May 06

The Twilight Zone-The Complete Definitive Collection ?????

This collection represents essentially five seasons. Each episode is 1/2 hour, except for the fourth season, where the episodes lasted an hour. Narrated by the familiar face of Rod Serling, and with over half of the episodes written by him, you cannot help but appreciate a distinct style throughout the collection. The seasons seem to evolve over time, with the productions being done a bit more professionally, with fancier props as time goes on. The first few seasons have a very distinct moral twist to each and every episode, something that partially lost as time goes on. In comparison to today’s television shows, many of these episodes would be considered too moralistic or “prejudiced” or “religious” to permit broadcast. Pity. Compared to the Outer Limits t.v. series, the Twilight Zone is not nearly as frightening, though some classic episodes exist that could be considered downright spooky.  Who cannot forget the episode where bandages are taken off the face of a young lady, only to be greeted with horror as she appears completely normal — until you finally see the faces of the physicians and nurses, who have completely disfigured, ugly faces. Even then, Serling presents it as a strong lesson that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The Twilight Zone should be considered a must-see if you haven’t seen the series before. If your only viewing was in the early 60′s when they were first broadcast, it is quite worth another viewing to realize how trashy prime-time television has become.

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May 06

Die Lustige Witwe, by Franz Lehár, and performed by the Zürich Opera ????

This is probably the best of the Lehár works, but also the most expensive. The music is a bit more memorable, notably some of the late pieces in the operetta. Lehár uses a mix of speaking, singing, dancing and ballet in this work. The plot is not so crazy as many of his other works, with a plain-jane Viennese lady returning from Paris, whose very wealthy husband died on her wedding night, leaving her a supremely wealthy person, and now suddenly attracting many Viennese suitors. Ultimately, the Graf (Count) wins out, but only after many false moves and deceptions. This performance is a stage performance, nicely done, and worth having in one’s collection. Lehár will never be in my top ten composers, though he successfully creates a minor work of art in this operetta.

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May 06

Das Land des Lächelns, by Franz Lehár ???

Translated the Land of Smiles, this operetta represents late 19th century Viennese “pop” art, similar to the Gilbert and Sullivan works in England. Like Gilbert and Sullivan, Lehár creates an operetta with a mix of song and spoken text, a profusion of catchy melodies, and a very lame story line. This operetta is the epitome of truly lame story lines, with a Viennese  lady of aristocratic descent falling in love with a Chinese prince, marrying, and then going back to China with him, only to discover that he intends to marry many women. The opera ends as a quasi-tragedy, though many tears are not generated. The singing is superb, so it’s hard to be too tough on the entire operetta. I wouldn’t keep it in my desert island collection, Lehár deserves a rightful audience, just as one needs to watch the Mikado at least once.

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May 01

Brahms Complete Works, by Brilliant Classics ????

Brahms Complete Edition, by Deutsche Grammophon ?????

I realized that I did not have collections of the complete works of Brahms, and so when these two editions came out on sale, decided that they needed to be in my collection. Both are very worthy editions to have in one’s collection, and are distinctly different. Brilliant Classics, though sold as a “budget” production, had notable quality that would be worthy of the sole Brahms of a less ardent classic music collector. Yet, the Deutsche Grammophon recordings were generally better. The symphonies had a livelier sound and better production, partially attributable to the conducting of von Karajan. The DG edition also had far better vocal works, making the vocal pieces far less of a drudgery, and actually enjoyable, to listen to over the Brilliant collection. The chamber works with the Brilliant Classics were quite nice, and quite on par with the DG productions. All in all, I’d vote for the DG edition, but enjoyed hearing both sets of Brahms works.

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May 01

Photoshop CS4 Channels and Masks One-on-one, by Deke McClelland ????

This is just another Photoshop book that I’ve read in the last 6-12 months. I have one or two more to go. This text taught me a number of things, including functionality and routines in Photoshop that I had absolutely no clue about in the past, like the “calculations” instruction for merging several channels to make a better mask. There are movies that accompany each lesson, but they only somewhat approximate the actual lesson. Deke is very careful to be exact in his instructions, but doesn’t always elaborate why you are doing a certain function in a manner that makes perfect clarity for when you need to do such functions independent of the instruction book. A number of things became quite clear on this reading. 1) Photoshop is far more complicated than I originally thought, and it will take years to master exactly what it could do for you. 2) Experience will eventually be the best teacher, and one needs to play with the program to glean all the possibilities of what you could do to alter or improve a photo. 3) There is always more than one way to accomplish a given task, and every book details a completely different style of accomplishing the same thing. Ultimately, one needs to develop their own style. 4) Many routines are discovered by chance and then shared. One should not imagine that any given photo alteration is intuitive. Rather, one needs to keep a number of “reference” books around when learning photoshop and use those books to walk through techniques. 5) Videos are nice, but the text ultimately teaches you how to do things. It would be nice to note a end product, attempt it first yourself, and then walk through how the teacher reaches the end-product. Unfortunately, most photoshop instruction books are not written that way. All in all, this is not the best photoshop book that I’ve read, but still is a book worth having on the shelves.

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