By: Warren Buckland Publisher: McGraw-Hill Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: McGraw-Hill Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 205 Publication Date: January 14, 2003
Both film buffs and students of the cinema will find this reference indispensable. It gives a chronological overview of film, analyzing genres such as westerns and sci-fi; explores different artistic approaches, techniques, and effects; and profiles a wide variety of directors, from Alfred Hitchcock to Steven Spielberg.
The book uncovers the secrets of film reviewing and the conventions reviewers adopt when they evaluate films. This new edition includes an expanded section concerning film studies on the Internet. Whatever readers' interest in film, Teach Yourself Film Studies will provide them with the skills to turn them into well-informed film critics.
"one is lost in admiration of the author's skill..." "Most beginners' guides of this sort fail miserably to fulfil (sic) their brief, being written by uncompromising ideologues who refuse to concede anything to the needs of the general reader. Buckland's pocket-sized volume represents a breakthrough: it's genuinely pitched at novices and succeeds in maintaining a perfect balance between clarity and intellectual complexity. One is lost in admiration of the author's skill at reducing the major issues and approaches to a scale exactly calibrated for undergraduate seminar discussion without the least hint of condescension in tone. The format of efficient bullet-pointing and succinct case studies can be freely cribbed from in planning lessons for years to come. (PM)" -- from Sight & Sound, a British film magazine