[.ca] From the Vatican to Vegas: A History of Special Effects (ISBN 1565848039)

an ingenious, original, useful, groundbreaking work:
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.

An Unreadable Mish-Mash:
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.