Hi Steffen,
You might try Timothy Corrigan's 'how-to' book A Short Guide to Writing about
Film (HarperCollins, 1994). You may already know about Rosenbaum's Movie Wars
(Wallflower, 2002) which maps out the film-critical landscape. Jonathan
Romney's collection Short Orders has a provocative opening essay about the
state of the art too. Raymond Haberski's "It's Only a Movie!" (Kentucky UP,
2001) gives a sturdy account of the evolution of American film writing since
the silent period. (I reviewed Movie Wars and Haberski at audiencemag.com.)
Bernard F. Dick's Anatomy of Film (St. Martin's, 1990, poss. more recent?)
has an interesting chapter called Film Criticism: Theory and Practice.
Elsaesser and Buckland's Studying Contemporary American Film (Arnold, 2002)
seeks to try dominant theoretical approaches out on a range of recent
Hollywood films. Edward Murray's Nine American Film Critics (Ungar, 1978)
offers a critical account of the work of people like Agee, Kael, Sarris,
MacDonald, Kauffmann, Warshow. I don't know if it is still available,
however. One for the used bookstore...
I know that Wallflower are becoming very interested in the metacritical
project, as it were, and I fancy this area is going to blossom during the
2000-2010s. You might keep your eye on publishers' lists.
Good luck!
Richard Armstrong
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