New Books in Film
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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826
Bob Moss, “Vibes from the Screen: Getting Great...
While there are many books that assist the viewer in learning how feature films are made, Bob Moss’s Vibes from the Screen: Getting Greater Enjoyment from Films (MCP Books, 2016) is particularly good at showing the artistry of filmmakers by presenting ...
61 min
827
James A. Davidson, “Hal Ashby and the Making of...
The original script was sold to a major Hollywood studio virtually overnight; the screenwriter was working as a pool boy and driver for the producer; the director was considered an acid freak by the studio heads; the star was a 74-year-old actress who ...
67 min
828
Tom Rice, “White Robes, Silver Screens: Movies ...
There has been much discussion recently in the United States about the contentious recent presidential election. Along with the election results, there has also been an increased interest in the so-called “fake news” stories spread on social media as w...
45 min
829
Anthony Lioi, “Nerd Ecology: Defending the Eart...
In Nerd Ecology: Defending the Earth with Unpopular Culture (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), Anthony Lioi examines literature, film, television, and comics through an ecocritical study of nerd culture. Lioi explores Star Trek, The Hunger Games,
65 min
830
Toni Pressley-Sanon, “Zombifying a Nation: Race...
Zombifying a Nation: Race, Gender and the Haitian Loas on Screen (McFarland, 2016) dwells on the intersections of memory, history, and cultural production in both Africa and the African diaspora. The figure of the zombie that entered the popular imagin...
53 min
831
Kevin Smokler, “Brat Pack America: A Love Lette...
Kevin Smokler’s new book, Brat Pack America: A Love Letter to 80s Teen Movies (Rare Bird Books, 2016)is what everyone in their 40s who loved watching movies as they were growing up wants it to be. In Brat Pack America,
58 min
832
David Shafer, “Antonin Artaud” (Reaktion/U Chic...
“Artaud lived with his neck placed firmly in the noose.” -Bauhaus* David Shafer’s new biography, Antonin Artaud (Reaktion Books and the University of Chicago Press, 2016), situates the life of this enigmatic and fascinating figure in historical context...
59 min
833
Amanda Deutch, “Pull Yourself Together: The Gen...
In Pull Yourself Together: The Gena Rowlands Poems (Dancing Girl Press, 2106), Amanda Deutch reminds us of the current and historic importance of the muse. Something draws writers the page, painters to the canvas, and musicians to their instruments.
6 min
834
Robert Matzen, “Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the ...
Jimmy Stewart has a well-deserved reputation as one of the major stars of the classic film era. Yet his life was greatly affected by his experiences as a bomber pilot in World War II. Robert Matzen, author of the book,
64 min
835
Elizabeth Reich, “Militant Visions: Black Soldi...
Elizabeth Reich is an assistant professor of film studies at Connecticut College in New London. Militant Visions: Black Soldiers, Internationalism, and the Transformation of American Cinema (Rutgers University Press, 2016) examines how,
32 min
836
Dennis Bartok and Jeff Joseph, “A Thousand Cuts...
While many fans collect all kinds of memorabilia related to their favorite movies, others actually seek out and collect the actual celluloid films. For their book, A Thousand Cuts: The Bizarre Underground World of Collectors and Dealers Who Saved the M...
64 min
837
Stephen Lee Naish, “Create or Die: Essays on th...
Stephen Lee Naish first became aware of Dennis Hopper watching David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, jumpstarting what would become a long examination of Hopper’s ambitions and creative output as an actor, filmmaker, photographer, sculptor, and painter.
62 min
838
Sue Matheson, “The Westerns and War Films of Jo...
While John Ford made films of more general subjects, he is best known for his movies that illustrated the American West and life during wartime. In her book, The Westerns and War Films of John Ford, Sue Matheson examines what was so special about his w...
56 min
839
Anand Pandian, “Reel World: An Anthropology of ...
Do we live in a real world or a ‘reel world,’ in which life begins to feel like a film? In this wonderful ethnography of the Tamil film industry, Anand Pandian explores topics as grand, rich and timeless as those explored in film itself love, desire,
46 min
840
Cass Sunstein, “The World According to Star War...
Cass Sunstein‘s son, Declan, got dad hooked on Star Wars. And dad, a Harvard Law professor, ended up writing a book about it. “If you’d told me a year ago that I’d write a book about Star Wars,” Sunstein recently told the Boston Globe,
32 min
841
Birgit Meyer, “Sensational Movies: Video, Visio...
Anthropologist Birgit Meyer‘s most recent book, Sensational Movies: Video, Vision, and Christianity in Ghana (University of California Press, 2015), explores the dynamic process of popular video filmmaking in Ghana as a new medium for the imagination t...
63 min
842
Harlan Lebo, “Citizen Kane: A Filmmakers Journe...
Considered by many to be the greatest American film ever made, Citizen Kane was the product of Orson Welles, who made a movie that is still groundbreaking today. In his new book Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey (Thomas Dunne Books, 2016),
69 min
843
Jason Mittell, “Complex TV: The Poetics of Cont...
We are said to be in a golden age of TV. The best stories today are told on television screens in serialized forms. The Wire, Lost, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos are a few of the shows that have elevated the cache of television,
64 min
844
Kimberly Fain, “Black Hollywood: From Butlers t...
While black men have been portrayed in film for over a hundred years, they have often been stereotyped or portrayed very badly. In her book Black Hollywood: From Butlers to Superheroes, the Changing Role of African American Men in the Movies (Praeger,
64 min
845
Alan Sepinwall, “The Revolution Was Televised” ...
What do Tony Soprano and Archie Bunker have in common? Alan Sepinwall, longtime TV writer and critic, knows that the 1970s comedic bigot and 2000s Jersey mob boss are not as different as we may think. Both broke new ground in TV and made viewers sit up...
29 min
846
George Cotkin, “Feast of Excess: A Cultural His...
George Cotkin is an emeritus professor of history at California Polytechnic State University. In his book Feast of Excess: A Cultural History of the New Sensibility (Oxford University Press, 2015) he has given us cultural criticism through a set of pro...
53 min
847
Ranen Omer-Sherman, “Imagining the Kibbutz: Vis...
In Imagining the Kibbutz: Visions of Utopia in Literature and Film (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015), Ranen Omer-Sherman, a professor at the University of Louisville, looks at literary and cinematic representations of the kibbutz,
28 min
848
Hilary Neroni, “The Subject of Torture: Psychoa...
Did you notice that after 9/11, the depiction of torture on prime-time television went up nearly seven hundred percent? Hilary Neroni did. She had just finished a book on the changing relationship between female characters and violence in narrative cin...
58 min
849
Liam Burke, “The Comic Book Film Adaptation: Ex...
When Marvel’s X-Men took the movie theaters by storm in the summer of 2000, the studios were both surprised and unprepared for the popularity of a comic book film. Over the last fifteen years, filmmakers have developed new ways to use modern movie tech...
69 min
850
Elizabeth Haas, Terry Chrstensen, and Peter J. ...
Politics has been a part of many films, since the beginning of the industry over 100 years ago. These include movies with political subjects, such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, to films with political underpinnings, such as The Hurt Locker.
62 min