Film books, screen histories, patient criticism.
New Books in Film is a scholarly interview show built around recent books and serious film conversations. It ranges from Lumiere global routes and British audience racism to queer Indigenous cinemas, Southeast Asian sex work, and close readings of Michael Mann.
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New Books in Film approaches cinema as a field of arguments rather than a stream of recommendations. The show is rooted in scholarly conversation, and many episodes revolve around a recently published book. That structure gives the discussions room to breathe. Guests are allowed to establish historical context, explain methods, and clarify what a film or archive makes visible. The range is wide. Recent conversations move from the global routes of the Lumiere Brothers to queer Indigenous cinemas, from audience racism in twentieth-century Britain to sex work in Southeast Asian literature and film. The show also makes space for cinephile formats, including a Michael Mann movie tournament that compares Heat, Collateral, Ali, and The Last of the Mohicans through reputation, theme, and craft. It can be playful. It rarely becomes casual. Even when the subject is Get Shorty or a Hollywood production anecdote, the conversation tends to circle back to genre, performance, audience expectation, and the social imagination of the movie business. The strongest episodes are attentive to mediation: windows, frames, mirrors, reception studies, publicity, theater production, and the fragile gap between what appears onscreen and what exists outside it. This makes the show especially useful for listeners who like film criticism with sources under it. It does not rush to rank, praise, or condemn. It asks what cultural work a film performs, who is allowed to look, who is being represented, and what histories sit behind familiar images. The mood is measured and analytical, with enough warmth to keep long scholarly explanations from feeling sealed off. The show’s best quality is its confidence that cinema matters because audiences, institutions, and books keep arguing over it.
Made for: Best suited to academically curious film fans, students, scholars, and readers who enjoy long-form conversations about cinema’s historical and cultural work. It rewards patience more than casual browsing.
What sets it apart: Unlike movie recap shows, New Books in Film centers research, archives, reception, and scholarly arguments. Its breadth lets early cinema, television racism, Indigenous representation, documentary form, Hollywood satire, and director retrospectives sit in the same serious film conversation.
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetworkSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Author interviews turn film scholarship into clear conversations about screen performance, audiences, representation, and the business structures behind movies.
New Books in Film gives film scholarship room to speak in its own language, then uses careful interviews to make the ideas easier to follow. Conversations move from an author's central terms into specific evidence, such as documentary framing, internationally marketable male…
This is where your movie night acquires footnotes and starts questioning the frame.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A measured cross-cultural interview about Shawshank on the Chinese stage.
The episode follows Marty Lehtonen into the Chinese-language stage production of Shawshank Redemption, directed by Zhang Guoli and billed as the first play presented in Chinese by an entirely foreign cast.
A patient, idea-rich interview that treats Indigenous cinema as a question of gender, ceremony, and queer life.
The episode makes a careful case for queer Indigenous cinema as a way of thinking about film, ceremony, gender, and embodied life. It moves cleanly from camp and homoerotic performance to a broader sense of queer and transerotic possibility, including plants, animals, and other…
A sharp interview about how film and literature frame sex work, visibility, and the limits of seeing.
Leslie Barnes talks through a book on sex work in Southeast Asia with a close eye on literature and documentary film, and the piece is strongest when it stays with the act of looking.
A measured, unsettling conversation about audience research, archival traces, and racist screen culture.
Christine Grandy's conversation about Race on Screen: Audience Racism in Twentieth-Century Britain treats audience research as a third archive, one that can surface hidden wants, discomfort, and racist adherence that official records miss. That is the episode's strongest thread.
A clear history of how one action franchise helped Hollywood settle into serialized blockbuster storytelling.
The episode follows Dan Hassler-Forest as he uses Fast and Furious to trace how Hollywood settled into serialized blockbuster storytelling. It also places the franchise in the early 2000s, when Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and the DVD market made continuation and…
A patient, sharp look at Barrymore's comic grandeur in *20th Century*.
Dan and Mike keep 20th Century focused on performance control, and the best stretch of the conversation is the one that lingers on Barrymore's knack for making solemnity funny without ever winking at it.
A careful conversation about male stardom, cosmosexuality, and spreadable sex appeal.
Mark Gallagher's conversation about Cosmosexual treats male screen appeal as a global idea, not just a parade of attractive stars. It ranges from cosmosexuality to spreadable stardom, then moves through anglophone, Latino, East Asian, Nordic, and Black British examples.
A patient, theory-heavy look at how fame gets made and believed.
The discussion treats celebrity as a product of culture industry pressure, audience belief, and the labor stars put into their own image. Sharon Marcus and John Plotz move from Adorno to the Birmingham School, then through punk, subculture, and a plainspoken folk theory before…
British nostalgia, ranked and cheerfully misremembered.
Oscar history, watched one nominee at a time.
Scholarship, made conversational and public.
Julie Yuwen Chen speaks with Marty Lehtonen about a Chinese-language stage production of The Shawshank Redemption.
Dan and Mike discuss the 1995 film 'Get Shorty', directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and based on Elmore Leonard's novel, as part of their podcast where they review movies separately before sharing insights on air.
He discusses the book as a way of thinking about queer Indigenous cinema through ceremony, performance, and the plant world, not just representation.
Australian National University associate professor Leslie Barnes discusses her 2025 Edinburgh University Press book 'Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film' with Sacramento State historian Michael Vann, arguing that fiction and creative nonfiction can sustain ambivalence where NGO, legislative, and social science discourses rely on 'moral and epistemological certainty.' Barnes analyzes films and novels from Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand — including Rithy Panh's 2007 documentary 'Paper Cannot Wrap Ember' and Michel Houellebecq's novel 'Platform' — as sites that resist the binary victim/non-victim framing.
Audience research says the quiet parts aloud.
Two professors discuss and compare the merits and themes of Michael Mann's films Heat and Collateral as part of a retrospective series exploring his cinematic work.
This episode features an interview with Professor Michael Allan about his new book 'Cinema Before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers', exploring the early history and global impact of cinema through the work of the Lumière Brothers.
This episode features a tournament-style debate to determine the best Michael Mann movie, focusing on a matchup between Ali and The Last of the Mohicans.
An academic interview podcast where scholars discuss their recently published research on film with another expert.
An academic interview with Dr.
An academic interview series where scholars discuss their recently published research on film with an expert host.
Two professors host a tournament to determine the best Michael Mann movie, analyzing his films and themes.
Two hosts discuss the 1937 film 'A Star is Born' after watching it separately, recreating post-movie conversations.
Host Joel Cherney interviews Stephen Lee Neff about his new book 'Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency', a collection of essays on film criticism written during the pandemic.
An interview with Mary Berry and Laura Dunn about the documentary 'Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry' and Wendell Berry's literary works.
An interview with author Rachel Walther about her book on the making of the film Dog Day Afternoon and its misfit characters.
Two hosts discuss movies they watched separately, analyzing and reacting to each other's thoughts in a spontaneous format.
A promotional segment for the New Books Network audience survey, followed by an academic interview about a recently published book on film.
An academic interview discussing Veronique Boone's book 'Le Corbusier on Camera' within the New Books Network.
An academic interview podcast where a scholar discusses their recently published research in film with another expert.
An academic interview podcast where scholars discuss their recently published research with an expert in their field.
Host Regan Gillum interviews Dr.
Host Pete Kunze interviews professors Robert P.
The episode begins with a survey promotion, then transitions into a discussion of the 1940 film His Girl Friday, directed by Howard Hawks.
Miranda Melcher speaks with Dan Hassler-Forrest about Fast and Furious Franchising, published by University of Minnesota Press in 2026, and why the series became a model for Hollywood’s serialized blockbuster era.
This episode features an interview with Professor Shorid Bhattacharya about his 2024 book 'Postcolonialism Now: Literature, Reading, Decolonising', exploring contemporary postcolonial theory and literary studies.
An interview with Isaac Butler about his book on the history of method acting in the 20th century.
This episode features an interview with Dr.
An interview with author Robert Guffey about his book 'Hollywood Haunts the World: An Investigation into the Cinema of Occulted Taboos', exploring how Hollywood films address hidden cultural taboos.
Barrymore turns tragedy into a joke.
Cosmosexuality is the hinge.
An academic interview with Dr.
Celebrity gets made in motion.
An academic interview podcast where scholars discuss their recently published research on film with another expert.
This episode is a promotional segment for the New Books Network audience survey followed by an introduction to the podcast Recall This Book, which features scholars discussing contemporary issues.