Channels of Discourse, Reassembled: Television and Contemporary Criticism
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • Excellent Overview of Media Studies Methodologies
Channels of Discourse, Reassembled: Television and Contemporary Criticism
Robert C. (ed.) Allen
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0807843741

Book Description

Since its original publication in 1987, Channels of Discourse has provided the most comprehensive consideration of commercial television, drawing on insights provided by the major strands of contemporary criticism: semiotics, narrative theory, reception theory, genre theory, ideological analysis, psychoanalysis, feminist criticism, and British cultural studies.

The second edition features a new introduction by Robert Allen that includes a discussion of the political economy of commercial television. Two new essays have been added—one an assessment of postmodernism and television, the other an analysis of convergence and divergence among the essays—and the original essays have been substantially revised and updated with an international audience in mind. Sixty-one new television stills illustrate the text.

Each essay lays out the general tenets of its particular approach, discusses television as an object of analysis within that critical framework, and provides extended examples of the types of analysis produced by that critical approach. Case studies range from Rescue 911 and Twin Peaks to soap operas, music videos, game shows, talk shows, and commericals.

Channels of Discourse, Reassembled suggests new ways of understanding relationships among television programs, between viewing pleasure and narrative structure, and between the world in front of the television set and that represented on the screen. The collection also addresses the qualities of popular television that traditional aesthetics and quantitative media research have failed to treat satisfactorily, including its seriality, mass production, and extraordinary popularity.

The contributors are Robert C. Allen, Jim Collins, Jane Feuer, John Fiske, Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, James Hay, E. Ann Kaplan, Sarah Kozloff, Ellen Seiter, and Mimi White.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars Excellent Overview of Media Studies Methodologies.......2002-07-04

In a critical writing course I taught in Spring 2002, I used Channels of Discourse, Reassembled as the core text for the course readings. The many chapters within are written by the best of the best in the fields of media studies and cultural studies, and the methodologies are presented in an easy-to-read manner which is informative and full of examples and case studies. This is an excellent book for media studies students, as its chapters lay out the basic information they should know about many of the methodologies often used in media criticism.
A History of Narrative Film, Fourth Edition
Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
  • good reading to organize your mind about cinema
  • Oi!! Could you go in a straight line just once?
  • More like a boring textbook than a "novel".
  • Reads like a novel
  • Too much of a good thing?
A History of Narrative Film, Fourth Edition
David A. Cook
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0393978680

Book Description

Sophisticated in its analytical content, current and comprehensive in its coverage of all aspects of film and filmmaking, and informed throughout by fascinating historical and cultural contexts, A History of Narrative Film is widely acknowledged to be the definitive text in the field. The Fourth Edition adds an entire chapter on computer-generated imaging, updates filmographies for nearly all living directors mentioned in the text, and includes major new sections that both revisit old content and introduce contemporary trends and movements.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars good reading to organize your mind about cinema.......2007-07-27

Very well organized but could have more information in each item.
Gives a good overview of the history of cinema and about names who had a role in it

3 out of 5 stars Oi!! Could you go in a straight line just once?.......2007-04-06

This book has a ton of information; but I challenge you to extract that information without pulling your hair out first. It was a required text for class and I dreaded every assignment from it. It has pages that are well organized and communicate information and interest very well. But, it also has pages and pages and pages that read like a first draft or outline, complete with unexplained tangents. The author and his editors have such a thorough knowledge of the subject that they miss the numerous and illogical side trips they make in the text. Side trips would be fine if the core message were clear. To be a truly effective teaching tool or an efficient reference, this book needs to be overhauled, restructured, redesigned, and re-indexed.

2 out of 5 stars More like a boring textbook than a "novel"........2005-02-08

I'm not quite sure why someone else reported that this book is like a novel. It is, quite in fact, the opposite. The author, David A. Cook, presents the information in a very historical fashion, giving the title to this book it's appropraite meaning. The book in no way tries to make the history of narrative film interesting. The definitions of mise-en-scene and montage, for example, were described rather poorly and hardly helped the reader understand their true meaning. One thing the author does provide is a very complete and thorough look at cinema, all most to the point where it is a struggle to remember all the names and their associations. It becomes even more of a challenge when the author uses unnecessary complex words and sentence structures in his descriptions. While I do enjoy how the book serves as an encyclopedia of sorts for providing vast information on narrative film, I would have liked to have seen the information presented in a more tangible and less complex format.

5 out of 5 stars Reads like a novel.......2005-01-26

This book reads like a novel rather than like a textbook. The writing is charming and the content is fascinating. To whomever criticised the daunting size of the book, I say this: Use whatever you want. Students should learn to filter what they read and separate the essential from the trivial. This is a reference volume, not a capsule.

I was amazed that one reviewer prefers a more tangible and less complex format for this book. I just pray that the reviewer meant no real disrespect. This is a history book man, not a comic book. Don't expect this book to fascinate your five-year old niece. As far as history books go, it is accurate, to the point, and interesting. Mise-en-scene and montage? This book contains, good, comprehensible definitions of mise-en-scene and montage. Perhaps you need to read the book carefully. Or recommend another volume that is better, why don't you?

4 out of 5 stars Too much of a good thing?.......2004-04-24

I've been teaching college film studies courses for about twenty years and I have been using Cook's book that whole time. It's an amazing effort which covers over a century of cinema from virtually every corner of the globe. Each edition has become larger and more exhaustive. So now we come to the fourth edition and I start to wonder when do we get TOO large and exhaustive?

The book is over 900 pages long. There are twenty-one chapters. Too much for a semester-length course - probably too much for two courses! I'd estimate there are ten thousand names (film titles and filmmakers). As an instructor, I look at it all and ask myself where do I even begin cutting to make it manageable for my classes? As a student, I'd guess you would ask, "how much of what I'm paying for am I going to actually read and learn about?" Seventy dollars isn't too bad compared to other college books of this length, but if you only read a third of it...?

A lot of film classes, sadly, my own included, tend to give you the greatest hits - the same fifty or so classics and nothing more. Cook rejects this and offers you literally hundreds of films that sound fascinating and make you want to see them. However, he seems so concerned not to exclude anything, that he name-drops. He'll devote a section of the book to films from a particular country and you get the impression, he's never seen them himself. He's just including them so the book won't be incomplete. There's no easy answer. He could ignore that country's cinema entirely and someone would criticize that decision. Instead he goes on and on about films you'll never see and won't be learning anything about.

I have a few personal criticisms of the new edition. Disney's animated films, he claims, are beyond the scope of the book, but then he discusses Japanese anime at some length. He has a section devoted to "splatter" exploitation films which includes pictures of a decapitated woman, a man with a drill going through his head and something really, really bloody coming out of ... well, you get the idea. If it were me, I'd cover Disney and skip the splatter section - or at least show fewer pictures. Am I just too old fashioned?

Cook has an especially difficult job with current world cinema. Like any other aspect of history, how do we really know what contemporary films are going to be classics fifty years from now and which will be forgotten? I agree with him some of the time: his detailed analysis of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I disagree sometimes too: do you really think Moulin Rouge is going to be considered a "landmark" film even a decade from now?

Finally, a plea, not just to David Cook but to all cinema book authors: Stop including shot by shot break-down photos from classic films! Do you really think we need to see A DOZEN PAGES of the Odessa Steps sequence of Battleship Potemkin?!! Can we all agree that video now makes these films readily available to any film buff and certainly to any college offering a cinema class? There are SIXTY photos taken from Citizen Kane alone. I know it's supposed to be the greatest film ever made, but won't readers just go out and see it for themselves?

So for the film fan who wants an entire college-level education on world cinema in a single volume, I cannot recommend this edition highly enough. For a student choosing cinema as a major, or for their graduate studies, it's going to be a great resource. But I envision two other people who may be reading this book. One's a student standing in line at the campus bookstore overwhelmed and demoralized by the sheer size of the thing in the shopping cart. The other is an instructor like me, who's wondering how I'm ever going to chop this opus down to something usable.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Written by Himself (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • The Rest of the Story
  • Not Just a African, but an American Hero!
  • Required Reading
  • My heart broke
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Written by Himself (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)
Frederick Douglass
Manufacturer: Bedford/St. Martin's
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0312257376

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars The Rest of the Story.......2007-07-07

In the classic slave narrative genre, Frederick Douglass' narrative of his life brings to life, in all its horrors, American slave society, and one slave's life-long protest against it.

When we read Frederick Douglass in his own words, he is less the radical and more the reformer than we've been led to believe. He is also more the Christian statesmen and less the Christianity critic than we might imagine. Douglass' oft quoted comments about Christianity had much more to do with a righteous critique of distorted Christian living practiced by white masters than with any critique of Christianity or of Christ. In reality, Douglass, like so many enslaved African Americans before and after him, saw in Jesus a Savior they could identify with--a suffering Savior.

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction, Soul Physicians, and Spiritual Friends.

5 out of 5 stars Not Just a African, but an American Hero!.......2005-10-10

Frederick Douglass is the complete ressurection of the saying, "Knowledge is Power." With the more information he aquired as a slave the more he lusted for freedom. He also provides an excellent example of what black people in this country could do for themselves, interms of their economical status. Looking further, Douglass loved to think and imagine the endless possiblities, while he was still in bondage physically. When he began to read and understand the "Hypocrasy" that this country was based on, using christianity as it main tool, and what every human should be allowed by right, this released his psychological enslavement. If blacks throughout this country could read and understand there were blacks that went through worse situatians and overcame them, and the current situation that destroy the black communities were created for them to fail, just like slavery, many would wake up and take on the mask of Douglass. The mask that says, "regardless of class, race, or creed, this world was created for everyone to enjoy including me."

4 out of 5 stars Required Reading.......2004-08-27

I read this book as part of a summer assignment entering into the 11th grade in addition to "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" by Harriet Jacobs. Both are great pieces of African-American historical literature and well worth the read. I couldn't read this book all in one sitting, due to the need to fight the urge to throw up. He detailed descriptions of physical, psycological, and emotional abuse are enough to sicken any one and make you disgusted with the human race.

5 out of 5 stars My heart broke.......2004-06-11

The honesty with which this is written is amazing. I was glued to it from page one. I felt disgusted by the human race, saddened by his traumas and guilty just for being white. I think this needs to be read more. Especially in schools. Why isn't it???
Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation: Spectacular Narratives of Gender and Race
Average customer rating: Not rated
    Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation: Spectacular Narratives of Gender and Race
    Susan Courtney
    Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Paperback

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    ASIN: 069111305X

    Book Description

    Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation analyzes white fantasies of interracial desire in the history of popular American film. From the first interracial screen kiss of 1903, through the Production Code's nearly thirty-year ban on depictions of "miscegenation," to the contemplation of mixed marriage in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), this book demonstrates a long, popular, yet underexamined record of cultural fantasy at the movies.

    With ambitious new readings of well-known films like D.W. Griffith's 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation and of key forgotten films and censorship documents, Susan Courtney argues that dominant fantasies of miscegenation have had a profound impact on the form and content of American cinema.

    What does it mean, Courtney asks, that the image of the black rapist became a virtual cliché, while the sexual exploitation of black women by white men under slavery was perpetually repressed? What has this popular film legacy invited spectators to remember and forget? How has it shaped our conceptions of, and relationships to, race and gender?

    Richly illustrated with more than 140 images, Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation carefully attends to cinematic detail, revising theories of identity and spectatorship as it expands critical histories of race, sex, and film. Courtney's new research on the Production Code's miscegenation clause also makes an important contribution, inviting us to consider how that clause was routinely interpreted and applied, and with what effects.

    Digital Storytelling: The Narrative Power of Visual Effects in Film
    Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    • GREAT CRITIQUE OF CRAFT FOR VIZ F/X ARTISTS AND PRODUCERS
    Digital Storytelling: The Narrative Power of Visual Effects in Film
    Shilo T. McClean
    Manufacturer: The MIT Press
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Hardcover

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    ASIN: 0262134659

    Book Description

    Computer-generated effects are often blamed for bad Hollywood movies. Yet when a critic complains that "technology swamps storytelling" (in a review of Van Helsing, calling it "an example of everything that is wrong with Hollywood computer-generated effects movies"), it says more about the weakness of the story than the strength of the technology. In Digital Storytelling, Shilo McClean shows how digital visual effects can be a tool of storytelling in film, adding narrative power as do sound, color, and "experimental" camera angles--other innovative film technologies that were once criticized for being distractions from the story. It is time, she says, to rethink the function of digital visual effects.

    Effects artists say--contrary to the critics--that effects always derive from story. Digital effects are a part of production, not post-production; they are becoming part of the story development process. Digital Storytelling is grounded in filmmaking, the scriptwriting process in particular. McClean considers crucial questions about digital visual effects-- whether they undermine classical storytelling structure, if they always call attention to themselves, whether their use is limited to certain genres--and looks at contemporary films (including a chapter-long analysis of Steven Spielberg's use of computer-generated effects) and contemporary film theory to find the answers. McClean argues that to consider digital visual effects as simply contributing the "wow" factor underestimates them. They are, she writes, the legitimate inheritors of film storycraft.

    Customer Reviews:

    4 out of 5 stars GREAT CRITIQUE OF CRAFT FOR VIZ F/X ARTISTS AND PRODUCERS .......2007-04-03

    The faults of this book? Point size is under 9 points which strains the eyes given that this is 99% text. There are a few photographs, but the focus of this book is use of Digital Visual Effects in contemporary movies, and how the author and critics are responding to them.

    As I'm a sucker for anything related to Visual Effects, I enjoyed this book. He defines concepts that are perhaps intuitive to a visual effects artist. Yet, making you aware of these things is quite cool. Someone has noticed, and taken the time to process what it all might mean.

    I appreciate that the author connects the story and visual effects, though some quotes are heavy handed. An ILM staffer complains that "Borne Identity" lost him during a exaggerated shot. It's a movie, not a documentary. The most perceptive part goes into the misidentification of f/x by critics, specifically "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," which used extensive digital effects that were attributed to incamera or old-style f/x. I wish he would've discussed Roman Coppola's CQ, which went whole hog chemical f/x. Still, there's plenty to consider. F/X are not the enemy. Mediocre filmmaking is.
    A History of Narrative Film
    Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
    • Excellent world cinema historical survey
    • Nice summary of... well... film
    • An awesome source of information!
    • Extremely comprehensive!
    • This is the best General History available
    A History of Narrative Film
    David A. Cook
    Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Paperback

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    ASIN: 0393968197

    Amazon.com

    Now in its third edition, A History of Narrative Film continues to be the most comprehensive and complete history of international cinema in print. This book conveys the vastness and heterogeneity of film history; it describes the extraordinary number of extraordinary films that have been made over the last hundred years. Even in 1,100 pages and more than 1,500 illustrations, Cook can but summarize the development of film narrative and film art in every major country. He has wisely complemented his survey with in-depth analyses of three hugely important movies, The Birth of a Nation, The Battleship Potemkin, and Citizen Kane. He also focuses on major films--The Rules of the Game, Tokyo Story, Vertigo, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors--when he assesses the careers of landmark directors. This edition, updated for the '90s, adds a section on "Hollywood 1965-present," as well as new chapters on "The Former Soviet Union" and "Third World Cinema."

    Customer Reviews:

    5 out of 5 stars Excellent world cinema historical survey.......2005-12-11


    This is a thorough, informative, and interesting history of world cinema, from the invention of the medium in the 1870s to about 1994. The book is arranged chronologically, for the most part, and within that arrangement chapters are devoted to specific trends, major developments, and particular countries. D.W. Griffith, the first great narrative filmmaker, gets a whole chapter to himself, and so does Orson Welles. But usually particular filmmakers are included under larger headings: the French New Wave (Truffaut, Godard), Western European Renaissance (Fellini, Bunuel, Bergman), the American studio system (Ford, Hawkes, Hitchcock), Hollywood in the twenties (Chaplin, Keaton, DeMille).

    Because the book covers so much ground, only the major highlights of each subject can be explored, but Cook is still able to give a good survey of important considerations for each topic or artist. Emphasis also is on the word "world" and Hollywood does not dominate, which for a book like this is good. In fact, I think the book is especially useful for anyone interested in the artform as it exists outside the Hollywood system. An excellent survey, well worth checking out.

    4 out of 5 stars Nice summary of... well... film.......2004-04-01

    Lets think of it like this: If you wanted to know the entire history of narrative film, this will do the trick. So it does its job. Granted, there are some omissions, and some things could be a little more in depth, but when you have a project with the girth that Cook does, it's completely understandable.

    It does its job, that's for sure.

    5 out of 5 stars An awesome source of information!.......2003-11-29

    I originally found this book while researching the film ratings system for a college paper. I found great information for my research but the book actually slowed down my work because I spent so much time reading about unrelated topics just for the joy of it. This is a must own for anybody who loves film. I found it not only informative but also extremely interesting.

    4 out of 5 stars Extremely comprehensive!.......2003-10-06

    An excellent compendium of cinematic knowledge, from Edison and Lumiere up to Robocop and Tron. I happen to also be taking a film history class with Dr. Cook and I can say that although his teaching style is a bit dry, he certainly knows his stuff. The book is well organized in terms of chronology and geography, tracing artistic movements and schools of thought from the prehistory through 1895 and beyond. The only thing that kept it from 5 stars would be its sometimes overwhelming amount of information (particularly lists of foreign film titles, not all of which are translated) - as a student, I would prefer that the text focused on the films that had a discerable impact on the development of the genre rather than just being listed for their own sake. Definitely recommended!

    5 out of 5 stars This is the best General History available.......2002-01-31

    Imagine having the gall to write a history of "Narrative Film" -- not just Hollywood production, but ALL film, from ALL OVER...

    Well Cook does, and does it better than anyone else.

    The most amazing thing about this book is that is reads so well: you can literally open it up anywhere, start reading, and start learning -- and be entertained at the same time. I just love reading this book.

    The second amazing thing is that Cook seems to have seen a lot of movies and taken the time to think carefully about them. As a result his comments, his sense of historical perspective, and his assertions are usually accurate, frequently insightful, and always enlightenling.

    If you're studying film in ANY context, this is the book to buy. If you prefer a video store with a foreign language section instead of your local Blockbuster, this is the catalog for you. Within days of reading this book I was making lists of films that I had to see (The Red And The White, and the Wadja trilogy among them), and running out to find them.

    For those in need of a text-book, this is the best value-for-money you can get. For thos FEARING a text-book, relax: it's actually a real page turner.

    Any short-commings? There are some minor factual errors (the photographs demonstrating zoom, telephoto and wide lenses use inaccurate frames from Barry Lyndon, for example), but nothing to worry about -- there so much about this book that's good it really doesn't make a difference. The only real problem is that it will never be big enough.

    This is the book against which the others are judged.
    Narrative in Fiction and Film: An Introduction
    Average customer rating: Not rated
      Narrative in Fiction and Film: An Introduction
      Jakob Lothe
      Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
      ProductGroup: Book
      Binding: Paperback

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      1. Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation
      2. Film and Literature: An Introduction and Reader Film and Literature: An Introduction and Reader

      ASIN: 0198752326

      Book Description

      Narrative in Fiction and Film gives a clear presentation of key concepts of narrative theory. A growing field in the humanities, narrative theory (or 'narratology') studies such narratives, thus discussing central questions concerning human communication. This introductory book has a two-part structure: Part I presents key concepts of narrative theory - for example, author, narrator, time, perspective, event, characterization. The discussion is oriented towards narrative fiction and centred on literary texts, yet since film can also have an important narrative dimension, the film aspect is brought into each chapter. Part II analyses five prose texts: the parable of the sower in St. Mark's Gospel, Franz Kafka's The Trial, James Joyce's 'The Dead', Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. Part II also discusses film versions of four of these texts: Orson Welles's The Trial, John Huston's The Dead, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, and Colin Gregg's To the Lighthouse. The book brings together and lucidly presents concepts and theories in narrative theory, and illustrates and tests theses theories. It will be an invaluable text for undergraduates studying narrative theory as part of a literature or film studies course.
      Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry
      Average customer rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
      • Food for thought
      • Helpful and Intriguing View of Tales and Culture
      • Weak
      Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry
      Jack Zipes
      Manufacturer: Routledge
      ProductGroup: Book
      Binding: Paperback

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      Similar Items:
      1. The Classic Fairy Tales (Norton Critical Editions) The Classic Fairy Tales (Norton Critical Editions)
      2. Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales
      3. Fairy Tale As Myth Myth As Fairy Tale (The Thomas D. Clark Lectures : 1993) Fairy Tale As Myth Myth As Fairy Tale (The Thomas D. Clark Lectures : 1993)
      4. The Witch Must Die: The Hidden Meaning of Fairy Tales The Witch Must Die: The Hidden Meaning of Fairy Tales
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      Accessories:
      1. philosophy hope in a jar daily moisturizer philosophy hope in a jar daily moisturizer
      2. Braun IRT 4020 ThermoScan Ear Thermometer Braun IRT 4020 ThermoScan Ear Thermometer

      ASIN: 0415918510

      Book Description

      In Happily Ever After, Jack Zipes addresses his ongoing concern with the socialization of children, the impact of the fairy tale on children and adults, and the future development of the fairy tale as film. As a result of analyzing the historical trajectory of storytelling and the literary fairy tale, the essays in Happily Ever After move from the sixteenth century to the present, between different cultures and societies, and from specific analyses to general syntheses. Zipes demonstrates how Straparola's 16th-century Puss in Boots tale is related to Disney's 1922 film version. He examines the narrative structure of Hansel and Gretel as a rationalization for child abuse, tracing the same theme in Collad's novel Pinocchio and its Disney film version. He concludes by examining how we have come full circle from the early oral tradition in light of the rise of storytelling throughout the world. Underscoring all these essays is the question that all fairy tales raise: what does it take to bring about happiness? Is happiness only to be found in fairy tales?

      Customer Reviews:

      4 out of 5 stars Food for thought.......2004-12-09

      I definitely didn't agree with a lot of what Zipes had to say - he was much too pessimistic and bitter for my tastes. Additionally, the idea of Disney-as-embodiment-of-all-things-evil is a little tired.

      However, what I enjoyed about the book was how much it got me thinking about my own views on the material. Quite a few times I wished Zipes was in front of me so we could discuss and debate. That is always a sign of a good book to me - something that gets me thinking about my own belief system, whether I agree with the author or not.

      A very interesting read.

      4 out of 5 stars Helpful and Intriguing View of Tales and Culture.......2000-04-28

      I really disagree with the previous review of this book. Zipes doesn't distort the tales meaning at all. Instead he avoids the facile, obvious surface reading, and goes deeper into the many varied meanings of what any one tale can mean. I especially enjoyed the sections on how tales were twisted and edited to reinforce our ideas of childhood and what is appropriate for children to read. For instance, the Grimms' tales were heavily edited over time making them less violent, adding in strict moral messages, and generally making the female characters more annoying (see Bottigheimer's Grimms Bold Boys and Bad Girls for a great analysis of this). I highly reccomend this book.

      2 out of 5 stars Weak.......2000-03-30

      The insights here are few and far between. Zipes labors much too hard twisting these tales to fit his own political agenda. In a typical chapter, Zipes tries to explain how fairy tales demonstrate that cats are better than people. Many better books have been written on the subject.
      Narrative Comprehension and Film (Sightlines Series)
      Average customer rating: Not rated
        Narrative Comprehension and Film (Sightlines Series)
        Edward Branigan
        Manufacturer: Routledge
        ProductGroup: Book
        Binding: Paperback

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        Similar Items:
        1. Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion
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        5. Narration in the Fiction Film Narration in the Fiction Film

        ASIN: 0415075122

        Book Description

        How does cinematic fiction render the ordinary world intelligible?

        Narrative is one of the ways we organize and understand the world. It is found everywhere: not only in films and books, but also in everyday conversations and in the nonfictional discourses of journalists, historians, educators, psychologists, and others.

        In Narrative Comprehension and Film, Edward Branigan presents a telling exploration of the basic concepts of narrative theory and its relation to film--and literary--analysis, bringing together theories from linguistics and cognitive science, and applying them to the screen. Individual analysis of classical narratives form the basis of a complex study of every aspect of filmic fiction, exploring, for example, subjectivity in Lady in the Lake, multiplicity in Letter from an Unknown Woman, postmodernism and documentary in Sans Soleil.

        Through his exploration of film, Branigan expresses how the study of narrative should be viewed as a distinctive strategy for recognizing, isolating, and articulating the fundamental role which narrative plays in our response to the world as a whole.

        Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film As An Emotion Machine (Les's Communication Series)
        Average customer rating: Not rated
          Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film As An Emotion Machine (Les's Communication Series)
          Ed S. Tan
          Manufacturer: Lawrence Erlbaum
          ProductGroup: Book
          Binding: Hardcover

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          ASIN: 0805814094

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