Product Description
Over 50,000 sold--the only illustrated companion book to the extraodinary film. Includes excerpts from Stephen Ambrose's books, screenplay extracts, and commentary by Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Janusz Kaminski and others. 100 illustrations, 130 color plates.Amazon.com Review
The photos and snippets of dialog and celebrity quotes in thistie-in book to Steven Spielberg's D-day film Saving PrivateRyan are a continuation of the movie by other means. (Beforewarned that the book reveals one major plot point concerning MattDamon's Private Ryan character.) If the color pictures look a bitwashed-out compared to, say, Disney's The Art of Mulan,that's the idea--Spielberg renounced his razzle-dazzle visual magic inorder to convey a brute reality honestly. "I didn't want to shootthe picture as a Hollywood gung ho Rambo kind ofextravaganza," Spielberg says in the book. "Janusz[Kaminski, the cinematographer] stripped all the glossy filters andthe filaments from the lenses so they were just like the kind oflenses they actually used in the Second World War. We shot a lot ofthe war sequences with the shutter speed used by those Bell and Howellcameras of the 1940s for making newsreels.... If we've done our jobs,[the audience] will think we were actually on the beach onD-day." Time magazine opined that the film boasts"quite possibly the greatest combat sequence ever made."

The photos in this book give an inkling of that impact, and alsoevince the intense empathy for the GIs that won Spielberg theallegiance of the leading historian Stephen E. Ambrose, whose stunningbook CitizenSoldiers was the director's prime influence. "I wanted towrite about the lives of the GIs," Ambrose saidin an Amazon.com interview. "Books are always written fromthe generals' point of view, but I'm sick of the generals and theirpoint of view. It's more refreshing to be with the guys who did thefighting." After seeing the film or reading this book (or thenovelization SavingPrivate Ryan), you may not feel refreshed, but you will beenlightened. And you will immediately want to read two other sagas ofordinary heroism by Ambrose, D-day and Undaunted Courage,his ode to Meriwether Lewis.

Saving Private Ryan is, in a sense, a companion volume to TimO'Brien's masterpiece Going AfterCacciato, about soldiers hunting down a deserter during theVietnam War. Spielberg's story of GIs risking their lives hunting downan endangered dogface to save his life helps measure what it was thatAmericans lost between World War II and Vietnam. --Tim Appelo ... Read more

Customer Reviews (21)

"But if we could do just one good thing . . . "
I think Spielberg's a genius. There, I've said it. He takes simple men, surely John Miller, Captain, 2nd Ranger Battalion is just that, a simple man, and paints a canvas of such detail of Armageddon, putting these simple men all over the painting. Hell. The end of the world. Good versus evil. Call it what you may. "I'm a history teacher," he says in the movie in one extraordinarily tense scene. "I teach history in a small high school in Pennsylvania. . . .when I'm done here I don't know if I can go back to it."

I'm reminded of another 'simple man' that came from Pennsylvania in novel lore. Lieutenant Harry Brubaker, the lawyer who flies F-9 Panther Jets in Michner's brief story about the carnage in Korea, 'Bridges at To Ko Ri.'

But the point is Spielberg tells us that they were all simple men and we don't believe him at first. We keep looking forArnie Schwarznegger or Chuck Norris or The Rock. But they are and were normal guys, guys from Brooklyn New York and Brooklyn Michigan. Guys from towns you never heard of in Iowa, where Jimmy Ryan and his brothers came from. Just guys in the greatest carnage the world ever knew. And Spielberg shows us what they did. They changed the world.

The five Sullivan brothers all went down with their ship in the middle of the war and after that the powers that be would not commit one brother in a theater of combat where another brother was also serving in harm's way. So here, one of Jimmy Ryan's brothers is killed in the Pacific and one brother is killed in Anzio Beach. And Sean Ryan is killed in the landing at Omaha Beach. And Captain John Miller and a squad of men he picks are asked to find him to send him home.

A wonderful book to compliment a movie that should be preserved forever about an ubelievable body of men and women. "Was I a good man," asks James Ryan 50 years later? My Dad asked me the same question a few years ago. Five stars is not enough. Larry Scantlebury.

Eh..............Saving Private Ryan
This Movie Is Great It Has The MG-42 Bullets Going Right Through The Water On The Beach.The Blood,Gore,Gun Realism Is Great.It Also Is A Heart Touching Movie.The Action Is Great,The Guns,The Cool Guys,And The Nazis....

Very interesting
Saving Private Ryan and The Triumph and the Glory have sparked an interest in me about WWII.The novel isn't quite as good as the movie but anyway this book is a great behind the scenes look at the making of a terrificmovie.

this is a very good story
I think this story is a very good story it really shows how the war really whent. my favrit character in this story was mellish well i'v seen the movie and i think he is the cutest i also like capazo he was really cool ithink uhpum was a bit of a wimp but apart from that i think it was reallycool.If i was to give this movie/book a raiting out of 100 i would give it100 becaust it is so good.

The reality that war brings, how it effects our lives.
This movie was one that I was not able to watch completely the first time, but rather had to keep coming back to it because of the reality was what war is really about.It was so dramatic and real that I will never look atwar in the same prespective, but rather as something we should never gointo again, in any shape or form.Too many lives were lost and not enoughwas done for the war veterans that returned.They should have held a placeright next to the President of the United States, because if they had notfought, we would not be enjoying the type of liberty we have today. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not Free SF Reader
The novelisation of the movie, as people dream and are fascinated by an image of a geographical formation, and end up there for a first contact
situation.Music ends up playing an important role.


... Read more

Product Description

This entry in the Modern Filmmakers series offers a film-by-film encounter with a director who, for many, is the face of American cinema; a man who invented the summer blockbuster, then put his extraordinary command of film to work in stories of ever-richer complexity and humanity.

All the highlights of Spielberg's career are here: the television work, including nail-biting Duel; the runaway success of Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Indiana Jones series, the Oscar-nominated ET and The Color Purple, the stunning achievements of Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, and the rest of his wide-ranging canon of genre films, entertainments, and serious dramas. Throughout, Spielberg-scholar John Foote makes a compelling case that the director once pigeonholed as merely an entertainer is instead the most accomplished filmmaker working today.

Product Description
Profiles the prolific and wildly successful director, discussing everything from his days as a Little Leaguer to his position as creator of Jaws, E.T, Jurassic Park, and other films. ... Read more

Product Description
This elegant volume commemorates the creation of an extraordinary movie, featuring: specially commissioned watercolors which served as "storyboards"; production and historical photos and documents; essays by director Spielberg, producer Allen (who pursued the project for 13 years), and poet Angelou; and a lengthy text on the making of the film about the fight for freedom by 53 Africans, who, in 1839, were captured as slaves and who rebelled on the Spanish slave ship Amistad.Amazon.com Review
Scores of photographs, storyboard illustrations, and historical documents illuminate the making of the Spielberg film about the slave-ship mutiny and trial that helped ignite the Civil War. Also included are essays by the director, poet Maya Angelou, and actress/choreographer/producer Debbie Allen. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

"It is through asking questions that the truth is discovered."Mende Proverb
MAYA ANGELOU opens this moviebook with truth.The answer to why our story must be retold over and over again.The shocking truth that a black man's skin could be cut into a postage stamp size flap and sold as souvenirs by his racist white murderers.The generational truth that Cinque's remarkable, chilling story lives on beyond the relic flap of thatlynching.America today is the reason AMISTAD must live another generation in hopes that we try to do better.

In the palpable words of Debbie Allen, the inhumanity of slavery in America was put on trial.When Joseph Cinque courageously and unselfishly challenged America's Declaration of Independence, its Constitution, its President of the United States, its abolitionists, its Supreme Court, and the Queen of Spain, the entire world watched.The truth about America's slave system was revealed.That truth must continue to be discussed and explored and remembered from one generation to the next.AMISTAD, therefore, should never die on a bookshelfor in history.AMISTAD forces Joseph Cinque's story into eternity.The pictures and quotes in this fine moviebook should continue to shame and inspire all of us today to paint a better existence for all mankind.

Ask a man of extraordinary intellectual power who is equally creative such as Steven Spielberg to define "truth" and he will show you it in living color page after page, clip after clip.You will beg to discover it over and over again because AMISTAD commands that type of loyalty to tell our story repeatedly to our children, black and white.Readers will gain a different perspective on "Give Us Free" each time.You will cry your own script to the young and help keep Cinque's purpose alive to make life better.The truth not only sets us all free, it keeps us free.AMISTAD is indeed truth.

The post list of additional reading resources about Amistad for both the young and the old are an integral part of this masterpiece.

Reviewed by Swaggie Coleman
for The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

I WISH I COULD GIVE THEM "FREE"
Just like his film on it, Steven Spielberg's work on this book, "Amistad: 'Give Us Free'", was well-executed. It reminds one of Alex Haley's "Roots". Both stir emotions. Every bit of the story shows how cruel a man can be to his fellow man. And, I disagree with all those who term this true story "a story of illegally enslaved Africans", (Mr Spielberg didn't). We are shying away from the truth, which is that no African, (not even one), was a legal slave. There is nothing that made one slave legal, and the other illegal. There is no legality in slavery. Absolutely! That treacherous and heartless people overpowered, kidnapped, and transported, (in the most inhumane manner), their fellow human beings to America and other places does not, in any way, make those victims of inhumanity "legal slaves". Regardless of all the face-saving tales that those who defiled our lands with the innocent blood, tears, and sweat of millions of Africans will like us to believe, the truth is that not even a single African volunteered to become a slave in any circumstance. They were all forced into it: with no option but death. Those who ripped and enjoyed the bloodied fruits of slavery merely sought cheap excuses in order to justify what they did. But we know that there is nothing legal in kidnapping and subjecting human beings to such a horrible condition.
'La Amistad' tells a soul-eroding story. Cinque and his cohorts are true heroes. They are heroes of freedom, heroes of justice, and heroes of human rights. Songs have been composed about them. Books have been written about them. Films have been made about them. And, history will forever appreciate their gallantry.

This book will have the most impact if you...........
Put yourself in the shoes of the victims of slavery.Allow yourself toreally, really feel what it would be like to have every aspect of yourculture, values, language stripped from you.Imagine having to sit bywhile someone rapes your wife, mother, 11 year old daughter.Imaginehaving to eat an animal which you have been taught is poison.Imagine nothaving freedom to marry and having to watch your baby being driven away ina wagon, never being seen again, because one man has taken it upon himselfthe right to sell another.Sit there, close your eyes and then you will bebrought into a deeper understanding of the people of the Amistad.

Links Perfectly With Life Of Our Lord Jesus Christ
The intercut of the church & prison was strange yet wonderful. The abolitionists gave Yomba an illustrated Bible and he gave his heart to Jesus[alternate version]. Cinque was the man who subsequently gave his lifefor his clan...Yomba was the informer who died beside Cinque in remorse.Cinque did what he did because he had to.

An African's strong will to fight, keep from being a slave.
"THE BEST!", Its inspiring on one's will to keep himself and other Africans from the early slave trade which destroyed many families in America.Exciting effort to fight in a foreign country without knowing its language or laws. Very forth right in telling truth of American's untold "ugly" slave trade and what slave traders were willing to do just to keep it alive. Amistad's truth about slavery was very emotional, determined to express the will of any free man who's fighting williness to remain a free soul.A Heartfelt story about a lone struggle for Africans coming to America for the first time and having to face the ugliness of slavery, this was not right and should not have happened. All wasn't lost in the end and my true thanks to the many allies: former President - John Q. Adams, Mr(s) Baldwin, Gibbs, and former slave Joadson for their unyeilding efforts to abolish this ugly sore(slavery) which infested deep within America.I truely loved this story, because it was simply "THE BEST!"Also, thanks to Alex Pate and Steven Spielberg and the many others for bring out this ugly hidden part of America's history, I never knew this happened. This could have been me and I cried when I saw the movie. "THE BEST...." ... Read more

Product Description
Traces the life and successful career of the man who has directed and produced both popular and award-winning films. ... Read more

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Illustrated (comic) adaptation of the movie of the same title. ... Read more

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Package includes 6 Dvds, one for each series episode, and the hardcover book "Into the West: A Celebration of the Epic Series, 96 pages.Deluxe promotional package not sold in stores. ... Read more

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"Sometimes I can't eat because I get so excited about new ideas."

Steven Spielberg, the dream maker, who makes befriending an alien and running into dinosaurs a reality.

The little world he imagined as a young kid moves the hearts of millions!,

Travel into the exciting world of film of the top movie director of this generation! ... Read more

Product Description
A collection of letters the many fans of all ages here on earth have written to the extraterrestrial star of the hit movie. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

heart glowing letters
Letters to E.T. is a compilation of letters written to steven spielberg and e.t. by fans all over the world,
people of all ages fell in love with this unearthly creature that was deserted on this far away world,

the letter that most touched me was one written by a mother of a 20 year old(in 1982) autistic boy, the boy cried during the movie wich is very exceptionel because autistic people NEVER crie
"not for themselves ,not for others" so his mom wrote,

a lovely book for everyone who keeps E.T in his heart,
my heart will "glow" forever,
peter de mooij ...

Good book for E.T.fans
That is a very good book it is about fans that send E.t. and Steven Spielberg.The leters are funny, strange,and sad.Perfect for anbody who likes E.T. especially kids.They have good pictures and even two familycircus comics with are good friend E.T. Buy the book.If you like StevenSpielberg`s movies. ... Read more

Product Description
With more than 100 color photos, the companion book to the major DreamWorks film directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Tom Hanks.

Engaging in a game of cat and mouse in the real-life crime drama, Frank Abagnale, Jr. (Di Caprio) worked as a doctor, a lawyer, and as a co-pilot for a major airline-all before his 18th birthday. A master of deception, he was also a brilliant forger, whose skill gave him his first real claim to fame: At the age of 17, Frank Abagnale, Jr. became the most successful bank robber in the history of the United States. FBI Agent Carl Hanratty (Hanks) made it his prime mission to capture Frank and bring him to justice, but Frank was always one step ahead of him, baiting him to continue the chase.

With more than 100 color images, the companion book includes the complete script and behind-the-scenes photographs of this amazing true tale. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

An Exciting, Fantastic Read
What a great book!

I could not wait until I could read more each day and lost myself in this book whenever I started reading. Very well-written and an engaging story. I was so sorry to see it end.

The book is the true story of Frank Abgnale Jr's life as a con-artist. I think it's so amazing that he was smart enough to trick everyone into believing he was what he said he was and at a very young age, nonetheless! Fascinating.

And even more amazing is how his charm flows through the story, so you as the reader end up cheering for him, even though he's the bad guy!

The only reason I rated it four stars, instead of five, was because I felt it ended too abruptly. I would have liked to have read about his life beyond that point and learn what he's doing now.

Overall a great, entertaining story and a must-read!

Highly entertaining
This book is an example of truth giving fiction a run for its money. I'm sure that the stories were polished just a bit for publication, but the fact that they are true makes the book all the more interesting. I would list this book as one of the ten best that I have read in the past year. The story contains humor, suspense, and a web of intrigue that will tempt any law abiding citizen. I'll never look at a pilot the same way again.

Makayla's review

I choose this book because I had seen the movie and every one said the movie is different from the book. The movie is different from the move in many ways.
It left out when he becomes a professer,when he moves to Paris, and when he is put in solitaire confinement.
I liked this book because it shows just how easy it was to rip off a bank in the 60's.I think it is funny how much training the tellers had at finding a bad check. Back then the tellers only asked for ID on large amounts, now we have technology so we can search out phonies.
This book is about Frank W Abagnale and how he conned every bank in New York City and several other major cities in all different countries. His schemes involved an airline pilot, an attorney, a physician, professor and a detective. He goes from state to state and from country to country and scams any one he can for what ever he needs.
The type of person that would like this book

a lot would be girls because he also tricks girls into helping him in his scams. I think that we all could learn a thing or two from this book. That is why I liked the book.

Catch Me If You Can
Catch Me If You Can is a great book.It is about an 18 year old con-man named Frank Abnagle.He was an airline pilot, a lawyer and a doctor before he turned age 21.He also stole over 2 million dollars through counterfeit checks.This is a great book and also a great movie.

A Must Read
You can't put this book down.A very good book if you are into true crime.What a story. ... Read more

Product Description
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 American science fiction film co-produced and directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Melissa Mathison and starring Henry Thomas, Robert MacNaughton, Drew Barrymore, and Dee Wallace. It tells the story of Elliott (played by Thomas), a lonely boy who befriends a friendly extraterrestrial, dubbed "E.T.", who is stranded on Earth. Elliott and his siblings help the extraterrestrial return home while attempting to keep it hidden from their mother and the government. The concept for E.T. was based on an imaginary friend Spielberg created after his parents' divorce in 1960. In 1980, Spielberg met Mathison and developed a new story from the stalled science fiction/horror film project Night Skies. The film was shot from September to December 1981 in California on a budget of US$10.5 million. Unlike most motion pictures, the film was shot in roughly chronological order, to facilitate convincing emotional performances from the young cast ... Read more

Product Description
At the pinnacle of his career and now in his fourth decade as a director, Steven Spielberg is firmly established as the world's most popular film-maker. Celebrated for his mastery of spectacle and fantasy he has, more recently, proven his skill as a craftsman of compelling populist drama. He is an icon of late twentieth century popular culture. From the thrills and zestful adventure of Jaws and the unflinching recreation of Auschwitz in Schindler's List, to the tender idealism of ET and the sombre hymn to brotherhood of Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg takes his audience on new journeys, to places often unknown to the eye but always familiar and recognisable to the heart.

With his films AI, Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can, Spielberg continues to invest powerful emotion into familiar genres. His work has become more nuanced and shaded, but its sense of optimism remains. This Pocket Essential examines every Spielberg film since Duel and includes a career overview of a singular director whose work has transcended its origin to become the cinematic vision for a generation of moviegoers.

Customer Reviews (1)

Dreck
Poorly written, riddled with descriptive errors, padded with verbatim redundancies and IMDB boilerplate. Easily the worst book on film I have ever paid money for. (I had wanted to buy something cheap so I could test out my new Kindle...) When Clarke's descriptions aren't categorically inaccurate they are simply banal, plausible-sounding generalities. His technical vocabulary is on par with a Film Studies sophomore. His industry diagnostics are as authoritative as your average user comment on Ain't It Cool News. The book feels like a throwback to film studies monographs published in the early 60s, when the high-profile emergence of auteurism spiked public demand for director profiles but the publishing houses did not yet have editors in place who could distinguish between insightful criticism and empty hack-jobs. I googled Clarke's name and was shocked to see that he teaches at the university level. To the tenure committee at Hereford College of Art: take note. ... Read more