this book is essential reading--an authoritative theoretical resource and a practical guide to meeting the toughest storage and access challenges. It covers the latest developments in compression and indexing and their application on the Web and in digital libraries. It also details dozens of powerful techniques supported by mg, the authors' own system for compressing, storing, and retrieving text, images, and textual images. mg's source code is freely available on the Web.

* Up-to-date coverage of new text compression algorithms such as block sorting, approximate arithmetic coding, and fat Huffman coding
* New sections on content-based index compression and distributed querying, with 2 new data structures for fast indexing
* New coverage of image coding, including descriptions of de facto standards in use on the Web (GIF and PNG), information on CALIC, the new proposed JPEG Lossless standard, and JBIG2
* New information on the Internet and WWW, digital libraries, web search engines, and agent-based retrieval
* Accompanied by a public domain system called MG which is a fully worked-out operational example of the advanced techniques developed and explained in the book
* New appendix on an existing digital library system that uses the MG software

Customer Reviews:

one of the best book on search engineering.......2007-04-20

It has been 8 years since it was published and I could see it is still one of the best in IR field. Without much long magic equations, it is not hard for common user to pick it up. There are mainly 2 parts in the book, the first book is compression, most of them are just principle introduction since it does not make sense for the read to invent or implement an algorithm. The second part is indexing (plus some query) which I highly recommended because it is "practical".
The authors are smart guys who could do sth, google mg for their website and mg4j for the ported java implementation.

A Comprehensive Introduction To Text Retrieval Systems.......2005-07-30

A wonderful feature of this book spans out practicality for various topics including compresion algorithms and theory, document and imaging system and information retrieval. On my personal interest, the authors highlight a vast list of not only the theory but present it in a simple common sense logic.

There are several examples that break down complex processes into simple and easy to understand logic and the pages provides a smooth flow of the structured topics. Well organised, presented and fully informative.

Truly an ideal book. This serves as a superior text for students studying document and imaging systems, processing and information and multimedia retrieval subjects. Beautiful!!!

Just on a personal note, it would be great to see some emphasis in the future editions in regards to web mining applications.

Great Book on Information Retrieval.......2004-05-03

Managing Gigabytes is the best book out there on information retrieval. If you're interested in implementing your own IR system, there's nothing available that comes close to this book. But the book is good not just because it's the only one out there: the writing is excellent, the algorithms are presented clearly and explained well, and the coverage is thorough. Additionally, the coverage of compression algorithms is the best I've found in any book. All algorithms and pseudo-code in the book are presented clearly enough such that any competent programmer should be able to implement them. If all else fails, however, the free downloadable source code for the mg system can fill in any gaps.

All in all, this is the best computer science book I've purchased in years. I wish all CS books were written like this one: it doesn't skimp on the theory or on the implementation details.

The Wonderful Thing Is: It's the Only One.......2001-12-21

This is the only book there is that will actually teach you how to build an information retrieval system (aka search engine). It discusses all the algorithms and tradeoffs, and comes with free downloadable source code to experiment with. Some of the material is standard, but covered in more implementation detail here than anywhere else. Some of the material is novel: you won't find better coverage of compression unless you hand-assemble twenty research papers, and reverse-engineer them to figure out how they're implemented. But with "Managing Gigabytes", it's all here. (Although, after a particularly envigorating discussion of how to string together a bunch of techniques to compress their corpus and save a couple 100MB, I did a check and found you could buy 512MB of RAM for less than the cost of the book. Knowledge is Power, but sometimes a little cash is more powerful.) The only negative is that this book is not called "Managing Terabytes", as the first edition promised/threatened it might be. RAM and disk are cheap, but not that cheap, and for now terabytes (and sometimes petabytes) are managed only by NASA, Google, and a few others. I can't wait to see the third edition!

Very clear, but misses some key real-world issues.......2001-08-15

As others have said, MG is a good introductory text for Information Retrieval. However I think it spends a little too much time on compression techniques and lacks a good discussion of incremental or on-line indexing. The book tends to assume that the set of texts to be searched is static - if new documents can be added or old ones deleted it makes the whole problem much harder and many of MG's techniques are no longer relevant. That said, I strongly look forward to Managing Terabytes (if it ever appears).

Managing Gigabytes : Compressing and Indexing Documents and Images (Electrical and Electronics Technology Handbooks)

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Managing Gigabytes : Compressing and Indexing Documents and Images (Electrical and Electronics Technology Handbooks)
Ian H.; Moffat, Alistair; Bell, Timothy C. Witten
Manufacturer: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000PS2LVS

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