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New Books in Film
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/…
Episodes
- New Books in Film
Karmic Winds: Reflections from “The Smartest Guy in Hollywood” with Peter M. Hoffman (Rare Bird Books, 2026)
Karmic Winds: Reflections from “The Smartest Guy in Hollywood” (Rare Bird Books, 2026) is a memoir of power, collapse, and reckoning by Peter M. Hoffman, a…
- New Books in Film
Once Upon a Time in South Central LA: John Singleton's Hood Trilogy with Mark D. Cunningham (UP of Mississippi, 2026)
After the groundbreaking success of his debut film, Boyz N the Hood in 1991, filmmaker John Singleton (1968–2019) gained worldwide acclaim, earned the respect…
- New Books in Film
Pink Auteur, Red Outlaw: Adachi Masao and Japan's Cinema of Revolution with William Andrews (Awai Books, 2026)
Pink Auteur, Red Outlaw: Adachi Masao and Japan’s Cinema of Revolution (Awai Books, 2026) is the first-ever English-language book on Adachi Masao. Based on…
- New Books in Film
Action Bodies: VFX, Identity, and Embodiment in Blockbuster Cinema with Drew Ayers (U Texas Press, 2026)
Exploring how digital visual effects have changed the representations of the body and identity in action films. When Harrison Ford appeared digitally de-aged…
- New Books in Film
Reading for Pleasure: Working Women and the Popular Romance in Early Twentieth-Century Britain with Lise Shapiro Sanders (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Lise Shapiro Sanders is the author of Reading for Pleasure: Working Women and the Popular Romance in Early 20c Britain, published in October 2026 by Bloomsbury…
- New Books in Film
Egyptian Male Film Stars in the Nasser Era: Envisioning a National Identity with Samar Abdel-Rahman (American U of Cairo Press, 2026)
Samar Abdel-Rahman's Egyptian Male Film Stars in the Nasser Era: Envisioning a National Identity (American University of Cairo Press, 2026) explores male…
- New Books in Film
Weapons
A true dark comedy, Zach Cregger’s Weapons (2025) combines a satire of suburbia, a study of addiction, and the satisfaction of a fairy tale. The film works so…
- New Books in Film
Wastelands and Wonderlands: Utopias and Dystopias in Film and Literature with Matthew Leggatt (SUNY Press, 2026)
Wastelands and Wonderlands: Utopias and Dystopias in Film and Literature with Matthew Leggatt (SUNY Press, 2026) is an edited collection exploring utopias ad…
- New Books in Film
Power Surge: Conglomerate Hollywood and the Studio System's Last Hurrah with Thomas Schatz (U California Press, 2026)
Thomas Schatz returns us to an era when a newly enriched movie industry rediscovered its creative energy, and indie went mainstream without losing its edge…
- New Books in Film
Sarah Meehan O'Callaghan, "Psychoanalysing Mind-Body Narratives Through Beckett and Artaud: The Trauma of the Body" (Routledge, 2026)
Psychoanalysing Mind-Body Narratives Through Beckett and Artaud: The Trauma of the Body (Routledge, 2026) provides an epistemology of the body as it relates to…
- New Books in Film
Lucas L. Johnson II, "Remembering Roots: How an American Classic Transformed the World" (Broadleaf Books, 2026)
As we approach the 50th anniversaries of Alex Haley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Roots (1976) and its landmark television adaptation (1977), journalist and…
- New Books in Film
Violaine Roussel, "Data-Driven Hollywood: The New Data Professionals in the Age of Streaming" (Princeton UP, 2026)
In Hollywood today, thousands of data specialists work for streaming video platforms, playing a role not just in distribution and marketing but also in…
- New Books in Film
Stephen Lee Naish, "Point Break: Movies Minute by Minute" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Stephen Lee Naish's Point Break: Movies Minute by Minute (Bloomsbury, 2026), in Bloomsbury's Timecodes Series, is a detailed, minute-by-minute critical…
- New Books in Film
Filmmaker Peter Santenello on Your Fellow Americans: Dispatches from Across the Country We Call Home
Have you ever swapped stories on a porch with Amish snowbirds in Florida? Searched for reindeer with the Siberian Yupik in Alaska? Been a guest on a houseboat…
- New Books in Film
Dog Day Afternoon
A comedy of frustration and a look at how the media takes and then takes back one’s fifteen minutes of fame, Dog Day Afternoon (1975) is on of Sidney Lumet’s…
- New Books in Film
John Trafton, "Los Angeles and Film: A Cultural History of 20th-Century Hollywood" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
It is impossible to talk about the City of Angels without talking about its movie business. The history of American cinema is so intertwined with Los Angeles…
- New Books in Film
Corrado Neri, "Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century: Spectral Narratives and Screen Culture" (Anthem Press, 2026)
Taiwanese cinema is internationally celebrated for the auteurs of the Taiwan New Cinema. Yet over the past fifteen years, ghosts, demons, curses and haunted…
- New Books in Film
Brian Jay Jones, "George Lucas: A Life" (Little, Brown and Company, 2016)
The essential biography of the influential and beloved filmmaker George Lucas. On May 25, 1977, a problem-plagued, budget-straining independent science-fiction…
- New Books in Film
Mulholland Drive at 25: Film Quarterly
In this episode, J. M. Tyree, the editor of Film Quarterly discusses a dossier of articles about David’s Lynch’s 2001 Mulholland Drive on its 25th anniversary…
- New Books in Film
Vincent Haddad, "Next Time on Dragon Ball: Playing with a Manga and Anime Franchise" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)
Since its debut in 1984, Dragon Ball has become one of the most popular, influential, and lucrative media franchises in the world. In Next Time on Dragon Ball…
- New Books in Film
Tár
Tod Field’s Tár (2022) is one of the best ghost stories we’ve discussed on the show. The story of a troiubled genius, the film is also a wonderfully ambiguous…
- New Books in Film
Ellery E. Foutch, "A Perfectionist Impulse: The Art of Stopping Time in the Nineteenth Century (U Minnesota Press, 2026)
Cultural studies of the nineteenth century often categorize their subjects as being motivated by one of two opposing notions: a wholehearted embrace of…
- New Books in Film
Linda Williams and eds. Christine Gledhill et al., "Melodrama As Provocateur" (Duke UP, 2026)
The centerpiece of Melodrama as Provocateur (Duke UP, 2026) is an essay by Linda Williams (1946–2025). Williams was Professor of Film Studies and Rhetoric at…
- New Books in Film
Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The War of the Worlds
In light of the dismal Disclosure Day (2026), we return to two films that show Spielberg tackling alien visitation (or invasion) stories while at the height of…
- New Books in Film
Kathleen W. Taylor Kollman, "The Fictional Female Presidency in Film, Television, and Literature: Representations from 1932 to 2024" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026)
Kathleen W. Taylor Kollman has a new book out that focuses on the reality of women running for president in the United States, and the fictional…
- New Books in Film
David Zeitlyn and Chihab El Khachab eds., "Understanding Social Images: Essays on Visual Methods and Teaching Visual Anthropology" (Berghahn, 2025)
In this episode I discuss the book Understanding Social Images: Essays on Visual Methods and Teaching Anthropology (Berghahn, 2025) with co-editors David…
- New Books in Film
Anja Foerschner, "Female Art and Agency in Yugoslavia, 1971–2001" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
In Female Art and Agency in Yugoslavia, 1971–2001 (Bloomsbury, 2024), Anja Foerschner offers a compelling exploration of the women artists, curators…
- New Books in Film
Adam Geczy, "Glasses" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Glasses are among the oldest and most commonplace prosthetics we have invented. But what does it mean to wear glasses? There is more to the answer than…
- New Books in Film
Mike F. Alvarez, Warren J. Bareiss, and Jolane Flanigan eds., "Suicide in Popular Media and Culture: Studies in Framing a Social Catastrophe" (Bristol University Press, 2026)
NB: This episode contains a discussion of suicide and may not be appropriate for all listeners. If you are thinking about hurting yourself, help is always…
- New Books in Film
Soraya Murray, "Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination" (MIT Press, 2026)
Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination (MIT Press, 2026) is the first dedicated examination of popular movies classified as “thrillers” that channel…
- New Books in Film
Krzysztof Rowiński, "Failure Narratives Beyond Redemption: Twentieth Century Literature and Film" (Routledge, 2026)
Today’s guest, Krzysztof Rowiński, is the author of Failure Narratives Beyond Redemption: Twentieth Century Literature and Film (Routledge, 2026). This book…
- New Books in Film
Jonathan L. Friedmann, "Chai Noon: Jews and the Cinematic Wild West" (U Wisconsin Press, 2025)
Only a few Westerns contain explicitly Jewish stories or themes, and very rarely do Old West tales involve identifiably Jewish characters. Yet Jewish…
- New Books in Film
Grizzly Man
Tennyson called nature “red in tooth and claw,” but that warning didn’t keep Timothy Treadwell from living among the grizzlies of Alaska for thirteen…
- New Books in Film
Blue Jasmine
Woody Allen has called A Streetcar Named Desire the most well-directed film ever made and its influence on Blue Jasmine (2013) is unmistakable. Both concern a…
- New Books in Film
Shikha Jhingan, "The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology" (Wayne State UP, 2025)
How the sound of the female playback voice impacts Bollywood's cultural, musical, and cinematic environment. Drawing on sound studies and performance theory…
- New Books in Film
Allyson Nadia Field, "Acts of Love: Black Performance and the Kiss That Changed Film History" (U California Press, 2026)
In 1898, vaudeville actors Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown joyously embraced in a short silent film titled Something Good—Negro Kiss. The first known film to…
- New Books in Film
Mackenzi Lee, "Masters of the Universe: Teela: Daughter of Eternos" (Mattel, 2026)
Mackenzi Lee's Masters of the Universe: Teela: Daughter of Eternos (Mattel, 2026) is a young adult tie-in for the Masters of the Universe (2026) film. A FALLEN…
- New Books in Film
Robin R. Means Coleman and Novotny Lawrence eds., "The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Film" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Since the release of Jordan Peele's Academy Award-winning horror hit Get Out (2017), interest in Black horror films has erupted. This renewed intrigue in…
- New Books in Film
Oscar Winberg, "Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics" (UNC Press, 2025)
Political historian Oscar Winberg has a fascinating new book titled Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics. This book…
- New Books in Film
Tony Lee Moral, "A Century of Hitchcock: The Man, the Myths, the Legacy" (UP of Kentucky, 2026)
For over a century, Alfred Hitchcock has remained one of cinema's most influential directors. Known as the Master of Suspense, this visionary filmmaker…
- New Books in Film
Angharad N. Valdivia and Isabel Molina-Guzmán, "Rebooting Inequality: Critical Takes on Film and Television Remakes" (NYU Press, 2026)
From Ghostbusters to Will & Grace, One Day at a Time to Jurassic Park, the past decade has seen Hollywood reach a new peak in its obsession with reboots…
- New Books in Film
Thomas Doherty, "How Film Became History: The Rise of the Archival Documentary in 1930s America" (Columbia UP, 2026)
By the 1930s, filmmakers had access to a backlog of footage from nearly forty years of motion pictures, allowing them to create a new kind of film stitched…
- New Books in Film
Sumana Roy, "Plant Thinkers of Twentieth-Century Bengal" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Plant Thinkers of Twentieth-Century Bengal (Oxford UP, 2024) by Sumana Roy takes an unexpected cast of writers and artists and, in studying their work as…
- New Books in Film
Benjamin Dalton, "Catherine Malabou and Contemporary French Literature and Film: Witnessing Plasticity" (Edinburgh UP, 2026)
Our bodies and brains are radically transformable, mutable and plastic. From the neuroplasticity of the brain to the epigenetic malleability of our bodies and…
- New Books in Film
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
In 1828, a seventeen-year-old boy was found wandering the streets of Nuremberg, holding two letters and unable to say more than a few words. The locals adopted…
- New Books in Film
Ayşehan Jülide Etem, "Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations" (Columbia UP, 2026)
Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations (Columbia UP, 2026) offers a powerful new account of how film shaped international relations and…
- New Books in Film
Wake Up Dead Man (Fr Scott Bailey): The Priest who Helped Hollywood Make a Murder Mystery Movie about the Church
When Hollywood director Rian Johnson started making Wake Up Dead Man, the new Knives Out mystery (a movie you can watch on Netflix), he needed some help. His…
- New Books in Film
Es-pranza Humphrey, "Act Black: Posters from Black American Stage & Screen" (Poster House Museum, 2026)
Starting in the 1880s, Black performers, and those invested in telling stories centering Black people, attempted to counter the dehumanizing and harmful…
- New Books in Film
Patrick Noonan, "Age of Disaffection: The Aesthetic Critique of Politics in 1960s Japan" (Columbia UP, 2025)
The 1960s in Japan have long been understood as a period of radical political engagement. But as political movements from Old Left Communism to New Left…
- New Books in Film
Ana I. Oancea, "Dangerous Creations: The Inventor Novel in Fin-de-siècle France" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
Dangerous Creations: The Inventor Novel in Fin-de-siècle France (U Toronto Press, 2025) presents a master narrative of the inventor in fin-de-siècle French…
- New Books in Film
Frontier Films for America250: On the Western Genre and Beyond with Matthew J. Franck
Here in Episode 7 of Season 5, I interview Dr. Matthew J. Franck. A senior contributing fellow at Public Discourse, a visiting lecturer in the Department of…
- New Books in Film
Jeremy Harding's Analogue Africa: Notes on the Anti-Colonial Imagination
Jeremy Harding has long been one of the premier essayists and journalists of our day. Elegant, committed and free of cant, Harding's writing has often appeared…
- New Books in Film
Richard Ivan Jobs and Steven Van Wolputte, "In the Land of the Lacandón: A Graphic History of Adventure and Imperialism" (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2025)
In the mid-1930s the amateur French ethnographer and filmmaker Bernard de Colmont ventured into the mountainous state of Chiapas to study the Lacandón people…
- New Books in Film
Through the Lens of Taiwan: Film, History, and Identity
This podcast episode is hosted by Mart Tšernjuk, the Taiwan Coordinator at the University of Tartu Asia who is talking to Prof. Robert Chen, a leading scholar…
- New Books in Film
Chinatown
“Forget it, Jake—it’s Chinatown.” This piece of advice is as famous as it is useless: Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) will never be able to forget what he’s seen…
- New Books in Film
Jes Battis, "It's Only Forever: Labyrinth" (ECW Press, 2026)
Jes Battis' new book, It's Only Forever. Labyrinth (ECW Press, 2026) is a wild, intimate, and political deep dive into Jim Henson’s 1986 classic starring David…
- New Books in Film
Michael Lee Nirenberg, "Cinematic Immunity" (Feral House, 2026)
The unbelievable insider stories of how they “got the shot,” Cinematic Immunity tells the story of New York City's movie industry from the crew members who…
- New Books in Film
Laura Horak, "Trans Cinema: Making Communities, Identities, and Worlds" (U California Press, 2026)
Since the 1990s, a largely underground upwelling of trans creativity has helped new trans identities, communities, and political movements come together. In…
- New Books in Film
Daisuke Miyao, "Ozu and the Ethics of Indeterminacy" (Duke UP, 2026)
Ozu and the Ethics of Indeterminacy (Duke University Press, 2026) re-examines cinema studies through the work of Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu, employing the…
- New Books in Film
Aurore Spiers, "Archiving the Past: Women's Film History in France, 1927–1978" (U California Press, 2026)
What happens when we assume women’s presence in film history instead of their absence? This is the question at the heart of Archiving the Past: Women’s Film…