Rating: 
Summary: an interesting but somewhat inconsistent work
Review: I'm glad to have been exposed to the minutiae of the mammoth undertaking of making this film, because it increased my appreciation for both Titanic and James Cameron; also, it was interesting. But I feel that the book could have been vastly improved by HAVING SOMEONE EDIT IT!!!!!!!! (Parisi thanks an editor in the afterword, but I have doubts such a person really exists). The same grammatical errors appear consistently (such as the use of the conjunction "it's" where "its" would be correct, the use of the word "premiere" where "premier" would be correct, commas used where semicolons should go - really basic errors which any high school teacher would catch). The author's frequent switches between past and present tense make for a somewhat disjointed reading experience. I undertand what she was trying to do, but I think it could have been achieved in a more seamless fashion. The above kept pulling me out of the narrative and jerking me back into reality, and that certainly interfered with my enjoyment of the work. Having said that, Parisi does provide an abundance of detail (for all but the very technologically advanced or production insiders, maybe a little too much - you find yourself reading for context) and some interesting insight into James Cameron. As well, and this is perhaps the single best reason to read this book, she does succeed in conveying the huge scope of this project - and the attention paid to every single detail that resulted in a superlative piece of work.
Rating: 
Summary: Kind of biased and not historically correct
Review: If you are looking for a book on the movie Titanic that includes quotes from the stars, this is not the book for you. The author rarely quoted Leo and Kate and even put in some criticizing facts, like Leo playing video games everyday and Kate calling in sick everyday. While these may be true, she seemed biased because she turned around to praise Cameron. At times it seemed more like Cameron's biography than a book on his movie.
This author is also not an expert on Titanic. What little historical information that is included is wrong. For example, she says the Titanic hit the iceberg at 10:30 pm and sank in 2 hours and 40 minutes, at 2:20 am. It should be that the Titanic hit the iceberg at 11:40 pm and sank at 2:20 am. If she had done her research on the event as well as the movie and it's making, she would have known that.
This book is okay. I would not recommend buying it because I have read better books on the making of this great movie.
Rating:
Summary: The Making of the Myth
Review: In some ways, the story of the making of Titanic and the search for the reasons for the movie's mythical success, is destined to overshadow the story of the historical Titanic. For those who want to understand why the movie is so great, this book shows how the gargantuan work effort by James Cameron shaped and created his masterpiece. In fact, you might start evolving from a Titanic fan into a Cameron groupie. This fast-paced book presents an overview of the more technical aspects of the making of the movie. Paula Parisi started writing it while the movie was still being made and no one was interested in publishing the book, so it's not a hurriedly-written exploitation of the movie's success. We learn a lot about Cameron's drive and genius, his thoroughness and creativity. The book takes us from the early days of the Halifax venture and the dives to the wreck, through the assembly of the gigantic Fox Baja, Mexico set. It tells of his perseverance during the days of all the negative media attention, and his battles against budgetary and time constraints. We realize that James Cameron is truly a great artist first, and then a great technician. My only wish is that the book dealt more with the cast of the movie and what they experienced, than it does the technical aspects. But the author explains in a postscript that the technical domain is her specialty. One gets the feeling that it's 200 pages only scratch the surface of what was really involved in making of James Cameron, and of the Titanic.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book-if you like the tecnical stuff
Review: It was well written and interesting, but it had alot of tecnical stuff. If you are a titanic and or James Cameron fan and like technical stuff this is a great book. If you are a titanic fan and get bored and confused by technical stuff, I suggest the book, James Cameron's Titanic.
Rating: 
Summary: Writing about Cameron & Titanic was an adventure in itself!
Review: It's a kick to get all this Amazon.com feedback. You readers will say things my friends will never tell me over cocktails! Basically, my intention with this book was to demonstrate what it's like to make a true, 21st century blockbuster . There have been plenty of books documenting the making of "films." Epic cinema on this scale is off the charts. "Modern spectacle" was the way Cameron phrased it. Technology is and will increasingly be a big part of what I'll term millennial filmmaking. This nerdy tech stuff happens to fascinate me. I knew that would be off-putting to some readers, but as they say, you can't please everyone! I've tried to make it all as accessible as possible. Movie stars, executive suite spats, dollar duelists -- every film has these elements. For me, things like the Deep Dive to the actual wreck of Titanic and the act of recreating a 10-story replica of the ship itself seemed more important to document because these are the things that make Titanic -- and James Cameron -- unique. Of course I do cover the more traditional elements -- the casting contretemps, how the actors behaved on the set. I tried to give those old crowd pleasers a new spin. I think it's interesting to present Kate Winslet, world class actress, as just another young person trying to call in sick to work! And Leonardo, a Nintendo-obsessed kid. My overriding goal was, however, to put the reader right there on the set of the film. And yeah, sometimes (as when they were shooting the First Class Dining Room scene -- also known as "the Cinderella Ball") it was glamorous and everyone was in a good mood and gossiping and having fun, but more often than not it was dealing with hundreds of miles of electrical cable and the wind blowing down the lighting baffles and a million technical details. That said, the story of how Cameron came to realize his ambition to "create a living history" of Titanic plays out like a fairy tale. As I told Jim many times, had I made it all up I couldn't have created a better lead character nor conjured a more outrageous storyline.
Rating: 
Summary: "My mouth is full but I'll keep on biting"
Review: Parisi bit off more than she could chew with this book. A truly insightful work would have no doubt been a hulking tome that would break bookshelves, but the whole thing comes off as a bit brief, and you worry when halfway through the book she's still going on about the subs exploring Titanic. Parisi is a journalist and this book reads like an extended article, complete with all the grammatical and puntuation errors. There's even one highly obscure derogatory reference to herself! She also says she finds the technical stuff interesting, but it's very poorly reported wirth terms and jargon never being explained. I'm not a huge fan of the film, but I am of James Cameron, and of Film-making, and this book came off as insightful to both, which I was happy with.
Rating:
Summary: SUMMARY:Some good material, badly handled.
Review: The first problem with Entertainment Weekly journalist Paula Parisi's first book is the title. It may have seemed clever from the writer's point of view, but from the point of view of the consumer, it's an embarrassing title to ask for. No doubt clerks who have not heard of the book will think that people have got the title back to front. The book is a collection of interview quotes, documentation and commentary on he subject of, in conflict with the title's determination to be different, the making of "Titanic". It attempts to document how James Cameron was inspired to start off the project, get it completed despite the incredible challenges that it presented, and, of course, the film's phenomenal success. Parisi's first section tells of Cameron and a Russian submersible crew trying to get good footage of the real Titanic wreck for the beginning of the movie. She spends far too much time on this, almost half the book, when not many people will care about ! the technical details she goes on and on about, despite obviously having no clue about them herself. In comparison, the next hundred pages of this remarkably short book make the colossal production, media coverage and success of "Titanic" merely hinted at. And the book is not only disproportionate in depth, but lacking in continuity in terms of the writing style. Unlike Steven Bach's "Final Cut", which covered details with objectivity and the narrative with personality, Parisi is blindly objective for most of the book, then far too conversational towards the close, where I guess she just got lazier and lazier. The writing style we're left with is an off-putting mixture of encyclopedic clinicality and rather immature attempts at humour. Not as annoying as the Alamo "Drive Happy" tune maybe, but still annoying, since it would be so easy and so helpful if Parisi had made just a little more effort to put a polish on her work. Maybe she's just too ! used to reading and writing articles. This also becomes app! arent in the amount of erroneous pieces of information she uses to make a point from, which are slightly forgivable in articles and completely irritating in books. There are also a number of typos and references to things which aren't quoted. Instead of thanking her editor, Parisi should have shot her for giving her false hope. Still, this is somewhat of an interesting read, because Parisi can't change quotes(not much, anyway), and she's quoted a lot of interesting people, most notably Cameron himself, a fascinating man who, like, say, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, one could watch interviews of all day without getting bored. We also get to know about the behind-the-scenes attitudes towards different people, and it's interesting to find out how certain people got hired. Am I putting this on my bookshelf? It's not so bad, I might look at it for reference, and it's got a cool cover. Well, no...I've only one space left on the shelf. Maybe when I get a bigger house.
Rating:
Summary: Driving through the Green Light
Review: The story of an obsessed man who is driven to make a dream. Cameron steams through Hollywood, Baja and the world on the most Titanic ship ever, the blockbuster movie. This is how Hollywood movies are made today. The deals, the visions and the drive to overcome. Are you as obsessed? Well done!
Rating:
Summary: The InterWorkings of a movie mastermind
Review: This book brought the movie into a new perspective. It made it very easy to explain certain scenes to our kids, so that they could truly understand the complexity of the movie and thus of the disaster. The actors/actresses speaking of the fear they felt on the set just trying to recreate the worst maritime disaster in history-gives us a small glimpse of what the passengers/crew faced that nite. Also, it gave us a new respect for all the hard work, long hours, difficulties that had to be overcome to delivery the greatest movie of all time to the public. Also, we get to see that James Cameron is human, he gets frustrated and upset just like everyone else, that in and of itself was reassuring, because he is so often portrayed as larger than life.
Rating:
Summary: A good counterpoint to most media views of Cameron.
Review: This book does exactly what it set out to do - show how Titanic reshaped the movie-making industry by destroying conventional expectations. It also paints Cameron in a much different light than most other tv and print media do (i.e. good). Sometimes Parisi seems to go a bit overboard in her praise of Cameron and when she starts calling the media "idiots", one wonders just how much Cameron himself has influenced this work. A good read, and helpful in understanding just how big an undertaking this film was, but while I admire James Cameron and loved the film, the golden glow that this book gives him is a bit much. Overall, I would recommend it for anyone wanting to see the innovativeness, stamina, politics, and gambling that went into pulling off the biggest film of all time (so far).
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