Category Archives: Books

Just wanted to give a mention to two new edited collections either about or relevant to American indies (OK, I’m also plugging the fact that I’ve got an essay in each of them!). First is US Independent Film After 1989: Possible Films, … Continue reading →

Just finished a terrific book on issues relating to gender and American culture, particularly in relation to the so-called’ ‘war on terror’: Sovereign Masculinity: Gender Lessons from the War on Terror, by Bonnie Mann (Oxford UP, 2014). Mann offers a very … Continue reading →

Indie films often mark their difference from the Hollywood mainstream through their resistance to the kinds of happy endings associated with studio films. That Hollywood films always have, or have had, such endings, or that they are as simplistic and/or … Continue reading →

Having just plugged Michael Newman’s new co-authored book on television, I also wanted to say something about his 2010 essay on discourses relating to the notion of ‘attention spans’ (‘New media, young audiences and discourses of attention: from Sesame Street to … Continue reading →

Can highly recommend Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status by Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine (Routledge 2012). OK, it’s not about film let alone indie film, but there’s strong continuity between this book and Newman’s Indie: An American Film … Continue reading →

I’m having the slightly weird experience of doing a really final read-through of my forthcoming book Indie 2.0: Change and Continuity in Contemporary American Indie Film – quite some months after originally delivering the ‘completed’ manuscript. It turned out recently that the … Continue reading →

I’m revisiting Raymond Williams’ classic text Culture and Society, first published in 1958, as part of background research for my next project. It’s a very useful source on the context in which our contemporary notions of ‘art’, ‘creativity’, ‘genius’ and … Continue reading →

Also newly out and promising to make an important contribution in similar territory is Hollywood’s Indies: Classics Divisions, Speciality Labels and American Independent Cinema by Yannis Tzioumakis from Edinburgh University Press (also only in hardback at present and £47.99 from Amazon). … Continue reading →