New Books in Film

Sarah Meehan O'Callaghan, "Psychoanalysing Mind-Body Narratives Through Beckett and Artaud: The Trauma of the Body" (Routledge, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 subjectivity through an analysis of selected works of Antonin Artaud and Samuel Beckett. Presented in three parts, the book explores a fundamental premise: that there is a traumatic and alienating dimension to embodiment that resists expression within representational systems and is core to the being of any subject. In Part One, The Epistemology of the Body, Meehan O'Callaghan approaches a theory of the body as traumatic by framing it as a question, a gap in knowledge through the lens of psychoanalysis and theatre studies. Part Two, The Body of Drama, is devoted to a study of the body in the works of Beckett and Artaud from the perspective of psychoanalysis. Part Three, The Body Between Being and Non-Being, provides a deeper exploration of how the interrogation of the body opens onto a question of being and uses the insights gained from the dialectical encounter of psychoanalysis with the specific works of Beckett and Artaud to apply them to contemporary and scholarly issues of the body. Psychoanalysing Mind-Body Narratives through Beckett and Artaud will be essential reading for psychoanalysts in practice and in training, and for academics and scholars of Lacanian studies, psychoanalytic studies, the body, disability studies, and literary and theatre studies.

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Lucas L. Johnson II, "Remembering Roots: How an American Classic Transformed the World" (Broadleaf Books, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 8 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

As we approach the 50th anniversaries of Alex Haley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Roots (1976) and its landmark television adaptation (1977), journalist and storyteller Lucas L. Johnson II reflects on the enduring legacy of Haley’s work through the voices of those it continues to move, including scholars, artists, genealogists, students, and original cast members like LeVar Burton and Ben Vereen.

With vivid personal anecdotes, emotional tributes, and probing reflections, Remembering Roots: How an American Classic Transformed the World (Broadleaf Books, 2026)shows how Haley’s vision gave birth to a genealogy movement, inspired generations to reclaim their identities, and challenged America to confront its past. From a sixth-grader who became the first lawyer in her family, to a blind musician empowered by his father’s retelling of Roots’ most iconic scene, Johnson traces the ripple effects of Haley’s griot storytelling across time and culture.

As debates rage over which histories get told, Remembering Roots boldly asserts the necessity to remember and retell our stories. A call to action, this book reaffirms that storytelling is not just an art — it’s a path to healing. A companion reading and viewing guide to the book and film is available here.

Lucas L. Johnson II is a former reporter for the Associated Press, where he worked for more than twenty years mainly covering politics, education, and religion. He is the author of Finding the Good and coauthor of Youth Change Agent. Lucas works in higher education and has taught high school and college students. A freelance writer and communications strategist, Lucas lives in Nashville, Tennessee. You can find him at his website.

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Violaine Roussel, "Data-Driven Hollywood: The New Data Professionals in the Age of Streaming" (Princeton UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 7 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In Hollywood today, thousands of data specialists work for streaming video platforms, playing a role not just in distribution and marketing but also in decisions about content and production. In Data-Driven Hollywood: The New Data Professionals in the Age of Streaming (Princeton UP, 2026), Violaine Roussel examines the emergence of this new category of professionals at the heart of the Hollywood dream factory. Roussel shows how the rise of data and algorithm specialists has transformed organizations and rearranged power relationships within them. Drawing on extensive interviews and in situ observations, she describes the ways that technical “data work” carried out by professionals at streaming platforms including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+ has had a significant effect on creative decisions.
Rather than fetishizing data and algorithmic models, Roussel explores the practices of the professionals who shape them, manipulate them, and give them power. She examines the relationships of these workers with traditional producers, describing legitimacy struggles and the eventual stabilization of new professional arrangements. Roussel’s account of the ways that data specialists deploy algorithmic models to reinvent their industry’s approach to content, artists, and the market—the first in-depth sociological study of the rise of this new profession—reveals the new forms of power and knowledge at play in today’s Hollywood.

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Stephen Lee Naish, "Point Break: Movies Minute by Minute" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 3 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Stephen Lee Naish's Point Break: Movies Minute by Minute (Bloomsbury, 2026), in Bloomsbury's Timecodes Series, is a detailed, minute-by-minute critical exploration of Kathryn Bigelow's 1991 action film "Point Break". Moving sequentially through the film's two-hour runtime, the book blends formal analysis, cultural history and theory, action genre study, and personal reflection and interpretation. It positions Point Break as both a quintessential action spectacle and a film layered with thematic tensions: masculinity, spirituality, individual risk, personal freedom, environmental awareness, and the search for one's identity. Each minute of the film is treated as a self-contained unit. The cinematography, editing, sound design, performances, and narrative beats are discussed in relation to broader social contexts including surfing subculture, mid-to-late-20th-century American politics, post-Vietnam War attitudes, and the evolving media images of Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze. Drawing on a wide array of sources, such as film theory, cultural criticism, and surf memoirs, the book reframes "Point Break" as not merely an adrenaline-driven thriller, but as a work rich in symbolism, mythology, homoerotic desires, and philosophical inquiry. This approach reveals how Bigelow crafts a kinetic, expressive cinema where bodies, landscapes, and motion collide, and how the film's characters operate within intersecting personal, cultural, and ideological currents. The result is a hybrid of scholarship and creative writing that reanimates the film by slowing it down, revealing layers of meaning often obscured by its velocity.

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Filmmaker Peter Santenello on Your Fellow Americans: Dispatches from Across the Country We Call Home

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 00:44:00 +0000

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 deep in the Louisiana bayou? Peter Santenello hadn't either, until after years spent traveling through eighty-five countries and living abroad, he realized the most unfamiliar territory was often his own American backyard. And so, with a camera in hand and an open mind, he began visiting communities across the country that most media overlooks or misrepresents, from tiny towns in Appalachia to the streets of East LA. What began as curiosity became--one story at a time--an intimate, revealing portrait of America today. From road trips and chance encounters to dinners shared in locals' homes, Your Fellow Americans: Dispatches from Across the Country We Call Home (Simon and Schuster, 2026) captures what makes this country so dynamic, so resilient, and most of all, so very human. Because what Peter discovered on his travels wasn't a nation torn in two. He found something more complex and more powerful: people who want to be seen, who are willing to listen, and who still believe we're more alike than we are different.

Peter Santenello is an independent journalist and filmmaker with over four million subscribers on YouTube.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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John Trafton, "Los Angeles and Film: A Cultural History of 20th-Century Hollywood" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 that the term “Hollywood” is used interchangeably with “American film” worldwide. From the early 20th-century migration of film pioneers from the East Coast to the emergence of local subcultures and global genres, John Trafton traces how the city has been imagined by insiders and outsiders alike in Los Angeles and Film: A Cultural History of 20th-Century Hollywood (Bloomsbury, 2026).

Key case studies include the L.A. Rebellion School, disaster cinema, and the intersections of independent cinema with the music scene and VHS culture. The book culminates in an exploration of Los Angeles neorealist cinema—a form that centers marginalized voices and challenges the myth of Hollywood glamour.

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Dog Day Afternoon

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 best films with one of Al Pacino’s best performances. Sonny wants to be Lee Marvin but acts more like Don Knotts; he wants to be a folk hero, but becomes more like a meme; he has a romance with the media and finds that his mistress is fickle. Sonny is the kind of person who accidentally appears in a viral video, comes to enjoy the renown, but then learns that his hour upon the stage is signifying nothing.

Bumper music: Bumper music by John Deley.

Interested in the real events that inspired the film and how the film was made? Read Rachel Walther’s Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Mike Takla is on substack at The Grumbler’s Almanac.

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Corrado Neri, "Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century: Spectral Narratives and Screen Culture" (Anthem Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Taiwanese cinema is internationally celebrated for the auteurs of the Taiwan New Cinema. Yet over the past fifteen years, ghosts, demons, curses and haunted screens have become increasingly prominent, turning horror from a marginal genre into an important strand of Taiwan’s popular cinema.

Professor Corrado Neri’s new book, Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century: Spectral Narratives and Screen Culture (Anthem Press, 2026), explores this transformation. Neri argues that Taiwanese horror has reached a new stage of maturity: it is now an established industrial category, has diversified across genres and media, and has developed a sophisticated capacity to address Taiwan’s social, historical and technological anxieties.

The book also launches the new short book series, ‘Anthem Impact in Asian Media, Cinema and Communications’.

In this podcast conversation, Dr Ming-yeh Rawnsley talks with Professor Neri about what Taiwanese horror can tell us about Taiwan itself. Their discussion moves from ghosts and folklore to democracy, historical memory, digital culture and changing understandings of identity. Themes include:

Why horror? – how a once-marginal genre became an important part of Taiwanese cinema.
Taiwan as a ‘Ghost Nation’ – why ghosts offer powerful ways of thinking about Taiwan’s contested history and identity.
Horror, democracy and historical memory – how liberalisation opened new possibilities for confronting difficult histories, notably the White Terror in Detention.
Religion, folklore and the supernatural – how beliefs, rituals and local legends provide filmmakers with distinctive cultural resources.
Digital ghosts – how smartphones, social media, gaming and screen culture have transformed haunting.
Gender, sexuality and queer horror – how films such as Marry My Dead Body use supernatural conventions to explore changing social identities.
Taiwan within Asian horror cinema – how Taiwanese filmmakers engage with regional traditions while developing recognisably local forms.

One of the book’s most compelling arguments is that the supernatural provides a productive language for exploring Taiwan’s relationship with its past and present. Detention transforms the political violence of the White Terror into a spectral landscape of memory, guilt and historical reckoning. The Tag-Along, The Rope Curse and Incantation bring folklore and ritual into contact with cameras, smartphones and social media.

Taiwanese horror is also transmedial. Detention moved from video game to feature film, television series and novel; The Bridge Curse and Incantation have extended into gaming, while The Tag-Along has expanded into webtoon and virtual reality. Horror thus forms part of a wider creative ecosystem in which cinema intersects with digital media, popular culture and Taiwan’s cultural-content industries.

Taiwanese horror therefore deserves attention beyond horror enthusiasts or film specialists. These films frighten, surprise and sometimes make audiences laugh, but their ghosts also carry history. They negotiate memories of authoritarianism and democratisation, questions of gender and sexuality, and move between temples, cinemas, video games and smartphone screens.

The ghosts haunting contemporary Taiwanese cinema are rarely just ghosts. They offer another way of asking questions about Taiwan: how the past survives in the present, how identities are continually remade, and how a rapidly changing society chooses to remember—and imagine—itself.

Dr Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley is a Research Associate at the Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS University of London, and a host for the New Books Network. She is also a co-editor (with Professor Gary Rawnsley) of the short book series, ‘Anthem Impact in Asian Media, Cinema and Communications’.

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Brian Jay Jones, "George Lucas: A Life" (Little, Brown and Company, 2016)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The essential biography of the influential and beloved filmmaker George Lucas.

On May 25, 1977, a problem-plagued, budget-straining independent science-fiction film opened in a mere thirty-two American movie theaters. Conceived, written, and directed by a little-known filmmaker named George Lucas, the movie originally called The Star Wars quickly drew blocks-long lines, bursting box-office records and ushering in a new way for movies to be made, marketed, and merchandised. It is now one of the most adored–and successful–movie franchises of all time.

Now, the author of the bestselling biography Jim Henson delivers a revelatory look into the life and times of the man who created Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Indiana Jones in George Lucas: A Life (Little, Brown and Company, 2016)

If Star Wars wasn't game-changing enough, Lucas went on to create another blockbuster series with Indiana Jones, and he completely transformed the world of special effects and the way movies sound. His innovation and ambition forged Pixar and Lucasfilm, Industrial Light & Magic, and THX sound.

Lucas's colleagues and competitors offer tantalizing glimpses into his life. His entire career has been stimulated by innovators including Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola, actors such as Harrison Ford, and the very technologies that enabled the creation of his films-and allowed him to keep tinkering with them long after their original releases. Like his unforgettable characters and stories, his influence is unmatched.

Brian Jay Jones is the author of the New York Times bestseller Jim Henson: The Biography, as well as Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of An American Imagination and Washington Irving: An American Original. His most recent book is The Capitol: The Surprising Biography of an American Building. He continues to believe that Han shot first.

Daniel Moran’s writing about literature and film can be found on Pages and Frames. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches writing and co-hosts the long-running podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, available here on the New Books Network and wherever podcasts are found.

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Mulholland Drive at 25: Film Quarterly

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 with dossier editor Eileen G’Sell.

Film Quarterly (FQ) is published four times a year by the University of California Press. For more information about the journal, including subscription and submission information, please visit FQ ’s website.

If you are interested in supporting the work of UC Press and its Journals Program, please consider making a charitable donation to the UC Press Foundation. To learn more about the UC Press Foundation and how to contribute, please visit UC Press’s Support Us page.

Articles mentioned:

Eileen G’Sell; Uncanny Intimacies, Abject Desires. Film Quarterly Fall 2026; 80 (1): 26-29. Link
Laura Westengard; The Radical Intimacy of Rot: Mulholland Drive's Queer Proliferations. Film Quarterly Fall 2026; 80 (1): 30-35. Link
Lori Jo Marso; Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This): David Lynch, Simone de Beauvoir, and “Feeling Like a Feminist”. Film Quarterly Fall 2026; 80 (1): 36-41. Link
Temperance Aghamohammadi; “That’s Not My Voice”: Telephonic Logics and Paranoid Listening in Mulholland Drive. Film Quarterly Fall 2026; 80 (1): 42-47. Link
Eileen G’Sell; “This Is the Girl”: Mulholland Drive, Naomi Watts, and the Double Abjection of the Hollywood Starlet(s). Film Quarterly Fall 2026; 80 (1): 48-56. Link

A complete list of University of California Press journals is available at UC Press Journals.

J. M. Tyree is the editor-in-chief of Film Quarterly and an associate professor in the Cinema Program at VCUarts.

A Rabkin winner for arts journalism, Eileen G'Sell is a film critic and teaching professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

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Vincent Haddad, "Next Time on Dragon Ball: Playing with a Manga and Anime Franchise" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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: Playing with a Manga and Anime Franchise (U Minnesota Press, 2026), Dr. Vincent Haddad investigates how the franchise has maintained huge global demand despite its formulaic plotlines. Examining its exhaustive repetition of storytelling forms across comics, TV series, games, and merchandise, Haddad argues that the convergence of play, fandom, and narrative made Dragon Ball an unlikely success—and a harbinger of broader shifts in the media landscape of franchises from the 1980s to the present.

Dr. Haddad conceives of Dragon Ball as a “franchise toy,” a corporate media property that is constantly remixed by its fans in ways that its owners resist but also ultimately embrace: appropriation is essential to the franchise’s popularity. Over the past forty years, Dr. Haddad argues, Dragon Ball’s deployment of familiar tropes, cultural references, and narrative forms—from classical Chinese stories and the films of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan to American franchises like Superman and Star Wars—has invited unique transcultural play. Through diverse examples of how fans use its characters as “playthings,” Dr. Haddad shows how Dragon Ball travels across international networked fandoms, highlighting the queer, gendered, and racialized dimensions of this play.

Parsing the dynamics of “sites of conflict” between authorized media and fan content, Next Time on Dragon Ball illuminates how fan engagement across the Americas changes the parameters of what a manga and anime franchise is and can be.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Tár

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 portrat of a person persued by her past in the form of an unseen and vengerful force. Lydia Tár is by turns charismatic, repulsive, fascinating, and frightening. She’s a real person and demands a compicated response, just like the film as a whole. Part Amadeus and part Lolita, Tár is a high-water mark for anyone intrested in a portrat of the artist.

Bumper music: Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 - Trauermarsch by Jason Weinberger & WCF Symphony. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

If, like Lydia Tár, you’re fascinated by Mahler, check out Stephen Downes’ 2025 biography.

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Linda Williams and eds. Christine Gledhill et al., "Melodrama As Provocateur" (Duke UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 the University of California, Berkeley. Her highly influential work reframed some of cinema’s most neglected or denigrated genres from a feminist perspective, including documentary, pornography, horror, and melodrama.

Melodrama is the focus of what would become Williams’s final project. In the last few years of her life, she was working on a project that traced melodrama’s divergent fortunes in France and the US—and argued for its enduring relevance in contemporary life and culture.

Williams's work on this project was curtailed when she suffered a stroke, the complications of which led to her death in 2025. In the wake of her passing, some of her friends, collaborators, and admirers joined together to make a book that honors and memorializes her. Not only sharing Williams’s unfinished work with the world, Melodrama as Provocateur also expands on that work through a series of essays by scholars working in melodrama studies across time, place, and media.

For New Books in Film, Alix Beeston sits down with the three editors of Melodrama as Provocateur: Christine Gledhill, an esteemed scholar of film and feminism who is presently a Visiting Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Leeds; Laura Horak, Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University; and Elisabeth R. Anker, Professor of American Studies and Political Science and Director of Film Studies at the George Washington University.

Celebrating the model of incisive and generous research, teaching, mentorship, and collaboration Williams provided, the editors of Melodrama as Provocateur discuss the unique shape of a scholarly book generated in response to a colleague’s unfinished labor. They also take up some of Williams's provocations, including the political possibilities of melodrama in contemporary culture—from Trumpian discourse to trans cinema and beyond—and explore the kinds of labor, thought, and feeling necessary for studying melodrama as a form that moves or provokes us.

Like their book, a work forged in grief and loss, Gledhill, Horak, and Anker's conversation casts film and media scholarship as an act of collectivity and love: a bid for a better kind of world.

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Ellery E. Foutch, "A Perfectionist Impulse: The Art of Stopping Time in the Nineteenth Century (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Cultural studies of the nineteenth century often categorize their subjects as being motivated by one of two opposing notions: a wholehearted embrace of progress or an antimodernist nostalgia. A Perfectionist Impulse: The Art of Stopping Time in the Nineteenth Century (U Minnesota Press, 2026) centers a different kind of response to the period’s newly intensified awareness of temporality and history: an obsession with preserving perfection. Engaging a diverse set of case studies, Dr. Ellery E. Foutch explores the era’s desire to forestall the march of time and immortalize the fleeting moment through art and technology.

Beginning with an investigation of artist and naturalist Titian Peale’s butterfly illustrations and specimen boxes, Dr. Foutch assesses the implications of attempts to fix animal life in the “perfect state.” She then turns to Harvard’s Ware Collection of Glass Flowers, botanical models meticulously crafted to serve as instructional tools but most famous internationally as a spectacle for tourists. Finally, she scrutinizes the period’s preoccupation with the fragility of the human body, examining artistic representations of the legendary bodybuilder Eugen Sandow, widely known during his time as the “Perfect Man.” Highlighting the paradoxical way in which these attempts at preservation ultimately sap the vitality from the organic processes they seek to arrest, Dr. Foutch uses these curious objects to unpack a deep set of cultural anxieties around decay and death.

By analyzing objects of mass culture and natural history using methods typically reserved for works of art, A Perfectionist Impulse provides a unique window into how nineteenth-century scientists, technologists, artists, and entertainers rendered a common desire for perfection and immortality. Itself a wondrous collection of attempts to capture the idealized moment, this extensively illustrated book serves as a shining example of our enduring fascination with the ephemeral.

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Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The War of the Worlds

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 3 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 his powers. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and The War of the Worlds (2005) are decades apart, yet united by a single image and devotion to their audiences. The first is as Disneylike as Pinocchio; the second conjures memories of 9/11. Both show domesticity under great strain as families and infrastructures break down; one ends with hope while the other simply stops.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

The War of the Worlds is based on H. G. Wells’s 1898 novel, which you can purchase here .

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

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Kathleen W. Taylor Kollman, "The Fictional Female Presidency in Film, Television, and Literature: Representations from 1932 to 2024" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 representations of this idea that we have seen over the past hundred years. The Fictional Female Presidency in Film, Television, and Literature: Representations from 1932 to 2024 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026) takes up a number of different and intriguing examples of this idea, a woman serving as president, and unpacks the various narratives to help us understand what popular culture may be communicating about this concept and what those narratives may be teaching the audience (viewers or readers). Taylor Kollman comes at her research from a variety of perspectives, including Media Studies, Women’s Studies, Feminist Studies, and American Studies. This makes the research particularly rich – since it explores these ideas from a host of analytical viewpoints, helping the reader to consider different genres (television, film, literature) and different approaches. Undergirding all of this is an interrogation of the idea of women and power, which is a controversial concept for many voters, even if it remains unacknowledged.

Taylor Kollman goes through the decades, with a focus on examples of female presidents in a variety of different cultural artifacts. In tracing this concept through almost a hundred years of different narratives, the research highlights some interesting themes, including the accidental way in which women become president within the fictional framework. One of the points Taylor Kollman makes is that, in all the different genres and contexts, there seems to be something wrong with this idea of a woman as president. Often the characters are presented as deceptive, evil, corrupt, illegitimate, or they are seen as incapable of doing the job and are often torn between work and homelife/family life. In tracing these examples, Taylor Kollman also provides the reader with an understanding of the different iterations (waves) of feminism and feminist thought, as well as noting the various backlashes to feminism. The Fictional Female Presidency in Film, Television, and Literature takes the reader through a host of different examples, fleshing out these feminist and backlash imaginary spaces that focus on women and power.

Another part of the equation, that is often overlooked in the research on this topic, is that there are fewer female film and television producers, directors, and showrunners, thus often constraining the opportunity to present these ideas of woman and power. This also influences the narratives that come before audiences, since women are not generally “trusted” in the same way that men are to helm major film releases with multi-million dollar budgets. This is another form of reality influencing the imaginary, but in a less expected way. The Fictional Female Presidency in Film, Television, and Literature: Representations from 1932 to 2024 takes the reader from Betty Boop for President to Allison Janney as President Grace Penn in The Diplomat and many other fascinating examples of fictional portrayals of women as president of the United States.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social

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David Zeitlyn and Chihab El Khachab eds., "Understanding Social Images: Essays on Visual Methods and Teaching Visual Anthropology" (Berghahn, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode I discuss the book Understanding Social Images: Essays on Visual Methods and Teaching Anthropology (Berghahn, 2025) with co-editors David Zeitlyn and Chihab El Khachab, a posthumous collection of writings by the late anthropologist Marcus Banks. Banks was a key the figures in development of visual anthropology, but his work remains of continuing relevance. This volume brings together several of his essays on film, photography, archive work, as well as reflections of visual methods such as photo-elicitation and ways of teaching visual anthroplogy.

The conversation begins with Marcus Banks himself, his place within anthropology, his influence on visual anthropology, and the broader effort to preserve and extend his work through a set of posthumous collections. From there, the discussion turns to one of the central themes that emerge from across several essays, namely, that images are not simply illustrations or transparent representations, but socially and temporally situated objects with disctinct social lives. From there, we discuss Banks’s interest in the materiality of the visual and how the circulation and afterlives of images gather new meaning over time.

A substantial part of the interview focuses on Banks’s film Raju and His Friends (1988), which proved foundational to his later reflections on ethnographic filmmaking, and especially on the ethics and politics of representation. As well as providing an introduction to Marcus Banks’s work and serving as a tribute to a scholar whose influence continues to shape the field, many of the topics covered in the interview touches on many broader questions in anthropology itself, and as such will be of interest not only to students of visual anthropology, but to anthropology students and anthropologists more generally.

David Zeitlyn is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Wolfson College. His work spans visual anthropology, photography and archives, religion and divination, and long-term fieldwork in Cameroon. He also collaborated with Marcus Banks on the second edition of Visual Methods in Social Research.

Chihab El Khachab is Associate Professor in Visual Anthropology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Wolfson College. He is a social anthropologist specializing in visual and media anthropology, especially Egyptian media production, and is the author of Making Film in Egypt: How Labor, Technology, and Mediation Shape the Industry.

Further reading and resources mentioned in the recording

Jainism as Social and Visual Practice: Anthropological Perspectives
Marcus Banks. Edited by John E. Cort, David Zeitlyn and Chihab El Khachab. New Delhi: Primus Books, 2026. This posthumous volume gathers Banks’s writings on Jain social organization and visual representation.
The revived HADDON catalogue of ethnographic films
Originally created by Marcus Banks in the 1990s, HADDON is an online catalogue of archival ethnographic film. The revived site presents a restored version of the database, now hosted through Paul Henley’s Silent Time Machine project.
Raju and His Friends (1988)
The film discussed at length in this episode, and a key reference point for Banks’s later reflections on visual anthropology and ethnographic filmmaking.

Marcus Banks was Professor of Visual Anthropology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA), University of Oxford until he passed away in 2020. He was a pioneer in integrating visual approaches into the mainstream of social and cultural anthropology. With Howard Morphy, he edited the influential volume Rethinking Visual Anthropology (Yale University Press, 1999).

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Anja Foerschner, "Female Art and Agency in Yugoslavia, 1971–2001" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In Female Art and Agency in Yugoslavia, 1971–2001 (Bloomsbury, 2024), Anja Foerschner offers a compelling exploration of the women artists, curators, scholars, and activists who shaped the cultural landscape of Yugoslavia and its successor states. Drawing on both original research and existing scholarship, she traces the emergence of the New Art Practice of the late 1960s and 1970s, highlighting the pivotal role of Belgrade’s Student Cultural Centre, where women were instrumental in forging a progressive artistic and curatorial vision.

Through insightful examinations of performance art, video art, and the development of feminist thought in Yugoslavia, Foerschner reveals how the region carved out a distinctive place within the international postwar avant-garde. Situating Yugoslav feminism in dialogue with Western and neighbouring contexts, she sheds new light on the complex intersections of art, politics, and social change. By exploring artistic responses to the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and the enduring political dimensions of cultural production, this book invites readers to reconsider the legacies of activist art and their resonance in our present time.

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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)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 available at 988 in the United States.

Suicide in Popular Media and Culture: Studies in Framing a Social Catastrophe (Bristol University Press, 2026) brings together scholars from across disciplines to examine how suicide is mythologized, politicized, and challenged across film, TV, young adult literature, digital platforms, online communities, and more. From news coverage of celebrity suicide to social media interventions with at-risk youth, this wide-ranging collection explores suicide’s intersections with class, gender, chronic illness, and cultural identity.

The book is co-edited by Mike F. Alvarez (Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of New Hampshire), Warren J. Bareiss (Professor of Communication at the University of South Carolina Upstate), and Jolane Flanigan (Professor of Communication Studies at Rocky Mountain College and a licensed mental health counselor).

Some Crisis Resources

*Note: some of these may utilize emergency services or law enforcement to conduct wellness/welfare checks or active rescues. Ask if these are possibilities at any point during your conversation.

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline

Website

Dial 988

The Trevor Project

Website

Provides support for LGBTQ+ youth facing crisis

1-866-488-7386

Text: 678678

Chat: Here

Crisis Text Line

Text HOME to 741-741

Trans Lifeline

1-877-565-8860 (U.S.)

1-877-330-6366 (Canada)

Warmline.org

Website

Contains links to warmlines in every state

Provides peer support

Find a Helpline

Website

For those not in the U.S. Search for links to crisis centers worldwide

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Adam Geczy, "Glasses" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 correcting vision. Glasses alter, enhance, and shield the way that we view the world, and the way the world sees us.

Everyone has encounters with glasses, passively or actively, from reading glasses to sunglasses. At times they are the main identifiers in a face (think John Lennon), and they signify extremes from nerdy and brainy to cool and sleazy. They are alternately the most mundane of things on our bodies and potentially the most glamorous.

In this edition of the Object Lessons series, Glasses (Bloomsbury, 2026) by Adam Geczy explores this most pervasive and accessible accessory and shows that it is both a conduit to and a barrier between ourselves and the world outside.

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Soraya Murray, "Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination" (MIT Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination (MIT Press, 2026) is the first dedicated examination of popular movies classified as “thrillers” that channel societal anxiety or dread about advanced technologies like supercomputers, robotics, AI, biotech, military weaponry, and surveillance culture. Technothriller is about the changing imagination of technology within an American context and its role in engineering some of the most profound ideologies of modern life.

Soraya Murray is a Professor in the Film and Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work explores the visual culture of innovation, advanced computation, and its imaginaries as imaged in popular American films, for which technology assumes a central role. Murray’s first book, On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space (I.B. Tauris, 2018, paperback 2021), examines popular video games like Assassin’s Creed, Spec Ops: The Line, Metal Gear Solid, and Grand Theft Auto as visual culture. She currently serves as Provost of Porter College, UCSC.

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Krzysztof Rowiński, "Failure Narratives Beyond Redemption: Twentieth Century Literature and Film" (Routledge, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 7 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Today’s guest, Krzysztof Rowiński, is the author of Failure Narratives Beyond Redemption: Twentieth Century Literature and Film (Routledge, 2026). This book focuses on the concept of non- redemptive failure, a type of failure that is not part of a larger narrative of success or narrative redemption, with attention to how the concept functions between literature, critical theory, and other fields. Examining literature and film from mid- twentieth- century Poland, Italy, and the United States, it traces productive effects of failure which cannot survive into the future, yet have an important, transformative impact in the moment in which they occur. The book engages with the work of John Williams, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Bruno Jasieński, proposing a theory of failure at the intersection of literary study, performance theory, and political thought. In discussing these examples, the book examines the place of failure in the broader context of modern and contemporary US American, Italian, and Polish literary and cultural traditions.

Because of its interdisciplinary potential, this study might appeal to readers in art history, philosophy, political theory, and other fields within the humanities and social sciences. Failure Narratives Beyond Redemption offers a framework that could not only spotlight the contribution of literary studies to the topic, in the form of narrative analysis but also become part of the theoretical apparatus for further research in these fields.

Jane Hwang Degenhardt is Professor English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Globalizing Fortune on the Early Modern Stage (Oxford UP, 2022) and Islamic Conversion and Christian Resistance on the Early Modern Stage (Edinburgh UP, 2012). She is also a co-editor of the academic journal English Literary Renaissance.

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Jonathan L. Friedmann, "Chai Noon: Jews and the Cinematic Wild West" (U Wisconsin Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 4 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Only a few Westerns contain explicitly Jewish stories or themes, and very rarely do Old West tales involve identifiably Jewish characters. Yet Jewish contributors have shaped the Western—once Hollywood's most popular genre—ever since the silent era, both onscreen and offscreen, and some filmmakers have sought to infuse the genre with a distinctly Jewish sensibility. In Chai Noon: Jews and the Cinematic Wild West (University of Wisconsin Press, 2025), Friedmann engages with larger themes of Jewish identity in popular film, including depictions of race, ethnicity, and foreignness. He also identifies similar concerns within the invention and creation of the imaginary West writ large in American culture. The juxtapositions prove to be both unexpected and intuitively understandable.

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Grizzly Man

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 summers–until one of them killed him and his girlfriend. Werner Herzog’s 2005 documentary Grizzly Man tells Treadwell’s story and raises the issues of what happens when we ascribe human motives and characteristics to animals and the ways in which we all attempt to stake out our own territory in an indifferent world.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Herzog’s most recent book The Future o f Truth (2025) is a series of essays about what constitutes truth and the threats truth faces in our age of AI and deepfakes.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

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Blue Jasmine

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 woman whose fantasy life and self-deception break down and both feature incredible performances by the lead actress: in Streetcar, it’s Vivien Leigh and here it’s Cate Blanchett. And if Streetcar is a high point of Eliza Kazan’s filmography, Blue Jasmine is surely one of Allen’s and perhaps the best of the subgenre Woody Allen Movies Without The Woody Allen Character.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Blue Jasmine is Allen’s 44th film; his memoir, Apropos of Nothing, details how he became a writer and director of fifty films.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

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Shikha Jhingan, "The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology" (Wayne State UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 9 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

How the sound of the female playback voice impacts Bollywood's cultural, musical, and cinematic environment.

Drawing on sound studies and performance theory, scholar Shikha Jhingan explores the discursive nature of the female playback voice in Bombay film songs in The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology (Wayne State UP, 2025). Mapping the production, circulation, and reception of the voices of singing stars—notably Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle—Jhingan situates the singing voice as a cinematic object with limitless possibilities of distribution and dispersal. She employs the perspectives of a diverse range of listeners across a vast media landscape to illustrate how the affective charge of the female playback voice, combined with developments in audio technology, has led to a gradual expansion of opportunities for women in film, popular music, and media and audio production. With nuanced exploration of the way the human voice becomes intertwined with devices such as the microphone, radio, cassettes, and digital technologies, Jhingan argues for the sonic excess of the female voice beyond the narrative and visual. The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema is an authoritative addition to the field of sound studies with implications for gender studies, performance studies, and cinema studies.

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Allyson Nadia Field, "Acts of Love: Black Performance and the Kiss That Changed Film History" (U California Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 6 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 portray African American affection, it was lost for over a century until its rediscovery inspired contemporary audiences with a powerful and enduring depiction of Black love. More than a missing piece in an untold history of Black cinematic performance, Something Good—and the magnetism of Suttle and Brown—attests to the power of Black performance on stage and screen from the nineteenth century to today.

In Acts of Love: Black Performance and the Kiss That Changed Film History (University of California Press, 2026), Allyson Nadia Field tells the story of Something Good and recovers the forgotten yet fascinating lives of its performers and their world. Drawing a vivid picture from sparse historical records, Acts of Love examines popular culture's negotiation of blackness to reconsider the intersections of minstrelsy, vaudeville, and cinema in ragtime America. This book not only presents the story of Something Good, its performers, and the drama of its rediscovery; it shows how the rediscovery of this short early film changes our understanding of American film history.

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Mackenzi Lee, "Masters of the Universe: Teela: Daughter of Eternos" (Mattel, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 1 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 KINGDOM
Four years after Skeletor decimated the kingdom of Eternos, Teela and the scattered refugees of Eternia survive by never staying in one place for long. When a brutal storm of acidic rain deep within the Evergreen Forest leaves their camp ravaged and hope at its thinnest, some, like Teela’s friend Locke, begin to plan for a future beyond Eternia. But Teela knows her father Duncan, the once-mighty Man-At-Arms, won’t survive leaving the land he swore to protect.
A FORBIDDEN ALLIANCE
Desperate to save her people, Teela ventures to Darksmoke to bargain with the ancient dragon Granamyr. He bestows upon her a vial filled with a mysterious, powerful elixir—and no instructions on its use. Enter Evil-Lyn, Skeletor’s ruthless second-in-command, who intercepts Teela with a dangerous proposal: an alliance. In exchange for the vial’s secrets, Teela and the Heroic Warriors must someday help the sorceress overthrow Skeletor himself.
A MAGIC THAT COULD SAVE—OR DESTROY—THEM ALL
The vial heals the sick and brings food back to empty tables—until the forest around the camp begins to change. Rivers vanish. Trees peel to bone. Creatures flee. As the land around them withers at an ever-increasing pace, Teela must confront an impossible question: Has the very magic she used to save her people doomed Eternia instead?

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Robin R. Means Coleman and Novotny Lawrence eds., "The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Film" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 29 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 stories about Black life, history, culture, or "Blackness" has taken two forms. First, the history and politics of race have been centered in the horror genre. Second, Black horror has become an increasingly visible topic in mainstream discourses with scholars, critics, and fans contending that Black horror is seeing its so-called renaissance. However, critical attention to Blackness in horror has primarily focused on the U.S. and western world, despite Black stories having featured prominently in the genre-as actors, screenwriters, directors, producers-globally and across cultures.
The essays in this handbook explore global Black horror cinema by interrogating Blackness and the ways in which it manifests in films across the diaspora and around the world. Chapters pose and answer questions including how taxonomies of race are presented; who is considered "Black?"; how is Blackness constructed in the culture in which it is produced and/or distributed?; How is horror defined and represented globally and/or culturally?; and what textual role does Blackness play in horror?
Sophisticated, innovative, argument-driven research that brings to bear the most enlightened reflections upon Black horror's place in the world drives this handbook. Significantly, The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Film (Oxford UP, 2024) presents expansive scholarship about Blackness, expanding the ways in which researchers, critics, and fans see and make meaning of Black experiences. In this volume, leading scholars from around the world contribute provocative, worthy examinations of the popular genre of horror in all its rich and empowering possibility.

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Oscar Winberg, "Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics" (UNC Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 25 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Political historian Oscar Winberg has a fascinating new book titled Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics. This book weaves together quite a few different threads in examining the historical context in which the television show, All In The Family, landed on American television screens. Archie Bunker for President examines why this particular sitcom was a kind of inflection point within U.S. politics, within the media landscape at the time and moving forward, and how television production shifted and changed around this one particular television series. Winberg also lays out the path from the early 1970s, when All in the Family first aired, to our contemporary political moment, when celebrity and politics seem to be inescapably intertwined.

As Winberg notes in our conversation, television as an entity is inherently conservative, since the functional model was about appealing to the lowest common denominator so that advertisers would be willing to pay for time during shows. In order to reach the most viewers, at least in the age of network television, the television series needed to appeal to the largest market possible, and not “turn off” viewers. What happens in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the television show All in the Family is that this dynamic shifts, and the case is made that it isn’t about reaching the most people, but about reaching the people who have the means and inclination to purchase what the advertisers are selling. This is part of the pitch that Norman Lear makes, that CBS executive Bob Wood finally decides to gamble on by greenlighting All in the Family. The dynamic inside the show itself is to focus on politics: to have the characters within the series discuss different political issues, and engage with the impacts of these issues, from women’s rights and reproductive health to homosexuality to racism and the anti-war movement. In designing All in the Family with Archie Bunker (played by Carroll O’Conner) clearly defined as a conservative and as a bigot, and with Archie’s daughter, Gloria Stivic (played by Sally Struthers) and son in law, Mike Stivic (played by Rob Reiner), as liberals and politically active, the show embedded politics within the narrative. Edith Bunker, played by Jean Stapleton, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment, which was making its way through the ratification process while the series was airing, providing yet another avenue for political discussion within the show’s structure.

There were quite a few other shows that were developed at the same time as All in the Family that took up similarly political themes in iconic ways, from the Mary Tyler Moore Show to M*A*S*H to Maude. Political conversations were the fabric of these shows in much the same way as in All in the Family, where characters find themselves experiencing dimensions of politics in their lives and they discuss this with friends and family within the narrative construction. This also translated to Americans discussing these shows with each other at dinner, or at the “water cooler”, or at the beauty parlor or barbershop. Given the structure of television in the 1970s and 1980s, before cable and streaming services, options were more limited options, and many of these shows had great writers, actors, and showrunners. This was “appointment television” because there was no way to record or otherwise go back and watch the episode. Episodes were only available at their regularly scheduled time and day—which also meant that lots and lots of Americans were watching the same show at the same time.

In some sense, Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics is not only about how one television show remade American politics, but also about how All in the Family remade American television, opening up the networks to developing and airing television shows that integrate politics (of all kinds) into the narratives. There is still quite a lot of television, particularly network television, that is pitched to the broadest possible audience, but the narratives in police procedurals or hospital-centered series or sitcoms integrate different dimensions of politics into their storylines in ways that had not been done before All in the Family.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI.

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Tony Lee Moral, "A Century of Hitchcock: The Man, the Myths, the Legacy" (UP of Kentucky, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 22 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

For over a century, Alfred Hitchcock has remained one of cinema's most influential directors. Known as the Master of Suspense, this visionary filmmaker directed more than fifty films over six decades. His thriller The Lodger (1927) marked the start of his signature style, which was later exemplified in classic films like Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963).

Hitchcock's work received tremendous success and critical acclaim. While he never won the competitive Academy Award for Best Director, he received five Oscar nominations, two Golden Globes, the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, a BAFTA Fellowship, multiple lifetime achievement awards, and two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Nine of his films are preserved in the United States National Film Registry. His mastery of tension, innovative camera techniques, and psychological depth continue to inspire and influence modern filmmakers such as Christopher Nolan, Jordan Peele, and Bong Joon Ho.

Drawing on new archival research, previously unpublished interviews, and a rigorous examination of key biographies, A Century of Hitchcock: The Man, the Myths, the Legacy (University Press of Kentucky, 2026) challenges the long-standing narratives that have shaped Hitchcock's legacy. Author Tony Lee Moral revisits controversial claims regarding Hitchcock's alleged abuses, scrutinizing biographer Donald Spoto's interpretations—particularly Spoto's portrayal of the director's relationship with actress Tippi Hedren. With his analysis of Spoto's 1980 interview of Hedren, Moral reveals for the first time how one key document contradicts decades of exaggeration.

In this comprehensive reappraisal of Hitchcock's career, Moral encourages readers to explore the complexities of creative collaboration and the risks of relying on a single biographical narrative. Marking one hundred years since Hitchcock's first film, The Pleasure Garden, and fifty years since his last film, Family Plot, Moral reexamines the director's cinematic brilliance, storytelling mastery, creative partnerships, and controversies, offering a fresh perspective on Hitchcock's legacy in the post-#MeToo era.

Tony Lee Moral is a British filmmaker and author who specializes in film history, especially the work of Alfred Hitchcock. He is the author of Hitchcock and the Making of Marnie, The Making of Hitchcock's The Birds, The Young Alfred Hitchcock's Moviemaking Master Class, and Alfred Hitchcock Storyboards.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th- and 19th-century British Literature.

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Thomas Doherty, "How Film Became History: The Rise of the Archival Documentary in 1930s America" (Columbia UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 20 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 together from the raw material of older films. At around the same time, the transition to synchronous sound added a transformative new element to the grammar of cinema: the voiceover narration. Together, the film inventory and offscreen commentary gave rise to the archival documentary, the motion picture genre that preserves and rewinds history.

In How Film Became History: The Rise of the Archival Documentary in 1930s America (Columbia University Press, 2026), Dr. Thomas Doherty tells the story of the archival documentary, spotlighting the first films that set out deliberately to preserve history on screen. He shows how newsreels and documentaries challenged the era’s restrictive censorship and how film began to engage with the great political issues of the day. Doherty considers a range of films—some well-known, others obscure—including J. Stuart Blackton’s The Film Parade (1933), Laurence Stallings and Truman Talley’s The First World War (1934), Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.’s Hitler’s Reign of Terror (1934), Max Eastman and Herbert Axelbank’s Tsar to Lenin (1937), and the March of Time screen magazine. Tracing the creation of the archival documentary, How Film Became History illuminates how motion pictures have come to shape our vision of the past.

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Angharad N. Valdivia and Isabel Molina-Guzmán, "Rebooting Inequality: Critical Takes on Film and Television Remakes" (NYU Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 20 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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, remakes, and revivals. Spearheaded by media giants like Disney and Netflix, these projects promise progress—more diverse casts, “timely” social commentary, and redemptive nostalgia—yet they often reproduce the very inequalities they claim to address.
Rebooting Inequality: Critical Takes on Film and Television Remakes (NYU Press, 2026) brings together twelve concise, theoretically rich essays that interrogate how Hollywood’s recycling of intellectual property sustains entrenched systems of racial, gender, and sexual inequality. Across genres and platforms, contributors explore how the industry’s nostalgic return to familiar stories masks an ongoing reliance on white, patriarchal, and heteronormative frameworks of storytelling and production.
Blending critical race, feminist, and media studies, the collection analyzes dozens of recent film and television revivals, remakes, and reboots from Roseanne to Charlie’s Angels to ask what it means when entertainment markets strive for diversity while leaving the structures of inequality intact.
Accessible yet deeply analytical, Rebooting Inequality exposes how nostalgia has become both a marketing strategy and a political tool, revealing how the “new” Hollywood continues to reanimate the past—profitably, repeatedly, and unequally.

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Sumana Roy, "Plant Thinkers of Twentieth-Century Bengal" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 19 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 ‘plant thinkers’, looks at how their stories and songs, art and films, and, of course, the idiomatic affected Bengali life and thought. Forest and garden, grass and root, weeds and magical plants—supported by a foliage of thought that allowed them to see beyond the botanical, Rabindranath Tagore, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, Jibanananda Das, Shakti Chattopadhyay, Satyajit Ray, and others derived their worldview, their poetics and politics, from the plant world. Jagadish Chandra Bose’s scientific experiments, his research and the philosophy that propelled it, religions and rituals that involved an affective relationship with the natural world, a subterranean invocation of plant philosophy in actions and words, in living and in creative practice, and the political possibilities beyond the nation state that such thinking generated give this book its sap and flow. What might we take from these plant thinkers to rehabilitate our consciousness today?

Arnab Dutta Roy is Assistant Professor of World Literature and Postcolonial Theory at Florida Gulf Coast University

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The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 18 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 him as a kind of municipal mascot; eventually, they learned that he had been bound in darkness until his release and struggled to learn more about his past. Werner Herzog took the story as a basis for his 1974 film–not one of his trademark documentaries–and used it as a meditation on the human condition. It’s an unforgettable experience, like seeing 2001 for the first time. Join us as we discuss the film’s ideas, humor, and audacity.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

The German title of the film is Every Man for Himself and God Against All, which is also the title of Werner Herzog’s 2024 memoir.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

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Benjamin Dalton, "Catherine Malabou and Contemporary French Literature and Film: Witnessing Plasticity" (Edinburgh UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 18 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Our bodies and brains are radically transformable, mutable and plastic. From the neuroplasticity of the brain to the epigenetic malleability of our bodies and of all organic life, the work of the contemporary French philosopher Catherine Malabou invites us to consider our plasticity as both a creative resource and an ethical challenge.

Catherine Malabou and Contemporary French Literature and Film: Witnessing Plasticity (Edinburgh UP, 2026) brings Malabou's philosophy into dialogue with contemporary literature and film. It reads conceptions of plasticity and neuroplasticity in Malabou through the mutant bodies of Leos Carax's films; the shape-shifting bodies of Marie Darrieussecq's novels and theatre; the terrifying, traumatic metamorphoses depicted in the fiction of Marie NDiaye; and the anarchic sexualities and identities celebrated in the cinema and writing of Alain Guiraudie. It argues that, in different ways, Malabou's philosophy and literary and filmic texts develop modes of bearing witness to plasticity which can supplement, challenge and extend scientific understandings of biological plasticity, constituting ethical and creative sites of exploration.

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Ayşehan Jülide Etem, "Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations" (Columbia UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 16 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations (Columbia UP, 2026) offers a powerful new account of how film shaped international relations and national identity. Drawing on previously unexamined and recently declassified archives in Turkey and the United States, Ayşehan Jülide Etem demonstrates how both countries used educational films to align institutional agendas and geopolitical interests. By tracing the transnational network of educational cinema, Etem uncovers how film functioned as infrastructure, circulating ideologies, organizing institutions, and training citizens. Moving beyond conventional accounts of propaganda and soft power, this book exposes how film was central to the making of modern Turkey and sheds new light on the media’s role in global politics.

Author Ayşehan Jülide Etem is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, where she also directs the Film Studies Concentration. A media studies scholar, Dr. Etem’s research examines how film operates within infrastructures, how it is strategically sponsored, produced, exhibited, and circulated to shape public behavior, manage populations, and mediate power.

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Wake Up Dead Man (Fr Scott Bailey): The Priest who Helped Hollywood Make a Murder Mystery Movie about the Church

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 15 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 uncle and aunt in Denver connected him with their pastor in Denver, Father Scott Bailey, who became an advisor to the project. He talks about the process and the big questions of this movie with me. (And I admit: I hated the beginning and stopped watching a few minutes in. After reading about Fr Scott online and finding several Catholic sources who praised the movie, I gave it another look. I’m glad I did, because I think it’s not only entertaining but also important … and beautiful.)

Article in First Things by Father Scott about the movie and his role in it, “Wake Up Dead Man Captures the Beauty of Priestly Ministry,” January 5, 2026.
Article in Denver Catholic about Fr Scott and the movie, “A Denver Priest, a Hollywood Director and a Bowl of Fettuccine: Father Scott Bailey Advises on Catholic Life for New ‘Knives Out’ Film” by Jay Sorgi, November 22, 2025.
Screenplay of Wake Up Dead Man by Rian Johnson, the director and writer, available on his website.
Fr Scott Bailey at the Archdiocese of Denver.

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Es-pranza Humphrey, "Act Black: Posters from Black American Stage & Screen" (Poster House Museum, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 12 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Starting in the 1880s, Black performers, and those invested in telling stories centering Black people, attempted to counter the dehumanizing and harmful stereotypes used to portray Black characters. Shows began touting “All Colored Revues” to indicate that a cast was made up of actual Black performers rather than white people in blackface, and that these spectacles aimed to build stories around the perception of Black experiences. Although these performances were sometimes flawed, and even overly prejudiced, they represented a significant form of Black American cultural development and expression.

Since theatrical performances were rarely recorded, and many of the movies that featured all Black casts are now considered “lost films,” films for which no copy is known to survive, advertising posters often provide the only remaining evidence of the most important productions featuring Black performers between the 1870s and 1940s. These posters, and the historic innovations of playwrights, composers, directors, producers, and the Black performers behind them, are the subjects of the exhibition, Act Black: Posters From Black American Stage and Screen, curated by our guest for this episode, Assistant Curator of Collections at New York City’s Poster House museum, Es-pranza Humphrey.

Act Black: Posters from Black American Stage & Screen is on view at Poster House through September 6, 2026. Exhibition resources are also available via the Bloomberg Connects app until September 6, and at the Poster House online exhibition archive thereafter.

Es-pranza’s recommended reading list is available at the Additions to the Archive Substack.

Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Patrick Noonan, "Age of Disaffection: The Aesthetic Critique of Politics in 1960s Japan" (Columbia UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 10 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 revolts appeared to fail in their efforts to revolutionize Japanese society, artists and intellectuals came to reject the ideals of postwar politics. Instead, they advocated withdrawing from political participation and making self-transformation the grounds for social change.
This provocative book uncovers a paradox at the heart of the 1960s: how political disillusionment became the basis for a new form of politics—a politics of the self. Examining aesthetic criticism, popular literature, avant-garde art, cinema, and political theory, Patrick Noonan argues that cultural producers in 1960s Japan cultivated what he calls an “ethos of disaffection” toward revolutionary politics and postwar society. Departing from approaches that define politics as contestation, Age of Disaffection: The Aesthetic Critique of Politics in 1960s Japan (Columbia UP, 2025) foregrounds cultivation, or the production of ways of feeling and relating to the world in efforts to redefine the political. It presents an unorthodox account of the 1960s: withdrawal from political activity developed not as the decade ended but as it was unfolding. Noonan reveals how Japanese artists and intellectuals in this period confronted a crucial question that continues to vex efforts at radical change today: transform institutions or alter how people relate to themselves and others?

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Ana I. Oancea, "Dangerous Creations: The Inventor Novel in Fin-de-siècle France" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 6 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 literature by analyzing the works of Jules Verne, Albert Robida, Émile Zola, and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam. Their writings challenge the role of science in shaping French national identity and aim to transform contemporary understandings of science and technology. The book reveals how Verne, Robida, Zola, and de l’Isle-Adam reimagine the figure of the inventor, reshaping the literary standards of their time. Universally male in these narratives, the inventor serves as a flawed exemplar of national heroism during the Age of Empire – a period marked by significant external threats and internal strife – while also embodying unrestrained creativity. Ultimately, the inventor novel reflects broader French anxieties surrounding scientific progress, empire, and gender. Ana Oancea explores the transmedia and transnational legacy of the fin-de-siècle inventor novel through vignettes that highlight similarly themed narratives in contemporary popular culture. These sections engage with films, television series, graphic narratives, and video games that reinterpret key aspects of the inventor narrative, shedding light on its power structures, racial and gender politics, and colonial aspirations.

Guest Ana Oancea is Associate Professor of French at the University of Delaware. Her research interests include the intersections of science and literature, adaptation studies, and visual culture. She has recently published articles in Forum for Modern Language Studies, Science Fiction Film and Television, and French Screen Studies.

Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean, with a book manuscript in progresson posthumanist ecological engagement in the surrealist movement.

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Frontier Films for America250: On the Western Genre and Beyond with Matthew J. Franck

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 6 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 Politics at Princeton University, as well as a senior fellow at the Witherspoon Institute and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Radford University, he has written, edited, and contributed to many books, including Against the Imperial Judiciary (1996).

Drawing on his Public Discourse column, “The Bookshelf,” which often veers into film history and criticism, we discuss American frontier films broadly construed in light of our country’s 250th anniversary and the successful Artemis II rocket mission. Using Frederick Jackson Turner’s essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893), we look at why the western is the most prolific genre in film history and how it offers viewers a vicarious lens into its pioneer heroic ethos, from literary works like those of James Fenimore Cooper and Mark Twain, to cinema, whether the westerns of John Ford or science and space exploration movies today. Although the western frontier may have closed, Americans still keep making new ones.

Hosted by Ryan Shinkel, Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. The transcript for this interview is available on our new Substack page, “Madison’s Footnotes.”

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Jeremy Harding's Analogue Africa: Notes on the Anti-Colonial Imagination

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 5 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 in the London Review of Books, from which a number of these essays were drawn. Harding explores the intersection of politics and culture on the African continent, and unearths stories that explain the dialectical relations between the two spheres during the colonial and post-colonial moments. Never heavy-handed, Harding's mode is the exploratory, and one comes away from his nuanced narratives edified. Discussed in the podcast are several of Harding's pieces, including the complicated and unanticipated journey of Kamel Daoud in his rewriting of Camus's The Stranger, and Camus's own ambivalent legacy around colonial rule.

Read the transcript here.

Leonard Benardo is a vice president for the Open Society Foundations.

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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)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 2 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 and broadcast their way of life to a curious European public. Considered a “lost tribe,” the Lacandón were thought to be the closest living relatives of the ancient Maya.
De Colmont became a celebrity explorer whose adventures generated considerable attention. The Lacandón themselves, however, were silenced in his tale. Nearly a century later, in In the Land of the Lacandón: A Graphic History of Adventure and Imperialism (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2025), Dr. Richard Ivan Jobs and Dr. Steven Van Wolputte have taken up this story in all its complexity, creating a graphic history from de Colmont’s narratives and images in the form of a heroic adventure comic. An essay contextualizing and historicizing the tale follows, as does an evocative, reflective poem by Tsotsil writer Manuel Bolom Pale, which offers an Indigenous perspective on the encounter. A captivating experiment in form, the book puts an immersive new spin on studying the past.
In the Land of the Lacandón illuminates de Colmont’s expedition against the backdrop of late imperialism on the eve of the Second World War in Europe. It investigates the history of exploration, science, and media, revealing how these narratives represented and constructed Indigenous Peoples for the public – and how such representations continue to resonate.

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Through the Lens of Taiwan: Film, History, and Identity

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 of Taiwanese cinema, discussing the relationship between film, history, and identity in Taiwan.

Drawing on Chen’s teaching experience at the University of Tartu, he highlights how Estonian students engage deeply with Taiwanese films, particularly due to shared historical experiences of colonisation and political repression. This common ground allows students to connect emotionally with themes such as trauma and national identity, especially in films addressing the White Terror period.

Chen emphasises that understanding Taiwan’s cinema requires strong historical awareness, as film history closely mirrors Taiwan’s broader political and social development. Unlike other East Asian film industries, Taiwan’s cinematic identity is shaped by its complex colonial past, multicultural society, and ongoing geopolitical tensions. Language also plays a crucial role, reflecting shifts in identity from a China-centred perspective toward a distinctly Taiwanese consciousness.

Aesthetically, Taiwanese cinema, especially the New Cinema movement, is characterised by realism, long takes, and a contemplative style that resonates globally. Directors like Hou Hsiao-Hsien create stories with universal themes, allowing international audiences to relate to Taiwanese experiences.

Chen also discusses King Hu’s films, which blend action with Buddhist philosophy, emphasising harmony with nature and the concept of emptiness. In contrast, films about the White Terror demonstrate how cinema helps process collective trauma and educate younger generations. While earlier films treated these topics with gravity, newer filmmakers approach them more lightly, making them more accessible.

Ultimately, Chen suggests that films such as Dust in the Wind capture the essence of Taiwan through universal coming-of-age narratives, offering an accessible entry point into understanding Taiwanese culture and cinema.

Robert Chen (陳儒修) is a Professor at the Department of Radio and Television at National Chengchi University in Taipei. He earned his PhD in Cinema-Studies from the University of Southern California (USC) and is a prolific author, known for foundational works such as Historical Memory and National Identity in Taiwan Cinema. Throughout his career, he has taught and researched extensively on how national identity and historical trauma are projected onto the silver screen. Robert is currently visiting University of Tartu as the Taiwan Chair. He is teaching a course "Culture and Politics in Taiwan Cinema".

Mart Tšernjuk is the Taiwan Coordinator at the University of Tartu Asia Centre. He is also a lecturer in Chinese language and culture at the Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures, and President of the Estonian Academic Oriental Society. He has lived and studied in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

---

Chen’s selection of films for introducing yourself to the history of Taiwan cinema:

The Mountain (1962) depicts young people living under a repressive atmosphere.
Raining in the Mountain (by King Hu, 1979)
Super Citizen Ko (by Wan Jen, 1995)
Dust in the Wind (by Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1986)
The Skywalk Is Gone (2003) explores modernity and urban alienation and shows how Taiwan undergoes similar modernisation processes as Estonia and other developed countries.
The Electric Princess House (2007) brings the focus back to Taiwanese cinema itself and connects to the shared experience of watching films in theatres.
As well as Raining in the Mountain (by King Hu, 1979); Super Citizen Ko (by Wan Jen, 1995); Dust in the Wind (by Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1986)

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Chinatown

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

“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. Chinatown (1974) is also impossible to forget: whether it’s the perfect nod to noir or the best noir of all time, it’s endlessly fascinating, compelling, and disturbing. Join us for an improvised conversation about why the film still fascinates and why Noah Cross (John Huston) might be the best movie villain of all time.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

If you want to read a great in-depth book about the making of Chinatown, check out Sam Wasson’s The Big Goodbye.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

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Jes Battis, "It's Only Forever: Labyrinth" (ECW Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 Bowie and its cast of lovable, gender-defying goblins. In the 40 years since Labyrinth’s release, Jim Henson’s cult classic starring a menagerie of goblin puppets, the conversation about it has only grown louder. Fans are still holding viewing parties and masquerade balls, and creating memes inspired by David Bowie’s sardonic and sexy goblin king, numerous Etsy crafts, and even a Japanese video game. But what makes the film so enduring, beyond its technical mastery and clever script, is how it presents childhood as something dangerous, heroic, and even queer. It's Only Forever explores Labyrinth as an ’80s time capsule that both reflects and challenges its era, offering its young audience an alternative to conservatism and soulless economics, at a time when U.S. president Ronald Reagan ignored the HIV/AIDS crisis, pushing queerness further into the shadows. As Sarah, played by a teenaged Jennifer Connelly, faces down the king and his destructive whims, she exclaims, “You have no power over me,” and in that moment she is everyone who has ever felt marginalized, who has instead turned to the goblins over social and political toxicity every single time. From the costuming to the twisting plot, this classic example of 1980s fantasy shows us that the magic and comfort of childhood never need to be discarded as we are forced to enter a world that may very well seek to destroy us. Instead, Labyrinth reveals a universal and beautiful truth: that our strength comes from what we have always known ourselves to be — beastly, loving, and wildly joyful.

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Michael Lee Nirenberg, "Cinematic Immunity" (Feral House, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 created the sets, lit the scenes, and shot the film. Focused on the golden age (1950-1990) of New York filmmaking, Cinematic Immunity covers On the Waterfront through The Sopranos.

The East Coast film industry, thousands of miles from the Los Angeles executives, existed by its own rules and with little oversight. It was a close-knit and freewheeling community of movie technicians that took on the most outrageous challenges to get every shot perfect. Behind-the-scenes documentaries and books feature “above the line” talent—actors, producers, directors, and writers. For the first time, readers will hear the unvarnished truth of the New York movie industry—tales about union politics, labor strikes, movie families, dangerous locations, difficult shots, volatile directors, anecdotes about actors, pranks, friendships, rivalries, generational shifts, substance use and abuse, technical feats, and more.

Readers will hear never heard before stories about classic (and not so classic) films and television shows including: Midnight Cowboy, The Warriors, The French Connection, The Exorcist, The Godfather, The Wiz, The Taking of Pelham 123, Annie Hall, Cruising, Do The Right Thing, When Harry Met Sally, Home Alone 2, The Sopranos, and Law and Order.

Expect to discover secrets about how your favorite scenes were shot and the outrageous characters with outsized talents whose personalities sometimes dwarfed actors and directors. Tales of their exploits, what they saw (and did) on these sets was previously only passed among themselves as showbiz lore but now, readers learn of Marlon Brando’s pranks on the set of The Godfather, how crews kept William Friedkin from killing them, the actors, and himself, and how consummate New Yorker Sidney Lumet was the angel to Friedkin’s demons.

Michael Lee Nirenberg has worked as a scenic artist in New York since 2006, and in many cases, alongside many of the people featured in the book. This book is a labor of love comprised of over 150 interviews and hundreds of hours of recordings. Cinematic Immunity includes hundreds of behind-the-scenes images from studio archives and from the technicians who were there.

Daniel Moran’s writing about literature and film can be found on Pages and Frames. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing and co-hosts the long-running podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network.

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Laura Horak, "Trans Cinema: Making Communities, Identities, and Worlds" (U California Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Since the 1990s, a largely underground upwelling of trans creativity has helped new trans identities, communities, and political movements come together. In Trans Cinema: Making Communities, Identities, and Worlds (University of California Press, 2026), Dr. Laura Horak provides an entryway to the wildly diverse and creative cinema made by trans creators, including those who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color. Overlooked until now, this rich collection of media ranges in genre from romantic comedies to horror films and asks essential questions about how to be human and how to craft a livable life in a world on fire.

Okay.Using the fundamentals of film studies, Horak reveals the innovative approaches taken by trans and gender-nonconforming artists to explore how we relate to other people, what it's like to have a body, and how we survive in an oppressive society. These filmmakers tackle the challenging paradox of representing trans lives when greater visibility is associated with ever-increasing levels of harm. In the process, they produce art that emphasizes trans survival and resilience and imagines a more expansive world for trans communities.

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Daisuke Miyao, "Ozu and the Ethics of Indeterminacy" (Duke UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Ozu and the Ethics of Indeterminacy (Duke University Press, 2026) re-examines cinema studies through the work of Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu, employing the multiple methodologies and indeterminacy of Ozu’s films as a model for discussions of cinema’s relationship to the world and the formation of film studies as a discipline.

Author Daisuke Miyao is Professor and Hajime Mori Chair in Japanese Language and Literature at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author and editor of several books, including Japonisme and the Birth of Cinema, The Aesthetics of Shadow: Lighting and Japanese Cinema, and Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom, published by Duke University Press.

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Qi Ai, "Feng Xiaogang's New Year Films: Industry, Regulation, Humour and Authorship" (Routledge, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 auteur but also a comprehensive and informative discussion of the industrial transformation of mainstream Chinese cinema under party-state regulation from the 1990s to the 2010s.

Ai Qi is a lecturer at the School of Journalism and Communication, Shandong Normal University, China. Qi holds a Ph.D. in Film and Television Studies from the University of Nottingham, UK. His current research mainly focuses on Chinese cinema, new media and cultural studies, non-human celebrities in the digital age in particular. Recently, he published an article on Capybara, discussing why this animal species becomes popular online with attention to Chinese Sang culture.

Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies.

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Aurore Spiers, "Archiving the Past: Women's Film History in France, 1927–1978" (U California Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 History in France, 1927–1978, the newest addition to the Feminist Media Histories book series at the University of California Press.

The first book by Aurore Spiers, Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at Texas A&M University, Archiving the Past is a fascinating account of some of the many women in France whose labor had a decisive role in the formation of cinema history across the twentieth century. Aurore shows that the film-historical archive has always been a site of feminist agency and power, even if women’s work in and around the archive has been diminished, interrupted, erased, or ignored.

In this conversation with fellow feminist film scholar Alix Beeston, Aurore shares about the historical, methodological, and political stakes of her work, from the archive to the classroom. She describes her process for discerning the traces of women’s archival labor, however fleeting, contingent, or speculative they may be. She reflects on how gendered ideas and norms have defined—and limited—our sense of what counts as film-historical labor. And she ruminates on what it means for feminist scholars, in and beyond film and media studies, to collect and recollect the past—for the sake of the feminist present and its still-possible futures.

Alix Beeston is Reader in Literature and Visual Culture at Cardiff University. She's the author of In and Out of Sight: Modernist Writing and the Photographic Unseen (Oxford UP, 2018) and the co-editor of the award-winning volume Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film (University of California Press, 2023).

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Miranda Banks and Kate Fortmueller, "Boom to Bust: How Streaming Broke Hollywood Workers" (U California Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 actors went on strike in 2023, they drew attention to the rapidly changing nature of film and television production. In Boom to Bust, media industry experts Miranda Banks and Kate Fortmueller combine economic and cultural analysis and interviews with industry workers to capture the lived experience of Hollywood in crisis. Tracking major disruptions of the preceding decade—including the transformation of streaming services into studios, the overproduction of series during Peak TV, as well as #MeToo and COVID—the authors explain how the conflicting interests of studio executives, creative workers, and workers' unions compelled a renegotiation of the terms of work. Grounding readers in the history of Hollywood labor negotiations, the authors provide a road map to make sense of Hollywood’s present—and what comes next.

Miranda Banks is Professor of Film, Television, and Media Studies at Loyola Marymount University, author of The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild, and coeditor of Production Studies.

Kate Fortmueller is Associate Professor of Film and Media History at Georgia State University and author of Below the Stars: How the Labor of Working Actors and Extras Shapes Media Production and Hollywood Shutdown: Production, Distribution, and Exhibition in the Time of COVID.

Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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The Shawshank Redemption in China: An Interview with Matti Lehtonen

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 podcast, Julie Yu-Wen Chen talks with Matti E. Lehtonen, a Finnish national who shares his journey from a decades-long career in engineering and business to a starring role in the first Chinese-language stage production of The Shawshank Redemption performed by an all-foreign cast.

Directed by the legendary Zhang Guoli, this production marks a cultural milestone in Chinese theater. Matti discusses his portrayal of the librarian, a tragic figure who represents the “saddest role” in a story otherwise defined by hope.

This episode dives into why Zhang Guoli insisted on foreign actors to avoid stereotypical and slightly fake portrayals of foreigners and how this choice may have helped the play navigate censorship. Matti also discusses the complexities of proactive self-censorship, securing government approvals for every city, and performing with a censor in the audience. Join us for a fascinating look at cross-cultural artistic collaboration and the evolving landscape of performance art in contemporary China.

Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies and Asian studies coordinator at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland).

The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland), Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Centre for South Asian Democracy, University of Oslo (Norway).

We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.

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Get Shorty

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 Elmore Leonard’s contribution to the genre, a film that was “meta” before the term became overused: we are given the illusion of spontaneity and the story–like one of Leonard’s novels–seems like it’s being made up as it moves along. This perfect 90s movie is a lighthearted and wholly enjoyable dramatization of screenwriter William Goldman’s famous description of the industry: “Nobody knows anything.”

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

If you’re interested in reading the original novel, you can find it here.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

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Gabriel S. Estrada, "Queer Indigenous Cinemas: Sovereign Genders from Seven Directions" (U Arizona Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In Queer Indigenous Cinemas, scholar Gabriel S. Estrada offers an analysis of queer Indigenous media from the Americas, the Pacific, and the Caribbean. This groundbreaking work uses Indigenous directional space and sovereign mapping methods to uncover the emotional, spiritual, and cultural dimensions of queer Indigenous lives. The book's seven chapters--each one of the directions--look closely at media such as cinema and streaming videos that draw on Indigenous concepts from diverse nations such as Diné, Caxcan, Kanaka Maoli, and Nehiyawak.

Gabriel S. Estrada is a Caxcan/Xicanx professor in religious studies at California State University Long Beach, where ze teaches queer spirituality, Indigenous graduate classes, and Nahuatl literature.

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Leslie Barnes, "Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 7 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film (Edinburgh UP, 2025), Leslie Barnes examines the ambivalences that mark Southeast Asian sex industries under global imperialism. She explores the multi-layered subjectivities of sex workers, procurers and clients, and interrogates the frameworks in which discourses surrounding sex work circulate. Engaged with debates concerning the status of transactional sex, Sex Work in Southeast Asia explores the symbolic force and concrete conditions of sex work in Cambodia and Vietnam, considering how these debates and the figures they ensnare are mediated by fiction and creative nonfiction. The book’s scenes of ambivalence show how the aesthetic treatment of sex work stretches the paradigms we use to make sense not only of sex work, but also of art, the evidentiary status of testimony and the spectacles of pleasure and suffering. Contesting essentialism and authenticity, and working to suspend judgement, these scenes encourage a re-examination of what we think we know about sex work, how we know it and what we do with that knowledge.

Leslie Barnes is an Associate Professor of French Studies at the Australian National University. She is author of Vietnam and the Colonial Condition of French Literature (2014) and co-editor of The Cinema of Rithy Panh: Everything Has a Soul (2021). We previously chatted on New Books about her work on the great Cambodian film director Rithy Panh, so was excited to speak with her again about Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film.

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Christine Grandy, "Race on Screen: Audience Racism in Twentieth-Century Britain" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 4 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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, an Associate Professor in History at the University of Lincoln, explores how producers, audiences, and television programmes themselves addressed race and racism in the Twentieth-Century. Drawing on a huge range of archival material, the book demonstrates the explicit racism associated with white audiences and TV programming, along with the critical resistance offered by audiences of colour. Thinking through how this history of audience and TV production racism has been forgotten, the analysis is a vital contribution to our own contemporary discussions about race and media, in the UK and beyond. The book is essential reading for arts, humanities and social science scholars, along with anyone interested in the past and future of television.

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Michael Mann Reconsidered: Heat and Collateral

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 1 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 eight most highly regarded movies in single-elimination competition. Today, we consider Heat (1995) and Collateral (2004). We ask what makes a Michael Mann movie distinctive, and what themes and ideas seem to capture his attention and bring out his best work. And we conclude the series by ranking the top Michael Mann movies.

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Michael Allan, "Cinema before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers" (Fordham UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Cinema Before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers (Fordham UP, 2026) investigates the transnational origins of filmmaking by focusing on a case study in world cinema—the 1896-1897 voyage of one of the Lumière Brothers camera operators, Alexandre Promio, across North Africa and the Middle East. The book shows how the sites in these early films are not simply backdrops, but integral to film form and its global history.

Connecting a series of filmic principles (framing, tracking shots, close-ups) to the sites where they are made visible (a rooftop in Algiers, a train station and the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem), Allan unsettles a familiar narrative of imperial vision. In the interplay of local history and global media, he highlights tensions between ethnography, observation, and visual capture, revealing how the Lumière Brothers films persist as living archives.

The book evokes a formative moment when cinema stood before the world—both as a technological marvel and as a medium that shaped how space and time were perceived. Tracing a journey from Algeria to Egypt and Palestine, and moving across media from lithography to photography and panoramas, Allan shows how in the hands of later filmmakers, such as Egyptian director Youssef Chahine and the Syrian collective Abounaddara, the Lumière films continue to enrich and inform visions of what cinema—and the world—can be.

Cinema before the World offers a critical historical intervention in the global story of the cinematograph and a visionary method for film scholarship grounded in transnational analysis across languages, regions, and media.

Michael Allan is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Cinema Studies at the University of Oregon. He is the author of In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (Princeton, 2016, winner, MLA First Book Prize) and serves as editor of the journal Comparative Literature.

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Michael Mann Reconsidered: Ali and The Last of the Mohicans

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 highly regarded movies single-elimination competition. Today, we consider Ali (2001) and The Last of the Mohicans (1992). We ask what makes a Michael Mann movie distinctive, and what themes and ideas seem to capture his attention and bring out his best work.

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Michael Mann Reconsidered: Ferrari and Manhunter

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 highly regarded movies single-elimination competition. Today, we consider Ferrari (2023) and Manhunter (1986). We ask what makes a Michael Mann movie distinctive, and what themes and ideas seem to capture his attention and bring out his best work.

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Becca Voelcker, "Land Cinema in an Age of Extraction" (U California Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 environmental responsibility. Diving into little-known archives to explore films that resonate across geographies, Becca Voelcker unearths key examples of eco-political counterculture, from farmer-filmmakers in Japan and Mali to a gardener-filmmaker in Massachusetts, and from filmed landscape-portraits of women in Los Angeles, Orkney, and the Navajo Nation to Indigenous documentaries about land dispossession in Colombia. Proposing "land cinema" as an urgent genre for our time, this book reveals how images and ideas produced half a century ago sowed the seeds for climate justice movements today.

Becca Voelcker is Lecturer in the Department of Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. She was named a BBC New Generation Thinker in 2024.

YouTube Channel: here

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Karen McNally ed., "Women in Hollywood's Dream Factory: Tales of Inequality, Abuse, and Resistance" (U Illinois Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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: Tales of Inequality, Abuse, and Resistance (U Illinois Press, 2026) Karen McNally edits a collection focused on examining and revising film history in the aftermath of the women’s stories, past and present, that have come to light.
The collection begins with essays on the interplay between reality and imagination in narratives and representations of women’s experiences of unequal treatment. In Part 2, contributors discuss how the gendered attitudes of the media’s stories enable inequality in Hollywood and look at the forces that arise whenever women resist these media assaults. The next section addresses the structures that built the inequalities and mistreatment while Part 4 revisits established narratives to challenge, renew, and expand upon our understanding of film history through women’s stories. Essays in the final section address the combination of inequality and resistance that defines women’s experiences in Hollywood.

Editor of book:

Karen McNally is Professor of American Film, Television and Cultural History at London Metropolitan University. Her research focuses on issues of stardom, gender, race, and American identity as they relate to Hollywood, American television, and US history, culture, and politics. She has published widely in volumes and journals including Journal of American Studies and European Journal of American Culture, and she is the author, editor, or co-editor of five books, including, most recently, The Stardom Film (2020) and American Television during a Television Presidency (2022). Professor McNally was awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship in 2023 for the three-year interdisciplinary research project “Lana Turner, a Historical Biography.”

Bio note of host

Dr Priyam Sinha is an Alexander Von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University in Berlin. Her research interests lie at the intersection of critical media industry studies, disability studies, gender studies, affect studies, production culture studies, and anthropology of the body. So far, her articles have been published in the European Journal of Cultural Studies, Media, Culture and Society; Communication, Culture and Critique; South Asian Diaspora, among others. She is also a regular podcast host at NewBooksNetwork and has been published in public writing forums like the Economic and Political Weekly, FemAsia, Asian Film Archive, among others. More information on her ongoing projects can be found on her website www.priyamsinha.com and you can follow her on X here

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Michael Mann Reconsidered: Thief and The Insider

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 highly regarded movies single-elimination competition, starting with Thief (1981) Vs. The Insider (1999). We ask what makes a Michael Mann movie distinctive, and what themes and ideas seem to capture his attention and bring out his best work.

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A Star Is Born (1937)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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. Selznick’s production drips with “movie” and artificiality, yet still delivers an ending that seems taken from Greek tragedy. No stars were harmed in the making of this film–yet the film also dramatizes the harm inflicted by a steady diet of fame. It’s not an indictment of Hollywood, but an illustration of how the machine works.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

If you’re interested in reading Dorothy Parker, Robert Carson, and Alan Campbell’s excellent screenplay, you can find it here. The collection Memo from David O. Selznick is an addictive edition of hundreds of memos, telegrams, and letters from the producer about the films he helped create, A Star Is Born among them.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

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Stephen Lee Naish, "Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency" (Lever Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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 cinematic phenomena that reflect/refract our contemporary political existence. Stephen Lee Naish is a writer, independent researcher, and cultural critic. He is the author of several books on film, politics, music, and pop culture. He lives in Kingston, Ontario. He has appeared on the New Books Network three times for previous books: Create of Die: Essays on the Artistry of Dennis Hopper (2016), Deconstructing Dirty Dancing (2017), Riffs and Meaning (2018)

From Star Wars-scope blockbusters and Hollywood coming-of-age comedies to independent horror productions, Naish draws out the ways these movies shape, and are shaped by, their audience's own dissatisfactions. In his discussion of the Star Wars franchise, Naish highlights a conflict between internet discussion-fueled fandom vs the Disney Empire that shares features with the ongoing rebellions depicted in the films themselves. A passionate fan base who can now voice their discontent via the internet is feeding back into the studio's agenda and criticizing the actions of characters within the film and the actors alike. Chapters on the super-heroes genre and disaster movies draw out the climate-based social tensions these reflect. Depictions of masculinity ("Men on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown") on screens large and small bleed into discussions of the work and presence of Nicholas Cage, David Lynch, and Dennis Hopper -- with a side-excursion into Valerie Solanas's strikingly prescient SCUM Manifesto. Stephen Lee Naish's Screen Captures adds a sharpening filter to the film-goer's experience on the big and little screen.

Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne.

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Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry | Filmmaker Q&A

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 7 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000

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 Mary Berry, executive director of The Berry Center, joined Library of America for an online Q&A focused on the film and its subject: author, poet, farmer, and activist Wendell Berry and his home in Henry County, KY. Hosted by Ben Lasman, online content and community manager for Library of America.

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Rachel Walther, "Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon" (Headpress, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 5 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000

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 delving into the film’s backstory, tracing how an unbelievable true crime tale of love, bank robbery, and LGBTQI+ activism became a box-office smash and catapulted a group of Brooklyn outsiders into the media spotlight. Name-checked on TV shows from The Simpsons to Drunk History, and now a Broadway play, Dog Day Afternoon’s legacy continues to inspire filmmakers, writers, and actors. Walther’s deep dive interrogates the film’s place in the 1970s zeitgeist, set against a background of antiwar activism and the fight for gay and trans rights, and in doing so shows its continuing relevance today.

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Boiling Point

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 2 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000

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 really earns that praise. The entire film was shot in one take, not to be “original,” but because doing so reflects the tension and stress of the whole enterprise: a restaurant, like a film, is a complicated ecosystem in which personalities, hang-ups, failures, and backstories collide. Join us for a conversation about how the restaurant is, like so many of our jobs, a petri dish in which radically different people are placed and forced to coexist. Sometimes, things get ugly.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Adam Reiner’s The New Rules of Dining Out explains how restaurants work and complements the film like a Cabernet Sauvignon does a steak. You can also see Adam Reiner being interviewed about his book and favorite restaurant-based films here on Pages and Frames.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

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Michael Glover Smith, "Bob Dylan as Filmmaker: No Time to Think" (McNidder and Grace, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

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 and lyrics have been studied endlessly, his work behind (and in front of) the camera remains largely unexplored. No other book has taken this angle, and with Dylan's legend still growing, the audience is more than ready for a bold new take.

Bob Dylan as Filmmaker: No Time to Think (McNidder and Grace, 2026), the first book of its kind, opens up exciting new ways to think about the artistry of Bob Dylan. It offers a captivating exploration into movies that, according to Michael, showcase Bob Dylan not just as a subject, but as the primary author. These include Eat the Document--a short, experimental television film shot in 1966 and released in 1972; the sprawling, genre-blurring epic Renaldo and Clara (1978), both directed by Dylan himself; and the darkly surreal Masked and Anonymous (2003), directed by Larry Charles but co-written by and starring Dylan. Bob Dylan as Filmmaker explores what these movies reveal about "how it feels" to be Bob Dylan during three defining eras of his career: the revolutionary 1960s, the introspective 1970s, and the enigmatic early 2000s. Just as crucially, they illuminate Dylan's remarkable instinct for using film not merely as a medium, but as a deeply personal mode of expression.

The book also provides an essential survey of Dylan's most recent movie projects, including those by other directors, in which Dylan's influence is less overt but no less powerful. Here, Michael argues that Dylan operates as a kind of "invisible co-author" in Martin Scorsese's Rolling Thunder Revue (2019), where Dylan appears as a slippery, self-mythologizing interviewee; Alma Har'el's haunting Shadow Kingdom (2021), a stylized livestream performance; and James Mangold's A Complete Unknown (2024), the Timothée Chalamet-led biopic shaped in part by Dylan's behind-the-scenes "script approval."

Michael Glover Smith is a Chicago-based filmmaker, author and teacher. Michael's most recent movie, Hekla, starring Elizabeth Stam, will have it’s festival premiere in early 2026. Michael is also the director of four award-winning feature films, the most recent of which, Relative, stars Wendy Robie (Twin Peaks) and is distributed by Music Box Films. His previous book, Flickering Empire: How Chicago Invented the U.S. Film Industry (co-written with Adam Selzer), was published by Columbia University Press to acclaim in 2015. He has seen Bob Dylan 100 times in concert.

Michael on Twitter and Bluesky.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America (Backbeat Books, 2021), Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, 2025), and U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, 2025). He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Veronique Boone, "Le Corbusier on Camera: The Unknown Films of Ernest Weissmann" (Birkhaüser, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

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) with a Pathé Motocamera in the years 1929-1933 at, among other places, the Atelier Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. These films capture moments from Le Corbusier's life that have never been seen before. It also documents his friendships with Pierre Jeanneret, Josep Lluís Sert, Charlotte Perriand, Norman Rice, Kunio Maekawa, Sigfried Giedion and others.

Across six chapters, the book shows impressive stills from these films and places them in the respective historical and personal context of Le Corbusier in introductory texts. Two introductions are devoted to the history of these pioneering amateur films and to Ernest Weissmann's life and his life-long relationship with Le Corbusier.

Veronique Boone is an architect from the University of Ghent, Belgium and doctor from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et de Paysage de Lille (ENSAPL), France and the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium. She is an associate professor at the Faculty of Architecture La Cambre Horta at the ULB. She lectures on architectural history and theory as well as on the conservation of 20th-century architecture. Her research focuses on the history and theory, as well as the construction history, of modern architecture. She has published extensively in academic publications on Le Corbusier and the mediation of architecture by film and television, and is a correspondant for Belgian and international architectural magazines on contemporary architecture. She has worked on several exhibitions as curator and/or contributor to catalogues – among them, Lucien Hervé, l’oeil de l’architecte, CIVA, 2005; Le Corbusier and the Power of Photography, Musée des beaux-arts La Chaux-de-Fonds, 2012; L’Architecture modern à l’écran, Cinematek, 2014; In the Studio at 35, rue de Sèvres: an Amateur cameraman’s Informal View, Fondation Le Corbusier, 2017 and Atelier Jespers, 2018. She is also Vice-President of DOCOMOMO Belgium.

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Santiago Fouz-Hernández, "The Films of Bigas Luna" (Manchester UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Written by Professor Santiago Fouz-Hernández (Durham University), The Films of Bigas Luna (Manchester UP, 2025) is the first comprehensive English-language study of the complete filmography of Spanish filmmaker Bigas Luna, spanning from Tatuaje (1976) to DiDi Hollywood (2010).
Engaging with theoretical frameworks such as haptic cinema, erotic cinema, auteur theory, and studies of gender, sexuality, and national identity, the book situates close readings of Bigas Luna’s films within broader discussions of production and marketing. Fouz Hernández draws on extensive archival research―including original screenplays, press materials, and interviews with industry professionals―while engaging with previous scholarship in multiple languages.
Structured into five thematic chapters, the book explores key concerns in Bigas Luna’s work, including genre, gender representation, Iberian and Mediterranean identities, and meta-cinematic narratives. It can be read as a cohesive study of his oeuvre or as a reference for specific films.

The interview is hosted by Dr Fiona Noble, Lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Stirling, Scotland, and the author of Subversive Spanish Cinema: The Politics of Performance (Bloomsbury, 2020).

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The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

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 evidence to the contrary, many still view the United States as the land of opportunity. The American Mirage addresses this puzzle by exposing the stark reality of today’s media landscape, revealing how popular entertainment media shapes politics and public opinion in an increasingly news-avoiding nation. Drawing on an eclectic array of original data, Dr. Eunji Kim demonstrates how, amid a dazzling array of media choices, many Americans simply are not consuming the news.

Instead, millions flock to entertainment programs that showcase real-life success stories, such as American Idol, Shark Tank, and MasterChef. Dr. Kim examines how shows like these leave viewers confoundingly optimistic about the prospects of upward mobility, promoting a false narrative of rugged individualism and meritocracy that contradicts what is being reported in the news. By taking seriously what people casually watch every day, The American Mirage shows how rags-to-riches programs perpetuate the myth of the American Dream, glorifying the economic winners, fostering tolerance for income inequality, and dampening support for redistributive policies that could improve people’s lives.

Our guest is: Dr. Eunji Kim, who is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. As a political communication scholar, she primarily studies the impact of media content on mass attitudes and political behavior. She is the author of The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy. Her research explores a range of topics, and has been published in many leading journals including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a writing coach and editor for academics. She is the creator and producer of the Academic Life podcast, and writes the show’s newsletter at ChristinaGessler.Substack.com.

Playlist for listeners:

Understanding Disinformation

100 Years of Radio in South Africa

You Have More Influence Than You Think

Black Girls and How We Fail Them

Live From The Underground

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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Darién J. Davis, "'Black Orpheus' and the Globalization of Afro-Brazilian Culture" (Rutgers UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

“Black Orpheus” and the Globalization of Afro-Brazilian Culture (Rutgers UP, 2026) is the first historical study in English to examine the development, production, and reception of the 1958 film Black Orpheus and its legacy in the 1960s and 1970s. It focuses on the making of the film and the trajectories of the major actors and musicians who helped construct an image of Black Brazil and provides an analysis of the globalization of Afro-Brazilian images and music in France and the United States in the wake of the movie’s success. Using archival sources, interviews, and the secondary literature from France, Brazil, and the United States, this book reveals information about the cultural histories of all three countries and gives readers new insight into the trajectories of diverse actors such as Breno Mello, Marpessa Dawn, and Léa Garcia and performers such as Agostinho dos Santos, Baden Powell, and Maria D’Apparecida.

Darién J. Davis is a professor and the chair of Africana studies at Rutgers University–Newark. He is the author of four books, three edited volumes, and more than forty essays and articles in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press).

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Robert P. Kolker and David Wyatt, "The Film Auteur: Angles of Vision" (Routledge, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

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 David Wyatt provide readers with a history of auteur theory, from its initial origins in France in the late 1940s as an outgrowth of the cinematic theories of the French film critics and theorists André Bazin and Alexandre Astruc, to the canonizing work of American film critic Andrew Sarris in the 1960s. After a streamlined account of the various postwar renaissances in film - the shock of “Neorealism”, the “New Wave,” and “New American Cinema” - the book features detailed examinations of the work of forty-eight auteurs, including F.W. Murnau, Jean-Luc Godard, Ida Lupino, Alfred Hitchcock, Yasujirō Ozu, Stanley Kubrick, Spike Lee, Pedro Almodóvar, and Jane Campion. In its focus on a limited number of auteurs, this book aims to offer a map of representative figures rather than an exhaustive or comprehensive list, providing an informative entry point to the study of the auteur.

Essential reading for any students of film theory and film studies, particularly those taking classes on the auteur.

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His Girl Friday

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

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 fascinations. Everything about it perfectly lands: the script, the casting, the camerawork, the minor players–all contribute to what can be called, without the kind of hyperbole found in the Morning Post, a perfect film. It’s as cynical as Network yet as joyful as Singin’ in the Rain and skewers the news-tainment complex with an affection for its perpetrators. Join us for an appreciation for one of the best.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Admirers of the film will enjoy this beautifully designed book edition of the original screenplay, in which the original dialogue from the film is reproduced complete with an accompanying commentary.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

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Dan Hassler-Forest, "Fast and Furious Franchising: How the Serialized Blockbuster Remade Hollywood" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Fast and Furious Franchising charts the transformation of Hollywood through the story of one of its most successful cinematic universes. Released in 2001, The Fast and the Furious became an unexpected hit, developing into a seven-billion-dollar media franchise with nine direct sequels (so far), one “sidequel,” copious spin-offs, and licensing deals from board games to theme park rides.

In Fast and Furious Franchising: How the Serialized Blockbuster Remade Hollywood (U Minnesota Press, 2026), Dr. Dan Hassler-Forest shows how Fast and Furious paved the way for a new form of serialized storytelling that balanced new distribution practices and expansion into international markets with a savvy awareness of representational politics. By following the series’s development over the past twenty-five years, Fast and Furious Franchising reveals distinct phases that reflect larger media-industrial trends: the postclassical blockbuster era of the early 2000s; the emergence of the megafranchise between 2008 and 2014; the franchise’s “imperial” era, from 2015 through 2019; and the postpandemic crisis era of media saturation and franchise fatigue.

While examining this rapidly changing media landscape, Dr. Hassler-Forest offers lively, insightful analyses of the films as they have embraced ever-more-ludicrous plots and unlikely character turns while always maintaining their signature faith in the power of family. As he illuminates the role of the Fast and Furious movies in the global entertainment industry, Dr. Hassler-Forest shows how the films’ improbable success proves Dominic Toretto’s adage that, whether “you win by an inch or a mile . . . winning’s winning.”

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Sourit Bhattacharya, "Postcolonialism Now: Literature, Reading, Decolonising" (Orient BlackSwan, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Postcolonialism Now: Literature, Reading, Decolonising (Orient BlackSwan, 2024) by Sourit Bhattacharya introduces a new method of decolonial reading and criticism. It critically examines the history and ongoing influence of colonialism and imperialism in postcolonial cultures and texts. The volume seeks to address the crucial question of how to read postcolonial literatures closely and comparatively, particularly through the lenses of decolonisation and anticolonialism. Through rubrics such as migration, ecology, trauma, minorities and futurity, Postcolonialism Now engages with close readings of films, graphic novels, fiction, theatre and poetry from across the globe.

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Isaac Butler, "The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 8 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

“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 purpose, a spectacular rise, struggles as it reached the top, and an eventual decline.” This is how Isaac Butler articulates his project in The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act (Bloomsbury, February 2022). The Method tracks the origins of this transcontinental school of naturalistic acting and its many contradictions, including its emphasis on individualist achievement within communitarian organizations and the actorly tension between psychological interiority and external action when building a character. In following the life of this concept, Butler reveals the impossibly charming, ambitious, questionable cast of characters that have defined the terms of Western acting in the twentieth century. In the process, he clears up many of the public misunderstandings around Method as an approach and as a style.

In this discussion, Butler details his first career in the theater as a professional actor, explores how Constantin Stanislavski’s “system” of acting was the farthest thing from systematic, explains the difference between method and Method, and divulges the many rivalries and hostilities between American M/method practitioners and instructors at mid-century.

Isaac Butler is the coauthor (with Dan Kois) of The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America, which NPR named one of the best books of 2018. Butler’s writing has appeared in New York magazine, Slate, the Guardian, American Theatre, and other publications. For Slate, he created and hosted Lend Me Your Ears, a podcast about Shakespeare and politics, and currently co-hosts Working, a podcast about the creative process. His work as a director has been seen on stages throughout the United States. He is the co-creator, with Darcy James Argue and Peter Nigrini, of Real Enemies, a multimedia exploration of conspiracy theories in the American psyche, which was named one of the best live events of 2015 by the New York Times and has been adapted into a feature-length film. Butler holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Minnesota and teaches theater history and performance at the New School and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn.

Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Public Books, Literary Hub, The Forward, and Camera Obscura.

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Jacqueline Riding, "Hard Streets: Working-Class Lives in Charlie Chaplin’s London" (Profile Books, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 5 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the hard streets: working-class London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in Hard Streets: Working-Class Lives in Charlie Chaplin’s London (Profile, 2026) by Dr. Jacqueline Riding.

Charlie Chaplin rose from the hard streets of Edwardian London to worldwide fame. But his work and outlook were always shaped by the world he came from, a place of cheap entertainments and the threat of the workhouse, radical politics and desperate poverty.

Framed through the life of this iconic success story, acclaimed historian Jacqueline Riding reveals working-class London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Breathing life into forgotten stories of mothers and sons, labourers and actors, vagrants and sex workers, of suffering, survival and success against the odds, this compelling social history paints a striking portrait of a vanished city.

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Robert Guffey, "Hollywood Haunts the World: An Investigation into the Cinema of Occulted Taboos" (Headpress, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 4 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

In Hollywood Haunts the World: An Investigation into the Cinema of Occulted Taboos (Headpress, 2026), Robert Guffey deconstructs the most powerful taboos of the twentieth century (and the initial decades of the twenty-first century) by analyzing how disturbing and transgressive ideas involving Theosophy, Gnosticism, Freemasonry, Darwinian Evolution, Surrealism, Freudian and Jungian psychology, race relations, paranoia, UFOs, xenophobia, political conspiracies, the JFK assassination, virtual reality, and alternate dimensions have been reflected in films — both American and foreign — throughout the past one hundred years.

Popular films and TV shows that fall under cutting-edge scrutiny include Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley, Larry Wade Carell’s Girl Next, Matt Shakman’s WandaVision, Anthony and Joe Russo’s Avengers: Infinity War, Scott Derrickson’s Dr. Strange, Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, Christopher Nolan’s Inception, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad, Oliver Stone’s JFK, Mark Frost and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, John Carpenter’s They Live, Alan Pakula’s The Parallax View, John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate, Jack Arnold’s It Came from Outer Space, Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Man from Planet X, Robert Florey’s Murders in the Rue Morgue, Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr., and Victor Sjöström’s The Phantom Carriage.

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Twentieth Century

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 2 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

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 performance as director Oscar Jaffee is awe-inspiring; Carole Lombard is equal to the task of pushing back against the man who, in a sense, created her. It’s Frankenstein meets His Girl Friday; it’s ninety minutes of screaming and yelling; it’s filled with as many coincidences as a Wodehouse novel; it’s a great portrait of theatrical types; and it’s laugh-out-loud funny from the first scene to the last. Join us for a ride!

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Michael Morrison’s John Barrymore, Shakespearean Actor tells the story of Barrymore’s triumphs as Hamlet and Richard III, which informed his performance as the overly-dramatic Oscar Jaffee.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

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Mark Gallagher, "Cosmosexuals: Screen Acting, Stardom, and Male Sex Appeal" (U Texas Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

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 the ways that race, ethnicity, and national origin combine with performance tools and film and television style to aid or inhibit actors’ circulation on an increasingly global stage.

Sex appeal is complicated, especially for screen actors. Looking good is not enough. Charisma and charm have to register when the camera rolls. And sexiness has to travel. Today’s heartthrobs are expected to raise temperatures all around the world.

Cosmosexuals theorizes male sex appeal as a form of capital in an age of international stardom. Screen scholar Dr. Gallagher assembles a diverse cast—Idris Elba, Pedro Pascal, Simu Liu, Ryan Gosling, and more—analyzing how each actor uses his appearance, voice, and movement to perform in ways that viewers across cultural divides register as sexually appealing. Cosmosexuals also explores the intersection of global sex appeal and exoticism in historical and contemporary contexts—from the malleable racial identities of Omar Sharif and Conrad Veidt to Mads Mikkelsen’s “accented whiteness”—and assesses the barriers that confine nonwhite actors, in spite of their talent or celebrity. Far more than handsome faces and chiseled abs, male sex symbols emerge as laborers subject to disciplinary regimes steeped in patriarchy, racism, and structural inequity. As such, they have much to tell us about the economies of taste at work in the construction of screen masculinity and the terms of human desire.

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Justin L. Mann, "Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation" (Duke UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation (Duke UP, 2026) takes Black speculative fiction as a central archive for understanding global security culture from the Reagan administration to the present. Drawing on black feminist, critical race, and queer of color theoretical traditions, Justin L. Mann posits that world-breaking is an ethical and aesthetic orientation to the dangerous, worldmaking process of securitization--the process by which state and parastate agents augment and build up the tools, techniques, and infrastructures intended to make people safer. World-breaking appears in the fiction of Octavia E. Butler, Colson Whitehead, N.K. Jemisin, in the music and video work of Janelle Monae, as well as unexpected places such as the Marvel and DC Cinematic Universes. Breaking the World charts the difference between securitization and "Black insecurity." Linking securitization to mass incarceration and the militarization of policing, Mann contributes to Black feminist and abolitionist conversations that seek an end to institutional and structural violence. Breaking the World emphasizes that world-breaking is an important aspect of the Black radical imagination, showing that speculation is an essential response to the dangerous worlds of securitization"-- Provided by publisher.

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163* The Drama of Celebrity with Sharon Marcus (JP)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

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 Celebrity, her tour-de-force account of how stars are born, publicized, and in time devoutly scrapbooked by adoring fans.

They tackle a question at least as old as Sarah Bernhardt: who or what makes a star? Rather than crediting star making to the culture industry, to fans, or to star themselves, Sharon makes the case that all three forces together constitute a celebrity creation machine.

After discussing her archival work on theatrical scrapbooking in Indiana, Sharon pulls from the vaults a marvelous Hollywood memoir, Brooke Haywood’s Haywired. That triggers discussion of the studio system and how its models of celebrity are and are not with us today.

Sharon’s two Recallable Books also capitalize on mid-century notions of celebrity: Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford and Edie: American Girl by Jean Stein and George Plimpton. John’s choice, The Entertainer by Margaret Talbot, another biographical account written by a star’s daughter, gives a slightly rosier perspective on the family memoir.

Discussed in this episode:

Sharon Marcus, The Drama of Celebrity
Daniel Boorstin, The Image (“a person who is known for his well-knownness”)
Theodor Adorno and Theodore Horkheimer, “Culture Industry” in Dialectic of Enlightenment
Henry Jenkins, “Textual Poachers“
Dick Herbdige, “Subculture: The Meaning of Style“
Mark Twain, Patented Scrapbook Innovator
Brooke Hayward, Haywire
Christina Crawford, Mommie Dearest
Jean Stein, George Plimpton, Edie, American Girl
Margaret Talbot, The Entertainer

Read the episode here.

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Justin Owen Rawlins, "Imagining the Method: Reception, Identity, and American Screen Performance" (U Texas Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Only one performance style has dominated the lexicon of the casual moviegoer: “Method acting.” The first reception-based analysis of film acting, Imagining the Method: Reception, Identity, and American Screen Performance (U Texas Press, 2024) investigates how popular understandings of the so-called Method—what its author Justin Rawlins calls "methodness"—created an exclusive brand for white, male actors while associating such actors with rebellion and marginalization. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book maps the forces giving shape to methodness and policing its boundaries.

Imagining the Method traces the primordial conditions under which the Method was conceived. It explores John Garfield's tenuous relationship with methodness due to his identity. It considers the links between John Wayne's reliance on "anti-Method" stardom and Marlon Brando and James Dean's ascribed embodiment of Method features. It dissects contemporary emphases on transformation and considers the implications of methodness in the encoding of AI performers. Altogether, Justin Rawlins offers a revisionist history of the Method that shines a light on the cultural politics of methodness and the still-dominant assumptions about race, gender, and screen actors and acting that inform how we talk about performance and performers.

Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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Robert P. Kolker and Nathan Abrams, "Kubrick: An Odyssey" (Pegasus Books, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

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 groundbreaking filmmaker.

The enigmatic and elusive filmmaker Stanley Kubrick has not been treated to a full-length biography in over twenty years.

Kubrick: An Odyssey (Pegasus Books, 2024) fills that gap. This definitive book is based on access to the latest research, especially Kubrick's archive at the University of the Arts, London, as well as other private papers plus new interviews with family members and those who worked with him. It offers comprehensive and in-depth coverage of Kubrick’s personal, private, public, and working life. Stanley Kubrick: An Odyssey investigates not only the making of Kubrick's films, but also about those he wanted (but failed) to make like Burning Secret, Napoleon, Aryan Papers, and A.I.

This immersive biography will puncture the controversial myths about the reclusive filmmaker who created some of the most important works of art of the twentieth century.

Robert P. Kolker, Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland, taught cinema studies for almost fifty years. He is the author of A Cinema of Loneliness and The Extraordinary Image: Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and the Reimagining of Cinema; editor of 2001: A Space Odyssey: New Essays and The Oxford Handbook of Film and Media Studies; and co-author of Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of his Final Film.

Nathan Abrams is a professor in film at Bangor University in Wales. He is a founding co-editor of Jewish Film and New Media: An International Journal, as well as the author of The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema, and Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual, and co-author of Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of his Final Film.

Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers and articles on G. K. Chesterton and John Ford, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network and on X.

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Min Joo Lee, "Finding Mr. Perfect: K-Drama, Pop Culture, Romance, and Race" (Rutgers UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

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 women who were inspired by romantic Korean televisual depictions of Korean masculinity to travel to Korea as tourists. Dr. Lee argues that disparate racialized erotic desires of Korean pop culture fans, foreign tourists to Korea, Korean men, and the Korean nation converge to configure the interracial and transnational relationships between these tourists and Korean men. Lee observes how racial prejudices are developed and manifested through interracial and transnational intimate desires and encounters. This book is the first to examine the interracial relationships between Hallyu tourists and Korean men. Furthermore, it is the first to analyze Korea as a popular romance tourist destination for heterosexual women. Finding Mr. Perfect illuminates South Korean popular culture’s transnational fandom and tourism as a global phenomenon where fantasies and realities converge to have a tangible impact on individual lives.

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Alvin K. Wong, "Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone" (Duke UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

How do we compare across languages, media, and histories, all without flattening differences? And what might Hong Kong teach us about doing comparison differently?

Alvin K. Wong examines these and other questions in Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone (Duke UP, 2025), a wide-ranging and thought-provoking study of queerness in Hong Kong. Bringing together Sinophone literature, independent and commercial cinema, documentary films, and visual art, the book asks how Hong Kong’s queer productions might help us rethink the work of comparison itself.

Rather than treating Hong Kong as a marginal or derivative space — a space defined by British colonialism, China-centrism, or global capitalism — this book approaches the city as a site of methodological possibilities. The key concept the book advances, “unruly comparison,” replacing neat equivalences and stable categories with incommensurability and transnational connections and linking Hong Kong to other places, times, and queer spaces across the Sinophone.

Theoretically deft, the book is filled with a wide range of fascinating material, including work by filmmakers including Wong Kar-wai, Scud, and Fruit Chan; transnational and transgender visual cultures; documentaries about Southeast Asian domestic workers and queer intimacies; and poetry about language and precarity.

This book will appeal to those interested in queer theory, Hong Kong studies, Sinophone studies, and comparative approaches. Listeners should also check out Alvin Wong's co-edited volume Keywords in Queer Sinophone Studies(Routledge, 2020) and the Society of Sinophone Studies webpage (of which Alvin is currently chair!).

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Matthew Kennedy, "On Elizabeth Taylor: An Opinionated Guide" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

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 life frequently overshadowed her movies. While she knew how to generate publicity like no other, her personal life is set aside in this volume in favor of her professional oeuvre and unique screen dynamism. In On Elizabeth Taylor: An Opinionated Guide (Oxford UP, 2024), her marriages, illnesses, media firestorms, perfume empire, violet eyes, and AIDS advocacy take a back seat to Elizabeth Taylor, the actress.

Taylor's big screen credits span over fifty years, from her pre-adolescent debut in There's One Born Every Minute (1942) to her cameo in The Flintstones (1994). She worked steadily in everything from the biggest production in film history (Cleopatra in 1963) to a humble daytime TV soap opera (General Hospital in 1981). Each of her sixty-seven film appearances is recapped here with background on their inception, production, release, and critical and financial outcome. On Elizabeth Taylor: An Opinionated Guide is a cradle-to-grave chronology of Taylor's life, noting key events, achievements, and milestones. This book offers a work-by-work analysis of her entire career told in chronological order, each film headlined with year of release, distributing studio, and director. This in-depth overview provides an invaluable new way of understanding Taylor's full life and work, as well as the history and nuances of the film industry as it existed in the twentieth century.

Kennedy engagingly reassesses Taylor's acting and the nuances she brought to the screen - this includes a consideration of her specific art, the development of her voice, her relationship to the camera, and her canny understanding of the effect she had on audiences worldwide. Kennedy also provides an elucidating guide to her entire filmography, one that speaks to the quality of her performances, their contours and shading, and their context within her extraordinary life and career. On Elizabeth Taylor is a beautifully comprehensive overview of a singular actress of the twentieth century, offering new ways to see and appreciate her skill and peerless charisma, in turn placing her among the greatest film stars of all time.

Matthew Kennedy is a film historian based in Oakland, California. He is the author of Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s, biographies of actresses Marie Dressler and Joan Blondell, and of director-screenwriter Edmund Goulding. He has introduced film series at the Museum of Modern Art, UCLA Film & Television Archive, and Pacific Film Archive, and written for the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Turner Classic Movies, and the National Film Registry. He is currently host and curator of the CinemaLit series at the Mechanics' Institute Library in San Francisco.

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Stuart Klawans, "Crooked, But Never Common: The Films of Preston Sturges" (Columbia UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

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 McGinty, The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels, The Palm Beach Story, and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek among them--all from screenplays he alone had written.

Stuart Klawans' Crooked, But Never Common: The Films of Preston Sturges (Columbia UP, 2023) pays close attention to Sturges' celebrated dialogue, but also to his films surprisingly intricate structures, marvelous use of a standard roster of character actors, and effective composition of shots. Klawans goes deeper than this, though, providing compelling readings of the underlying personal philosophy depicted in these films, which for all their seen-it-all cynicism nonetheless express firmly-held values, among them a fear for conformity and crowd-mentality, a dread of stasis, and a respect for intelligence, whether of a billionaire or of a Pullman porter. This is a book that will return you to these great films with new eyes.

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.

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Barbara Jane Brickman, "Suffering Sappho! Lesbian Camp in American Popular Culture" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 8 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

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 trying to escape her queer shame. A suave butch emcee introduces the sequined and feathered stars of the era’s most celebrated drag revue. For an unsettled and retrenching postwar America, these startling figures betrayed the failure of promised consensus and appeasing conformity. They could also be cruel, painful, and disciplinary jokes. It turns out that an obsession with managing gender and female sexuality after the war would hardly contain them. On the contrary, it spread their campy manifestations throughout mainstream culture. Offering the first major consideration of lesbian camp in American popular culture, Suffering Sappho! traces a larger-than-life lesbian menace across midcentury media forms to propose five prototypical queer icons—the sicko, the monster, the spinster, the Amazon, and the rebel. On the pages of comics and sensational pulp fiction and the dramas of television and drive-in movies, Barbara Jane Brickman discovers evidence not just of campy sexual deviants but of troubling female performers, whose failures could be epic but whose subversive potential could inspire.

In this episode Dr. Barbara Jane Brickman (University of Alabama) and Leah Cargin (University of Oklahoma and Journal of Women’s History) discuss Suffering Sappho! First, Brickman introduces the listeners to lesbian camp and then we discuss the many storied characters in the monograph. We share the zingers and one liners of actress Tallulah Bankhead and giggle about the camp antics of Superwoman’s sidekick, Etta Candy.

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Book Talk 69: American Medium, with Eyal Peretz

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 6 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

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 either reactionary or revolutionary, repressive or liberatory? I spoke with Eyal Peretz about his book American Medium, which looks at Hollywood to re-imagine the concept of "America" through the medium of film. By considering six fundamental American movies: John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, Steven Spielberg's West Side Story, and Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette, Peretz explains how these films do more than represent America and envision a new way to ground human life in our secular age. Eyal Peretz is Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University and the author of seminal books on Melville, de Palma, Diderot, da Vinci, as well as film, art, and philosophy.

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Jason Isralowitz, "Nothing to Fear: Alfred Hitchcock and the Wrong Men" (Fayetteville Mafia Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 5 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

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 The Wrong Man, a bracing drama based on the real-life false arrest of Queens musician Christopher “Manny” Balestrero. Manny's ordeal is part of a larger story of other miscarriages of justice in the first half of the twentieth century.

In Nothing to Fear: Alfred Hitchcock and the Wrong Men (Fayetteville Mafia Press, 2023), attorney Jason Isralowitz tells this story in a revelatory book that situates both the Balestrero case and its cinematic counterpart in their historical context. Drawing from archival records, Isralowitz delivers a gripping account of Manny’ s trial and new insights into an errant prosecution. He then examines how Hitchcock’ s film bears witness to issues that animate the contemporary innocence movement. Given the hundreds of exonerations of the wrongfully convicted in recent years, this genre-bending work of true crime and film history is a must-read.

Jason Isralowitz is a partner in the New York office of Hogan Lovells. A Queens native, Jason graduated from Boston University’s College of Communication with a bachelor’s in journalism and holds a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has practiced law in Manhattan since 1993. Jason lives in Summit, New Jersey with his wife, Jennifer.

Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found at https://fifteenminutefilm.podb... and on Twitter @15MinFilm.

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Pluribus Episodes 8 & 9 Analysis: It’s Over!

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 4 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

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 Mundo.”

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Scott Feinberg, “The Hollywood Reporter’s 100 Greatest Film Books of All Time” (2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 3 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

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 of 322 people who make, study, and are otherwise connected to the movies, Feinberg assembled an annotated list that reads like the ultimate film study syllabus. In this interview, Dan Moran asks him about the voting process, top winners, some omissions, and what the list reveals about the industry as a whole.

Scott Feinberg has led The Hollywood Reporter’s awards coverage since 2011 (he covered awards for the Los Angeles Times before that). He is best known for his “Feinberg Forecast,” through which he assesses the standings of various showbiz awards races, and for Awards Chatter, the interview-centric podcast that he started in 2015, for which he has conducted career-retrospective interviews with some 500 of Hollywood’s biggest names. An alumnus of Brandeis University, he is also a trustee professor at Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, serves on the board of the Los Angeles Press Club and is a voting member of BAFTA and the Critics Choice Association.

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Megha Anwer and Anupama Arora, "Screening Precarity: Hindi Cinema and Neoliberal Crisis in Twenty-first Century India" (U Michigan Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 2 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Screening Precarity integrates a cultural analysis of film texts and history, industry transformations, and the violence and crises of political economy infrastructures, to study post-liberalization shifts in the Hindi film industry in India. The book investigates Bollywood as a media system that has moved away from the glee and gusto of liberalization in the 1990s to an industry contending with the failures and inadequacies of neoliberalism’s promises, and the ascendency of the material-affective redressals offered by religious ethnonationalism. The monograph examines 19 Hindi-language films released post-2010 to study contemporary India’s precarious public sphere which has been characterized by a pervasive sense of professional-personal insecurity experienced by the vast majority. This is a book about the role of cinema, or cultural texts more generally, in a period marked by incredible insecurity, violence, and the absence of collective political alternatives. Screening Precarity is an intervention in the politics of representation, particularly, of how marginal identities are shaped, scripted, and screened in precarious times. It is also a cultural analysis of how the biggest film industry in the world is embedded in global media networks, and marshals state power and star power, national histories and transnational fantasies, structural impossibilities and individual agency.

Megha Anwer is a theorist of literature and visual culture. Her research areas include contemporary postcolonial literature, global cinema, Victorian literature and visual culture.

Anupama Arora is a professor of English and Communication, and Women’s and Gender Studies, at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

Dr Priyam Sinha is an Alexander Von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University in Berlin. Her research interests lie at the intersection of critical media industry studies, disability studies, gender studies, affect studies, production culture studies, and anthropology of the body. So far, her articles have been published in the European Journal of Cultural Studies, Media, Culture and Society; Communication, Culture and Critique; South Asian Diaspora, among others. She is also a regular podcast host at NewBooksNetwork and has been published in public writing forums like the Economic and Political Weekly, FemAsia, Asian Film Archive, among others. More information on her ongoing projects can be found on her website www.priyamsinha.com and you can follow her on https://x.com/PriyamSinha

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J. W. Rinzler and Lee Unkrich, "Stanley Kubrick's The Shining" (Taschen, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

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 desk, and a visual masterpiece was born. J. W. Rinzler and Lee Unkrich's book Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (Taschen, 2023) is the definitive compendium of the film that transformed the horror genre features hundreds of never-before-seen photographs, rare production ephemera from the Kubrick Archive, and extensive new interviews with the cast and crew.

Nathan Abrams is a professor of film at Bangor University in Wales. His most recent work is on film director Stanley Kubrick. To discuss and propose a book for interview you can reach him at n.abrams@bangor.ac.uk. Twitter: @ndabrams

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Michael Newton, "It's a Wonderful Life" (British Film Institute, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

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 that is one of the central movies of the 1940s, and a key text in America's understanding of itself. This is a film that remains relevant to our own anxieties and yearnings, to all the contradictions of ordinary life, while also enacting for us the quintessence of the classic Hollywood aesthetic. Nostalgia, humour, and a tough resilience weave themselves through this movie, intertwining it with the fraught cultural moment of the end of World War II that saw its birth. It offers a still compelling merging of fantasy and realism that was utterly unique when it was first released, and has rarely been matched since.

Michael Newton's study of the film, It's a Wonderful Life (British Film Institute, 2023), investigates the source of its extraordinary power and its long-lasting impact. He begins by introducing the key figures in the movie's production - notably director Frank Capra and star James Stewart - and traces the making of the film, and then provides a brief synopsis of the film, considering its aesthetic processes and procedures, touching on all those things that make it such an astonishing film. Newton's careful analysis explores all those aspects of the film that are fundamental to our understanding of it, particularly the way in which the film brings tragedy and comedy together. Finally, Newton tells the story of the film's reception and afterlife, accounting for its initial relative failure and its subsequent immense popularity.

Michael Newton is Lecturer in English at Leiden University, Netherlands. He is the author of Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children (2002), Age of Assassins: A History of Conspiracy and Political Violence, 1865-1981 (2012), and of Kind Hearts and Coronets (2003) and Rosemary's Baby (2020) in the BFI Film Classics series.

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Eric G. Wilson, "Point Blank" (British Film Institute, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

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 Wave, and spaghetti western. Its lasting influence can be traced throughout the decades in films like Mean Streets (1973), Reservoir Dogs (1992), Heat (1995), The Limey (1999) and Memento (2000).

Eric Wilson's compelling study Point Blank (British Film Institute, 2023) examines its significance to New Hollywood cinema. He argues that Boorman revises traditional Hollywood crime films by probing a second connotation of “point blank.” On the one hand, it is a neo-noir that aptly depicts close range violence, but, it also points toward blankness, a nothingness that is the consequence of corporate America unchecked, where humans are reduced to commodities and stripped of agency and playfulness.

He goes on to reimagine the film's experimental style as a representation of and possible remedy for trauma. Examining Boorman's formal innovations, including his favoring of gesture over language and blurring of boundaries between dream and reality, he also positions the film as a grimly comical exploration of toxic masculinity and gender fluidity.

Wilson's close reading of Point Blank reveals it to be a film that innovatively inflects its own generation and speaks powerfully to our own, arguing that it is this amplitude, which encompasses the many major films it has influenced, that qualifies the film as a classic.

Eric Wilson is Professor of English at Wake Forest University, USA. His publications include Secret Cinema: Gnostic Vision in Film (2006) and The Strange World of David Lynch: Transcendental Irony from Eraserhead to Mulholland Dr (2007). His writing has featured in Psychology Today, L.A. Times, The New York Times and Huffington Post.

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Jacob Bricca, "How Documentaries Work" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Previous guest Jacob Bricca (Documentary Editing: Principles and Practice) is a professional film editor and director, specializing in documentaries. In his new book, he breaks down the hidden conventions of the documentary film in accessible language for film students and documentary enthusiasts alike. Chapters on Narrative and Meaning show how documentaries use story constructions borrowed from fiction filmmaking and combine elements from disparate sources in order to prosecute their stories, while chapters on Flow and Time illuminate the precise mechanics of how the flow of information in a documentary is regulated to produce a specific result in the mind of the viewer. Other chapters like Titles, Music, and Sound break the documentary down into its component parts that can be analyzed independently.

Throughout How Documentaries Work (Oxford University Press, 2023), excerpts from interviews with documentary producers, directors and craftspersons help to illuminate the concepts and deliver behind-the-scenes insights. It contains examples from over 100 contemporary documentaries and covers a wide variety of contemporary non-fiction work, including docu-series, television documentaries, unscripted series, and contemporary avant-garde documentaries.

Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University and an Associate Faculty member at University of Arizona Global Campus. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne.

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Colin Williamson, "Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

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 models and ideas about nature were an important inspiration for Disney’s groundbreaking animated realism. In Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), Dr. Colin Williamson presents a vivid portrait of how developments in biology, physics, and geology between 1900 and the long 1960s influenced not just Disney but the American cartoon industry as a whole.

Drawing on original research on the scientific appetites of animators and studios such as Winsor McCay, the Fleischer Brothers, Walt Disney, and United Productions of America, Dr. Williamson opens new avenues for understanding the history and aesthetics of cartoons. Interrogating the differences between art and science and reconsidering the realms of dream, magic, and fantasy as they pertain to pop culture, he yields novel proposals for bridging longstanding divides between animation, live-action cinema, and the history of science.

Drawn to Nature not only illuminates the extent to which animators have drawn on scientific insights, it also considers seriously how commercial animations themselves participate in scientific discourse. It revises and revitalizes our existing narratives about the history of American animation to uncover the many ways science informs our collective cultural imagination.

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Patrick C. Fleming, "Animating the Victorians: Disney's Literary History" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

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 Literary History (University Press of Mississippi, 2025) explores Disney’s adaptations of Victorian texts like Alice in Wonderland, Oliver Twist, Treasure Island, Peter Pan, and the tales of Hans Christian Andersen. Author Patrick C. Fleming traces those adaptations from initial concept to theatrical release and beyond to the sequels, consumer products, and theme park attractions that make up a Disney franchise. During the production process, which often extended over decades, Disney’s writers engaged not just with the texts themselves but with the contexts in which they were written, their authors’ biographies, and intervening adaptations. To reveal that process, Fleming draws on preproduction reports, press releases, and unfinished drafts, including materials in the Walt Disney Company Archives, some of which have not yet been discussed in print.

But the relationship between Disney and the Victorians goes beyond adaptations. Walt Disney himself had a similar career to the Victorian author-entrepreneur Charles Dickens. Linking the Disney Princess franchise to Victorian ideologies shows how gender and sexuality are constantly being renegotiated. Disney’s animated musicals, theme parks, copyright practices, and even marketing campaigns depend on cultural assumptions, legal frameworks, and media technologies that emerged in nineteenth-century England. Moreover, Disney’s adaptations influence modern students and scholars of the Victorian period. By applying scholarship in Victorian studies to a global company, Fleming shows how institutions mediate our understanding of the past and demonstrates the continued relevance of literary studies in a corporate media age.

An audiobook will be available in January 2026.

Patrick C. Fleming is a scholar of Victorian studies and children's literature.

Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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Beenash Jafri, "Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film (University of Minnesota Press, 2025) is an interdisciplinary examination of the stubborn attachment of Asian diasporas to settler-colonial ideals and of the decolonial possibilities Asian diasporic films imagine. Author Beenash Jafri uniquely addresses the complexities of Asian–Indigenous relationality through film and visual media, urging film scholars to approach their subjects with an eye to the entanglements of race, diaspora, and Indigeneity.

Beenash Jafri is an associate professor of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at UC Davis. Her work engages longstanding debates on relationality and coalition across feminist and queer, Indigenous and critical ethnic studies. She is the co-editor of Cultural Studies in the Interregnum (Temple University Press, 2025), and of Amerasia's forthcoming special issue on Asian Settler Colonial Critique. Her writing has been published in academic venues such as GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Feminist Studies, Settler Colonial Studies, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies, and Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association; and in public venues such as Reappropriate, Public Books, ASAP/J, Truthout, and Briarpatch Magazine.

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The Dead

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

“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 true family affair in which his son, Tony, wrote the screenplay and his daughter, Anjelica, played a major role. Like Huston’s first film, The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Dead is a perfect adaptation that complements the source material and enriches our understanding of it.

“The Dead” is the final story in Dubliners, James Joyce’s 1914 collection, available here.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

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Michelle Anya Anjirbag, "Appropriated Tales: Race and the Disney Fairy-Tale Mode" (Wayne State UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

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 storytelling to determine how the corporation has shaped public understanding of what fairy tales are and who belongs within them. Covering a span of years "from mermaid to mermaid"—from the 1989 animated The Little Mermaid to the 2023 live-action remake starring Halle Bailey—she deconstructs and interrogates Disney's corporate commodification of multiculturalism and diversity, centering its impact on misrepresented people and cultures over the stated intentions of the producers. Further, Anjirbag demonstrates that Disney shapes childhood experiences and imagination in a way that strategically promotes American cultural imperialism. Through close film analysis, applied critical theory, and social analysis of the Disney corporation, Anjirbag unearths a new framework for studies of Disney fairy tales and how they shape popular culture.

For a limited time, Wayne State University Press is offering a discount when customers use the code RHOLIDAY.

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Michael D. Dwyer, "Tinsel and Rust: How Hollywood Manufactured the Rust Belt" (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

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 States. During the 1970s and 1980s, filmic representations of shuttered auto plants, furloughed millworkers, and decaying downtowns in the industrial heartland contributed to pervasive narratives of American malaise and decline--informing the wider cultural view of these cities and their people. Author Michael D. Dwyer (Arcadia University) untangles the complicated relationship between Hollywood and the Rust Belt, exploring how the sociocultural image of the region has become a tool to tell stories about America's mythic past, degraded present, and potential futures.
Dwyer offers a reading in twofold: through the conventional lens of film and cultural studies, and through an interdisciplinary lens that pulls in elements of cultural geography and urban studies to understand the ways in which Americans learned to interpret the cities and towns of the industrial Midwest. Each chapter spotlights a different Rust Belt city--Johnstown, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Detroit--and considers how films and filmmaking processes helped shape audiences' cultural understanding of those cities. Over the course of the book, Dwyer also examines several films which offer notable representations of the Rust Belt, including Slap Shot, The Blues Brothers, Major League, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and It Follows. Finally, the volume highlights how in more recent years, cities like Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Cleveland have all attempted to remake their public image and revitalize their economies through film and media production.

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Wings of Desire

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 8 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

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 but which also take root and then resurface a day or week later when one isn’t suspecting to think about a trapeze artist or Peter Falk. More like a painting than a film, Wings of Desire flips the usual extolling of the spiritual world over the material one and asks what our lives could be like if we could see the material world as an angel. It’s a film universally loved for reasons that are difficult to articulate but certainly strong.

The Pixels of Paul Cezanne is a 2018 collection of essays by Wim Wenders which he presents his observations and reflections on the fellow artists who have influenced, shaped and inspired him.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

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161 One Battle After Another: A West Newton Cinema Discussion with Peter Coviello and Ethan Warren (JP)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 4 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

One Battle After Another, the spirited and controversial Oscar contender from Paul Thomas Anderson, premiered in September. That opening weekend featured a "Behind the Screen" premiere at the storied West Newton cinema.

Why "behind"? Because Marisa Pagano and J.B. Sloan of the West Newton Cinema Foundation) invited RTB to oversee a fascinating post-mortem between authors of recent books about "PTA" and about Thomas Pynchon, whose scintillating 1990 novel Vineland inspired the film. If inspired does not seem the right word, the exact relationship between the two was one of many things examined by Ethan Warren (The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha, Columbia University Press, 2023)and Pete Coviello (Vineland Reread) pored over in some detail in what follows, a very unusual live Recall This Book conversation.

Pete situates the inspirational novel as a pivot point ("funniest novel you've ever read") for Thomas Pynchon, a consolidation of the counter-insurgency ("drugs, sacrament of the 60's, Evil of the 80's) state from the post-1960's into the complacency of the Reagan era. Ethan, who defends practically everything PTA movie but Hard Eight (1996; despite John's affection for it) points out the significance of non-white characters, and applauds his "alarming" decision to confront white supremacy in its clarity and also the over-the-topness of the Christmas Adventurer's Club.

Pete, who wishes that the film could be as funny as the novel, emphasizes that earlier Pynchon novels were founded on conspiratorial pushback against Manichean structures. By 1990, though, he no longer rejects the solidarity that the left might bring to bear against the fascist power of the Right. God bless the unrepudiated armed insurgents, says Pete. Camaraderie and solidarity define the essence of both book and film. Although Ethan, more skeptical of the politics of the novel, reminds us that they all lose; at the end of the day, he sees the film's overt message as less appealing than its visual energy.

Audience questions, topping off the event, delve into the past and the world of Pynchon's commitments, in often surprising ways. The conversation wraps by celebrating a more than cameo by Tisha Sloan, who happens to be West Newton organizer J.B.'s sister!

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Julia Wagner, "Hester Street" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 2 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Joan Micklin Silver's groundbreaking debut feature film, Hester Street (1975), vividly portrays the immigrant experience through the eyes of Gitl (Carol Kane), a young, Orthodox Jewish woman who arrives in New York City from Eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. Reunited with her already-assimilated husband, Gitl finds they now have little in common and she is forced to adjust to a new way of life. Hester Street achieved international critical and commercial success, and Kane received a Best Actress nomination at the 1976 Academy Awards.

Marking the film's 50th anniversary, Dr. Julia Wagner's landmark book Hester Street (Bloomsbury, 2025) is the first to focus exclusively on Micklin Silver's film. Wagner examines how, despite the sexism and prejudice that Micklin Silver faced, a low-budget, black-and-white, female-led, independent production with Yiddish dialogue became an unexpected box-office hit. Through close analysis, Dr. Wagner highlights the importance of Hester Street as a milestone in cinema and affirms Micklin Silver's status as a unique voice in the history of American film-making.

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Stefania Marghitu, "Teen TV" (Routledge, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Stefania Marghitu's Teen TV (Routledge, 2021)explores the history of television's relationship to teens as a desired, but elusive audience, and the ways in which television has embraced youth subcultures, tracing the shifts in American and global televisual and youth cultures. Organized chronologically, Teen TV starts with Baby Boomers and moves to Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z as a way to contextualize and discuss cultural and historical contexts of teen television and television audiences. The book examines a wide range of historical and contemporary programming: from the broadcast bottleneck, multi-channel era that included youth targeted spaces like MTV, the WB, and the CW, to the rise of streaming platforms and global crossovers. It covers the thematic concerns and narrative structure of the coming-of-age story, and the prevalent genres of teen TV, and milestones faced by teen characters. The book also includes interviews with creators and showrunners of hit network television teen series, including Degrassi's Linda Schulyer, and the costume designer that established a heightened turn in the significance of teen fashion on the small screen in Gossip Girl, Eric Daman.

Rebekah Buchanan is an Associate Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music.

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Sabrina Mittermeier, "Fan Phenomena: Disney" (Intellect Books, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Sabrina Mittermeier's edited volume Fan Phenomena: Disney (Intellect Books, 2023) analyzes the fandom of Disney brands across a variety of media including film, television, novels, stage productions, and theme parks. It showcases fan engagement such as cosplay, fan art, and on social media, as well as the company’s reaction to it. Further, the volume deals with crucial issues—race and racism, the role of queerness, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the advent of the streaming service Disney+—within the Disney fandom and in Disney texts.

The authors come from a variety of disciplines including cultural and media studies, marketing and communications, cultural history, theater and performance studies, and more. In addition to interviews with fan practitioners, the essays feature both leading experts in fan and Disney studies alongside emerging voices in these fields. A vital new addition to the growing subdiscipline of fan studies, it will be popular with scholars of cultural studies, cultural history, and media studies.

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Chris Yogerst, "The Warner Brothers" (UP of Kentucky, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

One of the oldest and most recognizable studios in Hollywood, Warner Bros. is considered a juggernaut of the entertainment industry. Since its formation in the early twentieth century, the studio has been a constant presence in cinema history, responsible for the creation of acclaimed films, blockbuster brands, and iconic superstars.

In The Warner Brothers (UP of Kentucky, 2023), Chris Yogerst follows the siblings from their family's humble origins in Poland, through their young adulthood in the American Midwest, to the height of fame and fortune in Hollywood. With unwavering resolve, the brothers soldiered on against the backdrop of an America reeling from the aftereffects of domestic and global conflict. The Great Depression would not sink the brothers, who churned out competitive films that engaged audiences and kept their operations afloat―and even expanding. During World War II, they used their platform to push beyond the limits of the Production Code and create important films about real-world issues, openly criticizing radicalism and the evils of the Nazi regime. At every major cultural turning point in their lifetime, the Warners held a front-row seat. These days, the studio is best known as a media conglomerate with a broad range of intellectual property, spanning movies, TV shows, and streaming content. Despite popular interest in the origins of this empire, the core of the Warner Bros. saga cannot be found in its commercial successes. It is the story of four brothers―Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack―whose vision for Hollywood helped shape the world of entertainment as we know it.

Paying close attention to the brothers' identities as cultural and economic outsiders, Yogerst chronicles how the Warners built a global filmmaking powerhouse. Equal parts family history and cinematic journey, The Warner Brothers is an empowering story of the American dream and the legacy four brothers left behind for generations of filmmakers and film lovers to come.

Chris Yogerst is the author of Hollywood Hates Hitler! Jew-Baiting, Anti-Nazism, and the Senate Investigation into Warmongering in Motion Pictures and From the Headlines to Hollywood: The Birth and Boom of Warner Bros. He appeared on the New Books Network to discuss the book in 2020. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, Journal of American Culture, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, and the Hollywood Reporter. He currently serves as an associate professor of communication in the Department of Arts and Humanities at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University and an Associate Faculty member at University of Arizona Global Campus. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne.

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The Purple Rose of Cairo

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Something film fanatics often say is that a particular director’s work is really “about the movies.” Sometimes that’s true and sometimes it isn’t–but there’s no doubt that The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) is one of the “moviest” movies ever made. Every frame of it articulates the longing for life in a world superior to our own: the world of art. The problem is that the people on the screen, despite their temporary invasion of reality, eventually fade when the house lights rise.

Patrick McGilligan’s 2025 biography, Woody Allen: A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham, is a comprehensive, sweeping, and rigorous account of Allen’s life and career.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd–and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

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Dustin Condren, "An Imaginary Cinema: Sergei Eisenstein and the Unrealized Film" (Cornell UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

An Imaginary Cinema: Sergei Eisenstein and the Unrealized Film (Cornell UP, 2024) explores the unfinished cinematic projects developed and abandoned by Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein between 1927 and 1937. Centred on seven major film concepts, the book examines what it means for a work of art—particularly a film—to remain unfinished or unrealised, and how these projects fit within Eisenstein’s broader theoretical and practical framework. Offering unique insight into the history of film production in Stalinist Russia, An Imaginary Cinema contrasts Eisenstein’s experiences with both the Soviet film industry and Hollywood, and considers the technological transitions that shaped early cinema.

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Lester D. Friedman, "Citizen Spielberg" (U of Illinois Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Steven Spielberg's extraordinary career redefined Hollywood, but his achievement goes far beyond shattered box office records. Rejecting the view of Spielberg as a Barnumesque purveyor of spectacle, Lester D. Friedman presents the filmmaker as a major artist who pairs an ongoing willingness to challenge himself with a widely recognized technical mastery.

This new edition of Citizen Spielberg (University of Illinois Press, 2022) expands Friedman’s original analysis to include films of the 2010s like Lincoln and Ready Player One. Breaking down the works by genre, Friedman looks at essential aspects of Spielberg’s art, from his storytelling concerns and worldview to the uncanny connection with audiences that has powered his longtime influence as a cultural force. Friedman's examination reveals a sustained artistic vision--a vision that shows no sign of exhausting itself or audiences after Spielberg's nearly fifty years as a high-profile filmmaker.

Incisive and discerning, Citizen Spielberg, Second Edition, offers a career-spanning appraisal of a moviemaking icon.

Nathan Abrams is a professor of film at Bangor University in Wales [https://research.bangor.ac.uk/...(b8c6d91f-14c5-4862-8745-0f5d0e938a28).html]. His most recent work is on film director Stanley Kubrick [https://oxford.universitypress...]. To discuss and propose a book for interview you can reach him at n.abrams@bangor.ac.uk. Twitter: @ndabrams

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Pluribus Episode 3 Analysis: The Amazonification of Everything

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we analyze the third episode of Vince Gilligan’s new series Pluribus. We talk through this episode as a literalization of the problem of being an individual in late-stage capitalism or, if you prefer, the Amazonification of everything.

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Christina Lane, "Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock" (Chicago Review Press, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

A platinum beauty with an ugly secret; a tall, dark, and handsome husband with murder in his eyes; starkly lit interiors that may or may not include the silhouette of a rotund British gentleman…. This may sound like a catalog of images from the films of Alfred Hitchcock, but it is just as much an encapsulation of the works of Joan Harrison, a studio-era producer, a prolific cinematic storyteller, and a pioneer of female-centered suspense media at mid-century. Harrison remains best known as Alfred Hitchcock’s right-hand woman—that is, to the extent that she is known at all.

Christina Lane has written the first-ever book dedicated to the life and art of Joan Harrison, entitled Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, The Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock (Chicago Review Press, February 2020). Born into a middle-class family in Surrey, Harrison took a secretarial job with Alfred Hitchcock as an aimless twenty-something, only to become a producer on films including Foreign Correspondent (1940), Rebecca (1940), and Suspicion (1941). In the 1940s, Harrison branched out, building a solo career producing movies for RKO and Universal Studios, only to return to the Hitchcock fold to run TV’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1962).

In this discussion, Lane shares how she uncovered this obscure history, placing this “phantom lady” at the center of her own story. She also discusses the trajectory of Harrison’s career and how she adapted her research for a broader readership.

Christina Lane is Professor in the Cinematic Arts Department at the University of Miami and Edgar®-Award winning author of Phantom Lady: Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock. She provides commentary for such outlets as the Daily Mail, CrimeReads and AirMail, and has been a featured guest speaker at the Film Forum, and on NPR and Turner Classic Movies.

Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Literary Hub, and Ms.

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The Beast

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Have you ever felt that you keep making the same mistakes or that you have fallen into a pattern that could be Exhibit A as proof of reincarnation? The Beast (2023) uses all kinds of world-building and three different timelines to explore these ideas–and does so while faithfully adapting a 1903 story by Henry James. It’s the kind of film in which one could be lost in the red arrows that point out movie Easter eggs all over YouTube, but the real draw of the film is its incredible performances and how it combines intricate plotting with emotional weight.

One of the many collections of James’s stories that includes “The Beast in the Jungle,” the basis for The Beast, can be found here.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

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In “Pluribus” An America Without Division, But At What Price?

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we analyze the first two episodes of Vince Gilligan’s new series Pluribus. The show posits an extraordinary intervention in worldwide politics and culture producing a utopia (that is of course simultaneously a dystopia) of quiescent bliss. Is the show shaping up to be another hit for the showrunner, previously responsible for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul?

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C. Yamini Krishna, "Film City Urbanism in India: Hyderabad, from Princely City to Global City ,1890-2000" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 1 Nov 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Film City Urbanism in India: Hyderabad, from Princely City to Global City ,1890-2000 (Cambridge UP, 2025) is about the reciprocal relationship between cinema and the city as two institutions which co-constitute each other while fashioning the socio-political currents of the region. It interrogates imperial, postcolonial, socio-cultural, and economic imprints as captured, introduced, and left behind by politics of cinema, in the site of Hyderabad. It traverses through the makings and remakings of Hyderabad as princely city, linguistic capital city, and global city, studied through capital, labour, and organization of the film industry. It brings together diverse, and rich historical material to narrate the social history of Hyderabad, over a hundred years.

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Jakub Gortat, "Remembering National Socialism in Austrian Post-war Film" (1945-1955) (Brill, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Entrenched in the myth of being victim of the Nazi aggression, Austrian elites pursued a politics of memory that symbolically shook off any responsibility for the emergence, development and consequences of National Socialism. Authors of the vast majority of films produced early after 1945 were not interested in dealing with the recent Nazi past of their country. There were, however, exceptions. Through detailed analysis of the narratives, stylistic patterns and reception of films that were set during or immediately after World War II, Remembering National Socialism in Austrian Post-war Film" (1945-1955) (Brill, 2025) explains how cinema corroborated Austrian national self-stereotypes, at the same time offering a critique of the Nazi regime.

Guest: Jakub Gortat (he/him) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of German Studies at the University of Lodz.

Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her), a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990.

Scholars@Duke: here

Linktree: here

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Kubrick’s Worlds: Power, Paranoia, and the Politics of the Human Condition

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of International Horizons, Interim Director Eli Karetny speaks with film scholar Nathan Abrams about the enduring relevance of Stanley Kubrick and what his work can teach us about our current era. From the nuclear absurdities of Dr. Strangelove to the cosmic rebirth of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick’s films expose the fragile line between technological mastery and moral collapse. Abrams unpacks Kubrick’s fascination with war, authority, and obedience, his roots in the New York Jewish intellectual tradition, and his exploration of mystical and mythic themes—from Kabbalah to The Odyssey. Together, they reveal how Kubrick’s cinematic universe reflects our own: a world where human creativity, paranoia, and power intertwine in both terrifying and illuminating ways.

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The Trip

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

My Dinner with Andre (1981) is a film that uses the simple premise of two men sharing a meal as a vehicle for exploration of how we should live our lives. It asks fundamental questions about happiness and self-fulfillment that it doesn't wholly answer. The Trip (2010) uses the same premise as a way to dramatize two men earnestly debating who does the better impressions of Michael Caine, Al Pacino, and Sean Connery. But for all its playground sensibility, The Trip is not without ideas regarding how friendships are formed and sustained. Join us for a conversation about the real reason why men befriend each other and what they want from each other. Hint: it’s not sympathy, high regard, or a non-judgmental ear.

If watching The Trip makes you want to make a reservation at your favorite spot, you may want to first read Adam Reiner’s The New Rules of Dining Out: An Insider's Guide to Enjoying Restaurants.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on X and on Letterboxd–and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

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Alice Lovejoy, "Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War" (U California Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The history of film calls to mind unforgettable photographs, famous directors, and the glitz and hustle of the media business. But there is another tale to tell that connects film as a material to the twentieth century's history of war, destruction, and cruelty.

This story comes into focus during World War II at the factories of Tennessee Eastman, where photographic giant Kodak produced the rudiments of movie magic. Not far away, at Oak Ridge, Kodak was also enriching uranium for the Manhattan Project--uranium mined in the Belgian Congo and destined for the bomb that fell on Hiroshima. While the world's largest film manufacturer transformed into a formidable military contractor, across the ocean its competitor Agfa grew entangled with Nazi Germany's machinery of war. After 1945, Kodak's film factories stood at the front lines of a new, colder war, as their photosensitive products became harbingers of the dangers of nuclear fallout.

Following scientists, soldiers, prisoners, and spies through Kodak's and Agfa's global empires, Alice Lovejoy links the golden age of cinema and photography to colonialism, the military-industrial complex, radioactive dust, and toxic waste. Revelatory and chilling, Tales of Militant Chemistry shows how film became a weapon whose chemistry irrevocably shaped the world we live in today.

Alice Lovejoy is author of the award-winning Army Film and the Avant Garde: Cinema and Experiment in the Czechoslovak Military. A former editor at Film Comment, she is Professor of film and media studies at the University of Minnesota.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

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Kathryn Robson, "Beyond the Happy Ending: Imagining Happiness in Contemporary French Women's Writing and Film" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In Kathryn Robson's Beyond the Happy Ending: Imagining Happiness in Contemporary French Women's Writing and Film (Liverpool UP, 2025), happiness (and the question of how to define, measure and facilitate it) has become a key theme in political, economic and social discourses in recent decades in France and elsewhere, yet research on happiness in French culture and film has been limited. Given that happiness is clearly gendered, this book looks critically at the ways in which contemporary French women's writing and film give voice to and critique conceptions of happiness. Analysing French and francophone women's writing (including Nina Bouraoui, Hélène Cixous, Annie Ernaux, Camille Laurens, Leïla Slimani, Delphine de Vigan) and film (including Claire Denis, Céline Sciamma and Agnès Varda), I focus on five main areas: images of happiness in consumer and Internet culture; happiness and intimacy in the family and the home; queering happiness; migrated happiness, and happiness and ageing. Whilst the 'happiness turn' is problematic, the desire for happiness, however fraught, matters and I show how representations of happiness in contemporary French women's writing and film offer alternative conceptions of happiness that enable us to rethink happiness in more critical, diverse and inclusive terms.

Author Dr. Kathryn Robson is a reader in French at Newcastle University and the author in 2019 of I Suffer Therefore I Am: Engaging with Empathy in Contemporary French Women’s Writing and in 2004 Writing Wounds: The Inscription of Trauma in Post-1968 French Women's Life-writing.

Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama. Their research is concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean.

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Mia Yinxing Liu, "Literati Lenses: Wenren Landscape in Chinese Cinema of the Mao Era" (U Hawai’i Press, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Chinese cinema has a long history of engagement with China’s art traditions, and literati (wenren) landscape painting has been an enduring source of inspiration. Literati Lenses: Wenren Landscape in Chinese Cinema of the Mao Era (U Hawai’i Press, 2019) explores this interplay during the Mao era, a time when cinema, at the forefront of ideological campaigns and purges, was held to strict political guidelines. Through four films―Li Shizhen (1956), Stage Sisters (1964), Early Spring in February (1963), and Legend of Tianyun Mountain (1979)― Mia Liu reveals how landscape offered an alternative text that could operate beyond political constraints and provide a portal for smuggling interesting discourses into the film. While allusions to pictorial traditions associated with a bygone era inevitably took on different meanings in the context of Mao-era cinema, cinematic engagement with literati landscape endowed films with creative and critical space as well as political poignancy. Liu not only identifies how the conventions and aesthetics of traditional literati landscape art were reinvented and mediated on multiple levels in cinema, but also explores how post-1949 Chinese filmmakers configured themselves as modern intellectuals in the spaces forged among the vestiges of the old. In the process, she deepens her analysis, suggesting that landscape be seen as an allegory of human life, a mirror of the age, and a commentary on national affairs.

Jing Li teaches Chinese language, literature, and film. Her research explores rural China and independent cinema. She’s also guest editor for the Chinese Independent Cinema Observer.

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Stevie Suan, "Anime's Identity: Performativity and Form Beyond Japan" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

A formal approach to anime rethinks globalization and transnationality under neoliberalism Anime has become synonymous with Japanese culture, but its global reach raises a perplexing question--what happens when anime is produced outside of Japan? Who actually makes anime, and how can this help us rethink notions of cultural production?

In Anime's Identity: Performativity and Form Beyond Japan (U Minnesota Press, 2021), Stevie Suan examines how anime's recognizable media-form--no matter where it is produced--reflects the problematics of globalization. The result is an incisive look at not only anime but also the tensions of transnationality. Far from valorizing the individualistic "originality" so often touted in national creative industries, anime reveals an alternate type of creativity based in repetition and variation. In exploring this alternative creativity and its accompanying aesthetics, Suan examines anime from fresh angles, including considerations of how anime operates like a brand of media, the intricacies of anime production occurring across national borders, inquiries into the selfhood involved in anime's character acting, and analyses of various anime works that present differing modes of transnationality. Anime's Identity deftly merges theories from media studies and performance studies, introducing innovative formal concepts that connect anime to questions of dislocation on a global scale, creating a transformative new lens for analyzing popular media.

Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing.

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Najmeh Moradiyan-Rizi and Shilyh J. Warren eds., "Women and Global Documentary: Practices and Perspectives in the 21st Century" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Women and Global Documentary: Practices and Perspectives in the 21st Century (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), edited by Najmeh Moradiyan-Rizi and Shilyh J. Warren, answers the urgent need to re-evaluate not only the significance of women's documentary practices and their contributions to feminist world-building, but also the state of documentary studies as it engages with political, aesthetic, and industrial developments arising as a result of an increasing numbers of women's documentaries.

Bringing together a range of diverse practitioners and authors, the volume analyzes alternative and emergent networks of documentary production and collaboration within a global context. The chapters investigate filmmaking practices from regions such as East Africa, Latin America, South Asia, East Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. They also examine decolonial practices in the Global North based on Indigenous filmmaking and feminist documentary institutions such as Women Make Movies. In doing so, they assess the global, institutional, political, and artistic factors that have shaped women's documentary practices in the 21st century, and their implications for scholarly debates regarding women's authorship, political subjectivity, and documentary representation.

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Petar Mitric, "The Co-production Landscape in Europe: From Eurimages to Netflix" (Springer Nature, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The Co-production Landscape in Europe: From Eurimages to Netflix (Springer Nature, 2025) explores the evolving landscape of European film and television co-productions, from traditional models supported by Eurimages to new collaborations shaped by global streaming platforms like Netflix. It examines how European co-production policies have influenced industry practices, funding structures, and audience engagement, balancing artistic, economic, and cultural priorities. Through historical analysis, case studies, and stakeholder perspectives – including policymakers, industry professionals, and audiences – this book offers fresh insights into the challenges and opportunities facing European audiovisual production today. It is essential reading for scholars, industry professionals, and policymakers interested in transnational media, cultural policy, and the future of European cinema.

Dr Petar Mitric is an Assistant Professor in Film Studies at the University of Copenhagen. His research focuses on European audiovisual policy, co-production, and audience design practices, bridging film studies and creative media industry studies. He has published extensively on European cinema and has collaborated in an advisory capacity with organizations such as Film iVäst and TorinoFilmLab.

Dr Priyam Sinha is an Alexander Von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University in Berlin. Her research interests lie at the intersection of critical media industry studies, disability studies, gender studies, affect studies, production culture studies, and anthropology of the body. So far, her articles have been published in Media, Culture and Society; Communication, Culture and Critique; South Asian Diaspora, among others. She is also a regular podcast host at NewBooksNetwork and has been published in public writing forums like the Economic and Political Weekly, FemAsia, Asian Film Archive, among others. More information on her ongoing projects can be found on her website here and you can follow her on X here

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William Lempert, "Dreaming Down the Track: Awakenings in Aboriginal Cinema" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The product of years of embedded fieldwork within Indigenous film crews in Northwestern Australia, Dreaming Down the Track: Awakenings in Aboriginal Cinema (U Minnesota Press, 2025) delves deeply into Aboriginal cinema as a transformative community process. It follows the social lives of projects throughout their production cycles, from planning and editing to screening, broadcasting, and after-images. Across its narrative sweep, this ethnography engages the film career of Kukatja elder Mark Moora to demonstrate the impact of filmmaking on how Aboriginal futures are collectively imagined and called forth.

William Lempert highlights a series of awakenings through which Moora ultimately came to view cinema as a process for catalyzing his family’s return to their home country of Mangkayi. This biographical media journey paints an intimate portrait of the inspiring possibilities and sobering limitations of Indigenous envisioning within settler states. Lempert traces how Moora’s life and films convey a multiplicity of Aboriginal experiences across time and space, from colonial contact to contemporary life in communities like Balgo, including the continued governmental attempts to undermine them.

Amid ongoing negotiations to establish the first treaties between Indigenous nations and Australian states, Dreaming Down the Track illustrates what is at stake in how Aboriginal–State relations are represented and understood, both within communities and for the broader public. Lempert stays true to Moora’s insight that film can preserve community stories for generations to come, toward the aim of enacting sovereign futures.

William Lempert is Osterweis Family Associate Professor of anthropology at Bowdoin College. His writing has been published in several journals, including Cultural Anthropology and American Indian Culture and Research Journal.

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Miami Vice

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Many movies tell us how to watch them. Whether it’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, Casablanca, or Rear Window, movies steer the viewers to certain reactions anticipated by their directors long before the first tickets have been sold. Michael Mann’s Miami Vice does this less often than other films (including Mann’s) with spectacular results. Almost twenty years after its release, the film seems to have found a new audience that appreciates Mann’s letting the viewer take the protagonists on their own terms. It’s not a buddy-cop movie, although the cops are friends; it’s not a tale of star-crossed lovers, although that’s plainly there; and it’s not a series of wild shoot-outs, although it culminates in a classic Michael Mann action sequence. The current colloquialism “It is what it is” seems to apply here–and what Miami Vice “is” is a great film, regardless of how it’s categorized.

Jean-Baptiste Thoret’s Michael Mann:A Contemporary Retrospective examines Mann’s style, themes since he announced his presence in 1981 with Thief.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

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History Is Made at Night

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Every so often, you encounter The Perfect Movie: something with a screenplay, cast, and direction that combine in a way that reminds you of what happens when everyone working on a movie gets it exactly right. History is Made at Night (1937) is one of those movies. Join us for a conversation about how a film that accelerates emotions almost to the level of farce and shifts between genres like a bored teenager with a remote control still dramatizes perfectly what it’s like to fall in love.

Hervé Dumont’s 1993 book Frank Borzage: The Life and Films of a Hollywood Romantic offers complete coverage of Borzage's entire career: the more than 100 films he made and the effect of those films on movie audiences, especially between 1920 and 1940.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

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Alien: Earth Episode Analysis: Emergence and The Real Monsters

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we conclude our analysis of the FX series Alien: Earth with episode 7, “Emergence” and episode 8, “The Real Monsters.”

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Mark Archuleta, "The Reel Thrilling Events of Bank Robber Henry Starr: From Gentleman Bandit to Movie Star and Back Again" (U North Texas Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In 1921 headlines across the country announced the death of Henry Starr, a burgeoning silent film star who was killed while attempting to rob a bank in Harrison, Arkansas. Cynics who knew the real Starr were not surprised. Before becoming a matinee idol, Starr had been the greatest bank robber of the horseback bandit era.

Born in 1873, Cherokee outlaw Henry Starr had survived shootouts and death sentences and lived long enough to witness the invention of moving pictures. In 1919, after Starr was released from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, a hotshot movie producer convinced him he had the looks, charisma, and “wild and woolly” life story to become the next big movie star.

When filming began in 1920, powerful organizations aligned to censor Starr, attempting to prevent him from exposing Oklahoma’s corrupt legal system and the government’s mistreatment of the Cherokee. The Women's Christian Temperance Union pressured theater owners to ban his film, state and federal lawmakers drafted legislation to stymie theatrical distribution, and police and district attorneys threatened to send him back to prison.

Starr's only film, the biographical movie A Debtor to the Law, is lost to history, but through surviving memorabilia, newspaper accounts, and interviews with people who worked with him on set, author Mark Archuleta traces how the reformed gentleman bandit attempted to use the power of cinema to reframe his life story and redeem himself in the eyes of the public, his family, and the Cherokee Nation.

The Reel Thrilling Events of Bank Robber Henry Starr: From Gentleman Bandit to Movie Star and Back Again (University of North Texas Press, 2025) by Mark Archuleta is about more than heists and Hollywood glamor. Starr’s journey is about the American myth of reinvention, recidivism, and the founding of the motion picture industry when racial tensions were simmering to a boil.

Contact the author here.

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Mary Beth Willard, "Why It's Ok to Enjoy the Work of Immoral Artists" (Routledge, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The #metoo movement has forced many fans to consider what they should do when they learn that a beloved artist has acted immorally. One natural thought is that fans ought to give up the artworks of immoral artists, but according to Mary Beth Willard, it’s hard to find good reasons to do so. In Why It's OK to Enjoy the Work of Immoral Artists (Routledge, 2021), she contends that because most boycotts of artists won’t succeed, there’s no ethical reason to do so most of the time. She then argues that canceling artists is ethically risky because it encourages moral grandstanding.

In this interview, Allison Leigh talks to Mary Beth Willard about the differences between enjoyment and engagement when it comes to immoral artists, as well as whether we should enjoy artworks that have immoral outlooks and behaviors embedded in them. Their conversation ranges from the problems associated with collective versus individual actions, the positive effects that giving up the work of immoral artists may have for shifting cultural norms, and the distinction between public and private enjoyment.

Allison Leigh is Associate Professor of Art History and the SLEMCO/LEQSF Regents Endowed Professor in Art & Architecture at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Her research explores masculinity in European and Russian art of the eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries.

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Yu Zhang, "Going to the Countryside: The Rural in the Modern Chinese Cultural Imagination, 1915–1965" (U Michigan Press, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, modern Chinese intellectuals, reformers, revolutionaries, leftist journalists, and idealistic youth often crossed the increasing gap between the city and the countryside, which made the act of "going to the countryside" a distinctively modern experience and a continuous practice in China. Such a spatial crossing eventually culminated in the socialist state program of "down to the villages" movements during the 1960s and 1970s. What then was the special significance of "going to the countryside" before that era? Yu Zhang explores the cultural representations and practices of this practice between 1915 and 1965, focusing on individual homecoming, rural reconstruction, revolutionary journeys, the revolutionary "going down to the people" as well as going to the frontiers and rural hometowns for socialist construction. As part of the larger discourses of enlightenment, revolution, and socialist industrialization, the act of going to the countryside entailed new ways of looking at the world and ordinary people, brought about new experiences of space and time, initiated new means of human communication and interaction, and generated new forms of cultural production. Going to the Countryside: The Rural in the Modern Chinese Cultural Imagination, 1915–1965 (U of Michigan Press, 2020) argues that this new body of cultural productions did not merely turn the rural into a constantly changing representational space; most importantly, the rural has been constructed as a distinct modern experiential and aesthetic realm characterized by revolutionary changes in human conceptions and sentiments. Through her close examinations of the practice, Yu Zhang shows a fundamental epistemic shift in modern China and ultimately how it creates a new aesthetic, social, and political landscape.

Jing Li teaches Chinese language and modern Chinese literature and film. Her research focuses on rural China and independent cinema. She is developing a public humanities project on Chinese rural cinema, and serves as guest editor for the Chinese Independent Film Archive (CIFA).

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Mark Goble, "Downtime: The Twentieth Century in Slow Motion" (Columbia UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Slow motion is everywhere in contemporary film and media, but it wasn't always so ubiquitous. How did slow motion ascend to the dubious honor of becoming our culture's least "special" effect? And what does slow motion — a trick secured paradoxically through the camera's ever-racing speeds of capture — tell us about the temporalities and trajectories of modernity?

Mark Goble, Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, takes up these questions in his latest book Downtime: The Twentieth Century in Slow Motio n (Columbia UP, 2025), out now from Columbia University Press. In this conversation with Alix Beeston, Mark shares from his fascinating account of slow motion across film, art, and literature in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. For Mark, slow motion is a key index of a period of capitalist, ecological, political, and cultural crisis that we're still enduring — but that we hope will one day, however slowly, come to an end.

Tracking bodies and things as they move fast and slow at once also prompts new reflections on the value of the time that academic labor takes, the nature of its uneven rhythms and contingencies, and why dad jokes, witty asides, and extended bits on the impotence of Clyde in the classic 1968 film Bonnie and Clyde might turn out to be essential to scholarly writing.

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The Straight Story

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Everybody was shocked when, in 1999, David Lynch released a G-rated film with a Norman Rockwell setting that didn’t have a dark underbelly or wild reveal; if you have a David Lynch bingo card, The Straight Story is the free space. And while The Straight Story is as wholesome a film as you can find, it's never sentimental or corny. Dan thinks it’s Lynch’s best. Join him and Mike as they talk about all the ways that the film could have gone wrong and, more importantly, all the things that Lynch gets right about aging, regret, and family.

Any fan of David Lynch’s work should read Room to Dream, Lynch’s memoir that’s as unique as the man himself: the book has alternating chapters of Lynch and his official biographer telling the story of his life.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on X and on Letterboxd–and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Also check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Check out Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

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Katherine Fusco, "Hollywood's Others: Love and Limitation in the Star System" (Columbia UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 6 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

We tend to think about movie stars as either glamorous or relatable. But in the 1920s and 1930s, when the Hollywood star system was taking shape, a number of unusual stars appeared on the silver screen, representing groups from which the American mainstream typically sought to avert its eyes. What did it mean for a white entertainment columnist to empathize with an ambiguously gendered Black child star? Or for boys to idolize Lon Chaney, famous for portraying characters with disabilities?

Hollywood's Others: Love and Limitation in the Star System (Columbia UP, 2025) explores the affective ties between white, non-disabled audiences and the fascinatingly different stars with whom they identified—but only up to a point. Katherine Fusco argues that stardom in this era at once offered ways for viewers to connect across group boundaries while also policing the limits of empathy. Examining fan magazines alongside film performances, she traces the intense audience attachment to atypical celebrities and the ways the film industry sought to manage it. Fusco considers Shirley Temple’s career in light of child labor laws and changing notions of childhood; shows how white viewers responded to Black music in depictions of the antebellum South; and analyzes the gender politics of conspiracy theories around celebrity suicides. Shedding light on marginalized stardoms and the anxieties they provoked, Hollywood’s Others challenges common notions about film’s capacity to build empathy.

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Alice Lovejoy, "Tales of Militant Chemistry" (U California Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 2 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In Tales of Militant Chemistry (U of California Press, 2025), Alice Lovejoy tells the untold story of film as a chemical cousin to poison gas and nuclear weapons, shaped by centuries of violent extraction. The history of film calls to mind unforgettable photographs, famous directors, and the glitz and hustle of the media business. But there is another tale to tell that connects film as a material to the twentieth century's history of war, destruction, and cruelty. This story comes into focus during World War II at the factories of Tennessee Eastman, where photographic giant Kodak produced the rudiments of movie magic. Not far away, at Oak Ridge, Kodak was also enriching uranium for the Manhattan Project--uranium mined in the Belgian Congo and destined for the bomb that fell on Hiroshima. While the world's largest film manufacturer transformed into a formidable military contractor, across the ocean its competitor Agfa grew entangled with Nazi Germany's machinery of war. After 1945, Kodak's film factories stood at the front lines of a new, colder war, as their photosensitive products became harbingers of the dangers of nuclear fallout. Following scientists, soldiers, prisoners, and spies through Kodak's and Agfa's global empires, Lovejoy links the golden age of cinema and photography to colonialism, the military-industrial complex, radioactive dust, and toxic waste. Revelatory and chilling, Tales of Militant Chemistry shows how film became a weapon whose chemistry irrevocably shaped the world we live in today.

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Patricia Aufderheide, "Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy" (U California Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy (U California Press, 2024) traces how filmmaker-philosophers brought the dream of making documentaries and strengthening democracy to award-winning reality—with help from nuns, gang members, skateboarders, artists, disability activists, and more.

The evolution of Kartemquin Films—Peabody, Emmy, and Sundance-awarded and Oscar-nominated makers of such hits as Hoop Dreams and Minding the Gap—is also the story of U.S. independent documentary film over the last seventy years. Patricia Aufderheide reveals the untold story of how Kartemquin developed as an institution that confronts the brutal realities of the industry and society while empowering people to claim their right to democracy.

Kartemquin filmmakers, inspired by pragmatic philosopher John Dewey, made their studio a Chicago-area institution. Activists for a more public media, they boldly confronted in their own productions the realities of gender, race, and class. They negotiated the harsh terms and demands of commercial media, from 16mm through the streaming era, while holding fast to their democratic vision. Drawing on archival research, interviews, and personal experience, Aufderheide tells an inspiring story of how to make media that matters in a cynical world.

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Excalibur

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 09:00:00 +0000

We’ve seen many attempts at transferring Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur and its variants onto the screen, but none of them capture the spirit of the original quite like Excalibur, John Boorman’s 1981 film that can be called, without insult, “aggressively two-dimensional.” Join us for a conversation about how Boorman makes the experience of watching a film like the experience of reading the legends. We also talk about the two best portrayals of King Arthur: Nigel Terry and Graham Chapman.

If the conversation makes you want to read the original material, you can find a great edition of Le Morte d’Arthur here.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on X and on Letterboxd–and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Also check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Check out Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

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Thomas Christian Bächle and Jascha Bareis eds., "The Realities of Autonomous Weapons (Bristol UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Autonomous weapons exist in a strange territory between Pentagon procurement contracts and Hollywood blockbusters, between actual military systems and speculative futures. For this week's Liminal Library, I spoke with Jascha Bareis, co-editor of The Realities of Autonomous Weapons (Bristol UP, 2025), about how these dual existences shape international relations and cultural imagination. The collection examines autonomous weapons not just as military hardware but as psychological tools that reshape power dynamics through their mere possibility. These systems epitomize what the editors call "the fluidity of violence"—warfare that dissolves traditional boundaries between human decision and machine action, between targeted strikes and algorithmic inevitability.

Bareis and his contributors trace fascinating connections between fictional representations and military doctrine—how Terminator narratives influence Pentagon planning while actual weapons development feeds back into artistic imagination. The book wrestles with maintaining "meaningful human control" over systems designed to operate faster than human thought, a challenge that grows more urgent as militaries worldwide race toward greater autonomy. Each chapter reveals how thoroughly we need to rethink human-machine relationships in warfare, from the gendered coding of robot soldiers in film to the way AI imaginaries differ between Silicon Valley and New Delhi. Autonomous weapons force us to confront uncomfortable realities about agency, violence, and the increasingly blurred line between human judgment and algorithmic certainty.

Links:

A Clean Kill? the role of Patriot in the Gulf War

Statement delivered by Germany on Working Definition of LAWS / “Definition of Systems under Consideration”

The Silicon Valley venture capitalists who want to ‘move fast and break things’ in the defence industry

Hype Studies

'The Gatekeepers' documentary

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Prudence Peiffer, "The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever" (Harper, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

For just over a decade, from 1956 to 1967, a collection of dilapidated former sail-making warehouses clustered at the lower tip of Manhattan became the quiet epicenter of the art world. Coenties Slip, a dead-end street near the water, was home to a circle of wildly talented and varied artists that included Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, Delphine Seyrig, Lenore Tawney, and Jack Youngerman. As friends and inspirations to one another, they created a unique community for unbridled creative expression and experimentation, and the works they made at the Slip would go on to change the course of American art.

Now, for the first time, in The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever (Harper, 2023) Dr. Prudence Peiffer pays homage to these artists and the unsung impact their work had on the direction of late twentieth-century art and film. This remarkable biography, as transformative as the artists it illuminates, questions the very concept of a “group” or “movement,” as it spotlights the Slip’s eclectic mix of gender and sexual orientation, abstraction and Pop, experimental film, painting, and sculpture, assemblage and textile works. Brought together not by the tenets of composition or technique, nor by philosophy or politics, the artists cultivated a scene at the Slip defined by a singular spirit of community and place. They drew lasting inspiration from one another, but perhaps even more from where they called home, and the need to preserve the solitude its geography fostered. Despite Coenties Slip’s obscurity, the entire history of Manhattan was inscribed into its cobblestones—one of the first streets and central markets of the new colony, built by enslaved people, with revolutionary meetings at the tavern just down Pearl Street; named by Herman Melville in Moby Dick and site of the boom and bust of the city’s maritime industry; and, in the artists’s own time, a development battleground for Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. The Slip’s history is entwined with that of the artists and their art—eclectic and varied work that was made from the wreckage of the city’s many former lives.

An ambitious and singular account of a time, a place, and a group of extraordinary people, The Slip investigates the importance of community, and makes an argument for how we are shaped by it, and how it in turns shapes our work.

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Alisha Mughal, "It Can’t Rain All the Time: The Crow" (ECW Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Alisha Mughal's It Can’t Rain All the Time: The Crow (ECW Press, 2025) weaves memoir with film criticism in an effort to pin down The Crow’s cultural resonance. A passionate analysis of the ill-fated 1994 film starring the late Brandon Lee and its long-lasting influence on action movies, cinematic grief, and emotional masculinity Released in 1994, The Crow first drew in audiences thanks to the well-publicized tragedy that loomed over the film: lead actor Brandon Lee had died on set due to a mishandled prop gun. But it soon became clear that The Crow was more than just an accumulation of its tragic parts. The celebrated critic Roger Ebert wrote that Lee’s performance was “more of a screen achievement than any of the films of his father, Bruce Lee.” In It Can’t Rain All the Time, Mughal argues that The Crow has transcended Brandon Lee’s death by exposing the most challenging human emotions in all their dark, dramatic, and visceral glory, so much so that it has spawned three sequels, a remake, and an intense fandom. Eric, our back-from-the-dead, grieving protagonist, shows us that there is no solution to depression or loss, there is only our own internal, messy work. By the end of the movie, we realize that Eric has presented us with a vast range of emotions and that masculinity doesn’t need to be hard and impenetrable. Through her memories of seeking solace in the film during her own grieving period, Mughal brilliantly shows that, for all its gothic sadness, The Crow is, surprisingly and touchingly, a movie about redemption and hope.

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Jirí Anger, "Towards a Film Theory from Below: Archival Film and the Aesthetics of the Crack-Up" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Jiří Anger is a scholar, archivist, and videographic critic devoted, as he says in this interview, to "making weird shapes shine." In this episode of New Books in Film, Anger sits down with Alix Beeston to discuss his award-winning book Towards a Film Theory from Below: Archival Film and the Aesthetics of the Crack-Up.

Anger's book is an experiment in theorizing film "from below," from the perspective of moving-image objects themselves. Its revelatory readings of single frames from the digitized first Czech films by Jan Kríženecký challenge what we think we know about film materials, histories, and spectatorship. These early film objects are defined and deformed by scratches, stains, tears, and shakes that Anger takes seriously as part of an "accidental aesthetics" which reveals the creative potential of material traces and processes — beyond their shaping through human intention.

How does doing film theory from below complicate our understandings of creativity and agency? What forms of scholarly or artistic interventions into film materials does it prompt? What are the ethics of "touching" or manipulating archival objects for the sake of restoration, dissemination, or interpretation? Reflecting on both his written scholarship and videographic practice, Jiří offers thoughtful answers to these and other vexing questions for all who seek to reimagine film history and theory through the archive's preponderance of idiosyncratic forms, disruptive materials, and weird shapes.

Towards a Film Theory from Below is out now with Bloomsbury Academic. Anger builds on the work of the book in A Tale of Two Desktops: The First Czech Films in Parallel Worlds, a new videographic essay coproduced with Veronika Hanáková and Jiří Žák.

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Horror and Humanism in "28 Years Later"

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

We break down the themes and ideas in 28 Years Later, with a particular focus on the politics of this Danny Boyle / Alex Garland sequel to 28 Days Later. We react to the humanitarianism of Dr. Kelson, the role of the islands within the movie, and analyze the visions of family, fatherhood, and masculinity presented. We explain the controversial ending to the movie, and consider the extent to which the movie is commenting on Britain past, present, and future. We begin, though, with a review of the film.

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Meredith McCarroll, "Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film" (U Georgia Press, 2018)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 9 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

If you mention Appalachia to many people, they may immediately respond with the "Deliverance" dueling banjos theme. Unfortunately, this is an example of how the region is stereotyped and misunderstood, particularly in films. In her book, Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film(University of Georgia Press, 2018), Meredith McCarroll, Director of Writing and Rhetoric at Bowdoin College, describes Appalachian people as being shown as different from both white and nonwhite groups, often considered as belonging to the worst of each group. Her book discusses specific film examples that help to illustrate the negative connotation heaped upon Appalachia, and also presents where filmmakers treat them more fairly.

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Liza Black, "Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, 1941-1960" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 8 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Behind the braided wigs, buckskins, and excess bronzer that typified the mid-century "filmic Indian" lies a far richer, deeper history of Indigenous labor, survival, and agency. This history takes center stage in historian Liza Black's new book, Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, 1941-1960 (University of Nebraska Press, 2020), which looks at Indigenous peoples' experiences in the American film industry that so often relied upon and reproduced racialized stereotypes of "authentic Indians" to produce profit. Black shows how non-Native film producers, in producing monolithic and historically static Native caricatures for profit, reinforced settler colonial narratives on screen while simultaneously denying Indigenous actors, extras, and staff of their modernity.

Thorough in detail and innovative in analysis, Black incorporates film studies, Native and Indigenous studies, and history, shedding new light on the mid-century film industry and Native peoples' roles in it. Black chronicles the contours of American settler colonialism and its cultural and economic manifestations both on- and off-screen, giving the "authentic Indian" so familiar to non-Native audiences a much-needed dose of historical context. The result is an engaging story of Indigenous talent, labor, and livelihood that transcends critical moments in Native and U.S. histories alike.

Listeners can now purchase Picturing Indians using code 6AF20 for a 40% discount on the University of Nebraska Press' site.

Annabel LaBrecque is a PhD student in the Department of History at UC Berkeley. You can find her on Twitter @labrcq.

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Nezar AlSayyad and Heba Safey Eldeen, "Cinematic Cairo: Egyptian Urban Modernity from Reel to Real" (American U in Cairo Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 7 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The relationship between the city and cinema is formidable. The images and sounds of the city found in movies are perhaps the only experience that many people will have of cities they may never visit. Films influence the way we construct images of the world, and accordingly, in many instances, how we operate within it. Cinematic Cairo: Egyptian Urban Modernity from Reel to Real offers a history of Cairo’s urban modernity using film as the primary source of exploration, and cinematic space as both an analytical tool and a medium of critique. Cairo has provided rich subject material for Egypt’s film industry since the inception of the art form at the end of the nineteenth century. The “reel” city—imagined, perceived, and experienced—provides the spatial domain that mirrors change and allows for an interrogation of the “real” city as it encountered modernity over the course of a century.
Bringing together chapters by architects and art and literary historians, this volume explores this parallel and convergent relationship through two sections. The first uses films from the 1930s to the end of the twentieth century to illustrate the development of a modern Cairo and its modern subjects. The second section is focused on tracing the transformation of the cinematic city under conditions of neoliberalism, religious fundamentalism, and gender tensions. The result is a comprehensive narrative of the urban modernity of one of the most important cities in the Arab world and Global South.

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Bruce Isaacs, "The Art of Pure Cinema: Hitchcock and His Imitators" (Oxford UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The Art of Pure Cinema: Hitchcock and His Imitators (Oxford University Press) is the first book-length study to examine the historical foundations and stylistic mechanics of pure cinema.

Author Bruce Isaacs, Associate Professor of Film Studies and Director of the Film Studies Program at the University of Sydney, explores the potential of a philosophical and artistic approach most explicitly demonstrated by Hitchcock in his later films, beginning with Hitchcock's contact with the European avant-garde film movement in the mid-1920s.

Tracing the evolution of a philosophy of pure cinema across Hitchcock's most experimental works - Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds, Marnie, and Frenzy - Isaacs rereads these works in a new and vital context.

In addition to this historical account, the book presents the first examination of pure cinema as an integrated stylistics of mise en scène, montage, and sound design. The films of so-called Hitchcockian imitators like Mario Bava, Dario Argento, and Brian De Palma are also examined in light of a provocative claim: that the art of pure cinema is only fully realized after Hitchcock.

Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne.

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Moonstruck

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Our episode on Moonstruck (1987) was almost never made: as with Manchester By the Sea, Dan harbored an irrational suspicion against it–but when he finally saw it, he sought forgiveness for the errors of his ways. That’s an appropriate theme to consider in light of a film saturated with Italian Catholicism that explores themes of sin and redemption, but with a light touch and in a celebratory mode. It’s a terrific film that couldn’t be made today; listen to the show to learn why.

Ira Wells’s Norman Jewison: A Director’s Life is the 2021 biography of the director who worked with almost every A-list star but who also had to often battle the studios to pursue his projects.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on X and on Letterboxd–and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Also check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as the many film-related interviews on The New Books Network.

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Richard Scheib, "A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic: Depictions of Plague and Pandemic on Film and TV" (Headpress, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Richard Scheib's A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic (Headpress, 2025) is a film book like no other. It opens with the author's first-hand account of the Covid-19 pandemic and life in lockdown. His sense of dread, and anxiety about his state of health, were experiences shared with millions of others across the world. For author Richard Scheib, already committed to writing a book about plagues and pandemics in popular culture, Covid-19 felt like a perverse twist of fate. Media depictions of deadly contagions had, to this point, been speculative and often off the mark; his book takes an in-depth look at what filmmakers imagined would happen and contrasts it with the reality. International in scope, A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic examines films in a wide variety of genres, from the silent era to the present day. Black Death, Ebola, Mad Cow Disease, Bird Flu -- it explores fictionalized accounts of plague and pestilence such as box-office hit Outbreak (1995), as well as documentary treatments of real-life incidents. Whether the threats depicted have a basis in reality -- the biowarfare of the Cold War era, for instance -- or are, like zombies and vampires, more fantastical, Scheib demonstrates how the fear of contagion has provided a wealth of inspiration for the big and small screen. In addition to his work on the pandemic, Scheib runs Moria Reviews where he posts reviews for horror, science fiction, and fantasy films.

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Veronica Litt, "Ugh! As If!: Clueless" (ECW Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Veronica Litt's Ugh As If!: Clueless (ECW Press, 2025) uncovers the complex layers beneath the glossy surface of the 1995 classic film "Clueless." Litt investigates not just the Austen satire but the film’s deeper ethical questions about femininity, innocence, bias, and inequity. A sweet and sly exploration of the Jane Austen–inspired teen movie and its evergreen imperative to be kind, do better, and find the activist within We are totally butt-crazy in love with "Clueless." Since the movie’s premiere in 1995, pop culture has mined Amy Heckerling’s high school comedy for inspiration, from Iggy Azalea and Charli XCX’s “Fancy” music video to Cher’s iconic yellow plaid suit appearing at every Halloween party. In Ugh As If!, Veronica Litt argues that this seemingly fluffy teen romp is the quintessential thinking woman’s movie, one in which the audience is asked to seriously consider the beauty and power of naïveté. Cher Horowitz’s gradual pivot from oblivious it girl to burgeoning activist is a powerful reminder that even the most unlikely people can change for the better and contribute to their communities. In this bright, shiny film, pursuing a more just society isn’t just possible — it’s enjoyable. This fun, feminine, feel-good movie is a counter-narrative to nihilism, a refusal to give into cynicism, hopelessness, and passivity. Almost without viewers noticing, "Clueless" teaches Cher, and us, how to become better. Like the film it examines, Ugh As If! nudges even the most jaded viewer into feeling hopeful about the future. About the Pop Classics Series Short books that pack a big punch, Pop Classics offer intelligent, fun, and accessible arguments about why a particular pop phenomenon matters.

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Karen Redrobe, "Undead: (Inter)(in)animation, Feminisms, and the Art of War" (Univ of California Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Karen Redrobe's latest book Undead: (Inter)(in)animation, Feminisms, and the Art of War (Univ of California Press, 2025) is a fascinating account of the role of animation in the visual cultures of war. It analyzes works by artists including Yael Bartana, Nancy Davenport, Kelly Dolak and Wazhmah Osman, Gesiye, David Hartt, Helen Hill, Onyeka Igwe, Ibrahim Nasrallah, Mary Reid Kelley, and Patrick Kelley, in which relational and intermedial practices of “(inter)(in)animation” generate aesthetic tactics for reframing war.

Like all of Karen's work, Undead is theoretically rich, thoroughly interdisciplinary, and written with clarity as well as urgency. Its mixture of clear-sighted criticality and dogged hopefulness is especially powerful in the times of conflict, cruelty, and destructiveness through which we’re living. In this wide-ranging conversation, Karen speaks with refreshing honesty and vulnerability about how to reimagine scholarly research and writing in line with anti-war feminist politics, what it means to confront the complicity of the university—and of university workers—in cultures of war, and why scholars should embrace being wrong and taking risks.

Undead was published in April 2025 by the University of California Press. A free ebook version is available through Luminos.

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Elana Levine, "Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera and US Television History" (Duke UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 7 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Since the debut of These Are My Children in 1949, the daytime television soap opera has been foundational to the history of the medium as an economic, creative, technological, social, and cultural institution. In Her Stories, Elana Levine draws on archival research and her experience as a longtime soap fan to provide an in-depth history of the daytime television soap opera as a uniquely gendered cultural form and a central force in the economic and social influence of network television. Closely observing the production, promotion, reception, and narrative strategies of the soaps, Levine examines two intersecting developments: the role soap operas have played in shaping cultural understandings of gender and the rise and fall of broadcast network television as a culture industry. In so doing, she foregrounds how soap operas have revealed changing conceptions of gender and femininity as imagined by and reflected on the television screen.

In a wide-ranging and enjoyable interview with Dr. Elana Levine, we covered a broad array of subjects pertaining to the history, culture, and craft of soap operas. After an initial conversation, I asked her a series of questions about her work and how it resonates with other genres such as the Real Housewives franchise, especially how original housewives (domestic workers as well as suburban housewives of numerous ethnicities and races) represented the viewership of soap opera consumption and support. We talked about the early origins of soap operas, especially with Proctor & Gamble in the early inception of the soap opera genre to now, with the innovative partnership and collaboration between Proctor and Gamble/CBS and the NAACP in debuting the new soap opera, Beyond the Gates.

We discussed the ways in which the viewership of soaps, mostly working women and stay at home women shed light on significant aspects of American Women's and Gender history, women's civic participation (combing public and private space) as well as informs how women viewers, often housewives and domestics, found ways to weave their own life narratives together with those of cast actors, thus contributing to an interpretive lens on life matter,(blurring line between real and imagined), representing both an innovative and inclusive type of Citizenship seasoning process, whereby, via interaction with soap operas stars as both celebrities and everyday people, (as fellow Cinema scholar Anna McCarthy talks about in her work on ways in which 1950s television, functioned as a kind of citizen machine governing America, championed inclusive democratic practice that engaged citizens in repetitious call and response and back and forth conversation about everyday practices of everyday working people.

Lastly, we talked about the parallels with primetime soap operas like Dallas, Dynasty, Knots Landing, Yellowstone, as well as what Dr. Levine calls a hybrid form of soap opera storytelling found in series like Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, and other primetime television series. We also spoke about the parallels between soap operas as meditations on aspects of good and evil, finding interesting synergy with genres such as wrestling as soap opera drama sport, the drama of superheroes and villains in the DC and Marvel Universe, as well as versions of science fiction.

Dr. Elana Levine is Professor of Media, Cinema and Digital Studies in the Department of English at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. She got her PhD, Communication Arts from University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research areas of interest include Television history, theory, and criticism; gender, sexuality, and media; media industry and production studies; media audience studies.

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Love and Mercy

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 7 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Love and Mercy

A film by Bill Pohlad

Love and Mercy (2014) is a film that shows how the sausage is made, in terms of both the music and the man. We get to see Brian Wilson’s Kubrick-like devotion to getting Pet Sounds exactly like he wants it, as well as his becoming a whole person through the force of his future wife.

The film is a nightmare version of Peter Pan, examining a boy who won’t grow up until he finds the two things mentioned in the title. We all know from history that he does, but the film still keeps us in suspense over whether or not Wilson will make it out of a prison he has unwittingly helped to create.

Brian Wilson’s 2017 memoir, I Am Brian Wilson, is a perfect companion piece to Love and Mercy.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on X and on Letterboxd–and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Also check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as the many film-related interviews on The New Books Network.

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Kevin Guyan, "Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 5 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Kevin Guyan reveals how the fight for LGBTQ equalities in the UK is shaped – and constrained – by the classifications we encounter every day.

Looking across six systems – the police and the recording of hate crimes; dating apps and digital desire; outness in the film and television industry; borders and LGBTQ asylum seekers; health and fitness activities; and DEI initiatives in the workplace – Rainbow Trap documents how inclusive interventions – such as new legislation, revamped diversity policies and tech fixes – have attempted to bring historically marginalized communities out of the shadows.
Yet, as part of the bargain, LGBTQ people need to locate themselves in an ever-growing list of classifications, categories and labels to 'make sense' to the very systems they are seeking to access. This requirement to be classified catches LGBTQ communities in a rainbow trap. Because when we look beyond the welcoming veneer of inclusive interventions, we uncover sorting processes that determine what LGBTQ lives are valued and what queer futures are possible.

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Is Sinners a New Classic of Political Utopianism?

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and we analyze the movie Sinners, starring Michael B. Jordan, just released on streaming. We address the political themes of the movie, focusing on its generic identity as a Southern Gothic, the historical context in which the movie takes place, its engagement with ideas of utopia, community, freedom, and the siren songs that often lead communities down false roads in search of these goals. We appreciate the aesthetic achievement of the movie, which is perhaps Director Ryan Coogler and star Michael B. Jordan's best and most complete work.

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American Gangster

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

American Gangster (2007) is Ridley Scott’s homage to The French Connection: it’s got the right cars, clothes, and colors and is based on another true story of an obsessed cop trying to take down a drug kingpin. The feature (or the bug, depending on how you look at it) is Denzel Washington in the title role. Is an actor so charismatic that everyone talks as if they are on a first-name basis with him actually a liability in a movie that wants to tell a story of a large-scale heroin dealer who, in the movie’s first scene, burns a man alive? Can an actor’s star power ever backfire?

John McCarty’s Bullets Over Hollywood (Grand Central Publishing, 2005) traces the gangster film and explores the enduring appeal of the genre.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on X and on Letterboxd–and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Also check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as the many film-related interviews on The New Books Network.

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Jeremy Stolow, "Picturing Aura: A Visual Biography" (MIT Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Picturing Aura: A Visual Biography (MIT Press, 2025) by Dr. Jeremy Stolow is the first book of its kind: an extended historical, anthropological, and philosophical study of modern efforts to visualize the hidden radiant force encompassing the living body known as our aura. This rich, interdisciplinary study by Dr. Stolow chronicles the rise and global spread of modern instruments and techniques of picturing aura, from the late nineteenth century to the present day, exploring how its images are put to work in the diverse realms of psychical research, esotericism, art photography, popular culture, and the New Age alternative medical and spiritual marketplace.
At their core, pictures of auras are boundary objects that operate simultaneously in multiple conceptual and practical realms, serving varying goals of making art, healing bodies, and exploring the cosmos. Drawing on extensive archival as well as field research, Stolow reconstructs a global history of this boundary-crossing enterprise through its evolving media technologies, markets, and cultural arenas. It is a story shaped through exchanges among professionals and amateurs, scientists and occultists, countercultural artists and entrepreneurs, metropolitans and hinterland figures. With more than 60 full-color illustrations, Picturing Aura brings to light a remarkable, entangled history of picture-making that challenges settled assumptions about religion, art, and science.

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Alison Griffiths, "Nomadic Cinema: A Cultural Geography of the Expedition Film" (Columbia UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

From In Borneo, the Land of the Head-Hunters to The Epic of Everest to Camping Among the Indians, the early twentieth century was the heyday of expedition filmmaking. As new technologies transformed global transportation and opened new avenues for documentation, and as imperialism and capitalism expanded their reach, Western filmmakers embarked on journeys to places they saw as exotic, seeking to capture both the monumental and the mundane. Their films portrayed far-flung locales, the hardships of travel, and the day-to-day lives of Indigenous people through a deeply colonial lens.

Nomadic Cinema: A Cultural Geography of the Expedition Film (Columbia University Press, 2025) by Dr. Alison Griffiths is a groundbreaking history of these films, analyzing them as visual records of colonialism that also offer new possibilities for recognizing Indigenous histories. Dr. Griffiths examines expedition films made in Borneo, Central Asia, Tibet, Polynesia, and the American Southwest, reinterpreting them from decolonial perspectives to provide alternative accounts of exploration. She considers the individuals and institutions—including the American Museum of Natural History—responsible for creating the films, the spectators who sought them out, and the Indigenous intermediaries whose roles white explorers minimized. Ambitious and interdisciplinary, Nomadic Cinema ranges widely, from the roots of expedition films in medieval cartography and travel writing to still-emerging technologies of virtual and augmented reality. Highlighting the material conditions of filmmaking and the environmental footprint left by exploration, this book recovers Indigenous memory and sovereignty from within long-buried sources.

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John Trafton, "Movie-Made Los Angeles" (Wayne State UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Los Angeles was a cinematic city long before the rise of Hollywood. By the dawn of the twentieth century, photography, painting, and tourist promotion in Southern California provided early filmmakers with a template for building a myth-making business and envisioning ideal moviegoers. These art forms positioned California as a land of transformative experiences and catapulted the dusty backwater town of Los Angeles to the largest city on the West Coast by 1915. Photography aided the Southern Pacific Railroad Company in opening the region to the rest of the nation. Painters gave traditions that were fading in Europe a new lease on life in the California sun, with signature colors and techniques that would be adopted by L.A. real estate companies, agribusiness, and health retreats. Tourism infused the iconography and signature styles of art with cultural mythology of the state’s colonial past, offering proto-cinematic experiences to those who ventured west. In Movie-Made Los Angeles (Wayne State University Press, 2023), John Trafton explores how Hollywood, an industry based on world-building, was the product of these art forms in the land of sunshine. A more complete story of the American film industry’s ascendency in Los Angeles emerges when one considers how the City of Angels cultivated its self-image through pre-cinema narrative art.

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Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 3 Jun 2025 20:36:00 +0000

The eighth installment in one of the most entertaining franchises ever made, The Final Reckoning is Tom Cruise’s Return of the King. Whether it suffers from too much exposition is a matter of taste (and debated by the hosts), but both agree that the movie does what only its star can do: deliver thrills that derive from both the plot and the knowledge that what they are seeing is, in some sense, real. Buster Keaton, Jackie Chan, and Tom Cruise all make themselves as much of a character in the films as the fictional people they are portraying, which puts the viewer in a strange and wonderful place. Tom Cruise has saved the world yet again, and may (as Steven Spielberg told him) have saved the industry.

Want to read about the first film in the franchise? Renowned film editor Paul Hersch’s memoir, A Long Time Ago in a Cutting Room Far, Far Away: My Fifty Years Editing Hollywood Hits–Star Wars, Carrie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Mission: Impossible, and More details his working with Brian DePalma on the first of the eight MI films.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on X and on Letterboxd–and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Also check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as the many film-related interviews on The New Books Network.

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Jon L. Pitt, "Botanical Imagination: Rethinking Plants in Modern Japan" (Cornell UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 31 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Botanical Imagination: Rethinking Plants in Modern Japan (Cornell University Press, 2025) explores the complicated legacy and enduring lure of plant life in modern Japanese literature and media. Using critical plant studies, Jon L. Pitt examines an unlikely group of writers and filmmakers in modern Japan, finding in their works a desire to "become botanical" in both content and form. For nearly one hundred years, a botanical imagination grew in response to moments of crisis in Japan's modern history.

Pitt shows how artists were inspired to seek out botanical knowledge in order to construct new forms of subjectivity and attempt to resist certain forms of state violence. As he follows plants through the tangled histories of imperialism and state control, Pitt also uncovers the ways plants were used in the same violence that drove artists to turn to the botanical as a model of resistance in the first place. Botanical Imagination calls on us to rethink plants as significant but ambivalent actors and to turn to the botanical realm as a site of potentiality.

This book is free for download through open access.

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Heist

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 28 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Caper movies aren’t like others involving criminals: there’s an aesthetic to a caper that’s as important to the thieves as it is to the viewers. Heist is David Mamet’s 2001 caper film that stands as his Singin’ in the Rain—an apt comparison, since “caper” meant “to dance” long before it took on its criminal meaning. Join us for an appreciation of one of Gene Hackman’s best yet least-discussed performances and of Mamet’s highly unrealistic dialogue. (Yes, you read that correctly–and we love David Mamet.)

David Mamet’s short book On Directing Film is a great companion to Heist.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find our over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on X and on Letterboxd–and email us at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Also check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as the many film-related interviews on The New Books Network.

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Claire Knight, "Stalin's Final Films: Cinema, Socialist Realism, and Soviet Postwar Reality, 1945-1953" (Cornell UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 24 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Stalin's Final Films: Cinema, Socialist Realism, and Soviet Postwar Reality, 1945-1953 (Cornell UP, 2024) explores a neglected period in the history of Soviet cinema, breathing new life into a body of films long considered moribund as the pinnacle of Stalinism. While film censorship reached its apogee in this period and fewer films were made, film attendance also peaked as Soviet audiences voted with their seats and distinguished a clearly popular postwar cinema.

Claire Knight examines the tensions between official ideology and audience engagement, and between education and entertainment, inherent in these popular films, as well as the financial considerations that shaped and constrained them. She explores how the Soviet regime used films to address the major challenges faced by the USSR after the Great Patriotic War (World War II), showing how war dramas, spy thrillers, Stalin epics, and rural comedies alike were mobilized to consolidate an official narrative of the war, reestablish Stalinist orthodoxy, and dramatize the rebuilding of socialist society. Yet, Knight also highlights how these same films were used by filmmakers more experimentally, exploring a diverse range of responses to the ideological crisis that lay at the heart of Soviet postwar culture, as a victorious people were denied the fruits of their sacrificial labor. After the war, new heroes were demanded by both the regime and Soviet audiences, and filmmakers sought to provide them, with at times surprising results.

Stalin's Final Films mines Soviet cinema as an invaluable resource for understanding the unique character of postwar Stalinism and the cinema of the most repressive era in Soviet history.

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Lori Jo Marso, "Feminism and the Cinema of Experience" (Duke UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 23 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Political theorist Lori Marso has been intrigued by filmmaker Chantal Ackerman for many years and has integrated Ackerman’s work into her courses at Union College and into her writings and scholarship as well. So it is no surprise that Feminism and the Cinema of Experience (Duke UP, 2024) is both an academic and a personal journey into Ackerman’s work but also the ways in which Ackerman’s work and similar kinds of artistry have made their way into our imaginations and our cinematic spaces. In Feminism and the Cinema of Experience Marso uses both Ackerman’s cinematic work and the written work of Simone de Beauvoir to frame a variety of approaches to thinking about feminism and contemporary film. As Marso explains, Ackerman’s work attends to and notices women’s experiences, often with the kinds of cinematography that are used to explore these experiences in ways that make audiences a bit uncomfortable. Part of the thrust of Marso’s analysis is interrogating what it means to “feel like a feminist.” This is an important component to the discussion in Feminism and the Cinema of Experience since this feeling may be a space where we are puzzled by what we actually do feel and we need to accept that we are alright sitting with that discomfort and with that inconclusive affect.

Feminism and the Cinema of Experience explores the ways that cinema and film shift our senses, through what we see, hear, and the focus of our thinking. Film is also a profoundly emotional experience, especially if we are in a theater with others or viewing it in a community. The discussions that we have with others about what we have seen and experienced are political—this is a form of political engagement and a kind of democratic engagement. Marso provides the reader with different genres and categories that help us think about films within the broader framework at hand. And within these sections, many more contemporary films are put into conversation with Ackerman’s work. Finally, Marso wrote an epilogue of a kind that brings Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie into the discussion as well.

This is an important and thoughtful examination of contemporary cinema—but it is also a valuable analysis of feminism and feminist thought as we see it all around us, but particularly in narrative form on the silver screen. Feminism and the Cinema of Experience is fascinating, engaging, and opens doors to new and different ways of thinking and seeing and experiencing.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social

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Kevin Smokler, "Break the Frame: Conversations with Women Filmmakers" (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 22 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In the twenty-first century alone, women filmmakers have succeeded at directing every size, genre, and style of motion picture. Their movies have won Oscars (Free Solo), made actors into household names (Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone), received induction into the Library of Congress's National Film Registry (Real Women Have Curves), and become worldwide box office phenomena (Captain Marvel, Deep Impact). Nevertheless in 2023, the year of Barbie, women directed only 12% of the top 250 movies in America. demonstrating how far moviemaking remains from gender parity. When women filmmakers succeed, they do so against these odds.

Break the Frame (Oxford UP, 2025) is a collection of 24 career-spanning interviews with America's celebrated, reigning, and rising women filmmakers. Each conversation considers the director's complete filmography as a map of their evolving artistry and evidence of their unassailable contributions to a historically misogynist industry. Author Kevin Smokler listens as women filmmakers speak to the struggle and triumphs of developing and directing movies that are shaping how the film business sees women in the director's chair, and how their audiences see themselves and each other. This book is both an opportunity and invitation to devote one's time, admiration and enthusiasm to movies directed by women.

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Christopher Hanscom, "Impossible Speech: The Politics of Representation in Contemporary Korean Literature and Film" (Columbia UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 21 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

How does art engage with its social context? What does 'the politics of art' even mean? In his new book Impossible Speech: The Politics of Representation in Contemporary Korean Literature and Film (Columbia University Press, 2023), Christopher P. Hanscom takes on these questions in the context of contemporary Korean literature. Moving away from realist texts and realism, Impossible Speech instead focuses on four key figures: the migrant laborer, the witness of state violence, the refugee, and the socially excluded. Through each, the book probes the boundaries of what we think of as 'nonpolitical' art, showing how by calling on characters to address events and experiences that cannot be spoken about — in other words, by asking characters to speak impossibly — even art that might be considered nonsensical or absurd demands to be read as politically engaged.

Although this book uses examples drawn from modern Korean literature and film, Hanscom's contention that the politics of art lies in its ability to confront and challenge the boundaries of what is sayable is deeply relevant to art beyond East Asian Studies. Impossible Speech should, therefore, be of interest to those in Korean literature as well as those interested in literary theory, film studies, and speech studies more broadly.

Listeners with a keen interest in Korean literature should also check out Hanscom's earlier appearance on the New Books Network to talk about his first book,The Real Modern: Literary Modernism and the Crisis of Representation in Colonial Korea (Harvard University Asia Center, 2013). You can listen to that interview here.

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From Hal to Siri: How Computers Learned to Speak

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 19 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Today we learn how computers learned to talk with Benjamin Lindquist, a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University’s Science in Human Culture program. Ben is the author “The Art of Text to Speech,” which recently appeared in Critical Inquiry, and he’s currently writing a history of text-to-speech computing.

In this conversation, we explore:

the fascinating backstory to HAL 9000, the speaking computer in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey
2001’s strong influence on computer science and the cultural reception of computers
the weird technology of the first talking computers and their relationship to optical film soundtracks
Louis Gerstman, the forgotten innovator who first made an IBM mainframe sing “Daisy Bell.”
why the phonemic approach of Stephen Hawking’s voice didn’t make it into the voice of Siri
the analog history of digital computing and the true differences between analog and digital

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The Politics of Andor (Season 2, Episodes 10-12): Freedom and Order

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 18 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and we continue our analysis of Andor season 2 with the conclusion to the series. We break down, analyze, and explain the political themes in these finale episodes, focusing on freedom, order and their interconnectedness in both the rebellion and the Empire. We explore the extent to which farce is an operative mode of storytelling in this arc. And we consider Cassian's statement that "nothing is ending," finding it to be both an accurate log-line for this arc and also a statement of some of the broader politics of Star Wars writ large - a cyclical story of the failure to consolidate political order by the Empire and the forces opposed to it.

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Mayukh Sen, "Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star" (Norton, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 15 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In 2022, Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. But she wasn’t the first actress of Asian origin to be nominated. In 1935, Merle Oberon was nominated for Best Actress for the role of Kitty Vane in The Dark Angel, only her second film in the U.S. film industry.

But no one knew Oberon was Asian. Her public biography said she was born to white parents in Tasmania, eventually moving to India and, from there, to the UK. But Merle Oberon, in truth, was of Anglo-Indian origin, born in Bombay. She’d hidden her heritage to get around U.S. censorship and immigration laws—a secret she took to her grave, even if many in the industry suspected the truth.

Mayukh Sen tackles Oberon’s life in Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star (W.W. Norton: 2025). Mayukh Sen is the James Beard Award-winning author of Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America (W.W. Norton: 2021). He is a 2025 Fellow at New America, and has written on film for the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and the Criterion Collection. He teaches journalism at New York University and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Love, Queenie. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon.

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Vincent L Stephens, "Broads, Sisters, Exes: Feminist Millennial Television" (Wayne State UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 13 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

This timely and telling analysis identifies the formal and thematic innovations pioneered by millennial feminists between 2012 and 2020 that have shaped the trajectory of our favorite shows today. Author Vincent L. Stephens offers close readings of nine pivotal series, including Girls, Orange Is the New Black, Broad City, Jane the Virgin, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Fleabag, Insecure, Shrill, and I May Destroy You. Across these series, women-led creative teams translated techniques from indie films, inverted gendered television tropes, and engaged in innovative temporal storytelling. These series, often including showrunners who also act, write, and direct, are the product of a new ecology of television driven by the rise of streaming platforms and a demand for more inclusive narratives.

Broads, Sisters, Exes: Feminist Millennial Television (Wayne State UP, 2025) optimistically contends with women as aesthetic innovators and maps their influence on entertainment industry reforms that are slowly but surely increasing accessibility for creatives from groups historically underrepresented across media. Through elegant prose deeply rooted in an intersectional feminist perspective, Stephens expands the aesthetic and narrative grammars of contemporary television.

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The Politics of Andor (Season 2 Episodes 7-9): Truth and Discipline

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 13 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and we continue our analysis of Andor season 2 with episodes 7-9.

We break down the politics of these episodes, focusing on the question of when in a rebellion must you break cover and insist - publicly - on the truth. We see a second major theme of this arc as discipline. The rebellion is moving from a para-military to a military posture, and requires increasing discipline from its members as it does so. Further, Cassian fights a battle in this arc between his belief that he makes his own decisions, and the discipline enforced on him by the needs of the rebellion and his own destiny.

We consider how these themes of truth and discipline intersect with and shape the actions of Mon Mothma, Cassian Andor, Bix, Dedra, and Syril.

We were delighted to be joined this week by Prof. Rob Farley. Rob blogs at Lawyers, Guns, and Money.

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The Fisher King

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 12 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

It’s our 300th episode and we honor a listener request for this milestone. The Fisher King (1991) could not be made today–not because of politics or cultural changes, but because it’s impossible to neatly classify. A love story, a tale of redemption, a disturbing study of psychosis, a romantic comedy, and an Artthurian quest, the film combines genres in ways that some audiences–or at least producers–might not appreciate. But the film is hilarious, frightening, and ultimately affirming of its two lead characters’ decisions to abandon their despair and find meaning in their lives.

Interested in reading about Terry Gilliam? Check out this collection of interviews from the University of Mississippi Press.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find our hundreds of episodes here on the New Books Network or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on X and on Letterboxd–and email us at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Also check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies.

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Mike Miley, "David Lynch’s American Dreamscape: Music, Literature, Cinema" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 11 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

How are David Lynch's films as much in dialogue with literary and musical traditions as they are cinematic ones?

By interrogating this question, David Lynch’s American Dreamscape: Music, Literature, Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2025) broadens the interpretive horizons of Lynch's filmography, calling for a new approach to Lynch's films that goes beyond cinema and visual art to explore how Lynch's work engages with literary and musical works that have shaped the American imagination. As much as Lynch stands as a singular artistic voice, his work arises from and taps into the cultural zeitgeist in a way that illuminates not only his approach to creativity but also the way works interact with each other in an age of mass media. From children's literature to teen tragedy ballads, Nathanael West and Cormac McCarthy to folk music and mixtapes, David Lynch's American Dreamscape investigates the cultural frequencies Lynch's films tune into and positions Lynch's work as a conduit for American popular culture, a medium or channel through which the subconscious of American life finds its way into full view.

The book expands upon this approach by discussing how artists such as David Foster Wallace and Lana Del Rey graft Lynch's affiliative, cinematic sensibility onto their own projects. Reading their work as intertextual engagements with Lynch's films further illustrates the versatile interactions among creators and audiences to generate more works, readers, and readings.

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Harry Castleman and Walter J. Podrazik, "Watching TV: American Television Season by Season, Fourth Edition" (Syracuse UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 9 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In their fourth edition of Watching TV: American Television Season by Season (Syracuse University Press, 2025), Harry Castleman and Walter Podrazik present a season-by-season narrative that encompasses the eras of American television from the beginning in broadcast, through cable, and now streaming. They deftly navigate the dizzying array of contemporary choices so that no matter where you start on the media timeline, Watching TV provides the context and background to this multi-billion-dollar enterprise.

Drawing on decades of research, the authors weave together personalities, popular shows, corporate strategies, historical events, and changing technologies, enhancing the main commentary with additional elements that include fall prime time schedule grids for every season, date box timelines, highlighted key text, and selected photos. Full of facts, firsts, insights, and exploits from now back to the earliest days, Watching TV is the standard chronology of American television, and reading it is akin to channel surfing through history. The fourth edition updates the story into the 2020s and looks ahead to the next waves of change. This new edition is the first to also be available in a digital format.

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Tupur Chatterjee, "Projecting Desire: Media Architectures and Moviegoing in Urban India" (NYU Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 5 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Since the late 1990s, the multiplex in India has emerged as a dominant site of media exhibition, almost always embedded within the shopping mall. This spatial pairing has transformed the experience of moviegoing, making it impossible to inhabit one space without also passing through the other. The rise of the mall-multiplex signals a broader shift in the spectatorial imagination: away from cinema halls built for the subaltern male viewer, toward environments curated for the aspiring, mobile, and consuming middle-class woman.

Projecting Desire: Media Architectures and Moviegoing in Urban India (NYU Press, 2025) tells the story of this infrastructural and cultural transformation as it unfolded across media industries, architectural design, urban planning, and popular cinema. Tracing the multiplex’s evolution in post-liberalization India, Tupur Chatterjee reveals how this new built form not only reconfigured cinematic space, but also reshaped the aesthetics, publics, and gendered politics of the contemporary Indian city.

Rather than narrating a linear history of technological replacement, the book situates the multiplex within a longer genealogy of postcolonial urban design—one marked by caste- and class-based anxieties around visibility, safety, and leisure. It argues that the architectural mediation of cinema is central to how desire, modernity, and risk are organised in India’s media cities. Drawing on industrial and organisational ethnography, in-depth interviews, participant observation, discourse and textual analysis, and archival research, Projecting Desire maps the multiplex as a space where film, infrastructure, and aspiration intersect. In doing so, it offers a critical framework for understanding how gendered publics are produced through the infrastructures of cinematic experience in the Global South.

Dr Tupur Chatterjee is an Assistant Professor in Global Film and Media in the School of English, Drama, and Film at University College Dublin. Her research spans global media industries, feminist media studies, urban spatial politics, and the material life of media technologies. Her work has been published in journals like Television and New Media, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Feminist Media Studies, South Asian Popular Culture, and Porn Studies among others.

Dr Priyam Sinha is a recipient of the Humboldt Research Award and is based at Humboldt University in Berlin. She earned her PhD from the National University of Singapore. Her research interests lie at the intersection of critical media industry studies, disability studies, gender studies, affect studies, production culture studies, and anthropology of the body. So far, her articles have been published in Media, Culture and Society; Communication, Culture and Critique; South Asian Diaspora, among others. More information on her research can be found on her website www.priyamsinha.com. She can also be reached at https://twitter.com/PriyamSinha

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The Politics of Andor (Season 2 Episodes 4-6): Too Much Information

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 4 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and we continue our analysis of Andor season 2 with episodes 4-6. We break down the politics of these episodes, focusing on the mirrored political challenges faced by figures from the Empire and the Rebellion. We see a big theme of these episodes as “too much information,” as both sides struggle to distinguish friend from foe, signal from noise, the authentic from the inauthentic. We discuss classic political problems portrayed in the episodes such as collective action problems, anticipatory compliance, preference falsification, and treating people as means or as ends in and of themselves.

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Ipek A. Celik Rappas, "Filming in European Cities: The Labor of Location" (Cornell UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 3 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Filming in European Cities: The Labor of Location (Cornell University Press, 2025) explores the effort behind creating screen production locations. Dr. Ipek A. Celik Rappas accounts the rising demand for original and affordable locations for screen projects due to the growth of streaming platforms. As a result, screen professionals are repeatedly tasked with chores such as transforming a former factory in Istanbul to resemble a war zone in Aleppo, or finding a London street that evokes Barcelona.

Dr. Celik Rappas highlights the pivotal role crew members play in transforming cities and locations into functional screen settings. Examining five European media capitals—Athens, Belfast, Berlin, Istanbul, and Paris—the book delves into the overlooked aspects of location-related screen labor and its ability to generate production value. Filming in European Cities demonstrates that in its perpetual quest for authentic filming locations, the screen industry extracts value from cities and neighborhoods, their marginalized residents, and screen labor, enriching itself through this triple exploitation.

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Amanda D. Lotz, "After Mass Media: Storytelling for Microaudiences in the Twenty-First Century" (NYU Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 2 May 2025 04:00:00 +0000

With significant evolutions in digital technologies and media distribution in the past two decades, the business of storytelling through screens has shifted dramatically. In the past, blockbuster movies and TV shows like Friends aimed first for domestic mass audiences, although the biggest hits circulated globally. Now, transnational distribution plays a primary role and imagined audiences are global. At the same time, the once-mass audience has significantly fragmented to enable an expansion in the range of commercially viable stories, as evident in series as varied as Atlanta, Better Things, and dozens of others that are not widely known, but deeply loved by their microaudiences.

Delving into the changing landscape of commercial screen storytelling, After Mass Media: Storytelling for Microaudiences in the Twenty-First Century (NYU Press, 2025) explores how industrial shifts and technological advancements have remade the narrative landscape over the past two decades. Television and movies have long shaped society, whether by telling us about the worlds around us or far away. By examining the internationalization of screen businesses, the rise of streaming services with multi-territory reach, and the stories made for this environment, this book sheds light on the profound transformations in television and film production and circulation. With a keen focus on major changes in the types of screen stories being told, Amanda D. Lotz unravels the industrial roots that made these transformations possible, challenges some conventional distinctions of screen storytelling, and provides new conceptual tools to make sense of the abundance and range of screen stories on offer.

Through its comprehensive analysis, After Mass Media exposes how contemporary industrial dynamics, particularly the erosion of traditional distribution models based on geography and mass audience reach, have far-reaching implications for our understanding of national video cultures.

Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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Peeping Tom

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

“Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.” So said W. H. Auden and so we see demonstrated in Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960), which boldly employs every convention of the horror film in order to achieve a stunning, authentic portrait of a disturbing mind at work. But Mark is no ordinary slasher: he’s an artist who is also a perfectionist and whose compulsion to destroy is like the compulsion to create. As Mark gives his all for the sake of his art, so did Michael Powell, whose reputation never recovered from the scandal of this film. It was released in the same year as Psycho, which it resembles, yet the two audiences across the Atlantic had very different reactions to their homegrown killers.

The University Press of Mississippi offers an excellent series of collected interviews. Here’s their volume on Michael Powell.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

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The Politics of Andor (Season 2 Episodes 1-3): The Personal is Political

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and today we react to Andor Season 2, episodes 1-3. We break down the politics of these episodes, focusing on the motives and aims of the rebellion and the Empire. Both sides have major coordination problems in these episodes, although the causes are very different. We explain and analyze the recurrent problems of authoritarian control and rebellion against it, and the way Andor comments upon them. We see a major theme of these three episodes as “the personal is political,” as micro motives are tied to macro causes on all sides. We also explore the dynamics of misinformation, double-talk, and masks worn by Dedra, Mon Mothma, Luthen Rael, and Cassian. We argue that Cassian is perhaps the most confident and action-oriented character at this point in the show, as he is able to operate out in the open as a mature and competent rebel leader.

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Ben Arogundade, "Hollywood Blackout: The Battle for Recognition in a White Hollywood" (Cassell, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

On February 29, 1940, African American actor Hattie McDaniel became the first person of color, and the first Black woman, to win an Academy Award. The moment marked the beginning of Hollywood's reluctant move toward diversity and inclusion. Since then, minorities and women have struggled to attain Academy Awards recognition within a system designed to discriminate against them.

In Hollywood Blackout: The Battle for Inclusion at the Oscars (Octupus Publishing, 2025) author Ben Arogundade interweaves the experiences of Black actors and filmmakers with those of Asians, Latinos, South Asians, Indigenous peoples, and women throughout the decades, charting their progression to the Oscars podium, galvanized by defiant boycotts, civil rights protests, and social media activism. Through lenses of history, cinephelia, and social justice, Hollywood Blackout offers a backstage view for those seeking the real story of Hollywood, the Oscars, and the talents who fought to make change.

You can find and follow Ben at hollywoodblackout.com or arogundade.com.

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Ross Benes, "1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times" (UP of Kansas, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted our Bizarre Times (2025, University of Kansas Press) journalist Ross Benes examines low culture in the late 1990s. From pro wrestling and Pokémon to Vince McMahon and Jerry Springer, Benes reveals its profound impact and how it continues to affect our culture and society today.

The year 1999 was a high-water mark for popular culture. According to one measure, it was the "best movie year ever." But as Benes shows, the end of the '90s was also a banner year for low culture. This was the heyday of Jerry Springer, Jenna Jameson, and Vince McMahon, among many others. Low culture had come into its own and was poised for world domination. The reverberations of this takeover continue to shape American society. During its New Year's Eve countdown, MTV entered 1999 with Limp Bizkit covering Prince's famous anthem to the new year. The highlights of the lowlights continued when WCW and WWE drew 35 million American viewers each week with sex appeal and stories about insurrections. Insane Clown Posse emerged from the underground with a Woodstock set and platinum records about magic and murder. Later that year, Dance Dance Revolution debuted in North America and Grand Theft Auto emerged as a major video game franchise. Beanie Babies and Pokemon so thoroughly seized the wallets and imagination of collectors that they created speculative investment bubbles that anticipated the faddish obsession over nonfungible tokens (NFTs). The trashy talk show Jerry Springer became daytime TV's most-watched program and grew so mainstream that Austin Powers, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, The Wayans Bros., The Simpsons, and The X-Files incorporated Springer into their own plots during the late '90s. Donald Trump even explored a potential presidential nomination with the Reform Party in 1999 and wanted his running mate to be Oprah Winfrey, whose own talk show would make Dr. Oz a household name. Among Springer's many guests were porn stars who, at the end of the millennium, were pursuing sex records in a bid for stardom as the pornography industry exploded, aided by sex scandals, new technology, and the drug Viagra, which marked its first full year on the US market in 1999.

According to Benes, there are many lessons to learn from the year that low culture conquered the world. Talk shows and reality TV foreshadowed the way political movements grab power by capturing our attention. Pro wrestling mastered the art of "kayfabe"--the agreement to treat something as real and genuine when it is not--before it spread throughout American society, as political contests, corporate public relations campaigns, and nonprofit fundraising schemes have become their own wrestling matches that require a suspension of disbelief. Beanie Babies and Pokémon demonstrate capitalism's resiliency as well as its vulnerabilities. Legal and technological victories obtained by early internet pornographers show how the things people are ashamed of have the ability to influence the world. Insane Clown Posse's creation of loyal Juggalos illustrates the way religious and political leaders are able to generate faithful followers by selling themselves as persecuted outsiders. And the controversy over video game violence reveals how every generation finds new scapegoats. 1999 is not just a nostalgic look at the past. It is also a window into our contentious present.

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Peter B. Kaufman, "The Moving Image: A User's Manual" (MIT Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Video (television, film, the moving image generally) is today’s most popular information medium. Two-thirds of the world’s internet traffic is video. Americans get their news and information more often from screens and speakers than through any other means. The Moving Image: A User's Manual (MIT Press, 2025) is the first authoritative account of how we have arrived here, together with the first definitive manual to help writers, educators, and publishers use video more effectively.

Drawing on decades as an educator, publisher, and producer, MIT’s Peter Kaufman presents new tools, best practices, and community resources for integrating film and sound into media that matters. Kaufman describes video’s vital role in politics, law, education, and entertainment today, only 130 years since the birth of film. He explains how best to produce video, distribute it, clear rights to it, cite it, and, ultimately, archive and preserve it. With detailed guidance on producing and deploying video and sound for publication, finding and using archival video and sound, securing rights and permissions, developing distribution strategies, and addressing questions about citation, preservation, and storage—across the broadest spectrum of platforms, publications, disciplines, and formats—The Moving Image equips readers for the medium’s continued ascendance in education, publishing, and knowledge dissemination in the decades to come. And, modeled in part on Strunk and White’s classic, The Elements of Style, it’s also a highly enjoyable read.

Peter B. Kaufman is Senior Program Officer at MIT Open Learning. He is the author of The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge and founder of Intelligent Television, a video production company that works with cultural and educational institutions around the world.

Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

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Giorgio Bertellini, "The Divo and the Duce: Promoting Film Stardom and the Political Leadership in 1920s America" (U California Press, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In 1927, the Hollywood stars (and spouses), Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr stood outside their California home, arms raised in fascist salute. The photo’s caption, referencing the couple’s trip to Rome the previous year, informs fans that the couple “greet guests at their beach camp in true Italian style.” How did “America’s sweetheart” and her husband, a swashbuckler on and off screen, both patriots who had promoted Liberty bonds following the United States’ entry into World War I, come to normalize something like Italian Fascism in its first decade? How did the Italian-born divo, or star, of Hollywood’s silent cinema, Rudolph Valentino come to function as foil and counterpart to Benito Mussolini’s, the duce, in public opinion in American culture in the 1920s?

Winner of the 2019 award for best book in film/media from the American Association for Italian Studies, The Divo and the Duce: Promoting Film Stardom and the Political Leadership in 1920s America (University of California Press, 2019) tells the story of the relationship between celebrity culture, charismatic leadership and national sovereignty as it plays out on both sides of the Atlantic from roughly 1917 to the end of 1933.

Giorgio Bertellini asks how two racially othered foreigners, Valentino and Mussolini, became leading figures in America and how these two icons of chauvinist Latin masculinity became public opinion leaders in a nation undergoing a major democratic expansion in terms of gender, equality, social mobility, and political representation. In the post-WWI American climate of nativism, isolationism, consumerism, and the democratic expansion of civic rights and women’s suffrage, the divo and the duce became surprising paragons of both authoritarian male power as well as mass appeal. Bringing together star studies, screen studies, political science, Italian Studies, and American Studies Bertellini’s study teaches us to think in new ways about cinema, political authority, masculinity, and race in Italian cinema and beyond. Meticulously archived, the author pays especial attention to the mediators between screens and the polity, a vast cast of players including journalists, photographers, ambassadors and other functionaries of state, advertisers, sponsors, and publicity agents, all of whom, on concert, work to promote the “ballyhoo” of the day.

Thanks to the efforts of TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries, The Divo and the Duce: Promoting Film Stardom and the Political Leadership in 1920s America is available free in an open access edition.

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Jonathan D. Cohen, "Losing Big: America's Dangerous Sports Gambling Boom" (Columbia Global Reports, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In 2018, the United States Supreme Court opened the floodgates for states to legalize betting on sports. Eager for revenue, almost forty states have done so. The result is the explosive growth of an industry dominated by companies like FanDuel and DraftKings. One out of every five American adults gambled on sports in 2023, amounting to $121 billion, more than they spent on movies and video games combined.

The rise of online sports gambling—the immediacy of betting with your phone, the ability of the companies to target users, the dynamic pricing and offers based on how good or bad of a gambler you are—has produced a public health crisis marked by addiction and far too many people, particularly young men, gambling more than they can afford to lose. Under intense lobbying from the gaming industry, states have created a system built around profit for sportsbooks, not the well-being of players.

In Losing Big: America's Dangerous Sports Gambling Boom (Columbia Global Reports, 2025), historian Jonathan D. Cohen lays out the astonishing emergence of online sports gambling, from sportsbook executives drafting legislation to an addicted gambler confessing their $300,000 losses. Sports gambling is here to stay, and the stakes could not be higher. Losing Big explains how this brewing crisis came to be, and how it can be addressed before new generations get hooked.

Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, will be out in the fall of 2025. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep.

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Alfred L. Martin, Jr., "Fandom for Us, by Us: The Pleasures and Practices of Black Audiences" (NYU Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Boldly going where few fandom scholars have gone before, Fandom for Us, by Us: The Pleasures and Practices of Black Audiences (NYU Press, 2025) breaks from our focus on white fandom to center Black fandoms. Alfred L. Martin, Jr., engages these fandoms through what he calls the “four C’s”: class, clout, canon, and comfort.

Class is a key component of how Black fandom is contingent on distinctions between white, nationally recognized cultural productions and multicultural and/or regional cultural productions, as demonstrated by Misty Copeland’s ascension in American Ballet Theatre. Clout refers to Black fans’ realization of their own consumer spending power as an agent for industrial change, reducing the precarity of Blackness within historically white cultural apparatuses and facilitating the production of Black blockbusters like 2018’s Black Panther. Canon entails a communal fannish practice of sharing media objects, like the 1978 film The Wiz, which lead them to take on meanings outside of their original context. Comfort describes the nostalgic and sentimental affects associated with beloved fan objects such as the television show, Golden Girls, connected to notions of Black joy and signaling moments wherein Black people can just be themselves.

Through 75 in-depth interviews with Black fans, Fandom for Us, by Us argues not only for the importance of studying Black fandoms, but also demonstrates their complexities by both coupling and decoupling Black reception practices from the politics of representation. Martin highlights the nuanced ways Black fans interact with media representations, suggesting class, clout, canon, and comfort are universal to the study of all fandoms. Yet, for all the ways these fandoms are similar and reciprocal, Black fandoms are also their own set of practices, demanding their own study.

Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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Jaye Early, "Confessional Video Art and Subjectivity: Private Experiences in Public Spaces" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Confessional Video Art and Subjectivity Private Experiences in Public Spaces (Bloomsbury, 2025) examines the development of the confessional subject in video art and demonstrates how it can provide a vital platform for navigating the politics of self, subjectivity, and resistance in society. In doing so, it reframes video art – the most ubiquitous and yet most understudied art form of recent decades – as an urgent socio-political tool that is increasingly popular among contemporary artists as a means of exploring a broad range of social issues, from politics and identity, to the body and technologies of self-representation.

Author Jaye Early brings together theory and practice to look afresh at contemporary video art through a Foucauldian lens. Early also brings the analysis of video art up to date by showing how social media and digital self representation has informed and further politicized time-based art practices.

Dr. Jaye Early is Lecturer in Contemporary Art at the University of New South Wales, Sydney and a practicing video artist.

The episode is hosted by Ailin Zhou, PhD student in Film & Digital Media at University of California - Santa Cruz.

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Megan Hunt, "Southern by the Grace of God: Religion, Race, and Civil Rights in Hollywood's American South" (U Georgia Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 2 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Megan Hunt joins us to talk about her recent book, Southern By the Grace of God, which was published in 2024 by the University of Georgia Press.

Lke the media coverage of the civil rights era itself, Hollywood dramas have reinforced regional stereotypes of race, class, and gender to cleanse and redeem the wider nation from the implications of systemic racism. As Southern by the Grace of God reveals, however, Hollywood manipulates southern religion (in particular) to further enhance this pattern of difference and regional exceptionalism, consistently displacing broader American racism through a representation of the poor white southerner who is as religious as he (and it is always a he) is racist. By foregrounding the role of religion in these characterizations, Megan Hunt illuminates the pernicious intersections between Hollywood and southern exceptionalism, a long-standing U.S. nationalist discourse that has assigned racial problems to the errant South alone, enabling white supremacy to not only endure but reproduce throughout the nation. Southern by the Grace of God examines the presentation and functions of Protestant Christianity in cinematic depictions of the American South. Hunt argues that religion is an understudied signifier of the South on film, used--with varying degrees of sophistication--to define the region's presumed exceptionalism for regional, national, and international audiences. Rooted in close textual analysis and primary research into the production and reception of more than twenty Hollywood films that engage with the civil rights movement and/or its legacy, this book provides detailed case studies of films that use southern religiosity to negotiate American anxieties around race, class, and gender. Religion, Hunt contends, is an integral trope of the South in popular culture and especially crucial to the divisions essential to Hollywood storytelling.

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Bridget Kies, "Murder, She Wrote" (Wayne State UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 1 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

As part of the TV Milestones Series, Bridget Kies explores Murder, She Wrote (Wayne State University Press, 2025). Embark on a journey through the mysteries of Cabot Cove to learn why Murder, She Wrote is a timeless classic. Discover the secrets behind the enduring appeal of Murder, She Wrote (CBS, 1984-96) in this captivating investigation of the long-running mystery series. Kies details the show's lasting impact owing to several interconnecting factors tied to the series' genre, cast, and reception. Murder, She Wrote was a trailblazing "cozy" murder mystery, blending suspense and charm to captivate a wide and varied audience. Bolstered by Angela Lansbury's established star power, the iconic amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher is beloved by fans across generations and around the world. Kies also points to the series' extratextual tie-in novels, made-for-TV movies, licensed products, and crossovers and attempted spinoffs that helped create a franchise universe that lives on today. With insights into the show's twelve remarkable seasons, its rise to global fame, and data from fandom interviews, this book is a must-read for fans and newcomers alike. Embark on a journey through the mysteries of Cabot Cove and beyond to learn why Murder, She Wrote remains a timeless classic.

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The Free Speech and Poetry of Ana Blandiana

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode, we sit down with Director and Producer Diana Nicolae and Editor and Camera Matt Jozwiakowski to discuss their documentary film, "Between Silence and Sin." The film explores the life and work of dissident Romanian poet Ana Blandiana, an artist whose voice was threatened, censored, and banned under the Communist dictatorship. In our conversation, we uncover the roots that inspired Diana’s desire to create this film, her personal experiences growing up in Romania, and the importance of understanding a nation’s history in the ongoing fight for democracy and freedom.

Diana Nicolae, Producer & Director, is an accomplished documentary filmmaker who has produced or directed over 50 films. A native Romanian, she began her career in media working as a TV news reporter in the post-Communist era, prior to working as a writer for BBC Radio on the first dramatic series inspired by the country in transition.

She has produced several documentary films about Romania, starting with Red Darkness Before Dawn (2003), which was broadcast on PBS and included in the Cold War archives of the Hoover Institute and the US Holocaust Memorial. Her subsequent films have delved into topics as diverse as intellectual migration, substance abuse, dating violence, and a group of camera-shy nuns.

Matt Jozwiakowski, Camera & Editor, has worked as producer, camera and editor on over a dozen acclaimed documentaries. With more than 15 years as a marketing director for multi-national iconic brands, he has managed multi-million dollar budgets to shepherd highly creative and compelling advertising campaigns into market. His documentary work has likewise been featured in film festivals throughout North America and Europe, and been broadcast on PBS regionally.

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

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Paul R. Laird and Elizabeth A. Wells, "The Cambridge Companion to West Side Story" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Over sixty years after its opening night, West Side Story is perhaps the most famous and beloved of twentieth-century musicals and stands as a colossus of musical and dramatic achievement. It not only helped define a generation of musical theatre lovers but is among the handful of shows that have contributed to our understanding of American musical identity at mid-century.

Bringing together contemporary scholars in music, theatre, dance, literature, and performance, The Cambridge Companion to West Side Story (Cambridge UP, 2024) explores this explosive 1950s remake of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and its portrayal of the raw passion, rivalries, jealousy and rage that doom the young lovers to their tragic fate. Organized thematically, chapters range from Broadway's history and precursors to West Side Story; the early careers of its creators; the show's score with emphasis on writing, production, and orchestrations; issues of class, colorism, and racism; New York's gang culture, and how the show's legacy can be found in popular culture throughout the world.

Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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Adam Kotsko, "Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era (University of Minnesota Press, 2025) by Dr. Adam Kotsko explores the beloved science fiction franchise’s repeated attempts to reinvent itself after the end of its 1990s golden age. Beginning with the prequel series Enterprise, Adam Kotsko analyzes the wealth of content set within Star Trek’s sprawling continuity—including authorized books, the three “Kelvin Timeline” films, and the streaming series Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds—along with fan discourse, to reflect on the perils and promise of the franchise as a unique form of storytelling.

Significantly including the licensed novels and comic books that fill out the Star Trek universe for its fans, Dr. Kotsko brings the multiple productions of the early twenty-first century together as a unified whole rather than analyzing them in their current stratified view. He argues that the variety of styles and approaches in this tumultuous era of Star Trek history provides the perfect opportunity to reflect on the nature of the franchise storyworlds that now dominate popular culture. By taking the spin-offs and tie-ins seriously as creative attempts to tell a new story within an established universe, Late Star Trek highlights creative triumphs as well as the tendency for franchise faithfulness to get in the way of creating engaging characters and ideas.

Arguing forcefully against the prevailing consensus that franchises are a sign of cultural decay, Dr. Kotsko contends that the Star Trek universe exemplifies an approach to storytelling that has been perennial across cultures. Instead, he finds that what limits creativity within franchises is not their reliance on the familiar but their status as modern myths, held not as common cultural heritage but rather owned as corporate intellectual property.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Woman in the Dunes

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In Walden (1854), Henry David Thoreau said he wanted to “drive life into a corner” and “reduce it to its lowest terms.” We often feel the appeal of that idea: to get away from civilization and really “live.” But would that always be a pleasurable series of epiphanies? Would the natural world always provide a backdrop against which we could explore our “real” selves? Thoureau also said that “a man is free in proportion to the number of things he can let alone.” Sounds good–unless that freedom from society and materialism reduces one to a new and worse kind of servant. Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes (1964) toys with these questions while simultaneously keeping its audience surprised and off-balance. It’s a movie in which everything is buried in sand and the sand is a metaphor for everything.

Woman in the Dunes is based on Kobo Ave’s novel, which you can find here. Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Please consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find our hundreds of episodes here on the New Books Network. Follow the show on X and on Letterboxd–and email us at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Also check out Dan’s substack Pages and Frames where he writes about books and movies.

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Fiona Handyside, "Girls' Hairstories: Sparkle and Resilience in Contemporary Screen Cultures" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Why have dynamic and shifting hairstyles, from Katniss Everdeen’s Power Plait to JoJo Siwa’s outsize bows, become such a significant part of how girlhood is articulated in contemporary visual cultures? What do they tell us about how girlhood combines the qualities of resilience and sparkle needed to survive and thrive in turbulent post-recessionary times?

Drawing together analysis of popular film franchises, Disney animation, ground-breaking TV shows, music videos, girl celebrity personas and global art cinema, Girls' Hairstories: Sparkle and Resilience in Contemporary Screen Cultures (Edinburgh University Press, 2025) by Dr. Fiona Handyside shows how across different cultural levels and aimed at different audiences, girls’ hairstyles provide a complex dynamic site of interpretation and interaction.

It documents the careful craft of hair-dressers and software engineers working in the screen industries to style and animate hair, bringing their work to a new visibility. It is in the very everydayness of hairstyling that we come to understand girls as the most resilient and the most sparkly of citizens.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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Hye Seung Chung, "Cinema Under National Reconstruction: State Censorship and South Korea's Cold War Film Culture" (Rutgers UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Cinema under National Reconstruction (Rutgers UP, 2024) calls for a revisionist understanding of state film censorship during successive Cold War military regimes in South Korea (1961-1988). Drawing upon primary documents from the Korean Film Archive's digitized database and framing South Korean film censorship from a transnational perspective, Hye Seung Chung makes the case that, while political oppression/repression existed inside and outside the film industry during this period, film censorship was not simply a tool for authoritarian dictatorship. Through such case studies as Yu Hyun-mok's The Stray Bullet (1961), Ha Kil-jong's The March of the Fools (1975), and Yi Chang-ho's Declaration of Fools (1983), the author defines censorship as a dialogical process of cultural negotiations wherein the state, the film industry, and the public fight out a battle over the definitions and functions of national cinema. In the context of Cold War Korea, one cannot fully understand or construct film history without reassessing censorship as a productive feedback system where both state regulators and filmmakers played active roles in shaping the new narrative or sentiment of the nation on the big screen.

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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Every Western since Stagecoach seems to have been touted as “about the western.” To what degree is that true for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, George Roy Hill’s 1969 contribution to the genre? Join Mike and Dan for a conversation about how the film wonderfully reminds its viewers why they love westerns as it also offers its more hip viewers a vision of an alternative lifestyle–think Easy Rider with horses.

Tom Clavin’s Bandit Heaven: The Hole-in-the-Wall Gangs and the Final Chapter of the Wild West is a look at the real-life Butch Cassidy, Sundance, Etta, and others. You can hear Dan’s interview with Tom Clavin here on the New Books Network. Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

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Eric Dienstfrey, "Making Stereo Fit: The History of a Disquieting Film Technology" (U California Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 7 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Surround sound is often mistaken as a relatively new phenomenon in cinemas, one that emerged in the 1970s with the arrival of Dolby. Making Stereo Fit: The History of a Disquieting Film Technology (University of California Press, 2024) reveals that, in fact, filmmakers have been creating stereo and surround-sound effects for nearly a century, since the advent of talking pictures, and argues that their endurance owes primarily to the longstanding battles between stereo and mono technologies.

Throughout the book, Eric Dienstfrey analyzes newly discovered archival materials and myriad stereo releases, from Hell’s Angels (1930) to Get Out (2017), to show how Hollywood’s financial dependence on mono prevented filmmakers from seeing surround sound’s full aesthetic potential. Though studios initially explored stereo’s unique capabilities, Dienstfrey details how filmmakers eventually codified a conservative set of surround-sound techniques that prevail today, despite the arrival of more immersive formats.

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Nadira Khatun, "Postcolonial Bollywood and Muslim Identity: Production, Representation, and Reception" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 7 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In Postcolonial Bollywood and Muslim Identity: Production, Representation, and Reception (Oxford UP, 2024), Nadira Khatun explores the contentious Muslim identity in contemporary India as reflected in recent Bollywood films. She argues that the approach towards Muslim identity in Bollywood films are influenced by the changing political landscape from Nehruvian India to the rise of BJP, which views Hindus and Muslims as separate religious communities instead of recognizing the syncretic culture manifesting in Hindu-Muslim unity. By analyzing the representation of Muslims in various films like Roja, Fanna, Mission Kashmir, Black Friday, New York, A Wednesday, Sarfarosh, she shows that the militant portrayal of Muslims is good for commercial success as opposed to a secular image. Overall, the study problematizes Muslim identity formation in Bollywood against the backdrop of nationalism and communalism in India.

Author: Dr. Nadira Khatun, Associate Professor of Communications, Xavier University, India

Host: Dr. Nilanjana Paul, Associate Professor of History, Department of History, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She is the author of Bengal Muslims and Colonial Education, 1854-1947: A Study of Curriculum, Educational Institutions and Communal Politics, Routledge, 2022.

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Chris Alexander, "Art! Trash! Terror! Adventures in Strange Cinema" (Headpress, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 6 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

ART! TRASH! TERROR! Adventures in Strange Cinema (Headpress 2025) by Chris Alexander is a treasure trove of in-depth essays and edifying interviews that celebrate some of the most eccentric and unforgettable movies in cult cinema history. From recognized classics (George A. Romero's Dawn Of The Dead, David Lynch's The Elephant Man) to misunderstood masterpieces (Michael Mann's The Keep, Boris Sagal's The Omega Man) to unfairly maligned curios (Kostas Karagiannis' Land Of The Minotaur, Brett Leonard's Hideaway), the author takes an alternately serious and playful but always personal look at several strains of international horror, dark fantasy, and exploitation film -- motion pictures that transform, transgress, challenge, infuriate, shock, and entertain. Connecting these passionate and critical essays are insightful interviews with revered talents, such as John Waters (writer/director, Cecil B. Demented), Michael Winner (director, The Sentinel), Nicolas Cage (actor, Vampire's Kiss), Gene Simmons (co-founder/bassist, KISS), William Crain (director, Blacula), William Lustig (director, Maniac), Werner Herzog (director, Nosferatu: Phantom Der Nacht) and many more, as well as witty, heartfelt memoirs charting the author's oddball experiences on the fringes of Hollywood and beyond. Illustrated with more than 200 startling photographs!

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Alfie Bown, "Post-Comedy" (Polity, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 5 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Not so long ago, comedy and laughter were a shared experience of relief, as Freud famously argued. At their best, ribbing, roasting, piss-taking and insulting were the foundation of a kind of universal culture from which friendship, camaraderie and solidarity could emerge.

Now, comedy is characterized by edgy humour and misplaced jokes that provoke personal and social anxiety, causing divisive cultural warfare in the media and among people. Our comedy is fraught with tension like never before, and so too is our social life. We often hear the claim that no one can take a joke anymore. But what if we really can’t take jokes anymore?

Post-Comedy (Polity, 2025) argues that the spirit of comedy is the first step in the building of society, but that it has been lost in the era of divisive identity politics. Comedy flares up debates about censorship and cancellation, keeping us divided from one other. This goes against the true universalist spirit of comedy, which is becoming a thing of the past and must be recovered.

Alfie Bown is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Media at Kings College London. His research focuses on psychoanalysis, digital media and popular culture.

He has also worked as a journalist, writing for The Guardian, Paris Review, New Statesman, Tribune, and others. His books include The Playstation Dreamworld, Post-Memes, and Dream Lovers: The Gamification of Relationships.

He is the founder of Everyday Analysis which publishes pamphlets and essay collections with contemporary social and political issues.

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Joseph Jonghyun Jeon, "Bong Joon Ho" (U Illinois Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Successful cult films like The Host and Snowpiercer proved to be harbingers for Bong Joon Ho's enormous breakthrough success with Parasite. In Bong Joon Ho (U Illinois Press, 2024), Joseph Jonghyun Jeon provides a consideration of the director's entire career and the themes, ambitions, techniques, and preoccupations that infuse his works. As Jeon shows, Bong's sense of spatial and temporal dislocations creates a hall of mirrors that challenges us to answer the parallel questions Where are we? and When are we?. Jeon also traces Bong's oeuvre from its early focus on Korea's US-fueled modernization to examining the entanglements of globalization in Mother and his subsequent films. A complete filmography and in-depth interview with the director round out the book. Insightful and engaging, Bong Joon Ho offers an up-to-date analysis of the genre-bending international director.

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Kate Fortmueller and Luci Marzola, "Hollywood Unions" (Rutgers UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Hollywood Unions (Rutgers UP, 2024) is a unique collection that tells the stories of the unions and guilds that have organized motion picture and television labor: IATSE, the DGA, SAG-AFTRA, and the WGA. The Hollywood unions represent a wide swath of the workers making media: from directors and stars to grips and makeup artists. People today know some of these organizations from their glitzy annual awards celebrations, but the unions’ actual importance is in bargaining with the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) on behalf of 331,000 workers in the motion picture and television industry. The Hollywood unions are not neutral institutions but rather have long histories of jurisdictional battles, competitions with rival unions, and industry-altering strikes. They have supported the industry’s workers through the Great Depression, World War II, the McCarthy era, the collapse of the studio system, the rise of television, runaway production, fights for gender parity, the digital revolution, and a global pandemic. The history of these unions has contributed to making media work sustainable in the long term and helped shape the conditions and production cultures of Hollywood.

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Waiyee Loh, "Empire of Culture: Neo-Victorian Narratives in the Global Creative Economy" (SUNY Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 3 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Empire of Culture: Neo-Victorian Narratives in the Global Creative Economy (SUNY Press, 2024) by Dr. Waiyee Loh brings together contemporary representations of Victorian Britain to reveal how the nation's imperial past inheres in the ways post-imperial subjects commodify and consume "culture" in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The globalization of English literature, along with British forms of dress, etiquette, and dining, in the nineteenth century presumed and produced the idea that British culture is a universal standard to which everyone should aspire.

Examining neo-Victorian texts and practices from Britain, the United States, Japan, and Singapore—from A. S. Byatt's novel Possession and its Hollywood film adaptation to Japanese Lolita fashion and the Lady Victorian manga series—Dr. Loh argues that the British heritage industry thrives on the persistence of this idea. Yet this industry also competes and collaborates with the US and Japanese cultural industries, as they, too, engage with the legacy of British universalism to carve out their own empires in a global creative economy. Unique in its scope, Empire of Culture centers Britain's engagements with the US and East Asia to illuminate fresh axes of influence and appropriation, and further bring Victorian studies into contact with various sites of literary and cultural fandom.

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Esha Niyogi De, "Women's Transborder Cinema: Authorship, Stardom, and Filmic Labor in South Asia" (U Illinois Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 1 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Can we write women’s authorial roles into the history of industrial cinema in South Asia? How can we understand women’s creative authority and access to the film business infrastructure in this postcolonial region?

In Women’s Transborder Cinema: Authorship, Stardom, and Filmic Labor in South Asia (University of Illinois Press, 2024), Esha Niyogi De draws on rare archival and oral sources to explore these questions from a uniquely comparative perspective, delving into examples of women holding influential positions as stars, directors, and producers across the film industries in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

Author Esha Niyogi De is a senior lecturer in the Writings Programs division at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the co-editor of South Asian Filmscapes: Transregional Encounters (2020) and author of Empire, Media, and the Autonomous Woman: A Feminist Critique of Postcolonial Thought (2011).

The episode is hosted by Ailin Zhou, PhD student in Film & Digital Media at University of California - Santa Cruz.

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William Burns, "Ghost of an Idea: Hauntology, Folk Horror, and the Spectre of Nostalgia" (Headpress, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

The future ain't what it used to be.

Is nostalgia revitalizing or killing 21st-century culture? The concept of nostalgia has seeped into almost all aspects of modern-day media, none more so than horror culture and its borderlands of Hauntology, Folk Horror, and found footage film. From film and TV franchises building endlessly on past glories, to musicians whose work now spans decades, modern media borrows heavily from the past.

Ghost of an Idea: Hauntology, Folk Horror, and the Spectre of Nostalgia examines the use and effect of nostalgia in the Horror and Hauntological realms. It asks why these genres hold such a fascination in popular culture, often inspiring devoted fanbases. From Candyman to The Blair Witch Project, and Dark Shadows to American Horror Story, are the folk horror and found footage phenomena significant artistic responses to political, social, and economic conditions, or simply an aesthetic rebranding of what has come before? How has nostalgia become linked to other concepts (psychogeography, residual haunting) to influence Hauntological music such as Boards of Canada, The Rowan Amber Mill, Hawksmoor, or The Caretaker? What can the 'urban wyrd' or faux horror footage tell us about our idealized past? And how will these cultures of nostalgia shape the future?

Combining the author's analysis with first-hand accounts of fans and creators, this book offers a critical analysis of our cultural quest to recognize, resurrect, and lay to rest the ghosts of past and present, also summoning up those spectres that may haunt the future.

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Florence Martin, "Farida Benlyazid and Moroccan Cinema" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Farida Benlyazid and Moroccan Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) unfolds and analyzes the work of Moroccan director, producer, and scriptwriter Farida Benlyazid, whose career extends from the beginning of cinema in independent Morocco to the present. This study of her work and career provides a unique perspective on an under-represented cinema, the gender politics of cinema in Morocco, and the contribution of Arab women directors to global cinema and to a gendered understanding of Muslim ethics and aesthetics in film.

A pioneer in Moroccan cinema, Farida Benlyazid has been successful at negotiating the sometimes abrupt turns of Morocco's rocky 20th century history: from Morocco under French occupation to the advent of Moroccan independence in 1956; the end of the international status of Tangier, her native city, in 1959; the "years of lead" under the reign of Hassan II; and finally Mohamed VI's current reign since 1999. As a result, she has a long view of Morocco's politics of self-representation as well as of the representation of Moroccan women on screen.

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The Friends of Eddie Coyle

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

When George V. Higgins’s first novel, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, was published in 1970, it was widely acclaimed as an insider’s look at Boston’s criminal underbelly. Three years later, Peter Yates directed Robert Mitchum in one of his best performances as the mid-level gunrunner who is tempted to help “uncle” by turning in his associates to the cops. Join Mike and Dan as they talk about how Robert Mitchum eating pie is better than a thousand bank robberies and how the dialogue for which Higgins is so rightly praised is like the kind of negotiations we make all the time at work, regardless of what we’re selling. Hide the irons inside that rustling shopping bag and give it a listen!

If you’re interested in the terrific novel upon which the film is based, you can find it here. Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

Please leave us a rating or review, follow us on X and Letterboxd, email us at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com, and let us know what you’d like us to watch and discuss. Also check out Dan’s Substack site, Pages and Frames, for essays about books and films.

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In “The Beast,” AI Puts Limits on Human Emotion

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and “The Beast” is a 2023 sci fi / romance movie by French director Bertrand Bonello, in which artificial intelligence has determined that human emotions are a danger, and must be surgically controlled. In this deep dive, we ask whether this is really a film about AI, a transhistorical love story, a narrative of societal decline, or something else entirely. The Beast stars Lea Seydoux and George McKay.

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Failed Passing

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Ian Fleishman develops the concept of failed passing in his new book Flamboyant Fictions, which reimagines free will in queer lives as an accidental affirmation of identity despite efforts towards adherence to standards and norms. In this, he works with his predecessors in queer theory like Judith Butler, José Muñoz, Leo Barsani, Lee Edelman and others. In our conversation, Ian also gives us a glimpse of his readings of failed passing in widely varying texts such as the works of André Gide and Jean Genet and the films of Luchino Visconti, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Schroeter, Todd Haynes, François Ozon, and Xavier Dolan, to the music and public persona of Shawn Mendes and Troye Sivan.

Ian Fleishman is the inaugural Chair of the Department of Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Flamboyant Fictions: The Failed Art of Passing (Northwestern 2024). His previous books are An Aesthetics of Injury: The Narrative Wound from Baudelaire to Tarantino (Northwestern 2018) and Performative Opacity in the Work of Isabelle Hupert (Edinburgh 2023), co-edited with Iggy Cortez.

Image: From the cover of Flamboyant Fictions, by Monograph / Matt Avery

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American Made

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Imagine you’re in a bar, holding forth about the news of the day–maybe it’s 1985 and, like everyone else, you’re talking about Iran-Contra, Oliver North, and the CIA. As you signal to the bartender that you’re ready for another, an unassuming, somewhat chubby guy next to you smiles and says, “You really want to know how all of that went down?” Then he begins a two-hour monologue that gets crazier every twenty minutes. American Made is that monologue, shot with all the speed and adrenaline as its artistic model, Goodfellas. Mike and Dan talk about why the immediacy of first-person narrative works so well here and why it wouldn’t work at all with other people’s stories. So bury that duffel bag of cash and then give it a listen!

Those interested in a less cinematic look at Iran-Contra may want to read Firewall by Lawrence E. Walsh or Del Hahn’s Smuggler’s End:The Life and Death of Barry Seal.

Follow us on X and Letterboxd–and let us know what you’d like us to watch! Incredible bumper music by John Deley. Also check out Dan’s new Substack site, Pages and Frames, for essays and short pieces about books and films.

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Parisa Vaziri, "Racial Blackness and Indian Ocean Slavery: Iran's Cinematic Archive" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 9 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

From the East African and Red Sea coasts to the Persian Gulf ports of Bushihr, Kish, and Hurmuz, sailing and caravan networks supplied Iran and the surrounding regions with African slave labor from antiquity to the nineteenth century. This book reveals how Iranian cinema preserves the legacy of this vast and yet long-overlooked history that has come to be known as Indian Ocean slavery.

How does a focus on blackness complicate traditional understandings of history and culture? Parisa Vaziri addresses this question by looking at residues of the Indian Ocean slave trade in Iranian films from the second half of the twentieth century. Revealing the politicized clash between commercial cinema (fīlmfārsii) and alternative filmmaking (the Iranian New Wave), she pays particular attention to the healing ritual zar which is both an African slave descendent practice and a constitutive element of Iranian culture, as well as to cinematic sīyāh bāzī (Persian black play). Moving beyond other studies on Indian Ocean and trans-Saharan slavery, Vaziri highlights the crystallization of a singular mode of historicity within these cinematic examples—one of “absence” that reflects the relative dearth of archival information on the facts surrounding Indian Ocean slavery.

Bringing together cinema studies, Middle East studies, Black studies, and postcolonial theory, Racial Blackness and Indian Ocean Slavery: Iran's Cinematic Archive (U Minnesota Press, 2023) explores African enslavement in the Indian Ocean through the revelatory and little-known history of Iranian cinema. It shows that Iranian film reveals a resistance to facticity representative of the history of African enslavement in the Indian Ocean and preserves the legacy of African slavery’s longue durée in ways that resist its overpowering erasure in the popular and historical imagination.

Parisa Vaziri is associate professor of comparative literature and Near Eastern studies at Cornell University.

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Martin D. Brown et al., "The Bondian Cold War: The Transnational Legacy of a Cultural Icon" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 8 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

James Bond, Ian Fleming’s irrepressible and ubiquitous ‘spy,’ is often understood as a Cold Warrior, but James Bond’s Cold War diverged from the actual global conflict in subtle but significant ways.

That tension between the real and fictional provides perspectives into Cold War culture transcending ideological and geopolitical divides. The Bondiverse is complex and multi-textual, including novels, films, video games, and even a comic strip, and has also inspired an array of homages, copies, and competitors. Awareness of its rich possibilities only becomes apparent through a multi-disciplinary lens.

The desire to consider current trends in Bondian studies inspired a conference entitled ‘The Bondian Cold War,’ convened at Tallinn University, Estonia in June 2019. Conference participants, drawn from three continents and multiple disciplines – film studies, history, intelligence studies, and literature, as well as intelligence practitioners – offered papers on the literary and cinematic aspects of the ‘spy’, discussed fact versus fiction in the Bond canon, went in search of a global Bond, and pondered gender and sexuality across the Bondiverse.

The Bondian Cold War: The Transnational Legacy of a Cultural Icon (Routledge, 2024) is suitable for students, researchers, and anyone interested in Cold War culture, makes vital contributions to understanding Bond as a global phenomenon, across traditional divisions of East and West, and beyond the end of the Cold War from which he emerged.

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Seung-hoon Jeong, "Biopolitical Ethics in Global Cinema" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 7 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

If world cinema studies have mostly displayed national cinemas and their transnational mutations, Seung-hoon Jeong’s global frame highlights two conflicting ethical facets of globalization: the ‘soft-ethical’ inclusion of differences in multicultural, neoliberal systems and their ‘hard-ethical’ symptoms of fundamentalist exclusion and terror.

Reflecting both and suggesting their alternatives, global cinema draws attention to new changes in subjectivity and community that Jeong investigates in terms of biopolitical ‘abjection’ and ethical ‘agency.’ In this frame, Biopolitical Ethics in Global Cinema (Oxford UP, 2023) explores a vast net of post-1990 films circulating in both the mainstream market and the festival circuit. Ultimately, the book renews critical discourses on global issues––including multiculturalism, catastrophe, sovereignty, abjection, violence, network, nihilism, and atopia––through a core cluster of political, ethical, and psychoanalytic philosophies.

Seung-hoon Jeong is Assistant Professor of Cinematic Arts at California State University Long Beach. He is the author of Cinematic Interfaces: Film Theory after New Media, co-translator of the Korean edition of Jacques Derrida’s Acts of Literature, and co-editor of The Global Auteur: The Politics of Authorship in 21st Century Cinema and Thomas Elsaesser’s The Mind-Game Film: Distributed Agency, Time Travel, and Productive Pathology.

Steve Choe is Associate Professor of Critical Studies in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University who researches and teaches in film and media theory. He is the author of Afterlives: Allegories of Film and Mortality in Early Weimar Germany (2014), Sovereign Violence: Ethics and South Korean Cinema in the New Millennium (2016) and ReFocus: The Films of William Friedkin (2023). He is the co-editor of Beyond Imperial Aesthetics: Theories of Art and Politics in East Asia (2019) and editor of the Handbook for Violence in Film and Media (2022).

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Davide Panagia, "Sentimental Empiricism: Politics, Philosophy, and Criticism in Postwar France" (Fordham UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 6 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Political Theorist Davide Panagia (UCLA) has two new books out focusing on the broader themes and ideas of film, aesthetics, and political theory. Sentimental Empiricism: Politics, Philosophy, and Criticism in Postwar France (Fordham University Press) interrogates French history and educational traditions from the Revolution through the postwar period and analyzes the cultural, social, political, and educational parameters that created the space for the French postwar political thinkers. In Sentimental Empiricism, Panagia explores the many directions of critical thought by Jean Wahl, Simone de Beauvoir, Gilbert Simondon, Gilles Deleuze, and Michel Foucault and how these theorists were pushing against, in many ways, the teleological structure as defined by Aristotle two millennia ago. This contrast in thinking is the heart of the book, helping the reader to consider distinctions between the more fixed classical ideas and a contemporary consideration of dispositionality and revisability.

The research and broader historical sketch in Sentimental Empiricism leads to the thrust of Intermedialities: Political Theory and Cinematic Experience (Northwestern UP, 2024). In Intermedialities (Northwestern UP, 2024), Panagia continues to explore this concept of the revisability of our understanding of the world, and turns the specific focus to film. Film itself, as a medium and as a conveyor of ideas, is rarely at the center of discussions of politics and power. And yet this is the exact place where humans (audiences) can see movement, which is what we are always observing around us to contribute to how we essentially make sense of the world. Intermedialities compels the intertwining of political theory and the theory of film, with encounters between contemporary aesthetic theorists like Stanley Cavell, Gilles Deleuze, Miriam Hansen, and Jean-Luc Godard and more traditional modern thinkers like David Hume, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Gilbert Simondon. Intermedialities should be of particular interest to political theorists and political scientists since it posits the importance of understanding and thinking about the life and world around us and how we are all connected to taking in this life as movement. The medium of film, which provides us with concepts, images, imaginaries, and perceptions, contributes to so much of our memory and imagination, but is often dismissed as not “real” politics. Panagia and the theorists with whom he is thinking help to tease out the very political nature of the projection of moving images.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj.

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Neil Fox, "Music Films: Documentaries, Concert Films and Other Cinematic Representations of Popular Music" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 5 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In Music Films: Documentaries, Concert Films and Other Cinematic Representations of Popular Music (Bloomsbury, 2024), Dr. Neil Fox considers a broad range of music documentaries, delving into their cinematic style, political undertones, racial dynamics, and gender representations, in order to assess their role in the cultivation of myth.

Combining historical and critical analyses, and drawing on film and music criticism, Fox examines renowned music films such as A Hard Day's Night (1964), Dig! (2004), and Amazing Grace (2006), critically lauded works like Milford Graves Full Mantis (2018) and Mistaken for Strangers (2013), and lesser-studied films including Jazz on a Summer's Day (1959) and Ornette: Made in America (1985). In doing so, he offers a comprehensive overview of the genre, situating these films within their wider cultural contexts and highlighting their formal and thematic innovations.

Discussions in the book span topics from concert filmmaking to music production, the music industry, touring, and filmic representations of authenticity and truth. Overall, Music Films traces the evolution of the genre, highlighting its cultural significance and connection to broader societal phenomena.

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James Fenwick, "Archive Histories: An Archaeology of the Stanley Kubrick Archive" (Liverpool UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 1 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

What can archives tell us about the film industry? In Archive Histories: An Archaeology of the Stanley Kubrick Archive (Liverpool UP, 2024), James Fenwick, a senior lecturer in cultural and creative industries at the University of Manchester examines the range of possibilities offered by The Stanley Kubrick Archive at the University of London. The book draws on the experience of being an archival researcher to situate the archive in relation to time and place, specifically London and the early 2020s. It connects the diversity of material held in the archive, much of it the everyday record of film industry lives, to key issues of work, sustainability, and technological change shaping media production today. A rich, fascinating and personal narrative, the book will be essential reading for film scholars, as well as the wider arts and humanities community.

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A.I. is Spielberg & Kubrick’s Dark Twisted Fantasy

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Steven Spielberg’s 2001 movie, is a strange and profound text on human-AI relations. Centering on David, an artificial child who is embraced and then abandoned by his adoptive human mother, the movie has the structure of a fairy tale and the sensibility of a horror film. We found the text to have significant things to say about the ethics of creating, and rejecting, artificial life, as well as functioning as something of a meta-commentary on related movies like Blade Runner and 2001: A Space Odyssey. But we were most intrigued by Stanley Kubrick’s influence on the movie, which was a longtime project of his that he abandoned in his final years and handed over to Spielberg.

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The Rainmaker

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

All of the nearly three hundred episodes we’ve done so far have been enthusiastic celebrations of artists whose work we admire so greatly that we had to invent a podcast to talk about it. But in this very strange episode, we talk about a film so awful in so many ways that we are baffled by how it came from the same man who directed four unquestionable masterpieces in a row. The Rainmaker (1997) is–and we mean this without irony–a fascinating film that does everything that films like The Conversation and The Godfather Part II avoid. It works on paper: there’s Coppola, of course, but also a bestseller as its source material, Matt Damon, Claire Danes, Mickey Roarke, Danny DeVito, Jon Voight, Danny Glover, and (inexplicably) Roy Scheider. But even Sheriff Brody can’t kill this beast. Rather than offer a litany of complaints, we talk about the concept of a “shadow movie”: the movie that could have been, the one lurking beneath the film we actually see. This is the only episode in which we don’t follow our usual three-part structure, because we didn’t know if we’d be releasing this one. But we think that we can learn more about films from even one as terrible as this.

If you’re interested in the source for Coppola’s film, you can find the novel here. Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

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What Ex Machina Tell Us About Human-AI Psychology

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and Ex Machina, Alex Garland’s 2014 sci fi movie, is a provocative examination of what an updated Turing test for a super-capable AI might look like, if the designer of the test was a megalomaniacal tech-mogul / genius. The movie, starring Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson, and Alicia Vikander, is a rich and often confounding text, which seems to posit a horrifying possibility: what if the real alignment problem is teaching AI the worst of humanity’s manipulative and instrumental traits?

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Marina Hassapopoulou, "Interactive Cinema: The Ambiguous Ethics of Media Participation" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Interactive Cinema: The Ambiguous Ethics of Media Participation (University of Minnesota Press, 2024) engages with a multitude of unconventional approaches throughout the history of motion pictures to offer insight into a range of largely ephemeral and site-specific projects that consciously assimilate viewers into their production. Through an exploration of radically inventive approaches to the medium, many of which emerged out of socio-political crises and periods of historical transition, Interactive Cinema works to by considering it in both technological and phenomenological terms.

Author Marina Hassapopoulou is Assistant Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies, at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is also the interim director of NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program. She is the founder of open-source and collaborative initiatives including: Interactive Media Archive, ExpressiveAI.net, and Weird Wave Archive.

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Oishik Sircar, "Ways of Remembering: Law, Cinema and Collective Memory in the New India" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Ways of Remembering: Law, Cinema and Collective Memory in the New India (Cambridge UP, 2024) tells a story about the relationship between secular law and religious violence by studying the memorialisation of the 2002 Gujarat pogrom--postcolonial India's most litigated and mediatized event of anti-Muslim mass violence. By reading judgments and films on the pogrom through a novel interpretive framework, the book argues that the shared narrative of law and cinema engenders ways of remembering the pogrom in which the rationality of secular law offers a resolution to the irrationality of religious violence. In the public's collective memory, the force of this rationality simultaneously condemns and normalises violence against Muslims while exonerating secular law from its role in enabling the pogrom, thus keeping the violent (legal) order against India's Muslim citizens intact. The book contends that in foregrounding law's aesthetic dimensions we see the discursive ways in which secular law organizes violence and presents itself as the panacea for that very violence.

About the Author: Oishik Sircar is a Senior Lecturer at the Melbourne Law School. He was previously the Professor of Law at Jindal Global Law School. His work maps the relationship between law, violence and aesthetics with a particular focus on contemporary India. Along with Ways of Remembering: Law, Cinema and Collective Violence in the New India (CUP 2024), he is the author of Violent Modernities: Cultural Lives of Law in the New India (OUP 2021) and the co-director of the award-winning documentary film We Are Foot Soldiers (PSBT 2010).

Priyam Sinha recently graduated with a PhD from the National University of Singapore and has been awarded the Alexander Von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship, starting 2025. She has interdisciplinary academic interests that lie at the intersection of film studies, critical new media industry studies, disability studies, affect studies, gender studies, and cultural studies. She can be reached at https://twitter.com/PriyamSinha

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Vincent Haddad, "The Detroit Genre: Race, Dispossession, and Resilience in American Literature and Film, 1967-2023" (Lever Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 24 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Detroit has an essential relationship to genre in American literature and popular culture. The contemporary formations of the suburban sitcom, the post-apocalyptic genre, the sci-fi dystopia, crime fiction, the superhero genre, and contemporary horror would not exist in the way they do today without the aesthetic material and racial history of Detroit. When DC Comics wanted to compete with Marvel and market “socially relevant” comics, especially ones dealing with issues of race, they swapped Gotham and Metropolis for Detroit. What about vampires concerned with de-industrialization, heritage conservation, and impending water wars? Must be Detroit. A story about a half-man, half-robot wrestling with what it means to be human by fighting crime? Improbably, Detroit has two. Author Vincent Haddad’s The Detroit Genre: Race, Dispossession, and Resilience in American Literature and Film, 1967-2023 (Lever Press, 2024) provides the first comprehensive literary and cultural investigation of the representations of Detroit in popular and literary culture.

The book first establishes the concept of the “Detroit genre” that emerged in late 1960s and traces the tropes of this white-centric narrative genre in popular culture, touching on key texts including Blue Collar, Robocop, The Crow, It Follows, and Barbarian. The second part shows how Black writers, including Alice Randall, adrienne maree brown, Stephen Mack Jones, and Angela Flournoy, reclaimed and revised the Detroit genre by un-fixing Detroit narratives of dispossession, criminality, and industrial and social failure through formal experimentations on genre itself.

Where Detroit has typically been painted in the news as one of three things—the center of the automotive industry; crime-ridden and in ruins; or as a “blank canvas” with limitless potential of entrepreneurship—Vincent Haddad shows that the Detroit genre in literature and film can be far more powerful than news media in narrating Black dispossession as a pragmatic, even liberal consensus. The texts studied here condition forgetfulness about Detroit’s history or expose it to a full reckoning, direct attention toward or away from the city’s agents of injustice, fetishize resilience or model resistance, and foreclose or imagine a future of Black liberation. Appealing to scholars of popular literature, media, race, and American studies, The Detroit Genre is an accessible and engaging study of the city’s influence on a wide array of genres in pop culture.

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The Big Heat

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Just as horror films are filled with characters who never seem quite enough afraid, crime films are filled with protagonists who, at the end of the movie, never seem quite enough affected by what they have seen or unleashed. Not here. Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat (1953) follows the attempts of one cop, Steve Bannion (Glenn Ford), to clean up his department and city’s corruption. He does, but at a terrible cost. Join us for an appreciation of a noir that offers a world of moral black and white and a man who refuses to pretend there are shades of grey–until he finds himself with his hands around someone’s neck.

Fans of Fritz Lang will enjoy this collection of interviews with the director.

Follow us on X and Letterboxd–and let us know what you’d like us to watch! Incredible bumper music is usually by John Deley; this week, it’s from the Inside Llewyn Davis soundtrack. Also check out Dan’s new Substack site, Pages and Frames, for an essay about this film and more writing about books and films.

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Scott Huver, "Beverly Hills Noir: Crime, Sin, & Scandal in 90210" (Post Hill Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 22 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Beverly Hills Noir: Crime, Sin, & Scandal in 90210 (Post Hill Press, 2024) explores the city’s true crime history, delving deep inside cases that made headlines, scandals that engulfed Hollywood legends, and more strange-but-true tales that could only happen in the 90210. Beverly Hills Noir chronicles an assortment of jaw-dropping true crime stories spanning the legendary city’s history, each with oh-so-90210 twists—including a high-profile murder mystery in the city’s most extravagant mansion, the daring exploits of a handsome cat burglar with movie star looks, a toxic Tinseltown love triangle that ended in gunplay, a brazen Rodeo Drive jewelry store holdup with tragically stunning finale, an Oscar nominated actress on shoplifting spree and more—complete with major roles and countless cameos by Hollywood idols and cultural icons. A gripping, century-long tour of the glamorous city’s shadowy underbelly through crimes and misdemeanors as over-the-top as the city itself, Beverly Hills Noir collects the kinds of stories you’d expect to be swapped if James Ellroy and Dominick Dunne had met Jackie Collins and Ryan Murphy for cocktails at the Polo Lounge. It’s Sunset Boulevard and Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood turned sordid, face-down-in-the-pool reality.

Scott Huver has covered the inner workings of Beverly Hills, the entertainment industry, and the Los Angeles-area elite for three decades.

Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

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Jeremy Dauber, "American Scary: A History of Horror, from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond" (Algonquin Books, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 22 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

From the acclaimed author of American Comics comes a sweeping and entertaining narrative that details the rise and enduring grip of horror in American literature, and, ultimately, culture—from the taut, terrifying stories of Edgar Allan Poe to the grisly, lingering films of Jordan Peele

America is held captive by horror stories. They flicker on the screen of a darkened movie theater and are shared around the campfire. They blare out in tabloid true-crime headlines, and in the worried voices of local news anchors. They are consumed, virally, on the phones in our pockets. Like the victims in any slasher movie worth its salt, we can’t escape the thrall of scary stories.

In American Scary: A History of Horror, from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond (Algonquin Books, 2024), noted cultural historian and Columbia professor Jeremy Dauber takes the reader to the startling origins of horror in the United States. Dauber draws a captivating through line that ties historical influences ranging from the Salem witch trials and enslaved-person narratives directly to the body of work we more closely associate with horror today: the weird tales of H. P. Lovecraft, the lingering fiction of Shirley Jackson, the disquieting films of Alfred Hitchcock, the up-all-night stories of Stephen King, and the gripping critiques of Jordan Peele.

With the dexterous weave of insight and style that have made him one of America’s leading historians of popular culture, Dauber makes the haunting case that horror reveals the true depths of the American mind.

Jeremy Dauber is a professor of Jewish Literature and American Studies at Columbia University. His books include Jewish Comedy and The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem, both finalists for the National Jewish Book Award, American Comics: A History, and Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew. He lives in New York City.

Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers and articles on G. K. Chesterton and John Ford, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network and on X. You can also find his writing about books and films on Pages and Frames.

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Joseph McBride, "George Cukor's People: Acting for a Master Director" (Columbia UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 21 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The director of classic films such as Sylvia Scarlett, The Philadelphia Story, Gaslight, Adam's Rib, A Star Is Born, and My Fair Lady, George Cukor is widely admired but often misunderstood. Reductively stereotyped in his time as a "woman's director"-a thinly veiled, disparaging code for "gay"-he brilliantly directed a wide range of iconic actors and actresses, including Cary Grant, Greta Garbo, Spencer Tracy, Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe, and Maggie Smith. As Katharine Hepburn, the star of ten Cukor films, told the director, "All the people in your pictures are as goddamned good as they can possibly be, and that's your stamp."

In this groundbreaking, lavishly illustrated critical study, Joseph McBride provides insightful and revealing essayistic portraits of Cukor's actors in their most memorable roles. The queer filmmaker gravitated to socially adventurous, subversively rule-breaking, audacious dreamers who are often sexually transgressive and gender fluid in ways that seem strikingly modern today. McBride shows that Cukor's seemingly self-effacing body of work is characterized by a discreet way of channeling his feelings through his actors. He expertly cajoled actors, usually gently but sometimes with bracing harshness, to delve deeply into emotional areas they tended to keep safely hidden. Cukor's wry wit, his keen sense of psychological and social observation, his charm and irony, and his toughness and resilience kept him active for more than five decades in Hollywood. George Cukor's People: Acting for a Master Director (Columbia UP, 2024) gives him the in-depth, multifaceted examination his rich achievement deserves.

Joseph McBride is a film historian and a professor in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University. He is the author of biographies of Frank Capra, John Ford, and Steven Spielberg; three books on Orson Welles; and critical studies of Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, and the Coen Brothers. He acted for Welles in The Other Side of the Wind and has won a Writers Guild of America award.

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Victoria Sturtevant, "It's All in the Delivery: Pregnancy in American Film and Television Comedy" (U Texas Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 8 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Victoria Sturtevant's It’s All in the Delivery: Pregnancy in American Film and Television Comedy (University of Texas Press, 2024) is about how changing depictions of pregnancy in comedy from the start of the twentieth century to the present show an evolution in attitudes toward women’s reproductive roles and rights.

Some of the most groundbreaking moments in American film and TV comedy have centered on pregnancy, from Lucille Ball’s real-life pregnancy on I Love Lucy, to the abortion plot on Maude; Murphy Brown’s controversial single motherhood; Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pregnancy in Junior; or the third-trimester stand-up special Ali Wong: Baby Cobra.

In the first book-length study of pregnancy in popular comedy, Victoria Sturtevant examines the slow evolution of pregnancy tropes during the years of the Production Code; the sexual revolution and changing norms around nonmarital pregnancy in the 1960s and ‘70s; and the emphasis on biological clocks, infertility, adoption, and abortion from the 1980s to now.

Across this history, popular media have offered polite evasions and sentimentality instead of real candor about the physical and social complexities of pregnancy. But comedy has often led the way in puncturing these clichés, pointing an irreverent and satiric lens at the messy and sometimes absurd work of gestation. Ultimately, Sturtevant argues that comedy can reveal the distortions and lies that treat pregnancy as simple and natural “women’s work,” misrepresentations that rest at the heart of contemporary attacks on reproductive rights in the US.

Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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Scott Anthony, "The Story of British Propaganda Film" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 7 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

'All art is propaganda,' wrote George Orwell, 'but not all propaganda is art.' Moving from World War I to the 'War on Terror' and beyond, The Story of British Propaganda Film (Bloomsbury, 2024) shows how the emergence of film as a global media phenomenon reshaped practices of propaganda, while new practices of propaganda in turn reshaped the use of the moving image. It explores classic examples of cinematic propaganda such as The Battle of the Somme (1916), Listen to Britain (1942) and Animal Farm (1954) alongside little-known newsreels, 'telemagazines' and digital media initiatives, in the process challenging our understanding of propaganda itself, and its many diverse manifestations.

Richly illustrated with unique material from the BFI National Archive, the book shows how central propaganda is to the development of British film, and how it has filtered our understanding of modern British history, from narratives of decolonisation to the celebration of pop culture and the meanings of the postwar consensus. In a contemporary moment so preoccupied with misinformation, malinformation and disinformation, Dr. Scott Anthony explains why the response to the ubiquity of the propaganda film has often turned out to be the production of ever more propaganda.

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Biopic

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 1 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode of High Theory, Laura Stamm talks about the biopic. One of the oldest forms of narrative cinema, biographical pictures are a mainstay of the medium today. Early biopics played an important role in public health discourse, representing the discoveries of science and the lives of scientists, which in turn led queer artists to adopt the genre in response to the AIDS crisis.

Laura’s book, The Queer Biopic in the AIDS Era (Oxford UP, 2022), asks why queer filmmakers repeatedly produced biographical films of queer individuals living and dead throughout the years surrounding the AIDS crisis. These films evoke the genre's history building up lives worthy of admiration and emulation and the parallel history of representing lives damaged. By portraying lives damaged by inconceivable loss, queer filmmakers challenge the illusion of a coherent self presumably reinforced by the biopic genre and in doing so, their films open the potential for new means of connection and relationality.

In the episode Laura references many films, including the Greta Garbo film Queen Christina (1933); Freud: The Secret Passion (1962); The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936); Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940); John Greyson’s musical Zero Patience (1993); and the Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black (2024). Her research extends beyond the 1980s moment of crisis, and in the episode she gives a good explainer pre-code Hollywood and (briefly) the New Queer Cinema of the 1990s. If you were interested in this episode and want to learn more about queer representation in US popular culture, check out Margaret Galvan’s episode on Visibility.

Laura Stamm is Assistant Professor of Health Humanities and Bioethics and Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Department of Medicine at University of Rochester. She completed her PhD in Film and Media Studies and Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Stamm's research interests broadly focuses on LGBTQ+ health, transgender studies, and medicine in visual culture. Beyond the book discussed here, her work has recently appeared in the edited collection New Queer Television: From Marginalization to Mainstream (Intellect Press, 2024) and Synapsis on “From the Clinic to the Talk Show: Narratives of Trans History in Framing Agnes.”

The image for this episode shows photographs by Rob Corder of photographs by Peter Hujar of two queer artists, the sculptor Louise Nevelson and the writer, photographer, film maker, etc., David Wojnarowicz. Left: Peter Hujar, "Louise Nevelson (II), 1969". Gelatin silver print (1934-1987) Morgan Library. BAM Right: Peter Hujar, "David Wojnarowicz", 1981. Gelatin silver print (1934-1987) Menschel Collection. BAM Photos by Rob Corder. We do not own these images, but we do like them.

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Sam Langsdale, "Searching for Feminist Superheroes: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Marvel Comics" (U Texas Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 30 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

It’s no secret that superhero comics and their related media perpetuate a model of a straight, white, male hero at the expense of representing women and other minorities, but other narratives exist. Searching for Feminist Superheroes: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Marvel Comics (University of Texas Press, 2024) by Dr. Sam Langsdale recognizes that female-led superhero comics, with diverse casts of characters and inclusive storytelling, exist on the margins of the mainstream superhero genre. But rather than focusing on these stories as marginalized, Dr. Langsdale’s work on heroes such as Spider-Woman, America Chavez, and Ironheart locates the margins as a site of innovation and productivity, which have enabled the creation of feminist superhero texts.

Employing feminist and intersectional philosophies in an analysis of these comics, Dr. Langsdale suggests that feminist superheroes have the potential to contribute to a social imagination that is crucial in working toward a more just world. At a time when US popular culture continues to manifest as a battleground between oppressive and progressive social norms, Searching for Feminist Superheroes demonstrates that a fight for a better world is worthwhile.

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Chris Berry et al., "Taiwanese-Language Cinema: Rediscovered and Reconsidered" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 27 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Taiwanese-Language Cinema: Rediscovered and Reconsidered (Edinburgh UP, 2024), edited by Chris Berry, Wafa Ghermani, Corrado Neri, and Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley, is a landmark contribution to studying Taiwanese cinema. The book revisits Taiyupian, a thriving yet overlooked segment of Taiwan’s cinematic history produced between the 1950s and 1970s in the Minnanhua dialect commonly used by the local Hoklo.

This volume arrives at a pivotal moment when many of these films are being restored, subtitled, and critically revisited. By bringing together essays from Taiwanese and non-Taiwanese scholars, the book offers a robust framework for understanding Taiyupian’s cultural, social, and industrial dimensions. It challenges the traditional dominance of Mandarin and Japanese influences in Taiwan’s cinematic narrative, advocating for a broader, more inclusive history.

The editors skilfully blend historical analysis with cultural theory, offering insights into the socio-political context that gave rise to these films and their eventual decline. The inclusion of translated Taiwanese scholarship is particularly commendable, as it ensures a dialogue between local and global perspectives.

Reading this book is an eye-opening experience, especially for those unfamiliar with Taiyupian’s rich legacy. The book effectively positions these films not as relics but as dynamic cultural artefacts that continue to shape Taiwan’s cinematic and cultural identity. The writing, while scholarly, is engaging, particularly in chapters that explore Taiyupian's aesthetic and emotional resonance. The visuals and archival materials referenced throughout enhance its value as a resource for both academic and personal exploration.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone interested in Taiwanese cinema, East Asian cultural studies, or the intersection of language and identity in film. Its insights resonate far beyond the specific era it examines, offering a model for how neglected histories can be rediscovered and celebrated.

Dr Ming-Yeh Tsai Rawnsley is a Taiwanese media scholar, writer, and former journalist and TV screenwriter. Since 2013, she has been a Research Associate at the Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS University of London. She is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham (2014–present), a Research Fellow at the European Research Centre on Contemporary Taiwan (ERCCT), University of Tübingen (2015–present), and Research Associate at Academia Sinica, Taiwan (2018–present). M-Y T. Rawnsley is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Taiwan Studies (2018–present) and associate editor of the East Asian Journal of Popular Culture (2013–present).

Bing Wang receives her PhD at the University of Leeds in 2020. Her research interests include the exploration of overseas Chinese cultural identity and critical heritage studies. She is also a freelance translator.

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Steven Swarbrick and Jean-Thomas Tremblay, "Negative Life: The Cinema of Extinction" (Northwestern UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 23 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In Negative Life: The Cinema of Extinction (Northwestern UP, 2024), Steven Swarbrick and Jean-Thomas Tremblay enact a dialogue between cinema, philosophy, and ecocriticism to tarry with the question of ecological catastrophe. Taking as one of their conceptual points of departure Freud’s writing on negation, the authors elaborate a concept of ‘negative life’ to contest current approaches to ecocriticism predicated upon ideas of entanglement, presence, and connection. In their book, Swarbrick and Tremblay engage critically with a broad body of films—including Kelly Reichardt, Julian Pölsler, Mahesh Mathai, and Paul Schrader—and a range of conceptual paradigms (from antisocial queer theory and psychoanalytic thought to object-oriented ontology and theories of melodrama) to unsettle many of ecocriticism’s foundational assumptions. In this interview, we unpack some of the core themes and organising principles of the book and discuss the nature of collaborative writing.

Jules O’Dwyer is Teaching Associate in Film Studies and French at the University of Cambridge.

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Shalini Kakar, "Devotional Fanscapes: Bollywood Star Deities, Devotee-Fans, and Cultural Politics in India and Beyond" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Devotional Fanscapes: Bollywood Star Deities, Devotee-Fans, and Cultural Politics in India and Beyond (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023) examines how fans worship film stars as deities. Focusing on temples dedicated to Bollywood (Hindi cinema) stars and the artifacts produced by Hindi and Tamil cinema fans, Shalini Kakar illustrates how the fan constructs their identity as a devotee and that of the star as a deity. Extending her research from India to the US, Kakar highlights the transnational dimensions of this phenomenon to demonstrate the degree to which devotional fan practices (fan-bhakti) and fan artifacts can help us rethink art, religion, and politics. With its interdisciplinary approach, this book addresses how fan-bhakti is performed in the global landscape, in the process augmenting new religious models and identities based on the idea of the “cinematic sacred.”

For more information, go here.

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A Serious Man

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

A Serious Man (2009) may seem much different from the Coens’ adaptation of No Country for Old Men, which they released two years earlier. But they both concern a likable man who finds himself posing questions that the universe–or any of its weisest men–cannot answer. And even if there are glimpses of answers to the question “What does Hashem, or God, want,” neither late-thirties Larry or late-sixties Sheriff Bell can read the writing on the wall (or, in the case of A Serious Man, the writing on the teeth). The film begins with a quotation from Rumi, “Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.” Join us for a conversation about one of the Coens’ best films and a terrific look at people to whom things happen and are forced to receive the will of a God who never tips His hand about His intentions.

There’s been a great deal written about Joel and Ethan Coen; if you want to hear them talk about their work in their own words, check out this collection of interviews.

Follow us on X and Letterboxd–and let us know what you’d like us to watch! Incredible bumper music by John Deley. Also check out Dan’s new Substack site, Pages and Frames, for more film-related material.

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Nicholas Baer, "Historical Turns: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism" (U California Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Historical Turns: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Nicholas Baer reassesses Weimar cinema in light of the "crisis of historicism" widely diagnosed by German philosophers in the early twentieth century. Through bold new analyses of five legendary works of German silent cinema—The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Destiny, Rhythm 21, The Holy Mountain, and Metropolis—Dr. Baer argues that films of the Weimar Republic lent vivid expression to the crisis of historical thinking. With their experiments in cinematic form and style, these modernist films revealed the capacity of the medium to engage with fundamental questions about the philosophy of history.

Reconstructing the debates over historicism that unfolded during the initial decades of moving-image culture, Historical Turns proposes a more reflexive mode of historiography and expands the field of film and media philosophy. The book excavates a rich archive of ideas that illuminate our own moment of rapid media transformation and political, economic, and environmental crises around the globe.

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Erin Lee Mock, "Changed Men: Veterans in American Popular Culture after World War II" (U Virginia Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Millions of GIs returned from overseas in 1945. A generation of men who had left their families and had learned to kill and to quickly dispatch sexual urges were rapidly reintegrated into civilian life, told to put the war behind them with cheer and confidence. Many veterans struggled, openly or privately, with this transition. Others in society wondered what the war had wrought in them. As Erin Lee Mock shows in this insightful book, the “explosive” potential of men became a central concern of postwar American culture.

This wariness of veterans settled into a generalised anxiety over men’s “inherent” violence and hypersexuality, which increasingly came to define masculinity. Changed Men: Veterans in American Popular Culture after World War II (University of Virginia Press, 2024) by Dr. Erin Lee Mock engages with studies of film, media, literature, and gender and sexuality to advance a new perspective on the artistic and cultural output of and about the “Greatest Generation,” arguing that depictions of men’s violent and erotic potential emerged differently in different forms and genres but nonetheless permeated American culture in these years. Viewing this homecoming through the lenses of war and trauma, classical Hollywood, pulp fiction, periodical culture, and early television, Dr. Mock shows this history in a provocative new light.

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Elsie Walker, "Life 24x a Second: Cinema, Selfhood, and Society" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Life 24x a Second: Cinema, Selfhood, and Society (Oxford UP, 2023) highlights the life-sustaining and life-affirming power of cinema. Author Elsie Walker pays particular attention to pedagogical practice and students' reflections on what the study of cinema has given to their lives. This book provides multiple perspectives on cinema that matters for the deepest personal and social reasons-from films that represent psychological healing in the face of individual losses to films that represent humanitarian hope in the face of global crises. Ultimately, Walker shows how cinema that moves us emotionally can move us toward a better world.

Life 24x a Second makes the case for cinema as a life force in uplifting and widely relatable ways. Walker zeroes in on films that offer hope in relation to the Black Lives Matter movement (Imitation of Life, 1959, and BlacKkKlansman, 2018); contemporary feminism (Nobody Knows, 2004); rite-of-passage experiences of mortality and mourning (Ikiru, 1952, and A Star Is Born, 2018), and first-love grief (Call Me by Your Name, 2017, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, 2019). Life 24x a Second invites readers to reflect on their own unique film-to-person encounters along with connecting them to others who love cinematic lessons for living well.

Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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Laure Astourian, "The Ethnographic Optic: Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and the Turn Inward in 1960s French Cinema" (Indiana UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The Ethnographic Optic: Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and the Turn Inward in 1960s French Cinema (Indiana UP, 2024) explores the significant ties between colonial ethnography and innovative works of 1960s French cinema. Laure Astourian probes the emergence of a self-aware urban French ethnography in both fictional and documentary films during the era of decolonization and offers fresh readings of canonical films including Moi, un Noir (Jean Rouch, 1958), La jetée (Chris Marker, 1962), and Muriel ou le Temps d’un retour (Alain Resnais, 1963)

Here's the link to Astourian's essay on Jean Rouch's Moi, Un Noir discussed in the podcast.

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Hunter Hargraves, "Uncomfortable Television" (Duke UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

From The Wire to Intervention to Girls, postmillennial American television has dazzled audiences with novelistic seriality and cinematic aesthetics. Yet this television is also more perverse: it bombards audiences with misogynistic and racialized violence, graphic sex, substance abuse, unlikeable protagonists, and the extraordinary exploitation of ordinary people.

In Uncomfortable Television (Duke UP, 2024), Hunter Hargraves examines how television makes its audiences find pleasure through feeling disturbed. He shows that this turn to discomfort realigns collective definitions of family and pleasure with the values of neoliberal culture. In viscerally violent dramas, cringeworthy ironic comedies, and trashy reality programs alike, televisual unease trains audiences to survive under late capitalism, which demands that individuals accept a certain amount of discomfort, dread, and irritation into their everyday lives. By highlighting how discomfort has been central to the reorganization and legitimization of television as an art form, Hargraves demonstrates television’s role in assimilating viewers into worlds marked by precarity, perversity, and crisis.

Cory Barker is a faculty member in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University, where he teaches courses on film, television, and digital culture. Twitter. Newsletter.

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Sarah Cleary, "The Myth of Harm: Horror, Censorship and the Child" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The horror genre has endured a long and controversial success within popular culture. Fraught with accusations pertaining to its alleged ability to harm and corrupt young people and indeed society as a whole, the genre is constantly under pressure to suppress that which has made it so popular to begin with - its ability to frighten and generate discussion about society's darker side.

In The Myth of Harm: Horror, Censorship and the Child (Bloomsbury, 2022), Dr. Sarah Cleary analyses controversies, myths, and falsehoods surrounding the genre of horror. Focusing on five major controversies, the text examines how horror media has become a scapegoat for political and social issues, platforms for “moral entrepreneurs” and tools of hyperbole for the news industry.

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True Believer

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Actors win awards and gain our admiration when they convince us that they have “become” someone else–it’s what we mean when we say that so-and-so “inhabits” a role. But that’s not the only benchmark: a good actor is also someone whose statements are interesting to hear and whose voice engages the listener, whether or not we “believe” that he’s really Charles Foster Kane or Norman Bates. That’s how Mike approaches James Woods in True Believer (1989). He and Dan also talk about the title and how it reflects an element of the film more interesting than the mystery at the heart of its plot. So grab that hair tie, fix that ponytail, and give it a listen!

James Woods’s character, Eddie Dodd, is based upon the lawyer Tony Serra; you might be interested in this recent biography of him.

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Daniela Berghahn, "Exotic Cinema: Encounters with Cultural Difference in Contemporary Transnational Film" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 9 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Daniela Berghahn's award-winning monograph Exotic Cinema: Encounters with Cultural Difference in Contemporary Transnational Film (Edinburgh UP, 2023) is the first systematic analysis of decentred exoticsm in contemporary transnational and world cinema. By critically examining regimes of visuality such as the imperial, the ethnographic and the exotic gaze, which have colonised our minds and ways of looking, the monograph makes an important contribution to the urgent agenda of decolonising film studies. Exotic Cinema was awarded The Janovics Center Award for Outstanding Humanities Research in Transnational Film and Theatre (best book) and the African Studies Centre award at Babes-Bolyai Univeristy in Cluj-Napoca.

The research website www.exotic-cinema.org offers some insights into the scope and aims of this project.

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Blow Out

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 4 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Political noise is as American as baseball and apple pie and in this election season it’s impossible to tune it out completely: it’s on our televisions, radios, phones, and computers. Brian DePalma’s Blow Out (1981) follows a man who is able to hear something underneath all the noise: a perfect character to think about this election season. The real debate for Mike and Dan is whether or not the film makes a statement about the United States and each takes a different side. But they do agree that Blow Out is a wonderful downer and one of DePalma’s best.

In this episode, Mike mentions Don DeLillo’s Underworld, which offers a conspiratorial tone that contrasts with the one that marks Blow Out.

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The Fly

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

There’s a moment in The Fly (1986) in which Seth Brundle–well into his transformation into Brundlefly–explains that he must vomit on a donut before eating it. The camera cuts away to show Geena Davis’s reaction, which is the same reaction David Cronenberg evokes in his viewers throughout the film. Grotesque yet surprisingly moving, The Fly is more than disturbing, wonderful makeup: it’s a look at a brilliant man who cannot understand the limits of his own vision, like his colleagues Drs. Faustus, Jekyll, and Frankenstien.

Interested in hearing what Cronenberg himself has to say about The Fly and his other films? Check out this collection of interviews.

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Landon Palmer, "Rock Star/Movie Star: Power and Performance in Cinematic Rock Stardom" (Oxford UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 26 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

During the mid-1950s, when Hollywood found itself struggling to compete within an expanding entertainment media landscape, certain producers and studios saw an opportunity in making films that showcased performances by rock 'n' roll stars. Rock stars eventually found cinema to be a useful space to extend their creative practices, and the motion picture and recording industries increasingly saw cinematic rock stardom as a profitable means to connect multiple media properties. Indeed, casting rock stars for film provided a tool for bridging new relationships across media industries and practices.

From Elvis Presley to Madonna, this book examines the casting rock stars in films. In so doing, Rock Star/Movie Star: Power and Performance in Cinematic Rock Stardom (Oxford UP, 2020) offers a new perspective on the role of stardom within the convergence of media industries. While hardly the first popular music culture to see its stars making the transition to screen, the timing of rock's emergence and its staying power within popular culture proved fortuitous for a motion picture business searching for its place in the face of continuous technological and cultural change. At the same time, a post-star-system film industry provided a welcoming context for rock stars who have valued authenticity, creative autonomy, and personal expression. This book uses illuminating archival resources to demonstrate how rock stars have often proven themselves to be prominent film workers exploring this terrain of platforms old and new - ideal media laborers whose power lies in the fact that they are rarely recognized as such.

Combining star studies with media industry studies, this book proposes an integrated methodology for writing media history that combines the actions of individuals and the practices of industries. It demonstrates how stars have operated as both the gravitational center of media production as well as social actors who have taken on a decisive role in the purposes to which their images are used.

Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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Kevin Sanson, "Mobile Hollywood: Labor and the Geography of Production" (U California Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 20 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What is the future of the film industry? In Mobile Hollywood Labor and the Geography of Production (U California Press, 2024), Kevin Sanson, Professor of Media Studies and Head of the School of Communication at Queensland University of Technology, examines the way Hollywood film production has become a global industry. The book theorises Hollywood as a distinct spatial assemblage, and examines the consequences of the rise of global, mobile film production for places and for workers. Offering a unique perspective on the challenges of this new mode of production, alongside insights on how ‘good work’ can be defended and preserved in media industries, the book is essential reading across the humanities and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in media today. The book is also available open access here.

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Peter C. Kunze, "Staging a Comeback: Broadway, Hollywood, and the Disney Renaissance" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In the early 1980s, Walt Disney Productions was struggling, largely bolstered by the success of its theme parks. Within fifteen years, however, it had become one of the most powerful entertainment conglomerates in the world. Staging a Comeback: Broadway, Hollywood, and the Disney Renaissance (Rutgers University Press, 2023) by Dr. Peter Kunze argues that far from an executive feat, this impressive turnaround was accomplished in no small part by the storytellers recruited during this period.

Drawing from archival research, interviews, and textual analysis, Dr. Kunze examines how the hiring of theatrically trained talent into managerial and production positions reorganized the lagging animation division and revitalized its output. By Aladdin, it was clear that animation—not live action—was the center of a veritable “renaissance” at Disney, and the animated musicals driving this revival laid the groundwork for the company’s growth into Broadway theatrical production. The Disney Renaissance not only reinvigorated the Walt Disney Company but both reflects and influenced changes in Broadway and Hollywood more broadly.

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Out of Sight

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The second-best movie based on an Elmore Leonard novel, Out of Sight (1998) does what Netflix and other platforms try to do all the time: throw a bunch of stars together in an effort to increase the quality of the “content.” But those half-assed efforts never come close to Out of Sight, which has a roster of A-list actors, a terrific screenplay based on quality source material, a great score, and a director who makes us feel as cool as his characters. Like Mozart, Steven Soderbergh makes complicated artistic maneuvers look effortless–and like Elmore Leonard, Soderbergh knows the difference between good bad guys and bad bad guys.

Out of Sight was adapted by Scott Frank from Elmore Leonard’s 1996 novel, found here.

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Slavery and Film, Creativity and Academia, and Is Slavery a Good Metaphor for AI?

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Dr. Dexter Gabriel is an associate professor of history at the University of Connecticut. He’s published and taught widely on the histories of slavery, resistance, and freedom, including teaching a superb class on slavery in popular culture, particularly film. He’s the author of the 2023 book Jubilee’s Experiment: The British West Indies and American Abolitionism (Cambridge UP, 2023).

But in addition to this, Professor Gabriel conducts a second, equally impressive intellectual and creative life in a wholly different register. As P. Djèlí Clark, he’s the author of acclaimed and award-winning speculative fiction, including the much-loved Dead Djinn universe books, Ring Shout, and his most recent, The Dead Cat Tail Assassins.

We have a really rich and deep conversation with Dexter, about how he juggles such an array of interests and pursuits, the question of whether there can be a “good” portrayal of slavery on film and what that would look like, whether there are lessons for our future with AI from our past with slavery.

In part two of this conversation, coming soon on this feed, we speak with P. Djèlí Clark about his speculative fiction.

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Aviva Dove-Viebahn, "There She Goes Again: Gender, Power, and Knowledge in Contemporary Film and Television Franchises" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

There She Goes Again: Gender, Power, and Knowledge in Contemporary Film and Television Franchises (Rutgers UP, 2023) interrogates the representation of ostensibly powerful women in transmedia franchises, examining how presumed feminine traits—love, empathy, altruism, diplomacy—are alternately lauded and repudiated as possibilities for effecting long-lasting social change. By questioning how these franchises reimagine their protagonists over time, the book reflects on the role that gendered exceptionalism plays in social and political action, as well as what forms of knowledge and power are presumed distinctly feminine. The franchises explored in this book illustrate the ambivalent (post)feminist representation of women protagonists as uniquely gifted in ways both gendered and seemingly ungendered, and yet inherently bound to expressions of their femininity. At heart, There She Goes Again asks under what terms and in what contexts women protagonists are imagined, envisioned, embodied, and replicated in media. Especially now, in a period of gradually increasing representation, women protagonists demonstrate the importance of considering how we should define—and whether we need—feminine forms of knowledge and power.

Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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Scott Henderson, "Comics and Pop Culture: Adaptation from Panel to Frame" (U Texas Press, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 8 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

It is hard to discuss the current film industry without acknowledging the impact of comic book adaptations, especially considering the blockbuster success of recent superhero movies. Yet transmedial adaptations are part of an evolution that can be traced to the turn of the last century, when comic strips such as “Little Nemo in Slumberland” and “Felix the Cat” were animated for the silver screen. Along with Barry Keith Grant, Scott Henderson (Dean and Head, Trent University Durham GTA) compiled a rich group of essays that represent diverse academic fields, including technoculture, film studies, theater, feminist studies, popular culture, and queer studies. Comics and Pop Culture: Adaptation from Panel to Frame (University of Texas Press, 2019) presents more than a dozen perspectives on this rich history and the effects of such adaptations.

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Kramer vs. Kramer

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 7 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Robert Benton’s 1979 interior drama turned out to be one of the biggest films of the 70s. While we might appreciate Dustn Hoffman now more often than we watch his movies, this marked another example of him owning the decade. It’s his movie, despite the attempt to give balance to the two Kramers fighting for the legal and moral right to raise their son. If you haven’t seen this since it played in theaters for months and then became a cable-TV staple, it’s worth rewatching; if you’ve never seen it, give it a look. Either way, be sure to listen to our conversation (and debate) about it once you finish.

Kramer vs. Kramer was adapted from Avery Corman’s bestselling novel, found here.

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Shweta Kishore and Kunal Ray, "Resistance in Indian Documentary Film: Aesthetics, Culture and Practice" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 7 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Dr. Shweta Kishore and Dr Kunal Ray’s Resistance in Indian Documentary Film: Aesthetics, Culture and Practice (Edinburgh UP, 2024) is a unique collection of essays on documentary cinema and practice that brings together multiple modes of scholarly, reflective and autoethnographic writing on documentary by scholars and creative practitioners. It takes a holistic view of documentary culture as a field comprising not only films but practices such as circulation, curation, criticism, and education, that come together to create a particular ecology of resistance. Resistance is conceptualised as a multidimensional phenomenon comprising both documentary representation as well as practices and tangible actions through which people mobilize and adapt documentary for local, community and individual functions.

Dr Kunal Ray is a writer and academic. He teaches literature and film at FLAME University, Pune. His writings on art and culture appear in The Hindu, The Indian Express, Hindustan Times amongst other publications. He has co-edited books on song-texts and food cultures in India. He is also the co-founder and co-editor of On Eating - A Multilingual Journal of Food & Eating.

Dr Shweta Kishore lectures in Screen and Media at RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) University. She is the author of Indian Documentary Film and Filmmakers: Independence in Practice published by Edinburgh University Press in 2018. Her research on documentary theory and practice appears in journals such as Bioscope, Feminist Media Studies, Studies in Documentary Film and Senses of Cinema. She is also a documentary practitioner and curator committed to creating conversations between Indian and international moving image artists and audiences.

Priyam Sinha recently graduated with a PhD from the National University of Singapore. Her interdisciplinary academic interests lie at the intersection of film studies, disability studies, production cultures, affect studies, anthropology of the body, creative media industries and cultural studies. She can be reached at https://twitter.com/PriyamSinha

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Gerald Sim, "Screening Big Data: Films That Shape Our Algorithmic Literacy" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 3 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Screening Big Data: Films that Shape Our Algorithmic Literacy (Routledge, 2024) examines the influence of key films on public understanding of big data and the algorithmic systems that structure our digitally mediated lives.

From star-powered blockbusters to civic-minded documentaries positioned to facilitate weighty debates about artificial intelligence, these texts frame our discourse and mediate our relationship to technology. Above all, they impact society’s abilities to regulate AI and navigate big tech’s political and economic manoeuvres to achieve market dominance and regulatory capture.

Foregrounding data politics with close readings of key films like Moneyball, Minority Report, The Social Dilemma, and Coded Bias, in Screening Big Data by Dr. Gerald Sim reveals compelling ways in which films and tech industry–adjacent media define apprehension of AI. With the mid-2010s techlash in danger of fizzling out, Screening Big Data explores the relationship between this resistance and cultural infrastructure while highlighting the urgent need to refocus attention onto how technocentric media occupy the public imagination.

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As Good as It Gets

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

For years, Dan avoided this movie, fearing it was like a Hallmark Holiday Classic or Very Special Episode of Mad About You. But after our episode on Broadcast News, Mike insisted Dan give it a watch. Join us as we talk about the ways in which the film surfs just above the sharks of sentimentality that threaten it at every plot point and offers a great combination of characters, problems, and new problems once original ones are solved.

Patrick McGilligan’s Jack’s Life: A Biography of Jack Nicholson and Marc Eliot’s Nicholson are good starting points if you’re interested in the life of the actor.

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Alessandra Seggi, "Youth and Suicide in American Cinema: Context, Causes, and Consequences" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Listener note: This interview contains discussions of suicide.

Resources for people in a crisis:

If you or someone you know is in a crisis or is feeling suicidal, please talk to somebody.

Call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 for free and confidential support.

¿Estás en una crisis?

Llama o envía un mensaje de texto al 988 o envía un mensaje de texto con AYUDA al 741741

Youth and Suicide in American Cinema: Context, Causes, and Consequences (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022) explores the depiction of suicide in American youth films from 1900 to 2019. Anchored in Sociology, this multidisciplinary study investigates the causes and consequences of suicide and uncovers the socio-cultural context for the development of youth, film, and suicide. While such cinematic portrayals seem to privilege external explanations of suicide versus internal or psychological ones, overall they are neither rich nor sensitive. Most are simplistic, limited or at the very least unbalanced. At times, they are flatly controversial. In light of this overall problematic depiction of suicide, this book offers a proactive approach to empower young audiences--a media literacy strategy to embrace while watching these films.

A Fulbright grantee and an award-winning artist, Alessandra Seggi (PhD in Sociology and MA in Media Studies) teaches at Villanova University, Pennsylvania, USA.

Ailin Zhou is a PhD student in Film & Digital Media at University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research interests include transnational Chinese cinema, Asian diasporic visual culture, contemporary art, and feminist and queer theories.

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Emily Carman, "Independent Stardom: Freelance Women in the Hollywood Studio System" (U Texas Press, 2016)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 04:00:00 +0000

During the heyday of Hollywood’s studio system, stars were carefully cultivated and promoted, but at the price of their independence. This familiar narrative of Hollywood stardom receives a long-overdue shakeup in Emily Carman’s new book. Far from passive victims of coercive seven-year contracts, a number of classic Hollywood’s best-known actresses worked on a freelance basis within the restrictive studio system. In leveraging their stardom to play an active role in shaping their careers, female stars including Irene Dunne, Janet Gaynor, Miriam Hopkins, Carole Lombard, and Barbara Stanwyck challenged Hollywood’s patriarchal structure.

Through extensive, original archival research, Independent Stardom: Freelance Women in the Hollywood Studio System (U Texas Press, 2016) uncovers this hidden history of women’s labor and celebrity in studio-era Hollywood. Carman weaves a compelling narrative that reveals the risks these women took in deciding to work autonomously. Additionally, she looks at actresses of color, such as Anna May Wong and Lupe Vélez, whose careers suffered from the enforced independence that resulted from being denied long-term studio contracts. Tracing the freelance phenomenon among American motion picture talent in the 1930s, Independent Stardom rethinks standard histories of Hollywood to recognize female stars as creative artists, sophisticated businesswomen, and active players in the then (as now) male-dominated film industry.

Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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David Kroening Seitz, "A Different Trek: Radical Geographies of Deep Space Nine" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

A different kind of Star Trek television series debuted in 1993. Deep Space Nine was set not on a starship but a space station near a postcolonial planet still reeling from a genocidal occupation. The crew was led by a reluctant Black American commander and an extraterrestrial first officer who had until recently been an anticolonial revolutionary. DS9 extended Star Trek’s tradition of critical social commentary but did so by transgressing many of Star Trek’s previous taboos, including religion, money, eugenics, and interpersonal conflict. DS9 imagined a twenty-fourth century that was less a glitzy utopia than a critical mirror of contemporary U.S. racism, capitalism, imperialism, and heteropatriarchy.

Thirty years after its premiere, DS9 is beloved by critics and fans but remains marginalised in scholarly studies of science fiction. Drawing on cultural geography, Black studies, and feminist and queer studies, A Different Trek: Radical Geographies of Deep Space Nine (University of Nebraska Press, 2023) by Dr. David Seitz is the first scholarly monograph dedicated to a critical interpretation of DS9’s allegorical world-building. If DS9 has been vindicated aesthetically, this book argues that its prophetic, place-based critiques of 1990s U.S. politics, which deepened the foundations of many of our current crises, have been vindicated politically, to a degree most scholars and even many fans have yet to fully appreciate.

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Sheri Chinen Biesen, "Through a Noir Lens: Adapting Film Noir Visual Style" (Columbia UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Shadows. Smoke. Dark alleys. Rain-slicked city streets. These are iconic elements of film noir visual style. Long after its 1940s heyday, noir hallmarks continue to appear in a variety of new media forms and styles. What has made the noir aesthetic at once enduring and adaptable? Sheri Chinen Biesen's Through a Noir Lens: Adapting Film Noir Visual Style (Columbia UP, 2024) explores how the dark cinematic noir style has evolved across eras, from classic Hollywood to present-day streaming services. Examining both aesthetics and material production conditions, she demonstrates how technological and industrial changes have influenced the imagery of film noir.

Biesen considers the persistence of the noir legacy, discussing how neo-noirs reimagine iconic imagery and why noir style has become a touchstone in the streaming era. Drawing on a wealth of archival research, she provides insightful analyses of a wide range of works, from masterpieces directed by Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock to New Hollywood neo-noirs, the Coen brothers' revisionist films, and recent HBO and Netflix series.

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Emily Strand and Amy H. Sturgis, "Star Trek: Essays Exploring the Final Frontier" (Vernon Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

n this special Star Trek Day episode on the New Books Network, hosted by Dessy Vassileva from Vernon Press, we celebrate over 55 years of Star Trek with a deep dive into the book Star Trek: Essays Exploring the Final Frontier (Vernon Press, 2023). Co-editors Emily Strand and Amy H. Sturgis join the discussion to explore how Star Trek has shaped science fiction and contributed to broader academic and cultural conversations around speculative fiction.

The anthology, unlike many works that focus on specific parts of the franchise or narrow perspectives, offers a multidisciplinary look at Star Trek, with contributions from scholars across disciplines. From the franchise’s 1966 debut to its latest incarnations, the book covers its influence on fandom, its philosophical and societal implications, and its exploration of contemporary issues such as post-humanism and conspiracy theories in Voyager. The co-editors emphasize Star Trek’s unique ability to address diverse topics and inspire action, both in academic circles and fan communities.

The origins of the book trace back to an invitation from Vernon Press, when Emily approached Amy for a collaboration that eventually resulted in two separate volumes—one on Star Wars and one on Star Trek. Both books have garnered significant academic interest, and the co-editors aimed to create works accessible to scholars, students, and fans alike.

In this episode, Amy and Emily also reflect on their personal journeys into science fiction, from Amy’s early exposure to Star Trek through her family, to Emily’s adult discovery of the franchise after a passion for speculative fiction ignited by Harry Potter. Their conversation highlights Star Trek’s ability to continue resonating with global audiences, addressing issues of diversity, social justice, and human potential in an ever-evolving narrative universe.

Listeners interested in the sister volume on Star Wars can check out the related podcast episode here: Star Wars: Essays Exploring a Galaxy Far, Far Away.

Vernon Press – Bridging Scholarly Ideas and Global Readership

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Salma Siddique, "Evacuee Cinema: Bombay and Lahore in Partition Transit, 1940–1960" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 14 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Evacuee Cinema: Bombay and Lahore in Partition Transit, 1940–1960 (Cambridge UP, 2022) offers a new history of the partition. Based on previously unexamined archives and rare films, it investigates key questions around film production, partition and the provenance of the nation in South Asia: How did partition transform the dynamic and transcultural film industry of undivided India? What has been the relationship between Pakistani and Indian Cinema? Could the cinematic rendition of Pakistan have preceded its territorial realisation? Focussing on the unravelling of artistic and economic ties between two formerly intimate film cities of colonial India, Bombay and Lahore, this book follows their transition into the nationally discrete production centres of independent India and Pakistan. Pursuing inflections, migrations and shifts across national lines, Evacuee Cinema explains how filmmaking interpreted national danger and examines the expulsion and rehabilitation that went into the making of ‘Indian’ and ‘Pakistani’ cinema.

Dr Salma Siddique is research faculty at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, specializing in South Asian popular cinema, Islamicate screen cultures and immigrant media. Her research has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Third Text, and Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. She is a core editor at BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, published by Sage.

Priyam Sinha recently graduated with a PhD from the South Asian Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore. Her interdisciplinary academic interests lie at the intersection of social media and internet studies, platforms and film studies, disability studies, production cultures, affect studies, creative media industries and cultural studies. She can be reached at here.

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Jennifer L. Lambe, "The Subject of Revolution: Between Political and Popular Culture in Cuba" (UNC Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

From television to travel bans, geopolitics to popular dance, The Subject of Revolution: Between Political and Popular Culture in Cuba (UNC Press, 2024) explores how knowledge about the 1959 Cuban Revolution was produced and how the Revolution in turn shaped new worldviews. Drawing on sources from over twenty archives as well as film, music, theater, and material culture, this book traces the consolidation of the Revolution over two decades in the interface between political and popular culture.

The "subject of Revolution," it proposes, should be understood as the evolving synthesis of the imaginaries constructed by its many "subjects," including revolutionary leaders, activists, academics, and ordinary people within and beyond the island's borders. The book reopens some of the questions that have long animated debates about Cuba, from the relationship between populace and leadership to the archive and its limits, while foregrounding the construction of popular understandings. It argues that the politicization of everyday life was an inescapable effect of the revolutionary process, as well as the catalyst for new ways of knowing and being.

Jennifer Lambe is Associate Professor of History at Brown University.

Katie Coldiron is the Outreach Program Manager for the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) and PhD student in History at Florida International University.

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Steve Jones, "The Metamodern Slasher Film" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

It is commonly proposed that since the mid-2000s, the slasher subgenre has been dominated by unoriginal remakes of "classics". Consequently, most original slasher films have been ignored by academics (and critics), leaving the field with a limited understanding of this highly popular subgenre.

The Metamodern Slasher Film (Edinburgh UP, 2024) corrects that mischaracterisation by analysing contemporary slasher films that sincerely attempt to innovate within the subgenre. I argue that these films reflect broader cultural turns towards sincerity, optimism in the face of crisis, and an emphasis on felt experience that are indicative of a metamodern sensibility. This is the first book to use metamodernism to analyse film in a sustained way, and the first academic work to use metamodernism to examine horror. The Metamodern Slasher offers readers new ways to understand the slasher film, the horror genre, and also the cultural moment we find ourselves in.

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L. A. Confidential

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 9 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

If L. A. Confidential (1997) were two degrees campier, it would seem like Dick Tracy–but Curtis Hanson made sure to capture the spirit of James Ellroy’s novel while making its labyrinth plot understandable to viewers. Join us for a conversation about how the film examines the need for heroes yet seems to only offer them in a way to which the movies have made us accustomed. Sunlight may be the best disinfectant, but how much sunlight do we really want illuminating the institutions that hold society together? Do we want to live in Chinatown or on the set of Badge of Honor?

If you haven’t read James Ellroy’s novel, you can find it here, as well as Steven Powell’s new biography of James Ellroy, Love Me Fierce in Danger. You can also listen to Dan’s interview with Steven Powell here on the New Books Network, as well as a conversation between Dan and Steven about L. A. Confidential on the page and screen.

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Chris Richardson, "Batman and the Joker: Contested Sexuality in Popular Culture" (Routledge, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 3 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Batman and The Joker: Contested Sexuality in Popular Culture (Routledge, 2020), Chris Richardson presents a cultural analysis of the ways gender, identity, and sexuality are negotiated in the rivalry of Batman and The Joker. Richardson's queer reading of the text provides new understandings of Batman and The Joker and the transformations of the Gotham Universe throughout its 80-year existence. In particular, Richardson investigates how artists, writers, and fans engage with, challenge, and interpret gendered and sexual representations of this influential and popular rivalry. Fans of Batman and The Joker will find this work engaging and applicable across a range of scholarly fields and popular interests.

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For a Few Dollars More

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 2 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966) are collectively known as “The Man with No Name” trilogy and are often thought of as one long movie about the hero’s adventures, much like we think of the original three installments of Indiana Jones. Quentin Tarantino has called the third film the most well-directed film ever made, but Mike contends that For a Few Dollars More is superior to the other two. Join us for a conversation about this most dreamlike of Westerns that operates like a buddy-cop movie and reminds us the question posed by classicists, “Could Achilles beat Odysseus in a fight?” In other words, who would be more afraid of angering: Clint Eastwood or Lee Van Cleef?

If you’re interested in learning more about Leone’s work, you might want to read Alireza Vahdani’s The Hero and the Grave: The Theme of Death in the Films of John Ford, Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leone.

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Christopher Brown, "Mapping Taiwanese Cinema, 2008-2020: Environments, Poetics, Practice" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Accounting for the unique characteristics of Taiwan’s cinema from 2008 to 2020, Mapping Taiwanese Cinema, 2008-2020: Environments, Poetics, Practice (Edinburgh UP, 2024) examines how filmmakers have depicted and imagined the island’s diverse environments. Drawing on cinema, cartography, and cultural studies, Christopher Brown argues that by refocusing attention on how films are shaped through a process of construction, the tradition of film poetics enables us to think about Taiwanese cinema differently: as a form of mapping. Wide-ranging in scope and drawing on original interviews with contemporary filmmakers, the analysis appraises case studies including works of popular entertainment, genre cinema such as comedies and horror, films about indigenous communities, LGBTQ+ cinema, and arthouse work. By asking what it means to map an environment onscreen, the book offers new insights into a critically neglected, yet creatively dynamic, period in Taiwan’s film history.

Christopher Brown is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Filmmaking at the University of Sussex. He has written and directed several short films including “Remission” (2015), “Soap” (2015), and “Coccolith" (2018). As a researcher, Chris has written on contemporary Taiwanese film, practice-based research, and American cinema. His research has appeared in journals such as the Quarterly Review of Film & Video, Asian Cinema, Film Criticism, Film International, Performance Matters, Bright Lights Film Journal, Media Practice & Education, East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, and Senses of Cinema.

Li-Ping Chen is a teaching fellow in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts.

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To Have and Have Not

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Howard Hawks’s To Have and Have Not (1944) is more Hollywood than Hemingway–something for which we should all be grateful. The film is a wonderful example–perhaps the best–of onscreen chemistry and remains wildly entertaining even aside from the onscreen courtship of Bogart and Bacall. Join us as we talk about banter as a tool of seduction, the ways in which films let us “borrow the nature” of their actors, how To Have and Have Not feels like Casablanca II, and if Howard Hawks has an odd obsession with Hoagy Carmichael.

In this episode, Dan mentions William J. Mann’s recent book Bogie and Bacall, a terrific dual biography of the stars. You can hear Dan’s interview of the author here. And if you don’t believe that the source material for the film is as bad as we say it is, you can find Hemingway’s novel here.

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Can "Alien: Romulus" Revive the Alien Franchise?

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Fede Alvarez’s "Alien: Romulus" hit cinemas on August 16th. It’s set between the events of Alien and Aliens, two science fiction classics. We review the movie and ask whether it continues the thematic work done in its lauded predecessors, touching on capitalism, AI, body horror, subversion of sexual and reproductive systems, colonialism, class, and genre.

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Thief

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Everyone loves a good heist movie that depends on the combination of cold, logical planning and some element going sideways–and Thief is one of the best. Its 1981 release date is seen in every frame and the soundtrack by Tangerine Dream makes for great nostalgic viewing. But the film has real power as a character study of a highly skilled man trying to get something beyond his reach and wants what he cannot steal. James Cann’s performance as Frank is one of his best; he even seems to channel his most famous role when he needs Frank to let off steam. Give it a listen and learn how Michael Mann answers the question of whether there is honor among thieves.

Want to read more about Michael Mann? Jean-Baptiste Thoret’s Michael Mann: A Contemporary Retrospective examines Mann’s “contemplative way of filming that combines fascination and melancholy.”

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The Sounds of Silents

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What did going to the movies sound like back in the “silent film” era? The answer takes us on a strange journey through Vaudeville, roaming Chautauqua lectures, penny arcades, nickelodeons, and grand movie palaces. As our guest In today’s episode, pioneering scholar of film sound, Rick Altman, tells us, the silent era has a lot to teach us about why sound works the way it does at the movies today. And as our other guest, sound and film historian Eric Dienstfrey tells us, “What we think of today as standard practice is far from inevitable.” In fact, some of the practices we’ll hear about are downright wacky.

Audiences today give little thought to the relationship between sound and images at the movies. When we hear a character’s footsteps or inner thoughts or hear a rousing orchestral score that the character can’t hear, it all seems natural. Yet these are all conventions that had to be developed by filmmakers and accepted by audiences. And as Altman and Dienstfrey show us, the use of sound at the movies could have developed very differently.

Dr. Rick Altman is Professor Emeritus of Cinema and Comparative Literature in the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature, University of Iowa. Altman is known for his work on genre theory, the musical, media sound, and video pedagogy. He is the author of Silent Film Sound (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), Film/Genre (Bloomsbury, 1999), and A Theory of Narrative (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

Dr. Eric Dienstfrey is Postdoctoral Fellow in American Music at the University of Texas at Austin. Eric is a historian of sound, cinema, and media technology. His paper “The Myth of the Speakers: A Critical Reexamination of Dolby History” won the Society of Cinema and Media Studies’ Katherine Singer Kovács Essay Award for best article of the year in 2016.

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Karen Tongson, "Normporn: Queer Viewers and the TV That Soothes Us" (NYU Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 18 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Normporn: Queer Viewers and the TV That Soothes Us (NYU Press, 2023), Karen Tongson presents an irreverent look at the love-hate relationship between queer viewers and mainstream family TV shows like Gilmore Girls and This Is Us. After personal loss, political upheaval, and the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us craved a return to business as usual, the mundane, the middlebrow. We turned to TV to find these things. For nearly forty years, network television has produced a constant stream of “cry-along” sentimental-realist dramedies designed to appeal to liberal, heterosexual, white America. But what makes us keep watching, even though these TV series inevitably fail to reflect who we are?

Revisiting soothing network dramedies like Parenthood, Gilmore Girls, This Is Us, and their late-80s precursor, thirtysomething, Normporn mines the nuanced pleasures and attraction-repulsion queer viewers experience watching liberal family-centric shows. Tongson reflects on how queer cultural observers work through repeated declarations of a “new normal” and flash lifestyle trends like “normcore,” even as the absurdity, aberrance, and violence of our culture intensifies. Normporn allows us to process how the intimate traumas of everyday life depicted on certain TV shows—of love, life, death, and loss—are linked to the collective and historical traumas of their contemporary moments, from financial recessions and political crises to the pandemic.

Normporn asks, what are queers to do—what is anyone to do, really—when we are forced to confront the fact of our own normalcy, and our own privilege, inherited or attained? The fantasies, the utopian impulses, and (paradoxically) the unreality of sentimental realist TV drama creates a productive tension that queer spectators in particular take pleasure in, even as—or precisely because—it lulls us into a sense of boredom and stability that we never thought we could want or have.

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Alonso Duralde, "Hollywood Pride: A Celebration of LGBTQ+ Representation and Perseverance in Film" (Running Press Adult, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Film critic Alonso Duralde and I talk his new book, Hollywood Pride: A Celebration of LGBTQ+ Representation and Perseverance in Film (Running Press, 2024), including some fascinating anecdotes, case studies, and watershed moments in queer cinematic history, not to mention its creators, its stars, its detractors, and its various ebbs and flows -- from as early as Edison sound experiments to the pornographic underground to more recent strides and mainstream representation in the new millennium. Featuring: your gracious host not being able to pronounce "linoleum."

Alonso Duralde is Chief US Film Critic for The Film Verdict, author of Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas, and coauthor of I'll Be Home for Christmas Movies. He is the cohost of the Linoleum Knife, Maximum Film!, and Breakfast All Day podcasts, and has discussed film on CNN, PBS, TCM, ABC, and in numerous documentaries.

Tyler Thier is a faculty member and administrator in the Department of Writing Studies & Rhetoric at Hofstra University. He regularly writes and teaches cultural criticism, specifically in relation to maligned, dangerous, "poor-taste," and otherwise controversial pieces of film and pop culture.

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Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece, "Movies Under the Influence" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Movies under the Influence (University of Minnesota Press, 2024) by Dr. Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece charts the entangled histories of moviegoing and mind-altering substances from early cinema through the psychedelic 1970s. Dr. Szczepaniak-Gillece examines how the parallel trajectories of these two enduring aspects of American culture, linked by their ability to influence individual and collective consciousness, resulted in their being treated and regulated in similar ways. Rather than looking at representations of drug use within film, she regards cinema and intoxicants as kindred experiences of immersion subject to corresponding forces of ideology and power.

Exploring the effects of intoxicants such as caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, marijuana, and psychedelics on film spectatorship, Dr. Szczepaniak-Gillece demonstrates how American movie theaters sought to cultivate a dual identity: as both a place of wholesome entertainment and a shadowy zone of illicit behavior. Movies under the Influence highlights the various legislative, legal, and corporate powers that held sway over the darkened anonymity of theaters, locating the convergence of moviegoing and drug use as a site of mediation and social control in America.

As much as substances and cinema are points where power intervenes, they are also settings of potential transcendence, and Movies under the Influence maintains this paradox as a necessary component of American film history. Recontextualizing a wide range of films, from Hollywood to the avant-garde, this book examines the implicit relationship intoxicants suggest between mass media, spectatorship, and governmental regulation and offers a new angle from which to understand cinema’s lasting role in evolving American culture.

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Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack, "What's Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service" (Dutton, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Twenty-five years ago, The West Wing premiered to great acclaim. This book is a behind-the-scenes look into the creation and legacy of the series, as told by cast members Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack. The authors help us step back inside the world of President Jed Bartlet’s Oval Office as they reunite the West Wing cast and crew, including series creator Aaron Sorkin and many others, in a lively and colorful “backstage pass” to the timeless series.

From cast member origin stories to the collective cathartic farewell on the show’s final night of filming, What's Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service (Dutton, 2024). includes on-set and off-camera anecdotes that even West Wing superfans (Wingnuts) have never heard. Meanwhile, a deeper analysis of the show’s legacy through American culture, service, government, and civic life underscores how the series envisaged an American politics of decency and honor, creating an aspirational White House beyond the bounds of fictional television. Fitzgerald and McCormick revisit beloved episodes with fresh, untold commentary; compile poignant and hilarious stories from the show’s production; highlight initiatives supported by the cast, crew, and creators; and make a powerful case for competent, empathetic leadership, hope, and optimism for whatever lies ahead.

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Training Day

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Do you need to be a wolf to protect the sheep? That’s the question at the heart of Training Day (2001), in which Ethan Hawke plays the lead and Denzel Washington plays himself–at least for the first hour. What happens in the film once the sun goes down gets Mike and Dan arguing as they haven’t in a while: does the movie become yet another one where people go through a house with pistols drawn and shotgun blasts take out kitchen counters? Or is there a deeper reason why the film must end as it does? Listen and decide!

During the conversation we also bring in Meeting Evil, and The Screwtape Letters–both terrific books.

Follow us on X and Letterboxd–and let us know what you’d like us to watch! Incredible bumper music by John Deley. Also check out Dan’s new Substack site, Pages and Frames, for more film-related material.

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Nora Stone, "How Documentaries Went Mainstream: A History, 1960-2022" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 8 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

How Documentaries Went Mainstream: A History, 1960-2022 (Oxford University Press, 2023) provides a more comprehensive and meaningful periodization of the commercialization of documentary film. Although the commercial ascension of documentary films might seem meteoric, it is the culmination of decades-long efforts that have developed and fortified the audience for documentary features.

Author Nora Stone refines rough explanations of these efforts through a robust synoptic history of the market for documentary films, using knowledge of film economics and the norms of industry discourse to tell a richer story. This periodization will allow scholars to compare the commercialization of documentary film with other genres. Drawing on archival documents, industry trade journals and popular press, and interviews with filmmakers and film distributors, Stone illuminates how documentary features have become more plentiful, popular, and profitable than ever before.

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Yiman Wang, "To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong's Cross-Media World" (U California Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 4 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Between 1919 and 1961, pioneering Chinese American actress Anna May Wong established an enduring legacy that encompassed cinema, theatre, radio, and American television. Born in Los Angeles, yet with her US citizenship scrutinised due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, Wong—a defiant misfit—innovated nuanced performances to subvert the racism and sexism that beset her life and career.

In To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong's Cross-Media World (University of California Press, 2024), Dr. Yiman Wang marshals extraordinary archival research and a multifocal approach to illuminate a lifelong labour of performance, creating critical study of Wong's cross-media and transnational career. Viewing Wong as a performer and worker, not just a star, To Be an Actress adopts a feminist decolonial perspective to speculatively meet her as an interlocutor while inviting a reconsideration of racialized, gendered, and migratory labour as the bedrock of the entertainment industries.

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Kate Hext, "Wilde in the Dream Factory: Decadence and the American Movies" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 3 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Hollywood is haunted by the ghost of playwright and novelist Oscar Wilde. Wilde in the Dream Factory: Decadence and the American Movies (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Kate Hext is the story of his haunting, told for the first time. Set within the rich evolving context of how the American entertainment industry became cinema, and how cinema become the movies, it reveals how Wilde helped to shape Hollywood in the early twentieth century.

It begins with his 1882 American tour, and traces the ongoing popularity of his plays and novel in the early twentieth century, after his ignominious death. Following the early filmmakers, writers and actors as they headed West in the Hollywood boom, it uncovers how and why they took Wilde's spirit with them. There, in Hollywood, in the early days of silent cinema, Wilde's works were adapted. They were also beginning to define a new kind of style -- a 'Wilde-ish spirit', as Ernst Lubitsch called it -- filtering into the imaginations of Lubitsch himself, as well as Alla Nazimova, Ben Hecht, Samuel Hoffenstein and many others. These were the people who translated Wilde's queer playfulness into the creation of screwball comedies, gangster movies, B-movie horrors, and films noir.

Wilde and his style embodied a spirit of rebellion and naughtiness, providing a blue-print for the charismatic cinematic criminal and screwball talk onscreen. Wilde in the Dream Factory revises how we understand both Wilde's afterlife and cinema's beginnings.

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Collateral

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Collateral was made in 2004, ten years after Speed—and while both films have the same story of a good guy trying to stop a killer in real time, Collateral feels decades away from the innocence of Speed. Much of that has to do with the villain, who espouses a set of assumptions about the world that we se all around us on LinkedIn, YouTube, and Shark Tank. On a lighter note, the movie also ends the debate of how Superman could disguise himself with a simple pair of glasses. It’s a movie made for the hosts: Michael Mann for Mike and Tom Cruise for Dan. Jump in the taxi and give it a listen!

If you love Michael Mann, you love Heat. Mann’s new novel, Heat 2, can be found here.

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Kathleen Loock, "Hollywood Remaking: How Film Remakes, Sequels, and Franchises Shape Industry and Culture" (U California Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

From the inception of cinema to today’s franchise era, remaking has always been a motor of ongoing film production. Hollywood Remaking: How Film Remakes, Sequels, and Franchises Shape Industry and Culture (U California Press, 2024) challenges the categorical dismissal in film criticism of remakes, sequels, and franchises by probing what these formats really do when they revisit familiar stories.

Kathleen Loock argues that movies from Hollywood’s large-scale system of remaking use serial repetition and variation to constantly negotiate past and present, explore stability and change, and actively shape how the film industry, cinema, and audiences imagine themselves. Far from a simple profit-making exercise, remaking is an inherently dynamic practice situated between the film industry’s economic logic and the cultural imagination. Although remaking developed as a business practice in the United States, this book shows that it also shapes cinematic aesthetics and cultural debates, fosters film-historical knowledge, and promotes feelings of generational belonging among audiences.

For more on the Hollywood Memories project, go here.

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Rosemary Pennington, "Pop Islam: Seeing American Muslims in Popular Media" (Indiana UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

As Muslim American representation becomes more prominent in popular culture, how are they continued to be portrayed?

Rosemary Pennington's new book Pop Islam: Seeing American Muslims in Popular Media (Indiana University Press, 2024) explores the “trap of hypervisibility” faced by Muslims in popular media and the burden of representation that follows them. More representation may not always be generative, if there is not an intentional move away from stereotypes or caricatures of Muslim humanity to portraying real complicated and diverse human beings.

Using a wide variety of case studies from prime-time television shows, such as Lost, 24, or Ramy to stand-up comedians such as Hasan Minhaj, Aziz Ansari, Kumail Nanjiani to Zainb Johnson, reality shows (like Project Runway or Top Chef), magazines (like Teen Vogue) and comic books (Ms. Marvel), Pennington carefully guides us through some of the binary representations we continue to see in popular culture around us, especially those that are framed as portraying "authentic" Muslims. Thus representation may not be the only answer, as Islamophobia and anti-Muslim violence continues to grow, but more is needed as we more forward, as the book contends. This book will be of great interest to those who work on popular culture, media, comedy, gender, and Islam, and a great addition to courses on Islam.

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Jonathan Branfman, "Millennial Jewish Stars: Navigating Racial Antisemitism, Masculinity, and White Supremacy" (NYU Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Jewish stars have longed faced pressure to downplay Jewish identity for fear of alienating wider audiences. But unexpectedly, since the 2000s, many millennial Jewish stars have won stellar success while spotlighting (rather than muting) Jewish identity. In Millennial Jewish Stars: Navigating Racial Antisemitism, Masculinity, and White Supremacy (NYU Press, 2024), Jonathan Branfman offers case studies on six top millennial Jewish stars: the biracial rap superstar Drake, comedic rapper Lil Dicky, TV comedy duo Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, “man-baby” film star Seth Rogen, and chiseled film star Zac Efron.

Branfman argues that despite their differences, each star’s success depends on how they navigate racial antisemitism: the historical notion that Jews are physically inferior to Christians. Each star especially navigates racial stigmas about Jewish masculinity―stigmas that depict Jewish men as emasculated, Jewish women as masculinized, and both as sexually perverse. By embracing, deflecting, or satirizing these stigmas, each star comes to symbolize national hopes and fears about all kinds of hot-button issues. For instance, by putting a cuter twist on stereotypes of Jewish emasculation, Seth Rogen plays soft man-babies who dramatize (and then resolve) popular anxieties about modern fatherhood. This knack for channeling national dreams and doubts is what makes each star so unexpectedly marketable. In turn, examining how each star navigates racial antisemitism onscreen makes it easier to pinpoint how antisemitism, white privilege, and color-based racism interact in the real world.

Jonathan Branfman is the Eli Reinhard Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at Stanford University.

Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com.

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40 Years of Purple Rain: What to Make of the Movie/Album in 2024

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and Purple Rain, Prince’s semi-autobiographical, semi-concert film, hit cinemas 40 years ago this week. The movie followed the album of the same name by a few short weeks. While the album is considered a defining musical achievement, the movie met a mixed reception at the time, and later critics have been both troubled by its misogyny and perplexed by its surreal qualities and uneven acting.

We consider the movie and the music at the four-decade mark, centering our discussion on the figure of Prince (who plays a character called “The Kid” in the movie) as a set of shifting signifiers allowing, and perhaps demanding, an active reading by audiences interested in gender, race, musical genre, performance, and more.

Mentioned in this episode: Jack Hamilton, “Baby I’m a Star”: Prince, Purple Rain, and the Audiovisual Remaking of the Black Rock Star” in Black Camera (2022) Vol. 14, No. 1.

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Steven Powell, "Love Me Fierce In Danger: The Life of James Ellroy" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Love Me Fierce In Danger: The Life of James Ellroy (Bloomsbury, 2023) is the story of James Ellroy, one of the most provocative and singular figures in American literature. The so-called “Demon Dog of Crime Fiction,” Ellroy enjoys a celebrity status and notoriety that few authors can match. However, traumas from the past have shadowed his literary success.

When Ellroy was ten years old, his mother was brutally murdered. The crime went unsolved, and her death marked the start of a long and turbulent road for Ellroy that has included struggles with alcoholism, drug addiction, homelessness, and jail time. In tracing his life and career, Steven Powell reveals how Ellroy's upbringing in LA, always on the periphery of Hollywood, had a profound and dark influence on his work as a novelist. Using new sources, Powell also uncovers Ellroy's family secrets, including the mysterious first marriage of his mother Jean Ellroy, eighteen years before her murder. At its heart, Love Me Fierce in Danger is the story of how Ellroy overcame his demons to become the bestselling and celebrated author of such classics as The Black Dahlia and LA Confidential.

Informed by interviews with friends, family, peers, and literary and Hollywood collaborators, as well as extensive conversations with Ellroy himself, Love Me Fierce In Danger pulls back the curtain on an enigmatic figure who has courted acclaim and controversy with equal zealotry.

Steven Powell is an Honorary Fellow in the English Department at the University of Liverpool, UK. He is the editor of Conversations with James Ellroy (2012) and 100 American Crime Writers (2012). His most recent work is James Ellroy: Demon Dog of Crime Fiction (2016).

Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network and on X. His writing and other interviews about literature and film can also be found on Pages and Frames.

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Charles Barr, "British Cinema: a Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Cinema has had a hugely influential role on global culture in the 20th century at multiple levels: social, political, and educational. The part of British cinema in this has been controversial–often derided as a whole, but also vigorously celebrated, especially in terms of specific films and film-makers.

In British Cinema: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2022), Charles Barr considers films and filmmakers, and studios and sponsorship, against the wider view of changing artistic, socio-political, and industrial climates over the decades of the 20th Century. Considering British cinema in the wake of one of the most familiar of cinematic reference points–Alfred Hitchcock–Barr traces how British cinema has developed its own unique path, and has since been celebrated for its innovative approaches and distinctive artistic language.

Charles Barr worked for many years at the University of East Anglia, helping to develop one of the first UK programs in film studies at the graduate and undergraduate level. He has since taught in St. Louis, Galway, and Dublin, and is currently a Research Fellow at St. Mary's University, Twickenham. Much of his published work has been on British cinema, including the books Ealing Studios and English Hitchcock, and he was cowriter, with director Stephen Frears, of Typically British, part of the centenary history of cinema broadcast on Channel 4 in 1995. He has continued writing on Hitchcock, with a study of Vertigo in the BFI Classics series and Hitchcock: Lost and Found, coauthored with the Parisian scholar Alain Kerzoncuf.

Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network and on X. His writing and other interviews about literature and film can also be found on Pages and Frames.

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The Graduate

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to begin our descent into Los Angeles.” So begins The Graduate (1967), which everyone loves but which many of us loved for one reason when we were younger and one when we became a little more seasoned. “Plastics” is a great joke when you’re 20; how does it sound decades later? The movie hasn’t changed, but we have. It’s still terrific: Mike and Dan talk about the intelligence of the actors and the ways in which targets of the film’s satire (such as the cult of enthusiasm parents create around their kids) is even more pronounced today than when the film was made. They also talk about what many viewers seem to omit from their memories of the film’s famous ending.

Pictures at a Revolution, Mark Harris’s 2009 book, tells the story of the five Best Picture nominees in 1968, The Graduate among them. It’s a terrific read.

Follow us on X and Letterboxd–and let us know what you’d like us to watch! Incredible bumper music by John Deley. Also check out the new Substack site, Pages and Frames, for more film-related material.

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Filmmaker, Artist, Writer: A Conversation with Paromita Vohra

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series. This podcast is a multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. At CARGC, we produce and promote critical, interdisciplinary, and multimodal research on global media and communication. We aim to bridge academic scholarship and public life, bringing the best scholarship to bear on enduring global questions and pressing contemporary issues.

In this episode, our host, Kinjal Dave, sits down with filmmaker, artist, and writer Paromita Vohra for a wide-ranging conversation about the artist’s career. As an artist, Vohra has worked across a variety of forms, including film, comics, digital media, installation art and writing to explore themes of feminism, desire, sexuality and popular culture. In this interview, she reflects on the provocations and practices that have shaped her approach as an artist, as well as the pedagogical possibilities that multimodal artworks provide in the classroom.

Over the next forty-five minutes, you will hear about:

What inspired Paromita Vohra to pick up a camera
The challenges of building and sustaining a career as an independent filmmaker
Social, political, and cultural shifts in the India during the 1990s that informed Vohra’s media production
How digital media technologies and the Internet shaped Vohra’s work
How Unlimited Girls sought to capture a particular moment within a globalizing feminist discourse,
How Vohra has rejected certain aesthetic and narrative paradigms to craft her own style and voice as an artist, straddling comedy, irony, and politically incisive commentary
Vohra’s digital platform Agents of Ishq and the sense of community the project has built
How to cultivate and encourage complex conversations about gender, sex, desire, and politics in the classroom
Building intimacy with audiences and being vulnerable to criticism
Vohra’s upcoming projects

…and more!

Guest Biography

Paromita Vohra is an artist who works with a range of forms, including film, comics, digital media, installation art and writing to explore themes of feminism, desire, sexuality and popular culture. Her extraordinary body of truth-telling, kinetic and intensely sensuous films, online videos, art installations, television programming and writing have made sense of feminism, love, sexuality, urban life and popular culture for a diverse and loving audience for over 25 years.

Host Bio

Kinjal Dave is a PhD Student at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She researches critical perspectives on gender, technology, and labor in the South Asian diaspora at the intersection of Media and Communication Studies and Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Diaspora Studies. She is a fellow with the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) and an affiliate of Data & Society Research Institute.

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Ying Qian, "Revolutionary Becomings: Documentary Media in Twentieth-Century China" (Columbia UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Welcome to another episode of New Books in Chinese Studies. Today, I will be talking to Columbia University professor Ying Qian about her new book, Revolutionary Becomings: Documentary Media in Twentieth-Century China (Columbia UP, 2023).

The volume enriches our understanding of media’s role in China’s revolutionary history by turning to documentary. Qian guides readers through early documentary practice, left- and right-wing Republican documentary, and documentary as it functioned in the socialist and early postsocialist periods. In reference to socialist documentary, she writes, “As the vanguard of cinema, documentary in the Mao era meant, in principle, to facilitate the dialectical relationship between the masses and the party, not only to aid in their mutual constitution, but also to facilitate a collective formation of knowledge and priorities to direct the unfolding of the revolution” (249). In our interview, we will discover how crucial this understudied genre has been in the 20th century and learn how the mutually constitutive dialectic between documentary form and revolution worked in practice.

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Melissa E. Anderson, "Inland Empire" (Fireflies Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

"A woman in trouble"

In her monograph Inland Empire (Fireflies Press, 2021), film critic Melissa Anderson explores meaning (or the impossibility thereof) in the David Lynch film of the same title. We talk everything from Laura Dern (a LOT of Laura Dern), to the Hollywood nightmare of trying to "make it in the movies," to the contradictions of film criticism, to the (a)political legacy of Lynch's work.

Melissa Anderson is the film editor of 4Columns. From 2015 to 2017, she was the senior film critic for the Village Voice. She is also a frequent contributor to Bookforum.

Tyler Thier is a faculty member and administrator in the Department of Writing Studies & Rhetoric at Hofstra University. He regularly writes and teaches cultural criticism, and his scholarship is concerned with malicious rhetoric and dangerous media—specifically, extremist manifestos.

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Auto Focus

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

A great movie that is very difficult movie to recommend because of its subject matter, Paul Schrader’s Auto Focus (2002), the story of TV-star Bob Crane, is another of Schrader’s portraits of a man whose self-destruction we watch with admiration for the writing and unease at what we’re seeing. It’s a combination of The Lost Weekend, Reefer Madness, and Sunset Blvd. with Willem Defoe at his creepiest. But it’s much more than perfect recreations of Hogan’s Heroes or Greg Kinnear’s incredible performance: it’s a movie about the power of movies and images and of how nothing seems real until it is filmed—an idea we see all the time as people hold up their phones to record their vacations, kids’ sporting events, or office birthday parties. It’s a shocking film, but Schrader seems to have been as shocked to make it as we are to see it.

Auto Focus is based on Robert Graysmith’s The Murder of Bob Crane. If you are interested in the details of Crane’s murder—which remains a cold case—you may want to read John Hook’s Who Killed Bob Crane? The Final Close-Up. A more traditional biography of Crane that seeks to tell more than what Schrader does in Auto Focus was published in 2015.

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Pamela Hutchinson, "The Red Shoes" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 14 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Endlessly fascinating, dark and bright, The Red Shoes (1948) employs every branch of the cinematic arts to sweep the audience off its feet, invigorated by the transcendence of art itself, only to leave them with troubling questions. Representing the climax of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's celebrated run of six exceptional feature films, the film remains a beloved, if unsettling and often divisive, classic.

Pamela Hutchinson's study of the film, published by Bloomsbury in 2023, examines its breathtaking use of Technicolor, music, choreography, editing and art direction at the zenith of Powell and Pressburger's capacity for 'composed cinema'. Through a close reading of key scenes, particularly the film's famous extended ballet sequence, she considers the unconventional use of ballet as uncanny spectacle and the feminist implications of the central story of female sacrifice.

Hutchinson goes on to consider the film's lasting and wide-reaching influence, tracing its impact on the film musical genre and horror cinema, with filmmakers such as Joanna Hogg, Sally Potter, Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma having cited the film as an inspiration.

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Olga Gershenson, "New Israeli Horror: Local Cinema, Global Genre" (Rutgers UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 13 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Before 2010, there were no Israeli horror films. Then distinctly Israeli serial killers, zombies, vampires, and ghosts invaded local screens. The next decade saw a blossoming of the genre by young Israeli filmmakers. New Israeli Horror: Local Cinema, Global Genre (Rutgers UP, 2024) is the first book to tell their story. Through in-depth analysis, engaging storytelling, and interviews with the filmmakers, Olga Gershenson explores their films from inception to reception. She shows how these films challenge traditional representations of Israel and its people, while also appealing to audiences around the world.

Gershenson introduces an innovative conceptual framework of adaptation, which explains how filmmakers adapt global genre tropes to local reality. It illuminates the ways in which Israeli horror borrows and diverges from its international models. New Israeli Horror offers an exciting and original contribution to our understanding of both Israeli cinema and the horror genre.

A companion website to this book is available at here. A book trailer is available here.

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Heidi Honeycutt, "I Spit on Your Celluloid: The History of Women Directing Horror Movies" (Headpress, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

I Spit On Your Celluloid: The History of Women Directing Horror Movies (Headpress, 2024) by Heidi Honeycutt is the first book-length history of female horror directors from the late 1800s to present day. Having conducted hundreds of interviews and watched thousands of horror films, Honeycutt defines the political and cultural forces that shape the way modern horror movies are made by women. The women's rights and civil rights movements, new distribution technology, digital cameras, the destruction of the classic studio system, and the abandonment of the Hays code have significantly impacted women directors and their movies. So, too, social media, modern ideas of gender and racial equality, LGBTQ acceptance, and a new generation of provocative, daring films that take shocking risks in the genre. Includes short films, anthologies, documentaries, animated horror, horror pornography, pink films, and experimental horror.

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William Gow, "Performing Chinatown: Hollywood, Tourism, and the Making of a Chinese American Community" (Stanford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

This episode features a conversation with Dr. William Gow on his recently published book, Performing Chinatown: Hollywood, Tourism, and the Making of a Chinese American Community (Stanford University Press, 2024), focuses on the 1930s and 1940s Los Angeles–its Chinatowns, and “city,” as well as the Chinese American community’s relationship with Hollywood. Chinatown and Hollywood, Gow argues, represented the two primary sites where Chinese Americans performed racial difference for popular audiences during the Chinese exclusion era. As he will illustrate later in this conversation, Chinese Americans in Los Angeles used these performances in Hollywood films and in Chinatown for tourists to shape widely-held understandings of race and national belonging during this pivotal chapter in U.S. history.

Performing Chinatown builds on Gow’s background as a historian, educator, and documentary filmmaker–even incorporating his own family’s history with Hollywood throughout the book’s opening and closing. A fourth-generation Chinese American and a proud graduate of the San Francisco Unified School District, he holds an M.A. in Asian American Studies from UCLA and a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley. Before receiving his doctorate, he taught history for nearly a decade in California public schools. For the past 20 years, he has also served as a volunteer historian with the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California (CHSSC), a non-profit in Los Angeles Chinatown. At the CHSSC, he is the co-director of the Five Chinatowns project, documenting the history of the five Chinatowns that existed in Los Angeles before 1965. He is presently an assistant professor of Asian American and Ethnic Studies at Cal State Sacramento.

Donna Doan Anderson (she/her) is a research assistant professor in History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

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Darshana Sreedhar Mini, "Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India" (U California Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 7 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In the 1990s, India's mediascape saw the efflorescence of edgy soft-porn films in the Malayalam-speaking state of Kerala. In Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India (U California Press, 2024), Darshana Sreedhar Mini examines the local and transnational influences that shaped Malayalam soft-porn cinema—such as vernacular pulp fiction, illustrated erotic tales, and American exploitation cinema—and maps the genre's circulation among blue-collar workers of the Indian diaspora in the Middle East, where pirated versions circulate alongside low-budget Bangladeshi films and Pakistani mujra dance films as South Asian pornography. Through a mix of archival and ethnographic research, Mini also explores the soft-porn industry's utilization of gendered labor and trust-based arrangements, as well as how actresses and production personnel who are marked by their involvement with a taboo form negotiate their social lives. By locating the tense negotiations between sexuality, import policy, and censorship in contemporary India, this study offers a model for understanding film genres outside of screen space, emphasizing that they constitute not just industrial formations but entire fields of social relations and gendered imaginaries.

Dr. Darshana Sreedhar Mini is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. She did her PhD from the University of Southern California. Her teaching and research lie at the intersection of gender, sexuality, transnational media, migrant media and screen cultures of South Asia. She is the co-editor of South Asian Pornographies: Vernacular Formations of the Permissible and the Obscene (Routledge, 2024).

Priyam Sinha recently graduated with a PhD from the South Asian Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore. Her interdisciplinary academic interests lie at the intersection of film studies, disability studies, production cultures, affect studies, anthropology of the body, creative media industries and cultural studies. She can be reached at https://twitter.com/PriyamSinha

Khadeeja Amenda is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication and New Media, National University of Singapore, Singapore. She can be reached at khadeejaamenda@u.nus.edu

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Marsha Gordon, "Becoming the Ex-Wife: The Unconventional Life and Forgotten Writings of Ursula Parrott" (U California Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 5 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Credited with popularizing the label "ex-wife" in 1929, Ursula Parrott wrote provocatively about divorcées, career women, single mothers, work-life balance, and a host of new challenges facing modern women. Her best sellers, Hollywood film deals, marriages and divorces, and run-ins with the law made her a household name. Part biography, part cultural history, Becoming the Ex-Wife: The Unconventional Life and Forgotten Writings of Ursula Parrott (U California Press, 2024) establishes Parrott's rightful place in twentieth-century American culture, uncovering her neglected work and keen insights into American women's lives during a period of immense social change.

Although she was frequently dismissed as a "woman's writer," reading Parrott's writing today makes it clear that she was a trenchant philosopher of modernity—her work was prescient, anticipating issues not widely raised until decades after her decline into obscurity. With elegant wit and a deft command of the archive, Marsha Gordon tells a timely story about the life of a woman on the front lines of a culture war that is still raging today.

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Feng-Mei Heberer, "Asians on Demand: Mediating Race in Video Art and Activism" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 2 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Asians on Demand: Mediating Race in Video Art and Activism (University of Minnesota Press, 2023) explores a multilingual archive of contemporary queer and feminist videos by Asian diasporans in North America, Europe, and East Asia. It grapples with the pressing question of how media representation can critique and advance social justice for racialized minorities in the wake of today’s unprecedented rise of onscreen diversity.

Feng-Mei Heberer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University. She is also a faculty affiliate of the department’s Asian Film and Media Initiative. Her research interests lie at the junctures of labor, transnational migration, and Asian diaspora, and her work draws heavily on the insights of ethnic studies, queer studies, feminist studies, and critical area studies. In addition, she researches and works in film curation and community arts and culture organizing.

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Forbidden Planet

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 1 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

A dramatized thought experiment like best episodes of Star Trek, Forbidden Planet (1956) is a wonderful reminder of how people in the past envisioned the future. Part prophecy—looking forward—and part analysis of the timeless human condition, the film wraps heavy ideas about the cost of knowledge and the ways we interact with our own creations into melodrama. Yes, it’s a reimagining of The Tempest, but it’s also Faust, Frankenstein, and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” from Fantasia. Join us for a conversation about the limits of technology and the ways in which anything we create bears our own failings.

If you’re interested in further reading, Dr. Morbius has many literary antecedents, from Prospero in The Tempest, to Dr. Faustus, Dr. Frankenstein, and Dr. Jekyll.

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Swapnil Rai, "Networked Bollywood: How Star Power Globalized Hindi Cinema" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 29 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Swapnil Rai’s book Networked Bollywood: How Star Power Globalized Hindi Cinema (Cambridge UP, 2024) brilliantly navigates the intricate landscapes of stardom, shedding light on its diverse meanings amidst the ever-evolving new media industries and the demands of a globally interconnected audiences. With a keen focus on the global south, she masterfully explores the intersection of transnational networked cultures with the dynamic tapestry of media industries, geopolitics, and audience engagement.

Dr. Swapnil Rai is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Media at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. As an interdisciplinary scholar, she works at the intersection of media studies, critical cultural communication, women’s and gender studies, and industry studies. She has published her scholarship in a range of journals such as Communication, Culture & Critique, Feminist Media Studies, International Journal of Communication, Media, Culture and Society among others.

Priyam Sinha recently graduated with a PhD from the South Asian Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore. Her interdisciplinary academic interests lie at the intersection of film studies, disability studies, production cultures, affect studies, anthropology of the body, creative media industries and cultural studies. She can be reached here.

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Barbara Klinger, "Immortal Films: 'Casablanca' and the Afterlife of a Hollywood Classic" (U California Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Casablanca is one of the most celebrated Hollywood films of all time, its iconic romance enshrined in collective memory across generations. Drawing from archival materials, industry trade journals, and cultural commentary, in Immortal Films: "Casablanca" and the Afterlife of a Hollywood Classic (University of California Press, 2022), Dr. Barbara Klinger explores the history of Casablanca's circulation in the United States from the early 1940s to the present by examining its exhibition via radio, repertory houses, television, and video. By resituating the film in the dynamically changing industrial, technological, and cultural circumstances that have defined its journey over eight decades, Dr. Klinger challenges our understanding of its meaning and reputation as both a Hollywood classic and a cult film. Through this single-film survey, Immortal Films proposes a new approach to the study of film history and aesthetics and, more broadly, to cinema itself as a medium in constant interface with other media as a necessary condition of its own public existence and endurance.

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Ishita Tiwary, "Video Culture in India: The Analog Era" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Ishita Tiwary’s book Video Culture in India: The Analog Era (Oxford UP, 2024) is an unprecedented attempt in foregrounding the diverse media history of the analog video era in India. It reconstructs the evolution of analog video culture through interdisciplinary approaches, including oral histories, archival resources, and discarded tapes. At the same time, it provides key information on the socio-political context of video culture, which existing digital media studies lack.

Dr. Ishita Tiwary is an Assistant Professor in Film Studies and the Canada Research Chair at the Department of Cinema at Concordia University, Montreal. She is also the director of the research lab “Raah." Ishita Tiwary's research interests include video cultures, media infrastructures, migration, contraband media practices, and media aesthetics. She has published essays in Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, International Journal of Cultural Studies, JumpCut, Post Script: Essays in Film and Humanities, Culture Machine, MARG: Journal of Indian Art, and in edited collections on topics of media piracy, video histories, and streaming platforms.

Priyam Sinha recently graduated with a PhD from the South Asian Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore. Her interdisciplinary academic interests lie at the intersection of film studies, disability studies, production cultures, affect studies, anthropology of the body, creative media industries and cultural studies. She can be reached at https://twitter.com/PriyamSinha

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Kim Nelson, "Making History Move: Five Principles of the Historical Film" (Rutgers UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Making History Move: Five Principles of the Historical Film (Rutgers UP, 2024) builds upon decades of scholarship investigating history in visual culture by proposing a methodology of five principles to analyze history in moving images in the digital age. It charts a path to understanding the form of history with the most significant impact on public perceptions of the past. The book develops insights across these fields, including philosophical considerations of film and history, to clarify the form and function of history in moving images. It addresses the implications of the historical film on public historical consciousness, presenting criteria to engage and assess the truth status of depictions of the past. Each chapter offers a detailed aspect of this methodology for analyzing history in moving images. Together, they propose five principles to organize past and future scholarship in this vital, interdisciplinary field of study.

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After Hours

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

“Kafkaesque” is the word usually used to describe After Hours, Martin Scorsese’s 1985 comedy—a fair point, since there’s a scene in the film that dramatizes Kafka’s “Before the Law.” But the writer whose imagination this film really taps is Lewis Carroll: as in Alice in Wonderland, a naïve but likable young person chases a white rabbit to a different part of town, is threatened by an angry woman who wants to chop off his head, and learns, “We’re all mad here.” Join us for an appreciation of this terrific film we’ve used to test other people’s sense of humor.

If you haven’t read Lewis Carroll in a while, you can get a copy of all the Alice books here.

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Jennifer S. Clark, "Producing Feminism: Television Work in the Age of Women's Liberation" (U California Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

How have women resisted sexism in TV? In Producing Feminism: Television Work in the Age of Women’s Liberation (U California Press, 2024), Jennifer S. Clark, an Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, explores the people, organisations, TV shows and audiences who all shaped women in and on television during the 1970s. Drawing on a production studies perspective, the book ranges widely from organisational archives, through key programmes and personalities, to specific genres including sport on TV. The analysis also offers a challenge to both contemporary television’s approach to equity and diversity issues, as well as a significant contribution to the history of television too. The book is essential reading across the humanities and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in television. The book is also available open access here.

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Slava Greenberg, "Animated Film and Disability: Cripping Spectatorship" (Indiana UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

While many live-action films portray disability as a spectacle, "crip animation" (a genre of animated films that celebrates disabled people's lived experiences) uses a variety of techniques like clay animation, puppets, pixilation, and computer-generated animation to represent the inner worlds of people with disabilities. Crip animation has the potential to challenge the ableist gaze and immerse viewers in an alternative bodily experience.

In Animated Film and Disability: Cripping Spectatorship (Indiana University Press, 2023), Dr. Slava Greenberg analyses over 30 animated works about disabilities, including Rocks in My Pockets, An Eyeful of Sound, and A Shift in Perception. He considers the ableism of live-action cinematography, the involvement of filmmakers with disabilities in the production process, and the evocation of the spectators' senses of sight and hearing, consequently subverting traditional spectatorship and listenership hierarchies. In addition, Dr. Greenberg explores physical and sensory accessibility in theatres and suggests new ways to accommodate cinematic screenings.

Offering an introduction to disability studies and crip theory for film, media, and animation scholars, Animated Film and Disability demonstrates that crip animation has the power to breach the spectator's comfort, evoking awareness of their own bodies and, in certain cases, their social privileges.

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Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, "Sound in Indian Film and Audiovisual Media: History, Practices and Production" (Amsterdam UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay’s book Sound in Indian Film and Audiovisual Media: History, Practices and Production (Amsterdam UP, 2023) is an exhaustive attempt to study film sound in the Indian subcontinent through artistic research. It aims to fill a significant scholarly void by addressing issues of sound and listening within the cultural contexts of the Global South. By developing a comprehensive understanding of the unique soundscapes of Indian film and audiovisual media, his study examines the evolution of sound, from early optical recordings to contemporary digital audio technologies. It unfolds the intricate ways in which sound contributes to the storytelling, emotional resonance, and cultural significance of Indian films. Chattopadhyay’s research is informed by his personal experiences as a sound practitioner and through extensive conversations with leading sound professionals across the Indian subcontinent. This approach allows for a deep dive into the practical and creative processes that shape the auditory dimensions of Indian cinema. Broadly, Chattopadhay’s work is a significant contribution to film history, sound studies, and media studies.

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay is a media artist, researcher, and writer. He has an expansive body of scholarly publications in media arts history, artistic research, media theory and aesthetics in leading peer-reviewed journals. He is the author of five books, including The Nomadic Listener (2020), The Auditory Setting (2021), Between the Headphones (2021), and Sound Practices in the Global South (2022). Dr. Chattopadhyay holds a PhD in Artistic Research and Sound Studies from the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden University. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Institute Experimental Design and Media Cultures (IXDM), Basel, Switzerland, and a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design (KMD), University of Bergen, Norway.

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Bringing Out the Dead

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What is the proper—or most effective—response to a barrage of horror and pain? The closest that screenwriter Paul Schrader ever came to a comedy (albeit a very dark one), Bringing Out the Dead (1999) is low on special effects depicting medical emergencies but high on drama. Join us for a conversation about one of Scorsese’s sleepers, a movie about a man who wants to find something like religious faith in a world with no spiritual oasis. It also dramatizes the incredible cost paid a moment of peace.

The film is based on Joe Connolly’s 1988 novel, which was a minor sensation when published.

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Jared Stearns, "Pure: The Sexual Revolutions of Marilyn Chambers" (Headpress, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Pure: The Sexual Revolutions of Marilyn Chambers (Headpress, 2024), Jared Stearns tells the untold story of the world's most famous X-rated star, who rose to fame as the face of Ivory Snow and the star of Behind the Green Door but struggled to find her true self in a world of sex, scandal, and shattered dreams. Marilyn Chambers was the embodiment of the free-spirited Seventies, the world's most famous X-rated star, and an unappreciated talent whose work in adult films hindered her dreams of becoming a serious actress. Raised in an affluent Connecticut suburb, Marilyn catapulted to fame when it was learned that not only had she starred in the groundbreaking X-rated film, Behind the Green Door but was also the model on the box of Ivory Snow laundry detergent (product tagline: "99 44/100% Pure.") Marilyn was the first woman known primarily for her work in adult films to cross over to mainstream entertainment. She sustained a versatile three-decade career in entertainment, including roles in dramatic plays, a Broadway musical revue, her own television show, and the lead role in David Cronenberg's film Rabid.

But her success in adult films also proved to be her undoing. Marred by a violent relationship with her abusive husband-manager, Chuck Traynor, she developed the persona of a twenty-four-hour-a-day sex star. In the process, she lost her sense of self and spent much of her life searching for her true identity. With recollections from family and friends, many of whom have never spoken publicly, along with Marilyn's own words, and never-before-published photos, Jared Stearns vividly captures the revolutionary career of one of the twentieth century's most misunderstood icons.

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On Richard Linklater and “Hit Man”

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and “Hit Man” is writer and director Richard Linklater’s latest film, available on Netflix after a brief theatrical run. We analyze the movie through Linklater’s classic themes: identity and its malleability, American sub-cultures, and American mythologies. “Hit Man” is a less challenging watch than much of Linklater’s canon, but it works best, we argue, when seen as part of his wider project of examining the permeable boundary between fantasy and reality.

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Amrita Ghosh, "Kashmir's Necropolis: Literary, Cultural, and Visual Texts" (Lexington Books, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Amrita Ghosh's book Kashmir's Necropolis: Literary, Cultural, and Visual Texts (Lexington Books, 2023) is an interdisciplinary book that studies literary texts, film, photography, and art to understand the different forms of violence represented in the cultural productions from and on Kashmir. The author argues that selected texts present how the long conflict in the postcolonial nation-state transforms the Kashmiri body, the space, setting, the relationship between the subject and its natural world under different forms of violence. Each chapter showcases a form of representational and textual violence that emphasizes the shifts from biopolitical to necropolitical violence and also includes specific forms of violence such as epicolonialism, horrorism, and hauntings in Kashmir’s landscape. The book also delves into how the concepts of agency, resistance, and resilience in these different texts necessitate new poetics of looking at Kashmir. The conflicted space of Kashmir has always been located within the politics of representation and this book investigates a problem in taxonomy within postcolonial discourses to articulate unique forms of violence in such a conflicted space.

Arnab Dutta Roy is Assistant Professor of World Literature and Postcolonial Theory at Florida Gulf Coast University.

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American Movie

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 3 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

If you’ve seen Hearts of Darkness, you can better appreciate what Coppola endured while making Apocalypse Now; if you’ve seen River of Dreams, you can watch in wonder as Herzog talks about the shooting Fitzcaraldo and really moving that boat through the jungle. American Movie (1999) aims to do the same thing for Mark Borchardt’s low-budget independent horror film Coven. How you respond to American Movie depends on how you respond to Borchardt: is he simply a pretentious jerk who thinks he’s the next George A. Romero? Or is he what Thomas Gray would call “some mute inglorious Milton,” whose work deserves a wider audience?

In this episode, the guys mention the work of English poet Thomas Gray, whose famous

“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is applied to Mark Borchardt.

Follow us on X and Letterboxd–and let us know what you’d like us to watch! Incredible bumper music by John Deley. Also check out the new Substack site, Pages and Frames, for more film-related material.

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Robert Phillip Kolker and Marsha Gordon, "Film, Form, and Culture" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 30 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

This fifth edition of Film, Form, and Culture (Routledge, 2024) offers a lively introduction to both the formal and cultural aspects of film.

With extensive analysis of films past and present, this textbook explores how films are constructed from part to whole: from the smallest unit of the shot to the way shots are edited together to create narrative. Robert P. Kolker and Marsha Gordon demystify the technical aspects of filmmaking and demonstrate how fiction and nonfiction films engage with culture. Over 265 images provide a visual index to the films and issues being discussed. This new edition includes: an expanded examination of digital filmmaking and distribution in the age of streaming; attention to superhero films throughout; a significantly longer chapter on global cinema with new or enlarged sections on a variety of national cinemas (including cinema from Nigeria, Senegal, Burkina Faso, South Korea, Japan, India, Belgium, and Iran); new or expanded discussions of directors, including Alice Guy-Blaché, Lois Weber, Oscar Micheaux, Agnès Varda, Spike Lee, Julie Dash, Jafar Panahi, Ava DuVernay, Jane Campion, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne and Penny Lane; and new, in-depth explorations of films, including Within Our Gates (1919), Black Girl (1966), Creed (2015), Moonlight (2016), Wonder Woman (2017), Get Out (2017), Black Panther (2018), Parasite (2019), Da 5 Bloods (2020), The French Dispatch (2021), The Power of the Dog (2021), RRR (2022), and Tár (2022).

Robert P. Kolker is Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA. He is the author/editor of several books on film including The Oxford Handbook of Film and Media Studies (2008), A Cinema of Loneliness, 4th edition (2011), The Cultures of American Film (2014), The Extraordinary Image: Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and the Reimagining of Cinema (2016), Politics Goes to the Movies (2018), Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of His Final Film (2019), and, with Nathan Abrams, Kubrick: An Odyssey (2024).

Marsha Gordon is Professor and Director of Film Studies at North Carolina State University, USA. She is the author of Becoming the Ex-Wife: The Unconventional Life & Forgotten Writings of Ursula Parrott (2023), Film is Like a Battleground: Sam Fuller’s War Movies (2017), and Hollywood Ambitions: Celebrity in the Movie Age (2008), and co-editor of Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film (2019) and Learning With the Lights Off: Educational Film in the United States (2012).

Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers (2016), he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network and on X. His work also appears on Pages and Frames.

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First Reformed

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 13 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In a recent interview, Paul Schrader said he was lucky with Taxi Driver because he “caught the zeitgeist.” He may have done so again with First Reformed (2017), a film that reflects the age of extremism in which we now live. Join us for a long conversation about a person who might be called the “green Travis Bickle” and who trades in one religion for another, only to find that he can’t give his new set of beliefs as much as he thought he could.

Reverend Toller (Ethan Hawke) is an admirer of Thomas Merton; his renown The Seven Story Mountain (1948) tells the story of his entering Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky.

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Emily Strand and Amy H. Sturgis, "Star Wars: Essays Exploring a Galaxy Far, Far Away" (Vernon Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 10 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

'Star Wars' is a global phenomenon that in 2022 celebrated its 45th year of transmedia storytelling, and it has never been more successful than it is today. More 'Star Wars' works than ever are currently available or in simultaneous development, including live-action and animated series, novels, comics, and merchandise, as well as the feature films for which the franchise is best known. 'Star Wars' fandom is worldwide, time-tested, and growing; academic interest in the franchise, both inside and outside of the classroom, is high. This accessible and multidisciplinary anthology covers topics across the full history of the franchise.

With a range of essays by authors whose disciplines run from culture and religious studies to film, feminism, and philology, Star Wars: Essays Exploring a Galaxy Far, Far Away (Vernon Press, 2023) speaks to academics in the field, students in the classroom, and anyone looking to broaden their understanding and deepen their appreciation for 'Star Wars'.

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Julia Havas, "Woman Up: Invoking Feminism in Quality Television" (Wayne State UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 8 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

While American television has long relied on a strategic foregrounding of feminist politics to promote certain programming's cultural value, Woman Up: Invoking Feminism in Quality Television (Wayne State University Press, 2022) by Dr. Julia Havas is the first sustained critical analysis of the twenty-first-century resurgence of this tradition. In Woman Up, Dr. Havas’ central argument is that postmillennial "feminist quality television" springs from a rhetorical subversion of the (much-debated) masculine-coded "quality television" culture on the one hand and the dominance of postfeminist popular culture on the other.

Postmillennial quality television culture promotes the idea of aesthetic-generic hierarchies among different types of scripted programming. Its development has facilitated evaluative academic analyses of television texts based on aesthetic merit, producing a corpus of scholarship devoted to pinpointing where value resides in shows considered worthy of discussion. Other strands of television scholarship have criticised this approach for sidestepping the gendered and classed processes of canonization informing the phenomenon. Woman Up intervenes in this debate by reevaluating such approaches and insisting that rather than further fostering or critiquing already prominent processes of canonization, there is a need to interrogate the cultural forces underlying them. Via detailed analyses of four TV programs emerging in the early period of the "feminist quality TV" trend—30 Rock (2006–13), Parks and Recreation (2009–15), The Good Wife (2009–16), and Orange Is the New Black (2013–19)—Woman Up demonstrates that such series mediate their cultural significance by combining formal aesthetic exceptionalism and a politicised rhetoric around a "problematic" postfeminism, thus linking ideals of political and aesthetic value.

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Hobson’s Choice

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 6 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Hobson’s Choice (1954) is the perfect example of a very specific genre: the capitalist romance. Filled with a Dickensian love of humanity and featuring one of Charles Laughton’s best performances, it’s a perfect film about a deeply complicated topic: what makes the world go round and how individual family units come together, function, and roll on. Dan compares it to The Honeymooners; Mike compares it to 2001. Give it a listen on your way to Moonraker’s!

If you love the film, you’ll want to read the original play by Harold Brighouse, subtitled “A Lancashire Comedy in Four Acts.”

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Sydney Stern, "The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics" (U Mississippi Press, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 5 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Herman J. (1897–1953) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993) wrote, produced, and directed over 150 pictures. With Orson Welles, Herman wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane and shared the picture’s only Academy Award. Joe earned the second pair of his four Oscars for writing and directing All About Eve, which also won Best Picture.

In The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics (University of Mississippi Press, 2019), Sydney Stern draws on interviews, letters, diaries, and other documents still in private hands to provide a uniquely intimate behind-the-scenes chronicle of the lives, loves, work, and relationship between these complex men. The book is part of the Hollywood Legends Series of the University of Mississippi Press.

Despite triumphs as diverse as Monkey Business and Cleopatra, and Pride of the Yankees and Guys and Dolls, the witty, intellectual brothers spent their Hollywood years deeply discontented and yearning for what they did not have—a career in New York theater. Herman, formerly an Algonquin Round Table habitué, New York Times and New Yorker theater critic, and playwright-collaborator with George S. Kaufman, never reconciled himself to screenwriting. He gambled away his prodigious earnings, was fired from all the major studios, and drank himself to death at fifty-five. While Herman drifted downward, Joe rose to become a critical and financial success as a writer, producer, and director, though his constant philandering with prominent stars like Joan Crawford, Judy Garland, and Gene Tierney distressed his emotionally fragile wife who eventually committed suicide. He wrecked his own health using uppers and downers in order to direct Cleopatra by day and finish writing it at night, only to be very publicly fired by Darryl F. Zanuck, an experience from which Joe never fully recovered.

Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne.

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Patrick Humphries, "Cleopatra and the Undoing of Hollywood: How One Film Almost Sunk the Studios" (History Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 4 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The astonishing behind-the-scenes story of the 1963 film Cleopatra and how it changed the face of Hollywood makes it one of the most fabled films of all time.

Starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the film’s making soon became a cautionary tale, for the lavish extravagance of production on Cleopatra all but bankrupted 20th Century Fox and almost singlehandedly set in motion the decline of the major Hollywood movie studios. By the time the film was finally released, 20th Century Fox and the world watched as it died at the box office. Cleopatra and the Undoing of Hollywood: How One Film Almost Sunk the Studios (History Press, 2023) is an epic tale of love and lust, gossip, money, sex, movie-star madness, studio politics, and the birth of paparazzi journalism. Within the saga of Cleopatra lies the end of the era of Hollywood's studio system, the seeds of the Swinging Sixties, and the stuff of timeless movie legend.

Patrick Humphries has been a writer and journalist for over forty years and has published numerous books on musical artists such as the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Elton John, Pink Floyd, and Bruce Springsteen.

Latoya Johnson is an editor, writer, and bibliophile with a master's in Humanities. Her research and writing delve into various aspects of popular culture. She is particularly interested in exploring the public history of women's fiction and the portrayal of femme characters in Greco-Roman mythology.

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John Powers, "Technology and the Making of Experimental Film Culture" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 4 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The Bolex camera, 16mm reversal film stocks, commercial film laboratories, and low-budget optical printers were the small-gauge media technologies that provided the infrastructure for experimental filmmaking at the height of its cultural impact. Technology and the Making of Experimental Film Culture (Oxford University Press, 2023) by Dr. John Powers examines how the avant-garde embraced these material resources and invested them with meanings and values adjacent to those of semiprofessional film culture.

By reasserting the physicality of the body in making time-lapse and kinesthetic sequences with the Bolex, filmmakers conversed with other art forms and integrated broader spheres of humanistic and scientific inquiry into their artistic process. Drawing from the photographic qualities of stocks such as Tri-X and Kodachrome, they discovered pliant metaphors that allowed them to connect their artistic practice to metaphysics, spiritualism, and Hollywood excess. By framing film labs as mystical or adversarial, they cultivated an oppositionality that valorized control over the artistic process. And by using the optical printer as a tool for excavating latent meaning out of found footage, they posited the reworking of images as fundamental to the exploration of personal and cultural identity.

Providing a wealth of new detail about the making of canonised avant-garde classics by such luminaries as Carolee Schneemann, Jack Smith, and Stan Brakhage, as well as rediscovering works from overlooked artists such as Chick Strand, Amy Halpern, and Gunvor Nelson, Technology and the Making of Experimental Film Culture uses technology as a lens for examining the process of making: where ideas come from, how they are put into practice, and how arguments about those ideas foster cultural and artistic commitments and communities.

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Robert Farley on how "Andor" recreates "The Battle of Algiers" (and it works)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 3 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and today we are joined by Professor Robert Farley, author of “Andor: Star Wars Recreates the Battle of Algiers (And it Works).” We talk about how Andor, the Disney+ streamer, was deeply influenced by Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 movie The Battle of Algiers. Both texts tell the story of a rebellion against authoritarian colonial overlords, and both do so in a documentary style. We consider how Andor relates to other entries in the Star Wars universe, what myths and meaning structures Andor engages, and whether the show qualifies as great television, or merely pretty good Star Wars.

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Kristi Irene McKim, "Rushmore" (British Film Institute, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 3 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Earning critical acclaim and commercial success upon its 1998 release, Rushmore-the sophomore film of American auteur Wes Anderson-quickly gained the status of a cult classic. A melancholic coming-of-age story wrapped in comedy drama, Rushmore focuses on the efforts of Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman)-a brazen and precocious fifteen-year-old-to find his way. Restless, energetic, struggling, and overcompensating for his insecurities, Max pursues a dizzying range of possible futures, leading him into the orbit of local steel magnate Herman Blume (Bill Murray), elementary school teacher Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams), and a host of cooperative schoolmates who help him to stage lavish film-derivative plays.

Kristi McKim's book Rushmore (British Film Institute, 2023) argues that despite the film's titular call for haste and excess (rush/more), it challenges a drive toward perfectionism and celebrates the quiet connections that defy such passion and speed. After establishing Rushmore's history and reception, McKim closely reads Rushmore's energetic musical montages relative to slower moments that introduce tenderness and ambiguity, in a form subtler than Max's desire-built drive or genre-based plays.

Her analysis offers an urgent corrective to what might be perceived as an endearing portrait of privilege that perpetuates a status quo power. Drawing out Rushmore's subtleties that soften, temper, ease, expand, and equalize the film's zeal, she reads the film with a generosity learned from the film itself.

Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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Katie Gee Salisbury, "Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong" (Dutton, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 2 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In 2022, the U.S. Mint released the first batch of its American Women Quarters series, celebrating the achievements of U.S. women throughout its history. The first set of five included Maya Angelou, Sally Ride…and Anna May Wong, the first Asian-American to ever appear on U.S. currency.

Katie Gee Salisbury takes on Anna May Wong’s life in her book Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong (Dutton, 2024). The biography takes readers through Wong’s life, from her start in Hollywood’s early days, her struggles against prejudiced studio executives unwilling to give her the spotlight, through to her groundbreaking trip to China.

In this interview, Katie and I talk about Anna May Wong’s life, her struggles against censorship, and what films you should watch to understand Wong as an actress.

A fifth-generation Chinese American from Southern California, Katie has spoken and written about Anna May Wong on MSNBC, in the New York Times and in Vanity Fair. She also writes the newsletter Half-Caste Woman. She was a 2021 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship finalist and gave the TED Talk “As American as Chop Suey.” Follow on Instagram at @annamaywongbook and on Twitter at @ksalisbury.

We Own the Night

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Is there anything so refreshing for a film fanatic as a film about grownups? The mid-budget We Own the Night (2007) is a tonic in a world of films costing five times the money but offering only one fifth the talent. Join Mike and Dan for an appreciation of a film without seven reversals at its ending or a series of explosions, but one about adults who find themselves in terrible situations from which they struggle to escape. It has major players in its cast but still feels like a deeply un-Hollywood movie; it’s the cinematic equivalent of a dull ache, and we mean that as a compliment. Prince of the City, Angels with Dirty Faces, and even the parable of the prodigal son make their way into the discussion. If 7-Up is the un-cola, this film is the un-Departed.

If you’re interested in the issue raised by the film concerning the war on drugs, you may want to read David Farber’s 2021 history of the cause and the costs.

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Pamela Robertson Wojcik, "Unhomed: Cycles of Mobility and Placelessness in American Cinema" (U California Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Unhomed: Cycles of Mobility and Placelessness in American Cinema (University of California Press, 2024), Dr. Pamela Roberston Wojcik examines America's ambivalent and shifting attitude toward homelessness. She considers film cycles from five distinct historical moments that show characters who are unhomed and placeless, mobile rather than fixed—characters who fail, resist, or opt out of the mandate for a home of one's own.

From the tramp films of the silent era to the 2021 Oscar-winning Nomadland, Dr. Wojcik reveals a tension in the American imaginary between viewing homelessness as deviant and threatening or emblematic of freedom and independence. Blending social history with insights drawn from a complex array of films, both canonical and fringe, Dr. Wojcik effectively "unhomes" dominant narratives that cast aspirations for success and social mobility as the focus of American cinema, reminding us that genres of precarity have been central to American cinema (and the American story) all along.

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Alexander Greenhough, "Albert Brooks: Interviews" (UP of Mississippi, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Albert Brooks: Interviews (UP of Mississippi, 2024) brings together fourteen profiles of and conversations with Brooks (b. 1947), in which he contemplates, expounds upon, and hilariously jokes about the connections between his show business upbringing, an ambivalence about the film industry, the nature of fame and success, and the meaning and purpose of comedy. Throughout all these encounters, Brooks expresses an unwavering commitment to his own artistic expression as a filmmaker and a rejection of mainstream conventions. With his questioning and critical disposition, nothing seems certain for Albert Brooks except for the integrity of art and the necessity for a wry skepticism about the incongruities of everyday life in corporate America.

Brooks is neither a Hollywood insider nor an outsider. He’s somewhere in-between. Since the early 1970s, this inimitable actor-writer-director has incisively satirized the mass media system from within. After initial work as an inventive comedian, both live and on network television, Brooks contributed six shorts to the first season of Saturday Night Live, which earned him a cult following for their avant-garde form and sensibility. These were followed by his feature debut, Real Life, the first of only seven films—including Modern Romance, Lost in America, and Defending Your Life—that Brooks has directed to date. His limited output reflects not only the difficulty in financing idiosyncratic films, but equally the exacting seriousness which Brooks has in making audiences laugh and think at the same time.

Alexander Greenhough teaches in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University.

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Cat People

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

“I envy normal women—they’re free,” laments Irina Dubrovna Reed, in Jacques Tourner’s 1942 film, one as noir as Out of the Past which he would direct five years later. Join Mike and Dan for a conversation about a film that explores the same subject as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and has received, justly or not, “The Criterion Treatment.” They also talk about why Paul Schrader’s 1982 remake works on paper but not on the screen. So grab your sketchbook, steal that key, and give it a listen!

You can pick up a copy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde here.

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Diana Leon-Boys, "Elena, Princesa of the Periphery: Disney’s Flexible Latina Girl" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In the summer of 2016, Disney introduced its first Latina princess, Elena of Avalor. Elena, Princess of the Periphery: Disney’s Flexible Latina Girl (Rutgers University Press, 2023) by Dr. Diana Leon-Boys explores this Disney property using multiple case studies to understand its approach to girlhood and Latinidad. Following the circuit of culture model, Dr. Leon-Boys teases out moments of complex negotiations by Disney, producers, and audiences as they navigate Elena’s circulation. Case studies highlight how a flexible Latinidad is deployed through corporate materials, social media pages, theme park experiences, and the television series to create a princess who is both marginal to Disney’s normative vision of princesshood and central to Disney’s claims of diversification.

This multi-layered analysis of Disney’s mediated Latina girlhood interrogates the complex relationship between the U.S.’s largest ethnic minority and a global conglomerate that stands in for the U.S. on the global stage.

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Cathy Yue Wang, "Snake Sisters and Ghost Daughters: Feminist Adaptations of Traditional Tales in Chinese Fantasy" (Wayne State UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Contemporary Chinese film and literature often draw on time-honored fantastical texts and tales which were founded in the milieu of patriarchy, parental authority, heteronormativity, nationalism, and anthropocentrism. Cathy Yue Wang's Snake Sisters and Ghost Daughters: Feminist Adaptations of Traditional Tales in Chinese Fantasy (Wayne State University Press, 2023) examines the processes by which modern authors and filmmakers reshape these traditional tales to develop new narratives that interrogate the ingrained patriarchal paradigm. Through a rigorous analysis, Wang delineates changes in both content and narrative that allow contemporary interpretations to reimagine the gender politics and contexts of the tales retold. With a broad transmedia approach and a nuanced understanding of intertextuality, this work contributes to the ongoing negotiation in academic and popular discourse between past and present, traditional and contemporary, and text and reality in a globalized and postmodern world. Snake Sisters and Ghost Daughters offers an engaging interdisciplinary investigation of issues at the heart of these traditional tales such as gender and status hierarchy, marriage and family life, and in-group/out-group distinction. Beyond the content of these individual stories, Wang ties these narratives together across time using cognitive literary criticism, especially affective narratology, to shed new light on the adaptation of literary and cultural texts and their sociopolitical contexts.

Dr. Cathy Yue Wang is a lecturer in Department of Chinese Language and Literature, School of Humanities, Shanghai Normal University in China. She received her PhD from Macquarie University in Australia. She is particularly interested in applying feminist and queer perspectives into examinations of adaptation and retelling, children and young adult literature, as well as boys’ love subculture and fandom in the East Asian context. She is the author of Snake Sisters and Ghost Daughters: Feminist Adaptations of Traditional Tales in Chinese Fantasy (Wayne State University Press, 2023) and editor of Catching Chen Qing Ling: The Untamed and Adaptation, Production, and Reception in Transcultural Contexts (Peter Lang, forthcoming).

Linshan Jiang is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. She received her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she also obtained a Ph.D. emphasis in Translation Studies. Her research interests include modern and contemporary literature, film, and popular culture in mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan; trauma and memory studies; gender and sexuality studies; queer studies; as well as comparative literature and translation studies.

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Eve Golden, "Strictly Dynamite: The Sensational Life of Lupe Velez" (UP of Kentucky, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Before Salma Hayek, Eva Longoria, and Penelope Cruz, there was Lupe Velez―one of the first Latin-American stars to sweep past the xenophobia of old Hollywood and pave the way for future icons from around the world. Her career began in the silent era, when her beauty was enough to make it onto the silver screen, but with the rise of talkies, Velez could no longer hope to hide her Mexican accent. Yet Velez proved to be a talented dramatic and comedic actress (and singer) and was much more versatile than Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Gloria Swanson, and other legends of the time. Velez starred in such films as Hot Pepper (1933), Strictly Dynamite (1934), and Hollywood Party (1934), and her popularity peaked in the 1940s after she appeared as Carmelita Fuentes in eight Mexican Spitfire films, a series created to capitalize on Velez's reputed fiery personality.

The media emphasized the "Mexican Spitfire" persona, and by many accounts, Velez's private life was as colorful as the characters she portrayed on-screen. Fan magazines mythologized her mysterious childhood in Mexico, while mainstream publications obsessed over the drama of her romances with Gary Cooper, Erich Maria Remarque, and John Gilbert, along with her stormy marriage to Johnny Weissmuller. In 1944, a pregnant and unmarried Velez died of an intentional drug overdose. Her tumultuous life and the circumstances surrounding her early death have been the subject of speculation and controversy.

In Strictly Dynamite: The Sensational Life of Lupe Velez (UP of Kentucky, 2023), author Eve Golden uses extensive research to separate fact from fiction and offer a thorough and riveting examination of the real woman beneath the gossip columns' caricature. Through astute analysis of the actress's filmography and interviews, Golden illuminates the path Velez blazed through Hollywood. Her success was unexpected and extraordinary at a time when a distinctive accent was an obstacle, and yet very few books have focused entirely on Velez's life and career. Written with evenhandedness, humor, and empathy, this biography finally gives the remarkable Mexican actress the unique and nuanced portrait she deserves.

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The Ladykillers

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Everyone loves gut-busting belly-laughs in a film. But sometimes, big laughs slow things down. There’s something to be said for films that amuse us for their duration. Join us for a conversation about a film that makes us smile from its first moment to its last: The Ladykillers, Alexander Mackendrick’s 1955 dark comedy starring Alec Guinness as the creepiest criminal and a young Peter Sellars as one of his gang. Dan praises the film’s economy and compares it to John Cheever’s “Reunion”; Mike explains how it reminds him of Gilbert & Sullivan. And while they dissect the film and how it manipulates the viewer, they still cannot answer the question, “Are those really Alec Guinness’s teeth?”

If you’d like to read “Reunion,” the terrific story by John Cheever to which they compare The Ladykillers, you’ll find it in this collection—which, incidentally, is a book everyone should have.

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Sharrona Pearl, "Mask" (Bloombury, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 14 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

From the theatre mask and masquerade to the masked criminal and the rise of facial recognition software, masks have long performed as an instrument for the protection and concealment of identity.

Even as they conceal and protect, masks – as faces – are an extension of the self. At the same time, they are a part of material culture: what are masks made of? What traces do they leave behind? Acknowledging that that mask-wearing has become increasingly weaponized and politicised, in Mask (Bloomsbury, 2024) Dr. Sharrona Pearl looks at the politics of the mask, exploring how identity itself is read on this object.

By exploring who we do (and do not) seek to protect through different forms of masking, Dr. Pearl's long history of masks helps us to better understand what it is we value.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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Grazia Ingravalle, "Archival Film Curatorship: Early and Silent Cinema from Analog to Digital" (Amsterdam UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Archival Film Curatorship: Early and Silent Cinema from Analog to Digital (Amsterdam UP, 2023) is the first book-length study that investigates film archives at the intersection of institutional histories, early and silent film historiography, and archival curatorship. It examines three institutions at the forefront of experimentation with film exhibition and curatorship. The Eye Film Museum in Amsterdam, the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY, and the National Fairground and Circus Archive in Sheffield, UK serve as exemplary sites of historical mediation between early and silent cinema and the digital age.

A range of elements, from preservation protocols to technologies of display and from museum architectures to curatorial discourses in blogs, catalogs, and interviews, shape what the author innovatively theorizes as the archive’s hermeneutic dispositif. Archival Film Curatorship offers film and preservation scholars a unique take on the shifting definitions, histories, and uses of the medium of film by those tasked with preserving and presenting it to new digital-age audiences.

Archival Film Curatorship is available as an open access e-book at this link.

Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive.

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Pan’s Labyrinth

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 8 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In 1965, Bob Dylan teased the squares by stating, “Something is happening but you don’t know what it is.” The same could be said for childhood and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) is a film that takes childhood seriously—as opposed to the way it is usually portrayed in big-budget, effects-laden films. Join us for a conversation about a film sometimes compared to the work of C. S. Lewis but one we find is more like that work of Miguel de Cervantes and Hayao Miyazaki.

If you’re interested in learning more about the director of Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, and other (literally) fantastic thrillers, check out Guillermo del Toro: The Iconic Filmmaker and His Work.

Follow us on X or Letterboxd–and let us know what you’d like us to watch! Incredible bumper music by John Deley. The opening interview clip of Guillermo del Toro can be found here.

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Jane M. Ferguson, "Silver Screens and Golden Dreams: A Social History of Burmese Cinema" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 5 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Within the social sciences and the humanities, international research in Burma/Myanmar studies tends to lean toward political science and Buddhist studies, or what can be characterized as the “soldiers or monks” approach. The political situation within the country has restricted the access that foreign researchers have had to the country. It has also shaped the type of research that international scholars choose to research and that grant agencies are willing to fund. As a result of this our understanding of Burmese society and culture is comparatively weak.

Jane Ferguson has tried to tackle this problem in her highly original study of the Burmese film industry. Her book, Silver Screens and Golden Dreams: A Social History of Burmese Cinema (University of Hawai’i Press, 2024) paints a very different picture of Burma to the one we are used to. The book depicts Burma as an outwardly oriented, internationally connected place, with a vibrant and creative movie industry, talented film directors, packed cinemas, glamorous movie stars, and even a Burmese version of the Academic Awards.

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Daniel de Visé, "The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic" (Grove Atlantic, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 5 Apr 2024 04:00:00 +0000

The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic (Grove Atlantic, 2024) tells the story of the epic friendship between John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, the golden era of improv, and the making of a comedic film classic that helped shape our popular culture.

“They’re not going to catch us,” Dan Aykroyd, as Elwood Blues, tells his brother Jake, played by John Belushi. “We’re on a mission from God.” So opens the musical action comedy The Blues Brothers, which hit theaters on June 20, 1980. Their scripted mission was to save a local Chicago orphanage. But Aykroyd, who conceived and wrote much of the film, had a greater mission: to honor the then-seemingly forgotten tradition of rhythm and blues, some of whose greatest artists—Aretha Franklin, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles—made the film as unforgettable as its wild car chases. Much delayed and vastly over budget, beset by mercurial and oft drugged-out stars, The Blues Brothers opened to outraged reviews. However, in the 44 years since, it has been acknowledged a classic: it has been inducted into the National Film Registry for its cultural significance, even declared a “Catholic classic” by the Church itself, and re-aired thousands of times on television to huge worldwide audiences. It is, undeniably, one of the most significant films of the twentieth century.

The story behind any classic is rich; the saga behind The Blues Brothers, as Daniel de Visé reveals, is epic, encompassing the colorful childhoods of Belushi and Aykroyd; the comedic revolution sparked by Harvard’s Lampoon and Chicago’s Second City; the birth and anecdote-rich, drug-filled early years of Saturday Night Live, where the Blues Brothers were born as an act amidst turmoil and rivalry; and, of course, the indelible behind-the-scenes narrative of how the film was made, scene by memorable scene. Based on original research and dozens of interviews probing the memories of principals from director John Landis and producer Bob Weiss to Aykroyd himself, The Blues Brothers illuminates an American masterpiece while vividly portraying the creative geniuses behind modern comedy.

Daniel de Visé is an author and journalist. A graduate of Wesleyan and Northwestern universities, he worked at the The Washington Post, the Miami Herald and three other newspapers in a 23-year career. He shared a 2001 team Pulitzer Prize and garnered more than two dozen other national and regional journalism awards. His investigative reporting twice led to the release of wrongly convicted men from life terms in prison. His first book, I Forgot To Remember (with Su Meck, Simon & Schuster, 2014), began as a front-page article de Visé wrote for the Washington Post in 2011. His second book, Andy & Don (Simon & Schuster, 2015), began as a journalistic exploration into the storied career of his late brother-in-law, famed actor Don Knotts. His third book, The Comeback (Grove Atlantic, 2018), rekindles a childhood obsession with professional cycling. Daniel is married to Sophie Yarborough, a senior editor at The Washington Post. They and their children live outside Washington D.C.

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Adapting Liu Cixin’s "Three-Body Problem" for Television

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 2 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and today we discuss Netflix’s new screen adaptation of Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin’s Three Body trilogy. We discuss the battle between the eye and the idea in film and television science fiction, and whether the new show strikes a successful balance. We consider some of the challenges involved in adapting this distinctively Chinese literary work for a non-Chinese audience, and what might have been lost in doing so. And we think more broadly about the genre of hard science fiction: to whom does it appeal and what is it trying to accomplish?

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Maggie Hennefeld, "Death by Laughter: Female Hysteria and Early Cinema" (Columbia UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Can you really die from laughing too hard? Between 1870 and 1920, hundreds of women suffered such a fate—or so a slew of sensationalist obituaries would have us believe. How could laughter be fatal, and what do these reports of women’s risible deaths tell us about the politics of female joy?

In Death by Laughter: Female Hysteria and Early Cinema (Columbia University Press, 2024), Dr. Maggie Hennefeld reveals the forgotten histories of “hysterical laughter,” exploring how women’s amusement has been theorised and demonised, suppressed and exploited. In nineteenth-century medicine and culture, hysteria was an ailment that afflicted unruly women on the cusp of emotional or nervous breakdown. Cinema, Hennefeld argues, made it possible for women to laugh outrageously as never before, with irreversible social and political consequences. As female enjoyment became a surefire promise of profitability, alarmist tales of women laughing themselves to death epitomised the tension between subversive pleasure and its violent repression.

Dr. Hennefeld traces the social politics of women’s laughter from the heyday of nineteenth-century sentimentalism to the collective euphoria of early film spectatorship, traversing contagious dancing outbreaks, hysteria photography, madwomen’s cackling, cinematic close-ups, and screenings of slapstick movies in mental asylums. Placing little-known silent films and an archive of remarkable, often unusual texts in conversation with affect theory, comedy studies, and feminist film theory, this book makes a timely case for the power of hysterical laughter to change the world.

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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

If we could undergo a procedure that would erase the painful memories from our lives, would we do it? That seems to be the question of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) until we realize that we’re asking the wrong question. The real question this film asks is why wouldn’t such a procedure ever work? Join us for a conversation about Michel Gondry’s mind-bending film that is a completely different experience when you’re 20 versus when you’re 40. Go ahead and give it a listen–then visit Lacuna so you can listen again for the first time.

If the passage from Alexander Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard reminded you of Pope’s talent, you may be interested in this quality collection of his verse. You may also want to check out this collection of essays about the film.

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Stephen Lee Naish, "Music and Sound in the Films of Dennis Hopper" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Music and Sound in the Films of Dennis Hopper (Routledge,2024), Stephen Lee Naish explores how as a director Dennis Hopper used music and sound to propel the narrative of his work and to signpost the era in which the films were made and the characters' place within American culture. Naish examines five of Hopper's films to show how this deep engagement with music to build character and setting continued throughout his career, as Hopper used folk, punk, hip-hop, and jazz to shape the worlds of his films in ways that influenced other filmmakers and foreshadowed the advent of the music video format. As Naish demonstrates, throughout his career Hopper relied on music to propel his films and tell his stories.

In Easy Rider, Hopper was one of the first filmmakers to include popular rock, pop, and folk music on a soundtrack. In his sophomore film The Last Movie, Hopper blended diegetic performances of folk and traditional Peruvian indigenous music to create a textured piece of sound art. In Out of the Blue, Hopper used punk rock as a vibrant shock, but also as a reaction to the failed ethos of the past. In 1988's Colors he incorporated hip-hop and rap music to soundtrack the lives of the gang members who rule the streets of Los Angeles. Finally, in his 1990 film The Hot Spot, Hopper commissioned a hybrid soundtrack of jazz/blues by Miles Davis and John Lee Hooker to accompany his steamy neo-noir. Using case studies of five of Hopper's directorial films, Naish aims to uncover the film soundtrack as a vital piece of the narrative, not only in Dennis Hopper's films but in film as a whole.

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Defending Your Life

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

We are supposed to get smarter as we get older. Do we? If the meaning of your life had to be found in nine representative days, which days would you choose? Are they the same days that your critics would select? Would you live your life differently if you had to watch yourself years later a big screen? Would you think you were as cool as you do now if you had to see yourself as a cold observer does? Defending Your Life, Albert Brooks’s version of A Matter of Life and Death, asks all of these questions and answers about half of them—pretty good for someone only using 3% of his brain. Join us for a conversation about this terrific film that, to its credit, feels like Lost in America II: The Death of David Howard. Face your fears and give it a listen!

We all love Albert Brooks’s movies—but have you read his novel? In 2012, Brooks released 2030, his own version of 1984.

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Anna Kornbluh, "Immediacy: Or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism" (Verso, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What is the status of art and culture in a world dominated by apps, algorithms, and influencers? Anna Kornbluh’s newest book Immediacy, Or the Style of Too Late Capitalism (Verso, 2023) analyzes a swath of cultural forms from auto-fiction to Netflix binges and immersive art installations. For Kornbluh, neoliberalism’s economic disintermediation manifests itself in a new dominant cultural style that renounces complex forms of representation, abstraction, and mediation in favor of instantaneity, memoir, and literalism. An ambitious and far-reaching intervention into politics and aesthetics, Immediacy is ultimately an impassioned defense of the power of art to reflect, critique, and transform the world.

Anna Kornbluh is Professor of English and a member of the United Faculty bargaining team at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where her research and teaching center on literature, film, and Marxist cultural theory. She is the author of The Order of Forms: Realism, Formalism, and Social Space, and Marxist Film Theory and Fight Club, and Realizing Capital.

David Maruzzella is a writer, editor, and translator specializing in philosophy and contemporary art currently based in Chicago. He received his PhD in philosophy from DePaul University.

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Ellen E. Jones, "Screen Deep: How Film and TV Can Solve Racism and Save the World" (Faber and Faber, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Why does race matter in film and TV? In Screen Deep: How Film and TV Can Solve Racism and Save the World (Faber and Faber, 2024), Ellen E. Jones, a journalist, broadcaster and the co-host of the BBC’s Screenshot, shows how the storytelling potential offered by screen media shape how we understand ourselves and our societies. The book covers a huge range of genres in film and TV, from superheroes and horror, through romance and crime, to costume drama, comedy and westerns. It tells the history of race in Hollywood, the struggles over British history on screen, and how filmmakers are challenging genre stereotypes across screen industries. Offering a powerful call to reimagine the power, potential, and possibilities offered by film and TV, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary culture as well as a more just and equal world.

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Nick Jones, "Gooey Media: Screen Entertainment and the Graphic User Interface" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The Graphic User Interface, or GUI, is the adhesive centre of today’s screen entertainment web. From films and television to apps and videogames, it holds together a multitude of media and shapes the way they are accessed, organised, created, consumed, and manipulated. However, it does not do so without leaving viscous traces, and Gooey Media: Screen Entertainment and the Graphic User Interface (Edinburgh University Press, 2023) by Dr. Nick Jones examines this residue and its consequences, revealing how the GUI exerts a powerful influence on contemporary media.

Focusing on aesthetics and adopting a media agnostic approach, Dr. Jones explores cinema, streaming platforms, television, user-generated content, videogames, apps, virtual reality, VFX, design software, and more in order to show how they cross-pollinate with one another and with our desktop interfaces. The result is a new approach for analysing convergent media in the digital era.

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Eleanor Patterson, "Bootlegging the Airwaves: Alternative Histories of Radio and Television Distribution" (U Illinois Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Long before internet archives and the anytime, anywhere convenience of streaming, people collected, traded, and shared radio and television content via informal networks that crisscrossed transnational boundaries.

Eleanor Patterson’s fascinating cultural history explores the distribution of radio and TV tapes from the 1960s through the 1980s. Looking at bootlegging against the backdrop of mass media’s formative years, Patterson delves into some of the major subcultures of the era. Old-time radio aficionados felt the impact of inexpensive audio recording equipment and the controversies surrounding programs like Amos ‘n’ Andy. Bootlegging communities devoted to buddy cop TV shows like Starsky and Hutch allowed women to articulate female pleasure and sexuality while Star Trek videos in Australia inspired a grassroots subculture built around community viewings of episodes. Tape trading also had a profound influence on creating an intellectual pro wrestling fandom that aided wrestling’s growth into an international sports entertainment industry.

Original and engaging, Bootlegging the Airwaves: Alternative Histories of Radio and Television Distribution (U Illinois Press, 2024) shares the story of how fan passion and technology merged into a flourishing subculture.

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Magic

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Magic is misdirection, and Richard Attenborough and William Goldman do a terrific job of misdirecting the audience in this 1978 thriller. Like The King of Comedy and Limelight, the film looks at the desperation of people who want to be recognized; unlike those films, there’s nothing funny about the hero’s struggle. Join us for a conversation about a film so unsettling that even the TV spot (featured at the start of the episode) caused people to run from their living rooms. So put down the dummy and give it a listen!

William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade (1989) and Which Lie Did I Tell? (2001) both offer the renowned screenwriter’s advice about writing films and understanding how they work—or don’t.

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Dune, Part Two: An Interview with Dr. Kara Kennedy

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 8 Mar 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Part Two of director Denis Villeneuve’s Dune films embeds viewers among the Fremen, the Indigenous inhabitants of the planet Arrakis. The sole source of the valuable drug spice, Arrakis has been colonized and its resources extracted by the Imperium. The Fremen fight to liberate themselves and their planet from Imperial control under the messianic leadership of Paul Atreides. In Frank Herbert’s original series of Dune novels, the Fremen were inspired by the Bedouin, nomadic pastoralist inhabitants of the Middle East. Aspects of Bedouin culture and lifeways as well as episodes from Bedouin history, such as the effects of resource extraction on Bedouin landscapes and Bedouin participation in the Great Arab Revolt, heavily informed the novels’ themes and narratives. In this episode, Dr. Kara Kennedy joins me to discuss representations of nomadic peoples in the Dune novels and their onscreen adaptations as well as her latest book Adaptations of Dune: Frank Herbert's Story on Screen (Blue Key, 2024).

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Baby Face

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 4 Mar 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Baby Face is the 1933 film that created the archetypal Barbara Stanwyck character and famously laid everything bare before the production code tried to clean up Hollywood. It’s direct and “against interpretation”—but that’s what makes it so compelling. Join Tim and Dan for a conversation about how the film speaks to our current moment regarding agency, exploitation, and climbing the corporate ladder. It’s also a lot like Richard III. This may have been the first of Barbara Stanwyck’s big roles, but it was Alfred E. Green’s fifty-fourth feature, which leads to a digression about people who claim that any director did something first. So grab that suitcase of jewels, hop in the back of the ambulance, and give it a listen!

In 2015, Victoria Wilson published A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel True 1907-1940. We’re still waiting for the next volume, but at 1,056 pages, this one will keep you busy. Also check out Catherine Russell’s 2023 collection, The Cinema of Barbara Stanwyck: Twenty-Six Essays on a Working Star and Dan’s interview with the author on the New Books Network.

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Jinying Li, "Anime's Knowledge Cultures: Geek, Otaku, Zhai" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 3 Mar 2024 09:00:00 +0000

With comics franchises getting turned into multi-billion dollar revenue opportunities and consumer technology companies dominating daily headlines — the trappings of “geekdom” have made their way into the global mainstream over the past few days. As part of this trend, Japanese-style anime has also gained immense transnational popularity, arguably becoming part of the “new cool”.

It’s against this backdrop that Jinying Li dives into the sociocultural landscape of anime with her book Anime’s Knowledge Cultures: Geek, Otaku, Zhai (University of Minnesota Press, March 2024). However, instead of diving into the “Japaneseness” of anime and otaku culture, Anime’s Knowledge Cultures helps frame anime within a more globalized sense of “geekdom” — especially with the rise of post-80s millennial zhai in China’s cultural and economic spheres.

Li is an Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. Her research and teaching focuses on media theory, animation, and digital culture in East Asia. She is also a filmmaker who’s worked on various animations, features, and documentaries, including the noted Chinese 2016 animation feature Big Fish and Begonia.

With this academic and domain expertise, Li’s book illuminates phenomena like fansubs, danmaku “bullet-style” subtitles, and geek “complexes” to audiences who are interested in the theoretical and practical implications of anime’s global popularity. Tune into this episode about Anime’s Knowledge Cultures to learn more—listen to the end for some special anime and movie recommendations.

Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, and Eater.

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Jesse David Fox, "Comedy Book:: How Comedy Conquered Culture–and the Magic That Makes It Work" (FSG, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 2 Mar 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In Comedy Book:: How Comedy Conquered Culture–and the Magic That Makes It Work (FSG, 2023), Jesse David Fox—the country’s most definitive voice in comedy criticism and someone who, in his own words, enjoys comedy “maybe more than anyone on this planet”—tackles everything you need to know about comedy, an art form that has been under-considered throughout its history, even as it has ascended as a cultural force. Weaving together history and analysis, Fox unravels the genre’s political legacy through an ode to Jon Stewart, interrogates the divide between highbrow and lowbrow via Adam Sandler, and unpacks how marginalized comics create spaces for their communities. Along the way, Fox covers topics ranging from comedy in the age of political correctness and Will Smith’s slap, to the right wing’s relationship with comedy, to comedy’s ability to heal in the wake of tragedy.

With memorable cameos from Jerry Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle, John Mulaney, Ali Wong, Kate Berlant, and countless others, Comedy Book is an eye-opening education in how to engage with our most omnipresent art form, a riotous history of American pop culture, and a love letter to laughter.

Brittney Edmonds is an Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies at UW-Madison. I specialize in 20th and 21st century African American Literature and Culture with a special interest in Black Humor Studies. Read more about my work at brittneymichelleedmonds.com.

Peter C. Kunze is assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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Eve Benhamou, "Contemporary Disney Animation: Genre, Gender and Hollywood" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Eve Benhamou's book Contemporary Disney Animation: Genre, Gender and Hollywood (Edinburgh UP, 2022) is the first in-depth study of Disney’s latest animated output from the perspective of genre theory. Analysing a decade in Disney’s history (2008-2018), Benhamou examines the multifaceted interactions between animated films, Disney properties such as Pixar and Marvel, and popular genres including the romantic comedy, the superhero film and the cop buddy film.

Through this extensive critical lens, combined with a focus on gender, she provides illuminating and original insights on films such as Tangled, Frozen and Moana. Informed by wider discourses on contemporary Hollywood and post-feminism, this book challenges conventional approaches to Disney, and foregrounds the importance of animation in understandings of film genres.

Erratum. In the interview, Eve said that Eeyore was from Dumbo, while it is from Winnie the Pooh. She also said "the first Ralph Breaks the Internet", which is of course just Wreck-It Ralph.

Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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Conan the Barbarian

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

It’s easy for some people to laugh at Conan the Barbarian, John Milius’s 1982 film about Robert E. Howard’s most famous creation: it seems like the cinematic equivalent of middle-schoolers playing Dungeons and Dragons. But this is an honest (as in “unpretentious”) film with ideas: the pagan existentialism of Thulsa Doom, the theology of Subatai, and the difference between soldiers and warriors are all offered for the viewer’s consideration. It’s also oddly countercultural and conservative in its point of view. Join Dan and Tim for an appreciation of a wildly entertaining film that launched the career of Arnold Schwarzenegger and features one of the greatest movie soundtracks. We know the poetry of Khitai and the philosophy of Sung—so give it a listen!

Interested in reading the source material? Check out Robert E. Howard’s The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, the first collection of Conan stories Howard wrote in the 1930s for Weird Tales magazine. You may also want to check out Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story to hear Arnold talk of how much he and James Earl Jones enjoyed working with each other.

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Tucker: The Man and His Dream

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

A genuine crowd-pleaser that couldn’t please enough crowds in 1988, Tucker: The Man and His Dream has finally found an audience. Tim defends 80s Coppola and calls out critics who dismissed his post-Godfather II output; Dan talks about the film’s enthusiasm for its subject and how that enthusiasm helps the viewer feel like those who find themselves in any great leader’s orbit. Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Wordsworth, and Emerson all find their way into the conversation. Larry David may want us to curb our enthusiasm, but even he couldn’t keep Tucker down. So hold that tiger and give it a listen!

Steve Lehto’s Preston Tucker and His Battle to Build the Car of Tomorrow tells the story upon which Coppola’s film is based—and has a Foreword by Jay Leno, who owns one of the 46 or 47 Tucker Torpedoes in existence. You can find more information and photos at the official Tucker Automobile Club of America.

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Jenna Ng, "The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections: Where Screen Boundaries Lie" (Amsterdam UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Screens are ubiquitous today. Yet contemporary screen media eliminate the presence of the screen and diminish the visibility of its boundaries. As the image becomes indistinguishable from the viewer’s surroundings, this unsettling prompts re.examination of how screen boundaries demarcate.

Through readings of three media forms – Virtual Reality; holograms; and light projections – The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections: Where Screen Boundaries Lie (University of Amsterdam Press, 2021) by Dr. Jenna Ng develops new theories of the surfaces on and spaces in which images are displayed. Interrogating contemporary contestations of reality against illusion, this open-access book argues that the disappearance of difference reflects shifted conditions of actuality and virtuality in understanding the human condition. These shifts further connect to the current state of politics by way of their distorted truth values, corrupted terms of information, and internalizations of difference.

The Post.Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections thus thinks anew the image’s borders and delineations, evoking the screen boundary as an instrumentation of today’s intense virtualizations which do not tell the truth. In the process, a new imagination for images emerges for a gluttony of the virtual; for new conceptualizations of object and representation, materiality and energies, media and histories, real and unreal; for new understandings of appearances, dis-appearances, replacement and re.placement – the post-screen.

This book is available open access here.

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Kartik Nair, "Seeing Things: Spectral Materialities of Bombay Horror" (U California Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

1980s Bombay was a time when a wave of low-budget, gory horror films made by independent film producers such as the Ramsay Brothers swept the B-movie market. Kartik Nair's book Seeing Things: Spectral Materialities of Bombay Horror (U California Press, 2024) is about the sudden cuts, botched makeup effects, continuity errors, and celluloid damage found in these movies. Kartik Nair reads such "failures" as clues to the conditions in which the films were made, censored, and seen, offering a view from below of the world's largest film culture. By combining close analysis with extensive archival research and original interviews, Seeing Things reveals the spectral materialities informing the genre's haunted houses, grotesque bodies, and graphic violence.

Priyam Sinha is a doctoral candidate in the South Asian Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore. She has interdisciplinary academic interests that lie at the intersection of film studies, disability studies, production cultures, affect studies, anthropology of the body, creative media industries and cultural studies. She can be reached here.

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The Hunting Trilogy

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

We all know the rules of the Looney Tunes universe: rabbits can outrun bullets, shots to the face don’t kill, and the laws of gravity don’t always apply. But that universe is still very much like our own, in which we all strive to be like Bugs Bunny, but are really like Daffy Duck. If there’s an aesthetic of frustration, Chuck Jones is its Shakespeare. Join us for a conversation about Rabbit Fire, Rabbit Seasoning, and Duck! Rabbit, Duck!—the three cartoons that comprise what’s called “The Hunting Trilogy.” We promise it’s not one of those awful attempts by intellectuals to rhapsodize about popular art, although we do bring in Henry James at one point. Regardless of whether it’s rabbit season or duck season, give it a listen!

If you’d like to learn more about the super-genius who created these films and dozens of others, check out Chuck Jones: Conversations, an installment in the series of interview collections by the University Press of Mississippi.

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Robert Alpert et al., "Diseased Cinema: Plagues, Pandemics and Zombies in American Movies" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 6 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

As I may be the target audience for Diseased Cinema: Plagues, Pandemics and Zombies in American Movies (Edinburgh UP, 2023), I really enjoyed interviewing Robert Alpert, Merle Eisenberg, and Lee Mordechai. Their co-authored book explores the politics of American films about disease and zombies. We had a wide-ranging, thoughtful, and funny conversation about pandemics, capitalism, academic collaboration, apocalyptic fiction, and the importance of family.

Robert Alpert is an Adjunct Instructor at Fordham University where he has taught courses on computers and robots in film, movies and the American experience, and media law. He has written extensively on movies, including on directors, such as Chaplin, Meyers, and Bigelow, as well as on other topics, such as gender, the Hollywood idiom, and the politics of science fiction. His publications can be found in Jump Cut, Senses of Cinema, and CineAction. Alpert received his M.F.A. in Film from Columbia University. He also received a J.D. from New York University and practiced intellectual property law for over 30 years.

Merle Eisenberg is an Assistant Professor of History at Oklahoma State University and a founding faculty member of the Oklahoma State Pandemic Center. He has published articles in journals including The American Historical Review and Past & Present. His work has also appeared in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which received press coverage in CNN, Fox News, USA Today, and the NY Post. He has also appeared on CNN to discuss historical pandemics and regularly teaches courses on plagues and pandemics in history. Along with Lee Mordechai, he is the co-founder and co-host of the Infectious Historians podcast.

Lee Mordechai is a Senior Lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Associate Director of Princeton University’s Climate Change and History Research Initiative. He has published over twenty academic articles, including two in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and in The American Historical Review and Past & Present. He has taught several courses on epidemics, including a seminar that used a draft of Diseased Cinema: Plagues, Pandemics and Zombies in American Movies.

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Limelight

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 5 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Being lighthearted and amusing can be a painful business. That’s one of the themes of Limelight, Charlie Chaplin’s 1952 portrait of the artist as an older man. It’s like a combination of The Red Shoes and Death of a Salesman, with elements of The Entertainer and The King of Comedy. Join Mike and Dan for a conversation about the ways in which art and love prove to be antidotes to poisonous despair.

If you like Charlie Chaplin, visit the New Books Network and listen to Dan’s interview of Scott Eyman talking about his terrific book, Charlie Chaplin vs. America. You may also want to check out Charlie Chaplin Interviews, an installment in the series of interview collections by the University Press of Mississippi.

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Courtney Brannon Donoghue, "The Value Gap: Female-Driven Films from Pitch to Premiere" (U Texas Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 4 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Conversations about gender equity in the workplace accelerated in the 2010s, with debates inside Hollywood specifically pointing to broader systemic problems of employment disparities and exploitative labor practices. Compounded by the devastating #MeToo revelations, these problems led to a wide-scale call for change.

Courtney Brannon Donoghue's book The Value Gap: Female-Driven Films from Pitch to Premiere (U Texas Press, 2023) traces female-driven filmmaking across development, financing, production, film festivals, marketing, and distribution, examining the realities facing women working in the industry during this transformative moment. Drawing from five years of extensive interviews with female producers, writers, and directors at different stages of their careers, Courtney Brannon Donoghue examines how Hollywood business cultures “value" female-driven projects as risky or not bankable. Industry claims that “movies targeting female audiences don’t make money" or “women can't direct big-budget blockbusters" have long circulated to rationalize systemic gender inequities and have served to normalize studios prioritizing the white male–driven status quo. Through a critical media industry studies lens, The Value Gap challenges this pervasive logic with firsthand accounts of women actively navigating the male-dominated and conglomerate-owned industrial landscape.

Peter C. Kunze is a visiting assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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Andrew David Jackson, "The Late and Post-Dictatorship Cinephilia Boom and Art Houses in South Korea" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Dr. Andy Jackson’s The Late and Post-Dictatorship Cinephilia Boom and Art Houses in South Korea (Edinburgh University Press, 2024) examines an unexplored area of South Korean cinema history – the 1985-1997 growth of art film exhibition, consumption, and cinephilia. This moment of heightened interest in art film altered how many Koreans conceptualised cinema and helped pave the way for the critical success of South Korean film. This historical study analyses the cultural, political, social, and economic developments of the post-1985 period that increased interest in European art film. It looks at the interactions of art house exhibitors with cinephile audiences, the media and the state-level administrators responsible for governing the industry. The aim of young cinephiles was nothing less than a bottom-up cultural transformation of a society emerging from three decades of dictatorship. The analysis is based on the previously unheard voices of audiences who participated in the cinephilia. This study is both a history of an era in Korean cinema and an argument about the impact of this period of cultural renewal on the industry.

Andy Jackson is an Associate Professor in the Korean Studies programme at Monash University. He is also director of the Monash University Korean Studies Research Hub (MUKSRH) and current convenor of Korean Studies. His key research areas include the history of rebellion in Korea, premodern and modern Korean history, North and South Korean film and popular culture, invented traditions in Korea. Learn more about Monash University’s Korean Studies Research Hub here.

Leslie Hickman is a translator and writer. She has an MA in Korean Studies from Yonsei University. You can follow her activities on X.

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Anatomy of a Fall

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

We all know the rules of courtroom dramas. We welcome the confusion we feel during the case and the sense of release upon hearing the jury’s decision: this is true in Witness for the Prosecution, Anatomy of a Murder, and, of course, The Verdict. But what if the feeling of disorientation that we enjoy in the middle of these films was heightened and then examined by the director as a subject on its own? Join Mike and Dan for a conversation about Anatomy of a Fall, Justine Triet’s terrific film that offers multiple readings but no guidance on how to make those readings valid. It’s exactly like The Turn of the Screw by Henry James—and exactly the opposite of Basic Instinct. So turn down those steel drums already and listen to this instead!

Robert Traver’s 1958 novel Anatomy of a Murder is the archetype to which many courtroom dramas, including this one, respond. Listeners may also want to visit the film’s official site to see how their judgment compares to that of other viewers.

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Ridley Scott's "Napoleon": A Historian's Review

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 28 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Charles Coutino discusses Ridley Scott's film "Napoleon" with military historian Jeremy Black. Is it accurate? Is it inaccurate? Does it matter? Listen in to the discussion.

Charles Coutinho, PH. D., Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House’s International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles.

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Bliss Cua Lim, "The Archival Afterlives of Philippine Cinema" (Duke UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In The Archival Afterlives of Philippine Cinema (Duke University Press, 2024), Bliss Cua Lim draws on cultural policy, queer and feminist theory, materialist media studies, and postcolonial historiography to analyze the crisis-ridden history of Philippine film archiving—a history of lost films, limited access, and collapsed archives. Rather than denigrate underfunded Philippine audiovisual archives in contrast to institutions in the global North, this book shows how archival practices of making do can inspire alternative theoretical and historical approaches to cinema. Lim examines formal state and corporate archives, analyzing restorations of the last nitrate film and a star-studded lesbian classic as well as archiving under the Marcos dictatorship. She also foregrounds informal archival efforts: a cinephilic video store specializing in vintage Tagalog classics; a microcuratorial initiative for experimental films; and guerilla screenings for rural Visayan audiences. Throughout, Lim centers the improvisational creativity of audiovisual archivists, collectors, advocates, and amateurs who embrace imperfect access in the face of inhospitable conditions.

Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive.

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My Best Fiend

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Werner Herzog is a filmmaker with an intuitive sense for showing the right thing at the right time, whether he is offering the story of a maniacal conquistador, Count Dracula, or himself eating his own shoe. Klaus Kinski was, according to many, more monster than man and an actor who resembled the megalomaniacs he portrayed. Together, Herzog and Kinski made five films. Kinski died in 1991; in 1999, Herzog released the documentary My Best Fiend about their relationship. The film combines the ravings of Kinski with the introspection of Herzog and explores the degree to which we are entertained by other people’s volatility, how we fall in love with actors because of small gestures, and our misguided desire to believe that people who create beautiful art are beautiful themselves.

In his 2023 memoir, Every Man for Himself and God Against All, Werner Herzog tells his story in his inimitable voice. Herzog by Ebert is a terrific collection of essays about Herzog’s films by the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic. The collection Klaus Kinski: Beast of Cinema contains essays about Kinski’s films and interviews with filmmakers and actors who worked with him.

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"Apocalypto" and Mel Gibson (with Jonathon Fessenden)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The 2006 Mel Gibson movie, Apocalypto, takes us into a decadent Maya civilization in the Yucatan on the eve of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico. It could be a commentary on ancient Rome or the present-day US, but, because it is a new world for both the viewer and the forest-dwelling protagonists, we get to see it through ‘new eyes’ and a ‘beginner’s mind.’ It’s a great movie, a cinematic masterpiece. It also allows us to ask how Mel Gibson, a devout Catholic and such a human sinner—as we all are, though when he does something terrible it’s in the news—should proclaim the Gospel after he has fallen from his moral pedestal a few times. We also ask about how the Church should proceed given her many painful scandals. It was a great discussion on the Missio Dei podcast on YouTube and I’m delighted to share it here.

Our original YouTube interview on Missio Dei (October 1, 2023)
Apocalypto on the Best Pick podcast with John Dorney, Jessica Regan, Tom Salinsky and( guest) Joy Wilkinson (August 24, 2022)
The Making of Apocalypto documentary with Mel Gibson.James
Empires of death: Apocalypto (2006) on Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast with James Majewski
History article by Richard Hansen: “Relativism, Revisionism, Aboriginalism, and Emic/Etic Truth: The Case Study of Apocalypto.”

Related Almost Good Catholics episodes:

Joseph González and Monique González on Almost Good Catholics, episode 74: Our Lady of Guadalupe and Aztec True Myth: How the Flower World Bloomed into History in 1531
Brant Hansen on Almost Good Catholics, episode 75: The Men We Need: What Men Are Supposed to Be Doing

Other Almost Good Catholics episodes with Jonathon Fessenden:

Jonathon Fessenden on Almost Good Catholics, episode 37: Catholic Movies, Pt. 1: Silence and The Scarlet and the Black
Jonathon Fessenden on Almost Good Catholics, episode 49: Catholic Movies, Pt. 2: The Mission and A Man for All Seasons
Jonathon Fessenden on Almost Good Catholics, episode 58: The Book of Job: Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?
Jonathon Fessenden on Almost Good Catholics, episode 64: The Fourth Wise Man: Follow Jesus—He’s Getting Away!

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Eyes Wide Shut

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In a past episode in which they discussed the films of Tom Cruise, Mike told Dan, “You’re the smartest person I know who ever made it all the way through Eyes Wide Shut.” After reading a forthcoming biography of Stanley Kubrick, Dan returned to the film and urged it on Mike, who rewatched it, but who still finds it a total failure. Dan thinks it’s a sobering and startling portrayal of a man exiled from his own Eden—a fool’s Paradise—while Mike finds every element and deviation from established structures to be both ponderous and insincere. Is the film a misunderstood look at the nightmare of not knowing one’s spouse? Or is it simply an indulgent mess? Mike and Dan agree on the quality of 99% of the films they discuss, but like true film fanatics, bicker about the other 1%. Come along for the conversation about what makes a film successful--the password is “Fidelio!”

Those on Dan’s side will want to read Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of his Final Film. Those on Mike’s will want to urge Syd Field’s famous Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting on their opponents.

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Matt Singer, "Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever" (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 13 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Once upon a time, if you wanted to know if a movie was worth seeing, you didn’t check out Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB. You asked whether Siskel & Ebert had given it “two thumbs up.”

On a cold Saturday afternoon in 1975, two men (who had known each other for eight years before they’d ever exchanged a word) met for lunch in a Chicago pub. Gene Siskel was the film critic for the Chicago Tribune. Roger Ebert had recently won the Pulitzer Prize—the first ever awarded to a film critic—for his work at the Chicago Sun-Times. To say they despised each other was an understatement.

When they reluctantly agreed to collaborate on a new movie review show with PBS, there was at least as much sparring off-camera as on. No decision—from which films to cover to who would read the lead review to how to pronounce foreign titles—was made without conflict, but their often-antagonistic partnership (which later transformed into genuine friendship) made for great television. In the years that followed, their signature “Two thumbs up!” would become the most trusted critical brand in Hollywood.

In Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2023), award-winning editor and film critic Matt Singer eavesdrops on their iconic balcony set, detailing their rise from making a few hundred dollars a week on local Chicago PBS to securing multimillion-dollar contracts for a syndicated series (a move that convinced a young local host named Oprah Winfrey to do the same). Their partnership was cut short when Gene Siskel passed away in February of 1999 after a battle with brain cancer that he’d kept secret from everyone outside his immediate family—including Roger Ebert, who never got to say goodbye to his longtime partner. But their influence on in the way we talk about (and think about) movies continues to this day.

Matt Singer is the editor and film critic of ScreenCrush and a member of the New York Film Critics Circle. He won a Webby Award for his work on the Independent Film Channel’s website. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two daughters.

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Ofer Ashkenazi, "Anti-Heimat Cinema: The Jewish Invention of the German Landscape" (U Michigan Press, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 9 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Anti-Heimat Cinema: The Jewish Invention of the German Landscape (U Michigan Press, 2020) studies an overlooked yet fundamental element of German popular culture in the twentieth century. In tracing Jewish filmmakers' contemplations of "Heimat"-- a provincial German landscape associated with belonging and authenticity -- it analyzes their distinctive contribution to the German identity discourse between 1918 and 1968. The book shows how these filmmakers devised the landscapes of the German "Homeland" as Jews, namely as acculturated "outsiders within." Through appropriation of generic Heimat imagery, the films discussed in the book integrate criticism of national chauvinism into German mainstream culture from the end of World War One to the early decades of the Cold War. Consequently, the Jewish filmmakers discussed in this book anticipated the anti-Heimatfilm of the ensuing decades and functioned as an uncredited inspiration for the critical New German Cinema.

Ofer Ashkenazi is an Associate Professor of History and the Director of the Richard Koebner-Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He published monographs and articles on various topics in modern German and German-Jewish history, including Weimar visual culture, the German antiwar movement, and the German memory of Nazism and the Holocaust. His current project considers photographs that were taken by Jews to document their daily life in Nazi Germany.

Amir Engel is currently a visiting professor at the faculty of theology at the Humboldt University in Berlin. He is also the chair at the German department at the Hebrew University. Engel studied philosophy, literature, and culture studies at the Hebrew University and completed his PhD. in the German Studies department at Stanford University. He is the author of Grshom Scholem: an Intellectual biography that came out in Chicago in 2017. He also published works on, among others, Jacob Taubes, Hannah Arendt, and Hans Jonas. He is currently working on a book titled "The German Spirit from its Jewish Sources: The History of Jewish-German Occultism". The project proposes a new approach to German intellectual history by highlighting marginalized connections between German Occultism, its Christian sources notwithstanding, and Jewish sources, especially the Jewish mystical tradition.

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Jennifer Cazenave, "An Archive of the Catastrophe: The Unused Footage of Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah" (SUNY Press, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 8 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Jennifer Cazenave’s An Archive of the Catastrophe: The Unused Footage of Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (SUNY Press, 2019) is a fascinating analysis of the 220 hours of outtakes edited out of the final nine and a half-hour 1985 film with which listeners and readers might be familiar. Well known around the world as one of the greatest documentary films ever made, and certainly one of the most important works/artifacts of Holocaust history and memory, Lanzmann’s eventual finished film emerged from an astonishing 230 hours of interview footage shot in various locations. Commissioned originally by the State of Israel to make a film about the catastrophe, Lanzmann collected these testimonies over a period of several years before beginning the epic task of editing the film. He saved the outtakes as a vital repository of accounts of those who had lived through the Shoah. The footage has since been acquired, preserved, and digitized as an archive by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The chapters of Cazenave’s book explore the film’s conceptualization and production, reframing the final film in terms of all that it left out, to think about what was included in relationship to those stories and scenes excluded for different reasons. Over years from an initial dissertation project to this volume, Cazenave pursued the story of the film and its outtakes through archival research, detective work, and close technical, aesthetic and theoretical consideration. The resulting analysis takes author and reader from consideration of the film/archive in relationship to Holocaust trials (and especially the Eichmann trial of 1961), to issues of gender and the feminine, to the question of rescue and refugees, as well as debates about representation, witnessing, and testimony. The book is a wonderful and complex study that will be of great interest to readers in Holocaust and cinema studies. The magnum opus of a French filmmaker working with a largely French crew, and produced with funding provided in part by the French government, the film also illuminates, in its own ways (including its silences) the difficult French past and politics of Holocaust history and memory.

Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and empire. She is the founding host of New Books in French Studies, a channel launched in 2013.

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The Omen

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 8 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Can a film do everything wrong yet still find its defenders, who not only acknowledge each of the film’s faults but find these faults endearing? Such is the case with Mike and The Omen, the 1976 Richard Donner blockbuster that—like Satan himself—has spawned sequels, remakes, and imitations. Dan tries to point out all the things that are bad about The Omen, but Mike spins each one into a perverse mark of greatness and claims that the film somehow rises above them in its high seriousness. Whether you think The Omen a terrifying morality tale or simply The Devil and Atticus Finch, give it a listen. We’ll tell you where to find the birthmark.

Interested in a great novel about a kid as awful as Damien Thorn? Check out William March’s The Bad Seed.

Follow us on X or Letterboxd. Opening music by Jerry Goldsmith from the film’s official soundtrack; closing music by Sing King. Our usual incredible bumper music is by John Deley.

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Plot

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 4 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode of High Theory, Pardis Dabashi tells us about plot. A plot consists of a change with stakes that establish norms. This seemingly simple structure shapes novels, films, politics, and our world, from easy seductions of comfort to difficult promises of liberation.

In the episode, Pardis references Thomas Edison’s 1903 film, Electrocuting an Elephant, which is super sad, and kind of terrifying, but an economical explanation of plot. She also discusses Max Ophüls’s 1953 film, The Earrings of Madame de... as an example of a film with a potentially liberatory plot. We recommend you watch the latter, not the former. Other texts referenced in this episode include Mary Anne Doane’s The Emergence of Cinematic Time (Harvard, 2002) and Lauren Berlant’s Cruel Optimism (Duke, 2011) and Female Complaint (Duke, 2008).

The occasion for our conversation was Pardis’s new book, Losing the Plot: Film and Feeling in the Modern Novel (U Chicago Press, 2023). If you’d like to get yourself a copy there’s a 30% discount on the University of Chicago Press website with the promo code UCPNEW. It’s a book about film and literary modernism, including the work of Nella Larsen, Djuna Barnes, and William Faulkner. The cover is really beautiful, and it’s definitely worth a read if you’re interested in either of the genres it addresses.

Pardis Dabashi is an Assistant Professor of Literatures in English and Film Studies at Bryn Mawr College, where she is also Affiliated Faculty in the Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and North African Studies Program (MECANA). She has published everywhere, and is friends with everyone! She teaches courses in twentieth-century literature, film studies, Middle East studies, and theory. She was also one of the first guests on High Theory! You can listen to her 2020 episode on The Autonomous Work of Art if you’re feeling a flashback.

The image for this episode is a publicity still from George Cukor’s 1936 MGM film Camille, showing Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor in a tense embrace. Digital image from Wikimedia Commons.

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W. K. Stratton, "The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film" (Bloomsbury, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 3 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

On June 18, 1969, "The Wild Bunch" premiered to critical success. Over the past 50 years it has been rightly recognized as one of the landmark films from the end of the Hollywood studio system. Yet it was developed out of chaos, with a controversial director who had already largely burned his bridges with Hollywood studios. Sam Peckinpah worked for years to film a story that both illustrated the end of the “Old West” and also showed how newer filmmakers wanted to proceed with their newfound independence. W. K. Stratton’s book The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film (Bloomsbury, 2019) describes all of these activities as it wonderfully tells the story of the film.

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Meet John Doe

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 1 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Have you seen that other Capra film in which the protagonist in a moment of crisis, attempts suicide on Christmas Eve? Join Mike and Dan for a conversation about Meet John Doe (1941), a film Frank Capra made five years before It’s a Wonderful Life and which shares that film’s celebration of the common man—the John Doe—living and working and dying across the country. We know we’d all be better off—and the country would be in better shape—if we acted like the people in the John Doe Clubs, so why don’t we? How many of your neighbors do you know on a first-name basis? When’s the last time you reached out to someone you don’t know very well but you know needs a hand? Capra’s film may seem like a collection of platitudes, but it’s a cross between A Christmas Carol and Lord of the Flies and is absolutely prophetic of a film that would follow it thirty-five years later about another media-created sensation who’s mad as hell and not going to take it any more!

The University of Mississippi Press has published many volumes of interviews of notable directors; you can find the edition on Frank Capra here. And—did you know that Capra wrote a novel in 1966, not published until 2018? Neither did we. You can find Cry Wilderness here.

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Patrick Ffrench, "Roland Barthes and Film: Myth, Eroticism and Poetics" (Bloomsbury, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 1 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Suspicious of what he called the spectator's "sticky" adherence to the screen, Roland Barthes had a cautious attitude towards cinema. Falling into a hypnotic trance, the philosopher warned, an audience can become susceptible to ideology and "myth". In Roland Barthes and Film: Myth, Eroticism and Poetics (Bloomsbury), Patrick Ffrench explains that although Barthes was wary of film, he engaged deeply with it. Barthes' thought was, Ffrench argues, punctuated by the experience of watching films - and likewise his philosophy of photography, culture, semiotics, ethics and theatricality have been immensely important in film theory.

Focusing particularly on the essays 'The Third Meaning' and 'On Leaving the Cinema' and the acclaimed book Camera Lucida, Ffrench examines Barthes' writing and traces a persistent interest in films and directors, from Fellini and Antonioni, to Eisenstein, the Marx Brothers and Hitchcock. Ffrench explains that although Barthes found pleasure in "leaving the cinema" - disconnecting from its dangerous allure by a literal exit or by forcefully breaking the trance - he found value in returning to the screen anew. Barthes delved beneath the pull of progressing narrative and the moving image by becoming attentive to space and material aesthetics. This book presents an invaluable reassessment of one of the most original and subtle thinkers of the twentieth-century: a figure indebted to the movies.

Bill Schaffer is a semi-retired lecturer in Film Studies.

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Annie McClanahan, "Dead Pledges: Debt, Crisis, and Twenty-First Century Culture" (Stanford UP, 2016)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

When teaching a public course called “The Age of Debt” this winter break, I had the strange realization that one of the the most successful readings in that course, the one which most clearly explained the 2008 crisis and the financialized economy, was written by an English professor. It was Annie McClanahan’s Dead Pledges: Debt, Crisis, and Twenty-First Century Culture (Stanford University Press, 2016). The book is a masterful exploration of the cultural politics of the financial crisis and a powerful mediation on how to make sense of an era of unrepayable debts. As a review in the LA Review of Books notes, McClanahan has resurrected and repurposed the rich tradition of Marxist literary criticism which brought us Raymond Williams, analyzing post-crisis literature, photography, and cinema as cultural texts registering “a new ‘crisis subjectivity’ in the wake of the mortgage meltdown’s shattering revelations.” Dead Pledges is a must read. For whom? Well, anyone living in the 21st century, concerned about insurmountable debts, thinking of how culture and the economy transect each other, and striving for a radical politics fit for the mortgaged times in which we live.

Aparna Gopalan is a Ph.D. student in Social Anthropology at Harvard University. Her research focuses on how managing surplus populations and tapping into fortunes at the “bottom-of-the-pyramid” are twin-logics that undergird poverty alleviation projects in rural Rajasthan.

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Nobuko Ishitate-Okunomiya Yamasaki, "Prostitutes, Hostesses, and Actresses at the Edge of the Japanese Empire" (Routledge, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 25 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Analysing materials from literature and film, this book considers the fates of women who did not or could not buy into the Japanese imperial ideology of "good wives, wise mothers" in support of male empire-building.

Although many feminist critics have articulated women's active roles as dutiful collaborators for the Japanese empire, male-dominated narratives of empire-building have been largely supported and rectified. In contrast, the roles of marginalized women, such as sex workers, women entertainers, hostesses, and hibakusha have rarely been analyzed. This book addresses this intellectual lacuna by closely examining memories, (semi-)autobiographical stories, and newspaper articles, grounded or inspired by lived experiences not only in Japan, but also in Shanghai, Manchukuo, colonial Korea, and the Pacific. Chapters further explore the voices of diasporic Korean women (Zainichi Korean woman born in Japan, as well as Korean American woman born in Korea) whose lives were impacted, intervening ethnocentric narratives that were at the heart of the Japanese empire. An appendix presents the first English translation of a memorable statement on comfort women by former Japanese propaganda actress, Ri Kōran / Yamaguchi Yoshiko.

Nobuko Ishitate-Okunomiya Yamasaki's book Prostitutes, Hostesses, and Actresses at the Edge of the Japanese Empire (Routledge, 2021) will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese literature and film studies, as well as gender, sexuality and postcolonial studies.

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The Sting

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 25 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

There’s nothing like being conned at the movies. Join Mike and Dan as they talk about George Roy Hill’s beautifully-constructed toy, The Sting. Dan explains how the long con in the film is like a theatrical production and how con games and films are similar forms of art. Mike revs up with a rant about why Pauline Kael is overrated, continues with one about how Robert Shaw is underrated, and finally claims that anyone who doesn’t like The Sting needs to sit in a room for thirty minutes and reevaluate their life choices. So turn on that player piano and give it a listen!

Paul Newman’s posthumously-released memoir, The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man, is a terrific glimpse into the actor’s thoughts and recollections on life as one of the last bona fide movie stars.

Follow us on X or Letterboxd. The bumper music for this episode is by Lord Vinheteiro: you can see the whole incredible video of his performing “The Entertainer” on an authentic-era piano here and visit his YouTube channel here.

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Jie Li, "Cinematic Guerrillas: Propaganda, Projectionists, and Audiences in Socialist China" (Columbia UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 24 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the latest episode of New Books in Chinese Studies! I am your host, Julia Keblinska, and today I will be talking today to Jie Li, about her new book, Cinematic Guerrillas: Propaganda, Projectionists, and Audiences in Socialist China (Columbia UP, 2023). The book describes the Chinese media revolution, namely the enormous media project undertaken by the communist state to “solder” a dispersed and heterogenous populace into the revolutionary masses. Li shows how in the face of postwar material constraints and technological shortages, cultural workers (and audiences) became human components of audiovisual media networks that connected and built the new nation. Through a careful reading of archival sources and oral interviews, Li excavates two historically grounded terms, the guerrilla and the spirit medium, to develop a theoretical framework that explains how cinema and propaganda functioned in the socialist state. Her chapters explore the top-down visions of the cinematic image economy (the directives laid down by Mao and Jiang Qing), the grassroots labor of mobile projectionists, and the memories of film workers and audiences who, respectively, struggled to contain and enjoyed the polysemy inherent in socialist film experience. I’m very eager to hear Jie Li tell us more about this fascinating text! NOTE: I apologize for sound issues in the recording and hope you can enjoy our conversation despite them!

Julia Keblinska is a postdoc at the East Asian Studies Center at the Ohio State University specializing in Chinese media history and comparative socialisms.

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George MacLeod, "Mediating Violence from Africa: Francophone Literature, Film, and Testimony After the Cold War" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 24 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

George MacLeod's book Mediating Violence from Africa: Francophone Literature, Film, and Testimony After the Cold War (U Nebraska Press, 2023) explores how African and non-African Francophone authors, filmmakers, editors, and scholars have packaged, interpreted, and filmed the violent histories of post–Cold War Francophone Africa. This violence, much of which unfolded in front of Western television cameras, included the use of child soldiers facilitated by the Soviet Union’s castoff Kalashnikov rifles, the rise of Islamist terrorism in West Africa, and the horrific genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Through close readings of fictionalized child-soldier narratives, cinematic representations of Islamist militants, genocide survivor testimony, and Western scholarship, George S. MacLeod analyzes the ways Francophone African authors and filmmakers, as well as their editors and scholarly critics, negotiate the aesthetic, political, cultural, and ethical implications of making these traumatic stories visible. MacLeod argues for the need to periodize these productions within a “post–Cold War” framework to emphasize how shifts in post-1989 political discourse are echoed, contested, or subverted by contemporary Francophone authors, filmmakers, and Western scholars.

The questions raised in Mediating Violence from Africa are of vital importance today. How the world engages with and responds to stories of recent violence and loss from Africa has profound implications for the affected communities and individuals. More broadly, in an era in which stories and images of violence, from terror attacks to school shootings to police brutality, are disseminated almost instantly and with minimal context, these theoretical questions have implications for debates surrounding the ethics of representing trauma, the politicization of memory, and Africa’s place in a global (as opposed to a postcolonial or Euro-African) economic and political landscape.

Annie deSaussure holds a Ph.D. in French from Yale University and is an Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies in the Department of Languages and Literary Studies at Lafayette College.

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Nate Patrin, "The Needle and the Lens: Pop Goes to the Movies from Rock 'n' Roll to Synthwave" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In The Needle and the Lens: Pop Goes to the Movies from Rock 'n' Roll to Synthwave (University of Minnesota Press, 2023), Nate Patrin examines how the link between film and song endures as more than a memory. It is, in fact, a sort of cultural symbiosis that has mutually influenced movies and pop music, a phenomenon Patrin tracks through the past fifty years, revealing the power of music in movies to move the needle in popular culture. Rock 'n' roll, reggae, R&B, jazz, techno, and hip-hop: each had its moment--or many--as music deployed in movies emerged as a form of interpretive commentary, making way for the legitimization of pop and rock music as art forms worthy of serious consideration. These commentaries run the gamut from comedic irony to cheap-thrills excitement to deeply felt drama, all of which Patrin examines in pairings such as American Graffiti and "Do You Want to Dance?"; Saturday Night Fever and "Disco Inferno"; Apocalypse Now and "The End"; Wayne's World and "Bohemian Rhapsody"; and Jackie Brown and "Didn't I Blow Your Mind This Time?"

What gives power to these individual moments, and how have they shaped and shifted music history, recasting source material or even stirring wider interest in previously niche pop genres? As Patrin surveys the scene--musical and cinematic--across the decades, expanding into the deeper origins, wider connections, and echoed histories that come into play, The Needle and the Lens offers a new way of seeing, and hearing, these iconic soundtrack moments.

Rebekah Buchanan is a Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music.

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Olga V. Solovieva, "The Russian Kurosawa: Transnational Cinema, Or the Art of Speaking Differently" (Oxford UP. 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Olga V. Solovieva's book The Russian Kurosawa: Transnational Cinema, Or the Art of Speaking Differently (Oxford UP. 2023) offers a new historical perspective on the work of the renowned Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa. It uncovers Kurosawa's debt to the intellectual tradition of Japanese-Russian democratic dissent, reflected in the affinity for Kurosawa's worldview expressed by such Russian directors as Grigory Kozintsev and Andrei Tarkovsky. Through a detailed discussion of the Russian subtext of Kurosawa's cinema, most clearly manifested in the director's films based on Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gorky, and Arseniev, the book shows that Kurosawa used Russian intertexts to deal with the most politically sensitive topics of postwar Japan. Locating the director in the cultural tradition of Russian-inflected Japanese anarchism, the book challenges prevalent views of Akira Kurosawa as an apolitical art house director or a conformist studio filmmaker of muddled ideological alliances by offering a philosophically consistent picture of the director's participation in post-war debates on cultural and political reconstruction.

Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing.

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David Craig, "Apocalypse Television: How The Day After Helped Save the World" (Applause Books, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

On November 20, 1983, a three-hour made-for-TV movie The Day After premiered on ABC. Set in the heartland of Lawrence, Kansas, the film depicted the events before, during, and after a Soviet nuclear attack with vivid scenes of the post-apocalyptic hellscape that would follow. The film was viewed by over 100 million Americans and remains the highest rated TV movie in history. After the premiere, ABC News aired an episode of Viewpoint, a live special featuring some of the most prominent public intellectuals of the debating the virtues of the Arms Race and the prospect of a winnable nuclear war. The response to the film proved more powerful than perhaps any film or television program in the history of media. Aside from its record-shattering Nielsen ratings, it enjoyed critical acclaim as well as international box office success in theatrical screenings.

The path to primetime for The Day After proved nearly as treacherous as the film's narrative. Battles ensued behind the scenes at the network, between the network and the filmmakers, with Broadcast Standards and Ad Sales, in the edit room and on the set, including the "nuke-mares" experienced by the cast. After the director was pushed aside, he contemplated suicide while also engineering a comeback through the press. But these skirmishes pale in comparison to the culture wars triggered by the film in the press, alongside a growing Nuclear Freeze movement, and from a united, pro-nuclear Right. Once efforts to alter the script failed, the White House conducted a full-throttled propaganda campaign to hijack the film's message.

Apocalypse Television: How the Day After Helped End the Cold War (Applause Books, 2023) features a dramatic insider's account of the making of and backlash against The Day After. No other book has told this story in similar fashion, venturing behind-the-scenes of the programming and news divisions at ABC, Reagan officials in the White House who mounted the propaganda campaign, rogue publicists who hijacked the film to promote a Nuclear Freeze, the backlash from the conservative movement and Religious Right, the challenges encountered by film's production team from conception to reception, and the experiences of the citizens of Lawrence, Kansas, where the film was set and shot, if also, ground zero in America's nuclear heartland.

David Craig is a Clinical Professor in the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California. Before his academic career, he was a multiple Emmy-nominated Hollywood producer and cable television executive involved in over thirty projects.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

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Donnie Darko

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

If we had seen Donnie Darko in high school, we would been drawn to the Easter eggs throughout the film and made videos in which we pointed them out with big red arrows. But there’s more to this tale of time travel than a dorm-room discussion of free will vs. determinism: we now appreciate the ways in which Richard Kelly dramatizes teenage dread and the fear of one’s insignificance. Being a teenager often involves thinking that one’s personal dramas are like the end of the world—but what if they were? Join Mike and Dan for a conversation about a film that feels as if Philip K. Dick adapted The Catcher in the Rye for the screen. It’s one of the best films about high school in America and one of three that features a large rabbit.

“Signs and Symbols,” the terrific story by Vladimir Nabokov that comes up in the episode, can be found in this collection.

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Simone Gigliotti, "Restless Archive: The Holocaust and the Cinema of the Displaced" (Indiana UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 16 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The global refugee, the ship passenger, the displaced person. How did their homeseeking routes and visual motifs intersect and diverge in the early Holocaust film archive? Simone Gigliotti's Restless Archive: The Holocaust and the Cinema of the Displaced tracks the footsteps and routes of predominantly Jewish refugees and postwar displaced persons in what I call a “restless archive” of photographic, cinematographic and visual material that was created and re-used between 1933 and 1949. The historical and spatial analysis concentrates on tracing the emergence and remediation (migration) of images of displacement and transit and the forgotten-ness of others. The visual inventory is anchored in non-fiction historical material, including newsreels, institutional projections, found footage, home movies, short films, "fundraisers" and documentaries. In addition to Manifold's narrative platform, creative technologies, such as StoryMaps, have enabled the digital curation, mapping and “repatriation” of this visual and spatial archive of obstruction which has, to date, eluded analysis in its local and global entanglements.

You can find the open access book here. You can also find all of the source material mentioned in the interview if you keep scrolling down to the "Resources" section.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, Hamid Naficy (Princeton University Press, 2001)
Walter Benjamin's essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (PDF)

Hallel Yadin is an archivist and special projects manager at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

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The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

How should one deal with evil? What are people capable of doing when they are given unconstrained liberty? Why does democracy work when people run things physically away from the very people it wants to assist? These are a few of the questions that arise as one watches John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance (1962). Progress and civilization are wonderful—but the train that signals them also carries a lot of moral pollution. Join Mike and Dan for a dive into this perfect Western and hear what happens when they apply the famous line, “Print the legend,” to John Ford’s, John Wayne’s, and Jimmy Stewart’s military careers. Pick up that steak and give it a listen!

Robert Matzen’s Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe tells the story of Stewart’s learning to fly, joining the Army, and leading dangerous missions in the Second World War.

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Ervin Malakaj, "Anders als Die Andern" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Released in 1919, "Anders als die Andern" (Different from the Others) stunned audiences with its straightforward depiction of queer love. Supporters celebrated the film’s moving storyline, while conservative detractors succeeded in prohibiting public screenings. Banned and partially destroyed after the rise of Nazism, the film was lost until the 1970s and only about one-third of its original footage is preserved today.

Directed by Richard Oswald and co-written by Oswald and the renowned sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, "Anders als die Andern" is a remarkable artifact of cinema culture connected to the vibrant pre-Stonewall homosexual rights movement of early-twentieth-century Germany. The film makes a strong case for the normalization of homosexuality and for its decriminalization, but the central melodrama still finds its characters undone by their public outing. Ervin Malakaj sees the film’s portrayal of the pain of living life queerly as generating a complex emotional identification in modern spectators, even those living in apparently friendlier circumstances. There is a strange comfort in knowing that we are not alone in our struggles, and Malakaj recuperates "Anders als die Andern"’s mournful cinema as an essential element of its endurance, treating the film’s melancholia both as a valuable feeling in and of itself and as a springboard to engage in an intergenerational queer struggle.

Over a century after the film’s release, Anders als die Andern (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023) serves as a stark reminder of how hostile the world can be to queer people, but also as an object lesson in how to find sustenance and social connection in tragic narratives.

Ervin Malakaj is associate professor of German studies at the University of British Columbia.

Armanc Yildiz is a postdoctoral researcher at Humboldt University. He received his Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at Harvard University, with a secondary degree in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. He is also the founder of Academics Write, where he supports scholars in their writing projects as a writing coach and developmental editor.

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This is the Best Statement of the Simulation Hypothesis We've Seen

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 8 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn PopCast, and in this episode we discuss Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1973 movie World on a Wire, shown on West German television over two nights, and then lost for decades. When it was restored and re-released nearly 40 years later, the movie quickly gained acclaim as a lost masterwork of science fiction cinema.

We discuss the movie’s sophisticated and pioneering presentation of the simulation hypothesis, and its deep engagement with Jean Baudrillard’s concepts of simulacra and simulation.

We examine the deep influence of the movie on blockbusters like The Matrix and Inception, consider the Cold War context of its production, and ask where World on a Wire places in the pantheon of philosophically informed - and philosophically influential - cinema.

The UConn PopCast is proud to be sponsored by the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute.

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Wild Strawberries

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 4 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

What if you could receive the adulation and respect of strangers but not from your own family-or even yourself? In Wild Strawberries (1957), Ingmar Bergman dramatizes a journey into a man’s memories, insecurities, and fears in a way that may borrow the technique of Death of a Salesman but not its final scenes or the fate of its hero. For all we hear about the bleakness of Bergman’s vision, the film is ultimately affirming. The world screams, “Physician, heal thyself”—and he does! Join us for an extended conversation that also includes how the film resembles A Christmas Carol and Casablanca.

The opening clip is Bergman talking on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 about the final closeup of Wild Strawberries.

Admirers of Bergman’s films will want to read his autobiography, My Life in Pictures.

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Daniel Herbert, "Maverick Movies: New Line Cinema and the Transformation of American Film" (U California Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 2 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Daniel Herbert's book Maverick Movies: New Line Cinema and the Transformation of American Film (U California Press, 2023) tells the improbable story of New Line Cinema, a company that cut a remarkable path through the American film industry and movie culture. Founded in 1967 as an art film distributor, New Line made a small fortune running John Waters’s Pink Flamingos at midnight screenings in the 1970s and found reliable returns with the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise in the 1980s. By 2001, the company competed with the major Hollywood studios and reached global box office success with the Lord of the Rings franchise. Blurring boundaries between high and low culture, between independent film and Hollywood, and between the margins and the mainstream, New Line Cinema epitomizes Hollywood's shift in focus from the mass audience fostered by the classic studios to the multitude of niche audiences sought today.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

Daniel Herbert is Associate Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Media at the University of Michigan and author of Videoland: Movie Culture at the American Video Store.

Peter C. Kunze is a visiting assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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I Know Where I’m Going!

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Samuel Johnson once asked, “What enemy would invade Scotland, where there is nothing to be got?” He must never have seen I Know Where I’m Going (1945). In their fifth examination of a Powell and Pressburger film, Mike and Dan talk about what makes this cinematic Scotland a more authentic place than England and how the film’s heroine gains maturity and depth once she abandons her itinerary. Dan brings up an American film he considers a sibling to this one; Mike praises the film’s economy; both wish they could go to the cèilidh. You can’t marry the British Chemical Company, but you can dance the Scottish, so give it a listen!

Samuel Johnson’s and James Boswell’s accounts of their travels in Scotland are a terrific read and tie in wonderfully with the film. You may also enjoy Neil Oliver’s History of Scotland, based on his BBC series.

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Michael Rushton, "The Moral Foundations of Public Funding for the Arts" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Should governments fund the arts? In The Moral Foundations of Public Funding for the Arts (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), Michael Rushton, Co-Director of the Center for Cultural Affairs and a Professor at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, explores a variety of frameworks for thinking about this question, from liberal and egalitarian justifications, through to communitarian, conservative, and multiculturalist ideas. The book outlines the economic method for thinking about the arts, and uses this as a starting point to understand what various political philosophies might tell policymakers and the public today. A rich and deep intervention on a pressing social and governmental question, the book is essential reading across the arts, humanities, and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in arts and cultural policy. Prof Rushton blogs at both Substack and Artsjournal and you can read open access papers covering some of the key ideas in the book here and here.

Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Manchester.

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Mia Mask, "Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Did you know Sidney Poitier was a western icon? In a genre best known for John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, African American actors and directors have played an important role in both shaping, and subverting, Hollywood westerns. In Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western (U Illinois Press, 2023), Vassar College film professor Mia Mask unravels the history of Black westerns dating back to 1910s and 1920s rodeo films, all the way through modern iterations such as Django Unchained (2012). Mask explains the eras in film history that changed the genre, including the infusion of pro athletes into Hollywood in the 1940s, New Hollywood in the 1960s, and the rise of Blaxploitation in the 1970s. Through this history, Mask explains how African Americans were central to the development and lasting appeal of westerns as a global film genre, and how genre conventions from westerns are in the very DNA of American popular culture today.

Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota and is the Assistant Director of the American Society for Environmental History.

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Jeffrey Angles, ed., "Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again: The Original Novellas by Shigeru Kayama" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Earlier this month, Toho Studios released “Godzilla Minus One”—the 37th film in the now almost seven-decade-old franchise. Godzilla has gone through many phases over the past 70 years: symbol of Japan’s nuclear fears, cuddly defender of humanity, Japanese cultural icon and, now, the centerpiece of another Hollywood cinematic universe.

But it was 1954’s Godzilla that launched the whole thing, with a story written by Japanese author Shigeru Kayama. He also wrote a novelization for the movie and its sequel Godzilla Raids Again (University of Minnesota Press: 2023), both translated by Jeffrey Angles.

In this interview, Jeffrey and I talk about these novels, how they differ from the movies, and how they start Godzilla’s journey to becoming a cultural icon.

Jeffrey Angles is a professor and advisor of Japanese in the Department of World Languages and Literatures at Western Michigan University. He is also a prominent translator of modern Japanese literature, with several volumes of Japanese literature in translation to his name. His book of poetry won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature, making Jeffrey the first American ever to win this prestigious prize for a book of poetry.

Jeffrey can be followed on Twitter at @jeffreyangles.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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Spirited Away

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

We are used to entering cinematic fantasy worlds in which we learn the rules of how the world works and then watch our hero navigate through it: think of Star Wars, Dune, The Matrix, and The Wizard of Oz, and Lord of the Rings. But Spirited Away (2001) works differently than these, with a logic that seems just out of reach and which we, like the hero, try to discern. Join Mike and Dan for an appreciation of a film about childhood that works like the real thing; the film feels as if it were created by children, and they mean that as the highest compliment. Along the way, the guys talk about left brain / right brain film structure and how Spirited Away resembles John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. So hop on the train with No-Face, and give it a listen!

Interested in a short critical study of the film? Check out Andrew Osmond’s volume in the BFI Film Classics series.

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Alexa Weik von Mossner, "Affective Ecologies: Empathy, Emotion, and Environmental Narrative" (Ohio State UP, 2017)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 18 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Affective Ecologies: Empathy, Emotion, and Environmental Narrative (Ohio State UP, 2017) explores our emotional engagement with environmental narrative. Focusing on the American cultural context, Alexa Weik von Mossner develops an ecocritical approach that draws on the insights of affective science and cognitive narratology. This approach helps to clarify how we interact with environmental narratives in ways that are both biologically universal and culturally specific. In doing so, it pays particular attention to the thesis that our minds are both embodied (in a physical body) and embedded (in a physical environment), not only when we interact with the real world but also in our engagement with imaginary worlds.

How do we experience the virtual environments we encounter in literature and film on the sensory and emotional level? How do environmental narratives invite us to care for human and nonhuman others who are put at risk? And how do we feel about the speculative futures presented to us in ecotopian and eco-dystopian texts? Weik von Mossner explores these central questions that are important to anyone with an interest in the emotional appeal and persuasive power of environmental narratives.

Arnab Dutta Roy is Assistant Professor of World Literature and Postcolonial Theory at Florida Gulf Coast University.

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Pavitra Sundar, "Listening with a Feminist Ear: Soundwork in Bombay Cinema" (U Michigan Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Pavitra Sundar's book Listening with a Feminist Ear: Soundwork in Bombay Cinema (U Michigan Press, 2023) is a study of the cultural politics and possibilities of sound in cinema. Eschewing ocularcentric and siloed disciplinary formations, the book takes seriously the radical theoretical and methodological potential of listening. It models a feminist interpretive practice that is not just attuned to how power and privilege are materialized in sound, but that engenders new, counter-hegemonic imaginaries.

Focusing on mainstream Bombay cinema, Sundar identifies singing, listening, and speaking as key sites in which gendered notions of identity and difference take form. Charting new paths through seven decades of film, media, and cultural history, Sundar identifies key shifts in women's playback voices and the Islamicate genre of the qawwali. She also conceptualizes spoken language as sound, and turns up the volume on a capacious, multilingual politics of belonging that scholarly and popular accounts of nation typically render silent. All in all, Listening with a Feminist Ear offers a critical sonic sensibility that reinvigorates debates about the gendering of voice and body in cinema, and the role of sound and media in conjuring community.

Khadeeja Amenda is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication and New Media at the National University of Singapore, Singapore. @KhadeejaAmenda.

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'For All Mankind,’ An Alternate History About the Possibility of Utopia

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn PopCast, and in this episode we tackle ‘For All Mankind,’ Apple TV’s alternate history about a space race that never ended. We first react to episode one of season four, which portrays a well-established human base on Mars. What does this first episode portend for the rest of the season, and the overall trajectory of the show?

We then dive deep into the political, social, and technological themes of the show over the past three seasons. What does this text say about the malleability of the structures of contemporary societies? Can technological advances ‘overleap’ political problems? Is the show’s portrayal of gender as progressive as it seems at first blush? Most fundamentally, what type of politics is ‘For All Mankind’ trying to sell us, and is it convincing?

The UConn PopCast is proud to be sponsored by the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. Check out the Popular Culture Initiative.

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Minority Report

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Minority Report (2002) is Exhibit A of how screenwriters love the premises of Philip K. Dick’s source materials and then adapt his core thought experiments into genres that get people in theatres. Mike and Dan discuss the ways in which Minority Report examines a thorny idea laden with ethical complexities while also offering Spielberg at his popcorn-selling best. We get serious questions about the ways in which solutions to enduring problems are bound by trade-offs and human fallibility—but we also get jetpacks. It’s part A Clockwork Orange and part Mission: Impossible. So put your eyes back in that baggie—it’s an audio podcast, after all—and give it a listen!

If you’re interested in the short story and the ways it differs from the film (besides the protagonist being a very un-Tom-Cruise balding and overweight guy), check out The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories. You may also be interested in the book mentioned in Part 1 of the episode: Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles.

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Adrien Sebro, "Scratchin' and Survivin': Hustle Economics and the Black Sitcoms of Tandem Productions" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 12 Nov 2023 05:00:00 +0000

The 1970s was a golden age for representations of African American life on TV sitcoms: Sanford & Son, Good Times, The Jeffersons. Surprisingly, nearly all the decade’s notable Black sitcoms were made by a single company, Tandem Productions. Founded by two white men, the successful team behind All in the Family, writer Norman Lear and director Bud Yorkin, Tandem gave unprecedented opportunities to Black actors, writers, and producers to break into the television industry. However, these Black auteurs also struggled to get the economic privileges and creative autonomy regularly granted to their white counterparts.

Scratchin' and Survivin': Hustle Economics and the Black Sitcoms of Tandem Productions (Rutgers UP, 2023) discovers surprising parallels between the behind-the-scenes drama at Tandem and the plotlines that aired on their sitcoms, as both real and fictional African Americans devised various strategies for getting their fair share out of systems prone to exploiting their labor. The media scholar Adrien Sebro describes these tactics as a form of “hustle economics,” and he pays special attention to the ways that Black women—including actresses like LaWanda Page, Isabel Sanford, and Esther Rolle—had to hustle for recognition. Exploring Tandem’s complex legacy, including its hit racially mixed sitcom Diff’rent Strokes, he showcases the Black talent whose creative agency and labor resilience helped to transform the television industry.

Adrien Sebro is an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He specializes in critical media studies at the intersections of comedy, gender, and Black popular culture.

Peter C. Kunze is a visiting assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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What Reality TV Says About Us

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 8 Nov 2023 09:10:00 +0000

Reality TV shapes and reflects how we see ourselves, and what we regard as normal. Professor Danielle J. Lindemann watched thousands of hours of reality tv to decode its influence on society. She joins us to discuss her book True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us (FSG, 2022).

Danielle J. Lindemann is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Lehigh University interested in gender, sexuality, the family, and culture. She is the author of Commuter Spouses: New Families in a Changing World and Dominatrix: Gender, Eroticism and Control in the Dungeon. Her research has been featured in media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Billboard, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. She has spoken about her work on National Public Radio and has written op-eds for CNN, Newsweek, Salon, Fortune, and Quartz.

The UConn PopCast is proud to be sponsored by the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. Learn about our MA Program.

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This Will Change Your Perspective on James Bond

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 7 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The Bond movies have influenced portrayals of masculinity and femininity for decades, but the Daniel Craig-era saw a revolution in depictions of sex, gender, and inclusivity. The UConn PopCast discusses with Professor Susan Burgess, author of LGBT Inclusion in American Life: Pop Culture, Political Imagination, and Civil Rights (NYU Press, 2023)

The UConn PopCast is proud to be sponsored by the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. Learn about our MA Program.

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Point Blank

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 6 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In 1962, Donald E. Westlake used the pseudonym Richard Stark and published The Hunter, the story of Parker, a betrayed thief who seeks vengeance with more determination than we see from the T-1000 in Terminator 2. Four years later, Lee Marvin starred in John Boorman’s Point Blank, an adaptation of The Hunter. The film renamed Parker to Walker, but also reimagined the revenge plot as one of a man unable to recover from trauma. Join Mike and Dan for an extra-long, extra-cool conversation with special guest Eric G. Wilson, author of the new BFI Classics study of Point Blank. So put on your best clackety shoes, pace the halls, and give it a listen!

If you’re a fan of crime fiction, you’ll enjoy the first of Richard Stark’s Parker novels, The Hunter, upon which Point Blank is based. Be sure to check out Eric Wilson’s terrific book about Point Blank in the BFI Film Classics series and his interview about it on New Books in Film.

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Jacqueline R. Braitman, "She Damn Near Ran the Studio: The Extraordinary Lives of Ida R. Koverman" (UP of Mississippi, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 2 Nov 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I am happy to be interviewing historian and author Dr. Jacqueline R. Braitman about her very engaging biography, She Damn Near Ran the Studio: The Extraordinary Lives of Ida R. Koverman (University Press of Mississippi, 2020).

This very detailed and comprehensively researched book tells the story of Ida Koverman, whose life was almost accidentally remarkable. She was not only Louis B. Mayer’s gatekeeper at MGM for over two decades but also a major mover and shaker in the conservative wing of the California Republican party throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Coming from humble beginnings in Ohio, when Ulysses S. Grant was president, Koverman worked tirelessly to elect Herbert Hoover to the White House. In addition, she made a remarkable contribution to American culture, scouting and nurturing the iconic stars of the future at MGM, while also acting as a spokesperson for the studio and its relationship to the politicians of the day.

In this interview, Dr. Braitman describes how she came to admire Ida Koverman, whose politics are far to the right of the author’s views, and how she was met with surprises throughout the years-long process of writing She Damn Near Ran the Studio.

I hope you’ll join me for this engaging and informative conversation with Dr. Jacqueline R. Braitman.

Bruce Shapiro is a recently retired professor of theater at several universities, primarily in the areas of drama, directing and acting.

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Scott Eyman, "Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided" (Simon & Schuster, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The remarkable, must-read story of Charlie Chaplin’s years of exile from the United States during the postwar Red Scare, and how it ruined his film career, from bestselling biographer Scott Eyman.

Bestselling Hollywood biographer and film historian Scott Eyman tells the story of Charlie Chaplin’s fall from grace. In the aftermath of World War Two, Chaplin was criticized for being politically liberal and internationalist in outlook. He had never become a US citizen, something that would be held against him as xenophobia set in when the postwar Red Scare took hold.

Politics aside, Chaplin had another problem: his sexual interest in young women. He had been married three times and had had numerous affairs. In the 1940s, he was the subject of a paternity suit, which he lost, despite blood tests that proved he was not the father. His sexuality became a convenient way for those who opposed his politics to condemn him. Refused permission to return to the US from a trip abroad, he settled in Switzerland, and made his last two films in London

In Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided (Simon & Schuster, 2023), bestselling author Scott Eyman explores the life and times of the movie genius who brought us such masterpieces as City Lights and Modern Times. This is a perceptive, insightful portrait of Chaplin and of an America consumed by political turmoil.

Scott Eyman was formerly the literary critic at The Palm Beach Post and is the author or coauthor of sixteen books, including the bestseller John Wayne and You Must Remember This with actor Robert Wagner. Eyman also writes book reviews for The Wall Street Journal, and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune. He and his wife, Lynn, live in West Palm Beach.

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Babette’s Feast

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In 1965, Bob Dylan sang, “She’s got everything she needs; she’s an artist; she don’t look back.” About twenty years later, Gabriel Axel brilliantly dramatized this idea in Babette’s Feast (1987).

A film as perfect as a film can be, Babette’s Feast treats the viewer to the pleasures of autotelic endeavors: things we do for their own sake because we enjoy them. Like last week’s film, Big Night, this one welcomes us to a big table in which a chef feeds others as a work of art. Mike and Dan also talk about the characters’ assumption that austerity is the key to Heaven and how the film treats this idea without mocking the characters or setting them up for a nasty surprise, as in The Witch. So pour another glass of Amontillado, sit back, and press play!

The film is a faithful adaptation of Isak Dinesen’s 1955 story, found in the collection Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard.

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Stephen B. Armstrong, "I Want You Around: The Ramones and the Making of Rock 'n' Roll High School" (Backbeat Books, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Stephen Armstrong's new book I Want You Around: The Ramones and the Making of Rock-n-Roll High School (Backbeat Books, 2023), provides a detailed production history of this beloved film that draws upon extensive interviews the author has conducted with many of the people who contributed to its creation, including director Allan Arkush, uncredited co-director Joe Dante, screenwriter Joseph McBride, producer Michael Finnell, the Ramones' tour manager, Monte A. Melnick, and Roger Corman. Armstrong not only engages in the production of this classic film, but also examines the life of director Allan Arkush and the events that brought him to directing with film for New World Pictures. Armstrong also tells the story of the Ramones, giving insight into their experiences becoming the band that help Riff Randell and the students of Vince Lombardi High as they rebel against the tyrannical Principal Togar and blow up their school.

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Big Night

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Sometimes, the idea for a film would work on paper—such is the case with Big Night (1996), a film that packs in as much real life a full novel. “Love” as a secret ingredient to a great recipe may be a cliché, but how else to explain the joy people get from cooking large meals for people they care about, gathered around a big table? Mike and Dan discuss how the two restaurants in the film offer two versions of success, why “foodies” can be irritating, and the beauty of actors who act without speaking. The restaurant may fail, but the film does not. So as you wait for that timpani to settle, give it a listen!

Stanley Tucci’s Taste: My Life Through Food is his memoir about the intersection of Italian food and families.

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Cutter’s Way

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

There may be some dated or downright silly elements of Cutter’s Way, Ivan Passer’s 1981 mystery—but what’s great about it outweighs any of its clumsiness and stays in the viewer’s memory. Not enough people know about John Heard’s performance as the unhinged, unlikable, yet undeniably compelling Alex Cutter; this film without any scenes of military conflict is one of the best about Vietnam. Join Mike and Dan for a conversation about the ways in which the title character resembles Captain Ahab physically, emotionally, and psychologically; how the film uses and then abandons Hollywood conventions; and the ways in which a convoluted murder plot doesn’t detract from complicated issues of heroism, friendship, and justice. So jump on that white horse and give it a listen!

One of our favorite memoirs of Vietnam is Things I’ll Never Forget: Memories of a Marine in Vietnam. Thom Jones’s short story collection The Pugilist at Rest contains incredible fiction about the war (and would, we imagine, be admired by Alex Cutter).

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Smith Mehta, "The New Screen Ecology in India: Digital Transformation of Media" (British Film Institute, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 15 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In The New Screen Ecology in India: Digital Transformation of Media (British Film Institute, 2023), Smith Mehta takes a deep dive into the world of social media platforms and their impact on contemporary film and television production, arguing that they have fundamentally shifted the creator dynamics of these industries. Through first-hand research with creators, platform and portal executives, and intermediaries such as talent agents and multi-channel networks, Mehta develops the concept of the 'new screen ecology'. He reveals how the Indian screen industries are affected by the social relations between these agents and how industrial practices are blurring the amateur-professional divide through creator and content interdependencies.

Mehta goes beyond theoretical analysis by interrogating the production practices of 13 different platforms and portals, including Hotstar, Netflix, YouTube, and TVFPlay. He analyses the extent to which they benefit from the lack of censorship and restrictive industrial practices that are characteristic of traditional media structures. By doing so, he provides a unique and insightful examination of the dynamics of digital transformation in the screen industries in a region-specific context.

Priyam Sinha is a doctoral candidate in the South Asian Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore. She has interdisciplinary academic interests that lie at the intersection of film studies, disability studies, production cultures, creative media industries and cultural studies. She can be reached on Twitter here.

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Paul Crenshaw, "Melt with Me: Coming of Age and Other '80s Perils" (Ohio State UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In his new collection of essays, Melt With Me (Mad Creek Press, 2023), Paul Crenshaw examines the intersection of 1980s pop culture, the Cold War, and the trials of coming of age. Crenshaw takes up a range of topics from Star Wars to video games, Choose Your Own Adventure books to the Satanic Panic. Blending the personal with the historical, levity with gravity, Crenshaw shows how pop culture shaped those who grew up in 1980s America: how Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative drove fears of nuclear war, how professional wrestling taught us everyone was either a good guy or a bad guy, how Bugs Bunny cartoons reflected the absurdity of war and mutually assured destruction, and how video games taught young boys, in particular, that no matter how hard they tried to save it, the world would end itself. Reflecting on the decade and its dark influence on fear-based notions of nation and manhood, Crenshaw writes, "All this reminds me I'm still afraid of the same things I was afraid of as a child. Some days I think the movies are real and we're watching the last hour of humanity. You'll have to decide if there's any hope."

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Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik, "Maghreb Noir: The Militant-Artists of North Africa and the Struggle for a Pan-African, Postcolonial Future" (Stanford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Upon their independence, Moroccan, Algerian, and Tunisian governments turned to the Global South and offered military and financial aid to Black liberation struggles. Tangier and Algiers attracted Black American and Caribbean artists eager to escape American white supremacy; Tunis hosted African filmmakers for the Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage; and young freedom fighters from across the African continent established military training camps in Morocco. North Africa became a haven for militant-artists, and the region reshaped postcolonial cultural discourse through the 1960s and 1970s.

Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik's book Maghreb Noir: The Militant-Artists of North Africa and the Struggle for a Pan-African, Postcolonial Future (Stanford UP, 2023) dives into the personal and political lives of these militant-artists, who collectively challenged the neo-colonialist structures and the authoritarianism of African states. Drawing on Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English sources, as well as interviews with the artists themselves, Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik expands our understanding of Pan-Africanism geographically, linguistically, and temporally. This network of militant-artists departed from the racial solidarity extolled by many of their nationalist forefathers, instead following in the footsteps of their intellectual mentor, Frantz Fanon. They argued for the creation of a new ideology of continued revolution—one that was transnational, trans-racial, and in defiance of the emerging nation-states. Maghreb Noir establishes the importance of North Africa in nurturing these global connections—and uncovers a lost history of grassroots collaboration among militant-artists from across the globe.

Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik is Assistant Professor of History at Suffolk University.

Tugrul Mende holds an M.A in Arabic Studies. He is based in Berlin as a project coordinator and independent researcher.

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Marlena Williams, "Night Mother: A Personal and Cultural History of the Exorcist" (Mad Creek Books, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Never watch The Exorcist, Marlena Williams's mother told her, just as she'd been told by her own mother as a Catholic teen in rural Oregon when the horror classic premiered. And like her mother, Mary, Williams watched it anyway. An inheritance passed from mother to daughter, The Exorcist looms large--in popular culture and in Williams's own life, years after Mary's illness and death. In Night Mother: A Personal and Cultural History of the Exorcist (Mad Creek Books, 2023), Williams investigates the film not only as a projection of Americans' worst fears in the tumultuous 1970s and a source of enduring tropes around girlhood, faith, and transgression but also as a key to understanding her mother and the world she came from.

The essays in Night Mother delve beneath the surface of The Exorcist to reveal the deeper stories the film tells about faith, family, illness, anger, guilt, desire, and death. Whether tracing the career of its young star, Linda Blair, unpacking its most infamous scenes, exploring its problematic depictions of gender and race, or reflecting on the horror of growing up female in America, Williams deftly blends bold personal narrative with shrewd cultural criticism. Night Mother offers fresh insights for both fans of the film and newcomers alike.

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Lost in America

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 9 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

“What makes something funny” is difficult to articulate, but Mike and Dan try with one of their favorite comedies, Albert Brooks’ Lost in America. His 1985 film about married professionals who yearn to hit the road (like they saw in Easy Rider) works because there’s nothing to rescue the viewer from the awkwardness and downward spiral of every scene. The characters’ conflicts and anxieties are hilarious—just not to them. Many of us have yearned to start life anew in a world elsewhere or live like Thoreau at Walden Pond; Lost in America cures us of that in ninety minutes. So bet the whole nest egg on 22—and after you lose it all, give us a listen as you cross the country in your RV!

Albert Brooks’ satiric novel, 2030, imagines an America in which cancer has been cured, global warming is an acknowledged reality, and people have robot companions. All seems perfect until the events of a single day change everything. This collection of interviews with Brooks examines his feature films and the challenges of making them. And if you feel like dropping out like David and Linda but can’t buy an RV, you can always read Walden instead.

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Geraint D'Arcy, "Mise en scène, Acting, and Space in Comics" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 7 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Geraint D'Arcy's book Mise en scène, Acting, and Space in Comics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) explores some of the less frequently questioned ideas which underpin comics creation and criticism. “Mise en scène” is a term which refers to the way in which visual elements work together to create meaning in comics. It is a term that comics have borrowed from cinema, which borrowed it in turn from theatre. But comics are not film and they are not cinema, so how can this term be of any use? If we consider comics to have mise en scène, should not we also ask if the characters in comics act like the characters on film and stage? In its exploration of these ideas, this book also asks what film and theatre can learn from comics.

Dr. Geraint D'Arcy is a lecturer in Media Practice, at the School of Art, Media and American Studies at the University of East Anglia in the UK and a member of the Comics Studies Research Group. he also wrote Critical Approaches to TV and Film Set Design in 2018, published with Taylor and Francis. He currently works across several courses at the University of South Wales.

Elizabeth Allyn Woock an assistant professor in the Department of English and American Studies at Palacky University in the Czech Republic with an interdisciplinary background in history and popular literature. Her specialization falls within the study of comic books and graphic novels.

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The Vanishing

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 2 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

If you have seen Sluizer’s original 1988 thriller—not his 1993 American remake with Jeff Bridges and Kiefer Sutherland--you’ll know exactly why we are doing it as a companion piece to Rope. You’ll also nod along with us when we praise the film’s cold precision: it’s not surprising that Sluzier states in the opening clip that Stanley Kubrick admired the film and saw it ten times. Why we often tell people to watch films but to not read anything first about them, the thrill of assembling pieces of information as we watch a film, the terrible weight of truth, and the meaning of love all come into play as Mike and Dan talk about what belongs on everyone’s top-ten list of disturbing and exhilarating films. We seem due for a comedy.

The Vanishing is based Golden Egg, a novel by Tim Krabbé, who co-authored the screenplay with Sluizer.

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Melanie Williams, "A Taste of Honey" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 1 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

What makes a film a classic? In A Taste of Honey (Bloomsbury, 2023), published as part of the BFI Film Classics series, Melanie Williams, a Professor of Film and Television Studies in the School of Art, Media and American Studies at the University of East Anglia, tells the story of the films production and reception. The book explores the key themes of the film situating ideas of class, gender, race, and sexuality in both a historical context as well as thinking through the contemporary and continuing relevance of the film. Adding new insights to an overview of the existing critical responses, the book will be of interest across the arts and humanities, as well as for anyone interested in one of British cinema’s most important films.

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Hieyoon Kim, "Celluloid Democracy: Cinema and Politics in Cold War South Korea" (U California Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Before South Korea became the democracy and media powerhouse that it is today, it underwent several decades of authoritarian rule during the Cold War from the late 1940s to late 1980s. Amidst this authoritarian period, South Korea’s filmmakers, distributors, and exhibitors nevertheless found ways to push the boundaries of both cinema and politics. This is the topic of Hieyoon Kim’s Celluloid Democracy: Cinema and Politics in Cold War South Korea (University of California Press, 2023).

Kim is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Asian Cultures and Languages. She specializes in the intersections of dissident culture and media with a focus on Korea and has myriad publications on topics ranging from film archives, historiography, and memory.

As the global popularity of South Korean cinema continues unabated, Celluloid Democracy helps readers dive deeper into a historical context that runs deeply through many contemporary K-media artifacts, yet doesn’t receive ample coverage in English-language discourse. Listen to this episode to learn more, and stay tuned until the end for some great film recommendations.

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Rope

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Rope (1948) may not be top-shelf Hitchcock, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t interesting and worth repeated viewings. After arguing back at those who find Jimmy Stewart miscast, Mike and Dan talk about how the film stands as another example of Hitchcock using violence to dramatize the sex lives of his characters. Mike lists the ways in which the director resembles the killer, specifically Brandon: a Nabokovian figure through which Hitchcock shows the audience what it’s like to have an artistic temperament. Another Russian, Dostoevsky, comes into the conversation when Dan talks about Philip’s complaint that his former teacher is “plating Crime and Punishment.” It’s the kind of unscripted, enthusiastic conversation you have with your friends in the car on the way home from the movies—so put down the pâté and give it a listen!

So many books have been written about Hitchcock, but the book-length interview by Francois Truffaut still stands as one of the best. It never gets old.

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Diana Rickard, "The New True Crime: How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling Is Transforming Innocence" (NYU Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 23 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The New True Crime: How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling Is Transforming Innocence (NYU Press, 2023) by Dr. Diana Rickard examines how serialized crime shows became an American obsession.

TV shows and podcasts like Making a Murderer, Serial, and Atlanta Monster have taken the cultural zeitgeist by storm, and contributed to the release of wrongly imprisoned people—such as Adnan Syed. The popularity of these long-form true crime docuseries has sparked greater attention to issues of inequality, power, social class, and structural racism. More and more, the American public is asking, Who is and is not deserving of punishment, and who is and is not protected by the law? In The New True Crime, Dr. Rickard argues that these new true crime series deserve our attention for what they reveal about our societal understanding of crime and punishment, and for the new light they shine on the inequalities of the criminal justice system. Questioning the finality of verdicts, framing facts as in the eye of the beholder—these new series unmoor our faith in what is knowable, even as, Rickard critically notes, they often blur the lines between “fact” and “fiction.”

With a focus on some of the most popular true crime podcasts and streaming series of the last decade, Dr. Rickard provides an in-depth analysis of the ways in which this new media—which allows for binge-listening or watching—makes crime into a public spectacle and conveys ideological messages about punishment to its audience. Entertainment values have always been entwined with crime news reporting. Newsworthy stories, Rickard reminds us, need to involve sex, violence, or a famous person, and contain events that can be framed in terms of individualism and conservative ideologies about crime. Even as these old tropes of innocent victims and deviant bad guys still dominate these docuseries, Dr. Rickard also unpacks how the new true crime has been influenced by the innocence movement, a diverse group of organizers and activists, be they journalists, lawyers, formerly incarcerated people, or family members, who now have a place in mainstream consciousness as DNA evidence exonerates the wrongly convicted.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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Jeffrey Angles, ed., "Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again: The Original Novellas by Shigeru Kayama" (U Michigan Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Godzilla emerged from the sea to devastate Tokyo in the now-classic 1954 film, produced by Tōhō Studios and directed by Ishirō Honda, creating a global sensation and launching one of the world’s most successful movie and media franchises. Awakened and transformed by nuclear weapons testing, Godzilla serves as a terrifying metaphor for humanity’s shortsighted destructiveness: this was the intent of Shigeru Kayama, the science fiction writer who drafted the 1954 original film and its first sequel and, in 1955, published these novellas.

Although the Godzilla films have been analyzed in detail by cultural historians, film scholars, and generations of fans, Kayama’s two Godzilla novellas—both classics of Japanese young-adult science fiction—have never been available in English. Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again: The Original Novellas by Shigeru Kayama (U Michigan Press, 2023) finally provides English-speaking fans and critics the original texts with these first-ever English-language translations of Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again. The novellas reveal valuable insights into Kayama’s vision for the Godzilla story, feature plots that differ from the films, and clearly display the author’s strong antinuclear, proenvironmental convictions.

Kayama’s fiction depicts Godzilla as engaging in guerrilla-style warfare against humanity, which has allowed the destruction of the natural world through its irresponsible, immoral perversion of science. As human activity continues to cause mass extinctions and rapid climatic change, Godzilla provides a fable for the Anthropocene, powerfully reminding us that nature will fight back against humanity’s onslaught in unpredictable and devastating ways.

Shigeru Kayama (1904–1975) was a science fiction writer and scenarist whose early stories about monsters and mutated sea creatures attracted the attention of Tōhō Studios, which asked him to draft the first two Godzilla films.

Jeffrey Angles is professor of Japanese at Western Michigan University. He is the author of Writing the Love of Boys: Origins of Bishonen Culture in Modernist Japanese Literature (Minnesota, 2011) and the award-winning translator of Orikuchi Shinobu’s The Book of the Dead (Minnesota, 2017) and Hiromi Ito’s The Thorn Puller.

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Sorcerer

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In 1973, William Friedkin terrorized the world with The Exorcist and then decided to make a film even more grim: a remake of George Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear. This was an audacious move, since the 1953 original was already well-loved and regarded as one of the most suspenseful films of all time. But Friedkin followed his muse and created Sorcerer (1977), which belongs in the pantheon of Great Underappreciated Films. Like The Exorcist, it’s a frightening peek into Hell; unlike that film, however, evil is pervasive rather than localized. No exorcist can cleanse Porvenir of evil; Max Von Sydow isn’t showing up any time soon. You can try to outrun the Sorcerer, but it’s like driving a truck and trying to drive away from its contents. Rarely has a completely nihilistic and sobering film experience been so exhilarating.

William Friedkin’s memoir, The Friedkin Connection, is an engaging read and includes a chapter on the making of Sorcerer.

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Kristen Lopez, "But Have You Read the Book?: 52 Literary Gems That Inspired Our Favorite Films" (Running Press Adult, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Published earlier this year from Running Press, Kristen Lopez’s But Have You Read the Book?: 52 Literary Gems That Inspired Our Favorite Films looks at almost a hundred years of film adaptations of novels. The book offers a survey of how directors, actors, and screenwriters have transformed the raw material of fiction into works that were sometimes transgressive, sometimes reverential, and always compelling. Among the adaptations are William Wyler’s Wuthering Heights (1939) from the Emily Bronte novel; Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993) from Michael Crichton’s novel; Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) from Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”; and Sophia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides (1999) from Jeffrey Eugenides 1993 novel.

I am excited to have Kristen Lopez on the podcast to discuss the book. Kristen has been the Film Editor at The Wrap since 2022 and the creator of the podcast Ticklish Business. Kristen’s work has also been published in Culturess, Forbes, The Movie Isle, Citizen Dame, and Remezcla.

John Yargo is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Boston College. He earned a PhD in English literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, specializing in the environmental humanities and early modern culture. In 2023, his dissertation won the J. Leeds Barroll Prize, given by the Shakespeare Association of America. His peer-reviewed articles have been published or are forthcoming in the Journal for Early Modern Culture Studies, Early Theatre, Studies in Philology, and Shakespeare Studies.

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A Better Way to Buy Books

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has already raised more than $27,000,000. In this interview, Andy Hunter, founder and CEO discusses his journey to creating one of the most revolutionary new organizations in the book world. Bookshop has found a way to retain the convenience of online book shopping while also supporting independent bookstores that are the backbones of many local communities.

Andy Hunter is CEO and Founder of Bookshop.org. He also co-created Literary Hub.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

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Robyn Muir, "The Disney Princess Phenomenon: A Feminist Analysis" (Bristol UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The Disney Princesses are a billion-dollar industry, known and loved by children across the globe.

In The Disney Princess Phenomenon: A Feminist Analysis (Bristol University Press, 2023) Dr. Robyn Muir provides an exploratory and holistic examination of this worldwide commercial and cultural phenomenon in its key representations: films, merchandising and marketing, and park experiences. Muir highlights the messages and images of femininity found within the Disney Princess canon and provides a rigorous and innovative methodology for analysing gender in media.

Including an in-depth examination of each princess film from the last 83 years, the book provides a lens through which to view and understand how Disney Princesses have contributed to the depiction of femininity within popular culture.

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The Blues Brothers

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Jake and Elwood sing “Everybody Needs Someone to Love” and everybody loves The Blues Brothers: “You … me … them … everybody!” Join Mike and Dan for a conversation about John Landis’s 1980 film that has become movie comfort-food for people raised on the original SNL and others who have come to the film without any knowledge of John Belushi or Dan Ackroyd’s careers. So many comedy sketches fall flat when stretched into the length of a film, but Landis and Ackroyd avoided this when writing The Blues Brothers. How did they do it? What makes this film so rewatchable and affirming, like Singin’ in the Rain? What did Landis get right about the way to make a musical with people who were bigger celebrities than the leads of the movie? Get your four fried chickens, your dry white toast, and a Coke–and then give it a listen!

Interested in a book-length examination of The Blues Brothers? Check out Daniel de Visé’s The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic.

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Tingting Hu, "Victims, Perpetrators and Professionals: The Representation of Women in Chinese Crime Films" (Liverpool UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 9 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

How are women represented in Chinese crime films? In what ways do the representation reflect traditional Chinese values and contemporary Chinese social-cultural norms? How did boys’ love culture emerge in China? What is the role of the Chinese state in queer media production and queer culture in China? In a conversation with Joanne Kuai, PhD candidate at Karlstad University, Sweden, and an affiliated PhD student at NIAS, Tingting Hu talked about her book Victims, Perpetrators and Professionals: The Representation of Women in Chinese Crime Films and her latest research on A Transmedia ‘Third’ Space: The Counterculture of Chinese Boys’ Love Audio Dramas.

Tingting Hu is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Media and Communication, Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University. Her research interest lies in the articulation of film, media and cultural studies with feminist theories, and transmedia studies in various social and cultural contexts. You can connect with Tingting at tingting.hu_academic@hotmail.com.

Victims, Perpetrators and Professionals examines the representation of women in relation to violence in Chinese crime films made on the mainland, and in Hong Kong and Taiwan. It introduces a new trajectory in the investigation of the cinematic representation of female figures in relation to gender issues by interweaving Western feminist and postfeminist critiques with traditional Chinese sociocultural discourse.

The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical, and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.

About NIAS: http://www.nias.ku.dk/

Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast

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Caveh Zahedi, "Digging My Own Grave: The Films of Caveh Zahedi" (Factory 25, 2015)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 6 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Digging My Own Grave: The Films of Caveh Zahedi (Factory 25, 2015) is the most comprehensive collection of filmmaker Caveh Zahedi possible with 36 films including: A Little Stiff, I Don’t Hate Las Vegas Anymore, In the Bathtub of the World, Tripping with Caveh, I Am a Sex Addict, and The Sheik and I.

Writings by Bill Brown, Arnold Barkus, Greg Watkins, Thomas Logoreci, Alison Bechdel, Amanda Field, Richard Clark, Britta Sjorgren, Matthew L. Weiss, Jay Duplass, Lena Dunham, Akira Lippitt, Don Lennon, Josh Safdie, Jay Rosenblatt, and Caveh Zahedi.

Caveh Zahedi is an independent filmmaker and Assistant Professor of Screen Studies at the New School.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

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The Wages of Fear

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 4 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Clouzot’s 1953 thriller may be the ultimate bait and switch, moving from a character study of four desperate men in limbo into one of the most suspenseful films ever made. The Wages of Fear shows us the triumph of human ingenuity much like Robinson Crusoe or Castaway, but it’s also a grim statement about how we all carry our deaths within us: the thing from which we try to flee every morning when we wake up is closer than we can imagine. Everything hangs by a thread, and Clouzot exposes that thread by reducing human experience to its lowest terms. That he does so in a film in which trucks move slowly and carefully–usually forbidden on the big screen–adds to the audaciousness of his vision. Join Mike and Dan for an appreciation of a film that reminds them of Seven Samurai, The Dirty Dozen, Saving Private Ryan, The French Connection, Smokey and the Bandit, Reservoir Dogs, and The Road Warrior. This movie may have a Mario and a Luigi, but there’s no Rainbow Road.

If you are interested in Henri-George Clouzot’s life and career, check out Christopher Lloyd’s book in Manchester University Press’s series on French film directors. The Very Short Introductions series by Oxford University Press includes one on French Cinema; the British Film Institute’s The French Cinema Book is an anthology of essays. You can also find our previous episode on Clouzot’s Diabolique here.

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Diana W. Anselmo, "A Queer Way of Feeling: Girl Fans and Personal Archives of Early Hollywood" (U California Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 2 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In A Queer Way of Feeling: Girl Fans and Personal Archives of Early Hollywood (University of California Press, 2023), Diana W. Anselmo queers the earliest development of the "fangirl." Gathering an unexplored archive of fan-made scrapbooks, letters, diaries, and photographs, A Queer Way of Feeling explores how, in the 1910s, girls coming of age in the United States used cinema to forge a foundational language of female nonconformity, intimacy, and kinship. Pasting cross-dressed photos on personal scrapbooks and making love to movie actresses in epistolary writing, adolescent girls from all walks of life stitched together established homoerotic conventions with an emergent syntax of film stardom to make sense of mental states, actions, and proclivities self-described as "queer" or "different from the norm." Material testimonies of a forgotten audience, these autobiographical artifacts show how early movie-loving girls engendered terminologies, communities, and creative practices that would become cornerstones of media fan reception and queer belonging.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

Hallel Yadin is an archivist and special projects manager at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

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Beth Tsai, "Taiwan New Cinema at Film Festivals" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Taiwan New Cinema (first wave, 1982–1989; second wave, 1990 onward) has a unique history regarding film festivals, particularly in the way these films are circulated at major European film festivals. It shares a common formalist concern about cinematic modernism with its Western counterparts, departing from previous modes of filmmaking that were preoccupied with nostalgically romanticizing China’s image.

Through utilising in-depth case studies of films by Taiwan-based directors: Tsai Ming-liang, Zhao Deyin and Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai discusses how Taiwan New Cinema represents a struggling configuration of the ‘nation’, brought forth by Taiwan’s multilayered colonial and postcolonial histories. Taiwan New Cinema at Film Festivals (Edinburgh UP, 2023) presents the conditions that have led to the production of a national cinema, branding the auteur, and examines shifting representations of cultural identity in the context of globalization.

Beth Tsai is Visiting Assistant Professor in Film Studies at the University at Albany–State University of New York. Her research focuses primarily on the cinema of Taiwan, film festivals, and transnational film theory. She has published in the International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Journal of Asian Cinema, and Oxford Bibliographies.

Li-Ping Chen is Dornsife Teaching Fellow in General Education in Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts.

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In a Lonely Place

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Halfway through Casablanca, we learn why Rick Blaine is so cynical, angry, and embittered; we also feel glad at the end when he takes off his armor and begins that beautiful friendship. But how would we respond if we never learned why Rick acted as he does? The answer is that he’d be Dixon Steele, whom Bogart portrays so well in Nicholas Ray’s 1950 thriller In a Lonely Place. Join Mike and Dan for a conversation about a Bogart film they think deserves a wider audience and how it predicts what Martin Scorsese would do twenty-six years later with Taxi Driver.

William J. Mann’s Bogie & Bacall: The Surprising True Story of Hollywood’s Greatest Love Affair, is a thoroughly interesting dual biography about the movies’ most enduring power couple. Dan recently interviewed William J. Mann for the New Books Network: listen to it here.

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Karima K. Jeffrey-Legette, "Speculative Film and Moving Images by or about Black Women and Girls" (Lexington Books, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 27 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Karima K. Jeffrey-Legette's book Speculative Film and Moving Images by or about Black Women and Girls (Lexington Books, 2022) examines depictions of African-descended women and girls in twentieth and twenty-first century filmmaking. Topics include a discursive analysis of stereotypes; roles garnered by Halle Berry, the only Black woman to receive an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role; the promise of characters, relationships, and scripts found in works ranging from Altered Carbon, Lovecraft Country, and HBO’s Watchmen series; and a closing chapter that considers the legacy of Black women in horror. Jeffrey-Legette illustrates the ways in which recent texts explore the trauma endured by people of African descent in the United States of America in evocative ways. In doing so, she provides a compelling interpretation of prevalent, well-received, and recurring images of Black women and girls in American popular culture.

Katrina Anderson is a doctoral candidate at the University of Delaware.

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Chesya Burke, "Hero Me Not: The Containment of the Most Powerful Black, Female Superhero" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

First introduced in the pages of X-Men, Storm is probably the most recognized Black female superhero. She is also one of the most powerful characters in the Marvel Universe, with abilities that allow her to control the weather itself. Yet that power is almost always deployed in the service of White characters, and Storm is rarely treated as an authority figure.

Hero Me Not: The Containment of the Most Powerful Black, Female Superhero (Rutgers UP, 2023) offers an in-depth look at this fascinating yet often frustrating character through all her manifestations in comics, animation, and films. Chesya Burke examines the coding of Storm as racially “exotic,” an African woman who nonetheless has bright white hair and blue eyes and was portrayed onscreen by biracial actresses Halle Berry and Alexandra Shipp. She shows how Storm, created by White writers and artists, was an amalgam of various Black stereotypes, from the Mammy and the Jezebel to the Magical Negro, resulting in a new stereotype she terms the Negro Spiritual Woman.

With chapters focusing on the history, transmedia representation, and racial politics of Storm, Burke offers a very personal account of what it means to be a Black female comics fan searching popular culture for positive images of powerful women who look like you.

Katrina Anderson is a doctoral candidate at the University of Delaware.

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PostScript: The Barbie Movie: A Conversation about a Cinematic and Cultural Event

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Today’s episode of POSTSCRIPT explores and examines director Greta Gerwig’s film, Barbie. This Warner Brothers’ movie has been in theaters for under a month but has crossed the $1 billion dollar mark during that time, breaking all kinds of box office records and making Gerwig the first solo female director to enter this rarified realm. Barbie is now Warner Brothers’ most successful film, surpassing Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, which had held that position at Warner Brothers. Barbie has hit a kind of cultural and cinematic sweet spot—with a marketing campaign around the movie establishing pink as the new black, bringing in Barbie-connected products across almost all consumer platforms, from Barbie-themed furniture to holiday home rentals, from lunchboxes and tee-shirts to new Mattel Barbies reflecting characters in the film. Barbie has also received positive reviews in the United States and globally, with audience members attending the film in pink clothing and accessories, often accompanied by friends and family members. Thus, Barbie is more than a summer tent-pole release, though it certainly has fulfilled that particular role. Barbie is more of an event—driving theater attendance, conversations, and in-person community experiences.

In this episode, I am joined by four scholars and experts to discuss “all things Barbie” as we examine the narrative of the film itself, the questions of gender and feminism, patriarchy, and sexuality. We also dive into the marketing campaign, the tensions between capitalism, neoliberalism, postfeminism, and an original intellectual property based on a consumer product. Dr. Linda Beail (Point Loma Nazarene University), Dr. Shuchi Kapila (Grinnell College), Dr. Danielle Hanley (Clark University), and Dr. Susan Liebell (St. Joseph University and co-host of the New Books in Political Science podcast) take up all these dimensions of this brightly colored film as we explore our thinking about this movie event that has landed in the post-Covid landscape of 2023.

We all found the experience of seeing Barbie, in a movie theater, to be one filled with joy and fun, for ourselves, and among those in the theater with us. Join in our conversation about Barbie, since this is both a delightful cinematic experience and a film with something to say to its audience and the world around us.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social

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The French Connection

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 21 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

How much will a viewer tolerate? What if you took away all the quick and easy ways in which movies dole out information? What if you made the hero less-than-wholly-admirable and the villain less-than-wholly-terrible? Would audiences still come along for the ride in that brown Le Mans with Popeye Doyle as he tries to catch the sniper who missed him? William Friedkin bet that they would--and won. Join us for a conversation about The French Connection, the classic 1971 police procedural. Topics include the chase, of course, but also the ways in which Popeye Doyle is not Dirty Harry, how the film’s perfect structure allows the viewers to go through a process along with the detectives, and how Popeye resembles a great literary figure from a novel that also ends in a thrilling chase.

William Friedkin’s memoir, The Friedkin Connection, is an engaging read and includes much about the making of The French Connection. Robin Moore’s original book that inspired the film—which Friedkin claimed to never have finished reading—can be found here.

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David Humphrey, "The Time of Laughter: Comedy and the Media Cultures of Japan" (U Michigan Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

David Humphrey’s The Time of Laughter: Comedy and the Media Cultures of Japan (U Michigan Press, 2023) examines the roles of mediated laughter in the media and cultural history of postwar Japan, with a strong focus on the temporality of laughter. As the book shows, comedy has been central to Japanese entertainment from the age of television to the age of social media, identifying the 1980s as a transformative decade. Humphrey’s narrative is particularly attentive to the ambivalent functions of laughter as both unifier and divider. Here, his attention to the gendering of laughter is particularly illuminating. The Time of Laughter is a welcome academic intervention to a critical but, at least in the English-language literature, largely overlooked aspect of the history and culture of Japan over the past seven decades.

Nathan Hopson is an associate professor of Japanese language and history in the University of Bergen's Department of Foreign Languages.

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California Split

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

“Drifting” seems like a great word to describe many of Robert Altman’s films, especially California Split, his 1974 buddy film with Elliott Gould and George Segal as gamblers whose friendship is strengthened by their losses. But Mike argues that the film has a deep structure—and one based on a Disney film that we’ve all seen a hundred times. Elliott Gould’s special brand of cool, how gambling relies upon a combination of conviction and control, and the ways in which the film is as interested in poker players as the game itself all come into the conversation. Go ahead—draw on that inside straight and give it a listen!

In this episode Dan reads a short passage from Frederick and Steven Barthelme’s memoir Double Down: Reflections on Gambling and Loss, a terrific glimpse into what motivates otherwise rational people to bet thousands of dollars on the turn of a card. Frederick Barthelme’s Bob the Gambler and Paul Auster’s The Music of Chance are two of the hosts’ favorite gambling-related novels.

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William J. Mann, "Bogie and Bacall: The Surprising True Story of Hollywood's Greatest Love Affair" (Harper, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 9 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

From the noted Hollywood biographer comes this celebration of the great American love story—the romance between Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart—capturing its complexity, contradictions, and challenges as never before.

In Bogie and Bacall: The Surprising True Story of Hollywood's Greatest Love Affair (Harper, 2023), William Mann offers a deep and comprehensive look at Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, and the unlikely love they shared. Mann details their early years—Bogart’s effete upbringing in New York City; Bacall’s rise as a model and actress. He paints a vivid portrait of their courtship and twelve-year marriage: the fights, the reconciliations, the children, the affairs, Bogie’s illness and Bacall’s steadfastness until his death. He offers a sympathetic yet clear-eyed portrait of Bacall’s life after Bogie, exploring her relationships with Frank Sinatra and Jason Robards, who would become her second husband, and the identity crisis she faced.

Surpassing previous biographies, Mann digs deep into the celebrities’ personal lives and considers their relationship from surprising angles. Bacall was just nineteen when she started dating the thrice-married forty-five-year-old Bogart. How might that age gap have influenced their relationship? In addition to what she gained, what might Bacall have lost by marrying a Hollywood superstar more than twice her age? How did Bogart, a man of average looks, become one of the greatest movie stars of all time? Throughout, Mann explains the unparalleled successes of their individual careers as well as the extraordinary love between them and the legend that has endured.

Filled with entertaining details and thoughtful insights based on newly available records and correspondence, and illustrated with 30-40 photographs, Bogie & Bacall offers a fresh look at this famous couple, their remarkable relationship, and their legacy.

William J. Mann has written biographies of Marlon Brando, Katherine Hepburn, Barbara Streisand, and Elizabeth Taylor. In his words, “I live in two of the most beautiful places on the planet: Provincetown, Massachusetts, with its exquisite light and ever-shifting dunes in the summer and the fall, and Palm Springs, California, with its majestic mountains and invigorating desert air in the winter and the spring. I am indeed blessed.”

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Raging Bull

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 7 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

What is it like to experience emotions without being able to identify their sources? What happens when a person feels intense self-loathing but cannot articulate why—even as his star rises? Join Mike and Dan for an extended conversation about Raging Bull, Martin Scorsese’s 1980 masterpiece and a film that it took the guys three years of podcasting to get the nerve to tackle. Dan explains why Raging Bull is a film that Flannery O’Connor would have admired; Mike talks about what happens when the violence confined by sports to a specific place spills over into other spaces; both debate the degree to which Jake can understand himself at the end of the film. As a portrait of a soul in distress, Raging Bull is one of the best.

Peter Biskind’s terrific Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood tells the story of how Raging Bull was made and how it marked the end of one of the greatest eras in American film.

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The Fourth Wise Man (with Jonathon Fessenden)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 4 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Jonathon Fessenden, theologian and editor of Missio Dei, invited me to talk about The Fourth Wise Man, the 1985 film based on the 1895 Henry van Dyke novella, The Other Wise Man. It was a tale I had known as a children’s story, but it was a delight to learn more about it, to watch this movie (a few times), and to share this discussion with Jonathon. Martin Sheen plays Artaban, a Persian astrologer, a magus (one of the magi), who is following the star to the birth of Christ. But he arrives too late and spends the next thirty years pursuing Jesus, always one step behind, but always in His footsteps.

The first link below is to the movie itself (71 minutes) on YouTube:

The film, The Fourth Wise Man, on YouTube, also on Formed, and on Amazon.
Our video of this discussion on the Missio Dei website and also on YouTube.
Henry van Dyke’s eulogy for Mark Twain from the New York Times.
Henry van Dyke’s poem, “Time Is.”
Henry van Dyke’s The Other Wise Man on Wikipedia.
Jonathon Fessenden on Almost Good Catholics, episode 37: Catholic Movies, Pt. 1: Silence and The Scarlet and the Black
Jonathon Fessenden on Almost Good Catholics, episode 49: Catholic Movies, Pt. 2: The Mission and A Man for All Seasons
Jonathon Fessenden on Almost Good Catholics, episode 58: The Book of Job: Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of Medieval and Early Modern Europe; he is also the host of the 'Almost Good Catholics' podcast.

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Moving Innovation: A History of Computer Animation

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 3 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Computer graphics (or CG) has changed the way we experience the art of moving images. Computer graphics is the difference between Steamboat Willie and Buzz Lightyear, between ping pong and PONG. It began in 1963 when an MIT graduate student named Ivan Sutherland created Sketchpad, the first true computer animation program. Sutherland noted: "Since motion can be put into Sketchpad drawings, it might be exciting to try making cartoons." This book, the first full-length history of CG, shows us how Sutherland's seemingly offhand idea grew into a multibillion dollar industry.

In Moving Innovation, Tom Sito--himself an animator and industry insider for more than thirty years--describes the evolution of CG. His story features a memorable cast of characters--math nerds, avant-garde artists, cold warriors, hippies, video game enthusiasts, and studio executives: disparate types united by a common vision. Sito shows us how fifty years of work by this motley crew made movies like Toy Story and Avatar possible.

Tom Sito has been a professional animator since 1975. One of the key players in Disney’s animation revival of the 1980s and 1990s, he worked on such classic Disney films as The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and The Lion King (1994). He left Disney to help set up the Dreamworks Animation Unit in 1995. He is Professor of Cinema Practice in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California.

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Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon, "Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film" (U California Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 2 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

This field-defining collection establishes unfinished film projects--abandoned, interrupted, lost, or open-ended--as rich and under-appreciated resources for feminist film and media studies. In deeply researched and creatively conceived chapters, scholars join with film practitioners in approaching the unfinished film as an ideal site for revealing the lived experiences, practical conditions, and institutional realities of women's film production across historical periods and national borders.

Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon's Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film (U California Press, 2023) recovers projects and practices marginalized in film industries and scholarship alike, while also showing how feminist filmmakers have cultivated incompletion as an aesthetic strategy. Objects of loss and of possibility, incomplete films raise profound historiographical and ethical questions about the always unfinished project of film history, film spectatorship, and film studies.

Host Annie Berke sits down with editors Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon to ask how this project originated, what makes a film "incomplete," and what unfinished work has to tell us about the nature of cinema and art.

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The Great Dictator

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

What’s the most edgy film you’ve ever seen—one that makes you uncomfortable and doesn’t tell you how to feel or react? We’d bet that it isn’t as close to the bleeding edge as Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 The Great Dictator, his first talkie and still highest-grossing film. Chaplin’s beloved Tramp fumbling with a soup spoon is one thing; his running from stormtroopers is quite another. Join Mike and Dan for a conversation about the issues raised in Chaplin’s greatest work as well as his bravery in making it.

In this episode, Dan reads a quotation by Charlie Chaplin, quoted in Scott Eyman’s terrific 2023 biography, Charlie Chaplin vs. America. (Check out the New Books Network later this fall for an interview with the author.) You can read what Chaplin himself said about The Great Dictator in this collection of interviews and his own autobiography.

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Film Chat: Hsin-Chien Huang on VR Film in Taiwan

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The host was Adina Zemanek, in conversation with Hsin-Chien Huang, a new media creator with a background in art, design and digital entertainment, whose works have been exhibited and won awards at many renowned international venues. We talked about his experience in creating immersive films, major themes his works have addressed, the role of immersive film in expanding our field of vision and its particularities in terms of storytelling strategies, as well as Taiwan as an environment for producing VR film.

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Penelope Ingram, "Imperiled Whiteness: How Hollywood and Media Make Race in 'Postracial' America" (UP of Mississippi, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In Imperiled Whiteness: How Hollywood and Media Make Race in "Postracial" America (University Press of Mississippi, 2023), Penelope Ingram examines the role played by media in the resurgence of white nationalism and neo-Nazi movements in the Obama-to-Trump era. As politicians on the right stoked anxieties about whites “losing ground” and “being left behind,” media platforms turned whiteness into a commodity that was packaged and disseminated to a white populace. Reading popular film and television franchises (Planet of the Apes, Star Trek, and The Walking Dead) through political flashpoints, such as debates over immigration reform, gun control, and Black Lives Matter protests, Ingram reveals how media cultivated feelings of white vulnerability and loss among white consumers. By exploring the convergence of entertainment, news, and social media in a digital networked environment, Ingram demonstrates how media’s renewed attention to “imperiled whiteness” enabled and sanctioned the return of overt white supremacy exhibited by alt-right groups in the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in 2017 and the Capitol riots in 2021.

Anna E. Lindner received her doctorate in Communication from Wayne State University. On Twitter.

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Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Ethan Hunt’s mission in this seventh installment of the series might seem as challenging as Tom Cruise’s: to get people back in theaters for an almost three-hour movie that they know won’t be resolved at the end. But is there anything Tom Cruise can’t do? Mike and Dan react to Dead Reckoning Part One and how it fits in the chain of the Mission Impossible films. Along the way, they talk about how Tom Cruise is like Jackie Chan, why creating the character of Gabriel lets the filmmakers have an AI plot and fistfights on a train, and how a successful film franchise resembles the Grateful Dead. This episode ends with Dan going on record about what will happen in Dead Reckoning Part Two—do you agree? Listen and let them know!

Check out Amy Johnston’s How to Stunt in Hollywood for interviews with professionals who do the terrifying work for all the rest of the actors who aren’t Tom Cruise. You might also enjoy Danger on the Silver Screen, Scott McGee’s appreciation of cinema’s greatest stunts.

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Wirsching: Bombay Talkies B-Side

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of High Theory, we continue our conversation with Debashree Mukherjee about the pioneering film studio Bombay Talkies, founded in 1934 in the city of Bombay (now Mumbai) by Himansu Rai and Devika Rani. Here, she focuses on cinematographer Josef Wirsching, whose rare behind-the-scenes photographs of life and work at the studio appear in her new book Bombay Talkies: An Unseen History of Indian Cinema. Wirsching fled fascism in Europe, and brought the influence of German Expressionism to Indian cinema, and was responsible for the cinematic stylings of groundbreaking films like Achhyut Kanya (1936), Mahal (1949), and Pakeezah (1972). His experiences teach us about the stifling effects of fascism on art and the peculiarity of national cinema as an analytic category. The diverse global origins and training of the cast and crew his photographs document offer new ways of writing the history of labor in Indian Cinema.

If you want to learn more about Debashree’s research, and her new book, listen back to our earlier episode called “Bombay Talkies.”

Debashree Mukherjee is Associate Professor of film and media in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University. Her first book, Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City (2020), approaches film history as an ecology of material practices and practitioners. Her second book project, Camera Obscura: Media at the Dawn of Planetary Extraction, develops a media history of oceanic migrations and plantation capitalism. Debashree edits the peer-reviewed journal BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies and in a previous life she worked in Mumbai’s film and TV industries as an assistant director, writer, and cameraperson.

Image: Sourced from Bombay Talkies: An Unseen History of Indian Cinema with permission.

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Bombay Talkies

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Debashree Mukherjee talks about the pioneering film studio founded in 1934 in the city of Bombay (now Mumbai) by Himansu Rai and Devika Rani. Its cast and crew of diverse global origins and training, offer new ways of writing the history of labor in Indian Cinema. In the accompanying B-Side episode, she focuses on her new book Bombay Talkies: An Unseen History of Indian Cinema, which features rare behind-the-scenes photographs from the personal archive of cinematographer Josef Wirsching. Wirsching brought the influence of German Expressionism to Indian cinema, and was responsible for the cinematic stylings of groundbreaking films like Achhyut Kanya (1936), Mahal (1949), and Pakeezah (1972).

Image: Sourced from Bombay Talkies: An Unseen History of Indian Cinema with permission.

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Mani Sharpe, "Late-Colonial French Cinema: Filming the Algerian War of Independence" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In Late-Colonial French Cinema: Filming the Algerian War of Independence, Mani Sharpe peploys the term “late-colonial” to describe (mostly) French films made during, and in response to, the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962). Sharpe argues that late-colonial cinema represents a formally and thematically important, yet unappreciated tendency in French cinema; one that has largely been overshadowed by a scholarly focus on the French New Wave. Sharpe contends that whilst late-colonial French cinema cannot be seen as a coherent cinematic movement, school of filmmaking, or genre, it can be seen as a coherent ethical trend, with many of the fifteen central case studies explored in Late-colonial French Cinema filtering the Algerian War of Independence through a discourse of “redemptive pacifism”.

Dr. Mani Sharpe about Late-Colonial French Cinema: Filming the Algerian War of Independence out in 2023 with Edinburgh University Press. Dr. Sharpe is a Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Leeds. He previously taught Film Studies at Newcastle University and La Sorbonne – Paris 3. Dr. Sharpe’s areas of expertise include: cinema and war; film studies; violence and visuality; de-colonisation; contemporary film theory; French cinema; the French New Wave; cultural studies; defacement; and the politics of the close-up. Dr. Sharpe earned his B.A. and M.A. at Leeds and his Ph.D. at Newcastle University. He is the author of several articles on late-colonial French cinema, having published in French Studies, Journal of European Studies, Journal of War and Culture Studies, and Studies in French Cinema, amongst others.Late-colonial French Cinema: Filming the Algerian War of Independence is his first book.

Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California.

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Xiaoning Lu, "Moulding the Socialist Subject: Cinema and Chinese Modernity (1949-1966)" (Brill, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Xiaoning Lu received her BA and MA in Chinese Literature and Language from Nanjing University and Fudan University respectively. She then earned her PhD in Comparative Literature from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Prior to joining SOAS in 2010, she had taught cinema and cultural studies, modern Chinese literature and popular culture at Stony Brook University and Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich.

Xiaoning’s research focuses on the complex relationship between cultural production and state governance in modern China. She is the author of Moulding the Socialist Subject: Cinema and Chinese Modernity 1949-1966 (Brill, 2020) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures (OUP, 2020). Her writings on various aspects of Chinese socialist cinema and culture have appeared in journals and edited collections, including Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Journal of Contemporary China, Chinese Film Stars, Maoist Laughter, Surveillance in Asian Cinema: Under Eastern Eyes and Words and Their Stories: Essays on the Language of the Chinese Revolution. She was recently a recipient of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship through which she researched transnational film practices in the People’s Republic of China from 1949 to 1989.

In addition to her scholarly work, Xiaoning is passionate at introducing contemporary Chinese films to UK audiences. With colleagues at Shanghai Art Film Federation, she co-curated Chinese Art Film Festival London Showcase from 2016 to 2018 exploring social and cultural issues in contemporary Chinese society, including the persistence of traditional values in China’s modernization and Chinese women’s filmmaking. Recognized for her regional expertise, she was invited to provide advice on China-related cultural production for the National Theatre, RDF television, and other media companies in the UK.

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The Matrix

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Do you possess ideas—or do ideas possess you? Is it better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied? Why is The Matrix so universally loved by people of all political, moral, and philosophical attitudes? Mike and Dan plug into The Matrix, the action thriller that surprised everyone who saw it in 1999 as well as first-time viewers today. What would have happened if James Cameron had directed it, how the film resembles the best installment of the Star Wars films, and how Keanu Reeves depicts the liberating effects of free will all come into the conversation. So take the red pill and give it a listen!

While filming, cast members were given assigned reading: Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, Kevin Kelly’s Out of Control, and Introducing Evolutionary Psychology by Dylan Evans. Keep up with the syllabus!

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Michele Meek, "Consent Culture and Teen Films: Adolescent Sexuality in US Movies" (Indiana UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Teen films of the 1980s were notorious for treating consent as irrelevant, with scenes of boys spying in girls' locker rooms and tricking girls into sex. While contemporary movies now routinely prioritize consent, ensure date rape is no longer a joke, and celebrate girls' desires, sexual consent remains a problematic and often elusive ideal in teen films.

In Consent Culture and Teen Films: Adolescent Sexuality in US Movies (Indiana UP, 2023), Michele Meek traces the history of adolescent sexuality in US cinema and examines how several films from the 2000s, including Blockers, To All the Boys I've Loved Before, The Kissing Booth, and Alex Strangelove, take consent into account. Yet, at the same time, Meek reveals that teen films expose how affirmative consent ("yes means yes") fails to protect youth from unwanted and unpleasant sexual encounters. By highlighting ambiguous sexual interactions in teen films—such as girls' failure to obtain consent from boys, queer teens subjected to conversion therapy camps, and youth manipulated into sexual relationships with adults—Meek unravels some of consent's intricacies rather than relying on oversimplification.

By exposing affirmative consent in teen films as gendered, heteronormative, and cis-centered, Consent Culture and Teen Films suggests we must continue building a more inclusive consent framework that normalizes youth sexual desire and agency with all its complexities and ambivalences.

Peter C. Kunze is a visiting assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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Mathias F. Clasen, "Why Horror Seduces" (Oxford UP, 2017)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 8 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

From vampire apocalypses, shark attacks, witches, and ghosts, to murderous dolls bent on revenge, horror has been part of the American cinematic imagination for almost as long as pictures have moved on screens. But why do they captivate us so? What is the drive to be frightened, and why is it so perennially popular?

Why Horror Seduces (Oxford UP, 2017) addresses these questions through evolutionary social sciences.Explaining the functional seduction of horror entertainment, this book draws on cutting-edge findings in the evolutionary social sciences, showing how the horror genre is a product of human nature. Integrating the study of horror with the sciences of human nature, the book claims that horror entertainment works by targeting humans' adaptive tendency to find pleasure in make-believe, allowing a high intensity experience within a safe context.

Through analyses of well-known and popular modern American works of horror--Rosemary's Baby; The Shining; I Am Legend; Jaws; and several others--author Mathias Clasen illustrates how these works target evolved cognitive and emotional mechanisms; we are attracted to horrifying entertainment because we have an adaptive tendency to find pleasure in make-believe that allows us to experience negative emotions at high levels of intensity within a safe context. Organized into three parts identifying fictional works by evolutionary mode--the evolution of horror; evolutionary interpretations of horror; the future of horror--Why Horror Seduces succinctly explores the cognitive processes behind spectators' need to scream.

Mathias Clasen Associate Professor of English at Aarhus University in Denmark. Clasen’s research integrates horror study with the natural and social sciences, in particular human behavioral biology and evolutionary and cognitive psychology

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel.

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Ball of Fire

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 7 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

When Mike casually remarked to Dan that he had just re-watched Ball of Fire, the 1941 Barbara Stanwyck / Gary Cooper screwball comedy co-written by Billy Wilder and directed by Howard Hawks, Dan replied that he had “always wanted to, but never gotten around to seeing it.” Mike made demands, Dan pressed play, and here’s their conversation about what it’s like when a friend takes one of your film recommendations and wholly enjoys it. They also talk about the ways in which dancing, slang, and falling in love are messier than entries in an encyclopedia—wonderfully so. Mike even compares this film to one by John Carpenter—and he’s 100% correct. So stop worrying about the quest for knowledge and learn how to cha-cha!

Dan has interviewed Catherine Russell on New Books in Film about her new book, The Cinema of Barbara Stanwyck. You can also find a collection of interviews with Howard Hawks here and Todd McCarthy’s 2007 biography of Hawks here.

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Robin Steedman, "Creative Hustling: Women Making and Distributing Films from Nairobi" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 6 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

What is the future of the global creative economy? In Creative Hustling: Women Making and Distributing Films from Nairobi (MIT Press, 2023), Robin Steedman, a postdoc in the Department of Management, Society and Communication at Copenhagen Business School, offers a detailed analysis of the struggles and successes of women in Kenya’s capital city. The book draws on detailed fieldwork in Nairobi and an in-depth knowledge of the international film industry to explain how gender, class, and racial inequalities operate both at the local and global scale. Blending analysis of key films and directors with significant theoretical contributions such as the idea of creative hustling itself, the book is essential reading across media and cultural studies as well as social science and humanities, as well as for anyone interested in understanding how film and TV works.

Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Sheffield.

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Tilly Bridges, "Begin Transmission: The Trans Allegories of The Matrix" (BearManor Media, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In Begin Transmission: The Trans Allegories of The Matrix (BearManor Media, 2023), trans woman and screenwriter Tilly Bridges takes you through the trans allegories of the Matrix franchise, with deep dives into The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, The Animatrix, The Matrix Revolutions, and The Matrix Resurrections, tracking one person's transition journey - from Thomas Anderson, to Neo... to Trinity. Each movie's allegory is deeply layered, building from movie to movie, and speaks to a different aspect of trans existence. You'll learn how color is used to convey more than you realize, how Neo's psyche is personified in the people around him, how no other mass media franchise speaks as truly, deeply, and honestly to the trans experience, and exactly why these movies are beloved and vital to the trans community (and their cis allies). Free your mind, and see just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Jana Byars is an independent scholar located in Amsterdam.

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Suk-Young Kim, "Surviving Squid Game: A Guide to K-Drama, Netflix, and Global Streaming Wars" (Applause Books, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In Surviving Squid Game: A Guide to K-Drama, Netflix, and Global Streaming Wars (Applause Books, 2023), scholar Suk-Young Kim reflects on Netflix's most-viewed series and one of the most influential Korean dramas, Squid Game. The series premiered in September 2021, when the pandemic cloud still hung heavy over viewers and seemed to mirror the societal ills COVID-19 brought to the surface. Kim explores the drama's intricate imagery, discussion of free will, and other components that made Squid Game strike a chord with so many viewers. This book is essential for anyone wanting to delve deeper into this global phenomenon.

Dr. Suk-Young Kim is a professor at UCLA. You can find details about Dr. Kim’s work here.

Leslie Hickman is a translator and writer who earned her MA in Korean Studies from Yonsei University. On Twitter.

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Jennifer Caplan, "Funny, You Don't Look Funny: Judaism and Humor from the Silent Generation to Millennials" (Wayne State UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In this comprehensive approach to Jewish humor focused on the relationship between humor and American Jewish practice, Jennifer Caplan calls us to adopt a more expansive view of what it means to “do Jewish,” revealing that American Jews have turned, and continue to turn, to humor as a cultural touchstone. Caplan frames Funny, You Don't Look Funny: Judaism and Humor from the Silent Generation to Millennials (Wayne State UP, 2023) around four generations of Jewish Americans from the Silent Generation to Millennials, highlighting a shift from the utilization of Jewish-specific markers to American-specific markers.

Jewish humor operates as a system of meaning-making for many Jewish Americans. By mapping humor onto both the generational identity of those making it and the use of Judaism within it, new insights about the development of American Judaism emerge. Caplan’s explication is innovative and insightful, engaging with scholarly discourse across Jewish studies and Jewish American history; it includes the work of Joseph Heller, Larry David, Woody Allen, Seinfeld, the Coen brothers films, and Broad City. This example of well-informed scholarship begins with an explanation of what makes Jewish humor Jewish and why Jewish humor is such a visible phenomenon. Offering ample evidence and examples along the way, Caplan guides readers through a series of phenomenological and ideological changes across generations, concluding with commentary regarding the potential influences on Jewish humor of later Millennials, Gen Z, and beyond.

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Mulholland Drive

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 3 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) is in the same neighborhood as Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd and asks us to think about similar ideas: the power of self-delusion, the seductive nature of fame, and what happens to a dead dream. Join Mike and Dan for a conversation about what they call “red arrow videos” on YouTube and what good directors know about their audiences. We all know that movies are illusions—but we keep falling for them anyway. So grab that blue key and give it a listen! Just watch out for the man behind Winkie’s.

Interested in David Lynch? Listen here to Courtenay Stallings interviewed on the New Books Network about her book Laura’s Ghost: Women Speak about Twin Peaks. You can find a collection of interviews with Lynch here and his autobiography here.

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Stella Dallas

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Stella Dallas, the star vehicle for Barbara Stanwyck, hinges on a thought experiment: if you knew that by pushing a button your child would be happy for the rest of her life—but the cost of this happiness was that you could never see her again—would you do it? Mike and Dan talk about King Vidor’s 1937 melodrama as an example of what movies do so well: getting viewers to understand why people make decisions that defy logic but which are emotionally reasonable. Mike calls Stella a character who exhibits the maximum of emotion with the minimum of introspection: is he correct? Skip that birthday party—no one’s coming, anyway—and give this a listen!

Dan interviewed Catherine Russell on New Books in Film about her 2023 book The Cinema of Barbara Stanwyck. You can find the interview here and the book here. If you’re interested in the 1923 novel by Olive Higgins Prouty upon which the film is based, you can find it here.

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Sunset Blvd

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 04:00:00 +0000

How would you handle years of adoration and fame? Do you think you’d still be, essentially, yourself but with a better car—or would you become a different person? Join Mike and Dan for a conversation about Sunset Blvd, Billy Wilder’s 1950 look at the movie industry, the drug of fame, and what happens when the public no longer buys what a star is selling. Norma Desmond may be a figure of fun—but she’s not wrong. Network, Some Like it Hot, and the biggest trial of 1995 all enter the discussion. So tell Mr. DeMille you’re ready for your close-up and give it a listen!

You can find Joseph McBride’s recent biography of Billy Wilder here. Sam Staggs’ book-length study of Sunset Blvd can be found here.

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Arturo Rodríguez Morató and Alvaro Santana-Acuña, "Sociology of the Arts in Action: New Perspectives on Creation, Production, and Reception" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 11 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

What are the latest developments in the sociology of the arts? In Sociology of the Arts in Action: New Perspectives on Creation, Production, and Reception (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023), Arturo Rodríguez Morató, a Professor of Sociology and current Director of the CECUPS (Center for the Study of Culture, Politics and Society) at the University of Barcelona, and Alvaro Santana-Acuña, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Whitman College, bring together 12 leading researchers to present new empirical and theoretical breakthroughs within the field. The book has a huge range of case studies and approaches, from architectural competitions and graffiti to The Beatles, opera, and football shirts. Drawing on Spanish-speaking scholarship, the book broadens the global basis for the sociology of art, and is essential reading across the humanities and social sciences.

Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Sheffield.

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Elephant Man

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 6 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

George Orwell said, "By fifty, every man has the face he deserves." To what degree does David Lynch's The Elephant Man (1980) respond to the idea that our appearances define our moral selves? Join Mike and Dan for a conversation about the ways in which the story of John Merrick resonates in contemporary reality-TV and how Meririck is trapped in a series of performances. There's a sense that Lynch does to Merrick what the characters--good and bad--do to him in the film: does Lynch get to use Merrick like the shark in Jaws but also like Helen in The Miracle Worker? Give it a listen and decide!

The film is based on two books. The first is Frederick Treves' The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences, which you can find here. The second is Ashley Montagu's The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity. Mike and Dan also talk about the play by Bernard Pomerance in which the actor playing Merrick uses no makeup--you can find that here.

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Xiaomei Chen, "Performing the Socialist State: Modern Chinese Theater and Film Culture" (Columbia UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 5 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Xiaomei Chen's book Performing the Socialist State: Modern Chinese Theater and Film Culture (Columbia UP, 2023) looks at three "founding fathers" of Chinese spoken drama: Tian Han, Hong Shen, and Ouyang Yuqian. Dr. Chen argues that these three theatre artists laid the groundwork for Mao-era Chinese drama during the earlier Republic period, and that there is more continuity between the two periods than has typically been supposed. She also argues that these artists were not mere victims of heavy-handed political ideologues, but were passionate and sophisticated political thinkers in their own right. By telling the stories of these three figures and their effect on later Chinese drama, Dr. Chen helps us understand why the performing arts have such notable political consequence in the history of 20th century China.

Note: our interview with Dr. Chen on her 2016 book Staging Chinese Revolution can be found here.

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.

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Monika Raesch, "Abbas Kiarostami: Interviews" (UP of Mississippi, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 4 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The cinephile community knows Abbas Kiarostami (1940–2016) as one of the most important filmmakers of the previous decades. This volume illustrates why the Iranian filmmaker achieved critical acclaim around the globe and details his many contributions to the art of filmmaking. Kiarostami began his illustrious career in his native Iran in the 1970s, although European and American audiences did not begin to take notice until he released his 1987 feature Where’s the Friend’s House? His films defy established conventions, placing audiences as active viewers who must make decisions about actions and characters while watching the narratives unfold. He asks viewers to question the genre construct (Close-Up) and challenges them to determine how to watch and imagine a narrative (Ten and Shirin). In recognition for his approach to the craft, Kiarostami was awarded many honors during his lifetime, including the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 for Taste of Cherry.

In Abbas Kiarostami: Interviews (UP of Mississippi, 2023) ,editor Monika Raesch collects eighteen interviews (several translated into English for the first time), lectures, and other materials that span Kiarostami’s career in the film industry. In addition to exploring his expertise, the texts provide insight into his life philosophy. This volume offers a well-rounded picture of the filmmaker through his conversations with journalists, film scholars, critics, students, and audience members.

Monika Raesch is associate professor of film studies and video production at Suffolk University. A native of Germany, she is editor of Margarethe von Trotta: Interviews, published by University Press of Mississippi, and author of The Kiarostami Brand: Creation of a Film Auteur. Her work has appeared in such publications as the Journal of Film and Video and Feminist Media Studies.

Kaveh Rafie is a PhD candidate specializing in modern and contemporary art at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His dissertation charts the course of modern art in the late Pahlavi Iran (1941-1979) and explores the extent to which the 1953 coup marks the recuperation of modern art as a viable blueprint for cultural globalization in Iran.

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Black Film, British Cinema II

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 25 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Clive Nwonka and Anamik Saha discuss their forthcoming book Black Film, British Cinema II (publishing in March with Goldsmiths Press), a book which brings together scholars, thinkers and practitioners to consider the politics of blackness in contemporary British cinema and visual practice.

Black Film British Cinema II considers the politics of blackness in contemporary British cinema and visual practice. This second iteration of Black Film British Cinema, marking over 30 years since the ground-breaking ICA Documents 7 publication in 1988, continues this investigation by offering a crucial contemporary consideration of the textual, institutional, cultural and political shifts that have occurred from this period. It focuses on the practices, values and networks of collaborations that have shaped the development of black film culture and representation. But what is black British film? How do such films, however defined, produce meaning through visual culture, and what are the political, social and aesthetic motivations and effects? How are the new forms of black British film facilitating new modes of representation, authorship and exhibition? Explored in the context of film aesthetics, curatorship, exhibition and arts practice, and the politics of diversity policy, Black Film British Cinema II provides the platform for new scholars, thinkers and practitioners to coalesce on these central questions. It is explicitly interdisciplinary, operating at the intersections of film studies, media and communications, sociology, politics and cultural studies. Through a diverse range of perspectives and theoretical interventions that offer a combination of traditional chapters, long-form essays, shorter think pieces, and critical dialogues, Black Film British Cinema II is a comprehensive, sustained, wide ranging collection that offers new framework for understanding contemporary black film practices and the cultural and creative dimensions that shape the making of blackness and race.

Hosted and produced by Sam Kelly; Mixed by Samantha Doyle; Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux

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Brad Krumholz, "Why Do Actors Train?: Embodiment for Theatre Makers and Thinkers" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 24 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Why Do Actors Train?: Embodiment for Theatre Makers and Thinkers (Bloomsbury, 2023) powerfully demystifies the actor-training process by focusing on acting as embodied cognition. In this framework, thought is action and action is thought. Krumholz uses the frame of embodied cognition to analyze which specific skills are actually being developed through several acting exercises. He bypasses typical acting-coach encouragements to "stop thinking" and "get out of your head," instead insisting that all acting is always already both physical and mental. This is a must-read book for anyone interested in the intersections of philosophy, theatre, and psychology, as well as anyone who has ever wondered what the point of seemingly-trivial acting exercises actually is.

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.

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Thomas Chen, "Made in Censorship: The Tiananmen Movement in Chinese Literature and Film" (Columbia UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 22 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series.

In this episode, our host Ignatius Suglo discusses the book Made in Censorship: The Tiananmen Movement in Chinese Literature and Film (Columbia University Press, 2022) by Thomas Chen.

You’ll hear about:

Author’s intellectual and professional trajectory that led him to the book;
How to study Tiananmen Movement as a media event through a careful selection of literature and film materials;
How to think of the productivity of silence and absence;
The use of “positive energy” in mobilizing censorship;
Human labor and the idea of “workshop” in the work of censorship;
How iconic images such as “Tank Man” have been interpreted and appropriated;
The role played by women in social movements and their representations in post-1989 China;
The emergence of Internet in the 1990s and the paradoxical nature of “Internet sovereignty”;
Author’s positionality and reflection on writing the book.

About the book

The violent suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations is thought to be contemporary China’s most taboo subject. Yet despite sweeping censorship, Chinese culture continues to engage with the history, meaning, and memory of the Tiananmen movement. Made in Censorship examines the surprisingly rich corpus of Tiananmen literature and film produced in mainland China since 1989, both officially sanctioned and unauthorized, contending that censorship does not simply forbid—it also shapes what is created. You can find more about the book here by Columbia University Press.

Author: Thomas Chen graduated with a B.A. in Comparative Literature and English from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UCLA. With a focus on modern Chinese literature and cinema, his research interests include world literature/cinema, translation studies, and historiography. His book Made in Censorship: The Tiananmen Movement in Chinese Literature and Film is available from Columbia University Press.

Host: Ignatius Suglo is Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication. He completed his Ph.D. in China Studies at the University of Hong Kong. He also has a secondary specialization in African Studies. His research interests

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Catherine Russell, "The Cinema of Barbara Stanwyck: Twenty-Six Short Essays on a Working Star" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 17 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

From The Lady Eve, to The Big Valley, Barbara Stanwyck played parts that showcased her multidimensional talents but also illustrated the limits imposed on women in film and television. Catherine Russell’s A to Z consideration of the iconic actress analyzes twenty-six facets of Stanwyck and the America of her times. Russell examines Stanwyck’s work onscreen against the backdrop of costuming and other aspects of filmmaking. But she also views the actress’s off-screen performance within the Hollywood networks that made her an industry favorite and longtime cornerstone of the entertainment community. Russell’s montage approach coalesces into an engrossing portrait of a singular artist whose intelligence and savvy placed her center-stage in the production of her films and in the debates around women, femininity, and motherhood that roiled mid-century America. Original and rich, The Cinema of Barbara Stanwyck: Twenty-Six Short Essays on a Working Star (U Illinois Press, 2023) is an essential and entertaining reexamination of an enduring Hollywood star.

Catherine Russell is Distinguished University Professor of Film Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. She goes by Katie, she sings in a choir, and she has two cats. In the summer she lives in Georgian Bay, Ontario.

Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found at https://fifteenminutefilm.podb... and on Twitter @15MinFilm.

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Sarah Atkinson and Helen W. Kennedy, "Secret Cinema and the Immersive Experience Industry" (Manchester UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 13 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

What is the future of media? In Secret Cinema and the Immersive Experience Industry (Manchester UP, 2022), Sarah Atkinson, a Professor of Screen Media at Kings College London, and Helen W Kennedy, Professor of Creative and Cultural Industries, at the University of Nottingham, explore the rise of immersive experiences using the detailed case study of Secret Cinema. The book offers both a rich and extensive history of Secret Cinema, as well as analysis of the evolution of key trends in media production and consumption more generally. The book covers the key performances, including mainstream hits such as Back To The Future, Casino Royale, and Stranger Things, as well as the companies evolution and smaller projects. As live experiences and media industries evolve in the post-pandemic era, the book will be essential reading across media and cultural studies, as well as across humanities and social sciences, and for anyone interested in the future of media and live performance industries.

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Naomi McDougall Jones, "The Wrong Kind of Women: Inside Our Revolution to Dismantle the Gods of Hollywood" (Beacon, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 12 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The Wrong Kind of Women: Inside Our Revolution to Dismantle the Gods of Hollywood (Beacon, 2020) by Naomi McDougall Jones is a brutally honest look at the systemic exclusion of women in film—an industry with massive cultural influence—and how, in response, women are making space in cinema for their voices to be heard.

Generation after generation, women have faced the devastating reality that Hollywood is a system built to keep them out. The films created by that system influence everything from our worldviews to our brain chemistry. When women’s voices are excluded from the medium, the impact on society is immense. Actor, screenwriter, and award-winning independent filmmaker Naomi McDougall Jones takes us inside the cutthroat, scandal-laden film industry, where only 5% of top studio films are directed by women and less than 20% of leading characters in mainstream films are female. Jones calls on all of us to act radically to build a different kind of future for cinema—not only for the women being actively hurt inside the industry but for those outside it, whose lives, purchasing decisions, and sense of selves are shaped by the stories told.

Informed by the journey of her own career; by interviews with others throughout the film industry; and by cold, hard data, Jones deconstructs the casual, commonplace sexism rampant in Hollywood that has kept women out of key roles for decades. Next, she shows us the growing women-driven revolution in filmmaking—sparked by streaming services, crumbling distribution models, direct-to-audience access via innovative online platforms, and outside advocacy groups—which has enabled women to build careers outside the traditional studio system. Finally, she makes a business case for financing and producing films by female filmmakers.

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Fiona Gregory, "Actresses and Mental Illness: Histrionic Heroines" (Routledge, 2018)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 9 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Actresses and Mental Illness: Histrionic Heroines (Routledge, 2018) investigates the relationship between the work of the actress and her personal experience of mental illness, from the late nineteenth through to the end of twentieth century. Over the past two decades scholars have made great advances in our understanding of the history of the actress, unearthing the material conditions of her working life, the force of her creative agency and the politics of her reception and representation. By focusing specifically on actresses’ encounters with mental illness, Fiona Gregory builds on this earlier work and significantly supplements it.

Through detailed case studies of both well-known and neglected figures in theatre and film history, including Mrs Patrick Campbell, Vivien Leigh, Frances Farmer and Diana Barrymore, it shows how mental illness – actual or supposed – has impacted on actresses’ performances, careers and celebrity. The book covers a range of topics including: representing emotion on stage; the ‘failed’ actress; actresses and addiction; and actresses and psychiatric treatment.

Actresses and Mental Illness expands the field of actress studies by showing how consideration of the personal experience of the actress influences our understanding of her work and its reception. The book underscores how the actress can be perceived as a representative public woman, acting as a lens through which we can examine broader attitudes to women and mental illness.

Fiona Gregory is Lecturer in the Centre for Theatre and Performance at Monash University in Melbourne. Her research on the history of the actress has appeared in leading journals including New Theatre Quarterly, Theatre Survey, and Nineteenth-Century Theatre and Film.

Carmen Gomez-Galisteo, Ph.D. is a lecturer at Centro de Educación Superior de Enseñanza e Investigación Educativa (CEIE).

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James Charney, "Madness at the Movies: Understanding Mental Illness through Film" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 2 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The study of classic and contemporary films can provide a powerful avenue to understand the experience of mental illness. In Madness at the Movies: Understanding Mental Illness through Film (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023), James Charney, MD, a practicing psychiatrist and long-time cinephile, examines films that delve deeply into characters' inner worlds, and he analyzes moments that help define their particular mental illness.

Based on the highly popular course that Charney taught at Yale University and the American University of Rome, Madness at the Movies introduces readers to films that may be new to them and encourages them to view these films in an entirely new way. Through films such as Psycho, Taxi Driver, Through a Glass Darkly, Night of the Hunter, A Woman Under the Influence, Ordinary People, and As Good As It Gets, Charney covers an array of disorders, including psychosis, paranoia, psychopathy, depression, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety. He examines how these films work to convey the essence of each illness. He also looks at how each film reflects the understanding of mental illness at the time it was released as well as the culture that shaped that understanding.

Charney explains how to observe the behaviors displayed by characters in the films, paying close attention to signs of mental illness. He demonstrates that learning to read a film can be as absorbing as watching one. By viewing these films through the lens of mental health, readers can hone their observational skills and learn to assess the accuracy of depictions of mental illness in popular media.

Melek Firat Altay is a neuroscientist, biologist and musician. Her research focuses on deciphering the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders.

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Jonathan Gray, "Dislike-Minded: Media, Audiences, and the Dynamics of Taste" (NYU Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode, our host Sim Gill discusses the book Dislike-Minded: Media, Audiences, and the Dynamics of Taste (2021) by Jonathan Gray.

You’ll hear about:

A brief history of the book and its connection to global studies of media and communication;
The role of media and cultural studies in amplifying the voices of dislikers, and how can scholars in these fields better understand and appreciate the register of dislike;
The method of refractive audience analysis as a way to understand how adaptations of media texts affect people's perceptions of the original texts;
How paratexts can shape audience perceptions and understanding of a media product;
How the gendered norms may hinder women from expressing dislike, and how this relates to larger cultural systems of dislike, including political contexts;
Some recent developments that have added to or changed the initial arguments/findings in the book.

About the book

Dislike-Minded draws from over two-hundred qualitative interviews to probe what the media’s failures, wounds, and sore spots tell us about media culture, taste, identity, representation, meaning, textuality, audiences, and citizenship. The book refuses the simplicity of Pierre Bourdieu’s famous dictum that dislike is (only) snobbery. Instead, Jonathan Gray pushes onward to uncover other explanations for what it ultimately means to dislike specific artifacts of television, film, and other media, and why this dislike matters. You can find the book here by NYU Press.

Author: Jonathan Gray is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work examines how media entertainment and its audiences interact, and examines how and where value and meaning are created. He is now Chief Editor of The International Journal of Cultural Studies, co-editor, with Aswin Punathambekar and Adrienne Shaw, of NYU Press’ Critical Cultural Communication book series, and I was recently nominated as an International Communication Association Fellow.

Host: Sim Gill is a doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests concern the social and subjective effects of discourse and institutional politics as well as the interrelationships between discourse, epistemology, and subjectivity. Her master's thesis evaluated the meaning-making behind the term BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic), commonly used to describe minority ethnic communities in Britain.

Editor & Producer: Jing Wang

Keywords: Dislike, audience studies, media cultures, identity, representation, citizenship

Our podcast is part of the multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. At CARGC, we produce and promote critical, interdisciplinary, and multimodal research on global media and communication. We aim to bridge academic scholarship and public life, bringing the very best scholarship to bear on enduring global questions and pressing contemporary issues.

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Michael K. Johnson, "Speculative Wests: Popular Representations of a Region and Genre" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The Western as a genre is alive and vibrant, argues University of Maine - Farmington professor of English literature Michael K. Johnson. In Speculative Wests: Popular Representations of a Region and a Genre (U Nebraska Press, 2023), Johnson explains how authors, directors, and storytellers are pushing the classic genre into new directions by hybridizing Western tropes with science fiction, horror, and fantasy storytelling. These new speculative Westerns are revitalizing a genre, which has grown incredibly popular in recent years through television series like The Last of Us and Westworld, as well as many examples in film and literature. Speculative Westerns have also allowed space for Native and African American writers and storytellers to expand the genre into more inclusive spaces, telling stories about people often left out or stereotyped in more traditional Western stories. By including time travel, zombies, and vampires, Johnson argues that the Western has cemented itself with a new generation of Americans as one of the critical cultural narratives for understanding the United States.

Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

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Dwayne Epstein, "Killin' Generals: The Making of The Dirty Dozen, the Most Iconic WW II Movie of All Time" (Citadel Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

An explosive inside look at The Dirty Dozen, the star-studded war film that broke the rules, shocked the critics, thrilled audiences, and became an all-time classic.

The year was 1967. A cinematic blockbuster exploded across American popular culture. The Dirty Dozen didn’t just reinvent the “men on a mission” war story, it blew the genre to pieces. Like its ragtag team of misfits, it defied authority, mocked the military, and still managed to deliver action, adventure, and no-holds-barred Nazi-killing. It also received four Oscar nominations, launched the careers of many Hollywood legends, and inspired generations of filmmakers like Sam Peckinpah, Quentin Tarantino, and James Gunn.

Based on exclusive interviews with the surviving cast and crew, friends and families of the stars, and other Hollywood insiders, Killin' Generals: The Making of The Dirty Dozen, the Most Iconic WW II Movie of All Time (Citadel Press, 2023) is a riveting must-read for film buffs, military fans, and anyone who loves a down-and-dirty adventure tale. Detailed, insightful, and gossipy, Epstein’s homage spotlights the movie’s endless barrage of cinematic gold.

During a time when America was reeling from turmoil, Hollywood held an indelible mirror up to a changing society. Films like Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Cool Hand Luke, and In the Heat of the Night would define the era. But it was a gritty, violent, darkly comic World War II movie called The Dirty Dozen that would really strike a chord with audiences—and become the year’s biggest box office success. Heading up the all-star cast were Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, John Cassavettes, Charles Bronson, Donald Sutherland, Jim Brown, Robert Ryan, Clint Walker, and at his most terrifying best, Telly Savalas, propelling many of them to stardom.

Dwayne Epstein is the author of several young adult biographies, covering such celebrity personalities as Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Hilary Swank, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, and Denzel Washington for Lucent Books' People in the News series. Epstein also contributed to Bill Krohn's bestselling books Hitchcock at Work and Joe Dante and the Gremlins of Hollywood. His biography Lee Marvin: Point Blank was a New York Times bestseller.

Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found at https://fifteenminutefilm.podb... and on Twitter @15MinFilm.

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Cinegogía: An Open Access Resource for Teaching and Studying Latin American Cinema

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Cinegogía is an open-access website devoted to the teaching and study of Latin American cinemas. Bridget Franco, an associate professor of Spanish at College of the Holy Cross, founded and coordinates the website. Cinegogía contains a database of Latin American film as well as resources for teaching and researching film. Teaching resources include syllabi, teaching activities and assignments, and film guides. Cinegogía has a considerable selection of films by and about Black and Indigenous communities in Latin America. Bridget Franco and I discuss how she founded the site, teaching with Latin American film, and digital humanities projects.

Bridget Franco is Associate Professor of Spanish at College of the Holy Cross.

Reighan Gillam is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Southern California. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creations. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press).

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Jeremy Richey, "Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle to Chabrol" (Cult Epics, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

A trailblazing figure in film and popular culture, Netherlands native Sylvia Kristel became one of the biggest stars in the world as Emmanuelle in 1974. Alongside her most famous role, directed by Just Jaeckin, a little-known fact is that Sylvia Kristel also appeared in over 20 films between 1973 and 1981 featuring exceptional work with some of the greatest directors in film history including Walerian Borowczyk, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Roger Vadim and Claude Chabrol.

Now the story of Sylvia's astonishing career in the '70s is told in Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle to Chabrol (Cult Epics, 2022). Featured are new interviews with Just Jaeckin, Pim de la Parra, Robert Fraisse, Joe Dallesandro and Francis Lai among others. Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle to Chabrol is a film-by-film guide to one of the most distinctive and uncompromising careers in modern cinema, and a celebration of a most remarkable woman in a fully illustrated coffee-table book written by author Jeremy Richey.

A recollection of Sylvia Kristel's most exciting period as an actress. Beginning with her early Dutch film roles in Frank & Eva, Because of the Cats, and Naked over the Fence, this book covers all 22 movies Sylvia starred in between 1973 and 1981 including the European films Emmanuelle, Julia, No Pockets in a Shroud, Playing with Fire, Emmanuelle II, Une Femme fidele, La Marge, Alice, Rene the Cane, Goodbye Emmanuelle, Pastorale 1943, Mysteries, Tigers in Lipstick, The Fifth Musketeer, Love in First Class, Lady Chatterley's Lover, and the American films The Concorde.... Airport '79, The Nude Bomb, Private Lessons, plus a chapter on the unmade films, dozens of iconic roles that she was offered but declined written with in-depth detail. Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle to Chabrol also contains many vintage reviews and interviews with Sylvia Kristel never before translated into English, and takes a look at Sylvia's brief music recording career as well.

Jeremy R. Richey is a film and music historian and writer originally from Kentucky. The creator of the long-running blogs Moon in the Gutter and Fascination: The Jean Rollin Experience, Richey was also the publisher of the print-only journals Art Decades and Soledad. His work has appeared in a variety of books and magazines as well as on various home video supplements, including audio commentaries for Cult Epics’ releases Madame Claude and the upcoming Julia and Mysteries. Richey currently resides in Bremerton, WA with his beloved dog Ziggy.

Jeremy’s website and Instagram.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM, serves as a co-chair of the associate board at the Gene Siskel Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and volunteers in the music archive at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Bradley Morgan on Twitter.

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John Miller, "The Heart of the Forest: Why Woods Matter" (British LIbrary, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The Heart of the Forest: Why Woods Matter (British Library, 2022) looks at threats to forest life across the globe. Dr. John Miller draws on literature, film and art to explore why woods matter to us, building on the ecological case for saving trees to raise the compelling question of their cultural value.

The Heart of the Forest explores four enduring ways in which we connect to the woods – through Refuge, Sacredness, Horror and Hope – making fascinating links between emotion and genre. For Henry David Thoreau, the woods are places beyond civilisation; for Ursula LeGuin and C S Lewis, they are loaded with otherworldly potential; and for those fleeing captivity, they can provide a welcome sanctuary. Woods can strike fear, they can inspire wonder, they can be lovely, dark and deep.

With full-colour illustration throughout, this book branches out into the British Library to find both the haunting and the hopeful in an unparalleled collection of books, manuscripts and photography. It tells a global story of how we understand trees, and its beautifully illustrated pages present a moving argument for conservation and renewal.

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Johnny Walker, "Rewind, Replay: Britain and the Video Boom, 1978-92" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 7 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Nostalgia for the 1980s is in the air. From Stranger Things to the relaunch of 80s franchises like Top Gun, the American entertainment industry casts the period as an age of simpler things, clearer dichotomies, and less technology. Yet not all was simple. The 1980s were the heyday of the Cold War. They were the decade of rapid social change, of deregulation and selfish consumption, of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. They were also the decade when a new technology swept the world, setting the stage for our all-too-digital present.

A lot has been written about the rise of video in the United States, the format wars, the impact it had on the entertainment industry, on personal entertainment consumption habits, and new business models. But the rise of video was not a uniquely American phenomenon, nor was the American experience normative. In fact, wherever the new technology arrived, from the US, to the Middle East, to Eastern Europe, it reshaped social and business practices, as well as government responses to it, in ways that reflected the political, social, and economic arrangements of each space.

Johnny Walker’s Rewind, Replay: Britain and the Video Boom, 1972-1992 (Edinburgh UP, 2022) tells the story of Britain’s vide boom in the 1980s by focusing on the first video distributors who took chances on a wide range of films, from documentaries, to horror, to kids entertainment, in order to attract consumer interest. The new video shops that mushroomed across Britain turned video rental into a common practice among the public. Soon, despite a crushing recession, more and more industry players started to invest into what media at the time was dismissing as a mere ‘plaything.’ Rewind, Replay chronicles the idiosyncratic ways in which British distributors and store owners navigated various local political and economic pressures including piracy, the infamous video nasties moral panic and the government crackdown on the industry, as well as the corporate expansion of the industry which, by the end of the decade, eliminated independent distributors, and turned the pre-recorded videocassette from morally questionable enterprise into a staple of high street retail.

Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy is Teaching Professor of American Studies at Miami University of Ohio. Her book, Between Empire and Republic: America in the Colonial Canadian Imagination, came out in 2022. Twitter: @OanaGodyKenw. Oana’s webpage.

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Mauro Resmini, "Italian Political Cinema: Figure of the Long '68" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Traditionally, the definition of political cinema assumes a relationship between cinema and politics. In contrast to this view, author Mauro Resmini sees this relationship as an impasse. To illustrate this theory, Resmini turns to Italian cinema to explore how films have reinvented the link between popular art and radical politics in Italy from 1968 to the early 1980s, a period of intense political and cultural struggles also known as the long ’68.

Italian Political Cinema: Figure of the Long '68 (U Minnesota Press, 2023) conjures a multifaceted, complex portrayal of Italian society. Centered on emblematic figures in Italian cinema, it maps the currents of antagonism and repression that defined this period in the country’s history. Resmini explores how film imagined the possibilities, obstacles, and pitfalls that characterized the Italian long ’68 as a moment of crisis and transition. From workerism to autonomist Marxism to feminism, this book further expands the debate on political cinema with a critical interpretation of influential texts, some of which are currently only available in Italian.

A comprehensive and novel redefinition of political film, Italian Political Cinema introduces its audience to lesser-known directors alongside greats such as Pasolini, Bertolucci, Antonioni, and Bellocchio. Resmini offers access to untranslated work in Italian philosophy, political theory, and film theory, and forcefully advocates for the continued artistic and political relevance of these films in our time.

Mauro Resmini is associate professor of cinema and media studies and Italian at the University of Maryland, College Park.

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Ross Clare, "Ancient Greece and Rome in Modern Science Fiction: Amazing Antiquity" (Liverpool UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 3 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Ancient Greece and Rome in Modern Science Fiction: Amazing Antiquity (Liverpool UP, 2022) by Dr. Ross Clare introduces and analyses the reception of classical antiquity in contemporary science fiction. By using up-to-date methods from classical reception theory, science-fiction analysis and fictional-world studies, the book will help furnish the reader's understanding of the ways in which the literature, culture, history and mythology of ancient Greece and Rome are appropriated and represented across multiple media platforms in the science-fiction genre today. The book will therefore serve as an entry point into several areas of study: the reception of classics in popular culture, antiquity in modern media, the uses of the ancient world in science-fiction, and broader science-fiction criticism. The chapters, structured by medium, principally offer a roughly chronological overview of that medium and its treatment of ancient history, mythology, literature, and culture. An abundance of case studies from literature, film, television, and videogames—including Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and Fallout: New Vegas—show how classical antiquity is reused, encountered, and re-encountered by creators and consumers of the present. Clare shows how we bounce off images of this history, and it bounces off us, a reciprocation that creates new visions of Greece and of Rome.

In addition to this book, Ross Clare is the author of Ancient Greece and Rome in Videogames, with Bloomsbury Academic Press, as well as having written some short stories, and video game scripts. He used to teach at the University of Liverpool.

Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student at Université Laval in Quebec City. carrie-lynn.evans@lit.ulaval.ca @carrielynnland

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Colleen Lye and Christopher Nealon, "After Marx: Literature, Theory, and Value in the Twenty-First Century" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Colleen Lye and Christopher Nealon's edited volume After Marx: Literature, Theory, and Value in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge UP, 2022) demonstrates the importance of Marxist literary and cultural criticism for an era of intersectional politics and economic decline. The volume includes fresh approaches to reading poetry, fiction, film and drama, from Shakespeare to contemporary literature, and shows how Marxist literary criticism improves our understanding of racial capitalism, feminist politics, colonialism, deindustrialization, high-tech labor, ecological crisis, and other issues. A key innovation of the volume's essays is how they attend to Marx's theory of value. For Marx, capitalist value demands a range of different kinds of labor as well as unemployment. This book shows the importance of Marxist approaches to literature that reach beyond simply demonstrating the revolutionary potential or the political consciousness of a 19th-century-style industrial working class. After Marx makes an argument for the twenty-first century interconnectedness of widely different literary genres, and far-flung political struggles.

The featured speakers in this podcast include:

Colleen Lye and Christopher Nealon: Marxist Literary Study and the General Law of Capitalist Accumulation
Nikhil Pal Singh: Black Marxism and the Antinomies of Racial Capitalism
Mark Steven: Screening Insurrection: Marx, Cinema, Revolution
Joshua Clover: The Irreconcilable: Marx after Literature
Juliana Spahr: Literature and the State
Jasper Bernes: Poetry and Revolution

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Suzanne Ferriss, "Lost in Translation" (British Film Institute, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003) brings two Americans together in Tokyo, each experiencing a personal crisis. In this close look at Coppola’s multi-award-winning film, Suzanne Ferriss’s book, Lost in Translation (British Film Institute, 2023), uses the film’s travel theme as a structuring device to detail the complexities of filming the 27-day shoot without permits in Tokyo, to explore Coppola's allusions to fine art, to examine the subtle color palette, the use of music over words, and the characters' experiences in and around the Park Hyatt Tokyo. Ferriss also evaluates the filmmaker’s distinctive cinematic signature and the elements that make Lost in Translation a cinema classic.

Suzanne Ferris is Professor Emerita at Nova Southeastern University. She has published extensively on fashion, film, and cultural studies.

Latoya Johnson is an editor, writer, and bibliophile with a master's in Humanities. Her research and writing interests include books and reading in popular culture, the public history of women's fiction, and women in Greco-Roman mythology.

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Ethan Warren, "The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha" (Columbia UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Paul Thomas Anderson’s evolution from a brash, self-anointed “Indiewood” auteur to one of his generation’s most distinctive voices has been one of the most remarkable career trajectories in recent film history. From early efforts to emulate his cinematic heroes to his increasingly singular late films, Anderson has created a body of work that balances the familiar and the strange, history and myth: viewers feel perpetually off balance, unsure of whether to expect a pitch-black joke or a moment of piercing emotional resonance.

The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha (Columbia UP, 2023) provides the most complete account of Anderson’s career to date, encompassing his varied side projects and unproduced material; his personal and professional relationships with directors such as Jonathan Demme, Robert Altman, and Robert Downey Sr.; and his work as a director of music videos for Fiona Apple, Joanna Newsom, and Haim. Ethan Warren explores Anderson’s recurring thematic preoccupations―the fraught dynamics of gender and religious faith, biological and found families, and his native San Fernando Valley―as well as his screenwriting methods and his relationship to his influences. Warren argues that Anderson’s films conjure up an alternate American history that exaggerates and elides verifiable facts in search of a heightened truth marked by a deeper level of emotional hyperrealism. This book is at once an unconventional primer on Anderson’s films and a provocative reframing of what makes his work so essential.

Ethan Warren is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and is the writer and director of the film West of Her.

Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics (Twitter @15MinFilm).

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Christina Rice, "Mean...Moody...Magnificent!: Jane Russell and the Marketing of a Hollywood Legend" (UP of Kentucky, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

By the early 1950s, Jane Russell (1921–2011) should have been forgotten. Her career was launched on what is arguably the most notorious advertising campaign in cinema history, which invited filmgoers to see Howard Hughes's The Outlaw (1943) and to "tussle with Russell." Throughout the 1940s, she was nicknamed the "motionless picture actress" and had only three films in theaters. With such a slow, inauspicious start, most aspiring actresses would have given up or faded away. Instead, Russell carved out a place for herself in Hollywood and became a memorable and enduring star.

Christina Rice offers the first biography of the actress and activist perhaps most well-known for her role in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). Despite the fact that her movie career was stalled for nearly a decade, Russell's filmography is respectable. She worked with some of Hollywood's most talented directors―including Howard Hawks, Raoul Walsh, Nicholas Ray, and Josef von Sternberg―and held her own alongside costars such as Marilyn Monroe, Robert Mitchum, Clark Gable, Vincent Price, and Bob Hope. She also learned how to fight back against Howard Hughes, her boss for more than thirty-five years, and his marketing campaigns that exploited her physical appearance.

Beyond the screen, Rice reveals Russell as a complex and confident woman. She explores the star's years as a spokeswoman for Playtex as well as her deep faith and work as a Christian vocalist. Rice also discusses Russell's leadership and patronage of the WAIF foundation, which for many years served as the fundraising arm of the International Social Service (ISS) agency. WAIF raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, successfully lobbied Congress to change laws, and resulted in the adoption of tens of thousands of orphaned children. For Russell, the work she did to help unite families overshadowed any of her onscreen achievements.

On the surface, Jane Russell seemed to live a charmed life, but Rice illuminates her darker moments and her personal struggles, including her empowered reactions to the controversies surrounding her films and her feelings about being portrayed as a sex symbol. Mean...Moody...Magnificent!: Jane Russell and the Marketing of a Hollywood Legend (UP of Kentucky, 2021) offers a fresh perspective on a star whose legacy endures not simply because she forged a notable film career, but also because she effectively used her celebrity to benefit others.

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Larisa Grollemond and Bryan C. Keene, "The Fantasy of the Middle Ages: An Epic Journey through Imaginary Medieval Worlds" (Getty, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

This abundantly illustrated book is an illuminating exploration of the impact of medieval imagery on three hundred years of visual culture.

From the soaring castles of Sleeping Beauty to the bloody battles of Game of Thrones, from Middle-earth in The Lord of the Rings to mythical beasts in Dungeons & Dragons, and from Medieval Times to the Renaissance Faire, the Middle Ages have inspired artists, playwrights, filmmakers, gamers, and writers for centuries. Indeed, no other historical era has captured the imaginations of so many creators.

The Fantasy of the Middle Ages: An Epic Journey Through Imaginary Medieval Worlds (J. Paul Getty Museum, 2022) aims to uncover the many reasons why the Middle Ages have proven so applicable to a variety of modern moments from the eighteenth through the twenty-first century. These “medieval” worlds are often the perfect ground for exploring contemporary cultural concerns and anxieties, saying much more about the time and place in which they were created than they do about the actual conditions of the medieval period. With over 140 color illustrations, from sources ranging from thirteenth-century illuminated manuscripts to contemporary films and video games, and a preface by Game of Thrones costume designer Michele Clapton, The Fantasy of the Middle Ages will surprise and delight both enthusiasts and scholars.

This title is published to accompany an exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center from June 21 to September 11, 2022.

Larisa Grollemond is the assistant curator of manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum. She received her Ph.D. in art history from the University of Pennsylvania and was a contributing editor for Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World (Getty Publications, 2019).

Bryan C. Keene (he/él/they/elle) is assistant professor of art history at Riverside City College and a former associate curator of manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum. He specializes in codex cultures of the global Middle Ages and fantasy medievalisms. He holds a Ph.D. from the Courtauld Institute of Art, at the University of London.

Evan Zarkadas (MA) is an independent scholar of European and Medieval history and an educator. He received his master’s in history from the University of Maine focusing on Medieval Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, medieval identity, and ethnicity during the late Middle Ages.

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Nicholas Brown, "Autonomy: The Social Ontology of Art under Capitalism" (Duke UP, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 19 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In Autonomy: The Social Ontology of Art under Capitalism (Duke University Press, 2019), Nicholas Brown offers a fresh perspective on aesthetic autonomy and its political value, one of the great debates of the twentieth century. The monograph illustrates the viability of the modernist project in the era after postmodernism while offering one illuminating reading after another of contemporary examples in novels, photography, sculpture, popular music, TV, or movies. Brown defends art as a liberatory force in an age dominated by markets. By exploring the nuances of artistic production, Autonomy is a feast of delicious and insightful appraisals of artwork—with surprising turns and twists—within a larger context of the dialectics between art and market.

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Film Chat: Vietnamese Refugee Camps in Penghu

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In this podcast, the host, Lara Momesso, interviews the Taiwanese movie director Asio Liu on his most recent movie project on the Vietnamese refugee camps in Penghu. Many of us are familiar with the inexorable flow of Vietnamese boat people right after the end of the war in Vietnam. Though, very few know that some of the Vietnamese boat people landed in Penghu, in the Taiwan Strait, just off the west coast of Taiwan and they ended up living there until they were resettled. The Penghu refugee camps were destroyed at the beginning of the 2000s. By revealing the process of discovering the refugee camps in Penghu and connecting with the refugees who have been there, Asio discusses personal and collective aspects of a phenomenon that brings together global, regional and local issues and which has become the subject of a 20 year-long project.

For those who are interested to know more about this issue, here you can find some links:

Asio Liu asio.liu@gmail.com
Instagram: The Chiangmei Refugee Archive (CRAA)
Facebook: @澎湖難民營三部曲 Penghu Refugee Camps Trilogy at the Taiwan Strait
Twitter: @CRAA_Chiangmei

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Nicholas Carnes and Lilly J. Goren, "The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe" (UP of Kansas, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (UP of Kansas, 2022), Drs. Nicholas Carnes and Lilly J. Goren ask what lessons does Marvel – a “hulking, hegemonic media franchise” teach the public? What might we learn about ourselves and our understanding of the world from this “cinematic juggernaut?”

Popular texts encourage audiences to imagine worlds different from their own. Questioning their current political worlds is at the heart of speculative fiction. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a “cultural leviathan” with numerous interconnected movies, streaming series on Disney+, and an increasingly diverse cast of superheroes. The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe brings together over 25 scholars with diverse specialties and methodologies to analyze how the MCU narrates, reproduces, mirrors, and impacts political and social ideas. Dr. Carnes and Dr. Goren break the book into three main parts focusing on political origin stories, use and abuse of political power and evolving diversity in the bodies of the heroes, villains, and victims. The contributors interrogate how the MCU engages – and affects – political society using language accessible to MCU fans and providing contributions to research in various subfields of political science. They conclude that “Entertaiment media is itself a site where politically relevant messages are sent and received – pop culture is itself an arena of contemporary politics.”

Nicholas Carnes is Professor of Public Policy and Sociology at Duke University. His publications include The Cash Ceiling: Why Only the Rich Run for Office—And What We Can Do About It (Princeton University Press, 2018) and White-Collar Government: The Hidden Role of Class in Economic Policy Making (University of Chicago Press, 2013).

Lilly J. Goren is a Professor of Political Science and Global Studies at Carroll University and co-host of New Books in Political Science. Her publications include co-editing Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Publishers, 2015) and Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012).

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The Wooden O and the Iron Throne: Game of Thrones and Shakespeare Part 3

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Dive into the question of why audiences love Shakespeare’s plays and Game of Thrones so much, despite their depictions of prejudice and violence, and discuss the unique power of tragic art.

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Stefano Gualeni and Riccardo Fassone, "Fictional Games: A Philosophy of Worldbuilding and Imaginary Play" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 12 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

What role do imaginary games have in story-telling? Why do fiction authors outline the rules of a game that the reader will never watch or play?

Combining perspectives from philosophy, literature and game studies, Fictional Games: A Philosophy of Worldbuilding and Imaginary Play (Bloomsbury, 2023) provides the first in-depth investigation into the significance of games in fictional worlds. With examples from contemporary cinema and literature, from The Hunger Games to the science fiction of Iain M. Banks, Stefano Gualeni and Riccardo Fassone introduce four key functions that different types of imaginary games have in worldbuilding. First, fictional games can emphasize the dominant values and ideologies of the fictional society they belong to. Second, some games function as critical, utopian tools, inspiring shifts in the thinking and political orientation of the fictional characters. Third, imaginary games, especially those with a magical component, are conducive to the transcendence of a particular form of being, such as the overcoming of human corporeality. And fourth, fictional games can deceptively blur the boundaries between the contingency of play and the irrevocable seriousness of "real life", either camouflaging life as a game or disguising a game as something with more permanent consequences.

With illustrations in every chapter, bringing the imaginary games to life, Gualeni and Fassone creatively inspire us to consider fictional games anew: not as moments of playful reprieve in a storyline, but as significant and multi-layered rhetorical devices.

Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Design with a focus on Digital Game Studies at the IU International University of Applied Science, editor of “Game Studies Watchlist”, a weekly messenger newsletter about Game Culture and curator of @gamestudies at tiktok.

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Brian Harker, "Sportin' Life: John W. Bubbles, an American Classic" (Oxford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 11 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

John W. Bubbles was an actor, singer, comedian, and most importantly, a dancer. Born in 1902, Bubbles was an innovator in the jazz tap style and half of the great vaudeville act, "Buck and Bubbles," with his partner pianist Buck Washington. Brian Harker tells Bubbles' story in Sportin’ Life: John W. Bubbles, An American Classic (Oxford University Press, 2022). Bubbles’ long career, which largely ended after a stroke in 1967, spanned several significant shifts in American popular entertainment. He started entertaining audiences in vaudeville just as films began to dominate the landscape followed by television. Harker tells the story of Bubbles’ tumultuous life and situates his career as a Black dancer within segregated America and an entertainment industry that perpetuated racist stereotypes and exploited its workers—especially those from minoritized communities. Although Bubbles originated the role of Sportin’ Life in George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, he has largely slipped out of American memory. Harker restores Bubbles to his rightful place as an innovative dancer and an important figure in twentieth-century American popular entertainment.

Kristen M. Turner is a lecturer in the music and honors departments at North Carolina State University. Her research centers on race and class in American popular entertainment at the turn of the twentieth century.

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Film Chat: Queer, Sci-Fi and the Family

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 11 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

For this installment, we had the pleasure of hosting Maja Korbecka, a PhD candidate at Freie Universitat Berlin. We chatted about five East Asian films released between 2016 and 2022, and the topics of queer, sci-fi and the family.

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Ross Melnick, "Hollywood's Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World" (Columbia UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Beginning in the 1920s, audiences around the globe were seduced not only by Hollywood films but also by lavish movie theaters that were owned and operated by the major American film companies. These theaters aimed to provide a quintessentially “American” experience. Outfitted with American technology and accoutrements, they allowed local audiences to watch American films in an American-owned cinema in a distinctly American way.

In a history that stretches from Buenos Aires and Tokyo to Johannesburg and Cairo, Ross Melnick considers these movie houses as cultural embassies. He examines how the exhibition of Hollywood films became a constant flow of political and consumerist messaging, selling American ideas, products, and power, especially during fractious eras. Melnick demonstrates that while Hollywood’s marketing of luxury and consumption often struck a chord with local audiences, it was also frequently tone-deaf to new social, cultural, racial, and political movements. He argues that the story of Hollywood’s global cinemas is not a simple narrative of cultural and industrial indoctrination and colonization. Instead, it is one of negotiation, booms and busts, successes and failures, adoptions and rejections, and a precursor to later conflicts over the spread of American consumer culture. A truly global account, Hollywood's Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World (Columbia UP, 2022) shows how the entanglement of worldwide movie theaters with American empire offers a new way of understanding film history and the history of U.S. soft power.

Ross Melnick is professor of film and media studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of American Showman: Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel and the Birth of the Entertainment Industry, 1908–1935 (Columbia, 2012) and co-editor of Rediscovering U.S. Newsfilm: Cinema, Television, and the Archive (2018).

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Book Chat: "Puppets, Gods and Brands. Theorizing the Age of Animation from Taiwan" (U Hawaii Press, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

For this instalment, we had the pleasure of hosting Teri Silvio, who works as Research Fellow at the Academia Sinica Institute of Ethnology. We chatted about Teri’s recently published book, Puppets, Gods and Brands. Theorizing the Age of Animation from Taiwan (2019), her previous work and current projects.

To find out more about performance and animation, a Taiwan-centered mode of animation (ang-a), cute gods and designer toys, please listen to this episode!

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Film Chat: "Whale Island" (2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 8 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode, our host, Ti-han Chang, conducted an interview chat with the film director, Huang Chia-chu about his making of the eco-film, Whale Island (2020). The interview covers the Director's engagement with this amazing project to tell a "sea story" of Taiwan, his encountering with the writer, Liao Hung-chi and the photographer, Jin Lai, his choice of film translated title as well as movie soundtracks. The interviewed is conducted in Chinese and translated by Zhan Fe-fei in English, hence tailored to both English and Chinese audience.

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Once Upon an Algorithm: How Stories Explain Computing

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 7 Mar 2023 21:00:00 +0000

In this episode, Martin Erwig show us how we can find computational concepts inside some of our favorite stories.

Picture a computer scientist, staring at a screen and clicking away frantically on a keyboard, hacking into a system, or perhaps developing an app. Now delete that picture. In Once Upon an Algorithm, Martin Erwig explains computation as something that takes place beyond electronic computers, and computer science as the study of systematic problem solving. Erwig points out that many daily activities involve problem solving. Getting up in the morning, for example: You get up, take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast. This simple daily routine solves a recurring problem through a series of well-defined steps. In computer science, such a routine is called an algorithm.

Erwig illustrates a series of concepts in computing with examples from daily life and familiar stories. Hansel and Gretel, for example, execute an algorithm to get home from the forest. The movie Groundhog Day illustrates the problem of unsolvability; Sherlock Holmes manipulates data structures when solving a crime; the magic in Harry Potter's world is understood through types and abstraction; and Indiana Jones demonstrates the complexity of searching. Along the way, Erwig also discusses representations and different ways to organize data; "intractable" problems; language, syntax, and ambiguity; control structures, loops, and the halting problem; different forms of recursion; and rules for finding errors in algorithms.

This engaging book explains computation accessibly and shows its relevance to daily life. Something to think about next time we execute the algorithm of getting up in the morning.

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The Wooden O and the Iron Throne: Game of Thrones and Shakespeare Part 2

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 6 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Explore the moral tensions and dilemmas that Shakespeare and George R.R. Martin force their audiences to confront, especially in the storylines of their most notable political leaders.

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Measure for Measure Episode 4: Movies

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 5 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

We’d rate today’s episode a ten out of ten, five star, certified fresh, two thumbs up. But we can’t speak for its IMdB score.

This episode was produced by Andrew Middleton and Liya Rechtman.

Measure for Measure is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas.

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Girish Shambu, "The New Cinephilia" (Caboose, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 4 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Cinephilia has recently experienced a powerful resurgence, one enabled by new media technologies of the digital revolution. One strong continuity between today's "new cinephilia" and the classical cinephilia of the 1950s is the robust sociability which these new technologies have facilitated. Each activity of today's cinephilic practice - viewing, thinking, reading and writing about films - is marked by an unprecedented amount of social interaction facilitated by the Internet. As with their classical counterparts, the thoughts and writings of today's cinephiles are born from a vigorous and broad-ranging cinephilic conversation. Further, by dramatically lowering the economic barriers to publication, the Internet has also made possible new hybrid forms and outlets of cinephilic writing that draw freely from scholarly, journalistic and literary models.

The New Cinephilia (Caboose, 2022) both describes and theorises how and where cinephilia lives and thrives today. In this expanded second edition, author Girish Shambu revisits some of his original ideas and calls into question the focus in cinephilia on the male canon in the wake of the #MeToo movement and the lack of racial and gender diversity in contemporary cinema. As Dr. Shambu writes:"There is more to the cinephile experience than simply surfing from one link to another in a state of perpetual motion. How does this movement - this daily proliferation of encounters - power one's cinephilia? What special affective charge does this experience hold? In other words, how is the experience of the Internet cinephile affectively different from that of a 'traditional' cinephile who spends little time online?"

In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Shambu talks working as a Professor of Management while maintaining his profile as a prolific cinephile, explains why auteurism is a "manspreading machine," and offers recommendations on what films exemplify a "cinema of the future."

Girish Shambu is Professor of Management at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, where he teaches sustainability and supply chain management. In a dual career as film blogger, critic and scholar, Girish is also the author of The New Cinephilia (Caboose, 2020, 2nd ed.) and editor of Film Quarterly’s online column Quorum. His writings have appeared in The Criterion Collection, Framework Journal of Film & Media, and Film Quarterly.

In addition to being a host on New Books in Film, Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television. You can read her reviews and essays at Literary Hub, Public Books, LA Review of Books, The A.V. Club, Little White Lies, Film Quarterly, and The Washington Post.

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The Wooden O and the Iron Throne: Game of Thrones and Shakespeare Part 1

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Discover the real-life history that inspired Game of Thrones and Shakespeare’s history plays, and learn the distinctive ways in which Shakespeare and George R.R. Martin each transform history into art

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Lara Gabrielle, "Captain of Her Soul: The Life of Marion Davies" (U California Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

From Marion Davies's humble days in Brooklyn to her rise to fame alongside press baron William Randolph Hearst, the public life story of the film star plays like a modern fairy tale shaped by gossip columnists, fan magazines, biopics, and documentaries. Yet the real Marion Davies remained largely hidden from view, as she was wary of interviews and trusted few with her true life story. In Captain of Her Soul: The Life of Marion Davies (U California Press, 2022), Lara Gabrielle pulls back layers of myth to show a complex and fiercely independent woman, ahead of her time, who carved her own path.

Through meticulous research, unprecedented access to archives around the world, and interviews with those who knew Davies, Captain of Her Soul counters the public story. This book reveals a woman who navigated disability and social stigma to rise to the top of a young Hollywood dominated by powerful men. Davies took charge of her own career, negotiating with studio heads and establishing herself as a top-tier comedienne, but her proudest achievement was her philanthropy and advocacy for children. This biography brings Davies out of the shadows cast by the Hearst legacy, shedding light on a dynamic woman who lived life on her own terms and declared that she was "the captain of her soul."

Lara Gabrielle is a film writer and researcher whose work on Marion Davies has been featured in The Missouri Review, The Wall Street Journal, and on PBS’s American Experience. She has spoken about Davies at film festivals and retrospectives worldwide and has served as a consultant on her life and legacy for books, dissertations, and film projects. Gabrielle’s biography of Davies, Captain of Her Soul, is included in Alta Journal’s Top 16 Books to read this September. She lives in Oakland, California.

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Patricia Saldarriaga and Emy Manini, "Infected Empires: Decolonizing Zombies" (Rutgers UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Let’s talk about zombies! Scholars Patricia Saldarriaga and Emy Manini have produced an engaging and important analysis of the idea of zombies, and how and why these particular monsters are omnipresent in American popular culture, especially these days. Zombies both represent and present ideas about the world in which we live, and Infected Empires: Decolonizing Zombies (Rutgers UP, 2022) examines these connections, helping us consider our relationship to this vision of the “undead” and why these monsters are indigenous to the Americas.

Zombies reflect the colonial experience in the Americas, not only those who settled in both North and South America, but also in the approach taken to labor and those who labored. Saldarriaga and Manini examine the zombie as a representation of chattel slavery, which used the human body as a commodity like the other exploited resources in “the new world.” Those who were enslaved were essentially dead labor, according to Marxian conceptions, and the continued exploitation and disposability of workers continues this idea of the use of the undead in the modern world. Zombies as a concept can be seen within neoliberalism as corpses made into commodities, just as other commodities are valued or devalued based on supply and demand.

Another avenue of exploration is how zombies live in an ablest world where they have very limited abilities—thus making us consider our own toggling between ableism and disability. In a sense, zombies push on the idea that disability itself is the norm. They represent the way that bodies should not look, with all the insides missing, or on the outside. They also reproduce in rather unique ways—not in the biologically expected way, but in the consumption of others to create more zombies. Thus, in a world with zombies, the patriarchal form of reproduction is replaced, erasing binary sex roles along the way. While we usually consider zombies as horror staples, they are, in fact, science fiction entities, since they are really a kind of futurity.

Infected Empires: Decolonizing Zombies explores these myriad ways that zombies are symbolic of so much of what surrounds us in our everyday lives, but also what scares us. Zombies, if we think of them as a future, cause us a great deal of anxiety, since they demonstrate a post-human existence. Zombies regularly show us how we are literally eating ourselves. With the existential threat of global climate change, and the antagonism between humans and the nature world, zombies as metaphor and popular culture trope highlight our fears about the future as well as the long shadow of a colonial and enslaving past. Saldarriaga and Manini systematically explore the many dimensions of why zombies are so entrenched in our imaginaries and what these monsters are teaching us about ourselves and our fears and anxieties.

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Elora Halim Chowdhury, "Ethical Encounters: Transnational Feminism, Human Rights, and War Cinema in Bangladesh" (Temple UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 22 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

An exploration of the intersection of feminism, human rights, and memory, Ethical Encounters: Transnational Feminism, Human Rights, and War Cinema in Bangladesh (Temple University Press, 2022) examines contemporary, woman-centered Muktijuddho cinema--features and documentaries that focus on the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. Elora Chowdhury shows how these films imagine, disrupt, and reinscribe a gendered nationalist landscape of trauma, freedom, and justice. She analyzes the Bangladeshi feminist films Meherjaan, Guerilla, and Itihaash Konna, as well as socially engaged films by activist-filmmakers including Rising Silence, Bish Kanta, Jonmo Shathi, and Shadhinota, to show how war films of Bangladesh can conjure a global cinematic imagination for the advancement of human rights. Focusing on women-centric films, and steeped in Black and transnational feminist critiques, Chowdhury engages shared histories, experiences, and identities in the region to encourage transnational solidarity among women across borders. Ethical Encounters reveals how Bangladeshi national cinema can foster a much-needed dialogue among ordinary citizens who have grown up with the legacy of liberty and violence of nationalist and anti-colonial struggles.

Dr. Elora Halim Chowdhury is a Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, College of Liberal Arts, at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, as well as an Affiliate Faculty of the Asian Studies Department; the Asian American Studies Program; the Cinema Studies Program; and the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security and Global Governance. She is also an Affiliated Researcher, Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights, and the Series Editor for the Dissident Feminisms Series at the University of Illinois Press.

Dr. Rine Vieth is a researcher studying how the UK Immigration and Asylum tribunals consider claims of belief, how claims of religious belief are evidenced, and the role of faith communities in asylum-seeker support.

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Ying Zhu, "Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World's Largest Movie Market" (New Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 18 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

With her book Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World's Largest Movie Market (New Press, 2022), media scholar Ying Zhu explores the 100+ year relationship between what are now the world's two largest movie markets: China and the United States.

Zhu is a Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University's Academy of Film, and the founder/chief editor of Global Storytelling: Journal of Digital and Moving Images. Hollywood in China (July 2022, The New Press) is her fourth book, and it offers a comprehensive chronology of the Hollywood-China relationship, with numerous specific case studies.

In this podcast, Anthony Kao chats with Zhu about the book, and delves into matters like reactions to "China-humiliation films" during the 1911-1949 Republican Era, Madame Mao's penchant for Hollywood classics, and what the future might hold for relations between China and Hollywood.

Some movie recommendations from Ying Zhu (learn more by listening until the end of this episode):

From the 1990s: Zhang Yimou's To Live and Tian Zhuangzhuang's Blue Kite (discussed more in one of Ying's earlier books)
From the 2000s: Li Yang's Blind Shaft (analyzed in one of Ying's articles)
From the 2010s: Feng Xiaogang's I Am Not Madame Bovary (explored in Hollywood in China)

Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, The Diplomat, and Eater.

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Maya Phillips, "Nerd: Adventures in Fandom from This Universe to the Multiverse" (Atria Books, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

When Maya Phillips first saw the opening of Star Wars, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, she knew her life would change forever. She then spent her formative years loving not just the Star Wars saga but superhero cartoons, anime, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, Tolkien, and Doctor Who. In Nerd: Adventures in Fandom from This Universe to the Multiverse (Atria Books, 2022), Phillips, a critic at large for the New York Times, presents an incisive essay collection that explores race, religion, sexuality, class, and gender through the lens of pop culture fandoms.

Maya Phillips received her BFA in writing, literature, and publishing with a concentration in poetry from Emerson College and her MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson's MFA Program for Writers.

Latoya Johnson is an editor, writer, and bibliophile with a master's in humanities. Her research and writing interests include reading in popular culture, the public history of fiction writing, and women in Greco-Roman mythology.

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Star Wars: Andor’s Aldhani and its Real-World Parallels

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode, Dr. Kenny Linden, an environmental and animal historian of Mongolia and Inner Asia, joins me to discuss the Disney+ Star Wars prequel series Andor and its real-world parallels to pastoralism and the treatment of pastoralists in Central and East Asia by state authorities. We talk about nomadism in the Star Wars universe, depictions of nomads in pop culture, and the planet Aldhani in Andor as a reflection of modern histories of pastoralism and nomad-state relations in Central and Inner Asia.

Maggie Freeman is a PhD student in the School of Architecture at MIT. She researches uses of architecture by nomadic peoples and historical interactions of nomads and empires, with a focus on the modern Middle East.

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Chris Kempshall, "The History and Politics of Star Wars: Death Stars and Democracy" (Routledge, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 7 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Chris Kempshall's The History and Politics of Star Wars: Death Stars and Democracy (Routledge, 2022) provides the first detailed and comprehensive examination of all the materials making up the Star Wars franchise relating to the portrayal and representation of real-world history and politics.

Drawing on a variety of sources, including films, published interviews with directors and actors, novels, comics, and computer games, this volume explores the ways in which historical and contemporary events have been repurposed within Star Wars. It focuses on key themes such as fascism and the Galactic Empire, the failures of democracy, the portrayal of warfare, the morality of the Jedi, and the representations of sex, gender, and race. Through these themes, this study highlights the impacts of the fall of the Soviet Union, the War on Terror, and the failures of the United Nations upon the ‘galaxy far, far away’. By analysing and understanding these events and their portrayal within Star Wars, it shows how the most popular media franchise in existence aims to speak about wider contemporary events and issues.

If you are interested in the purchase of the book, you may use the following code for a 25% discount: HPSW25.

Roberto Mazza is visiting professor at Northwestern University. He is the host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast and to discuss and propose a book for interview can be reached at robbymazza@gmail.com. Twitter: @robbyref

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Tim Harte, "Faster, Higher, Stronger, Comrades!: Sports, Art, and Ideology in Late Russian and Early Soviet Culture" (U Wisconsin Press, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 5 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Dr. Tim Harte's Faster, Higher, Stronger, Comrades!: Sports, Art, and Ideology in Late Russian and Early Soviet Culture (U Wisconsin Press, 2020) looks at sport as artistic subject matter, in late Imperial and early Soviet Russia. In sport, artists found inspiration that could be applied both to improvement of the self and to social progress as artists defined it. In the long run, the constraints of the Socialist Realist aesthetic came to constrain the creative freedom of artists, but until the late 1920's, sport served as a focus of genuine artistic interest, for its own sake and for its ability to provide a reservoir of metaphors that artists could use to make broader, more ideological commentary.

Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, MT. He teaches courses on Russian and Soviet History, World History, and Philosophy of History. His research interests include the sociological theorist Philip Rieff and the influence of Russian nihilism on American libertarianism.

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Horton's Cosmic Zoom: A Discussion with Zachary Horton

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 2 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Today Recall this Book welcomes Zachary Horton, Associate Professor of Literature and director of the Vibrant Media Lab at University of Pittsburgh; game designer, filmmaker and camera designer. Out of all these endeavors, he came to talk about his book The Cosmic Zoom Scale, Knowledge, and Mediation.

This dizzying book begins with a bravura description of a movie we both loved as kids: The Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames. It's a view of two people enjoying a picnic zooms up and away to show their surroundings, all the way up into space then zooms back in for a close-up of the hand of the picnicker, ending top at the atomic level . The book, uses the cosmic zoom as a starting point to develop a cross-disciplinary theory of scale as mediated difference.

Zack shares his worries about scale literacy, and what happens when we diverge from the "meso-scale of the human sensorium." John approaches scale by way of Naturalism and SF in the late 19th century, both of which refuse the meso-scale aesthetic realism of their day in order to anchor it at a different scale. Elizabeth asks about temporal scales and geology's activation of human sense of humans' scalar insignificance.

Mentioned in this episode:

Italo Calvino The Complete Cosmicomics
The Holy Bible
Kees Boeke, Cosmic View: the University in 40 Jumps
PBS, The Bigger Picture
Voltaire, Micromegas
Mark Twain, 3000 Years Among the Microbes

Read transcript here.

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Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, "Beautiful, Gruesome, and True: Artists at Work in the Face of War" (Columbia Global Reports, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Art has a long history of engaging with conflict and violence. From the antiquities, through Goya, to Guernica, our museums are filled with depictions of battles, pogroms, uprisings, and their suppression. Not all of these stories are told from the perspective of the victors.

Many contemporary creatives have continued this tradition. While the position of the official war artist seems to have gone out of fashion, conflict hasn’t. Artists are compelled to document the violence and conflict that for some is the matter of the everyday.

Kaelan Wilson-Goldie's Beautiful, Gruesome, and True: Artists at Work in the Face of War (Columbia Global Reports, 2022) is an account of the lives and practices of three such artists Teresa Margolles, Amar Kanwar, and the collective Abounadorra. The documents which these practices produce have found their way into the mainstream contemporary art world, for better, or often worse.

Kaelan Wilson-Goldie speaks about the implicit contracts artists enter with their communities, the art world's exploitative interest in conflict, and the role of aesthetic expression in mediating, if not ameliorating conflict.

Kaelen Wilson-Goldie is a writer and critic who contributes regularly to Artforum, Aperture, and Afterall, among other publications. She is the author of Etel Adnan, a monographic study on the paintings of the Lebanese-American poet Etel Adnan, and a contributor to numerous books on modern and contemporary art, including Art Cities of the Future: 21st-Century Avant-Gardes and Huguette Caland: Everything Takes the Shape of a Person. She lives in New York City and Beirut.

Teresa Margolles was born in Culiacán, Mexico, and is a conceptual artist known for incorporating the physical memory of conflict and pain into her work.

Documentation of Margolles' pavilion in in Venice in 2009,
Her works at Mor Charpenter and Peter Kilchmann,
Her Fourth Plinth proposal for London.

Abounaddara is an anonymous collective known for producing more than 400 short films chronicling the uprising and civil war in Syria.

Abounaddara at Documenta 14,
The Right to the Image (in Arabic)
The Islamic State for Dummies - Part One, 2014.

Amar Kanwar was born in New Delhi, India, and has distinguished himself through films and multi‐media works which explore the politics of power, violence and justice.

Amar Kanwar's The Season Outside, 1997,
and Many Faces of Madness, 2000.

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Drew Morton, "After Midnight: Watchmen After Watchmen" (U Mississippi Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen fundamentally altered the perception of American comic books and remains one of the medium’s greatest hits. Launched in 1986—“the year that changed comics” for most scholars in comics studies—Watchmen quickly assisted in cementing the legacy that comics were a serious form of literature no longer defined by the Comics Code era of funny animal and innocuous superhero books that appealed mainly to children.

After Midnight: Watchmen After Watchmen (U Mississippi Press, 2022) looks specifically at the three adaptations of Moore’s and Gibbons’s Watchmen—Zack Snyder’s Watchmen film (2009), Geoff Johns’s comic book sequel Doomsday Clock (2017), and Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen series on HBO (2019). Divided into three parts, the anthology considers how the sequels, especially the limited series, have prompted a reevaluation of the original text and successfully harnessed the politics of the contemporary moment into a potent relevancy. The first part considers the various texts through conceptions of adaptation, remediation, and transmedia storytelling. Part two considers the HBO series through its thematic focus on the relationship between American history and African American trauma by analyzing how the show critiques the alt-right, represents intergenerational trauma, illustrates alternative possibilities for Black representation, and complicates our understanding of how the mechanics of the show’s production can complicate its politics. Finally, the book’s last section considers the themes of nostalgia and trauma, both firmly rooted in the original Moore and Gibbons series, and how the sequel texts reflect and refract upon those often-intertwined phenomena.

Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University and an Associate Faculty member at University of Arizona Global Campus. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne.

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The Sámi in "Frozen" (Part 2)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 21:00:00 +0000

The traditional folklore and animistic beliefs of the Sámi, the Indigenous nomadic peoples of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Russia, are under-studied and their cultural significance rarely acknowledged, even in the Scandinavian countries where Sámi traditions have intermingled with mainstream ones. The spread of Christianity and the influence of Christian missionaries in the Scandinavian north have especially distorted and shaped the reception and transmission of Sámi religious beliefs and practices in the modern era. The traditional Sámi religion recently gained widespread attention and reconsideration from a somewhat unexpected source, however, thanks to the incorporation of elements of Sámi folklore in Walt Disney Animation Studios' Frozen movie series. In this episode, artist and folklorist Niina Niskanen joins me to discuss her research into Sámi religious systems, folklore and oral culture, the cultural impacts of Sámi beliefs on mainstream Scandinavian society, how Sámi folklore traditions are represented in mass media, and how pop culture artifacts like Disney's Frozen have prompted a resurgence of interest in Sámi folklore and introduced Sámi culture to a new audience.

This episode is part two of a two-part series looking at the Sámi in Disney's Frozen movies; part one, focusing on the making of Frozen II, can be listened to here.

Music in this episode: Desert City by Kevin MacLeod. License.

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The Sámi in "Frozen" (Part 1)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 11 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Despite the box-office and critical success of Walt Disney Animation Studios' 2013 film Frozen, it also drew criticism and backlash for how it incorporated elements of the culture and heritage of the Sámi, the Indigenous people of northern Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Russia. Sámi representatives had not been consulted in the making of Frozen, and the film's use of elements of Sámi culture such as music and clothing came as a surprise to the Sámi community. In response, when the film's sequel was announced, Sámi organizers forged a partnership with Walt Disney Animation Studios in which a group of Sámi experts offered creative consultation and input on the representation of the Sámi in Frozen 2. In this episode, I speak with Aili Keskitalo, who helped organize the collaboration with Walt Disney Animation Studios during her tenure as President of the Sámi Parliament of Norway, about working with WDAS, Sámi politics, the impact of the Frozen films on the Sámi community, and the importance of telling Indigenous stories with Indigenous voices.

The agreement signed between Sámi representatives and Walt Disney Animation Studios is available here.

This episode is part one of a two-part series on the Sámi in Disney's Frozen movies; part two, focusing on representations of Sámi culture and folklore in Frozen, can be found here.

Music in this episode: Desert City by Kevin MacLeod. License.

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The Fremen in "Dune"

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Despite being set in the distant future on a remote desert planet, the story of resource extraction, power, politics, ecology, and religion told in Frank Herbert's sci-fi series Dune bears distinct parallels to real-world history and events. One example of Herbert's real-life inspirations comes in the characters of the Fremen, who Herbert based on both the Bedouin in the Middle East and Native American peoples. How are nomadic Indigenous peoples incorporated into and represented in Herbert's fictional universe, and what can we learn about real people and their history from these fictionalized representations? In this episode, I'm joined by Dune expert Dr. Kara Kennedy to discuss the Fremen of Dune , the inspirations and intentions behind the novels, Orientalism and literary representations of Islam and the Middle East, and what science fiction can teach us about both history and the future.

Dr. Kennedy's book Women’s Agency in the Dune Universe: Tracing Women’s Liberation through Science Fiction is available here. Dr. Kennedy writes articles about Dune aimed at a general audience on her blog here. Follow Dr. Kennedy on Twitter @drkarakennedy and @dunescholar

Music in this episode: Desert City by Kevin MacLeod. License.

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Romani Representation in Pop Culture

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 9 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Roma figures have been an essential part of European folklore, myths, and literary traditions for centuries, with writers from Cervantes to Shakespeare to Victor Hugo drawing on the stereotype of the free-spirited, bohemian "Gypsy." Post-World War II, Roma characters began to appear in a new literary medium: American comic books. Roma heroes and villains alike fill the pages of DC and Marvel comics, with iconic characters like Dr. Doom, Magneto, Scarlet Witch, and Nightcrawler depicted as Roma. Almost exclusively written and drawn by non-Romani, however, these characters are often flawed or stereotypical, or, in recent years, they've been stripped of their Roma identity. Despite this, Roma comic book characters have become an important source of inspiration and empowerment for Roma youth around the globe. In this episode, Roma human rights activist and pop culture expert Vicente Rodriguez Fernandez joins me to talk about depictions of Romani characters in comic books, film and TV, the use of Roma identity as a literary trope, and comics as a tool of empowerment for minority groups.

Music in this episode: Desert City by Kevin MacLeod. License.

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Ellen Cassedy, "Working 9 to 5: A Women's Movement, a Labor Union, and the Iconic Movie" (Chicago Review Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 6 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Today I talked to Ellen Cassedy about her new book Working 9 to 5: A Women's Movement, a Labor Union, and the Iconic Movie (Chicago Review Press, 2022).

Many people may identify 9 to 5 with the comic film starring Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin or perhaps only know Parton’s hit song that served as its theme. But 9 to 5 wasn't just a comic film—it was a movement built by Ellen Cassedy and her friends. Ten office workers in Boston started out sitting in a circle and sharing the problems they encountered on the job. In a few short years, they had built a nationwide movement that united people of diverse races, classes, and ages. They took on the corporate titans. They leafleted and filed lawsuits and started a woman-led union. They won millions of dollars in back pay and helped make sexual harassment and pregnancy discrimination illegal. The women office workers who rose up to win rights and respect on the job transformed workplaces throughout America. And along the way came Dolly Parton's toe-tapping song and a hit movie inspired by their work. Working 9 to 5 is a lively, informative, firsthand account packed with practical organizing lore that will embolden anyone striving for fair treatment.

Ellen Cassedy was a founder of the 9 to 5 organization in 1973. She is the coauthor with Karen Nussbaum of 9 to 5: The Working Woman's Guide to Office Survival and with Ellen Bravo of The 9 to 5 Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment. Ellen Cassedy is a former columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, was a speechwriter in the Clinton administration, and has contributed to Huffington Post, Redbook, Woman's Day, Hadassah, Philadelphia Inquirer, and other publications.

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Why are Insects so Scary? On Insects in Films.

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 3 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

This episode from the Vault is a lecture by May Berenbaum about why insects are so scary. Professor Berenbaum is an American entomologist whose research focuses on the chemical interactions between herbivorous insects and their host plants. She teaches entomology at the University of Illinois, and was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2014. She is also the organizer of the annual Insect Fear Film Festival.

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Bonus Episode: "Nomadland"

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 1 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

A special bonus episode in honor of the 93rd Academy Awards on April 25, 2021! One of the most-nominated films at this year's Oscars is "Nomadland," adapted from a book of the same name by journalist Jessica Bruder. "Nomadland" is about a 21st-century American phenomenon - the post-2008 increase in (mostly elderly) people who practice "vandwelling," living in vans, trucks, or other mobile housing and traveling the country in search of seasonal jobs. This episode talks about the characteristics of this nomadic community, how they adhere to an anthropological definition of the term "nomad," and nomadism in US history.

Desert City by Kevin MacLeod. License.

All other sounds courtesy of the BBC Sound Archive.

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Catholic Movies, Part 1: "Silence" and "The Scarlet and the Black"

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Jonathan Fessenden and I talk about two movies, Martin Scorsese’s Silence (2016) and Jerry London’s The Scarlet and the Black (1983) and what they say about how to confront evil in terrible times—seventeenth-century Tokugawa Japan in one film, and 1943 Nazi-occupied Rome in the other—how to face our shortcomings and lean on God even when He is hard to find. We also talk about Jonathan’s article about continuous prayer and his life and journey.

Jonathan Fessenden is a Catholic writer, composer, and teacher of theology. He has written about movies and worked in the industry as a composer, and continues to write music for film.

Note: In this episode we refer to my earlier conversation with Makoto Fujimura about his work on the film Silence and other topics: Almost Good Catholics, Episode 14.

Jonathan Fessenden, Missio Dei, “Pray without Ceasing” (October 6, 2022)
Pope Francis’s recent homily on continuous prayer (September 28, 2022)
All of Jonathan Fessenden’s articles on Missio Dei are here.
Jonathan Fessenden’s album, Upon the Water, is here.
Silence (2016), official trailer
The Scarlet and the Black (1983), trailer
Inside the Vatican, “Deep Dive: The Secret Archives of Pope Pius XII” (article and podcast)

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"Gone with the Wind" Revisited

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 28 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

In this week’s episode from the Institute’s Vault, Molly Haskell talks about her 2009 book, Frankly, My Dear: "Gone with the Wind" Revisited, published by Yale University Press.

Haskell grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and studied at the Sorbonne. She came to New York in the sixties to work for the French Film office, where she wrote a newsletter about French films. She wrote about movies for the Village Voice, Vogue, and New York magazine.

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Stuart Klawans, "Crooked, But Never Common: The Films of Preston Sturges" (Columbia UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 25 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.

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Eve Golden, "Jayne Mansfield: The Girl Couldn't Help It" (UP of Kentucky, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 25 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Jayne Mansfield (1933-1967) was driven not just to be an actress but to be a star. One of the most influential sex symbols of her time, she was known for her platinum blonde hair, hourglass figure, outrageously low necklines, and flamboyant lifestyle. Hardworking and ambitious, Mansfield proved early in her career that she was adept in both comic and dramatic roles, but her tenacious search for the spotlight and her risqué promotional stunts caused her to be increasingly snubbed in Hollywood.

In Jayne Mansfield: The Girl Couldn't Help It (UP of Kentucky, 2021), Eve Golden offers a joyful account of the star Andy Warhol called "the poet of publicity," revealing the smart, determined woman behind the persona. While she always had her sights set on the silver screen, Mansfield got her start as Rita Marlowe in the Broadway show Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?. She made her film debut in the low-budget drama Female Jungle (1955) before landing the starring role in The Girl Can't Help It (1956). Mansfield followed this success with a dramatic role in The Wayward Bus (1957), winning a Golden Globe for New Star of the Year, and starred alongside Cary Grant in Kiss Them for Me (1957). Despite her popularity, her appearance as the first celebrity in Playboy and her nude scene in Promises! Promises! (1963) cemented her reputation as an outsider.

By the 1960s, Mansfield's film career had declined, but she remained very popular with the public. She capitalized on that popularity through in-person and TV appearances, nightclub appearances, and stage productions. Her larger-than-life life ended sadly when she passed away at age thirty-four in a car accident.

Golden looks beyond Mansfield's flashy public image and tragic death to fully explore her life and legacy. She discusses Mansfield's childhood, her many loves—including her famous on-again, off-again relationship with Miklós "Mickey" Hargitay—her struggles with alcohol, and her sometimes tumultuous family relationships. She also considers Mansfield's enduring contributions to American popular culture and celebrity culture. This funny, engaging biography offers a nuanced portrait of a fascinating woman who loved every minute of life and lived each one to the fullest.

Carmen Gomez-Galisteo, Ph.D. is a lecturer at Centro de Educación Superior de Enseñanza e Investigación Educativa (CEIE).

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Stevie Suan, "Anime's Identity: Performativity and Form Beyond Japan" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 23 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing.

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What Makes a Book, Song or Movie Popular? A Conversation with Noah Askin

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 23 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 books, songs, and movies seem to last forever. Is it because the successful ones are similar but different? Is it a fluke? Is it the marketing? Or is it the story that the song/book/movie/anything tells, or is, or is it perhaps the story we make of it.

Noah Askin is Assistant Professor of Teaching Organization and Management at UC-Irvine in the Paul Merage School of Business. Prior to his arrival in Southern California, he was an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD, where he directed and taught multiple Executive Education programs in addition to teaching the organizational design and leadership core course in the MBA program. He has a popular TEDx talk on what makes popular songs succeed.

Mel Rosenberg is a professor emeritus of microbiology (Tel Aviv University, emeritus) who fell in love with children's books as a small child and now writes his own. He is co-founder of Ourboox, a web platform with some 240,000 ebooks that allows anyone to create and share flipbooks comprising text, pictures and videos.

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Kathe Geist, "Ozu: A Closer Look" (Hong Kong UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 and used symbolism to construct meaning in his films. Against critics’ insistence that Ozu was indifferent to plot and unlikely to use symbols, Geist reveals the director’s subtle iconographic paradigms. Her incisive understanding of the historical and cultural context in which the films were conceived amplifies her analysis of the films’ structure and meaning.

Ozu: A Closer Look (Hong Kong UP, 2022) guides the reader through Ozu’s earliest silent films, his sound films made during the wartime period and subsequent American Occupation of Japan, and finally takes up specific themes relevant to his later, better-known films. Geist also examines the impact that Ozu’s films had on specific directors in Europe, America, and Japan. Intended for film scholars, students, and fans of the director, this book provides fresh insights into the director’s films and new challenges in studies on Ozu.

Kathe Geist is an art historian and author of The Cinema of Wim Wenders.

Gustavo E. Gutiérrez Suárez is PhD candidate in Social Anthropology. His areas of interest include Andean and Amazonian Anthropology, Film theory and aesthetics. You can follow him on Twitter vía @GustavoEGSuarez.

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Ariana Huberman. "Keeping the Mystery Alive: Jewish Mysticism in Latin American Cultural Production" (Academic Studies Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Ariana Huberman's Keeping the Mystery Alive: Jewish Mysticism in Latin American Cultural Production (Academic Studies Press, 2022) delves into creative renditions of key aspects of Jewish Mysticism in Latin American literature, film, and art from the perspective of literary and cultural studies. It introduces the work of Latin American authors and artists who have been inspired by Jewish Mysticism from the 1960s to the present focusing on representations of dybbuks (transmigratory souls), the presence of Eros as part of the experience of mystical prayer, reformulations of Zoharic fables, and the search for Tikkun Olam (cosmic repair), among other key topics of Jewish Mysticism. The purpose of this book is to open up these aspects of their work to a broad audience who may or may not be familiar with Jewish Mysticism.

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Nicholas de Villiers, "Cruisy, Sleepy, Melancholy: Sexual Disorientation in the Films of Tsai Ming-Liang" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 14 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 Ming-liang is a major force in Taiwan cinema and global moving image art. Cruisy, Sleepy, Melancholy: Sexual Disorientation in the Films of Tsai Ming-Liang (U Minnesota Press, 2022) offers a fascinating, systematic method for analyzing the queerness of Tsai’s films.

Nicholas de Villiers argues that Tsai expands and revises the notion of queerness by engaging with the sexuality of characters who are migrants, tourists, diasporic, or otherwise displaced. Through their lack of fixed identities, these characters offer a clear challenge to the binary division between heterosexuality and homosexuality, as well as the Orientalist binary division of Asia versus the West. Ultimately, de Villiers explores how Tsai’s films help us understand queerness in terms of spatial, temporal, and sexual disorientation.

Conceiving of Tsai’s cinema as an intertextual network, Cruisy, Sleepy, Melancholy makes an important addition to scholarly work on Tsai in English. It draws on extensive interviews with the director, while also offering a complete reappraisal of Tsai’s body of work. Contributing to queer film theory and the aesthetics of displacement, Cruisy, Sleepy, Melancholy reveals striking connections between sexuality, space, and cinema.

Nicholas de Villiers is professor of English and film at the University of North Florida. He is author of Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol and Sexography: Sex Work in Documentary.

Li-Ping Chen is Postdoctoral Scholar and Teaching Fellow in the East Asian Studies Center at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts.

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Daniel Immerwahr, "The Galactic Vietnam: Technology, Modernization, and Empire in George Lucas’s Star Wars" (2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 10 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 Northwestern University. Our conversation focused on his recent article “The Galactic Vietnam: Technology, Modernization, and Empire in George Lucas’s Star Wars,” in Ideology in U.S. Foreign Relations: New Histories, edited by David Milne and Christopher Nichols (Columbia University Press, 2022). In the piece her uses the film and the figure of George Lucas to explore various aspects of the United States in the Cold War. Were Ewoks the Viet Cong? Was the Death Star a B-52? Was Alderaan Hanoi? Listen and find out.

Daniel Immerwahr earned his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley in 2011 after undergraduate studies at both Columbia and Cambridge. His previous work includes Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development (Harvard, 2015) and the award winning and best-selling How to Hide an Empire: A Short History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), which has been translated into German, Dutch, Italian, Korean, and Chinese so far. Dr. Immerwahr's writings have appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, the Washington Post, The New Republic, The Nation, Dissent, Jacobin, Slate, and elsewhere.

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Jake S. Friedman, "The Disney Revolt: The Great Labor War of Animation's Golden Age" (Chicago Review Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 10 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 destroyed it. Art Babbitt animated for the Disney studio throughout the 1930s and through 1941, years in which he and Walt were jointly driven to elevate animation as an art form, up through Snow White, Pinocchio, and Fantasia.

But as America prepared for World War II, labor unions spread across Hollywood. Disney fought the unions while Babbitt embraced them. Soon, angry Disney cartoon characters graced picket signs as hundreds of animation artists went out on strike. Adding fuel to the fire was Willie Bioff, one of Al Capone’s wiseguys who was seizing control of Hollywood workers and vied for the animators’ union.

Using never-before-seen research from previously lost records, including conversation transcriptions from within the studio walls, author and historian Jake S. Friedman reveals the details behind the labor dispute that changed animation and Hollywood forever.

The Disney Revolt: The Great Labor War of Animation's Golden Age (Chicago Review Press, 2022) is an American story of industry and of the underdog, the golden age of animated cartoons at the world’s most famous studio.

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Madeline Lane-McKinley, "Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in Dystopian Times" (Common Notions, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 4 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 Dystopian Times (Common Notions, 2022) offers a major contribution to theorizing comedy but also thinking about the particular politics of the genre today. Work is a joke and often the butt of our jokes. Madeline Lane-McKinley argues that in comedy, we find ways to endure and cope with the world of work, but also to question the conditions of capitalist life. When work is slowly killing us and destroying the planet and, at the same time, something impossible to imagine life without, Lane-McKinley considers the possibility of comedy as a revolutionary practice. By appealing to laughter we can counteract many of our shared miseries under capitalism, including our relationship to work.

But to think through these revolutionary aspects of comedy, as a practice, also involves troubling comedy's relationship to the global right turn of the last decade. Stand-up comedy's claims to the artistic freedom of hate speech in comedy represent a fascistic current of our world today, blurring the boundaries between left and "alt" right. Against this current, Comedy Against Work draws from a tradition of feminist critical utopianism, Marxist-feminism, and contemporary cultural criticism to reflect on an anti-fascist poetics of comedy, grounded in a critique of work.

In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Lane-McKinley discusses the origins of her project, her decision to include her own story and life in her academic analysis, and the comedic virtuosity of the feminist killjoy.

Madeline Lane-McKinley is a writer, professor, and Marxist-feminist with a PhD in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a founding member of Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, The New Inquiry, Entropy, GUTS, and Cultural Politics. She is also the author of the chapbook Dear Z and a contributor to The Museum of Capitalism.

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Craig Oldham, "The Shining: A Visual and Cultural Haunting" (Rough Trade Books, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 3 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 cinematic history. This loose-leafed and beautifully boxed book—disguised as the ‘writing project’ Jack is typing throughout the course of the film—explores the film’s cultural legacy through exclusive essays, original recollections, contributions from cultural luminaries, and art and visual ephemera.

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Stephen Galloway, "Truly, Madly: Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, and the Romance of the Century" (Grand Central, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 25 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

A sweeping and heartbreaking Hollywood biography about the passionate, turbulent marriage of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.

In 1934, a friend brought fledgling actress Vivien Leigh to see Theatre Royal, where she would first lay eyes on Laurence Olivier in his brilliant performance as Anthony Cavendish. That night, she confided to a friend, he was the man she was going to marry. There was just one problem: She was already married—and so was he.

Truly, Madly: Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, and the Romance of the Century (Grand Central, 2022) is the biography of a marriage, a love affair that still captivates millions, even decades after both actors' deaths. Vivien and Larry were two of the first truly global celebrities - their fame fueled by the explosive growth of tabloids and television, which helped and hurt them in equal measure. They seemed to have it all, and yet, in their own minds, they were doomed, blighted by her long-undiagnosed mental illness, which transformed their relationship from the stuff of dreams into a living nightmare.

Through new research, including exclusive access to previously unpublished correspondence and interviews with their friends and family, author Stephen Galloway takes listeners on a bewitching journey. He brilliantly studies their tempestuous liaison, one that took place against the backdrop of two world wars, the Golden Age of Hollywood, and the upheavals of the 1960s –as they struggled with love, loss, and the ultimate agony of their parting.

Stephen Galloway is the dean of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. Prior to joining in 2020, he was for many years the executive editor of the Hollywood Reporter.

Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found at https://fifteenminutefilm.podb... and on Twitter @15MinFilm.

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Carolyne Larrington, "All Men Must Die: Power and Passion in Game of Thrones" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 24 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

“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 imaginatively varied and gruesome ways; and often in terror within the viciously unpredictable world that is HBO's sensational evocation of Game of Thrones. As acclaimed medievalist Professor Carolyne Larrington writes in All Men Must Die: Power and Passion in Game of Thrones (Bloomsbury, 2021), the stories George R.R. Martin brings to life are epic in scope and in imaginative breadth, telling of the dramatic rise and fall of nations, the brutal sweeping away of old orders, and the advent of new autarchs in the eternal quest for dominion.

Yet, as her book reveals, many potent and intimate narratives of love and passion can be found within these grand landscapes of heroism, honour, and death. They focus on strong relationships between women and family, as well as among the anti-heroes, the “cripples, bastards and broken things.” In this vital follow-up to her book, Winter Is Coming (also published by Bloomsbury), Larrington explores themes of power, blood-kin, lust, and sex in order to draw entirely fresh meanings out of the show of the century.

Carolyne Larringon is Professor of Medieval Literature at University of Oxford, UK. She completed her DPhil in Old English and Old Norse at Oxford and now teaches Old and Middle English literature as well as English and Old Norse-Icelandic languages. Previous publications include books on Norse mythology and literature and another book on the series called Winter Is Coming: The Medieval World of Game of Thrones. Also, Professor Larrington has been awarded the Order of the Falcon by the President of Iceland for her services to Icelandic literature.

Carrie Lynn Evans is currently a PhD student of English Literature with Université Laval in Quebec.

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Joseph McBride, "Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge" (Columbia UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 24 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 earned acclaim as American cinema's greatest social satirist. Though an influential fixture in Hollywood, Wilder always saw himself as an outsider. His worldview was shaped by his background in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and work as a journalist in Berlin during Hitler's rise to power, and his perspective as a Jewish refugee from Nazism lent his films a sense of the peril that could engulf any society.

In this critical study, Joseph McBride offers new ways to understand Wilder's work, stretching from his days as a reporter and screenwriter in Europe to his distinguished as well as forgotten films as a Hollywood writer and his celebrated work as a writer-director. In contrast to the widespread view of Wilder as a hardened cynic, McBride reveals him to be a disappointed romantic. Wilder's experiences as an exile led him to mask his sensitivity beneath a veneer of wisecracking that made him a celebrated caustic wit. Amid the satirical barbs and exposure of social hypocrisies, Wilder’s films are marked by intense compassion and a profound understanding of the human condition.

Mixing biographical insight with in-depth analysis of films from throughout Wilder's career as a screenwriter and director of comedy and drama, and drawing on McBride's interviews with the director and his collaborators, this book casts new light on the full range of Wilder's rich, complex, and distinctive vision.

Joseph McBride is a film historian and professor in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University. His many books include the critical study How Did Lubitsch Do It? (Columbia, 2018) as well as acclaimed biographies of Frank Capra, John Ford, and Steven Spielberg and three books on Orson Welles.

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Jeanne Theoharis, "The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks" (Beacon Press, 2015)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 23 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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, Theoharis's book examines Park's six decades of activism, challenging perceptions of her as an accidental actor in the civil rights movement.

This interview revisits the original book, as well as Dr. Theoharis's involvement as a consulting producer and participant in the documentary. The film premiered in 2022 at the Tribeca Film Festival and is currently streaming on Peacock Presenting a powerful corrective to the popular iconography of Rosa Parks as the quiet seamstress who with a single act birthed the modern civil rights movement, scholar Jeanne Theoharis excavates Parks’s political philosophy and six decades of activism. Theoharis masterfully details the political depth of a national heroine who dedicated her life to fighting American inequality and, in the process, resurrects a civil rights movement radical who has been hidden in plain sight far too long.

Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University and an Associate Faculty member at University of Arizona Global Campus. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne.

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Burt Kearns, "Lawrence Tierney: Hollywood's Real-Life Tough Guy" (UP of Kentucky, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 23 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 Tierney (1919-2002) whose natural swagger and gruff disposition made him the perfect fit for the Hollywood "tough guy" archetype. Known for his erratic and oftentimes violent nature, Tierney drew upon his bellicose reputation throughout his career--a reputation that made him one of the most feared and mythologized characters in the industry. Born in Brooklyn to Irish American parents, Tierney worked in theatre in New York before moving to Hollywood in 1943 where he signed with RKO Radio Pictures. His biggest roles would come in Dillinger (1945), in which he played 1930s gangster and bank robber John Dillinger, and Robert Wise's film noir classic Born to Kill (1947). Despite his natural talents Tierney was trouble from the start, struggling with alcoholism and mental instability that emboldened him to start fights whenever and wherever he could. The continued bouts of alcohol-fueled rage, his subsequent stints in jail, and his continued attempts at rehabilitation curtailed his acting career.

Unable to find work throughout much of the 1960s, he did a stint in Europe before eventually returning to New York where he took odd jobs as a construction worker, bartender, and hansom cab driver. In the mid-1980s Tierney returned to acting. With a somewhat cooler head, he established himself again with recurring roles in shows such as Seinfeld and Star Trek: The Next Generation. He would take on his final projects as a septuagenarian in Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Armageddon (1998), where his on-set behavior would once again draw the ire of his colleagues and studio representatives. He would go down swinging just shy of his 83rd birthday, his tough-guy image solidly intact until the end. Kearns explores Tierney's storied life from his days as Dillinger, to his clash with Quentin Tarantino at the end of film career, and his final public appearances. The first official biography of the late personality, the book draws on the writings of Hollywood reporters and gossip columnists who first reported on Tierney's antics, and exclusive interviews with surviving colleagues, friends, family members--and victims. Through their words and his research, Kearns paints a portrait of Tierney's brutish behavior and the industry's reaction to the pugnacious star, drawing parallels--and the line--between the man and the characters that made him a Hollywood legend.

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Cajetan Iheka, "African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics" (Duke UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

In African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics (Duke UP, 2021), Cajetan Iheka examines the ecological footprint of media in Africa alongside the representation of environmental issues in visual culture. Iheka shows how, through visual media such as film, photography, and sculpture, African artists deliver a unique perspective on the socioecological costs of media production, from mineral and oil extraction to the politics of animal conservation. Among other works, he examines Pieter Hugo's photography of electronic waste recycling in Ghana and Idrissou Mora-Kpai's documentary on the deleterious consequences of uranium mining in Niger. These works highlight not only the exploitation of African workers and the vast scope of environmental degradation but also the resourcefulness and creativity of African media makers. They point to the unsustainability of current practices while acknowledging our planet's finite natural resources. In foregrounding Africa's centrality to the production and disposal of media technology, Iheka shows the important place visual media has in raising awareness of and documenting ecological disaster even as it remains complicit in it.

Dr. Cajetan Iheka is a Professor in the English Department at Yale University. Before African Ecomedia he published Naturalizing Africa: Ecological Violence, Agency, and Postcolonial Resistance in African Literature in 2018, which won two prizes - the Ecocriticism Book Award of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, and the African Literature Association First Book Prize. Dr. Iheka has also edited the volume, Teaching Postcolonial Environmental Literature and Media, and co-edited another titled African Migration Narratives: Politics, Race, and Space.

Sara Katz is a Postdoctoral Associate in the History Department at Duke University.

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Bridget Kies and Megan Connor, "Fandom, the Next Generation" (U Iowa Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 generations, which are defined not only by fans’ ages, but by their entry point into a canon or via their personal politics. Divided into three parts--Reboots, Revivals, and Nostalgia; Generations of Enduring Fandoms; and Generation Tensions--contributors further the conversation about how generational fandom is influenced by and, in turn, influences technologies, industry practices, and social and political changes. As reboot culture continues, as franchises continue expanding over time, and as new technologies enable easier access to older media, Fandom, the Next Generation offers a necessary investigation into transgenerational fandoms and intergenerational fan relationships.

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Jon Lewis, "The Godfather, Part II" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 many to be greater than its predecessor. This despite the fact that it consists largely of meetings between aspiring 'Godfather' Michael Corleone and fellow gangsters, politicians and family members. The meetings remind us that the modern gangster's success is built upon inside information and on strategic planning. Michael and his father Vito's days resemble those of the legitimate businessmen they aspire or pretend to be.

In his book The Godfather, Part II (Bloomsbury, 2022), Jon Lewis provides a close analysis of the film and a discussion of its cinematic and political contexts. It is structured in three sections: “The Sequel,” “The Dissolve,” and “The Sicilian Thing” – accommodating three avenues of inquiry, respectively: the film's importance in and to Hollywood history, its unique, auteur style and form; and its cultural significance. Of interest, then, is New Hollywood history, mise-en-scene, and a view of the Corleone saga as a cautionary capitalist parable, as a metaphor of the corruption of American power, post-Vietnam, post-Watergate.

Jon Lewis is the University Distinguished Professor of Film Studies at Oregon State University and the former editor of Cinema Journal. His books include Road to Nowhere: Hollywood Encounters the Counterculture, Hard-Boiled Hollywood: Crime and Punishment in Postwar Los Angeles, The Road to Romance and Ruin: Teen Films and Youth Culture, Whom God Wishes to Destroy … Francis Coppola and the New Hollywood, Hollywood v. Hard Core: How the Struggle over Censorship Saved the Modern Film Industry, and for the BFI’s Film Classics series, The Godfather.

Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found at https://fifteenminutefilm.podb... and on Twitter @15MinFilm.

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Alan Shuback, "Hollywood at the Races: Film's Love Affair with the Turf" (UP of Kentucky, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 Laurel and Hardy led nine-year-old Alan Shuback into a chance encounter with thoroughbred horse racing in 1957. Racing soon also became a passion, and he never abandoned either love, making a career out of the latter as a transatlantic racing journalist. More recently, with Hollywood and racing both in decline in Shuback’s eyes, he set out to document the close relationship between them during a golden era for both, encompassing the 1930s to the 1970s.

In this intriguing interview, Shuback discusses anti-Semitism in the early days of Santa Anita, one of southern California’s premier racetracks, which led to the formation of rival racecourse Hollywood Park; Louis B. Mayer’s obsession with racing, producing one of America’s most powerful racing stables and nearly leading to his firing from MGM; Fred Astaire’s late-life marriage to a pioneering female jockey who was decades younger than him; and the role of films about horse racing in the broader culture. (For the record, at least 60 movies on the topic were released in the 1930s alone.)

Finally, Shuback analyzes the decline of both industries. It’s a sad note, but one that leaves you grateful for the memories.

Rachel Pagones was a London-based journalist at the Racing Post from 2001-2009 and a racing columnist for the Financial Times from 2003-2009.

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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)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 8 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 near-fanatic attention brought each year to the Awards, the organization that dispenses those awards--the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences--has never been well-understood. The organization itself has never produced a thorough account of its birth and its touch-and-go adolescence, and the few reports on those periods from outside have always had a glancing, cursory quality. Yet the story of the Academy's birth and maturation is a critical piece of Hollywood's history. Now that story is finally being told. Bruce Davis, executive director of the Academy for over twenty years, was given unprecedented access to its archives, and the result is a revealing and compelling story of the men and women, famous and infamous, who shaped one of the best-known organizations in the world. No one has ever written about the Academy with as intimate a view of its workings, its awards, and its world-famous membership. Thorough and long overdue, The Academy and the Award: The Coming of Age of Oscar and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Brandeis UP, 2022) fills in a crucial gap in Hollywood history.

Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University and an Associate Faculty member at University of Arizona Global Campus. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne.

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Laura A. Frahm, "Design in Motion: Film Experiments at the Bauhaus" (MIT Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 2 Nov 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 school that operated between 1919 and 1933 and was located in Weimar, before moving to Dessau and later to Berlin. While the Bauhaus is commonly associated with the development of modern architecture and industrial design, Design in Motion focuses on film, and demonstrates how the cinematic medium became a proving ground for some of the school’s most innovative work.

Laura Frahm is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities at the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University. Frahm's work explores film and media through the lens of architecture, design, spatial theory, ecological thought, and process philosophy. In addition to her latest book Design in Motion: Film Experiments at the Bauhaus (2022), she is the author of Beyond Space: Cinematic Topologies of the Urban (2010), Moving Spaces: Spatial Configurations in Music Videos by Jonathan Glazer, Chris Cunningham, Mark Romanek, and Michel Gondry (2007) and Introduction to Media Cultural Studies (co-edited, 2005).

Iva Glisic is a historian and art historian specialising in modern Russia and the Balkans.

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Shaken and Stirred

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 2 Nov 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 post-Cold War era. So many films, so many Bonds. We’ve talked about nuclear warfare, espionage and intrigue, evil deep state corporations and corrupt national security institutions, and human stories of love and loss behind the Iron Curtain. Bond’s been through it all. Our films cover four Bonds - Sean Connery’s From Russia With Love (1963), Roger Moore’s For Your Eyes Only (1981), and Pierce Brosnan’s Goldeneye (1995). We end with a discussion of the post-9/11 Bond, Daniel Craig, especially 2012’s Skyfall. We demonstrate how Bond transcends the Cold War, acts as an avatar for a Britain that no longer exists, and, despite a number of cosmetic changes after 9/11, demonstrates surprising continuity over 60 years.

Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.

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Joseph McBride, "The Whole Durn Human Comedy: Life According to the Coen Brothers" (Anthem Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 Country for Old Men are cult favorites and box office hits. Yet this team of filmmaking brothers remains misunderstood in some critical circles, partly because, like John Ford, they mischievously refuse to explain themselves to interviewers, preferring to let their work speak for itself. Ethan and Joel Coen also delight in unsettling cinematic conventions and confounding audiences while raising disturbing questions about human nature.

Mixing film genres and styles, playing with narrative in postmodernist ways, the Coens' films display shocking tonal shifts as they blend comedy and drama and, most controversially, comedy and violence. This potent mélange of themes and stylistic approaches makes the Coens' films adventurous, unpredictable probes into social anxieties and reflections on the omnipresence of evil in the modern world. In their trenchant satire, these brilliant writer-directors are heirs to Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder, and as satirists tend to do, the Coens sometimes provoke audience anger and incomprehension along with enjoyment of their penchant for black comedy.

In The Whole Durn Human Comedy: Life According to the Coen Brothers (Anthem Press, 2022), film historian and critic Joseph McBride jousts with the Coens' detractors while defining the filmmakers' freshness and originality. The quirkily individualistic Coens are the kind of personal filmmakers the increasingly conglomerated American cinema rarely fosters anymore, a distinction partly attributable to their following in Europe and their partial financing by European sources. This critical study goes beyond the often-superficial and confused nature of Coen criticism to illuminate their artistic personalities and contributions to cinematic culture.

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Larry Ceplair, "The Hollywood Motion Picture Blacklist: Seventy-Five Years Later" (UP of Kentucky, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Seventy-five years ago, the Hollywood blacklist ruined lives, stifled creativity, and sent waves of proscription and censorship throughout United States culture. When the Hollywood Ten refused to answer the questions of the House Committee on Un-American Activities about their membership in the Communist Party, they were sentenced to prison, the five who were under contract were fired by their studios, and all were blacklisted from reemployment until they "purged themselves of their communist taint." By the 1950s, this blacklist publicly stigmatized nearly three hundred other Americans in the entertainment industry who invoked the First and Fifth Amendments in their refusal to apologize for their Communist ties or provide the names of other members. Dozens of others were graylisted as the result of rumors. In The Hollywood Motion Picture Blacklist: Seventy-Five Years Later (University Press of Kentucky, 2022), Larry Ceplair offers new insights on the origins of the blacklist, the characteristics of those blacklisted, and the probability of future proscriptions of the blacklist type.

Larry Ceplair is professor emeritus of history at Santa Monica College, California.

Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020).

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Hongwei Bao, "Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Visual Culture Under Postsocialism" (Routledge, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Visual Culture Under Postsocialism (Routledge, 2020), associate professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Nottingham Hongwei Bao returns with a theory-driven, methodologically-diverse, empathetic, and insightful analysis of LGBTQ literature and visual culture in postsocialist China. A thorough introduction positions Bao as a participant observer and explores key concepts including “postsocialist metamorphosis,” defined as “the transformation of subjectivity, desire and sense of belonging in the postsocialist era” (4). After exploring the history of homosexuality’s (re-)emergence in China’s reform era by tracing public, intellectual discourse, Bao counters the misperception that Chinese gay and lesbian identities are the result of the influence of global (Western) gay culture. Instead, he identifies a variety of gender and sexual subjectivities unique to China’s postsocialist conditions and historical context. Each chapter then explores rich case studies from queer China, touching upon a wide variety of cultural production types. From poetry to papercutting art, from comrade (tongzhi)/gay literature to girls’ love fan fiction, from lesbian films to activist documentaries, and from a drag show in Shanghai to a public performance of a same-sex wedding in Beijing, Queer China provides unique analysis and insights and also acts as an archive of queer cultural production in postsocialist China.

Laurie Dickmeyer is an Assistant Professor of History at Angelo State University, where she teaches courses in Asian and US history. Her research concerns nineteenth century US-China relations. She can be reached at laurie.dickmeyer@angelo.edu.

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Shall We Play A Game?

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 teenagers further demonstrated American dominance on the economic and cultural fronts. But what happens when teenagers check out of real life and responsibilities too much? We look at films that can be taken as cautionary tales about the dangers of teenagers (or young adults) who don’t take the Cold War seriously. The focus is on the seemingly apolitical, irresponsible and anti-social nature of the modern, video game playing white, affluent American youth. Our more serious films are Wargames, from 1983, and The Falcon and the Snowman, from 1985. But we also throw in a little bit of The Last Starfighter (1984) and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) just to spice things up.

Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.

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Mallory Lewis and Nat Segaloff, "Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop: The Team That Changed Children's TV" (UP of Kentucky, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 about the iconic pair in Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop: The Team that Changed Children's Television (University of Kentucky Press, 2022). For almost half a century, celebrated ventriloquist and entertainer Shari Lewis delighted generations of children and adults with the help of her trusted sock puppet sidekick Lamb Chop. For decades, the beloved pair were synonymous with children's television, educating and entrancing their young audience with their symbiotic personalities and their proclivity for song, dance, and the joy of silliness. But as iconic as their television personas were, relatively little inside knowledge has been revealed about Lewis herself and the life-changing moments that led her to the entertainment industry and perhaps, most importantly, to Lamb Chop.

Renowned for her skills as a performer, Lewis was an equally skilled businesswoman. Operating in an era when women were largely left out of the conversation, she was one of the few women to run her own television production company. Whether it was singing, dancing, conducting, writing, drawing, or ventriloquism-a skill in which she was virtually unmatched-Lewis spent the entirety of her 65 years in pursuit of performative perfection. Constantly innovating and adapting to the needs of her audience and the market, Lewis extended the longevity of her career decade after decade. Her contributions, and that of Lamb Chop, and the rest of her puppet pals forever changed the history of children's television. In this seminal biography, the pair pull the veritable wool from the eyes of audiences who adored the legendary entertainer to examine the joys, sorrows, triumphs, and sheer hard work that gave Lewis and Lamb Chop their enduring star power. To learn more, visit Mallory Lewis here.

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Andrei Nae, "Immersion, Narrative, and Gender Crisis in Survival Horror Video Games" (Routledge, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Andrei Nae's book Immersion, Narrative, and Gender Crisis in Survival Horror Video Games (Routledge, 2021) investigates the narrativity of some of the most popular survival horror video games and the gender politics implicit in their storyworlds. In a thorough analysis of the genre that draws upon detailed comparisons with the mainstream action genre, Andrei Nae places his analysis firmly within a political and social context.

In comparing survival horror games to the dominant game design norms of the action genre, the author differentiates between classical and postclassical survival horror games to show how the former reject the norms of the action genre and deliver a critique of the conservative gender politics of action games, while the latter are more heterogeneous in terms of their game design and, implicitly, gender politics.

Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Design with a focus on Digital Game Studies at the IU International University of Applied Science and editor of “Game Studies Watchlist”, a weekly messenger newsletter about Game Culture.

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Kyle Stevens, "The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory" (Oxford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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, we might say that the category of film now only exists in theory. Whereas film-theoretical discussion at the turn of the 21st century was preoccupied, understandably, by digital technology's permeation of virtually all aspects of the film object, this volume moves the conversation away from a focus on film's materiality towards timely questions concerning the ethics, politics, and even aesthetics of thinking about the medium of cinema. To put it another way, The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory (Oxford UP, 2022), edited by Kyle Stevens, narrows in on the subject of film, not with a nostalgic sensibility, but with the recognition that what constitutes a film is historically contingent, in dialogue with the vicissitudes of entertainment, art, and empire. The volume is divided into six sections: Meta-Theory; Film Theory's Project of Emancipation; Apparatus and Perception; Audiovisuality; How Close is Close Reading?; and The Turn to Experience.

Kyle Stevens is the author of Mike Nichols: Sex, Language, and the Reinvention of Psychological Realism. His work has appeared in Critical Inquiry, Cultural Critique, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Adaptation, Critical Quarterly, New Review of Film and Television Studies, World Picture, and several edited collections. He is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Appalachian State University.

Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne.

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Scott Bukatman, "Black Panther" (U Texas Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 just a movie led by and starring Black artists. It grappled with ideas and conflicts central to Black life in America and helped redress the racial dynamics of the Hollywood blockbuster.

Scott Bukatman, one of the foremost scholars of superheroes and cinematic spectacle, brings his impeccable pedigree to this lively and accessible study, finding in the utopianism of Black Panther (University of Texas Press, 2022) a way of re-envisioning what a superhero movie can and should be while centering the Black creators, performers, and issues behind it. He considers the superheroic Black body; the Pan-African fantasy, feminism, and Afrofuturism of Wakanda; the African American relationship to Africa; the political influence of director Ryan Coogler’s earlier movies; and the entwined performances of Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa and Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger. Bukatman argues that Black Panther is escapism of the best kind, offering a fantasy of liberation and social justice while demonstrating the power of popular culture to articulate ideals and raise vital questions.

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Wolverines!

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 makes sense that the geo-political structure that shaped and influenced so much of global political action - the Cold War - would show up in movies targeting teen audiences. In the broader media landscape, the question was being asked: Could these post-Vietnam teenagers hack the reality of conflict like their dads and granddads had to? We break down two films about teenagers as soldiers - Taps, released in 1981, and Red Dawn, released in 1984. In both cases, what we see is a conversation about American military culture, whether it can still be counted on when times get tough. And if it can’t, if America’s youth reject it, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.

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Diane Negra, "Shadow of a Doubt" (Auteur, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 one that he at various times identified as his favourite and his best. This scrupulously organized film operates as a masterclass on principles of narrative design while generating resonant commentary on the nature of family life.

Negra is Professor of Film Studies and Screen Culture at University College Dublin. Analysing the film's narrative system, issues of genre, authorship, social history, homesickness and 'family values', Negra shows how the film's impeccable narrative structure is wedded to radical ideological content, linking the film's terrors to the punishing effects of looking beyond conventional family and gender roles. This book redresses the deficit of sustained critical attention paid to Shadow even in the large corpus of Hitchcock scholarship. Finally it understands Shadow as an unconventionally female-centred Hitchcock text and a milestone film that marks the director's emergent engagement with the pathologies of violence in American life and opens a window into the placement of femininity in World War II consensus culture and more broadly into the politics of mid-century gender and family life.

Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne.

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Erin Keane, "Runaway: Notes on the Myths That Made Me" (Belt Publishing, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 truths in the stories families tell. In 1970, Erin Keane's mother ran away from home for the first time. She was thirteen years old. Over the next several years, and under two assumed identities, she hitchhiked her way across America, experiencing freedom, hardship, and tragedy. At fifteen, she met a man in New York City and married him. He was thirty-six. Though a deft balance of journalistic digging, cultural criticism, and poetic reimagining, Keane pieces together the true story of her mother's teenage years, questioning almost everything she's been told about her parents and their relationship. Along the way, she also considers how pop culture has kept similar narratives alive in her. At stake are some of the most profound questions we can ask ourselves: What's true? What gets remembered? Who gets to tell the stories that make us who we are? Whether it's talking about painful family history, #MeToo, Star Wars, true crime forensics, or The Gilmore Girls, Runaway is an unforgettable look at all the different ways the stories we tell--both personal and pop cultural--create us.

Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne.

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Alexander Sergeant, "Encountering the Impossible: The Fantastic in Hollywood Fantasy Cinema" (SUNY Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 or critical consensus on what the experience of watching fantasy cinema actually entails. What makes something a fantasy film, and what unique pleasures does the genre offer?

In Encountering the Impossible: The Fantastic in Hollywood Fantasy Cinema (SUNY Press, 2021) Alexander Sergeant solves the riddle of the fantasy film by theorizing the underlying experience of imagination alluded to in scholarly discussions of the genre. Drawing principally on the psychoanalysis of Melanie Klein and D. W. Winnicott, Sergeant considers the way in which fantasy cinema rejects Hollywood's typically naturalistic mode of address to generate an alternative experience that Sergeant refers to as the fantastic, a way of approaching cinema that embraces the illusory nature of the medium as part of the pleasure of the experience. Analyzing such canonical Hollywood fantasy films as The Wizard of Oz, It's a Wonderful Life, Mary Poppins, Conan the Barbarian, and The Lord of the Rings movies, Sergeant theorizes how fantasy cinema provides a unique film experience throughout its ubiquitous presence in the history of Hollywood film production.

Encountering the Impossible has been shortlisted for the 2022 Best First Monograph Award presented by the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies

Alexander Sergeant is Lecturer in Film and Media Studies at the University of Portsmouth. He is the coeditor (with Christopher Holliday) of Fantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres, which was Runner Up for Best Collection at the 2019 BAFTSS (British Association for Television & Screen Studies) awards. He is the founder of Fantasy-Animation.org and co-host of the Fantasy/Animation podcast.

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Ramzi Fawaz, "Queer Forms" (NYU Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 13 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 women’s liberation, the gay liberation movement, feminist and queer theory, and iconic popular culture artifacts in order to understand gendered and sexual forms in context of gender and sexual fluidity. This is a brilliant book, interdisciplinary in scope and approach, taking the reader on a journey through theoretical frameworks and interpretive understandings of where we often see queer forms, and what we think about those forms. Fawaz notes that he is working to tell a story, interpreting cultural artifacts to forefront the ideas from feminist and queer theory, knitting these approaches together to guide us through a fascinating understanding of what we see when we watch films, or television, or read comics, or enjoy Broadway performances. These interpretations provide us with ways of seeing identity and shape within narrative forms and creative storytelling. But Fawaz is also pushing against an excess of thinking that all identities and forms are fluid—instead, Queer Forms (NYU Press, 2022) examines the capacity of identity and forms to, essentially, shapeshift, which is not the same as being fluid, since shapeshifting is an adaption, and thus is not without form itself. Form has little meaning until or unless they are/it is interpreted by others.

The thrust of the work that Fawaz is doing in Queer Forms ultimately is about freedom and how we can each exist as free individuals, especially when there are often social and legal rules that constrain us as individuals with distinct identities that traverse a host of markers and qualities. Popular culture artifacts can provide the room and opportunity to imagine identities in different forms and contexts. Queer Forms provides the reader with an archive of culture forms as a kind of gift, helping us to see and understand how we might interpret or reinterpret the queer and feminist past so that we approach our daily contemporary life with that understanding. Fawaz explains the variegated theories that frame these interpretations and gets at this historical foundation—especially of the liberation movements in the 1960s and 1970s—in order to engage in a valuable consideration of freedom.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj.

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Bonus Episode: A Conversation about Past Episodes and Current Events

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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. The first season traced the long cultural shadow of 9/11 in films about historical events. How did 9/11 influence our collective memory about ancient history and the Middle East? What about McCarthyism? Other incidents of terrorism? And how did Hollywood eventually take on the event itself? Season two is about revolutions and revolutionaries. From the American Revolution to the Bolshevik Revolution to feminists and labor organizers, Hollywood is always attracted to human stories amid great upheaval. What happens to our myths when we look at history from below? How do we incorporate the darker side of the mythologized American Revolution at a time when the history wars rage in public schools. And how does Vladimir Putin’s manipulation of imperial and revolutionary Russian history stack up against the reality of his regime?

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Eran Kaplan, "Projecting the Nation: History and Ideology on the Israeli Screen" (Rutgers UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 Israeli cinema. The only book in English to offer this type of historical scope was Ella Shohat's Israeli Cinema: East West and the Politics of Representation from 1989. Since 1989, however, Israeli cinema and Israeli society have undergone some crucial transformations and, moreover, Shohat's book offered a single framework through which to judge Israeli cinema: a critique of orientalism. Projecting the Nation contends that Israeli cinema offers much richer historical and ideological perspectives that expose the complexity of the Israeli project. By analyzing Israeli films which address such issues as the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi divide, the kibbutz and urban life, the rise of religion in Israeli public life and more, the book explores the way cinema has represented and also shaped our understanding of the history of modern Israel as it evolved from a collectivist society to a society where individualism and adherence to local identities is the dominant ideology.

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Jennifer Wenzel, "The Disposition of Nature: Environmental Crisis and World Literature" (Fordham UP, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 7 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 tackles the formal innovations, rhetorical appeals, and sociological imbrications of world literature that might help us confront unevenly distributed environmental crises, including global warming.

The Disposition of Nature: Environmental Crisis and World Literature (Fordham UP, 2019) argues that assumptions about what nature is are at stake in conflicts over how it is inhabited or used. Both environmental discourse and world literature scholarship tend to confuse parts and wholes. Working with writing and film from Africa, South Asia, and beyond, Wenzel takes a contrapuntal approach to sites and subjects dispersed across space and time. Reading for the planet, Wenzel shows, means reading from near to there: across experiential divides, between specific sites, at more than one scale.

Impressive in its disciplinary breadth, Wenzel’s book fuses insights from political ecology, geography, anthropology, history, and law, while drawing on active debates between postcolonial theory and world literature, as well as scholarship on the Anthropocene and the material turn. In doing so, the book shows the importance of the literary to environmental thought and practice, elaborating how a supple understanding of cultural imagination and narrative logics can foster more robust accounts of global inequality and energize movements for justice and livable futures.

Jennifer Wenzel teaches at Columbia University.

Gargi Binju is a researcher at the University of Tübingen.

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Pamela Robertson Wojcik, "Gidget: Origins of a Teen Girl Transmedia Franchise" (Routledge, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 6 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Gidget: Origins of a Teen Girl Transmedia Franchise (Routledge, 2022) examines the multiplicity of books, films, TV shows, and merchandise that make up the transmedia Gidget universe from the late 1950s to the 1980s.

The book examines the Gidget phenomenon as an early and unique teen girl franchise that expands understanding of both teen girlhood and transmedia storytelling. It locates the film as existing at the historical intersection of numerous discourses and events, including the emergence of surf culture and surf films; the rise of California as signifier of modernity and as the epicentre of white American middle-class teen culture; the annexation of Hawaii; the invention of Barbie; and Hollywood’s reluctant acceptance of teen culture and teen audiences. Each chapter places the Gidget text in context, looking at production and reception circumstances and intertexts such as the novels of Françoise Sagan, the Tammy series, La Dolce Vita, and The Patty Duke Show, to better understand Gidget’s meaning at different points in time.

This book explores many aspects of Gidget, providing an invaluable insight into this iconic franchise for students and researchers in film studies, feminist media studies, and youth culture.

Peter C. Kunze is a visiting assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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The Two Russias

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 5 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 intent on propping up a crumbling regime, and the beautiful, little known country of real, everyday Russians who live rich and full lives despite it all. Our three films this week show the two Russias in different ways and in different stages of the 1980s Cold War. White Nights, the story of a Russian ballet dancer who defected to America and is forced to return, came out in December 1985. The Hunt for Red October, based on a 1984 Tom Clancy novel, was released in March 1990, a few months after the world changed. The Russia House, based on John le Carre’s 1989 novel came out Christmas Day, 1990, exactly one year before the Soviet Union closed up shop for good.

Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.

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Cinema’s First Nasty Women

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 she reminds polite society that the sweet, gentle screen martyr (the nasty woman’s counterpart) is a fiction too, as much a trick and a dupe as an exploding housemaid on celluloid?

And what a surprise—and what a treat—to discover cinema’s earliest days are among their nastiest. Coming from Kino Lorber this December, “this four-disc set showcase more than fourteen hours of rarely seen silent films about feminist protest, slapstick rebellion, and suggestive gender play. These women organize labor strikes, bake (and weaponize) inedible desserts, explode out of chimneys, electrocute the police force, and assume a range of identities that gleefully dismantle traditional gender norms and sexual constraints. The films span a variety of genres including slapstick comedy, genteel farce, the trick film, cowboy melodrama, and adventure thriller. Cinema’s First Nasty Women includes 99 European and American silent films, produced from 1898 to 1926, sourced from thirteen international film archives and libraries, with all-new musical scores, video introductions, commentary tracks, and a lavishly illustrated booklet.”

Host Annie Berke sits down with the curators of this set, Drs. Maggie Hennefeld and Laura Horak, and Ms. Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, to discuss how this project came to be, the steps they took to ensure an anti-racist program, and if the “nasty woman” spirit lives on in the mediascape of the present.

Maggie Hennefeld is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature and McKnight Presidential Fellow at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is author of Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes (Columbia UP, 2018), co-editor of the journal Cultural Critique (UMN Press), co-editor of two volumes: Unwatchable (Rutgers UP, 2019) and Abjection Incorporated: Mediating the Politics of Pleasure and Violence (Duke UP, 2020).

Laura Horak is an Associate Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University and director of the Transgender Media Lab. She is author of Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressing Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema (Rutgers UP, 2016) and co-editor of Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space (Indiana UP, 2014), Unwatchable (Rutgers UP, 2019), a special issue of Somatechnics on trans/cinematic/bodies and an In Focus section of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies on “Transing Cinema and Media Studies.”

Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi is the Curator of Silent film at Eye Filmmuseum, the national film archive of the Netherlands. Graduated from University of Amsterdam, Film&TV Studies in 1997 and employed since 1999 at Eye, she has worked on the discovery, restoration and presentation of many presumed lost films. She is responsible for the preservation and presentation of Eye's silent film holdings, including among others the Desmet Collection (1907-1916) and the Mutoscope & Biograph Collection (1896-1902).

Annie Berke is the film editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (University of California Press, 2022). Her scholarship and criticism have been published in Literary Hub, Feminist Media Histories, Public Books, Jacobin, and the Washington Post.

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Usha Iyer, "Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal Histories of Hindi Cinema" (Oxford UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal Histories of Hindi Cinema (Oxford UP, 2020), an ambitious study of two of South Asia's most popular cultural forms ― cinema and dance ― historicizes and theorizes the material and cultural production of film dance, a staple attraction of popular Hindi cinema. It explores how the dynamic figurations of the body wrought by cinematic dance forms from the 1930s to the 1990s produce unique constructions of gender, sexuality, stardom, and spectacle. By charting discursive shifts through figurations of dancer-actresses, their publicly performed movements, private training, and the cinematic and extra-diegetic narratives woven around their dancing bodies, the book considers the "women's question" via new mobilities corpo-realized by dancing women.

Some of the central figures animating this corporeal history are Azurie, Sadhona Bose, Vyjayanthimala, Helen, Waheeda Rehman, Madhuri Dixit, and Saroj Khan, whose performance histories fold and intersect with those of other dancing women, including devadasis and tawaifs, Eurasian actresses, oriental dancers, vamps, choreographers, and backup dancers. Through a material history of the labor of producing on-screen dance, theoretical frameworks that emphasize collaboration, such as the “choreomusicking body” and “dance musicalization,” aesthetic approaches to embodiment drawing on treatises like the Natya Sastra and the Abhinaya Darpana, and formal analyses of cine-choreographic “techno-spectacles,” Dancing Women offers a variegated, textured history of cinema, dance, and music. Tracing the gestural genealogies of film dance produces a very different narrative of Bombay cinema, and indeed of South Asian cultural modernities, by way of a corporeal history co-choreographed by a network of remarkable dancing women.

Pratichi Priyambada is a Ph.D Candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Irvine. She is broadly interested in histories of performance, gender and sexuality, and colonial law. She can be reached at @rhymingrhythm on Twitter.

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Jean-Thomas Tremblay, "Breathing Aesthetics" (Duke UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In Breathing Aesthetics (Duke University Press (2022), Jean-Thomas Tremblay argues that difficult breathing indexes the uneven distribution of risk in a contemporary era marked by the increasing contamination, weaponization, and monetization of air. Tremblay shows how biopolitical and necropolitical forces tied to the continuation of extractive capitalism, imperialism, and structural racism are embodied and experienced through respiration. They identify responses to the crisis in breathing in aesthetic practices ranging from the film work of Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta to the disability diaries of Bob Flanagan, to the Black queer speculative fiction of Renee Gladman. In readings of these and other minoritarian works of experimental film, endurance performance, ecopoetics, and cinema-vérité, Tremblay contends that articulations of survival now depend on the management and dispersal of respiratory hazards. In so doing, they reveal how an aesthetic attention to breathing generates historically, culturally, and environmentally situated tactics and strategies for living under precarity.

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Samhita Sunya, "Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay" (U California Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series.

In this inaugural episode, our host Aswin Punathambekar speaks with Samhita Sunya, the author of the book Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay (U California Press, 2022).

In this episode you’ll hear about:

Dr. Sunya’s intellectual trajectory in studying South Asian cinema from Houston to Bangalore, Bombay, and beyond;
How the periodization of the “long” 1960s – bookended by the 1955 Bandung Afro-Asian Conference and the 1975 Indian Emergency – comes into view through the author’s interdisciplinary approach;
How Dr. Sunya works her way through and out of a popular binary misunderstanding of Indian cinema - a familiar opposition between an auteurist world cinema and song-and-dance driven popular cinema;
Why the author chooses what would be considered oddball or off-beat media artifacts, what kinds of sources she gathers in relation to these materials, and where she looks for them in creative ways;
Reflection upon the pedagogy of world cinema in the classroom;
A discussion of the notion of “excess” and how it is weaved into the three central themes – love, desire, and gender – that emerge throughout the book;
How Dr. Sunya’s cross-industry and trans-regional perspective counter the spatial biases that are deeply ingrained into the disciplinary boundaries;
A reflection on the nature of academic work through the lens of “love” on topics like world cinema and South Asia.

About the Book

By the 1960s, Hindi-language films from Bombay were in high demand not only for domestic and diasporic audiences but also for sizable non-diasporic audiences across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Indian Ocean world. Often confounding critics who painted the song-dance films as noisy and nonsensical. if not dangerously seductive and utterly vulgar, Bombay films attracted fervent worldwide viewers precisely for their elements of romance, music, and spectacle. In this richly documented history of Hindi cinema during the long 1960s, Samhita Sunya historicizes the emergence of world cinema as a category of cinematic diplomacy that formed in the crucible of the Cold War. Interwoven with this history is an account of the prolific transnational circuits of popular Hindi films alongside the efflorescence of European art cinema and Cold War–era forays of Hollywood abroad. By following archival leads and threads of argumentation within commercial Hindi films that seem to be odd cases—flops, remakes, low-budget comedies, and prestige productions—this book offers a novel map for excavating the historical and ethical stakes of world cinema and world-making via Bombay.

You can find the open access version of Dr. Sunya’s book through Luminosoa.org at the University of California Press website.

Author Bio: Samhita Sunya is Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Cultures at the University of Virginia.

Host Bio: Aswin Punathambekar is a Professor of Communication and Director of the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Editor & Producer Bio: Jing Wang. She is Senior Research Manager at CARGC at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Original Background Music by Mengyang Zoe Zhao.

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Cold War Homefront

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 28 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 wouldn’t associate any of these films with how Vietnam figured into the Cold War dynamic because they are about the homefront. The Deer Hunter (1978), Coming Home (1978), and Da Five Bloods (2020) are reminders (or are they revelations?) that the Vietnam War deeply wounded American society from top to bottom. Whether it’s working class immigrants in rural Pennsylvania, severely wounded veterans and their caretakers, or Black and Brown soldiers contending with racism and shattered lives decades removed from the war, our three films depict the Cold War homefront in vivid detail. We often think of the Cold War as an impersonal contest between global powers that nearly ended the world, but the Vietnam War was incredibly personal for millions of Americans and Vietnamese.

Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.

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Catherine Lester, "Horror Films for Children: Fear and Pleasure in American Cinema" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 exposure to horror media. Nowhere is this tension more clear than in horror films for adults, where the demonic child villain is one of the genre's most enduring tropes. However, horror for children is a unique category of contemporary Hollywood cinema in which children are addressed as an audience with specific needs, fears and desires, and where child characters are represented as sympathetic protagonists whose encounters with the horrific lead to cathartic, subversive and productive outcomes.

Horror Films for Children: Fear and Pleasure in American Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2021) examines the history, aesthetics and generic characteristics of children's horror films, and identifies the 'horrific child' as one of the defining features of the genre, where it is as much a staple as it is in adult horror but with vastly different representational, interpretative and affective possibilities. Through analysis of case studies including blockbuster hits (Gremlins), cult favourites (The Monster Squad) and indie darlings (Coraline), Catherine Lester asks, what happens to the horror genre, and the horrific children it represents, when children are the target audience?

Peter C. Kunze is a visiting assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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M. Hennefeld and N. Sammond, "Abjection Incorporated: Mediating the Politics of Pleasure and Violence" (Duke UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 22 Sep 2022 19:00:00 +0000

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 permeated twentieth- and twenty-first-century social and political discourse.

The contributors to Abjection Incorporated: Mediating the Politics of Pleasure and Violence (Duke University Press, 2020) move beyond simple critiques of abjection as a punitive form of social death, illustrating how it has become a contested mode of political and cultural capital—empowering for some but oppressive for others.

Escaping abjection's usual confines of psychoanalysis and aesthetic modernism, core to theories of abjection by thinkers such as Kristeva and Bataille, the contributors examine a range of media, including literature, photography, film, television, talking dolls, comics, and manga.

Whether analyzing how comedic abjection can help mobilize feminist politics or how expressions of abjection inflect class, race, and gender hierarchies, the contributors demonstrate the importance of competing uses of abjection to contemporary society and politics. They emphasize abjection's role in circumscribing the boundaries of the human and how the threats abjection poses to the self and other, far from simply negative, open up possibilities for radically new politics.

Maggie Hennefeld is Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Her Twitter handle is @magshenny.

Nicholas Sammond is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto.

Joel Tscherne is an adjunct history general studies professor at Southern New Hampshire University. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne.

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Jon Krampner, "Ernest Lehman: The Sweet Smell of Success" (UP of Kentucky, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 as “perhaps the greatest screenwriter in history,” Lehman's work on films such as North by Northwest, The King and I, Sabrina, West Side Story, and The Sound of Music helped define a generation of movie making.

But while his talent took center stage, the public knew little of Lehman himself, a native of Manhattan's Upper West Side and the Five Towns of Long Island devoted to his wife of 50 years. His relentless perfectionism, hypochondria and all-night writing sessions fueled by tequila and grilled cheese sandwiches were some of the quirks that made Lehman a legend in the Hollywood community.

In Ernest Lehman: The Sweet Smell of Success (UP of Kentucky, 2022), author Jon Krampner lays bare the life of this lauded yet elusive character. Moving seamlessly from post-production meetings to sound stages and onto the locations of Lehman's greatest films, Krampner’s extensive biography brings to life the genius and singularity of the revered screenwriter's personality and the contributions he made to the world of cinema.

Jon Krampner is the author of The Man in the Shadows: Fred Coe and the Golden Age of Television, Female Brando: The Legend of Kim Stanley, and Creamy and Crunchy: An Informal History of Peanut Butter, the All-American Food.

Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found at https://fifteenminutefilm.podb... and on Twitter @15MinFilm.

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It’s The End Of The World As We Know It

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 explore how American, British, and Australian filmmakers imagined the unimaginable - Armageddon and the literal and figurative fallout. We look at On the Beach (1959), The Day After (1983), and Threads (1984). We challenge the conventional wisdom that the West only seriously worried about nuclear after the Cuban Missile Crisis, provide some background on the history of anti-nuclear social movements, and compare how these three unforgettable films chose to depict nuclear destruction. How accurate were they? Did they make a difference? And, how many of us are still traumatized by seeing them?

Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.

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A MAD, MAD, World

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 comedy was the only way to approach a topic as ridiculous as MAD. In this episode we compare and contrast Dr. Strangelove (1964) with Failsafe, a serious film about the same subject that came out the same year. We reveal just how spot on Dr. Strangelove was about MAD versus Failsafe’s unwarranted optimism that limited nuclear war was possible. An army of political scientists and bureaucrats game theoried fighting and winning a nuclear war like it was just another social science problem. Civilians are the warmongers in our MAD films. Dr. Strangelove may be a deranged Nazi freak, but everything he said was seriously considered by real life MAD Men.

Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.

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Danielle J. Lindemann, "True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us" (FSG, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 University, uses a sociological lens to examine the meaning and role of reality TV in contemporary society. In doing so, the analysis demonstrates how reality TV reinforces often narrow and conservative stereotypes about families, gender, class, race, and sexuality. At the same time, the book shows how reality TV can offer representations for excluded communities and is not consumed uncritically by audiences, even as reality TV is reflective of broader social inequalities. Drawing on classical and contemporary sociological theories and frameworks, the book uses a huge range of examples, from some of the early reality TV classics, through the huge hits, to the niche and less well-known shows that both reflect and shape how life is shown on TV. The book is essential reading across the social sciences and arts and humanities, as well as for anyone interested in television!

Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Sheffield.

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Who Can You Trust?

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 7 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 intelligence agencies run amok with no oversight? What if the president is a criminal and would do anything to stay in power? These sound like current events, but they were major preoccupations during the 1970s in the wake of Watergate and congressional hearings about CIA and FBI abuses. Hollywood responded by dramatizing the unfettered power of what some like to call “the deep state” in three films we cover this episode - The Parallax View (1974), The Three Days of the Condor (1975), and All The President’s Men (1976). Each features protagonists unraveling conspiracies at the heart of our national security state, but is exposing the truth enough?

Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.

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88 Underwater Eye: Margaret Cohen explores the Film Aquatic

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 1 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Margaret Cohen joins John to discuss The Underwater Eye, which explores "How the Movie Camera Opened the Depths and Unleashed New Realms of Fantasy." Margaret's earlier prizewinning books include The Novel and the Sea and The Sentimental Education of the Novel, but this project brings her places even her frequent surfing forays hadn't yet reached. She charts the rise of "wet for wet" filming both in the ocean itself and in various surrogates, exploring the implications of entering a domain that humans can explore and come to know, but never master.

She and John discuss the rarity of professional divers in early 19th century (Henri Edwards 1843) and Natasha Adamowsky on the abiding fear of the depths. Conversation also pivots towards such SF classics as Stanislas Lem Solaris (1961), featuring a sentient underwater being which controls the planetary tides, though this wrinkle disappears in the 1971 Tarkovsky film. Margaret wittily labels the unintended consequences of human agency the "dialectic of the anthropocene."

Mentioned in the episode

1916 20,000 Leagues was Hollywood’s first great underwater filming project. Underwater scenes of a length and complexity not seen again until modern films like The Deep (1977).
Man Ray The Starfish is proof of high art's shared investment (also in Jean Painleve's science and sexlife films) in the same oceanic aspects that thrilled popular filmmakers.
Esther William's Jupiter's Darling may be the apotheosis of bathing beauty breath-holding.
Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau
Sea Hunt with Lloyd Bridges as underwater beefcake.
Luc Besson, The Big Blue

Recallable Books/Films

Margaret chose Creature from the Black Lagoon 1954 which inspired Benicio del Toro's The Shape of Water (a "dry for wet" film, shot in studio rather than underwater) and was in its turn inspired by Gabriel Figueora, cinematographer of The Pearl'

John favored a SF novel about space aliens who on landing seek out the oceanic depths, John Wyndham The Kraken Wakes (1953)

Read a transcript here.

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Anthony Downey, "Critique in Practice: Renzo Martens' Episode III (Enjoy Poverty)" (Sternberg Press, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 1 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 artist as a colonial explorer travelling around the Congo’s plantations with the naiveté of the cartoon character Tintin. Martens encounters poverty, hunger, and abuse, all the while narrating the way in which these experiences enrich him as a western observer.

In a manner now familiar in mainstream critical culture, the film was labelled as 'problematic'. Martens’ work and method were critiqued widely by an array of commentators. Some have changed their mind in light of Martens’ further work. Others - and I know this from speaking with an editor of a prominent art magazine - won’t come anywhere near it even twelve years on "for fear of inadvertently promoting the Martens' practice".

Critique in Practice: Renzo Martens' Episode III (Enjoy Poverty) (Sternberg Press, 2020), a volume edited by Anthony Downey brings together a range of responses to Enjoy Poverty, some dating from 2008, others more recent. It contains essays by the likes of Dan Fox, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Artur Zmijewski, TJ Demos, JJ Charlesworth, Ariella Aisha Azoulay, JA Koster, and Gregory Sholette. The book explores the limits of artistic practice as critique, challenging both Martens and the writers.

Because it would be impossible to speak to them and because I already interviewed Anthony Downy not long ago, I invited Renzo Martens, the subject of the book and its critiques to join me.

Watch Episode III: Enjoy Poverty
Institute of Human Activities
The Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC)
CATPC at Sculpture Center
Article in The New Yorker
The Balot NFT
My interview with Anthony Downey

Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional.

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He May Be a Communist!

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 fears, and paranoia about “unseen enemies.” With our organizing principle of the Cold War and Hollywood representation, we begin with the Red Scare. We discuss Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), and The Way We Were (1973). Together these films reveal how the Red Scare cast a wide and enduring shadow on our culture. We highlight three themes. First, Cold War paranoia was a bipartisan issue. Second, the Korean War cast doubt on the relative strength of the military and our institutions long before Vietnam did. And finally, we dispute the comforting lie that progress is inevitable, that we are always on a path towards improvement, advancement, an expansion of rights, and a greater equality among people.

Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.

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Julie A. Turnock, "The Empire of Effects: Industrial Light and Magic and the Rendering of Realism" (U Texas Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 on computer-generated imagery to enhance the verisimilitude of scenes. But the realism of digital effects is not actually true to life. It is a realism invented by Hollywood—by one company specifically: Industrial Light & Magic.

The Empire of Effects: Industrial Light & Magic and the Rendering of Realism (University of Texas Press, 2022) shows how the effects company known for the puppets and space battles of the original Star Wars went on to develop the dominant aesthetic of digital realism. Julie A. Turnock finds that ILM borrowed its technique from the New Hollywood of the 1970s, incorporating lens flares, wobbly camerawork, haphazard framing, and other cinematography that called attention to the person behind the camera. In the context of digital imagery, however, these aesthetic strategies had the opposite effect, heightening the sense of realism by calling on tropes suggesting the authenticity to which viewers were accustomed. ILM’s style, on display in the most successful films of the 1980s and beyond, was so convincing that other studios were forced to follow suit, and today, ILM is a victim of its own success, having fostered a cinematic monoculture in which it is but one player among many.

Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne.

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James Welker, "Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2022), edited by James Welker, brings together twenty-one scholars exploring BL media, its fans, and its sociocultural impacts in a dozen countries in East, Southeast, and South Asia—and beyond. Contributors draw on their expertise in an array of disciplines and fields, including anthropology, fan studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, literature, media studies, political science, and sociology to shed light on BL media and its fandoms.

The boys love (BL) genre was created for girls and women by young female manga (comic) artists in early 1970s Japan to challenge oppressive gender and sexual norms. Over the years, BL has seen almost irrepressible growth in popularity and since the 2000s has become a global media phenomenon, weaving its way into anime, prose fiction, live-action dramas, video games, audio dramas, and fan works. BL’s male–male romantic and sexual relationships have found a particularly receptive home in other parts of Asia, where strong local fan communities and locally produced BL works have garnered a following throughout the region, taking on new meanings and engendering widespread cultural effects.

Queer Transfigurations reveals the far-reaching influences of the BL genre, demonstrating that it is truly transnational and transcultural in diverse cultural contexts. It has also helped bring about positive changes in the status of LGBT(Q) people and communities as well as enlighten local understandings of gender and sexuality throughout Asia. Queer Transfigurations shows that, some fifty years after the first BL manga appeared in print, the genre is continuing to reverberate and transform lives.

James Welker is a professor in the Department of Cross-Cultural Studies, Kanagawa University, Yokohama, Japan. His research focuses primarily on gender and sexuality in postwar and contemporary Japan, especially fan cultures, feminisms, and the LGBT(Q) community. He is the author of Transfigurations: Redefining Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan (forthcoming).

Linshan Jiang is Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. She received her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies from University of California, Santa Barbara, where she also obtained a Ph.D. emphasis in Translation Studies. Her research interests are modern and contemporary literature, film, and popular culture in mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan; trauma and memory studies; gender and sexuality studies; queer studies; as well as comparative literature and translation studies.

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Reality TV

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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, An American Family, COPS and America’s Most Wanted, before the watershed moment of The Real World in the 1990s. She references the work of June Deery, and Pier Dominguez on the commercial realism and affective economies of reality tv, and Susan Douglass’s article “Jersey Shore: Ironic Viewing.” She reminds us that Reality TV dramatizes the life of the neoliberal subject under surveillance, and explicates our “trashy” desires.

Olivia Stowell is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication at the University of Michigan, where she studies the intersections of race, genre & narrative, food, and temporality in contemporary popular culture. Her scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in Television & New Media and New Review of Film & Television, and her public writing has appeared in Post45 Contemporaries, Novel Dialogue, Avidly: A Channel of the L.A. Review of Books, and elsewhere.

The image for this episode was made by Saronik Bosu.

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87* Mike Leigh In Focus (JP)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 04:00:00 +0000

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 Britain (Life is Sweet, High Hopes) to gritty renditions of working-class constraint and bourgeois hypocrisy (Meantime, Abigail’s Party, Hard Labour) to period films that reveal the “profoundly trivial” elements of artistic life even two centuries in the past (Topsy-Turvy, Mr. Turner).

Leigh contains multitudes. What Roland Barthes says about the novels of Marcel Proust is true of Mike Leigh films as well: you notice different things every time you return to them.

In this Columbus, Ohio conversation, Mike and John they discovered their shared love for a hometown boy made good: James Thurber. The conversation ranged from recording working-class voices in the 19th century to Method acting to the pointlessness of fetishizing closeups to the movies John had never seen and should have–and that’s only the first twenty minutes. It cries out for footnotes, but maybe the best result of all this talk would be simply your decision to go off and see a couple (or like John seven) of Mike Leigh films you’d never seen before. You won’t be sorry.

Discussed in this episode:

Peter Jackson (dir.), They Shall Not Grow Old
John Osborne, Look Back in Anger
Ingmar Bergman (dir.), The Seventh Seal
Harold Pinter, The Caretaker
Jean-Luc Godard (dir.), A bout de souffle
John Cassavetes (dir.), Shadows and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
Sam Mendes (dir.), 1917
Alexander Sukorov (dir.), Russian Ark
James Thurber, The 13 Clocks, “The Unicorn in the Garden” and “The Greatest Man in the World“
Norman Z. McLeod (dir.), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Stanley Davis (dir.), Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool
Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint and Exit Ghost
Ermanno Olmi (dir.), The Tree of Wooden Clogs
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Philip Larkin, “This Be the Verse“
H.G. Wells, The Time Machine

Transcript Available Here

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Rebecca Weeks, "History by HBO: Televising the American Past" (UP of Kentucky, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

The television industry is changing, and with it, the small screen's potential to engage in debate and present valuable representations of American history. Founded in 1972, HBO has been at the forefront of these changes, leading the way for many network, cable, and streaming services into the "post-network" era. Despite this, most scholarship has been dedicated to analyzing historical feature films and documentary films, leaving TV and the long-form drama hungry for coverage.

In History by HBO: Televising the American Past (UP of Kentucky, 2022), Rebecca Weeks fills the gap in this area of media studies and defends the historiographic power of long-form dramas. Dr. Weeks is a lecturer in the Bachelor of Art and Design Programme at Media Design School in Auckland, New Zealand. By focusing on this change and its effects, History by HBO outlines how history is crafted on television and the diverse forms it can take. Weeks examines the capabilities of the long-form serial for engaging with historical stories, insisting that the shift away from the network model and toward narrowcasting has enabled challenging histories to thrive in home settings. As an examination of HBO's unique structure for producing quality historical dramas, Weeks provides four case studies of HBO series set during different periods of United States history: Band of Brothers (2001), Deadwood (2004–2007), Boardwalk Empire (2012–2014), and Treme (2010–2013). In each case, HBO's lack of advertiser influence, commitment to creative freedom, and generous budgets continue to draw and retain talent who want to tell historical stories.

Balancing historical and film theories in her assessment of the roles of mise-en–scène, characterization, narrative complexity, and sound in the production of effective historical dramas, Weeks' evaluation acts as an ode to the most recent Golden Age of TV, as well as a critical look at the relationship between entertainment media and collective memory.

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Nick Davis, "Competing with Idiots: Herman and Joe Mankiewicz, a Dual Portrait" (Knopf, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

A fascinating, complex dual biography of Hollywood's most dazzling—and famous—brothers, and a dark, riveting portrait of competition, love, and enmity that ultimately undid them both.

One most famous for having written Citizen Kane; the other, All About Eve; one who only wrote screenplays but believed himself to be a serious playwright, slowly dying of alcoholism and disappointment; the other a four-time Academy Award-winning director, auteur, sorcerer, and seducer of leading ladies, one of Hollywood's most literate and intelligent filmmakers.

Herman Mankiewicz brought us the Marx Brothers' Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and Duck Soup and W. C. Fields' Million Dollar Legs, wrote screenplays for Dinner at Eight and Pride of the Yankees, and cowrote Citizen Kane (Pauline Kael proclaimed that the script was mostly Herman's) and 89 others. Talented, witty (Alexander Woollcott thought him "the funniest man who ever lived"), huge-hearted, and wildly immature, Herman was a figure of renown and success.

Herman went to Hollywood in 1926, was almost immediately successful (his telegram to Ben Hecht back east: "Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don't let this get around.") and became one of the highest-paid screenwriters in Hollywood. Joe, eleven years younger, a focused, organized, and disciplined writer with a far more distinguished career, eventually surpassed his worshipped older brother, producing The Philadelphia Story, writing and directing A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve, both of which won him Oscars before seeing his career upended by the spectacular fiasco of Cleopatra.

In Competing with Idiots: Herman and Joe Mankiewicz, a Dual Portrait (Knopf, 2021), we see the lives of these two men—their dreams and desires, their fears and feuds, struggling to free themselves from their dark past; and the driving forces that kept them bound to a system they loved and hated.

Nick Davis, the grandson of Herman Mankiewicz and great-nephew of Joseph Mankiewicz, is a writer, director, and producer. He lives in New York City.

Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found at https://fifteenminutefilm.podb... and on Twitter @15MinFilm.

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Grant Wiedenfeld, "Hollywood Sports Movies and the American Dream" (Oxford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 8 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Through the heart of Hollywood cinema runs a surprising current of progressive politics. Sports movies, a genre that has flourished since the mid-seventies, evoke the American dream and represent the nation to itself. Once considered mere credos for Reaganism, on closer view, movies from Rocky (1976) to Ali (2001) dream of democratic participation and recognition more than individual success. In every case, off-field relationships take precedence over on-field competition.

Arranged chronologically, Hollywood Sports Movies and the American Dream (Oxford UP, 2022) tells the story of multiculturalism's gradual adoption. The mainstream's first minority heroes are paradoxically white ethnic, rural, working-class men, exemplified by Rocky, Slap Shot (1977) and The Natural (1984); Black, brown, and women characters follow in White Men Can't Jump (1992), A League of Their Own (1992), and Ali. But despite their insistence on community and diversity these popular dramas show limited faith in civic institutions. Hannah Arendt, Jeffrey Alexander, and others inform original analysis and commentary on the political significance of popular culture. Reading these familiar movies from another angle paints a fresh picture of how the United States has imagined democracy since its bicentennial.

In this conversation with host Annie Berke, Dr. Grant Wiedenfeld explains his personal and familial connections to the book's subject matter, discusses why Hollywood sports films don't always have (or need) a "happy ending," and explains how the genre functions as a "civic screen" for the American public in the decades following the Vietnam War.

Grant Wiedenfeld earned a PhD from Yale University in Comparative Literature and Film & Media Studies. He taught courses on sports and cinema in Yale's English Department and Film Studies Program before being hired at Sam Houston State University, where he is currently Associate Professor of Media and Culture. Previous publications include studies of Gustave Flaubert, D.W. Griffith, and André Bazin.

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86 Dana Stevens on Buster Keaton (JP EF)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 4 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Dana Stevens joins Elizabeth and John to discuss Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema and the Invention of the Twentieth Century. Her fantastic new book serves as occasion to revel in the work and working world of Buster Keaton, that "solemn, beautiful, perpetually airborne man."

Although packed with fascinating tidbits from Keaton's life, Camera Man is much more than just a biography. It performs its own airborne magic, lightly traversing topics like the crackdown on the use of children in vaudeville, the fluidity of roles before and behind the camera in early Hollywood and the doors that were briefly (ever so briefly) opened for female directors. Among other treats, Dana unpacks one of Keaton's early great "two-reelers" One Week ( a spoof of brisk upbeat industrial films) and his parodic "burlesques" e.g. of Lillian Gish.

People, Films, Books and Ideas in the conversation include:

Roscoe ("Fatty") Arbuckle: got Keaton his start in early films like Butcher Boy, reportedly filmed the day Keaton first stepped onto a set. He said "Buster lived inside the camera."

"Cinema of Attractions." a phrase coined by film historian Tom Gunning to describe the way the early years of cinema (1895 to 1913, more or less) achieved success by way of gags, stunts, special effects and other dazzling technological innovations--rather than plot or character development,.

John and Dana rave about Keaton's last great film (age 33!), The Cameraman (1928) and deprecate the later silents (with a silent caveat for the pancake scene Grand Slam Opera).

Mabel Normand: Arbuckle's longtime collaborator and briefly a rising director--Charlie Chaplin kneecapped her at a crucial moment in her career. Dana singles out for special praise Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1916) starring Luke, the first canine movie star.

Singing in the Rain as a MGM-friendly myth-making explanation for Clara Bow's eclipse (and the famous vocal failure moment: "I can't stand 'im")

Steamboat Bill Jr. ( 1928, Buster Keaton feature) "Keaton's most mature movie" says Dana.

Read the transcript here.

Elizabeth Ferry is Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University. Email: ferry@brandeis.edu. John Plotz is Barbara Mandel Professor of the Humanities at Brandeis University and co-founder of the Brandeis Educational Justice Initiative. Email: plotz@brandeis.edu.

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Hanan Hammad, "Unknown Past: Layla Murad, the Jewish-Muslim Star of Egypt" (Stanford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Layla Murad (1918-1995) was once the highest-paid star in Egypt, and her movies were among the top-grossing in the box office. She starred in 28 films, nearly all now classics in Arab musical cinema. In 1955 she was forced to stop acting—and struggled for decades for a comeback. Today, even decades after her death, public interest in her life continues, and new generations of Egyptians still love her work. Unknown Past: Layla Murad, the Jewish-Muslim Star of Egypt (Stanford UP, 2022) recounts Murad's extraordinary life—and the rapid political and sociocultural changes she witnessed.

Hanan Hammad writes a story centered on Layla Murad's persona and legacy, and broadly framed around a gendered history of twentieth-century Egypt. Murad was a Jew who converted to Islam in the shadow of the first Arab-Israeli war. Her career blossomed under the Egyptian monarchy and later gave a singing voice to the Free Officers and the 1952 Revolution. The definitive end of her cinematic career came under Nasser on the eve of the 1956 Suez War.

Egyptians have long told their national story through interpretations of Murad's life, intertwining the individual and Egyptian state and society to better understand Egyptian identity. As Unknown Past recounts, there's no life better than Murad's to reflect the tumultuous changes experienced over the dramatic decades of the mid-twentieth century.

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Ryan Uytdewilligen, "Killing John Wayne: The Making of the Conqueror" (Lyons Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Behold the history of a film so scandalous, so outrageous, so explosive it disappeared from print for over a quarter century! A film so dangerous, half its cast and crew met their demise bringing eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes’ final cinematic vision to life! Starring All-American legend John Wayne in full Fu Manchu make-up as Mongol madman Genghis Khan! Featuring sultry seductress Susan Hayward as his lover!

Killing John Wayne (Lyons Press, 2021) is the true story of The Conqueror (1956), the worst movie ever made. Filmed during the dark underbelly of the 1950s—the Cold War—when nuclear testing in desolate southwestern landscapes was a must for survival, the very same landscapes were where exotic stories set in faraway lands could be made. Just 153 miles from the St. George, Utah, set, nuclear bombs were detonated regularly at Yucca Flat and Frenchman Flat in Nevada, providing a bizarre and possibly deadly background to an already surreal moment in cinema history. This book tells the full story of the making of The Conqueror, its ignominious aftermath, and the radiation induced cancer that may have killed John Wayne and many others.

Ryan Uytdewilligen attended Lethbridge College in Alberta and earned a degree in Broadcast Journalism, leading to work in radio anchoring, reporting, and media coordinating for the prestigious Vancouver International Film Festival. After writing-producing his first short film, Tea Time (2014), he optioned two feature film scripts and has worked as a script doctor/writer for hire. In 2016, he published his first non-fiction work, a film history examination called 101 Most Influential Coming of Age Movies. Ryan currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia. He would like to express his sympathy to everyone who lost a loved one that worked on The Conqueror.

Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics (Twitter @15MinFilm).

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Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg, "Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image" (MIT Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg's edited volume Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image (MIT Press, 2022) offers intersectional, intergenerational, and international perspectives on nonfiction film- and videomaking by and about women, examining practices that range from activist documentaries to avant-garde experiments. Concentrating primarily on the period between the 1970s and 1990s, the contributions revisit major figures, contexts, and debates across a polycentric, global geography. They explore how the moving image has been a crucial terrain of feminist struggle--a way of not only picturing the world but remaking it.

The contributors consider key decolonial filmmakers, including Trinh T. Minh-ha and Sarah Maldoror; explore collectively produced films with ties to women's liberation movements in different countries; and investigate the cinematic expressions of tensions and alliances between feminism and anti-imperialist struggles. They grapple with the need for a broader more inclusive definition of the term "feminism"; meditate on the figure of the grandmother; reflect on realist aesthetics; and ask what a feminist film historiography might look like.

The book, generously illustrated with film stills and other images, many in color, offers ten original texts, two conversations, and eight short essays composed in response to historical texts written by filmmakers. The historical texts, half of which are published in English for the first time, appear alongside the essays.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Scott Meslow, "From Hollywood with Love: The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy" (Dey Street, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

An in-depth celebration of the romantic comedy's modern golden era and its role in our culture, tracking the genre from its heyday in the '80s and the '90s, its unfortunate decline in the 2000s, and its explosive reemergence in the age of streaming, featuring exclusive interviews with the directors, writers, and stars of the iconic films that defined the genre.

No Hollywood genre has been more misunderstood--or more unfairly under-appreciated--than the romantic comedy. Funny, charming, and reliably crowd-pleasing, rom-coms were the essential backbone of the Hollywood landscape, launching the careers of many of Hollywood's most talented actors and filmmakers, such as Julia Roberts and Matthew McConaughey, and providing many of the yet limited creative opportunities women had in Hollywood. But despite--or perhaps because of--all that, the rom-com has routinely been overlooked by the Academy Awards or snobbishly dismissed by critics.

In From Hollywood with Love: The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy (Dey Street, 2022), culture writer and GQ contributor Scott Meslow seeks to right this wrong, celebrating and analyzing rom-coms with the appreciative, insightful critical lens they've always deserved. Beginning with the golden era of the romantic comedy--spanning from the late '80s to the mid-'00s with the breakthrough of films such as When Harry Met Sally--to the rise of streaming and the long-overdue push for diversity setting the course for films such as the groundbreaking, franchise-spawning Crazy Rich Asians, Meslow examines the evolution of the genre through its many iterations, from its establishment of new tropes, the Austen and Shakespeare rewrites, the many love triangles, and even the occasional brave decision to do away with the happily ever after. Featuring original black-and-white sketches of iconic movie scenes and exclusive interviews with the actors and filmmakers behind our most beloved rom-coms, From Hollywood with Love constructs oral histories of our most celebrated romantic comedies, for an informed and entertaining look at Hollywood's beloved yet most under-appreciated genre.

Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne.

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Alison Macor, "Making The Best Years of Our Lives: The Hollywood Classic That Inspired a Nation" (U Texas Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 8 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Released in 1946, The Best Years of Our Lives became an immediate success. Life magazine called it “the first big, good movie of the post-war era” to tackle the “veterans problem.” Today we call that problem PTSD, but in the initial aftermath of World War II, the modern language of war trauma did not exist. The film earned the producer Samuel Goldwyn his only Best Picture Academy Award. It offered the injured director, William Wyler, a triumphant postwar return to Hollywood. And for Harold Russell, a double amputee who costarred with Fredric March and Dana Andrews, the film provided a surprising second act. Award-winning author Alison Macor illuminates the film’s journey from script to screen and describes how this authentic motion picture moved audiences worldwide. General Omar Bradley believed The Best Years of Our Lives would help “the American people to build an even better democracy” following the war, and the movie inspired broad reflection on reintegrating the walking wounded. But the film’s nuanced critique of American ideals also made it a target, and the picture and its creators were swept up in the anti-Communist witch hunts of the late 1940s. In Making The Best Years of Our Lives: The Hollywood Classic That Inspired a Nation (U Texas Press, 2022), Macor chronicles the making and meaning of a film that changed America.

Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne.

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Squid Game

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 6 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Kyung Hyun Kim talks about the Netflix series Squid Game, its economic and political contexts, and its cultural potential. He also talks about his new book, Hegemonic Mimicry, out from Duke University Press.

Prof. Kyung Hyun Kim is a creative writer, a scholar, and a film producer, who is currently a professor in the Department of East Asian Studies, UC Irvine. He has worked with internationally renowned directors such as Hong Sang-soo, Lee Chang-dong and Marty Scorsese, and also with American film producers Jason Blum and Steven Schneider. Prof. Kim is author of Virtual Hallyu: Korean Cinema of the Global Era, The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema, Hegemonic Mimicry: Korean Popular Culture of 21st Century, all of them published by Duke University Press, and a Korean-language novel entitled In Search of Lost G (Ireo beorin G-reul chajaso, 2014) about a Korean mother combing through the US in search of her missing son during his junior year in a Massachusetts prep school. He has coproduced and co-scripted two award-winning feature films Never Forever (2007, Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. Main Competition) and The Housemaid (2010, Cannes Film Festival Main Competition). He has recently written The Mask Debate, his first theatre screenplay, which premiered in February 2021 through UCI’s Illuminations: Chancellor’s Initiative in Arts and Drama YouTube channel.

Music used in promotional material: ‘Horizon Mine’ by krackatoa

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A. S. Hamrah, "The Earth Dies Streaming: Film Writing, 2002-2018" (N+1 Books, 2018)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 4 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

The Earth Dies Streaming: Film Writing, 2002-2018 (N+1 Books, 2018) collects the best of A. S. Hamrah’s film writing for n+1, The Baffler, Bookforum, Harper’s, and other publications. Acerbic, insightful, hilarious, and damning, Hamrah’s aphoristic capsule reviews and lucid career retrospectives of filmmakers and critics have taken up the mantle of serious American film criticism—pioneered by James Agee, Robert Warshow, and Pauline Kael—and carried it into the 21st century. Taken together, these reviews and essays represent some of the best film criticism in the English language. The Earth Dies Streaming showcases a remarkable critical intelligence while offering a cultural history of the cinema of our times.

In this conversation with host Annie Berke, A. S. Hamrah discusses his influences as a critic, lays out the challenges and shortcomings of film criticism today, and explains the differences between film and television.

Currently the film critic for The Baffler, A. S. Hamrah was n+1’s film critic from 2008 to 2019, as well as the editor of the magazine’s film review supplement. He has worked as a movie theater projectionist, a semiotic brand analyst, a political pollster, a football cinematographer, a zine writer, and for the film director Raúl Ruiz. He lives in New York.

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Paul Dobryden, "The Hygienic Apparatus: Weimar Cinema and Environmental Disorder" (Northwestern UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 1 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

The Hygienic Apparatus: Weimar Cinema and Environmental Disorder (Northwestern UP, 2022) traces how the environmental effects of industrialization reverberated through the cinema of Germany’s Weimar Republic. In the early twentieth century, hygiene encompassed the myriad attempts to create healthy spaces for life and work amid the pollution, disease, accidents, and noise of industrial modernity. Examining classic films—including The Last Laugh, Faust, and Kuhle Wampe—as well as documentaries, cinema architecture, and studio practices, Paul Dobryden demonstrates how cinema envisioned and interrogated hygienic concerns about environmental disorder.

Framing hygiene within the project of national reconstruction after World War I, The Hygienic Apparatus explores cinema’s material contexts alongside its representations of housework, urban space, traffic, pollution, disability, aging, and labor. Reformers worried about the health risks associated with moviegoing but later used film to popularize hygienic ideas, encouraging viewers to see the world and themselves in relation to public health objectives. Modernist architecture and design fashioned theaters into regenerative environments for fatigued spectators. Filmmakers like F. W. Murnau and Slatan Dudow, meanwhile, explored the aesthetic and political possibilities of dirt, contagion, intoxication, and disorder. Dobryden recovers a set of ecological and biopolitical concerns to show how the problem of environmental disorder fundamentally shaped cinema’s relationship to modernity. As accessible as it is persuasive, the book adds to a growing body of scholarship on biopolitics within German studies and reveals fresh ways of understanding the apparatus of Weimar cinema.

Paul Lerner is Professor of History at the University of Southern California where he directs the Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies. He can be reached at plerner@usc.edu and @PFLerner.

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New Books in Film

Sarah Meehan O'Callaghan, "Psychoanalysing Mind-Body Narratives Through Beckett and Artaud: The Trauma of the Body" (Routledge, 2026)

Lucas L. Johnson II, "Remembering Roots: How an American Classic Transformed the World" (Broadleaf Books, 2026)

Violaine Roussel, "Data-Driven Hollywood: The New Data Professionals in the Age of Streaming" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Stephen Lee Naish, "Point Break: Movies Minute by Minute" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Filmmaker Peter Santenello on Your Fellow Americans: Dispatches from Across the Country We Call Home

John Trafton, "Los Angeles and Film: A Cultural History of 20th-Century Hollywood" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Dog Day Afternoon

Corrado Neri, "Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century: Spectral Narratives and Screen Culture" (Anthem Press, 2026)

Brian Jay Jones, "George Lucas: A Life" (Little, Brown and Company, 2016)

Mulholland Drive at 25: Film Quarterly

Vincent Haddad, "Next Time on Dragon Ball: Playing with a Manga and Anime Franchise" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

Tár

Linda Williams and eds. Christine Gledhill et al., "Melodrama As Provocateur" (Duke UP, 2026)

Ellery E. Foutch, "A Perfectionist Impulse: The Art of Stopping Time in the Nineteenth Century (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The War of the Worlds

Kathleen W. Taylor Kollman, "The Fictional Female Presidency in Film, Television, and Literature: Representations from 1932 to 2024" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026)

David Zeitlyn and Chihab El Khachab eds., "Understanding Social Images: Essays on Visual Methods and Teaching Visual Anthropology" (Berghahn, 2025)

Anja Foerschner, "Female Art and Agency in Yugoslavia, 1971–2001" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

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)

Adam Geczy, "Glasses" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Soraya Murray, "Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination" (MIT Press, 2026)

Krzysztof Rowiński, "Failure Narratives Beyond Redemption: Twentieth Century Literature and Film" (Routledge, 2026)

Jonathan L. Friedmann, "Chai Noon: Jews and the Cinematic Wild West" (U Wisconsin Press, 2025)

Grizzly Man

Blue Jasmine

Shikha Jhingan, "The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology" (Wayne State UP, 2025)

Allyson Nadia Field, "Acts of Love: ﻿Black Performance and the Kiss That Changed Film History" ﻿(U California Press, 2026)

Mackenzi Lee, "Masters of the Universe: Teela: Daughter of Eternos" (Mattel, 2026)

Robin R. Means Coleman and Novotny Lawrence eds., "The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Film" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Oscar Winberg, "Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics" (UNC Press, 2025)

Tony Lee Moral, "A Century of Hitchcock: The Man, the Myths, the Legacy" (UP of Kentucky, 2026)

Thomas Doherty, "How Film Became History: The Rise of the Archival Documentary in 1930s America" (Columbia UP, 2026)

Angharad N. Valdivia and Isabel Molina-Guzmán, "Rebooting Inequality: Critical Takes on Film and Television Remakes" (NYU Press, 2026)

Sumana Roy, "Plant Thinkers of Twentieth-Century Bengal" (Oxford UP, 2024)

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

Benjamin Dalton, "Catherine Malabou and Contemporary French Literature and Film: Witnessing Plasticity" (Edinburgh UP, 2026)

Ayşehan Jülide Etem, "Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations" (Columbia UP, 2026)

Wake Up Dead Man (Fr Scott Bailey): The Priest who Helped Hollywood Make a Murder Mystery Movie about the Church

Es-pranza Humphrey, "Act Black: Posters from Black American Stage & Screen" (Poster House Museum, 2026)

Patrick Noonan, "Age of Disaffection: The Aesthetic Critique of Politics in 1960s Japan" (Columbia UP, 2025)

Ana I. Oancea, "Dangerous Creations: The Inventor Novel in Fin-de-siècle France" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

Frontier Films for America250: On the Western Genre and Beyond with Matthew J. Franck

Jeremy Harding's Analogue Africa: Notes on the Anti-Colonial Imagination

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)

Through the Lens of Taiwan: Film, History, and Identity

Chinatown

Jes Battis, "It's Only Forever: Labyrinth" (ECW Press, 2026)

Michael Lee Nirenberg, "Cinematic Immunity" (Feral House, 2026)

Laura Horak, "Trans Cinema: Making Communities, Identities, and Worlds" (U California Press, 2026)

Daisuke Miyao, "Ozu and the Ethics of Indeterminacy" (Duke UP, 2026)

Qi Ai, "Feng Xiaogang's New Year Films: Industry, Regulation, Humour and Authorship" (Routledge, 2025)

Aurore Spiers, "Archiving the Past: Women's Film History in France, 1927–1978" (U California Press, 2026)

Miranda Banks and Kate Fortmueller, "Boom to Bust: How Streaming Broke Hollywood Workers" (U California Press, 2026)

The Shawshank Redemption in China: An Interview with Matti Lehtonen

Get Shorty

Gabriel S. Estrada, "Queer Indigenous Cinemas: Sovereign Genders from Seven Directions" (U Arizona Press, 2026)

Leslie Barnes, "Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)

Christine Grandy, "Race on Screen: Audience Racism in Twentieth-Century Britain" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Michael Mann Reconsidered: Heat and Collateral

Michael Allan, "Cinema before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers" (Fordham UP, 2026)

Michael Mann Reconsidered: Ali and The Last of the Mohicans

Michael Mann Reconsidered: Ferrari and Manhunter

Becca Voelcker, "Land Cinema in an Age of Extraction" (U California Press, 2025)

Karen McNally ed., "Women in Hollywood's Dream Factory: Tales of Inequality, Abuse, and Resistance" (U Illinois Press, 2026)

Michael Mann Reconsidered: Thief and The Insider

A Star Is Born (1937)

Stephen Lee Naish, "Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency" (Lever Press, 2026)

Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry | Filmmaker Q&A

Rachel Walther, "Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon" (Headpress, 2026)

Boiling Point

Michael Glover Smith, "Bob Dylan as Filmmaker: No Time to Think" (McNidder and Grace, 2026)

Veronique Boone, "Le Corbusier on Camera: The Unknown Films of Ernest Weissmann" (Birkhaüser, 2024)

Santiago Fouz-Hernández, "The Films of Bigas Luna" (Manchester UP, 2025)

The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy

Darién J. Davis, "'Black Orpheus' and the Globalization of Afro-Brazilian Culture" (Rutgers UP, 2026)

Robert P. Kolker and David Wyatt, "The Film Auteur: Angles of Vision" (Routledge, 2026)

His Girl Friday

Dan Hassler-Forest, "Fast and Furious Franchising: How the Serialized Blockbuster Remade Hollywood" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

Sourit Bhattacharya, "Postcolonialism Now: Literature, Reading, Decolonising" (Orient BlackSwan, 2024)

Allyson Nadia Field, "Acts of Love: Black Performance and the Kiss That Changed Film History" (U California Press, 2026)

Justin L. Mann, "Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation" (Duke UP, 2026)

Thomas Christian Bächle and Jascha Bareis eds., "The Realities of Autonomous Weapons (Bristol UP, 2025)