Just to briefly contribute to this discussion, in addition to Film Art, I also use Martin Barker's book, From Antz To Titanic, which speaks more directly to students and students' own experience of film going without insulting us as lecturers/professors (and challenges an awful lot of our jargonistic bs). The problem with most of this discussion is that we are no longer first year film students anymore, and our interests and demands on textbooks are coming from this perspective. We need to put ourselves in the position of the first year student, who may or may not have any experience in film studies and tie their experience of going to the movies, with our academic issue in studing world cinema. I too find Film Art exceptionally dry, however, *in class* we can use more recent and relevant comparisions for them to get their teeth into. Sadly, next to Barker's new book, my FAVOURITE Intro Text only went through one printing - Sobchack and Sobchack's An Introduction to Film - particularly for their final section on 'How to Write a Film Paper' - given the really poor global condition of student writing. Interesting to note that the Sixth edition of Bordwell and Thompson now includes a booklet on this subject - at least in the UK. The subject of good writing guides for film papers should be its own thread.... And finally, just to be completely redundent, no single text book is going to satisfy or define even a single module/course - these books obviously need to be assisted by active pedegogy and a collection of photocopied readings from other sources. (Mikel now descends from his rickety soap-box.....) ------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Mikel J. Koven Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies University of Wales Aberystwyth Parry-Williams Building Penglais Campus Aberystwyth Ceredigion SY23 3AJ (01970) 621938 mobile (0777) 349-0188 [log in to unmask] ------------------------------------------------------------------ ---- For past messages, visit the Screen-L Archives: http://bama.ua.edu/archives/screen-l.html