Buena Vista Social Club: The Companion Book to the Film

Rating:
Summary: A "must" for BVSC fans and Cuban music enthusiasts!
Review: Buena Vista Social Club is more a coffee table addition than a serious in-depth study, but will prove a 'must' for any prior fan of the Buena Vista Social Club and Cuban music in particular. Photos, film stills and text accompany first-person capsule sketches by the participants of the BVSC group in this companion book to the film.

Rating:
Summary: A "must" for BVSC fans and Cuban music enthusiasts!
Review: Buena Vista Social Club is more a coffee table addition than a serious in-depth study, but will prove a 'must' for any prior fan of the Buena Vista Social Club and Cuban music in particular. Photos, film stills and text accompany first-person capsule sketches by the participants of the BVSC group in this companion book to the film.

Rating:
Summary: Nice photographic support to the book, but...
Review: I am a fan of Wim Wenders' work, and I loved the BVSC CD and the movie, but in all honesty, except for the intro by Wenders and the closing interview with Ry Cooder, the entire book basically consists of shots from the movie along with the dialogs by the BVSC stars and the lyrics to the songs they interpret, i.e. material that the movie and the CD already provide. Yes: I admit I had higher expectations with it. In any case, I have to say Ibrahim Ferrer's monologue toward the end, when they visit NYC for their performance at Carnegie Hall, is a very touching moment.

Rating:
Summary: A photo album that depicts the key moments in the movie
Review: I recently saw the movie Buena Vista Social Club for the first time and I liked it so much that I wanted to learn more about it. That's why I ordered this book.

At first, I was a little disappointed when I received the book and found out that some of the images were low-resolution digital scans. However, after reviewing the book as a whole, I really got to like it. There are quite a few large high-resolution images that more than compensate for their low-res counterparts.

The book is mainly a photo-album which includes the transcriptions of some of the dialogs and interviews from the movie, as well as the lyrics of some of the songs (all of them translated into English).

One of the only pieces of material in this book that are not an integral part of the movie is the foreword by Wim Wenders, where he describes his whole experience of going to Cuba to make the movie. Very, very interesting to read! The other two are an interview of Ry Cooder with Peter Kemper and the biographies of the musicians.

This book is good to have around when you are having a conversation about the movie with your friends. You'll find the photos and dialogs from all the key moments in the movie.