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With one of the longest and most controversial careers in Hollywood history, Blake Edwards is a phoenix of movie directors, full of hubris, ambition, and raving comic chutzpah. His rambunctious filmography remains an artistic force on par with Hollywood's greatest comic directors: Lubitsch, Sturges, Wilder. Like Wilder, Edwards's propensity for hilarity is double-helixed with pain, and in films like Breakfast at Tiffany's, Days of Wine and Roses, and even The Pink Panther, we can hear him off-screen, laughing in the dark. And yet, despite those enormous successes, he was at one time considered a Hollywood villain. After his marriage to Julie Andrews, Edwards's Darling Lili nearly sunk the both of them and brought Paramount Studios to its knees. Almost overnight, Blake became an industry pariah, which ironically fortified his sense of satire, as he simultaneously fought the Hollywood tide and rode it. Employing keen visual analysis, meticulous research, and troves of interviews and production files, Sam Wasson delivers the first complete account of one of the maddest figures Hollywood has ever known. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Interesting
This is an interesting book of the movies of Blake Edwards.A huge fan it is interesting the details that emerge from this book, not of his life but his work. I am still in the middle of reading it and find it very interesting indeed. Btw this book arrived in perfect condition.

Fun and formidable for film historians and people who love film.
i tip my hat to Sam Wasson, who has written a comprehensive, copiously researched rich encyclopedia for film historians while deftly weaving his reservoir offacts and faces which is also so appealing for film buffs.Wasson uncovers unknown stories that describe the little known stories behind each movie. We learn about the historical significance of blake edwards and his brand of comedy while getting to know the intimate inside stories of themen and women in front and behind the camera. We learn why we love the movies from A-Z while we learn the same about the players. Mr. Wasson's original and generous style of storytelling and teaching is formidable and fun. Splurch in the Kisser would be quite a feat for a seasoned author, let alone a first time author. I have pre-ordered his second book, Fifth Avenue, 5AM and cant wait.

FANTASTIC
This book is so well written and entertaining.Anyone who loves movies will love this book.Blake Edwards is such an interesting character and had such an interesting career.I highly recommend thisengaging book.

More than just The Pink Panther! A Major Study of a Comedy Legend
Of all the filmmaker studies I've read (and I've read my fair share) very few come close to A Splurch in the Kisser's complete understanding of its subject. Wasson is a great critic. He takes a hard look at Blake Edwards from all sides - technical, personal, cultural, historical, and even metaphysical - and in so doing sheds new light on a filmmaker that Wasson argues (and I agree) hasn't gotten his due.

Wasson's emphasis is at times more analytical than I would have liked (his descriptions of shots and scenes can go on a little too long), but his prose is never dull, nor is it impersonal or jargony - sometimes it's even funny, which is rare for a book of this kind.

Overall this is a smart, surprisingly fun look at an astoundingly long and dynamic Hollywood career. Splurch is as charming as it is insightful. ... Read more

Product Description
Superb reproduction of 1797 publication of four sections of Edward Young’s popular poem Night Thoughts, illustrated with 43 designs by William Blake. Images of angels, spirits, poets, sensuous women, Life, Death, Reason and Truth swirl about Young’s text, adding to its meaning and revealing much of Blake’s own vision. Plate-by-plate commentaries by Professors Robert Essick and Jenijoy La Belle. Introduction. Bibliography. 43 illustrations.
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Customer Reviews (1)

Unjustly forgotten
This is the reprint of the edition published in 1797, with engravings of William Blake. The poem itself, enormously popular in the 18th century, is now shrouded in obscurity, and it stays in print only due to Blake's illustrations. But despite of its unpopularity, I found it quite enjoyable. It is best read in one sitting, without interrupting the constant flow of ideas and thoughts. It is a meditation, at once introspective and all-encompassing, a contemplation of Death, Time, Friendship, and Immortality of man. Granted, it does tend to drag on too much in the last chapter, but the first ones are so good they're worthy of being memorized. Blake's engravings, surrounding the text as a frame, capture the essense of the poem and at the same time enhance it, adding to it even more depth. The poem's abstract concepts take shape, making some passages more memorable. (This edition includes a commentary on the pictures' symbolism.) The book is worth getting for the engravings alone; it is a work of art in every sense of the word. ... Read more

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The eminent architect Edward Larrabee Barnes is a member of the generation of influential modernists that emerged in America after World War II. After studying architecture at Harvard University under Bauhaus masters Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius, Barnes set up his own practice in New York in 1949. Since then, over the course of a long and varied career, he has worked in a modern vocabulary shaped by his own approach to geometry, composition, and siting. Barnes is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and has received the AIA Twenty-Five-Year Award, the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture, the Harvard University 350th Anniversary Medal, and some forty other awards for design excellence.

The projects in this monograph present the full range of Barnes' work: office buildings, museums, botanical gardens, private houses, churches, schools, camps, colleges, campus planning, and housing. The extraordinary Dallas Museum of Art and the much-admired Walker Art Center in Minneapolis are among the museums shown. The houses include his best known, among them the Osborn, Hecksher, and Dallas houses. Office buildings presented include the dramatic IBM Building at Madison Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street with its popular interior bamboo garden, the office tower at 599 Lexington Avenue, both in New York, and the Federal Judiciary Building in Washington, D.C. Among the academic projects are the early, widely influential Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Camp Hidden Valley for the Fresh Air Fund, dormitories at St. Paul's School, arts facilities at the Emma Willard School and Bowdoin College, and several campus plans, including those for the State University of New York at Purchase and the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis.

Peter Blake's introduction presents Barnes' work in both its architectural and cultural contexts. Blake also discusses Barnes' background and the evolution of his designs over the years, closely analyzing particular built works. Barnes' personal comments on each project provide further insight.
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Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent rendition of Archtect's body of work
Edward Larrabee Barnes is one of the most prominent Architect's of our time and Peter Blake has done a good job presenting his work. ... Read more

Product Description
Due to the very old age and scarcity of this book, many of the pages may be hard to read due to the blurring of the original text. ... Read more

Product Description
Two volumes. Vol.I: 118 p. text, monochrome plates. Vol.II: 14 p. text, colour and monochrome plates. ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
Originally published in 1894. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

Product Description
Due to the very old age and scarcity of this book, many of the pages may be hard to read due to the blurring of the original text. ... Read more

Product Description
Originally published in 1911.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
Beginning with the appearance of visionary writing in the work of William Blake, this book traces the development of the form in texts by authors writing in French, German and English. It includes Novalis, Lautreamont, Breton, William Burroughs, and feminists Monique Wittig and Jamaica Kincaid. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Theory and Love of Literature
Edward Ahearn, honored University Professor at Brown University, here commits to paper subjects he has examined through reading and teaching. To deal with the visionary, he makes the obligatory stop through Blake, whose fiery social conscience and mythological incoherence made him the template for future literary "visionaries": Nerval and Lautreamont among the French; Burroughs; and the voices ofDadaism and Surrealism. As some of these writings are impenetrably concentrated, and outright antagonistic towards the reader, it is Ahearn's task to bridge the reader and these fictions, in order to communicate his own analyses of them. This task he handles with the same directness and precision of his college lectures, along with the exactness of a critic who presupposes some familiarity with these texts. As a work of criticism and of writing, an achievement ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Blake and Jung
I was doing research on Blake's engravings of the Book of Job. The Jungian interpretation is clearly presented in this book. I recommend to those who are sympathetic to Jungian psychology. ... Read more

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This study is informed by a knowledge of Blake seen against the background of the "long 18th century". Throughout, the reader is reminded that the Blake of "Songs of Innocence and Experience" shared a century with Fielding, Hogarth and Sterne; the classification of Blake as a "romantic" too often overlooks the form and content of satirical modes with which he was familiar. The study places Blake's "Songs of Innocence" in their historical context, and sites the poet within an historical work that bridges traditional, canonical categories of high culture versus popular culture. The author's aim was to return "innocence" to its original literary-historical context. "Songs of Innocence" and other early writings are included in the text. ... Read more