reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Habla Español is a language learning supplement tape that promises to be a fun, graphics-filled and easy way to learn Spanish.

It is graphics-filled. Otherwise we're treated to endless bad jokes and other gimmicks that supposedly help the Spanish lessons on view to stick.

There is a lot of good content here, but a shocking lack of the best thing such a multimedia presentation should have to offer: native speakers, and real conversation in Spanish. Most of the voices and personalities on view look like American college students with good Spanish skills hamming it up for the camera. Not all the pronunciation is good.

Obviously, no disc is going to teach you Spanish the way that real immersion in the culture will, and nothing can take the place of the firm application of a few weeks in a real language class taught by a dedicated professional....Read the entire review

I love Shakespeare, so I was hoping for something interesting with the Standard Deviants DVD on Shakespeare's Tragedies: Origins and Style: something that would offer some insights into the life and work of this master dramatist; something that I could recommend to others as an introduction to a fascinating body of work. Unfortunately, my hopes were sadly disappointed.

There are two fundamental flaws in this program. The first is the basic style of presentation, and the second is the quality of the content. First let's deal with the presentation style. In a nutshell, the attitude presented by this DVD is "Shakespeare is hard and boring, so we'll try to make it "cool" for you." This sends exactly the wrong message: that learning has to be sugar-coated and served in teeny-tiny bites to be palatable. Let me tell you: Shakespeare's tragedies are rich stuff, full of action, high drama, tensio...Read the entire review