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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
What Makes a Book, Song or Movie Popular? A Conversation with Noah Askin
In this conversation (one of my favorite interviews ever), I talk with Noah Askin of the University of California at Irvine about why some popular children's…
- New Books in Film
Kathe Geist, "Ozu: A Closer Look" (Hong Kong UP, 2022)
Based on a close reading of Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu’s extant films, this book provides insights into the ways the director created narrative structures…
- New Books in Film
Ariana Huberman. "Keeping the Mystery Alive: Jewish Mysticism in Latin American Cultural Production" (Academic Studies Press, 2022)
Ariana Huberman's Keeping the Mystery Alive: Jewish Mysticism in Latin American Cultural Production (Academic Studies Press, 2022) delves into creative…
- New Books in Film
Nicholas de Villiers, "Cruisy, Sleepy, Melancholy: Sexual Disorientation in the Films of Tsai Ming-Liang" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
A critical figure in queer Sinophone cinema—and the first director ever commissioned to create a film for the permanent collection of the Louvre—Tsai…
- New Books in Film
Daniel Immerwahr, "The Galactic Vietnam: Technology, Modernization, and Empire in George Lucas’s Star Wars" (2022)
In this episode I got to chat about two of my favorite things: the history of imperialism and Star Wars with Daniel Immerwahr, Professor of History at…
- New Books in Film
Jake S. Friedman, "The Disney Revolt: The Great Labor War of Animation's Golden Age" (Chicago Review Press, 2022)
Soon after the birth of Mickey Mouse, one animator raised the Disney Studio far beyond Walt’s expectations. That animator also led a union war that almost…
- New Books in Film
Madeline Lane-McKinley, "Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in Dystopian Times" (Common Notions, 2022)
Comedy is so frequently the topic of cultural dialogue, but it is rarely taken seriously as an object of study. Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in…
- New Books in Film
Craig Oldham, "The Shining: A Visual and Cultural Haunting" (Rough Trade Books, 2022)
The Shining: A Visual and Cultural Haunting (Rough Trade Books, 2022) is an immersive, multi-dimensional examination of one of the most famous films in…
- New Books in Film
Stephen Galloway, "Truly, Madly: Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, and the Romance of the Century" (Grand Central, 2022)
A sweeping and heartbreaking Hollywood biography about the passionate, turbulent marriage of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. In 1934, a friend brought…
- New Books in Film
Carolyne Larrington, "All Men Must Die: Power and Passion in Game of Thrones" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
“All men must die”: or “Valar Morghulis,” as the traditional Essos greeting is rendered in High Valyrian. And die they do – in prodigious numbers; in…
- New Books in Film
Joseph McBride, "Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge" (Columbia UP, 2021)
The director and cowriter of some of the world's most iconic films―including Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd., Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment―Billy Wilder…
- New Books in Film
Burt Kearns, "Lawrence Tierney: Hollywood's Real-Life Tough Guy" (UP of Kentucky, 2022)
In his latest book, Lawrence Tierney: Hollywood's Real-Life Tough Guy (The University of Kentucky Press, 2022) Burt Kearns explores the life of actor Lawrence…
- New Books in Film
Jeanne Theoharis, "The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks" (Beacon Press, 2015)
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (Beacon Press, 2015) is the definitive political biography of Rosa Parks and the basis for a 2022 documentary…
- New Books in Film
Bridget Kies and Megan Connor, "Fandom, the Next Generation" (U Iowa Press, 2022)
In Fandom, the Next Generation (University of Iowa Press, 2022), Bridget Kies and Megan Connor have edited the first collection to offer a close study of fan…
- New Books in Film
Cajetan Iheka, "African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics" (Duke UP, 2021)
In African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics (Duke UP, 2021), Cajetan Iheka examines the ecological footprint of media in Africa alongside the…
- New Books in Film
Jon Lewis, "The Godfather, Part II" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather, Part II" (1974) is a magisterial cinematic work, a gorgeous, stylized, auteur epic, and one of the few sequels judged by…
- New Books in Film
Alan Shuback, "Hollywood at the Races: Film's Love Affair with the Turf" (UP of Kentucky, 2019)
Today I talked to Alan Shuback about his book Hollywood at the Races: Film's Love Affair with the Turf (UP of Kentucky, 2019) A love of the slapstick film duo…
- New Books in Film
Bruce Davis, "The Academy and the Award: The Coming of Age of Oscar and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences" (Brandeis UP, 2022)
Written by the former executive director of the Academy, this is the first behind-the-scenes history of the organization behind the Academy Awards. For all the…
- New Books in Film
Laura A. Frahm, "Design in Motion: Film Experiments at the Bauhaus" (MIT Press, 2022)
Design in Motion: Film Experiments at the Bauhaus (MIT Press, 2022) provides the first comprehensive history of film experiments at the Bauhaus, the famous art…
- New Books in Film
Shaken and Stirred
We couldn’t do a season on the Cold War without talking about Bond . . . James Bond. He was there from the beginning and has of course survived into the…
- New Books in Film
Joseph McBride, "The Whole Durn Human Comedy: Life According to the Coen Brothers" (Anthem Press, 2022)
The Coen Bros. have attracted a wide following and have been rewarded with Oscars and other honors. Some of their films such as Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and No…
- New Books in Film
Andrei Nae, "Immersion, Narrative, and Gender Crisis in Survival Horror Video Games" (Routledge, 2021)
Andrei Nae's book Immersion, Narrative, and Gender Crisis in Survival Horror Video Games (Routledge, 2021) investigates the narrativity of some of the most…
- New Books in Film
Hongwei Bao, "Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Visual Culture Under Postsocialism" (Routledge, 2020)
In Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Visual Culture Under Postsocialism (Routledge, 2020), associate professor of media and cultural studies at the…
- New Books in Film
Larry Ceplair, "The Hollywood Motion Picture Blacklist: Seventy-Five Years Later" (UP of Kentucky, 2022)
Seventy-five years ago, the Hollywood blacklist ruined lives, stifled creativity, and sent waves of proscription and censorship throughout United States…
- New Books in Film
Mallory Lewis and Nat Segaloff, "Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop: The Team That Changed Children's TV" (UP of Kentucky, 2022)
Two decades after Lewis and Lamb Chop last graced television with their presence, Lewis' daughter Mallory and author Nat Segaloff have set the record straight…
- New Books in Film
Shall We Play A Game?
Remember Khrushchev-Nixon Kitchen Debate? America recognized its consumer culture was a Cold War weapon. By the early 80s, the home computer in the hands of…
- New Books in Film
Kyle Stevens, "The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Despite changes in the media landscape, film remains a vital force in contemporary culture, as do our ideas of what "a movie" or "the cinematic" are. Indeed…
- New Books in Film
Scott Bukatman, "Black Panther" (U Texas Press, 2022)
Black Panther was the first Black superhero in mainstream American comics. Black Panther was a cultural phenomenon that broke box office records. Yet it wasn’t…
- New Books in Film
Wolverines!
This episode and the next look back at films that came out in the 1980s, a decade when Hollywood seemed to cater to teenage audiences like never before. So it…
- New Books in Film
Diane Negra, "Shadow of a Doubt" (Auteur, 2021)
Today I talked to Diane Negra about Shadow of a Doubt (Auteur, 2021). Shadow of a Doubt (1943) was British-born Alfred Hitchcock's fifth American film and the…
- New Books in Film
Erin Keane, "Runaway: Notes on the Myths That Made Me" (Belt Publishing, 2022)
From Erin Keane, editor in chief at Salon, comes Runaway: Notes in the Myths that Made Me (Belt Publishing, 2022), a touching memoir about the search for…
- New Books in Film
Alexander Sergeant, "Encountering the Impossible: The Fantastic in Hollywood Fantasy Cinema" (SUNY Press, 2021)
Hollywood fantasy cinema is responsible for some of the most lucrative franchises produced over the past two decades, yet it remains difficult to find popular…
- New Books in Film
Ramzi Fawaz, "Queer Forms" (NYU Press, 2022)
Ramzi Fawaz, Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has a new book that weaves together the more contemporary history of feminism and…
- New Books in Film
Bonus Episode: A Conversation about Past Episodes and Current Events
Lia and Brian revisit the first two seasons of Lies Agreed Upon for new listeners. Their conversation relates some specific episodes to current events in 2022…
- New Books in Film
Eran Kaplan, "Projecting the Nation: History and Ideology on the Israeli Screen" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
Eran Kaplan's book Projecting the Nation: History and Ideology on the Israeli Screen (Rutgers UP, 2020) is a wide-ranging history of over seven decades of…
- New Books in Film
Jennifer Wenzel, "The Disposition of Nature: Environmental Crisis and World Literature" (Fordham UP, 2019)
How do literature and other cultural forms shape how we imagine the planet, for better or worse? In this rich, original, and long awaited book, Jennifer Wenzel…
- New Books in Film
Pamela Robertson Wojcik, "Gidget: Origins of a Teen Girl Transmedia Franchise" (Routledge, 2022)
Gidget: Origins of a Teen Girl Transmedia Franchise (Routledge, 2022) examines the multiplicity of books, films, TV shows, and merchandise that make up the…
- New Books in Film
The Two Russias
In the late 1980s, Hollywood reflected the real world thaw in the Cold War by depicting the idea of two Russias: the cold bureaucratic state run by grey men…
- New Books in Film
Cinema’s First Nasty Women
What makes a nasty woman? Is it her unwillingness to break to the stringent standards of patriarchy, her gameness to get rough, even abject? Or is it the way…
- New Books in Film
Usha Iyer, "Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal Histories of Hindi Cinema" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal Histories of Hindi Cinema (Oxford UP, 2020), an ambitious study of two of South Asia's most popular cultural forms ―…
- New Books in Film
Jean-Thomas Tremblay, "Breathing Aesthetics" (Duke UP, 2022)
In Breathing Aesthetics (Duke University Press (2022), Jean-Thomas Tremblay argues that difficult breathing indexes the uneven distribution of risk in a…
- New Books in Film
Samhita Sunya, "Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay" (U California Press, 2022)
Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series. In this inaugural episode, our host Aswin Punathambekar speaks with Samhita Sunya, the…
- New Books in Film
Cold War Homefront
We could do a whole season on Vietnam war films, but in this episode we chose three films that highlight the Cold War’s omnipresence in daily life. You…
- New Books in Film
Catherine Lester, "Horror Films for Children: Fear and Pleasure in American Cinema" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Children and horror are often thought to be an incompatible meeting of audience and genre, beset by concerns that children will be corrupted or harmed through…
- New Books in Film
M. Hennefeld and N. Sammond, "Abjection Incorporated: Mediating the Politics of Pleasure and Violence" (Duke UP, 2020)
From the films of Larry Clark to the feminist comedy of Amy Schumer to the fall of Louis C. K., comedic, graphic, and violent moments of abjection have…
- New Books in Film
It’s The End Of The World As We Know It
Last episode we discussed films about how a nuclear war would start, particularly the insane logic of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). In this episode we…
- New Books in Film
Jon Krampner, "Ernest Lehman: The Sweet Smell of Success" (UP of Kentucky, 2022)
A Hollywood screenwriting and movie-making icon, Ernest Lehman penned some of the most memorable scenes to ever grace the silver screen. Hailed by Vanity Fair…
- New Books in Film
A MAD, MAD, World
The world lived under the shadow of the acronym MAD for forty years. Mutually Assured Destruction was no laughing matter, but Stanley Kubrick thought dark…
- New Books in Film
Danielle J. Lindemann, "True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us" (FSG, 2022)
Why is reality TV important? In True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us (FSG, 2022), Danielle J. Lindemann, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Lehigh…
- New Books in Film
Who Can You Trust?
Can you imagine living in a society that is ostensibly a democracy but secret forces are working behind the scenes to manipulate events? What if our…
- New Books in Film
88 Underwater Eye: Margaret Cohen explores the Film Aquatic
Margaret Cohen joins John to discuss The Underwater Eye, which explores "How the Movie Camera Opened the Depths and Unleashed New Realms of Fantasy."…
- New Books in Film
Anthony Downey, "Critique in Practice: Renzo Martens' Episode III (Enjoy Poverty)" (Sternberg Press, 2020)
In 2008, the artist Renzo Martens released his controversial film Episode 3: Enjoy Poverty filmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The film portrayed the…
- New Books in Film
He May Be a Communist!
We are back for a third season! The Russian invasion of Ukraine reminded us all that “everything old is new again” and that includes Cold War tensions, nuclear…
- New Books in Film
Julie A. Turnock, "The Empire of Effects: Industrial Light and Magic and the Rendering of Realism" (U Texas Press, 2022)
Just about every major film now comes to us with an assist from digital effects. The results are obvious in superhero fantasies, yet dramas like Roma also rely…
- New Books in Film
James Welker, "Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)
Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2022), edited by James Welker, brings together twenty-one scholars exploring BL…
New Books in FilmReality TV
In this episode of High Theory, Olivia Stowell speaks with Saronik about Reality TV. In the episode she talks about the genesis of the genre in Candid Camera…
- New Books in Film
87* Mike Leigh In Focus (JP)
In nearly 50 years of filmmaking, British director Mike Leigh has ranged from comic portrayals of ordinary life amid the social breakdowns of Thatcher’s…
- New Books in Film
Rebecca Weeks, "History by HBO: Televising the American Past" (UP of Kentucky, 2022)
The television industry is changing, and with it, the small screen's potential to engage in debate and present valuable representations of American history…
- New Books in Film
Nick Davis, "Competing with Idiots: Herman and Joe Mankiewicz, a Dual Portrait" (Knopf, 2021)
A fascinating, complex dual biography of Hollywood's most dazzling—and famous—brothers, and a dark, riveting portrait of competition, love, and enmity that…
- New Books in Film
Grant Wiedenfeld, "Hollywood Sports Movies and the American Dream" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Through the heart of Hollywood cinema runs a surprising current of progressive politics. Sports movies, a genre that has flourished since the mid-seventies…