Episodes

  • Blow Out

    Blow Out
    Nov 4 2024
    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. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
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    27 mins
  • The Fly

    The Fly
    Oct 28 2024
    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. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
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    25 mins
  • Landon Palmer, "Rock Star/Movie Star: Power and Performance in Cinematic Rock Stardom" (Oxford UP, 2020)

    Landon Palmer, "Rock Star/Movie Star: Power and Performance in Cinematic Rock Stardom" (Oxford UP, 2020)
    Oct 26 2024
    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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
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    1 hr and 5 mins
  • Kevin Sanson, "Mobile Hollywood: Labor and the Geography of Production" (U California Press, 2024)

    Kevin Sanson, "Mobile Hollywood: Labor and the Geography of Production" (U California Press, 2024)
    Oct 20 2024
    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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
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    39 mins
  • Peter C. Kunze, "Staging a Comeback: Broadway, Hollywood, and the Disney Renaissance" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

    Peter C. Kunze, "Staging a Comeback: Broadway, Hollywood, and the Disney Renaissance" (Rutgers UP, 2023)
    Oct 19 2024
    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. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • Out of Sight

    Out of Sight
    Oct 14 2024
    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. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
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    24 mins
  • Slavery and Film, Creativity and Academia, and Is Slavery a Good Metaphor for AI?

    Slavery and Film, Creativity and Academia, and Is Slavery a Good Metaphor for AI?
    Oct 12 2024
    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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
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    49 mins
  • Aviva Dove-Viebahn, "There She Goes Again: Gender, Power, and Knowledge in Contemporary Film and Television Franchises" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

    Aviva Dove-Viebahn, "There She Goes Again: Gender, Power, and Knowledge in Contemporary Film and Television Franchises" (Rutgers UP, 2023)
    Oct 10 2024
    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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
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    1 hr and 6 mins