The Film Appreciation Book: The Film Course You Always Wanted to Take

by Jim Piper

This is a book for cinephiles, pure and simple. Author and filmmaker, Jim Piper, shares his vast knowledge of film and analyzes the most striking components of the best movies ever made. From directing to cinematography, from editing and music to symbolism and plot development, The Film Appreciation Book covers hundreds of the greatest works in cinema, combining history, technical knowledge, and the art of enjoyment to explain why some movies have become the most treasured and entertaining works ever available to the public, and why these movies continue to amaze viewers after decades of notoriety.Read about such classic cinematic masterpieces as Citizen Kane, Gandhi, Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider, True Grit, Gone With the Wind, and The Wizard of Oz, as well as more recent accomplishments in feature films, such as Requiem for a Dream, Munich, The King’s Speech, and The Hurt Locker.Piper breaks down his analysis for you and points out aspects of production that movie-lovers (even the devoted ones) would never recognize on their own. This book will endlessly fascinate, and by the time you get to the last chapter, you’re ready to start all over again. In-depth analysis and thoughtful and wide-ranging film choices from every period of cinema history will ensure that you never tire of this reading companion to film.Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.

Genres: Film

375 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 30, 2014

Reviews

[Daniel Currie · Rating 3 out of 5]

There certainly is a lot of great information in this book and he obviously knows what he is talking about, but...

You'd have to quit your job, jettison your friends and family and stop eating and sleeping to possibly get thru this doing everything he recommends. There are so many links and recommendations you could not possibly even hope to do half of them and keep any perspective.

Way too much of a good thing.

[Stephen Bacon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting enough non-fiction book on the artistry and skills required in creating cinema, and each chapter comes complete with numerous examples of films (and links to YouTube clips which support the argument) for the reader to see it in action. However it's not very in-depth and, whilst the examples were fine, there were several others that I could think of that were not included (possibly because the clips were not available).
But the book's biggest failing is that the text is littered with mistakes in film titles, etc, something that I find unforgivable. There's just no excuse not to fix this. The premise of this book was something that |I was very interested in but unfortunately the writer did not deliver.

[Jordan Munn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is best when it's talking technical inside-baseball about moviemaking. It's less successful when it's flippantly blasting through other dimensions of film. Appreciated the read, and will now seek out deeper, more substantial books on the topic.

[Joelendil · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author of this book clearly knows the basics of cinematography and has gone through a lot of trouble to hunt down video clips to illustrate his points. The links to the film clips are gathered together on one convenient web page for those who want to easily follow along without typing convoluted YouTube addresses into their browser (though all the gibberish addresses also appear in the text of the book itself).

Despite a lot of useful basic information, the book as a whole is amateurish in the extreme. It feels more like an enthusiast's blog than a serious informative book. I was bothered by at least three major issues.

Limited language skills: Aside from technical terms related to films/film-making, the author's vocabulary seems limited and overly informal for a book that claims to be the film appreciation course you never got the chance to take in school (e.g. "super important" and "some guy" used in descriptions; "dumb***" "bull****" used of decisions/opinions with which he disagrees).

Overly generalized descriptions: The author is clearly going for only a very basic overview, which is fine, but some of his descriptions are so general as to be useless. (e.g. In one section he states that almost all movies have three acts and tells about how long each act lasts, but gives no description of the general content of each act).

Lack of scholarship: Many of the author's comments feel very "off the cuff," as if he is doing this off the top of his head and only occasionally consulting sources (and his only frequently cited sources are Wikipedia and IMDB). Several times he claims that he's not sure about something historical, when it would have been very easy to find out the information with a little research. I event noticed two improperly titled films (Who Killed Roger Rabbit and Momento instead of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Memento), and I'm not even much of a movie buff.

Overall, there was some good information in the book, and the collection of illustrations was impressive, but the overall writing quality was abysmal.

[Mfaiella2 · Rating 3 out of 5]

As someone who loves film, but didn't study it in school, this is a useful book (especially the first half). It walks through a bunch of concepts and terms that will help you in your discussion and appreciation of film. That said, most of the content is (with proper credits given) lifted off IMDB, Wikipedia, and Youtube. Some of this is appreciated, as film is a visual art that can't quite be explained through words alone, but the author hasn't added many of his own opinions or even written very much at all. It comes off more like a film appreciation blog. Frankly, I would feel a little let down if I had paid for this with my own money.

[Jeff Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book. I appreciated him providing links to film clips, which greatly improved my appreciation of films. However, some of the links don't exist anymore.
He kept his explanations simple and he elucidated when it was necessary.
I liked the parts about film grammar, sound mixing, settings, characters, themes and myths.

www.abigspark.blogspot.com

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

The information is good, but man the writing is terrible. Too many weird asides and links to youtube videos...in a book... Really feels like a blog that got printed.