Part I: Really useful theory: How films mean, or, from aesthetics to semiotics and half-way back again -- Why theory -- Film theory and the revolt against master narratives -- Case study: interpreting singin' in the rain -- Who (and what) is it for -- Part 2: Film as mass culture: Dream/factory -- The publicness of cinema -- The politics of cultural address in a 'transitional' cinema: a case study of Indian popular cinema -- Reception theory and audience research: the mystery of the vampire's kiss -- Re-examining stardom: questions of texts, bodies and performance -- Part 3: Questions of aesthetics: After the classic, the classical and ideology: the differences of realism -- Rethinking genre -- Judging audiences: the case of the trial movie -- Introducing film evaluation -- 'Style', posture, and idiom: tarantino's figures of masculinity -- Part 4: The return to history: What is film history, or the riddle of the sphinxes -- 'Animated pictures': tales of cinema's forgotten future, after 100 years of films -- The mass production of the senses: classical cinema as vernacular modernism -- Discipline and fun: psycho and postmodern cinema -- Part 5: Cinema in the age of global multimedia: Film theory and spectatorship in the age of the 'posts' -- Digging an old well: the labor of social fantasy in a contemporary Chinese film -- Facing up to Hollywood -- The end of cinema: multimedia and technological change

1. Motion Pictures