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Title: Film Art: An Introduction
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Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Companies
List Price: $61.45
Our Price: $40.00
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| Film Art: An Introduction by McGraw-Hill Companies The Worst Textbook of All Time | After spending 3 years as a film major, I was cornered into the Intro to Film studies class that worked out of this absurdly expensive book. 95% of the material we covered I already understood, but reading them in Film Art and trying to understand what the heck was going on made me want to drop out of college. This text manages to take the simplest of film theories and misconstrue them into boring, dense readings using some of the strangest (not the best, by any means) examples from films, some of which you might have seen, others probably you've never heard of (and never will again, even if you're in the field).
For the love of sanity somebody write a better film textbook, this one is horrible. You're much better off reading A Guide to Writing About Film and Film: An International History of the Medium. Professors, please stop assigning this book, trying to plow through this text alone has turned a lot of people I know off of film studies. | | Film Art: An Introduction by McGraw-Hill Companies Really good read considering it's a textbook | | This was assigned in my film history class; but I plan to read the whole thing again later, because it is not only informative but it's also a very good read. It's well organized and puts together a cohesive look at how films go together. I don't give it full marks because it does have the usual murky areas and overly textbook-ish spots. It's also way overpriced for something that isn't available new and yet is not a 'vintage' book. | | Film Art: An Introduction by McGraw-Hill Companies Excellent first text for film students | I'm learning film in the first year at college, and this text is proving its worth. It's got all the basic and major theory concepts, with bucketloads of examples, film stills and diagrams to back up the theory, so you never feel like there's no practical application for what you're learning. Most of the time, the examples are from popular and/or classic films, so you're bound to know what Bordwell and Thompson are talking about as they introduce new ideas.
Nowdays I can't watch films or TV shows without noticing how obvious some of the techniques described in this book are. It's really quite satisfying knowing how to 'read' the language of film, and having an edge over your friends when you go to the movies :) | | Film Art: An Introduction by McGraw-Hill Companies There are other choices!! | | 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. | | Film Art: An Introduction by McGraw-Hill Companies A better book than this on the art of film?? Naaa!!!!! | | This book is useful as a university textbook, but is also excellent for filmgoers who would like to understand a bit more than the average audience. | | Film Art: An Introduction by McGraw-Hill Companies Book Description | | Known for its outstanding scholarship and comprehensive coverage, Bordwell and Thompson's Film Art provides a firm foundation for introductory film courses. It explains the techniques specific to film as a medium, discusses the principles by which entire films are constructed, and explores how these techniques and formal principles have changed over the history of moviemaking. The authors seek to fully apprise students of the rich array of choices available to filmmakers while sharpening their analytical skills as viewers. | | Film Art: An Introduction by McGraw-Hill Companies Amazon.com | | Film Art is often assigned to college students taking their first film class. Authors David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson do not follow the traditional method of teaching film art through a close analysis of individual films. Instead, they provide an overview of the major issues students confront when they watch movies. In clear, straightforward prose, the authors describe and dissect the complexities of filmmaking, film narrative, film form, and film technique. This book serves as a fine introduction not only to the field of film studies, but also to the theories and concerns of two of the most important scholars in that field. |
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