A Pocket Guide to Analyzing Films

A Pocket Guide to Analyzing Films PDF Author: Robert Spadoni
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520958764
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
The perfect concise guide to the formal analysis of film. Designed to be used by readers at many levels of knowledge, this book moves systematically through the elements that make up most films, focusing on aspects of the art of cinema that are common across history and national cinemas. From form and narrative to mise-en-scène and cinematography to editing and sound, Robert Spadoni introduces and explains the principles and conventions of film in engaging, straightforward language. In addition to illustrating film techniques with almost 200 images—most of them in color—the book explains ways to find patterns and meaning in films through such concepts as motifs, development, and motivation. Thumbnail readings of exemplary films further lay out the essentials of formal analysis. Film illustrations include frame enlargements from Stagecoach, Psycho, Jeepers Creepers, Persepolis, Groundhog Day, Take Shelter, and more. Modestly priced and packed with images, A Pocket Guide to Analyzing Films is ideal for students in a wide range of film courses who are looking for an easy-to-read guide to film analysis to accompany and enhance their course materials.

A Pocket Guide to Analyzing Films

A Pocket Guide to Analyzing Films PDF Author: Robert Spadoni
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520958764
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Get Book Here

Book Description
The perfect concise guide to the formal analysis of film. Designed to be used by readers at many levels of knowledge, this book moves systematically through the elements that make up most films, focusing on aspects of the art of cinema that are common across history and national cinemas. From form and narrative to mise-en-scène and cinematography to editing and sound, Robert Spadoni introduces and explains the principles and conventions of film in engaging, straightforward language. In addition to illustrating film techniques with almost 200 images—most of them in color—the book explains ways to find patterns and meaning in films through such concepts as motifs, development, and motivation. Thumbnail readings of exemplary films further lay out the essentials of formal analysis. Film illustrations include frame enlargements from Stagecoach, Psycho, Jeepers Creepers, Persepolis, Groundhog Day, Take Shelter, and more. Modestly priced and packed with images, A Pocket Guide to Analyzing Films is ideal for students in a wide range of film courses who are looking for an easy-to-read guide to film analysis to accompany and enhance their course materials.

How Popular Culture Destroys Our Political Imagination

How Popular Culture Destroys Our Political Imagination PDF Author: Eugene Nulman
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040184618
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
How Popular Culture Destroys Our Political Imagination: Capitalism and Its Alternatives in Film and Television explores the representations of capitalism, the state, and their alternatives in popular screen media texts. Acknowledging the problems that stem systemically from capitalism and the state, this book investigates an often-overlooked reason why society struggles to imagine alternative economic and political systems in our neoliberal age: popular culture. The book analyzes 455 screen media texts in search of critiques and alternative representations of these systems and demonstrates the ways in which film and television shape the way we collectively see the world and imagine our political futures. It suggests that popular culture is the answer to the question of why it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Contributing to the areas of sociology, media studies, and utopian studies, this book provides insights into the topic of popular culture and politics in a theoretically informed and entertaining manner. The book will be useful to both students and scholars interested in these topics, as well as activists and organizers seeking to make the world a better place.

The Dread of Difference

The Dread of Difference PDF Author: Barry Keith Grant
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477302425
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 558

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Book Description
“The Dread of Difference is a classic. Few film studies texts have been so widely read and so influential. It’s rarely on the shelf at my university library, so continuously does it circulate. Now this new edition expands the already comprehensive coverage of gender in the horror film with new essays on recent developments such as the Hostel series and torture porn. Informative and enlightening, this updated classic is an essential reference for fans and students of horror movies.”—Stephen Prince, editor of The Horror Film and author of Digital Visual Effects in Cinema: The Seduction of Reality “An impressive array of distinguished scholars . . . gazes deeply into the darkness and then forms a Dionysian chorus reaffirming that sexuality and the monstrous are indeed mated in many horror films.”—Choice “An extremely useful introduction to recent thinking about gender issues within this genre.”—Film Theory

Merchants of Menace

Merchants of Menace PDF Author: Richard Nowell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1623563941
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Even though horror has been a key component of media output for almost a century, the genre's industrial character remains under explored and poorly understood. Merchants of Menace: The Business of Horror Cinema responds to a major void in film history by shedding much-needed new light on the economic dimensions of one of the world's most enduring audiovisual forms. Given horror cuts across budgetary categories, industry sectors, national film cultures, and media, Merchants of Menace also promises to expand understandings of the economics of cinema generally. Covering 1930-present, this groundbreaking collection boasts fourteen original chapters from world-leading experts taking as their focus such diverse topics as early zombie pictures, post-WWII chillers, Civil Rights-Era marketing, Hollywood literary adaptations, Australian exploitation, "torture-porn" Auteurs, and twenty-first-century remakes.

Puzzle Films

Puzzle Films PDF Author: Warren Buckland
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405168617
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Drawing upon the expertise of film scholars from around the world, Puzzle Films investigates a number of films that sport complex storytelling--from Memento, Old Boy, and Run Lola Run, to the Infernal Affairs trilogy and In the Mood for Love. Unites American ‘independent’ cinema, the European and International Art film, and certain modes of avant-garde filmmaking on the basis of their shared storytelling complexity Draws upon the expertise of film scholars from North America, Britain, China, Poland, Holland, Italy, Greece, New Zealand, and Australia

Films from the Future

Films from the Future PDF Author: Andrew Maynard
Publisher: Mango Media Inc.
ISBN: 1633539067
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
“Deftly shows how a seemingly frivolous film genre can guide us in shaping tomorrow’s world.” —Seth Shostak, senior astronomer, SETI Institute Artificial intelligence, gene manipulation, cloning, and interplanetary travel are all ideas that seemed like fairy tales but a few years ago. And now their possibilities are very much here. But are we ready to handle these advances? This book, by a physicist and expert on responsible technology development, reveals how science fiction movies can help us think about and prepare for the social consequences of technologies we don’t yet have, but that are coming faster than we imagine. Films from the Future looks at twelve movies that take us on a journey through the worlds of biological and genetic manipulation, human enhancement, cyber technologies, and nanotechnology. Readers will gain a broader understanding of the complex relationship between science and society. The movies mix old and new, and the familiar and unfamiliar, to provide a unique, entertaining, and ultimately transformative take on the power of emerging technologies, and the responsibilities they come with.

Sleepless in Hollywood

Sleepless in Hollywood PDF Author: Lynda Obst
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476727767
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
The veteran producer and author of the bestseller Hello, He Lied takes a witty and critical look at the new Hollywood. Over the past decade, producer Lynda Obst gradually realized she was working in a Hollywood that was undergoing a drastic transformation. The industry where everything had once been familiar to her was suddenly disturbingly strange. Combining her own industry experience and interviews with the brightest minds in the business, Obst explains what has stalled the vast moviemaking machine. The calamitous DVD collapse helped usher in what she calls the New Abnormal (because Hollywood was never normal to begin with), where studios are now heavily dependent on foreign markets for profit, a situation which directly impacts the kind of entertainment we get to see. Can comedy survive if they don’t get our jokes in Seoul or allow them in China? Why are studios making fewer movies than ever—and why are they bigger, more expensive and nearly always sequels or recycled ideas? Obst writes with affection, regret, humor and hope, and her behind-the-scenes vantage point allows her to explore what has changed in Hollywood like no one else has. This candid, insightful account explains what has happened to the movie business and explores whether it’ll ever return to making the movies we love—the classics that make us laugh or cry, or that we just can’t stop talking about.

A Pocket Guide to Writing in History

A Pocket Guide to Writing in History PDF Author: Mary Lynn Rampolla
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0312610416
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
A Pocket Guide to Writing in History provides all the advice students need to write effectively in any history course -- from introductory surveys to upper-level seminars -- in a quick-reference format.

Film

Film PDF Author: Maria Pramaggiore
Publisher: Pearson College Division
ISBN: 9780205645626
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
"Film: A Critical Introduction "provides a comprehensive framework for studying films, with an emphasis on writing as a means of exploring film's aesthetic and cultural significance. This text's consistent and comprehensive focus on writing allows students to master film vocabulary and concepts while learning to formulate rich interpretations. Part I introduces readers to the importance of film analysis, offering helpful strategies for discerning the way films produce meaning. Part II examines the fundamental elements of film, including narrative form, mise en scene, cinematography, editing, and sound, and shows how these concepts can be used to interpret films. Part III moves beyond textual analysis to explore film as a cultural institution and introduce students to essential areas of film studies research.

The Great Movies

The Great Movies PDF Author: Roger Ebert
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0767910389
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
America’s most trusted and best-known film critic Roger Ebert presents one hundred brilliant essays on some of the best movies ever made. Roger Ebert, the famed film writer and critic, wrote biweekly essays for a feature called "The Great Movies," in which he offered a fresh and fervent appreciation of a great film. The Great Movies collects one hundred of these essays, each one of them a gem of critical appreciation and an amalgam of love, analysis, and history that will send readers back to that film with a fresh set of eyes and renewed enthusiasm–or perhaps to an avid first-time viewing. Ebert’s selections range widely across genres, periods, and nationalities, and from the highest achievements in film art to justly beloved and wildly successful popular entertainments. Roger Ebert manages in these essays to combine a truly populist appreciation for our most important form of popular art with a scholar’s erudition and depth of knowledge and a sure aesthetic sense. Wonderfully enhanced by stills selected by Mary Corliss, the film curator at the Museum of Modern Art, The Great Movies is a treasure trove for film lovers of all persuasions, an unrivaled guide for viewers, and a book to return to again and again. The Great Movies includes: All About Eve • Bonnie and Clyde • Casablanca • Citizen Kane • The Godfather • Jaws • La Dolce Vita • Metropolis • On the Waterfront • Psycho • The Seventh Seal • Sweet Smell of Success • Taxi Driver • The Third Man • The Wizard of Oz • and eighty-five more films.