Book Description
In these innovative essays, Vivian Sobchack considers the key role our bodies play in making sense of today's image-saturated culture. Emphasizing our corporeal rather than our intellectual engagements with film and other media, Carnal Thoughts shows how our experience always emerges through our senses and how our bodies are not just visible objects but also sense-making, visual subjects. Sobchack draws on both phenomenological philosophy and a broad range of popular sources to explore bodily experience in contemporary, moving-image culture. She examines how, through the conflation of cinema and surgery, we've all "had our eyes done"; why we are "moved" by the movies; and the different ways in which we inhabit photographic, cinematic, and electronic space. Carnal Thoughts provides a lively and engaging challenge to the mind/body split by demonstrating that the process of "making sense" requires an irreducible collaboration between our thoughts and our senses.
Customer Reviews:
Phenomenology and film.......2007-08-14
This book is part of the author's long theoretical project during which Vivian Sobchack tries to apply the assumptions and approach of philosophical phenomenology to film theory. Sobchack's theory is based mainly on the work of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty - for more details regarding Sobchack's theory, see her earlier book entitled "The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience".
Beside it's marvulous theoretical performance this book is very intelligently written, full of creative language-use. However it could raise only the interest of film scholars interested deeply in film theory, and trained a little bit in philosophy.
Customer Reviews:
A good read!.......2000-05-28
Very few books on film are regarded as "A MUST READ", and there's a good reason for that. I can go on forever about this book, but I don't have the time. All I can say is go to your local bookstore and judge for yourself, because this is A MUST READ!
Book Description
From the "chop-sockey" kung-fu epics on the big screen to practices like tae kwon do at local community centers, the martial arts have become a major phenomenon in Western culture. In On the Warrior's Path, author Daniele Bolelli examines the central figure in this trend: the warrior. Bolelli, himself a martial artist, looks at every facet of the warrior lifestyle, from the unbreakable tenacity of the Japanese swordsman to the contemplative practices of the mysterious warrior monks of China. Drawing from both classical and popular sources of warrior culture, Bolelli shows what it takes to inhabit this singular role, along the way making surprising connections between martial arts and psychedelic culture, basketball, American Indian society, surfing, Star Wars, and more.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent Book.......2007-07-25
Many times after reading a book you aren't going to absorb very much at all, however. I can honestly say that there were a few very important things that I was able to learn as well as absorb from this book, that I actually carry with me to this day. I highly recommend it and it's at an excellent price as well.
a great read.......2005-10-20
This book is awesome. It introduced me to the philosophy of Taoism and it also discusses all the topics with eloquence and insightfulness. It is one of the books that can be read multiple times and be a different story each time.
An excellent view into the inner side of martial arts.......2005-07-29
This book is very well written. Having studied martial arts for many years, I was looking for a text that discussed the topic from an inner perspective. This book was just what I was looking for. Bolelli's writing style is very engaging and the topics he covers are wide ranging. The last three chapters of the book were written 10 years after the original content, and it does show. I will agree with others here that their content seems a bit awkward in comparison to the remainder of the book. However, it's still a very good insight into the mind of a warrior, and the personal goals one can achieve with a solid connection between the mind and body. Highly recommended.
Excellent and Relevant to All.......2005-01-12
I purchased "On the Warrior's Path" because the philosophy behind it intrigued me. Having absolutely no experience with any form of martial arts ever, I was probably far outside the target audience for this book. Despite this, I found it to be one of the best books I have read in the past year.
I found "On the Warrior's Path" to be amusing, engaging, and thought-provoking. It is impossible to summarise the book in a way that captures all that it encompasses, because it covers so much. Read it.
The writing style is very down-to-earth and easy to follow, but does not sacrifice content or deeper ideas in the process. The author draws from many eclectic sources, but does so in a way that is relevant and interesting.
Most importantly, the author's message can be meaningful and relevant in anyone's life -- the warrior, the poet, man or woman, martial artist or not.
A very engaging book.......2004-07-06
The author appears to be well educated in the tradition of the martial arts (i.e., providing an insider's view as a "practitioner")AND similarly well educated in the tradition of Academia (i.e., someone with an academic training writing within the best traditions of the University settings). This combination makes for an "insider's" view of the martial arts in its historical context without the blind belief in the system common among martial artists. Anyone who enjoys Donn Draeger's approach to describing the martial arts will definitely enjoy this book by Daniele Bolelli.
The first three fourths of the book describes various aspects of the martial arts with prose that is fully engaging and inspiring. However, the last two chapters of the book show the more mundane and "personal" views of the author that make one wonder if it is the same author. For example, his explanation for the wide opposition to "Ultimate Fighting Championship" gets side-tracked by his personal attack on a person that deserves more respect----having endured the tribulations of being a POW in Vietnam (even if I disagree with most of the policies espoused by this U.S. senator and his party).
At any rate, this book is a VERY GOOD book on the subject and I would rate this book along the lines of the movie, "Apocalypse Now", where it had a great beginning and middle portions but couldn't sustain its promise through to the end. I would rate the book a 5, but for the last two chapters. Thus, I give it 4 stars.
Average customer rating:
- Someone, Please REPRINT THIS BOOK!
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Nonindifferent Nature: Film and the Structure of Things (Cambridge Studies in Film)
Sergei Eisenstein
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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ASIN: 0521324157 |
Customer Reviews:
Someone, Please REPRINT THIS BOOK!.......2001-03-24
All I can say is that if you're serious about film, you're serious about Eisenstein, and in that case, you you should have access to this volume of his theories. Here we get many more diverse sources to Eisenstein's thoughts, as Martin Lefebvre wrote in his extended study for Screen 41.4, one of which is classical rhetoric and ideas of religious ecstasy. Revisiting Eisenstein may now be more important than ever w/ the various newcomers to "filmmaking" in the non-stop emergence of new forms and formats for motion pictures and with them new possibilities to explore and experiment with narration.
Customer Reviews:
Feminist Film Theory.......2000-05-25
Silverman's observations regarding classical Hollywood cinema constantly drive the reader beyond the complacency of a male-centered interpretation of film. Make no mistake about it, her prose is thick, but the rewards of contemplating her thoughts are there for the picking. She extends the thought of Laura Mulvey, and does so by also using the psychoanalytic method. If the reader has questions about the validity of this particular method, then he/she may question some of the ideas that are put forth. However, Mulvey's acknowledges that the psychoanalytic method itself has traditionaly bowed to the father-figure. Her intention is to raise the reader's awareness of this tendency before she begins to explore the ramifications of patriarchal society on the filmic medium. Incredibly interesting are remarks on the "disembodied voice" and its relationship to female characters that can be found in Hollywood cinema. This is the essence of what makes film an "acoustic mirror."
Customer Reviews:
Fetishism haunts cinematic apparatus, then and now,.......2003-12-19
and this lucid and caustic study gets fetishism just right, in revealing close studies of works like Citizen Kane and Imitation of Life, revealing the cover up of labor and the will to domination, as well as the pleasures in the narrative drive to see/not see. Curious spectacles that allow the cinema-goer to keep going, even as the US power of fetish covers up exploitation with glamour and sheen and fashion and sublimity, not to mention the recent drive to romanticize imperial fascism in works like Hero. Gladiator, and The Last Samurai. Laura Mulvey is necessary reading, still.
Inspirational Sparks.......2001-11-23
One should read this collection of essays, not for answers to the great philosophical questions in art, but for inspiration. Mulvey's polemics, filled with unsupported assertions and often strange conclusions, are not philosophically sound. These essays, however, are provocative and one cannot help but respond, either in sympathy or in rejection to her works. A risk taker, she gives birth to ideas that have transcended the boundaries of third-wave feminist criticism and have found their way into mainstream theory. Mulvey is a must read for feminist theorists and critics in the visual, literary, theatrical and filmic arts.
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Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film As An Emotion Machine (Les's Communication Series)
Ed S. Tan
Manufacturer: Lawrence Erlbaum
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Film Structure and the Emotion System
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Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion
ASIN: 0805814094 |
Book Description
View the
Table of Contents. Read the
Introduction.
"Building on the tradition of social commentators such as Gilbert Seldes, Robert Warshow, and Susan Sontag, Henry Jenkins brings his outstanding insight and compassionate counsel to contemporary cultural phenomena. Here not only media, but affect, matters. A delightful and helpful collection on popular pleasures."
—Janet Staiger, author of Media Reception Studies
Vaudevillians used the term "the wow climax" to refer to the emotional highpoint of their acts—a final moment of peak spectacle following a gradual building of audience's emotions. Viewed by most critics as vulgar and sensationalistic, the vaudeville aesthetic was celebrated by other writers for its vitality, its liveliness, and its playfulness.
The Wow Climax follows in the path of this more laudatory tradition, drawing out the range of emotions in popular culture and mapping what we might call an aesthetic of immediacy. It pulls together a spirited range of work from Henry Jenkins, one of our most astute media scholars, that spans different media (film, television, literature, comics, games), genres (slapstick, melodrama, horror, exploitation cinema), and emotional reactions (shock, laughter, sentimentality). Whether highlighting the sentimentality at the heart of the Lassie franchise, examining the emotional experiences created by horror filmmakers like Wes Craven and David Cronenberg and avant garde artist Matthew Barney, or discussing the emerging aesthetics of video games, these essays get to the heart of what gives popular culture its emotional impact.
Book Description
What is it about Jaws, Alien, Little Shop of Horrors and Poltergeist that plays on men's fear of women? And what is it that they fear most?
The Monstrous-Feminine examines the role of women in horror films. The author argues that when a woman is constructed as monstrous, it is almost always in conjuction with reproduction and mothering functions. In this exploration, using detailed analysis of Carrie, The Exorcist, Psycho and Alien among others, Creed identifies the seven faces of female monstrosity--archaic mother; monstrous womb; vampire; witch; possessed monster; deadly femme castratrice and castrating mother.
The argument then moves on to challenge the Freudian concept that a woman terrifies because she is castrated--Creed holds forth that the woman acting as castrator is what creates horror for men.
The
Monstrous-Feminine goes on to discuss and analyze what these images mean for feminist film theory, as well as revealing important clues about masculinity.
Customer Reviews:
And this is important because..........2004-03-24
Many of the interpretations in this book are indeed interesting, but that's largely it. Using psychoanalysis on horror films can produce fascinating theories on certain types of films and on specific films (Jaws, Carrie, Psycho), sure, but in the end it doesn't prove a thing, and it's a largely isolated fascination. Psychoanalytic film theory has been pretty much called out by post-theorists like David Bordwell who want to see some kind of evidence. Creed's book is over a decade old now, and theorists like Bordwell state the ball is in the court of the psychoanalysts of film to provide a more substantial theory with empirical evidence to back up these theories.
There is probably something to be learned from studying film in conjunction with psychology. As for psychoanalysis, in books like this, one is reminded how much of the work simply wallows in itself. While the insulated core of film 'theorists' sit in universities and philosophize, the subject has stagnated and has functionally moved nowhere. It's a classic academic construct that succeeds mainly in distinguishing the professors. Given that film is such a broad and popular medium (and to study horror films, no less) it's a shame that some of this work can't be qualified or introduced to 'the masses' who watch these films regularly.
Within film studies, there are many who don't delve into theory, and for good reason. It is largely useless. Even when there are valid points to be made, the work settles into ornate language, as if the only way to express obvious assertions and be taken seriously is to dress it up for the academy. Rarely is any useful evidence offered on how your mind reacts to what you're seeing on the screen and how you put together the references conscioulsy or unconsciously. Too much of the work reeks of elite intellectuallism, a competition to ensure the most impressive terms are invented for unproveable assertions about the beloved medium. To sit around and talk about vaginal representations in Alien and Jaws--not to say there isn't something there if you look at these films closely--with no worry about having to actually prove anything takes a lot of training.
What's most troubling in work like this is the application of constructs like Lacanian psychoanalysis (stemming from seminal Laura Mulvey works) and other debunked theories. The social sciences has a habit of distinguishing works that are based on left-behind theories, something hard sciences simply cannot do seriously. Recommended if you really want to delve into this niche market in the field.
An intriguing look at horror film.......2000-04-04
Those who dislike psychoanalytic interpretations beware! This book is full of them (even one about Little Red Riding Hood!) I don't necessarily agree with them, but I do find them exceptionally fascinating. The readings of Psycho and Carrie are particularly enlightening, as well as that of Jaws (very heavy on the Freudian castration anxiety angle... but now when I watch the film I can't abide by any other interpretation).
Book Description
A landmark, now classic, study of the rich cinematic history of the Weimar Republic, From Caligari to Hitler was first published by Princeton University Press in 1947. Siegfried Kracauer--a prominent German film critic and member of Walter Benjamin's and Theodor Adorno's intellectual circle--broke new ground in exploring the connections between film aesthetics, the prevailing psychological state of Germans in the Weimar era, and the evolving social and political reality of the time. Kracauer's pioneering book, which examines German history from 1921 to 1933 in light of such movies as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, M, Metropolis, and The Blue Angel, has never gone out of print. Now, over half a century after its first appearance, this beautifully designed and entirely new edition reintroduces Kracauer for the twenty-first century. Film scholar Leonardo Quaresima places Kracauer in context in a critical introduction, and updates the book further with a new bibliography, index, and list of inaccuracies that crept into the first edition. This volume is a must-have for the film historian, film theorist, or cinema enthusiast.In From Caligari to Hitler, Siegfried Kracauer--the German-born writer and film critic who shared many ideas and interests with his friend Walter Benjamin--made a startling (and still controversial) claim: films as a popular art provide insight into the unconscious motivations and fantasies of a nation. In films of the 1920s such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, M, Metropolis, and The Blue Angel, he traced recurring visual and narrative tropes that expressed, he argued, a fear of chaos and a desire for order, even at the price of authoritarian rule. The book has become an undisputed classic of film historiography, laying the foundations for the serious study of film.
In From Caligari to Hitler, Siegfried Kracauer made a startling (and still controversial) claim: films as a popular art provide insight into the unconscious motivations and fantasies of a nation. In films of the 1920s, he traced recurring visual and narrative tropes that expressed, he argued, a fear of chaos and a desire for order, even at the price of authoritarian rule. The book has become an undisputed classic of film historiography, laying the foundations for the serious study of film.
Kracauer was an important film critic in Weimar Germany. A Jew, he escaped the rise of Nazism, fleeing to Paris in 1933. Later, in anguish after Benjamin's suicide, he made his way to New York, where he remained until his death in 1966. He wrote From Caligari to Hitler while working as a "special assistant" to the curator of the Museum of Modern Art's film division. He was also on the editorial board of Bollingen Series. Despite many critiques of its attempt to link movies to historical outcomes, From Caligari to Hitler remains Kracauer's best-known and most influential book, and a seminal work in the study of film. Princeton published a revised edition of his Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality in 1997.
Customer Reviews:
A psychological history of The German film.......2001-12-18
This book shows how the cinema paralleled and sometimes helped form the German psyche. Yet it is more than just a documentary. This brings you from the beginning of the industry to show what Hitler inherited. However the information caries far beyond the political dimension.
I use it more for information on the film industry as a whole for that time and the basis of what we inherited today. It is interesting that from the beginning people complained that the film was to long and inclusive or too short and excluded characters form history or books.
Two good parallel and overlapping timeline books for the era are "Caligari's Children : The Film As Tale of Terror" ISBN: 030680347X Which is a different view on the same subject and "The UFA Story : A History of Germany's Greatest Film Company, 1918-1945 (Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism, 23)" ISBN: 0520220692
They tried to capture the feel of the time and of the German actors attitude toward film, in the movie "Shadow of the Vampire" (2001)
Very Thorough, but not Impartial.......2000-03-26
Not that any book can be impartial, but Kracauer's generally socialist reading of films should not be viewed as definitive.
With this point taken into account, this book does offer an imcomparable survey of early German film, its symbolism, and also, the early careers of such actors as Peter Lorre and Marlene Dietrich.
This book is a very entertaining study of these films, and a must for any student of modern Germany, or early film. It does perhaps reflect generally on the modern German society, and WWII in particular.
A brilliant look at early German Film.......1998-07-28
Here it is: probably the most insightful, psychologically brilliant and well researched study of the great early German films (1910-1940) ever written. The author's thesis is this: popular films are popular because they are the dreams shared by a people at any given time. If we study films as if they were keys to the subconscious of the audience, we gain tremendous insight into the culture and mass psychology of the time. The author builds a very convincing case for his thesis that the whole build up to Hitler can be found in the fims that preceded him. I am convinced. This book is also an excellent history of German film as the author is a very good film scholar. Now, if only we had someone around who could interpret the current films of the USA so that we could find out what the future holds in store for us! I loved this book. It was stimulating and I had seen most of the films that he writes about. One advantage todays readers have is that many of these films are no! w out on video.
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