Film: A Critical Introduction

Customer Reviews:

Film: A Critical Introduction.......2007-09-12

Great book for a humanities class! I recommend it.
Great into to Cinema! Delivery quick and good condition.

A Superior, Well-Developed, Introductory Text . . ........2007-01-29

Whether you are a student or professor, there are a wide range of introductory film texts from which to choose -- it can be a bit overwhelming and a mistake is costly! This is especially true if you are the professor who is selecting an expensive text for your students (and they are all expensive) . . . you want provide them with a text worthy of the expense AND you do not want to invest additional hours photocopying material from other texts to compensate for less-than-fantastic chapters.

With this in mind, allow me to say that Pramaggoire and Wallis' text is the best I have ever encountered . . . bar none. I have used this text for over a year now, and the response has been extremely positive. It may initially seem irrelevant, but this text is extraordinary aesthetically appealing. Why is this important? Because we are talking about professors and students who have an interest in a VISUAL art. This text presents large, lush examples to compliment the text: not all texts invest this effort or expense. Moreover, the selected examples are spot-on . . . they are not randomly chosen BUT are the quintessential example of any given technique.

What makes this text great is both the organization (which others have mentioned) and the accessibility. Let's say you are not taking a formal class in film, you would have no problem reading this text solo. It is that understandable . . . and, let's face it, if an author cannot clearly explain an idea to a lay-person then he/she really do not know the subject. Pramaggoire and Wallis KNOW their subject.

And while there are several "well-written" texts on the market, not all incorporate contemporary examples. While Orson Wells and Ingmar Bergman are key to understanding film, one cannot successful base an introductory text on "The Greats." It simply does not engage the new student. Luckily, this text includes essential examples from film history as well as contemporary examples (like "Super Size Me," "Waking Life," "The Piano" and "Requiem for a Dream"). I am especially fond of the short analysis of Harron's "American Psycho" (an oft overlooked, cinematic masterpiece).

One final reason to select this text: while other writers are rehashing old critical approaches to film, Pramaggoire and Wallis select the most relevant and contemporary ones. They instruct readers on how to view a film in the context of race, gender, sexuality, class, and national identity: all of which are crucial to understanding film! Likewise, they address "film authorship" which is equally as valuable. The text is never bogged-down by jargon (many are) . . . nor is it heavy-handed in its approach. Unlike most texts, this one wants to be understood.

You will find texts with DVD-ROMs, texts with "writing" supplements, texts with online-course access, and other "bells and whistles" . . . but this text does not NEED any of that. (It seems the others are trying to compensate for their short-comings by including "bonus" material . . . but it just becomes MESSY!). I plan to continue using this text as a tool for teaching film . . . it is, BY FAR, the best on the market. It is "smart," beautiful, and completely accessible. Whether you are a professor seeking a new text or a lay-person looking to enhance your knowledge of film, you cannot go wrong with this work. Trust me, it is worth the price!!

Fabulous introduction!.......2006-01-19

This is not only the best introduction to film studies that I've found, it's also a model of how a textbook should be organized and written. After an opening chapter on plot structure and thematic analysis, it goes in-depth into the elements of film form, with chapters on narrative form, mise en scene, cinematography, editing, and sound. The final section includes chapters on documentary and avant-garde film, writing about film, social context, ideology, stardom, genre, film authorship, and the economics of the film industry. Everything is covered very in-depth and in detail, with lots of excellent examples and photos. There is also a helpful film glossary in back. The writing is model of clarity and organization. This textbook is notable for the way that writing instruction is integrated into the text. Each chapter concludes with brief essay which exemplifies the concepts and terms used in the chapter, and includes margin notes which discuss the formal and rhetorical features of a college essay, including organization, research, thesis statement, and so on. There is also a concise chapter devoted entirely to writing about film, including the different kinds of essays typically assigned by professors. Students who read carefully will be well prepared to write film analysis papers for their college classes. Since this is an introductory text, it doesn't try to give complete coverage to film history and film theory, although these topics are introduced. Film history and theory really need to be covered in separate books and classes, as the authors recognize.

As Reference & Textbook for "Intro to Film".......2005-08-26

As a current user of Giannetti's "Understanding Movies", I find this new text to be a breath of fresh air. First impressions: the initial page prior to the content is a splash-page still from Visconti's "The Leopard", a film that perhaps has seen recent resurgence of interest in the film community. Overall, the text tries to convey the thesis of "Film as Art & Cultural Phenomenon" with thorough examples & concise explanations. Also appreciated is the brief desc of "persistence of vision & the phi phenomenon" & other more operational/technical aspects of film, filming & projection equipment.

The book features examples of what could be student film analysis papers. It also goes about analyzing the road to writing essays with an adequate thesis statement.

The book's highlight is the Chapter on "Writing about Film", which will likely help students in their film journal writing & paper thesis formulation. There won't be an intro book to tell the entire "story" of film, but Prammagiore & Wallis's book provides a commendable "structure" with film stills that ties closely to their text.

If you're looking for a summary of general film history in intro film studies, I don't think you'll find it here. Still a highly recommended book for students of film.

New Documentary: A Critical Introduction

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New Documentary: A Critical Introduction
Stella Bruzzi
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Theorizing Documentary (Afi Film Reader)
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ASIN: 0415182964

Book Description

New Documentary provides a comprehensive account of the last two decades of documentary filmmaking in the US, Britain and Europe. Bruzzi discusses key genres, filmmakers, and issues for the study of non-fiction film and television. Bruzzi discusses the relationship between recent, innovative examples of the genre and the more established canon of documentary. She also explores how issues of gender identity, queer theory, performance, "race" and spectatorship are important to our understanding of contemporary documentary.

Alan Bennett: A Critical Introduction (Studies in Modern Drama, 16)

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Alan Bennett: A Critical Introduction (Studies in Modern Drama, 16)
Joseph O'Mealy
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0815335407

Book Description

Alan Bennett is one of England's best-loved playwrights. He is perhaps best known there for the BBC production of his Talking Heads TV plays, while the rest of the world may recognize him for the film adaptation of his play The Madness of King George. Over the last thirty years, Bennett has written ten stage plays, three screenplays, eight television documentaries, and over thirty plays for television. Yet Bennett's work has resisted "serious" reviews in academic publications, as his reputation as a comedic player during the early '60's has saddled him with the label "lovable." Joseph O'Mealy demonstrates that Bennett is a social critic, interested in depicting and analyzing the role playing of everyday life, a'la sociologist Erving Goffman. After providing a general introduction to Bennett as multifaceted playwright and actor, O'Mealy looks in depth at Bennett's oeuvre, starting with Beyond the Fringe and concluding with his most recent production, The Lady in the Van.

Gilles Deleuze's
<I>Difference and Repetition</I>: A Critical Introduction and Guide

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It could be better...
Probably as good as it's going to get

Gilles Deleuze's Difference and Repetition: A Critical Introduction and Guide
James Williams
Manufacturer: Edinburgh University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Difference and Repetition
Gilles Deleuze: An Introduction
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ASIN: 074861818X

Book Description

This is the first critical introduction to Difference and Repetition, Gilles Deleuze's most important work of philosophy and one of the most significant texts of contemporary philosophy.

In offering a critical analysis of Deleuze's methods, principles and arguments, the book enables readers to engage with the revolutionary core of Deleuze's philosophy and take up favorable or critical positions with respect to its most innovative and controversial ideas. The book will also help to extend Deleuze's work to philosophers working in the analytic tradition.

Customer Reviews:

It could be better..........2005-03-11

To be perfectly honest, this book helped to reinvigorate an interest in Difference and Repetition, a book that I had formerly passed over because on first read I found the contents inaccessible, at least at the time. And - in all fairness - Williams' book offers a number of hints that helped me to understand Deleuze's magnum opus. But that is really all this book has to offer: hints. As one reviewer pointed out, it can work to Williams' detriment that he insists on keeping a constant dialogue with analytical philosophy. I would go one step further and say that Williams' habit of repeating the same complaints which would-be analytical philosophers might raise, and always deferring any lucid answer to these questions, borders on tedium. This is not the only thing that is tedious about this work, as one quickly becomes aware after sampling just a bit of the prose. For instance, Williams often interrupts his train of thought with bizarre and unhelpful remarks (e.g. "Who are you stranger? What reasons brought you here?").

If you're looking for a clarification of Deleuze's chef d'oeuvre, this book will help to some degree. If you don't feel like weeding through the tedium of "Gilles Deleuze's Difference and Repetition" I recommend looking elsewhere - Manuel Delanda's "Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy" is a nice alternative.

Probably as good as it's going to get.......2004-05-11

For everyone frustrated and defeated by Deleuze's masterwork, you now have before you a way to tame the beast in the form of this strange little book. Williams is pretty good on most points, and he does his darnedest to clarify D&R without caricaturing it. I think he succeeds, and this despite the fact that I would never read, or recommend that someone read, Deleuze's work as he has done. By which I mean: more or less in constant dialogue with the so-called analytic tradition. Williams not only develops Deleuze's ideas along those lines, but builds a more or less perpetual opposition to Deleuze by posing the most likely objections from the analytic camp. In the end, Deleuze wins--as well he should in a book on a book containing all the reasons why Deleuze thought he won--but, I just kept feeling the question pressing...at what cost? Might it not be more encumbent upon us left the task of making good on Deleuze's legacy to resist fusing that legacy and judging it in tandem with a tradition that he always sought to distance himself from? I think so, but as I am not master of all things, I'll go ahead and recommend this book on the strength of what it does quite capably: give a clear and sustained account of the principles underlying D&R; approach the work in a critical spirit that never reverts into blind attack or adulation; and, most importantly for me, keeps it concise, not getting lost in the infinite texture and detail of the work, and sticking to the "big" points. After all, this is an introduction to a great work of philosophy and not a key to scripture, and Williams does us all a great service by leaving most of the work up to us---he just ensures that we can begin to read the thing!!!
Pretty dang good.

The Critical Eye: An Introduction to Looking at Movies

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Clear and readable introduction to the techniques and interp

The Critical Eye: An Introduction to Looking at Movies
Margo A. Kasdan , Christine Saxton , and Susan Tavernetti
Manufacturer: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0787290769

Customer Reviews:

Clear and readable introduction to the techniques and interp.......1998-11-08

An excellent summary and profound analysis of the techniques and interpretation of movies. I particularly like the authors analysis of Casablanca. In addition, the analysis of Little Big Man is seminal in an understanding of Native American portrayal in contemporary film.

Introduction to Film Criticism: Major Critical Approaches to Narrative Film

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overpriced, and somewhat like a graduate monograph
useful for students but way overpriced

Introduction to Film Criticism: Major Critical Approaches to Narrative Film
Tim Bywater , and Thomas Sobchack
Manufacturer: Longman
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0582286069

Customer Reviews:

overpriced, and somewhat like a graduate monograph.......2007-02-15

Indeed, I have to agree with the previous reviewer who thought the book was way overpriced. But I did find that the book's content was quite well done. It is a scholarly treatment of film analysis. Frankly, very highbrow and certainly not to every student's tastes. The different genres of analysis do inevitably overlap. But the methods are not those meant for a popular, wide audience of readers. Instead, the text has the feel of a graduate literary monograph. Which is an awkward fit to the perhaps more typical undergraduate style of having an appendix with sample essays.

If you do treat the book as a monograph, then its list price makes more sense.

useful for students but way overpriced.......2006-01-24

This book is designed as a supplementary textbook for an introductory film studies class. Its purpose is to introduce students to the major forms of film criticism and prepare them for writing their own film criticism. There is an appendix with sample essays, and the authors provide typical questions that students might address in their essays, but the emphasis is not on the nuts and bolts of writing a college essay. There are chapters on "journalistic," "humanist," "auteur," "genre," "social science," "historical," and "ideological/theoretical" approaches to writing about film. Each chapter gives a brief history of this type of writing, the basic premises, and the kinds of issues and questions addressed. It is not an interesting read. I love reading about film, but reading about writing on film is not especially interesting. The field of writing on film is vast, and this is a rather thin book, so the coverage seems somewhat superficial. The different categories of writing about film seemed rather arbitrary and awkward; there is a lot of overlap between categories. For a thin and rather boring book, the price of $99 (Amazon price $89) is ridiculous.

European Film Theory and Cinema: A Critical Introduction

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European Film Theory and Cinema: A Critical Introduction
Ian Aitken
Manufacturer: Indiana University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

European Film Theory and Cinema explores the major film theories and movements within European cinema from the 1900s onwards. The study is organized around two major traditions which dominate European film theory and cinema: the ãintuitionist modernist and realistä tradition and the ãpost- Saussurianä tradition. This original and critically astute introduction is a work of intellectual history that considers film theory within the context of the intellectual climate of the last two centuries.

The Art of Record: A Critical Introduction to Documentary

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The Art of Record: A Critical Introduction to Documentary
John Corner
Manufacturer: Manchester University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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New Documentary: A Critical Introduction

ASIN: 0719046874

Book Description

Documentary is a controversial and important area of media production. The art of record is a fascinating insight into the function of documentary in film and television. Its attempts to depict reality, and to comment on it, have provoked disagreement from the 1920s to the present day. Recent debates about knowledge and representation, and about the changing character of public culture, have increased its interest and relevance. John Corner presents a clear overview of the theoretical issues and critical debates around documentary, and discusses the development of the main styles and approaches, including dramadocs and fly-on-the-wall. He also looks at the dual identity of work in documentary as both artefact and as reference. The book provides a valuable detailed analysis of specific examples of powerful documentary films and programmes such as Cathy Come Home, Life and Times of Rosie the Rivetter and When the Dog Bites.

Things to Come: A Critical Text of the 1935 London First Edition, With an Introduction and Appendices (Annotated H.G. Wells) (Annotated H.G. Wells)

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Stoverism

Things to Come: A Critical Text of the 1935 London First Edition, With an Introduction and Appendices (Annotated H.G. Wells) (Annotated H.G. Wells)
H. G. Wells
Manufacturer: McFarland & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

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ASIN: 0786430389

Product Description

Things to Come is the 1936 release of London Films, produced from the 1935 "film story" by H.G. Wells, the text of the present work. The book includes more than 100 illustrations, most of them publicity stills that are all the more relevant because Wells, for a script writer, had unusual control over the actual film production. The images are very much a direct expression of his film story.

Done at age 70, Things to Come reflects on a long literary career, in both fiction and nonfiction, often given to the fate of man and the prospect of a unified world state, a utopian future realized in the film by A.D. 2036. That is what is coming: the end of warfare between belligerent nation states. Now the new frontier of human conquest is space, begun at film's end with the first firing of a gigantic space gun.

Customer Reviews:

Stoverism.......2007-04-11

About The Author And The Book: Cosmic Vision.

Leon Stover (1929-2006) was Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Illinois Institute of Technology. Dr. Stover was the author of 24 books in varied categories, including Anthropology, History, Fiction, and Criticism. His major works include Cultural Ecology of Chinese Civilization, China: An Anthropological Perspective (with Takeko K. Stover), Imperial China and the State Cult of Confucius, Science Fiction from Wells to Heinlein, Stonehenge City: A Reconstruction, Stonehenge: Where Atlantis Died (a novel with Harry Harrison), and the massive nine-volume explication of H. G. Wells' scientific romances as vehicles for expounding Wells' brand of Saint-Simonian socialism, The Annotated H.G. Wells.

Even though he and Wells would have differed radically on politics, Dr. Stover shared with Wells what might be called "Cosmic Vision," a view of humanity in the context of vast reaches of space and eons of time. At an early age, he discovered the scientific romances of H.G. Wells, which awakened in him a "sense of wonder," and it became one of his life-long pursuits to explicate to himself the ramifications of those fascinating novels that took the long view, the cosmic evolutionary view, that could be summed up in one short question: Whither Mankind? The nine-volume The Annotated H.G. Wells was the result.

The film Things To Come was the Summa of Wells' ideas for a socialist World State. The Annotated H.G. Wells, Volume 9: Things To Come is the Summa of Dr. Stover's explication of Wells' scientific romances.

Stoverism, A Unique View of Wells' Utopian Ideas.

The Annotated H.G. Wells, Volume 9: Things To Come is Dr. Stover's explication of the film Things To Come as a propaganda vehicle for Wells to expound his brand of Saint-Simonian socialism. The film Things To Come was Wells' last will and testament to his world socialist brethren, the Summa of his ideas for a socialist World State. The following introductory remarks, which will serve as background for the readings from the book, is a brief outline of Dr. Stover's unique view of Wells' Utopian ideas. Members of the H.G. Wells Society in London referred to Dr. Stover's view of Wells as Stoverism.

Wells wasn't a Hindu. But, to present the summation of his Utopian ideas, his brand of Saint-Simonian world socialism, which was the reason for making the film Whither Mankind? (re-titled Things To Come as it went into production), Wells chose to make his characters avatars of the Hindu Trinity: Brahma The Creator, Siva The Destroyer, and Vishnu The Possessor, because, to Wells, the Hindu Trinity was emblematic of the structure of ancient Indo-European culture: The Philosopher-King (embodying the convoluted mirror-twin forces of Brahma and Siva) and The Subjects (embodying the simple, but schizophrenic force of Vishnu).

The Hindu Trinity represents the eternal tri-polar struggle of those raw cosmic forces that have driven the course of human affairs since civilization began: Brahma The Lawgiver (priest-theoretician) and Siva The Enforcer (king-soldier), the two arms of the all-powerful State, sometimes at war with each other, and always at war with Vishnu The Preserver (bourgiosie-landowner and peasant-worker). This tri-polar struggle was carried over from the times of Stonehenge, the Greek city-states, through Feudal times, into the Industrial Revolution, and even into Modern Times (the thirties, between World War I and the approaching World War II).

In Wells' view, comparing the examples of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and even his own Great Britain to Plato's Republic, and to Saint-Simon's technocracy, The Rulers and their Executives were incompetent captives of Vishnu, valuing the possession of territories subsumed under the banners of nation-states that fragmented the planet and prevented the formation of a socialist World State, and The Ruled were selfish brutes, also captives of Vishnu, valuing the possession of women subsumed under the sanctions of marriage and family that prevented the emergence of a new evolutionary product: Cosmic Man, an entity made of all humanity, working together in common cause, as bees in a hive, submerging all vestiges of individuality.

Wells' socialist mentor-saint was Henri Saint-Simon, a nobleman who was stripped of his nobility by the French Revolution, and whose greatest disciple was Auguste Comte, the man who invented the word "socialism." Saint-Simon was the first thinker to see that the Industrial Revolution was more important than the political one. The French Revolution, in the name of the People, did nothing to put down the feudal and military system, and the old order soon came back. To overthrow feudalism once and for all, that was the original socialist idea. Saint-Simon advocated the control of society by its "industrial chiefs," they who were the aristocracy of talent, the technocrats, run under the guidance of a "Council of Newton," composed of scientists and engineers. This would be a competent socialist World State, and Vishnu (embodied in the willing proletariat) would be held eternally in check by Siva (embodied in the technocrats) under the direction of Brahma (embodied in the Council of Newton).

Wells wasn't a Marxist. In Wells' estimation, the closest approximation to this Saint-Simonian socialist "Heaven on Earth" was the original Soviet Union, set up by the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of V.I. Lenin, although--at the time--it hadn't achieved world-wide domination. It fell short of being the ideal socialist World State. We had Lenin and the Politburo embodying the Council of Newton, the Communist Party, the Red Army, and the Secret Police embodying the technocratic executives, all under the direction of the Politburo, and the (maybe-not-so-willing) Proletariat guided by the firm hand of the dedicated Communist Party bureaucrats (backed up by the Red Army and the Secret Police). Aside from the fact that it didn't yet control the entire planet, the biggest flaw in the new Soviet Union was that the leaders gave lip-service to the Marxist rhetoric of class-warfare. In private, Lenin and the Party Elite were technocratic socialists of the Saint-Simonian stripe. But, to appeal to the masses of the Proletariat, Communist Party propaganda had to be couched in terms of Marxist ideology. This Wells despised.

If we could define Communism, as practiced by the Communist Party under V.I. Lenin, as Marxism-Leninism, then Wellsism, Wells' brand of Saint-Simonian socialism, might be close to Communism minus Marxism; that is, Leninism. The main reason for the existence of the film Things To Come was to provide a propaganda vehicle for Wells to expound his brand of Saint-Simonian socialism. Wells used the characters John Cabal and his grandson, Oswald Cabal, as spokesmen for Wellsism. They embody the truest aspects of the Saint-Simonian Scientist-Technocrat, all Brahma and Siva working together to keep Vishnu in check!

Those who believe that Wells was a Marxist--the majority of critics who have attempted a political reading of Wells' scientific romances, and Things To Come, in particular--will probably wither under the searchlight of Dr. Stover's analysis of the film that was originally titled Whither Mankind? But, that's their problem!

The Annotated H. G. Wells, 8: Man Who Could Work Miracles: A Critical Text of the 1936 New York First Edition, With an Introduction and Appendices) (Annotated Hg Wells)

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The Annotated H. G. Wells, 8: Man Who Could Work Miracles: A Critical Text of the 1936 New York First Edition, With an Introduction and Appendices) (Annotated Hg Wells)
H. G. Wells
Manufacturer: McFarland & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0786412372

Book Description

Man Who Could Work Miracles (without a The) is a film, ostensibly a comedy, that H.G. Wells (1866-1946) scripted late in life for London Film Productions. The present volume is a literary text of the scenario and dialogue published in advance of the movie's release in 1937. Wells himself says it is "a companion piece" to Things to Come, his deadly serious film done a year before. Both films were produced by Alexander Korda, who extended to Wells unprecedented control over them.

The editor's introduction explains how two such radically different films are related and discusses the artistic quality of the text, Wells' overriding sense of cosmic vision, his views on sex and politics, and his uncommon estimate of the common man's incapacity for public affairs. The annotations for Wells' original text offer penetrating insights into Wellsian thought as expressed for half a century in a variety of genres, including scientific romances and nonfiction. The author, the world's foremost Wellsian scholar, here brings his unique power of analysis to bear on, in the opinion of many, the strangest work Wells ever wrote. The appendices include the 1898 short story version, "The Man Who Could Work Miracles," three related cosmic-vision short stories by Wells, and an excerpt from a 1931 radio address by Wells not inaccurately retitled "If I Were Dictator of the World."

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