Valuing Films: Shifting Perceptions of Worth

This book gets to the heart of what films mean to people on personal, political and commercial levels. Exploring large-scale value judgements and tastes that underpin social, academic and institutional practices, it also looks at how films relate and contribute to individual life experiences. Studies within this volume survey a wide range of cultural practices and films: from Mexican and Nigerian cinema to anime and European films; from 'violent' and 'extreme' movies to comedies and 'weepies'; from Citizen Kane and Gone with the Wind to Transformers and The Usual Suspects. This collection examines how films are studied and taught, together with the shifting canonical frameworks working within magazines, newspapers and new technologies. It also provides an insight into the hierarchical structures that inform the way audiences and fans from diverse cultures value films in relation to pleasure, entertainment, ethical worth, aesthetic style, depth of meaning and authenticity.

Table of Contents:
Contents Acknowledgements List of Tables Notes on the Contributors Introduction: Valuing Films; L.Hubner PART I: POLITICS, CRITICISM AND THE CANON Use and Exchange: The Politics of Film Evaluation; L.Grist Sense and Sensibilities: The Value of Coherence in the Contemporary Twist Film; J.Walters Spectacle and Value in Classical Hollywood Cinema; T.Brown PART II: FANS, AUDIENCES AND SHIFTING CANONS Getting Animated -- Valuing Anime; S.Allen Authenticity, Popular Aesthetics and the Sub-Cultural Politics of an Unwanted Blockbuster: The Case of Transformers; L.Geraghty Que Naco! Mexican Popular Cinema, La Banda del Carro Rojo and the Audience; A.Avalos Audience Appreciation of Nigerian Films (Nollywood); O.Esan PART III: INSTITUTIONS OF TASTE, QUALITY AND VALUE Valuing Film Violence: Student Perceptions on the Inclusion of Violent Films and Film Violence Within the Undergraduate Learning Experience; S.Kimber 'The Many Ways of Looking at Cinema': Sight and Sound and the Value of Film; O.Evans Delivering the Quality Experience: Franco Zeffirelli; M.P.Wood A Vogue for Flesh and Blood? Shifting Classifications of Contemporary European Cinema; L.Hubner PART IV: AFTERTHOUGHTS Shifting Perceptions of Worth; L.Hubner Index

About the Author :
LAURA HUBNER Senior Lecturer in the School of Media and Film at the University of Winchester, UK, where she is programme director for BA (Hons) Film Studies. She is author of The Films of Ingmar Bergman: Illusions of Light and Darkness (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

Review :
'This special collection of essays is a valuable addition to a subject that has been neglected in film studies over the past few decades. Containing a diverse number of articles covering different films, by various critics from Britain and the United States, it provides insightful and new readings into an area that deserves further exploration, as the very important introduction and epilogue by its editor reveals. A worthy addition to the area of film studies.' - Tony Williams, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, USA 'Film studies has been slow to acknowledge how central debates about value must be to its concerns. This welcome collection opens up a wide range of value debates, many of which were foreclosed by cinema's need to achieve respectability as an art. Ranging from classic vs modern Hollywood, and European art cinema's problematic status, to the newer frontiers of Japanese anime, Mexican popular cinema and Nigeria's Nollywood, the authors display an encouraging appetite for new sources of data, new audience attitudes, and the self-evident fact that value motivates much of our media behaviour.' - Ian Christie, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK