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Date: | Thu, 29 Mar 2001 10:59:26 -0500 |
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>> I'm quite grateful to have had Film Art and Understanding Movies
>>back in the 80s. But does anyone actually read them anymore? I ask
because
>>in recent years I've heard a lot of noise from people saying "I want
letter-
>>box! I want widescreen TV." Especially film students . . .
am i the only one who's totally baffled by this "argument"? . . . so
baffled that i'm not even sure to explain how or why . . . let
me just venture that someone who uses bordwell [or gianetti or
sobchack or kawin or kolker or gollin, usw.] merely to
introduce questions of aspect ratio hasn't read the books . . .
i take it that those of us who use any of these are interested
in introducing students to a variety of issues and problems
ranging from the history of the production code to the ontology
of the photographic image to the "politiques des auteurs" and
its relationship to theories of intentionality to the sexual
politics of masculinity in classical hollywood to constructivist
ideas of montage to questions of who 'narrates' a film narrative
to the economics of american film hegemony to the aesthetics
of japanese film and on and on . . .
obviously we each have our own notions of which of these items
are essential or central in film study, and our lists may vary in
radical ways, but whatever issues we care about we'll inevitably
find that each one of these, worked through in any depth, could
take a major chunk of a course . . . the best books [would] provide
a coherent introduction to these issues, freeing us to explore a few
of them in detail
or is that not more or less the way others use textbooks??
mike
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