Rating: 
Summary: short but still tiresome
Review: The small amount of action in this story is lengthened into description after description of the narrator doing drugs and drinking while altering classic movies. You really want to shout "OK, I get the idea, already! Would you please move on???"Finally we get to the climax, and it's not much. There is no suspense, more of just an explanation of how the would-be dancer Alis has mysteriously appeared in some of the old movies. It's a required SF explanation (so that the story can be called SF) but really it's hard to be curious when you just want the thing to end, please -- by this point in the story you know it's not going to get any more interesting. It seems that Willis put all her energy into coming up with the SF premise and watching old movies so she could insert little descriptions of scenes into the text. It needed more attention to the characters and a plot. This would have made a passable short story.
Rating: 
Summary: If you love SF and THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT, this is for you.
Review: Unfortunately, Willis does not quite manage her usual blend of vivid characters and phenomenal insight in this novel. She probably would have been wiser to condense her plot into a short story--it could have made an excellent one, but for a few other problems. She develops her characters only to a limited extent, an unusual tactic for Willis that she may have intended to tie in to the superficial movie world of "faces." Even so, as I read, I ended up caring very little about what happened to the primary characters themselves. The narrator Tom's actions are haphazard and seem to lack a unifying emotion, and his relationship with Alis contains so very little that I had trouble understanding what reason she had for becoming angry with him at all. In addition, the majority of the profanity did not contribute in any way, rendering it annoyingly gratuitous. And, finally, I confess I failed to detect a viable theme. The closest contender I saw would go something like: "Don't let anything, even impossibility itself, stop you from doing what you want to." Since that statement says nothing proactive about the human condition, I doubt it is the one Willis had in mind; still, it was all I could find. I finished reading the book solely because I am a confirmed Willis fan. If I decide to read it again, I probably will change my mind and re-read _To Say Nothing of the Dog_ or _Bellwether_.
Rating:
Summary: Not the author's best
Review: Unfortunately, Willis does not quite manage her usual blend of vivid characters and phenomenal insight in this novel. She probably would have been wiser to condense her plot into a short story--it could have made an excellent one, but for a few other problems. She develops her characters only to a limited extent, an unusual tactic for Willis that she may have intended to tie in to the superficial movie world of "faces." Even so, as I read, I ended up caring very little about what happened to the primary characters themselves. The narrator Tom's actions are haphazard and seem to lack a unifying emotion, and his relationship with Alis contains so very little that I had trouble understanding what reason she had for becoming angry with him at all. In addition, the majority of the profanity did not contribute in any way, rendering it annoyingly gratuitous. And, finally, I confess I failed to detect a viable theme. The closest contender I saw would go something like: "Don't let anything, even impossibility itself, stop you from doing what you want to." Since that statement says nothing proactive about the human condition, I doubt it is the one Willis had in mind; still, it was all I could find. I finished reading the book solely because I am a confirmed Willis fan. If I decide to read it again, I probably will change my mind and re-read _To Say Nothing of the Dog_ or _Bellwether_.
Rating: 
Summary: A fine Connie Willis tale, with deep-running emotions.
Review: Willis' intriguing take on the future of Hollywood is almost too real, as recent beer commercials demonstrate. Not her best book (read BELLWEATHER for that), and done in a more serious tone than some, this is a fine read by an author who should get much more recognition. Recommended
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