Best J.P. Wagner Podcasts (2025)

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Wings of Desire 27:07

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1d ago27:07

27:07

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…

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161 One Battle After Another: A West Newton Cinema Discussion with Peter Coviello and Ethan Warren (JP) 33:53

5d ago33:53

33:53

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…

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Julia Wagner, "Hester Street" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 40:11

7d ago40:11

40:11

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 …

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Stefania Marghitu, "Teen TV" (Routledge, 2021) 1:24:28

9d ago1:24:28

1:24:28

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…

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Sabrina Mittermeier, "Fan Phenomena: Disney" (Intellect Books, 2023) 54:14

11d ago54:14

54:14

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 volu…

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Chris Yogerst, "The Warner Brothers" (UP of Kentucky, 2023) 1:07:36

11d ago1:07:36

1:07:36

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 …

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The Purple Rose of Cairo 20:05

15d ago20:05

20:05

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…

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Dustin Condren, "An Imaginary Cinema: Sergei Eisenstein and the Unrealized Film" (Cornell UP, 2024) 1:07:57

20d ago1:07:57

1:07:57

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 unrealis…

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Lester D. Friedman, "Citizen Spielberg" (U of Illinois Press, 2022) 48:48

22d ago48:48

48:48

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 ma…

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Christina Lane, "Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock" (Chicago Review Press, 2020) 1:01:36

23d ago1:01:36

1:01:36

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 studi…

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Pluribus Episode 3 Analysis: The Amazonification of Everything 28:48

23d ago28:48

28:48

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our sh…

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In “Pluribus” An America Without Division, But At What Price? 27:56

29d ago27:56

27:56

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 r…

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The Beast 29:18

29d ago29:18

29:18

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 o…

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C. Yamini Krishna, "Film City Urbanism in India: Hyderabad, from Princely City to Global City ,1890-2000" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 49:26

1M ago49:26

49:26

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 economi…

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Jakub Gortat, "Remembering National Socialism in Austrian Post-war Film" (1945-1955) (Brill, 2025) 39:37

1M ago39:37

39:37

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 …

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Kubrick’s Worlds: Power, Paranoia, and the Politics of the Human Condition 1:30:09

1M ago1:30:09

1:30:09

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 b…

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The Trip 23:20

1M ago23:20

23:20

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 t…

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Alice Lovejoy, "Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War" (U California Press, 2025) 45:50

2M ago45:50

45:50

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, …

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Kathryn Robson, "Beyond the Happy Ending: Imagining Happiness in Contemporary French Women's Writing and Film" (Liverpool UP, 2025) 47:07

2M ago47:07

47:07

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 Fr…

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Mia Yinxing Liu, "Literati Lenses: Wenren Landscape in Chinese Cinema of the Mao Era" (U Hawai’i Press, 2019) 1:41:37

2M ago1:41:37

1:41:37

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 c…

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Stevie Suan, "Anime's Identity: Performativity and Form Beyond Japan" (U Minnesota Press, 2021) 58:38

2M ago58:38

58:38

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 I…

1
Najmeh Moradiyan-Rizi and Shilyh J. Warren eds., "Women and Global Documentary: Practices and Perspectives in the 21st Century" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) 33:46

2M ago33:46

33:46

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 studie…

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Petar Mitric, "The Co-production Landscape in Europe: From Eurimages to Netflix" (Springer Nature, 2025) 49:56

2M ago49:56

49:56

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 influenc…

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William Lempert, "Dreaming Down the Track: Awakenings in Aboriginal Cinema" (U Minnesota Press, 2025) 1:06:11

2M ago1:06:11

1:06:11

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 an…

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Miami Vice 32:49

2M ago32:49

32:49

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…

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History Is Made at Night 28:07

2M ago28:07

28:07

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 l…

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Alien: Earth Episode Analysis: Emergence and The Real Monsters 58:15

2M ago58:15

58:15

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.” 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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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) 39:56

3M ago39:56

39:56

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 out…

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Mary Beth Willard, "Why It's Ok to Enjoy the Work of Immoral Artists" (Routledge, 2021) 1:08:14

3M ago1:08:14

1:08:14

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 (Routl…

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Yu Zhang, "Going to the Countryside: The Rural in the Modern Chinese Cultural Imagination, 1915–1965" (U Michigan Press, 2020) 57:41

3M ago57:41

57:41

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…

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The Straight Story 29:28

3M ago29:28

29:28

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 L…

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Mark Goble, "Downtime: The Twentieth Century in Slow Motion" (Columbia UP, 2025) 55:11

3M ago55:11

55:11

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 trajectorie…

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Katherine Fusco, "Hollywood's Others: Love and Limitation in the Star System" (Columbia UP, 2025) 43:30

3M ago43:30

43:30

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 …

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Alice Lovejoy, "Tales of Militant Chemistry" (U California Press, 2025) 36:42

3M ago36:42

36:42

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 anot…

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Patricia Aufderheide, "Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy" (U California Press, 2024) 1:24:21

3M ago1:24:21

1:24:21

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—Peabod…

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Excalibur 33:01

4M ago33:01

33:01

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 …

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Thomas Christian Bächle and Jascha Bareis eds., "The Realities of Autonomous Weapons (Bristol UP, 2025) 1:00:17

4M ago1:00:17

1:00:17

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 internatio…

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Prudence Peiffer, "The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever" (Harper, 2023) 50:30

4M ago50:30

50:30

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 Mar…

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Alisha Mughal, "It Can’t Rain All the Time: The Crow" (ECW Press, 2025) 44:21

4M ago44:21

44:21

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, …

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Jirí Anger, "Towards a Film Theory from Below: Archival Film and the Aesthetics of the Crack-Up" (Bloomsbury, 2024) 1:01:34

4M ago1:01:34

1:01:34

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 experime…

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Horror and Humanism in "28 Years Later" 1:08:32

4M ago1:08:32

1:08:32

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 endi…

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Meredith McCarroll, "Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film" (U Georgia Press, 2018) 1:02:14

4M ago1:02:14

1:02:14

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 …

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Liza Black, "Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, 1941-1960" (U Nebraska Press, 2020) 39:09

4M ago39:09

39:09

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…

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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) 1:08:10

4M ago1:08:10

1:08:10

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 Urb…

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Bruce Isaacs, "The Art of Pure Cinema: Hitchcock and His Imitators" (Oxford UP, 2020) 1:10:41

5M ago1:10:41

1:10:41

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 philosop…

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Moonstruck 26:59

5M ago26:59

26:59

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,…

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Richard Scheib, "A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic: Depictions of Plague and Pandemic on Film and TV" (Headpress, 2025) 35:23

5M ago35:23

35:23

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 …

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Veronica Litt, "Ugh! As If!: Clueless" (ECW Press, 2025) 47:57

5M ago47:57

47:57

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 an…

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Karen Redrobe, "Undead: (Inter)(in)animation, Feminisms, and the Art of War" (Univ of California Press, 2025) 1:02:40

5M ago1:02:40

1:02:40

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, I…

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Love and Mercy 23:29

5M ago23:29

23:29

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 versi…