Toward a New Film Aesthetic

by Bruce Isaacs

Overview

Toward a New Film Aesthetic is a radical attempt to connect the study of film with the actual viewing and consumption practices of mainstream cinematic culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826428707
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/01/2008
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Bruce Isaacs is a Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sydney. He has published widely on film history and theory.

Table of Contents

Part One: Foundations of a New Film Aesthetic


Chapter One: Engaging the Aesthetic Impulse
Chapter Two: The Redundancy of RealismChapter Three: The Transcendence of the Cinematic Image

Part Two: Towards a Theory of Popular Culture
Chapter Four: Popular Culture as Industry and Commodity Chapter Five: Authenticity and Spectacle

Part Three: Text and Spectacle in The Matrix Franchise


Chapter Six: Spectacle and The Matrix Phenomenon Chapter Seven: Discursive Text, Intertexuality and The Matrix Franchise
Chapter Eight: Conceptualising the Hypermyth - Gorging on the Sacred Past
Part Four: The Cinematic Real: Image, Text, Culture



Chapter Nine: The Transition From Genre to Genericity

Chapter Ten: The Metacinematic Real and the Spectacle Aesthetic

Chapter Eleven: Metacinema and Postmodern Narrative: The New Auteurism

Editorial Reviews

"Isaacs (Univ. of Sydney) contends that post modern narrative cinema no longer conforms to the hierarchical gradations of high art, mediocre art, and trash...This is a valuable, thought-provoking attempt to aestheticize the deployment of prior cinematic representations. Summing up: Recommended." -J.C. Tibbetts, CHOICE, December 2008

Unfortunately, despite his avowed intention to make film theory meaningful for contemporary viewers ("Film theory should be for people other than theorists"), Isaacs deploys abstruse jargon, problematic arguments, and frequent allusions to theorists such as Baudrillard, Lyotard, Eco, et. Al., thus putting the book out of reach of undergraduates. -J.C. Tibbetts, CHOICE, December 2008--Sanford Lakoff

'Isaacs opens a path to a theory that is rigorous about, and respectful of, the film.' Parallax, 2009

From the Publisher