Theory Books

Cinematic Storytelling: The 100 Most Powerful Film Conventions Every Filmmaker Must Know

Jennifer Van Sijll

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 26 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Flawed format. Wait for DVD! 3 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

I certainly agree with the existing reviews regarding content, and have nothing to add in this regard.
HOWEVER, there are two problems:
1. The book measures 7 1/2" tall and 11" wide. This makes it hard to hold and fits poorly on the reference bookshelf where it belongs.
2. The book mentions an upcoming DVD. This would a MUCH better format than book.
This book tries to illustrate various cinimatographic points with still shots from exemplary movies. Sometimes these still shots cannot illustrate the point adequately, while a video clip would be TREMENDOUS at illustrating the point. (For example: various transitions: How in the heck can you illustrate transitions with still photos?!)
WAIT FOR THE DVD. It should be TREMENDOUS,and well worth the purchase.

happy with my purchase 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

there was no unpleasant surprise with my purchase. the book came a day or two later than was promised, but other than that, all was as i expected!! :)

Editorial Review:

What the industry's most succcessful writers and directors have in common is that they have mastered the cinematic conventions specific to the medium.

The Art of Watching Film with CD-ROM

Joe Boggs, Dennis W. Petrie

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

"INFORMATIVE!" 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This textbook was purchased to fulfill a required "humanaties" course, while attending college. It's informative, easy to read, and guides you into becoming a "trained observer" in the art of watching films. As part of the curriculum I was instructed to watch several films selected by my professor. Some of the assigned films I would have never viewed by choice, including classics. However, this textbook has definitely given me a whole new perspective when attending a movie theater or at home watching a DVD. I've also acquired a deeper appreciation and understanding for all the hard work that goes into film making. Buy it for school or as a guide to help you enjoy your next movie experience.

Editorial Review:

This introduction to film appreciation uses contemporary and popular American movies to help students develop critical skills in the analysis and evaluation of film. By suggesting what to look for and how to look for it, the text challenges students to sharpen their powers of observation, establish habits of perceptive watching, and discover complex aspects of film art that will further enhance their enjoyment of watching films.

Film Art: An Introduction

Kristin; Bordwell, David Thompson

By: McGraw-Hill College Amazon Marketplace: 33 new & used starting at $0.48

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

There are other choices!! 2 out of 5 stars.
16 of 43 people found this review helpful.

This book serves as only a general intro. to film, but even at the level of general intro., Bruce Kawin's How Movies Work or Louis Giannetti's Understanding Movies is better than this one in many respects, particularly Kawin's.

Bordwell is often hailed as the giant of cinema studies. Yes, the guy has watched literally a lot of movies, but apart from his Narration in Fiction Film, which is a respectable work in its deployment of Russian Formalism, his other stuff is just commonsensical view. I personally don't find his books argumentative enough. Planet Hong Kong, for instance, although well-researched, is an extremely limited view of Hong Kong cinema and pays no attention to understand the philosophical complexities of Wong Kar-wai's movies, not to mention his ignorance of some truly innovative directors such as Fruit Chan, whose postcolonial sensibility has yet to be acknowledged.

His recent book Post-theory is anti-psychoanalytic, a move that is a disgrace to students/lovers of film theory. I am not saying that only psychoanalysis (if you read Joan Copjec's essay Orthopsychic Subject in Read My Desire, you will know that a lot of people thinking they use psychoanalysis properly to "do" film studies are wrong) and other structural / poststructural discourses are the only ways to understand films, but they are more academic and serious ways to make an argument that would expand our horizons. The film world is now more interested in Deleuze and perhaps other Lacanian concepts such as the real, Bordwell's work is really dated and anti-intellectual.

Understanding Movies (10th Edition)

Louis Giannetti

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Helps readers understand how the many languages of film work together to create meaning. Louis Giannetti organizes Understanding Movies around the key elements of filmmaking, including cintematography, Mise en Scène, movement, editing, sound, acting, drama, casting, story, screenwriting, ideology, and theory. He synthesizes every element through a complete case study: Citizen Kane. This book's ideas are illuminated with hundreds of high-quality still photos, more than 70 in full color, taken from movies such as The Matrix, Almost Famous, jackass the movie, Chicago, Lord of the Rings, Mystic River, and Traffic. New in this edition: a full section on contemporary special effects and computer generated imagery (CGI); up-to-the-minute information on new developments in film technology; more coverage of recent films and filmmakers; more ethnic diversity (including new material on the Islamic cinema); and more lavish use of color and high-quality paper. An updated Companion Website contains animations, video clips from interviews with movie professionals, and Research Navigator access to New York Times film reviews. For everyone who wants to understand the artistry and meaning of the movies.

Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image

Laura Mulvey

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Death 24x a Second is a fascinating exploration of the role new media technologies play in our experience of film. Addressing some of the key questions of film theory, spectatorship, and narrative, Laura Mulvey here argues that such technologies, including home DVD players, have fundamentally altered our relationship to the movies. 

According to Mulvey, new media technologies give viewers the ability to control both image and story, so that movies meant to be seen collectively and followed in a linear fashion may be manipulated to contain unexpected and even unintended pleasures. The individual frame, the projected film’s best-kept secret, can now be revealed by anyone who hits pause. Easy access to repetition, slow motion, and the freeze-frame, Mulvey argues, may shift the spectator’s pleasure to a fetishistic rather than a voyeuristic investment in film. 

By exploring how technology can give new life to old cinema, Death 24x a Second offers an original reevaluation of film’s history and its historical usefulness.

(05/01/2006)

Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings

List Price: $29.95 By: Oxford University Press, USA Amazon Marketplace: 33 new & used starting at $0.99

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

a must for film studies students 5 out of 5 stars.
39 of 41 people found this review helpful.

This is a must-have reader for film studies. Most of the TAs and professors at my school dip into this reader to create their classpacks and exam reading lists. The reader, a selection of key essays or excerpts, will introduce you to the language of film studies -- the major theorists from Bazin, Eisenstein, Burch, to Mulvey, Gunning and Dyer etc.; the differing methods of film studies from genre, psychoanalytic, reception, and Frankfurt studies. These are some of the key essays that have shaped film studies criticism over the last century. The book is pricey but well worth it, especially if you don't have the dough to stock up on the original texts. Some of the readings are difficult precisely because they are theory and meant for an academic or professional audience. Take your time, reread selections and savor some of the ideas that still shape how we see and make movies today.

Editorial Review:

The fourth edition of this classic resource is updated to illustrate the most recent approaches in film theory, including semiotic and structuralist imperatives, Marxist historical and Freudian psychoanalytic analysis, and feminist and deconstructionist views, and each section has been revised to show the impact of new thinking on matters such as film language, the film medium, and the film artist. More than half of the contents are new, providing a broad survey of thinking about film over the past eight decades. A comprehensive text for students of film, it is also an invaluable resource for courses in semiotics and modern culture and media.

How to Read a Film: The World of Movies, Media, Multimedia: Language, History, Theory

James Monaco

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Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

First published in 1977, this popular book has become the source on film and media. Now, James Monaco offers a revised and rewritten third edition incorporating every major aspect of this dynamic medium right up to the present.
Looking at film from many vantage points, How to Read a Film: Movies, Media, Multimedia explores the medium as both art and craft, sensibility and science, tradition and technology. After examining film's close relation to such other narrative media as the novel, painting, photography, television, and even music, Monaco discusses those elements necessary to understand how films convey meaning and, more importantly, how we can best discern all that a film is attempting to communicate.
In a key departure from the book's previous editions, the new and still-evolving digital context of film is now emphasized throughout How to Read a Film. A new chapter on multimedia brings media criticism into the twenty-first century with a thorough discussion of topics like virtual reality, cyberspace, and the proximity of both to film. Monaco has likewise doubled the size and scope of his "Film and Media: A Chronology" appendix. The book also features a new introduction, an expanded bibliography, and hundreds of illustrative black-and-white film stills and diagrams. It is a must for all film students, media buffs, and movie fans.

Theory of Film

Siegfried Kracauer

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A Classic of Realism 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 14 people found this review helpful.

Kracauer's book is an astonishingly detailed look into the cinema. What also makes this work interesting is the novelty that is expressed in the author's writing. Like Eisenstein, there is an excitement about the possibilities of this revolutionary new art (an excitement that seems somewhat scarce in the present). Kracauer explores how film is similar to and yet wholly different from other classical arts including photography, theatre, and literature. Also of interest are his thoughts regarding film's effects upon the spectator in relationship to the characteristics and difficulties of modernity.

Editorial Review:

Siegfried Kracauer's classic study, originally published in 1960, explores the distinctive qualities of the cinematic medium. The book takes its place alongside works in classical film theory by such figures as Béla Balázs, Rudolf Arnheim, and André Bazin, among others, and has met with much critical dispute. In this new edition, Miriam Bratu Hansen, examining the book in the context of Kracauer's extensive film criticism from the 1920s, provides a framework for appreciating the significance of Theory of Film for contemporary film theory.

Teach Yourself Film Studies

Warren Buckland

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

"one is lost in admiration of the author's skill..." 5 out of 5 stars.
36 of 49 people found this review helpful.

"Most beginners' guides of this sort fail miserably to fulfil (sic) their brief, being written by uncompromising ideologues who refuse to concede anything to the needs of the general reader. Buckland's pocket-sized volume represents a breakthrough: it's genuinely pitched at novices and succeeds in maintaining a perfect balance between clarity and intellectual complexity. One is lost in admiration of the author's skill at reducing the major issues and approaches to a scale exactly calibrated for undergraduate seminar discussion without the least hint of condescension in tone. The format of efficient bullet-pointing and succinct case studies can be freely cribbed from in planning lessons for years to come. (PM)" -- from Sight & Sound, a British film magazine

Editorial Review:

Both film buffs and students of the cinema will find this reference indispensable. It gives a chronological overview of film, analyzing genres such as westerns and sci-fi; explores different artistic approaches, techniques, and effects; and profiles a wide variety of directors, from Alfred Hitchcock to Steven Spielberg.

The book uncovers the secrets of film reviewing and the conventions reviewers adopt when they evaluate films. This new edition includes an expanded section concerning film studies on the Internet. Whatever readers' interest in film, Teach Yourself Film Studies will provide them with the skills to turn them into well-informed film critics.

Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary

Bill Nichols

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Bill Nichols should not be allowed to write 1 out of 5 stars.
16 of 45 people found this review helpful.

Bill Nichols is full of words and empty of thought. You need a machete to slash through the tangled sentences in this book, and what you'll find beneath are simplistic, flawed ideas that aren't developed but buried under more verbiage. Nichols stitches suffixes and prefixes to ordinary nouns, creating monsters like "situatedness," "hyperrationality," "reconceptualization," "polyvocality," "relationality," "talismanic"(!), and the pseudo-literate's favorite word of all: "juxtaposition." Each of those words costs as much time to understand as a whole chapter of Erik Barnouw's book (which is succinct, informative and even humorous). Mr. Nichols should be sealed in a cave and his books slung into outer space, for they pollute the body of film knowledge. Don't buy "Representing Reality" unless you want to know how confused Mr. Nichols's reality is.

Editorial Review:

"Representing Reality" is the first book to offer a conceptual overview of documentary filmmaking practice. It addresses numerous social issues and how they are presented to the viewer by means of style, rhetoric, and narrative technique. The volume poses questions about the relationship of the documentary tradition to power, the body, authority, knowledge, and our experience of history. This study advances the pioneering work of Nichols's earlier book, Ideology and the Image.