Theorizing Film Acting

Theorizing Film Acting
Author: Aaron Taylor
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2012
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0415509513

This comprehensive collection provides theoretical accounts of the grounds and phenomenon of film acting. The volume features entries by some of the most prominent scholars on film acting who collectively represent the various theoretical traditions that constitute the discipline of film studies. Each section proposes novel ways of considering the recurring motifs in academic enquiries into film acting, including: (1) the mutually contingent problematic of description and interpretation, (2) the intricacies of bodily dynamics and their reception by audiences, (3) the significance of star performance, and (4) the impact of evolving technologies and film styles on acting traditions.

Film Technique and Film Acting

Film Technique and Film Acting
Author: Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin
Publisher: Read Books Ltd
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2013-04-16
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1446547353

This vintage book contains two pioneering volumes on the subject of film making by V.I. Pudovkin. Considered two of the most valuable manuals of the practice and theory of film making ever written, these texts will prove invaluable for the student or film enthusiast, and are not to be missed by discerning collectors of such literature. The chapters of this volume include: 'The Film Scenario and Its Theory', 'Film Director and Film Material', 'Types Instead of Actors', 'Close-Ups in Time', 'Asynchronism as a Principle of Sound Film', 'Rhythmic Problems in my First Sound Film', 'Notes and Appendices', 'Film Acting', et cetera. Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin (1893 – 1953) was a Russian film director, screenwriter, and actor, famous for developing influential theories of montage. This volume is being republished now complete with a new prefatory biography of the author.

Theorizing Film Through Contemporary Art

Theorizing Film Through Contemporary Art
Author: Jill Murphy
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2020-09-29
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9048542022

As the cinematic experience becomes subsumed into ubiquitous technologies of seeing, contemporary artworks lift the cinematic from the immateriality of the film screen, separating it into its physical components within the gallery space. How do film theorists read these reformulations of the cinematic medium and their critique of what it is and has been? Theorizing Cinema through Contemporary Art: Expanding Cinema considers artworks that incorporate, restage, and re-present cinema's configurations of space, experience, presence/absence, production and consumption, technology, myth, perception, event, and temporality, thereby addressing the creation, appraisal, and evolution of film theory as channeled through contemporary art. Taking film theory as a blueprint for the moving image, and juxtaposing it with artworks that render cinema as a material object, this book unfolds a complex relationship between a theory and a practice that have often been seen as virtually incompatible, heightening our understanding of each and, more pertinently, their interactions.

Animating Film Theory

Animating Film Theory
Author: Karen Redrobe
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2014-03-21
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0822376814

Animating Film Theory provides an enriched understanding of the relationship between two of the most unwieldy and unstable organizing concepts in cinema and media studies: animation and film theory. For the most part, animation has been excluded from the purview of film theory. The contributors to this collection consider the reasons for this marginalization while also bringing attention to key historical contributions across a wide range of animation practices, geographic and linguistic terrains, and historical periods. They delve deep into questions of how animation might best be understood, as well as how it relates to concepts such as the still, the moving image, the frame, animism, and utopia. The contributors take on the kinds of theoretical questions that have remained underexplored because, as Karen Beckman argues, scholars of cinema and media studies have allowed themselves to be constrained by too narrow a sense of what cinema is. This collection reanimates and expands film studies by taking the concept of animation seriously. Contributors. Karen Beckman, Suzanne Buchan, Scott Bukatman, Alan Cholodenko, Yuriko Furuhata, Alexander R. Galloway, Oliver Gaycken, Bishnupriya Ghosh, Tom Gunning, Andrew R. Johnston, Hervé Joubert-Laurencin, Gertrud Koch, Thomas LaMarre, Christopher P. Lehman, Esther Leslie, John MacKay, Mihaela Mihailova, Marc Steinberg, Tess Takahashi

Star Studies

Star Studies
Author: Martin Shingler
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2019-07-25
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1838718354

Martin Shingler presents the mother volume for Palgrave's Film Stars series in three easily-navigable chapters in which he provides a summative and instructive account of star studies for today's film student. Via a critical evaluation of the work of leading film scholars, he provides a convincing argument for howthis important area of film studies has evolved. Building on this, he offerssome new directions for star scholarship, and ends by offering the film student a useful set of themes and issues for his or her own investigation. 'Star Studies' is the perfect companion for the student who wishes to foster further research on stardom across a wide range of contexts, from national cinemas, to mainstream and marginal cinemas, to different historical periods and beyond.

The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory

The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory
Author: Kyle Stevens
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 713
Release: 2022
Genre: Motion pictures
ISBN: 0190873922

Despite changes in the media landscape, film remains a vital force in contemporary culture, as do our ideas of what "a movie" or "the cinematic" are. Indeed, we might say that the category of film now only exists in theory. Whereas film-theoretical discussion at the turn of the 21st century was preoccupied, understandably, by digital technology's permeation of virtually all aspects of the film object, this volume moves the conversation away from a focus on film's materiality towards timely questions concerning the ethics, politics, and even aesthetics of thinking about the medium of cinema. To put it another way, this collection narrows in on the subject of film, not with a nostalgic sensibility, but with the recognition that what constitutes a film is historically contingent, in dialogue with the vicissitudes of entertainment, art, and empire. The volume is divided into six sections: Meta-Theory; Film Theory's Project of Emancipation; Apparatus and Perception; Audiovisuality; How Close is Close Reading?; and The Turn to Experience.

Give War a Chance

Give War a Chance
Author: P. J. O'Rourke
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2007-12-01
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 1555847129

The #1 New York Times bestseller from “one of America’s most hilarious and provocative writers . . . a volatile brew of one-liners and vitriol” (Time). Renowned for his cranky conservative humor, P. J. O’Rourke runs hilariously amok in this book, tackling the death of communism; his frustration with sanctimonious liberals; and Saddam Hussein in a series of classic dispatches from his coverage of the 1991 Gulf War. On Kuwait City after the war, he comments, “It looked like all the worst rock bands in the world had stayed there at the same time.” On Saddam Hussein, O’Rourke muses: “He’s got chemical weapons filled with . . . with . . . chemicals. Maybe he’s got The Bomb. And missiles that can reach Riyadh, Tel Aviv, Spokane. Stock up on nonperishable foodstuffs. Grab those Diet Coke cans you were supposed to take to the recycling center and fill them with home heating oil. Bury the Hummel figurines in the yard. We’re all going to die. Details at eleven.” And on the plague of celebrity culture, he notes: “You can’t shame or humiliate modern celebrities. What used to be called shame and humiliation is now called publicity.” Mordant and utterly irreverent, this is a modern classic from one of our great political satirists, described by Christopher Buckley as being “like S. J. Perelman on acid.” “Mocking on the surface but serious beneath . . . When it comes to scouting the world for world-class absurdities, O’Rourke is the right man for the job.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review “The funniest writer in America.” —The Wall Street Journal

Film Theory

Film Theory
Author: Thomas Elsaesser
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2015-03-12
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1317581148

What is the relationship between cinema and spectator? This is the key question for film theory, and one that Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener put at the center of their insightful and engaging book, now revised from its popular first edition. Every kind of cinema (and every film theory) first imagines an ideal spectator, and then maps certain dynamic interactions between the screen and the spectator’s mind, body and senses. Using seven distinctive configurations of spectator and screen that move progressively from ‘exterior’ to ‘interior’ relationships, the authors retrace the most important stages of film theory from its beginnings to the present—from neo-realist and modernist theories to psychoanalytic, ‘apparatus,’ phenomenological and cognitivist theories, and including recent cross-overs with philosophy and neurology. This new and updated edition of Film Theory: An Introduction through the Senses has been extensively revised and rewritten throughout, incorporating discussion of contemporary films like Her and Gravity, and including a greatly expanded final chapter, which brings film theory fully into the digital age.

Acting in Documentary Theatre

Acting in Documentary Theatre
Author: Tom Cantrell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2013-07-12
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1350316423

Using new interview material with actors, directors and writers, this book explores the challenges of performance in documentary theatre. Through a series of high profile case studies, Cantrell uses acting theory to examine the actors' complex processes, and makes a significant contribution to our understanding of stage performance.