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Rating: 
Summary: Master of structure
Review: Hal Ackerman is one of the most outstanding writing instructors in one of the world's best film schools (UCLA). He is a devotee of classical dramatic structure and can help you wrestle your crazed wanderings into clarity and a graceful shape. He is a master at it and it has earned him a devoted following at UCLA. His methods are clear and easy to use and your work will be a billion times better for it. Many best-selling writers around town have Ackerman to thank for helping them become the successes they are.
Rating: 
Summary: Hmmm...food for thought...
Review: I'm putting this right in the middle of the road because ultimately, I'm in agreement with the reviewer who notes one screenplay sold twenty-five years ago and the arrogance of the bookseller. It's probably more of a marketing tool to claim that one is a screenwriting "god," than self-promotion (I should hope). Otherwise, it would be gross arragance. Of course I have known my share of arrogant college professors, but also know many who have actually been out in the real world doing "it."I liken this over the top promotion to other authors like Syd Field, who much to his discredit, also has just one work noted in IMDB. At least this Lew Hunter (of whom I am not familiar) has a few works out here with his name on them. There are useful tidbits here as well as in Field's work, but the most important thing for writer's proabably to remember, is to have more than one source of inspiration and to write and examine successful works as much as possible. Let others in on your work and see what you can by use of a little vision versus some utility of a specific structured outline coming from one who has more success in touting "success" in a "how-to" book, rather than in the trenches with in actual performance.
Rating:
Summary: Inspiration from a Master Teacher
Review: I've spent my professional life directing actors, and a good number of my leisure hours watching plays and films. But whenever I've tried to compose so much as a single exchange of believable dialogue, the characters always wind up sounding like me, and the themes always hit the page with the subtelty of a sledgehammer. The one time I did find the courage to enroll in a college course on playwrighting, the instructor assigned us a two-character, one page scene due the second session. I dropped the class the next day. So the current everybody-does-it trend notwithstanding, I am hardly the guy likely to sit down and script a full-length feature film. And yet. Were I ever to be seized by an irresistible impulse to author a screenplay, this is the book I'd return to,
digesting and re-digesting every insightful page. Like any book that attempts to teach a subject (calculus, woodworking, photography), this is, after all, a textbook. But it's literally the first one I've ever encountered that was nothing less than exhilarating to read, with all the forward momentum of a good narrative. Ackerman is never ponderous or didactic, and his prose never stinks of the academy. My sense is rather of a guy who--like any gifted teacher--passionately wants the student to succeed, and is willing to share any and all of his best secrets in order to make that happen (and happen it has, for an amazingly high proportion of his former students!)
His book has all the qualities of a winner in this already crowded field: immense readability, a playful and infectious sense of humor, a refreshing concreteness (I love the fact that in citing examples of successful screenplays, he mentions big pop blockbusters like "Rocky" and "The Godfather" as often as he does 'chic' European titles like "Naked" and "Queen of Hearts".), and--maybe most importantly--a sense that the author is standing by, doing his damndest to get the best out of you.
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