AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: The Films of the Eighties: A Social History by William J. Palmer ISBN: 0-8093-1837-7 Publisher: Southern Illinois Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 November, 1993 Format: Hardcover List Price(USD): $41.95

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: More Fun than One Might Guess
Comment: Dr. Palmer's scribblings on film are NOT so uselessly DRY as the mysterious quoting review implies, though the guy can (& does) stoop to SOME jargonic postmodern deconstruction, plus at least one hilariously terrible actual diagram. I swear! Fortunately, the empty academic professionalism is nicely balanced by passages of plain readable screed, tips on good commercial flops, etc. The professor seems to be some sorta quasi-Dickensian crypto-feminist at heart, best as I can guess from this filmcrit & a very sketchy bio. He is overkind to Oliver Stone, who does not NEED (or even want) kindness, but otherwise fair. Or almost fair. If one elects to concoct a sub-heading called "Ensemble Weepies" for categorizing bathetic chick flicks, what about "Baseball Hokum" for the inverse, or obverse, or obtuse? Doctor?

Rating: 5
Summary: Scholarly analysis.
Comment: "...on a primary text level, history may embody an idea that gives a general definition to the vision of the film and points in a general way toward the other levels of textuality of the film - its subtexts and/or metatexts (self-reflexive discourses). If history is a holograph, then so is film because film is also composed of different layers of textuality. The surface texts of most films are constructed out of a limited number of conventional mass modes of discourse (plots), whereas the subtexts of films consist of a variety of sociohistorical discourse contests (themes) such as politics, social consciousness, revisionist history, moral messaging and existentialist themes. "

(The "score" rating is an unfortunately ineradicable feature of the page. This reviewer does not "score" books.)