Post by Martha P. Nochimson, Critic William Wordsworth made us believe in the ecstasy of the humble daffodil. Hannah Arendt isolated the potential for evil in the ordinary acts of people doing the business of their society. There is a long history that affirms that banality isn’t banal, for better and for worse. Three...
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Columns
New York Film Festival 2015 Part Two: The Banality of . . .
New York Film Festival 2015 Part One: Schrodinger’s Cinema
In the first installment of a four-part series on the 2015 New York Film Festival, Martha P. Nochimson argues that Kyoshi Kurosawa's Journey to the Shore and Miguel Gomes' Arabian Nights trilogy dissolve the boundaries between life and death, then and now, and here and there.
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Bollywood’s Superhero Genre: Transnational Appropriations, Labor and Referentiality
Nandana Bose unmasks the postmillennial Bollywood superhero to reveal a bricolage of transnational intertexts.
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A New Brand of Tea Leaves?: The 2015 Emmy Awards
We'll never know exactly why anyone wins Emmys, but the process weighed heavily in HBO's dominance at this year's ceremony.
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Why Superhero Movies Suck, Part II
In the second installment of his two-part series on the state of comic book film adaptations, Mark Gallagher critiques their exploitation of fans' good will, as will as the strain it places on media industry talent and trade coverage.
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Why Superhero Movies Suck, Part I
In part one of a two-part series on the state of comic book film and television franchises, Mark Gallagher criticizes their exploitation of esoterica and origin stories.
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Conference Announcement: Saving America’s Radio Heritage at the Library of Congress
Announcement of national conference for the Radio Preservation Task Force of the Library of Congress, February 25-27, 2016.
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“We Know More About You Than You’d Like”: Podcasts and High-Status Fandom
Mark Lashley notes the rise of fan podcasts within the comedy community by discussing Adam Scott and Scott Aukerman's U Talkin' U2 To Me, and the ways in which performances of fandom are complicated by the hosts' celebrity and industry connections.
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What I Learned at Podcast Movement 2015
Jason Loviglio reports from the Podcast Movement 2015 industry conference, providing a state-of-the-industry rundown that includes the divide between professional radio broadcaster "Pro-casters" and amateur "Podcasters" and the shared discourse of podcasting-as-rebirth.
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The Visibility and Invisibility of Chinese Independent Films
Festival film? Underground film? Dissident film? Sabrina Q. Yu on contemporary Chinese independent cinema's proliferating labels and reigning misperceptions.
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Hindi Cinema: Coming Soon To A Tweet Near You
Social media and Twitter-happy stars are changing the way Hindi films are promoted in India. (With this caveat: for English speakers only.) Sripana Ray looks at film prefiguration targeting India's urban middle class.
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James Bond: A Transmedia Anomaly?
Like time's arrow, transmedia franchises move relentlessly forward. Or do they? Matthew Freeman looks at the retro fixation of the transmedia James Bond storyworld as an anomaly in contemporary entertainment’s perpetual present.
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“Something Into Nothing”: On the Materiality of the Broadcast Archive
Laura LaPlaca writes about the material resilience of broadcast history from the perspective of a collector and archivist, discussing the importance of acknowledging the stuff that radio and television leave behind, especially in the face of an overwhelming emphasis on the "ephemerality" of these media.
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The Only Music Podcast: Listening to a New Music Podcast Find its Voice
Brian Fauteux inaugurates our "The Podcast Review" series with an analysis of The Only Music Podcast, a music podcast from Gothenburg, Sweden that offers a refreshing take on the music industries by critically engaging with bi-weekly topics.
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Textual Analysis & Technology: Information Overload, Part II
Kyra Hunting continues her discussion of software options for media textual analysis, suggesting that while there is no single perfect qualitative research software application available, a combination of Filemaker Pro, NVivo, Dedoose, and Cinemetrics has helped her dig more deeply into media texts.
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