| From Antz to Titanic: Reinventing Film Analysis Contributor(s): Barker, Martin (Author), Austin, Thomas (Author) |
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ISBN: 0745315798 ISBN-13: 9780745315799 Publisher: Pluto Press (UK) OUR PRICE: $39.60 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: August 2000 Annotation: Martin Barker and Thomas Austin provide a jargon-free, accessible and very student-friendly introduction to film analysis. Barker and Austin take a close look at a range of popular Hollywood films in a variety of genres such as Titanic, Deep Impact, Sleepless in Seattle, The Lion King and The Usual Suspects, and provide vivid demonstrations of what can and can't be achieved with close textual analysis.Explicitly rejecting much of the theoretical baggage that dogs contemporary film analysis, Barker and Austin work back from the problems their own students have encountered to quite literally strip the subject down to its bare essentials. In the process they enable students to see clearly the ways in which films make and distribute cultural meanings. This is a deliberately anti-theoretical text on film studies and filmic analysis -- the cornerstone of film and media studies -- which unpacks, explains, and demystifies what happens when we analyze film. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Performing Arts | Film - History & Criticism - Social Science | Popular Culture - Social Science | Anthropology - Cultural & Social |
| Dewey: 791.430 |
| Series: Reinventing Film Analysis |
| Physical Information: 0.62" H x 5.26" W x 8.39" (0.79 lbs) 240 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Everybody analyses films. Ordinary viewers, chatting on the way home afterwards. Reviewers, telling us just enough to tempt or put off. Critics, 'situating' films for us. Moralists, hunting for the (harmful) message. So what exactly is it that film academics do that's different?Martin Barker and Thomas Austin provide a jargon-free, accessible and student-friendly introduction to film analysis. They begin with a discussion about audience and a detailed case-study on four conflicting analyses of Capra's It's A Wonderful Life. The authors examine a range of popular Hollywood films in a variety of genres, including Titanic, Deep Impact, Sleepless in Seattle, The Lion King, Starship Troopers and The Usual Suspects, and provide vivid demonstrations of what can and can't be achieved with close textual analysis. The book ends by proposing a list of measures for assessing the adequacy of film analyses: measures intended to lay the basis of a way of doing film analysis which goes beyond theoretically-predetermined and often obscurantist assertions.Explicitly rejecting much of the theoretical baggage that dogs contemporary film analysis, Barker and Austin strip the subject down to its bare essentials. The result is a provocative and timely reexamination of many of the basic tenets in film theory and analysis. |