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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
Qi Ai, "Feng Xiaogang's New Year Films: Industry, Regulation, Humour and Authorship" (Routledge, 2025)
Feng Xiaogang's New Year Films: Industry, Regulation, Humour and Authorship (Routledge, 2025) offers not only an in-depth study of Feng Xiaogang as a cinematic…
- New Books in Film
Miranda Banks and Kate Fortmueller, "Boom to Bust: How Streaming Broke Hollywood Workers" (U California Press, 2026)
Boom to Bust is a timely investigation into the rise of Peak TV and the perfect storm that caused a rapid decline in Hollywood work. When Hollywood writers and…
- New Books in Film
The Shawshank Redemption in China: An Interview with Matti Lehtonen
How can an entirely foreign cast perform the American “The Shawshank Redemption” in the Chinese language across China? In this episode of the Nordic Asia…
- New Books in Film
Gabriel S. Estrada, "Queer Indigenous Cinemas: Sovereign Genders from Seven Directions" (U Arizona Press, 2026)
In Queer Indigenous Cinemas, scholar Gabriel S. Estrada offers an analysis of queer Indigenous media from the Americas, the Pacific, and the Caribbean. This…
- New Books in Film
Get Shorty
Hollywood loves making movies about itself: on this show alone, we’ve done Sunset Boulevard, Sullivan’s Travels, and Singin’ in the Rain. Get Shorty (1995) is…
- New Books in Film
Leslie Barnes, "Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
In Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film (Edinburgh UP, 2025), Leslie Barnes examines the ambivalences that mark Southeast…
- New Books in Film
Christine Grandy, "Race on Screen: Audience Racism in Twentieth-Century Britain" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
What is the role of television in the history of the UK? In Race on Screen: Audience Racism in Twentieth-Century Britain (Cambridge UP, 2026) Christine Grandy…
- New Books in Film
Michael Mann Reconsidered: Heat and Collateral
It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and in this show we conclude our series on the films of Michael Mann. Structured as a knock-out tournament, we have set his…
- New Books in Film
Michael Allan, "Cinema before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers" (Fordham UP, 2026)
Cinema Before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers (Fordham UP, 2026) investigates the transnational origins of filmmaking by focusing on a…
- New Books in Film
Michael Mann Reconsidered: Ali and The Last of the Mohicans
It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and in this show we start a series on the films of Michael Mann. Structured as a knock-out tournament, we set his eight most…
- New Books in Film
Michael Mann Reconsidered: Ferrari and Manhunter
It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and in this show we start a series on the films of Michael Mann. Structured as a knock-out tournament, we set his eight most…
- New Books in Film
Becca Voelcker, "Land Cinema in an Age of Extraction" (U California Press, 2025)
Land Cinema in an Age of Extraction considers nonfiction filmmakers and film collectives whose work advances an understanding of land as a locus of social and…
- New Books in Film
Karen McNally ed., "Women in Hollywood's Dream Factory: Tales of Inequality, Abuse, and Resistance" (U Illinois Press, 2026)
The #MeToo revelations put a twenty-first-century stamp on the age-old story of women’s mistreatment in Hollywood. In Women in Hollywood's Dream Factory…
- New Books in Film
Michael Mann Reconsidered: Thief and The Insider
It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and in this show we start a series on the films of Michael Mann. Structured as a knock-out tournament, we set his eight most…
- New Books in Film
A Star Is Born (1937)
A Star Is Born has been filmed four times, but the first version is the best: a combination of Singin’ in the Rain and Death of a Salesman, David O…
- New Books in Film
Stephen Lee Naish, "Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency" (Lever Press, 2026)
Movies open a window into our collective soul. In Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency (Lever Press, 2026), Stephen Lee Naish guides us through recent…
- New Books in Film
Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry | Filmmaker Q&A
February 24—Following a screening of the documentary Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry during the weekend of Feb. 20–22, 2026, filmmaker Laura Dunn and…
- New Books in Film
Rachel Walther, "Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon" (Headpress, 2026)
In her new book, Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon (Headpress, 2026) film historian Rachel Walther draws on extensive archival research…
- New Books in Film
Boiling Point
Every other movie seems to be touted as a “tour de force”--but Philip Barantini’s 2021 look at ninety minutes in the life of a chef and everyone around him…
- New Books in Film
Michael Glover Smith, "Bob Dylan as Filmmaker: No Time to Think" (McNidder and Grace, 2026)
A deep dive into one of the most overlooked -- and fascinating -- sides of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature winner: Bob Dylan, the filmmaker. While his music…
- New Books in Film
Veronique Boone, "Le Corbusier on Camera: The Unknown Films of Ernest Weissmann" (Birkhaüser, 2024)
Le Corbusier on Camera: The Unknown Films of Ernest Weissmann (Birkhaüser, 2024) is based on amateur films, shot by the architect Ernest Weissmann (1903-1985)…
- New Books in Film
Santiago Fouz-Hernández, "The Films of Bigas Luna" (Manchester UP, 2025)
Written by Professor Santiago Fouz-Hernández (Durham University), The Films of Bigas Luna (Manchester UP, 2025) is the first comprehensive English-language…
- New Books in Film
The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy
In an age of growing wealth disparities, politicians on both sides of the aisle are sounding the alarm about the fading American Dream. Yet despite all…
- New Books in Film
Darién J. Davis, "'Black Orpheus' and the Globalization of Afro-Brazilian Culture" (Rutgers UP, 2026)
“Black Orpheus” and the Globalization of Afro-Brazilian Culture (Rutgers UP, 2026) is the first historical study in English to examine the development…
- New Books in Film
Robert P. Kolker and David Wyatt, "The Film Auteur: Angles of Vision" (Routledge, 2026)
An accessible introduction to the concept of the auteur (author) in film theory. In The Film Auteur: Angles of Vision (Routledge, 2026) Robert Kolker and…
- New Books in Film
His Girl Friday
The average estimated words-per-minute in a feature film is 90; His Girl Friday (1940) clocks in at 240. And yet the fast dialogue is only one of its many…
- New Books in Film
Dan Hassler-Forest, "Fast and Furious Franchising: How the Serialized Blockbuster Remade Hollywood" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)
Fast and Furious Franchising charts the transformation of Hollywood through the story of one of its most successful cinematic universes. Released in 2001, The…
- New Books in Film
Sourit Bhattacharya, "Postcolonialism Now: Literature, Reading, Decolonising" (Orient BlackSwan, 2024)
Postcolonialism Now: Literature, Reading, Decolonising (Orient BlackSwan, 2024) by Sourit Bhattacharya introduces a new method of decolonial reading and…
- New Books in Film
Isaac Butler, "The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
“When I set out to write this book, I decided to approach it like a biography. After all, the Method had parents, obscure beginnings, fumbling toward its…
- New Books in Film
Jacqueline Riding, "Hard Streets: Working-Class Lives in Charlie Chaplin’s London" (Profile Books, 2025)
Welcome to the hard streets: working-class London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in Hard Streets: Working-Class Lives in Charlie…
- New Books in Film
Robert Guffey, "Hollywood Haunts the World: An Investigation into the Cinema of Occulted Taboos" (Headpress, 2026)
In Hollywood Haunts the World: An Investigation into the Cinema of Occulted Taboos (Headpress, 2026), Robert Guffey deconstructs the most powerful taboos of…
- New Books in Film
Twentieth Century
Twentieth Century (1934) is a screwball comedy that moves like a runaway train and we are delightfully tied to the tracks. John Barrymore’s audacious…
- New Books in Film
Mark Gallagher, "Cosmosexuals: Screen Acting, Stardom, and Male Sex Appeal" (U Texas Press, 2025)
In Cosmosexuals: Screen Acting, Stardom, and Male Sex Appeal (U Texas Press, 2025), Dr. Mark Gallagher presents an examination of male screen sex appeal and…
- New Books in Film
163* The Drama of Celebrity with Sharon Marcus (JP)
As Oscar Season rolls around, Recall This Book looks back to John's 2019 discussion with Columbia University professor Sharon Marcus about The Drama of…
- New Books in Film
Justin L. Mann, "Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation" (Duke UP, 2026)
Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation (Duke UP, 2026) takes Black speculative fiction as a central archive for understanding…
- New Books in Film
Justin Owen Rawlins, "Imagining the Method: Reception, Identity, and American Screen Performance" (U Texas Press, 2024)
Only one performance style has dominated the lexicon of the casual moviegoer: “Method acting.” The first reception-based analysis of film acting, Imagining the…
- New Books in Film
Robert P. Kolker and Nathan Abrams, "Kubrick: An Odyssey" (Pegasus Books, 2024)
The definitive biography of the creator of 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, and A Clockwork Orange, presenting the most in-depth portrait yet of the…
- New Books in Film
Min Joo Lee, "Finding Mr. Perfect: K-Drama, Pop Culture, Romance, and Race" (Rutgers UP, 2025)
Finding Mr. Perfect: K-Drama, Pop Culture, Romance, and Race (Rutgers UP, 2025) by Dr. Min Joo Lee explores the romantic relationships between Korean men and…
- New Books in Film
Alvin K. Wong, "Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone" (Duke UP, 2025)
How do we compare across languages, media, and histories, all without flattening differences? And what might Hong Kong teach us about doing comparison…
- New Books in Film
Matthew Kennedy, "On Elizabeth Taylor: An Opinionated Guide" (Oxford UP, 2024)
In the oceans of ink devoted to the monumental movie star/businesswoman/political activist Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (1932-2011), her beauty and not-so-private…
- New Books in Film
Stuart Klawans, "Crooked, But Never Common: The Films of Preston Sturges" (Columbia UP, 2023)
In a burst of creativity unmatched in Hollywood history, Preston Sturges directed a string of all-time classic comedies from 1939 through 1948--The Great…
- New Books in Film
Barbara Jane Brickman, "Suffering Sappho! Lesbian Camp in American Popular Culture" (Rutgers UP, 2023)
An ever-expanding and panicked Wonder Woman lurches through a city skyline begging Steve to stop her. A twisted queen of sorority row crashes her convertible…
- New Books in Film
Book Talk 69: American Medium, with Eyal Peretz
What is “America” not only as a political entity but in our imagination? How can we properly envision America, without repeating clichés that frame America as…
- New Books in Film
Jason Isralowitz, "Nothing to Fear: Alfred Hitchcock and the Wrong Men" (Fayetteville Mafia Press, 2023)
In 1956, Alfred Hitchcock focused his lens on an issue that cuts to the heart of our criminal justice system: the risk of wrongful conviction. The result was…
- New Books in Film
Pluribus Episodes 8 & 9 Analysis: It’s Over!
It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we continue our analysis of Pluribus, with our thoughts on episode 8, “Charm Offensive” and episode 9, “La Chico o El…
- New Books in Film
Scott Feinberg, “The Hollywood Reporter’s 100 Greatest Film Books of All Time” (2023)
In the October 12, 2023 issue of The Hollywood Reporter, Scott Feinberg offered an annotated list of the 100 greatest film books of all time. Drawing on a jury…
- New Books in Film
Megha Anwer and Anupama Arora, "Screening Precarity: Hindi Cinema and Neoliberal Crisis in Twenty-first Century India" (U Michigan Press, 2025)
Screening Precarity integrates a cultural analysis of film texts and history, industry transformations, and the violence and crises of political economy…
- New Books in Film
J. W. Rinzler and Lee Unkrich, "Stanley Kubrick's The Shining" (Taschen, 2023)
In 1966 Stanley Kubrick told a friend that he wanted to make “the world’s scariest movie.” A decade later Stephen King’s The Shining landed on the director’s…
- New Books in Film
Michael Newton, "It's a Wonderful Life" (British Film Institute, 2023)
Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is one of the best-loved films of Classical Hollywood cinema, a story of despair and redemption in the aftermath of war…
- New Books in Film
Eric G. Wilson, "Point Blank" (British Film Institute, 2023)
John Boorman's Point Blank (1967) has long been recognized as one of the seminal films of the sixties, with its revisionary mix of genres including neo-noir…
- New Books in Film
Jacob Bricca, "How Documentaries Work" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Previous guest Jacob Bricca (Documentary Editing: Principles and Practice) is a professional film editor and director, specializing in documentaries. In his…
- New Books in Film
Colin Williamson, "Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
What do technical renderings of plant cells in trees have to do with Disney’s animated opus Fantasia? Quite a bit, as it turns out: such emergent scientific…
- New Books in Film
Beenash Jafri, "Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film (University of Minnesota Press, 2025) is an interdisciplinary examination of the stubborn attachment of Asian…
- New Books in Film
Patrick C. Fleming, "Animating the Victorians: Disney's Literary History" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)
Many Disney films adapt works from the Victorian period, which is often called the Golden Age of children’s literature. Animating the Victorians: Disney’s…
- New Books in Film
The Dead
“Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland.” That line from James Joyce’s story is heard at the end of John Huston’s 1987 adaptation, a…
- New Books in Film
Michelle Anya Anjirbag, "Appropriated Tales: Race and the Disney Fairy-Tale Mode" (Wayne State UP, 2025)
In Appropriated Tales: Race and the Disney Fairy-Tale Mode (Wayne State UP, 2025), scholar Michelle Anya Anjirbag examines Disney's method of fairy-tale…
- New Books in Film
Michael D. Dwyer, "Tinsel and Rust: How Hollywood Manufactured the Rust Belt" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Tinsel and Rust: How Hollywood Manufactured the Rust Belt (Oxford UP, 2025) tells the story of Hollywood's role in the shaping of the Rust Belt in the United…
- New Books in Film
Wings of Desire
Wings of Desire (1987) is a film that stays with the viewer; part of how it works is to flood the viewer’s mind with images that seem, at first, disconnected…
- New Books in Film
161 One Battle After Another: A West Newton Cinema Discussion with Peter Coviello and Ethan Warren (JP)
One Battle After Another, the spirited and controversial Oscar contender from Paul Thomas Anderson, premiered in September. That opening weekend featured a…
- New Books in Film
Julia Wagner, "Hester Street" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Joan Micklin Silver's groundbreaking debut feature film, Hester Street (1975), vividly portrays the immigrant experience through the eyes of Gitl (Carol Kane)…