|
|
Article: Before Steven Spielberg, there was Michelangelo; Special effects aren't an invention of the modern age.(FEATURES)(BOOKS)
- Article from:
- The Christian Science Monitor
- Article date:
- July 27, 2004
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 The Christian Science Publishing Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Byline: Christopher Andreae
Norman Klein's book on special effects is not for those who prefer easily digestible sound bites. He writes a thick, stringy, multilayered, surging broth of relentless prose that demands much chewing before swallowing. And he has a remarkably wide, sometimes inventive vocabulary that he enjoys overusing.
If Klein's stylistic pyrotechnics are maddening, they're also strangely appropriate to his subject. He's not just writing about the familiar use of special effects in modern cinema, although he is fascinating on this subject, showing how such visions were engineered decades before computers entered the picture. For him ...