The Power of Movies

How is watching a movie similar to dreaming? What goes on in our minds when we become absorbed in a movie? How does looking 'into' a movie screen allow us to experience the thoughts and feelings of a movie's characters? These and related questions are at the heart of The Power of Movies, a thoughtful, invigorating, and remarkably accessible book about a phenomenon seemingly beyond reach of our understanding. Colin McGinn''an ingenious philosopher who thinks like a laser and writes like a dream,' according to Steven Pinker'enhances our understanding of both movies and ourselves in this book of rare and refreshing insight.

Share your thoughts on the The Power of Movies ebook with other internet viewers!

Title of ebook: The Power of Movies
ISBN: 9780307489739
parent-ISBN: 9781400077205
Publisher: Vintage
Pages: 224
Published: 12-2008
Released online for download: 12-10-2008
Author of eBook: Mcginn, Colin

Format

Encrypted

Sku

ISBN

File size

Security

Printing

Copying

Read aloud

Devices

ePub

Yes

0307489736

9780307489739

1807 KB

n/a

Not allowed

No

Sys Requirments

Download reader

Mobipocket

Yes

9780307489739

318 KB

n/a

Not allowed

No

Sys Requirements

Download reader

eReader

Yes

5551963225

9780307489739

189 KB

n/a

Not allowed

No

Sys Requirments

Download reader

The Power of Movies

How Screen and Mind Interact
One

THE POWER OF FILM

The Mind-Movie Problem

The power of film is indisputable. Since the beginning of movies, a little over a hundred years ago, they have captivated audiences. We want, badly, to watch. And this power seems unique to film. As the philosopher Stanley Cavell remarks, in The World Viewed, “the sheer power of film is unlike the powers of the other arts.”1 There is something about movies specifically—whether they emanate from America or France, Britain or Sweden—which succeeds in connecting to the human psyche in a deep way. Movies carry some sort of psychic charge that no other art form—perhaps no other spectacle—can quite match.

Their power is manifested in two ways: demographically and individually. Movies simply have a larger mass appeal than any other artistic medium. Nothing draws crowds in the millions like a new movie—and this was so from the very beginning. (It is this fact that explains the colossal investment of money that goes into the movie business. What would the movie industry be like to ... read full excerpt from: The Power of Movies ebook

Other Colin Mcginn ebooks:

receive alert on new Colin Mcginn ebooks

Shakespeare's Philosophy

Shakespeare's plays are usually studied by literary scholars and historians and the books about him from those perspectives are legion. It is most unusual for a ...more

Best price: $9.60

Top eBooks in "Film & Video - History & Criticism"

Black and White and Blue: Adult Cinema from the Victorian Age to the VCR

by Thompson, Dave

In the 1920s they were called stags, smokes, or blue movies; today it's adult films. But until now, apart from brief summaries in film histories and scholarly articles, ...more

Best price: $11.49

Alfred Hitchcock

by Duncan, Paul

Who was Hitchcock? A fat man who played practical jokes on people? A control freak who humiliated others to make himself look better? A little boy afraid of the dark? One of ...more

Best price: $8.76

Carry on Films - The Pocket Essential Guide

by Campbell, Mark

Infamy! Infamy! They've All Got It In For Me! Beginning with the feel-good conscription caper Carry On Sergeant (1958) and finishing up with the much-maligned sex farce ...more

Best price: $7.55

Australian Film - The Pocket Essential Guide

by Vanderbent, Saskia

From the world's first feature film in 1906 to the world's first feature documentaries shot between 1895 and 1901, Australia has always done great things in film. Not only did...more

Best price: $8.76

Andrei Tarkovsky

by Martin, Sean

In this book, Sean Martin considers the whole of Tarkovsky's oeuvre, from the classic student film The Steamroller and the Violin, across the full-length films, to ...more

Best price: $8.76

British Science Fiction Cinema

by Hunter, I. Q.

explores the breadth of British sci-fi films through readings of key films, examining the factors that shaped them, and the concerns they reflect, through the postwar boom ...more

Best price: $34.85

Class, Language, and American Film Comedy

by Beach, Christopher

This book examines the evolution of American film comedy through the lens of language and the portrayal of social class. Christopher Beach argues that class has been an ...more

Best price: $30.43

100 Years of Spanish Cinema

100 Years of Spanish Cinema provides an in-depth look at the most important movements, films, and directors of twentieth-century Spain from the silent era to the ...more

Best price: $89.95

Beyond the Box: Television and the Internet

by Ross, Sharon Marie

Beyond the Box gives students and couch potatoes alike a better understanding of what it means to watch television in an era of profound technological change.

<...more

Best price: $79.95

Other Film & Video eBooks Categories

Direction & Production (48)

History & Criticism (82)