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Playing to the Gods
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- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
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Playing to the Gods
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Publisher's summary
The riveting story of the rivalry between the two most renowned actresses of the 19th century: legendary Sarah Bernhardt, whose eccentricity on and off the stage made her the original diva, and mystical Eleonora Duse, who broke all the rules to popularize the natural style of acting we celebrate today.
Audiences across Europe and the Americas clamored to see the divine Sarah Bernhardt swoon - and she gave them their money’s worth. The world’s first superstar, she traveled with a chimpanzee named Darwin and a pet alligator that drank champagne, shamelessly supplementing her income by endorsing everything from aperitifs to beef bouillon, and spreading rumors that she slept in a coffin to better understand the macabre heroines she played.
Eleonora Duse shied away from the spotlight. Born to a penniless family of itinerant troubadours, she disappeared into the characters she portrayed - channeling their spirits, she claimed. Her new, empathetic style of acting revolutionized the theater - and earned her the ire of Sarah Bernhardt in what would become the most tumultuous theatrical showdown of the 19th century. Bernhardt and Duse seduced each other’s lovers, stole one another’s favorite playwrights, and took to the world’s stages to outperform their rival in her most iconic roles.
A scandalous, enormously entertaining history full of high drama and low blows, Playing to the Gods is the pause-resisting account of the feud that changed theater forever.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 74
Based on 10 years of research and a vast cache of primary sources located in archives in Warsaw, Paris, London, New York, and Washington, D.C., Alan Walker's monumental Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times is the most comprehensive biography of the great Polish composer to appear in English in more than a century. Walker's work is a corrective biography, intended to dispel the many myths and legends that continue to surround Chopin.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This book is a masterpiece
- By Carpe Diem on 02-09-19
By: Dr. Alan Walker
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Furious Love
- Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century
- By: Sam Kashner, Nancy Schoenberger
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 17 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 171
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 113
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 114
He was a tough-guy Welshman softened by the affections of a breathtakingly beautiful woman; she was a modern-day Cleopatra madly in love with her own Mark Antony. For nearly a quarter of a century, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were Hollywood royalty, and their fiery romance - often called "the marriage of the century" - was the most notorious, publicized, and celebrated love affair of its day.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Paul Boehmer needs more practice
- By Brenda Miller on 06-16-10
By: Sam Kashner, and others
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When Paris Sizzled
- The 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Chanel, Cocteau, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and Their Friends
- By: Mary McAuliffe
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 90
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 81
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 82
When Paris Sizzled vividly portrays the City of Light during the fabulous 1920s, les Annees folles, when Parisians emerged from the horrors of war to find that a new world greeted them - one that reverberated with the hard metallic clang of the assembly line, the roar of automobiles, and the beat of jazz. Mary McAuliffe traces a decade that saw seismic change on almost every front, from art and architecture to music, literature, fashion, entertainment, transportation, and, most notably, behavior.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Informative, but no sizzle
- By OzEnigma on 06-01-17
By: Mary McAuliffe
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Something Wonderful
- Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution
- By: Todd S. Purdum
- Narrated by: Todd S. Purdum
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 449
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 380
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 377
They stand at the apex of the great age of songwriting, the creators of the classic Broadway musicals Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music, whose songs have never lost their popularity or emotional power. Even before they joined forces, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II had written dozens of Broadway shows, but together they pioneered a new art form: the serious musical play.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fabulous book about Rodgers & Hammerstein!!!
- By BigWally on 06-27-18
By: Todd S. Purdum
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Without Lying Down
- By: Cari Beauchamp
- Narrated by: Holly Palance
- Length: 20 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 22
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 19
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Story5 out of 5 stars 19
Cari Beauchamp masterfully combines biography with social and cultural history to examine the lives of Frances Marion and her many female colleagues who shaped filmmaking from the early teens through the 1940s. Frances Marion was Hollywood's highest paid screenwriter - male or female - for almost three decades, wrote almost 200 produced films and remains the only woman to win two Academy Awards for original screenwriting (The Big House and The Champ).
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Must Read
- By Robert Wallace on 03-19-19
By: Cari Beauchamp
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The Mistress of Paris
- The 19th-Century Courtesan Who Built an Empire on a Secret
- By: Catherine Hewitt
- Narrated by: Sarah Nichols
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 75
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 74
Comtesse Valtesse de la Bigne was painted by Édouard Manet and inspired Émile Zola, who immortalized her in his scandalous novel Nana. Her rumored affairs with Napoleon III and the future King Edward VII kept gossip columns full. But her glamorous existence hid a dark secret: She was no comtesse. She was born into abject poverty, raised on a squalid backstreet among the dregs of Parisian society. Yet she transformed herself into an enchantress.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Dry bio of Vanity
- By BVerité on 12-29-18
By: Catherine Hewitt
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The Curse of Beauty
- The Scandalous & Tragic Life of Audrey Munson, America's First Supermodel
- By: James Bone
- Narrated by: Marianne Fraulo
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 88
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 83
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Story4 out of 5 stars 82
As America was stepping into the modern era, one great beauty became the artist's model of choice. Her perfect form became the emblem of the Gilded Age and appears on the greatest monuments of New York and the nation. Supermodel, actress, icon - her beauty paved the way for a life of glamour, passion, and ultimately tragedy. Her name is Audrey Munson.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating
- By Аmazon Customer on 04-06-17
By: James Bone
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Zelda Fitzgerald
- The Tragic, Meticulously Researched Biography of the Jazz Age's High Priestess
- By: Sally Cline
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 83
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4 out of 5 stars 74
Zelda Fitzgerald was the mythical American Dream Girl of the Roaring Twenties who became, in the words of her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, "the first American flapper." Their romance transformed a symbol of glamour and spectacle of the Jazz Age. When Zelda cracked up, not long after the stock market crash of 1929, Scott remained loyal to her through a nightmare of later breakdowns and final madness.
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2 out of 5 stars
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The Beautiful and the Bungled
- By Silverthorne on 12-08-17
By: Sally Cline
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My Thoughts Be Bloody
- The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth
- By: Nora Titone, Doris Kearns Goodwin - introduction/notes
- Narrated by: John B. Lloyd
- Length: 19 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 243
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 192
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 191
My Thoughts Be Bloody, a sweeping family saga, revives an extraordinary figure whose name has been missing, until now, from the story of President Lincoln's death. Edwin Booth, John Wilkes's older brother by four years, was in his day the biggest star of the American stage. Without an account of Edwin Booth, author Nora Titone argues, the real story of Lincoln's assassin has never been told.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful!
- By Tad Davis on 11-30-10
By: Nora Titone, and others
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The Sound of Music Story
- How a Beguiling Young Novice, a Handsome Austrian Captain, and Ten Singing Von Trapp Children Inspired the Most Beloved Film of All Time
- By: Tom Santopietro
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
Now Tom Santopietro has written the ultimate Sound of Music fan audiobook with all the inside dope, from behind-the-scenes stories of the filming in Austria and Hollywood to new interviews with Johannes von Trapp and others. Santopietro looks back at the real-life story of Maria von Trapp, goes on to chronicle the sensational success of the Broadway musical, and recounts the story of the near cancellation of the film when Cleopatra bankrupted 20th Century Fox.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A must for super-fans
- By Simone on 07-29-17
By: Tom Santopietro
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Empire of Self
- A Life of Gore Vidal
- By: Jay Parini
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 16 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 100
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 89
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 89
The product of 30 years of friendship and conversation, Jay Parini's Empire of Self probes behind the glittering surface of Gore Vidal's colorful life to reveal the complex emotional and sexual truth underlying his celebrity-strewn life. But there is plenty of glittering surface as well - a virtual who's who of the American Century, from Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart through the Kennedys, Princess Margaret, and the creme de la creme of Hollywood.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well done!
- By Christopher on 03-22-16
By: Jay Parini
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Rebel Souls
- Walt Whitman and America's First Bohemians
- By: Justin Martin
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
Rebel Souls is the first book ever written about the colorful group of artists - regulars at Pfaff's Saloon in Manhattan - rightly considered America's original Bohemians. Besides a young Whitman, the circle included actor Edwin Booth; trailblazing stand–up comic Artemus Ward; psychedelic drug pioneer and author Fitz Hugh Ludlow; and brazen performer Adah Menken, famous for her Naked Lady routine. Central to their times, the artists managed to forge connections with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, and even Abraham Lincoln.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Wonderful Read with Vibrant Characters
- By A on 11-11-15
By: Justin Martin
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Romantic Outlaws
- The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley
- By: Charlotte Gordon
- Narrated by: Susan Lyons
- Length: 22 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 300
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 266
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 266
Charlotte Gordon's new work is a fresh look at the lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, who together comprise one of the most illustrious and inspiring mother-daughter pairs in history.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Tons of info, poor format choice.
- By Gotta Tellya on 02-06-17
By: Charlotte Gordon
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Mademoiselle
- Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History
- By: Rhonda Garelick
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 170
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 149
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 145
Little black dresses. Fake pearls. Jersey knit. Blazers. Ballet flats. Today - and for nearly the last hundred years - we all see some version of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel every time we pass a woman on the street. But few among us realize that Chanel’s role in the events of the twentieth century was as pervasive as her influence on fashion, or how deeply she absorbed and then brilliantly reimagined the historical currents around her.
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1 out of 5 stars
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An Unlikable Portrait
- By Sara on 09-25-16
By: Rhonda Garelick
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Mark Twain
- A Life
- By: Ron Powers
- Narrated by: Ron Powers
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 120
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 76
Mark Twain founded the American voice. His works are a living national treasury: taught, quoted, and reprinted more than those of any writer except Shakespeare. His awestruck contemporaries saw him as the representative figure of his times, and his influence has deeply flavored the 20th and 21st centuries.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Buy the Book
- By W.Denis on 10-22-05
By: Ron Powers
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The Unfinished Palazzo
- By: Judith Mackrell
- Narrated by: Julia Franklin
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
Commissioned in 1750, the Palazzo Venier was planned as a testimony to the power and wealth of a great Venetian family, but the fortunes of the Venier family waned, and the project was left abandoned and unfinished. Yet in the early 20th century, it attracted three fascinating women: Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse and Peggy Guggenheim.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Nostalgia At Its Best
- By Dan on 01-09-18
By: Judith Mackrell
What listeners say about Playing to the Gods
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- monica rosenthal
- 02-07-23
Essential reading for anyone who claims to love the theatre!
Required reading for any student/lover of theatre. A great piece of extraordinary history that gives context to what anyone thinks they know about these game changers. Insightfully told, beautifully, lovingly researched and read. So grateful to have experienced this book on audible!
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- dreamerartist
- 02-10-21
The narration sounds like a computer voice
It’s impossible to listen to the book. What a waste of money for the audio. Now I need to buy the book. I can’t understand the narrator. She speaks in robotic rhythm. It’s maddening.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 10-27-18
AI narrator ? A rip.
Fake voice, totally lacking engagement.
Did I miss something in the promo? Huh? 2 more words, required.
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