>> 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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