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Adam Rozanski rozanski — This book was okay. It was a little sad at the end

Jackie Smith jaxasmith — Amazing.

Ivan Freaner freanercreative — Although somewhat fantastic to believe, I really like this high seas adventure tale, especially the fact that it was from a girl's point of view. The character of Charlotte seemed true to her age (13 when the story starts) - naive, still looking for guidance & often acting without thinking the consequences through - but very gutsy and brave. A good story!

Kelly Latiolais klelly — This book begins with much promise but ultimately ends in disappointment. Prince begins by stressing the importance of historically-based analysis. He suggests that one understand Kurosawa's films as "address[ing] the Japan shattered by World War II and [as helping] reshape society." (8) This is a most interesting, preliminary claim that initially promises certain fascinating paths of reading. Also, Prince begins by criticizing 'auteurism' and naive assumptions of 'authorship'. He notes that the formation of 'film studies' as an academic field imposed a "major code" that reduced all Kurosawa films to "the ideal of humanism". Now this is also promising - finally, a comprehensive work on Kurosawa, other than that of Donald Richie, that gets beyond 'auteurism'. Unfortunately, Prince's book does not live up to these introductory assertions. First, Prince continually makes use of terms like "Zen Buddhism", "heroic ideal", "warrior ideal", instead of terms like "humanist universalism" as if they were more accurate interpretive concepts for understanding Kurosawa's films (see pp. 10, 11, 28, 30, 115). However, he never 'historicizes' these very concepts but treats them as somewhat static and a-historical. I don't think that one would find it completely convincing or that interesting if some critic put to use concepts like "Christian providence" or "protestant individualism" for the purposes of deciphering the work of Orsen Welles without demonstrating first the historic intricacies of such empty concepts and second their specific, contextual relevance to a given Welles' film-text. Thus, it must be asked: why make use of analogous empty signifiers of Japanese history and culture so carelessly in relation to Kurosawa's films? Ultimately, Prince's interpretive framework remains less than convincing , for his initial imperative to read "against the grain of history" is violated repeatedly throughout the book. Also, it is disappointing that right after Prince criticizes the usual appeal to authorship or auteurism he categorically states, "Kurosawa's films form a series of inquiries on the place and the possibilities of the autonomous self within a culture whose social relations stress group ties and obligations." (27) From this Prince establishes his own master code for interpreting the totality of Kurosawa's work based upon the supposed `intentions' of Kurosawa-as-author. It is a code that reads Kurosawa's films as being primarily about the negotiation of the ego in the modern world. Prince continues, throughout the work, to make sense of the rich diversity of films in terms of this restricted framework. He writes, "Kurosawa's world is an arena where his characters must be tested , where they must be victorious in their goals or must be broken and defeated." (116) Later, he reduces the entire complexity of Kurosawa films into a `meta-narrative' that is "...the passage from willed optimism of the early films to the ethic of resignation and despair that pervades the late works..." (154) The meaning that Prince detects in these films is not wrong per say but way too limited and reductive. There is a vast complexity of meaning and significance in Kurosawa's diverse catalogue of films, and some of it is in direct contradiction to Prince's `auteurist' thesis. I cannot say that I was satisfied with Prince's analysis for these reasons. However, if one is sympathetic to auteur forms of criticism, then this book may be for you. Just remember what Foucault says in `What is an Author?': "the author serves to neutralize the contradictions that are found in a series of texts." Personally, I think the "contradictions" that one might locate in a series of texts serve as the sites of most interest in any interpretive investigation; thus, they should not be effaced by way of some reductive narrative of authorship.

Sima Simic simasimic — I absolutely adore this book. It totally floored me--really blew me away. The moment I closed it, I wanted to open it and read it again. The voice, the characters, the cultural backdrop...truly spectacular!

Central Creativa centralcrea — Hilarious! Unintentionally so. I picked this up because while passing it in the stacks, I noted that the cover was totally incongruous with the book's title. Anyhoo, the book itself it a bit sad. It doesn't tell the reader much of anything "new"; it's basically just full of obvious information, restated in a few different ways with example "evidence" that seems suspiciously fictitious. The main theme is "attractive people get all the love, sucks for the ugly." You get the idea after the first few pages that the author is probably among the latter group -- there's a kind of outsider/bitter tone going on with the writing. Grammatical errors all over the place -- I'm no expert, but if I was going to publish a book I'd at least get it to a better editor than he used, if he used one at all. (He thanks some guy for editing help, but I'm not sure that that helper was able to work on the whole book.)