Film History

From the Emmy Award-winning Squid Game to streaming sensations like The Glory and Crash Landing on You, Korean television has emerged onto the global pop culture scene as compelling television—but what exactly makes these shows so irresistibly bingeable? And what can we learn about our societies and ourselves from watching them? From stand-up comedian and media studies PhD Grace Jung comes a rollicking deep dive into the cultural significance of Korean television.

With Blumhouse celebrating its 15th anniversary throughout 2025, Horror’s New Wave captures the company’s journey to become a powerhouse in the horror and thriller film genres—taking you through the process of conception to premiere for films like Five Nights at Freddy’s, Split, Get Out, Glass, now-classic franchises like The Purge, and so much more.

Fifty years ago, a little boy was cast in a movie with some of Hollywood's brightest stars. The movie: It's a Wonderful Life; the boy: Jimmy Hawkins; today, he tells his story. Through personal recollection, careful research, and interviews with cast and crew, actor Jimmy Hawkins, who played four-year-old Tommy Bailey, takes you behind the scenes for a first-hand look at the American movie classic It's a Wonderful Life.

Based on exclusive interviews with the surviving cast and crew, friends and families of the stars, and other Hollywood insiders, Killin' Generals is a riveting must-listen 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.

Daniel Day-Lewis is an actor regarded by many as the finest of his generation. His portrayal of cerebral-palsy sufferer Christy Brown in My Left Foot won him his first Oscar in 1990, and in 2008 another Oscar followed for his role in There Will Be Blood. His roles in The Age of Innocence, The Last of the Mohicans and In the Name of the Father further cemented his reputation as well as grossing millions at the box office, making Day-Lewis one of Hollywood's most bankable stars.

"I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth". On July 4, 1939, baseball great Lou Gehrig delivered what has been called "baseball's Gettysburg Address" at Yankee Stadium and gave a speech that included the phrase that would become legendary. He died two years later and his fiery widow, Eleanor, wanted nothing more than to keep his memory alive. With her forceful will, she and the irascible producer Samuel Goldwyn quickly agreed to make a film based on Gehrig's life, The Pride of the Yankees.

In this scintillating combination of critical race theory, social commentary, veganism, and gender analysis, media studies scholar Aph Ko offers a compelling vision of a reimagined social justice movement. Through a subtle and extended examination of Jordan Peele’s hit 2017 movie Get Out, Ko shows the many ways that white supremacist notions of animality and race exist through the consumption and exploitation of flesh. She demonstrates how a critical historical and social understanding of anti-blackness can provide the pathway to genuine liberation.

Until now, Hollywood's political history has been dominated by a steady stream of films and memoirs decrying the nightmare of the Red Scare and how it victimized political innocents. But Ronald and Allis Radosh tell for the first time the “backstory” behind this myth. They show how the Soviet Comintern targeted the film capital in the late 1920s, taking us inside the cells and discussion groups that Communist Party members formed, the guilds and unions they tried to take over, and the studios they aimed to influence.

In Vitagraph, Andrew A. Erish provides a comprehensive examination and reassessment of the company most responsible for defining and popularizing the American movie. This history challenges long-accepted Hollywood mythology that simply isn't true: that Paramount and Fox invented the feature film, that Universal created the star system, and that these companies, along with MGM and Warner Bros., developed motion pictures into a multimillion-dollar business.

The one and only Zadie Smith, prize-winning, best-selling author of White Teeth, is back with a second unmissable collection of essays. No subject is too fringe or too mainstream for the unstoppable Zadie Smith. From social media to the environment, from Jay-Z to Karl Ove Knausgaard, she has boundless curiosity and the boundless wit to match. In Feel Free, pop culture, high culture, social change and political debate all get the Zadie Smith treatment, dissected with razor-sharp intellect.

In 1926, the American version of the film classic Metropolis was cut in half, now for the first time in seventy years you can experience the whole story. A very important book in the development of the audiobook industry. The music and sound effects are piped through differant speakers so the listener gets the surround sound or 3-D effect. The futuristic music alone (and the listener's imagination) tells part of the story without any words describing the action.

Fascinante ensayo que recorre, no solo la representación del vudú en el cine, desde cintas emblemáticas como El corazón del ángel a La serpiente y el arco iris, sino también los propios orígenes, evolución, idiosincrasia y prácticas del vudú real, de la mano de uno de los mayores expertos en el tema. El texto principal está aderezado con críticas y ensayos sobre el tema de otros autores emblemáticos de la escena hispanohablante contemporánea.

Women have been instrumental in the success of American cinema since its very beginning. One of the first people to ever pick up a motion picture camera was a woman, as was the first screenwriter to win two Academy Awards, the inventor of the boom microphone, and the first person to be credited with the title film editor. Throughout the entire history of Hollywood women have been revolutionizing, innovating, and shaping how we make movies. Yet their stories are rarely shared. This is what film reporter Alicia Malone wants to change. Backwards and in Heels tells the history of women in film in a different way.

With oodles of steamy romance, paranormal time travel, adventure, and much more, Outlander is sweeping the nation. From over a dozen volumes to its newest incarnation as a breathtaking Starz show, it continues to delight, even with subtle, clever changes. But what was life really like then - from kilts and bagpipes to selkies and the fair folk? Who was Bonnie Prince Charlie and why was his campaign so disastrous for the Highlanders?

Mike Medavoy is a Hollywood rarity: a studio executive who, though never far from controversy, remained loved and respected through four decades of moviemaking. He helped bring to the screen some of the most acclaimed Oscar-winning films of our time, including Apocalypse Now, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, and Sleepless in Seattle.

With the success of the Wonder Woman movies and the results following the outcry of the #MeToo movement, now is the time to highlight the female influences in film history previously left unheard!

With a connoisseur's insight and an offbeat sensitivity perfectly tailored to his subjects, Gifford's brief essays cover a hundred of the noir buff's favorites. His highly polished impressions take the listener through five decades of noir to find both the heart and the art of the plotline.

In this first biography of Woody Allen in over a decade, David Evanier discusses key movies, plays, and prose as well as Allen's personal life. Evanier tackles the themes that Allen has spent a lifetime sorting through in art: morality, sexuality, Judaism, the eternal struggle of head and heart. Woody will be the definitive word on a major American talent as he begins his ninth decade and his sixth decade of making movies.

A Thousand Cuts is a candid exploration of one of America's strangest and most quickly vanishing subcultures. It is about the death of physical film in the digital era and about a paranoid, secretive, eccentric, and sometimes obsessive group of film-mad collectors who made movies and their projection a private religion in the time before DVDs and Blu-rays.

Every so often, an inspiring book comes along that helps the reader reform their approach to art and life, and A TREASURY OF ART (Part 2)--UNDISCOVERED WORKS 1966-2022 is one of those. The author, Rick Schmidt, was graced by ACTOR VIN DIESEL reading and utilizing his earlier "Feature filmmaking at Used-Car Prices" Viking Penguin how-to, so the superstar could kick-start his career. WRITER/DIRECTOR KEVIN SMITH also made his breakthrough feature, CLERKS, with Schmidt's book. So, somehow, the contents of Schmidt's tomes seem to generate positive energy to the reader, to help them get busy on ...