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Uncanny Cinema

Agonies of the Viewing Experience
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Uncanny Cinema by Professor Murray Pomerance examines the complex challenge of expressing the experience of watching films and television through text. Drawing from a wide range of works, from On the Waterfront to Marriage Story, the book explores how words often struggle to capture the nuances of cinematic viewing. It begins with reflections on vocality and imagination, before progressing through three movements that provoke readers to reconsider their perceptions and the act of seeing cinema itself. Pomerance analyses disturbances and surprises in viewing that test what we think we know about film and how we discuss it.
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Format: Paperback / softback
$13700

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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

Ideal for cinephiles, film scholars, and readers interested in the theory and philosophy of cinema, particularly those curious about the intersection of visual experience and language. Suitable for an academic or thoughtful general audience.

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"An in-depth study of several films and television shows to demonstrate the difficulties of conveying the experience of viewing cinema"--

An in-depth study of several films and television shows to demonstrate the difficulties of conveying the experience of viewing cinema.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Murray Pomerance's latest book explores an encyclopaedic range of films and television shows to demonstrate the difficulty of conveying the experience of viewing cinema through words and the medium of text. From On the Waterfront to Marriage Story, Uncanny Cinema illuminates that words and writing are in perilous waters when applied to cinema, similar to ungestured talk.

The book begins with this problem using Julian Jaynes’s thoughts on vocality and imagination before delving into three exploratory β€˜movements’ arranged to alternately challenge, inspire, and confound the reader to question if we know what we think we know or even see what we think we see.

The viewer is faced with disturbances, ruptures, and surprises that occur during the viewing experience, which Pomerance analyses to stretch the sense of what we do and do not (or, possibly, cannot) know, particularly as we think, talk, and write about cinema.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Described as written with intelligence and grace, this book bracingly addresses often overlooked mysteries of spectatorship. It invites readers to engage deeply with the uncanny aspects of cinema, from charismatic characters to emotional layers and sensory experiences. While intellectually ambitious and sobering, it enriches understanding for both cinephiles and scholars, encouraging a refined appreciation of popular films and TV.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781501398780

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 30 November 2023

Country: United States

Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic

Illustration: 60 bw illus

Audience: Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 24.0mm

Width: 150.0mm

Height: 228.0mm

Weight: 500g

Pages: 344

About the Author

Murray Pomerance is an independent scholar living in Canada and Adjunct Professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, Australia. He is the author of many books, including A Silence from Hitchcock (2023), Color It True: Impressions of Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2022), A Voyage with Hitchcock (2021), Grammatical Dreams (2020), The Film Cheat: Screen Artifice and Viewing Pleasure (Bloomsbury, 2020), Virtuoso: Film Performance and the Actor’s Magic (Bloomsbury, 2019), A Dream of Hitchcock (2019), and Cinema, If You Please: The Memory of Taste, the Taste of Memory (2018).

Also by Professor Murray Pomerance

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    This book is a series of seventeen meditations that revolve around the notion of the viewer’s placement at the edge of the screen. Every page is an opportunity to think about an aspect of film, or of film viewing, in new ways, and to begin reconsidering deeply ingrained ways of unthinkingly characterising and accounting for what it is that we...
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