Books like Colorization — picked by fans

While the Bogle and Cripps books were written during the 1970s Blaxploitation era, this one emerged during the next great Black film movement, the “urban cinema” era of the 1990s, triggered by movies like Do the Right Thing and Boyz n the Hood.

Particularly influential for my book is the chapter “Slaves, Monsters, and Others,” which touches upon the racialized metaphors and allegories in horror, fantasy, and science fiction.

Even if you don’t agree with its assertions, the book provides fascinating food for thought.

This book is an absolutely indispensable reference – Donald Bogle may well be dubbed the “godfather” of race studies in film as he meticulously chronicled and chartered black images in early film.

The book’s title alone already clues readers into the idea that Bogle will not pull any punches in describing popular black film caricatures that we now regard as problematic today.

Another pioneering work, this 1977 book was written during the late “Blaxploitation” film movement, but rather than focus on that era, it looks back at the first half of the 20th century, during the foundation of Hollywood as a filmmaking industry, to detail the harrowing trials and tribulations that Black performers had to endure.

With a scholarly yet accessible approach, this book drums home the fact that cinema—and American society as a whole—is not that far removed from slavery, as evidenced by Black portrayals in popular films like Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Birth of a Nation. Like Bogle, Cripps is a legend in the field of Black film studies.

This is a large, gorgeous work that comes off as part textbook and part coffee table book.

It carries an air of officiality, serving as the official companion piece to the exhibition of the same name displayed at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. Not a page goes by without a dazzling image or an intriguing story from the history of Black representation in Hollywood. It features a wide range of content, from essays to case studies to glamor portraits, movie poster galleries, filmographies, chronologies, and interviews.

If you can’t make it to LA to view the dazzling exhibit in person, this is as close as you can get.

I think the author is very clever by bringing in the trendy concept of soft power and thus opening a new window for our understanding of Taiwan cinema.

I found the book not the easiest to read if you are not particularly familiar with the language of cultural studies or with specific films and filmmakers in Taiwan. However, the author has presented a convincing and valuable argument by linking a cinematic output to the entire system, which enables the production, circulation, and distribution of this output.

In other words, Taiwan cinema is a result, but the system that enriches creativity is where Taiwan’s values and soft power lie.  

Neal Gabler is one of our most astute cultural critics.

I met him when I invited him to be my guest in a Princeton seminar called “Writing about Popular Culture.”

He talked compellingly about his books like Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity and An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, which carefully examined the inner workings of entertainment and celebrity. 

In Life: The Movie, Gabler takes the argument even further, drawing on examples ranging from Elizabeth Taylor and Tom Cruise to Princess Diana and Oprah Winfrey to show how celebrity hagiography has turned everything from news to religion and politics into an inescapable public entertainment. 

I don’t think I like Ghost World, but it belongs on this list. When I think of Clowes’ work I think of caricature, but the environments in Ghost World pull most of the storytelling weight. You can hear the hum of the fluorescents in the grocery store and the wind between buildings on an empty street.

When I decided to study Taiwan cinema more systematically, I tried to read as much on the subject as possible. I enjoyed this book because it offered me a broad overview of many kinds of questions that can be asked about and through Taiwan cinema.

For example, I realized that it is possible to try and understand Taiwanese domestic & international politics, cross-strait relations, colonial history, and the impact of globalization in a more relatable manner by reading films and documentaries as texts. It is also possible to analyze different festivals, genres, filmmakers, and individual films from the perspectives of the film industry and film artistry.

I was totally energized by the enormous potential the subject of Taiwan cinema can offer because of this book.     

The year before Errol Flynn blew into Hollywood, the “pre-Code” era ended. What was the “pre-Code” era? It was the period in the early 1930s when Hollywood rode the cliff, making movies about sensational topics like adultery, pay-for-play, drug use, and more. Many of the pictures included a scene or two with leading ladies scantily clad and even braless. Leading men were often scoundrels.

This book entertainingly details both the point of view of studios struggling to remain relevant in the depths of the Great Depression by creating salacious products and the outcry from alarmed parents who took their kids to the movies only to cover their eyes and rush them back out again.

The author backs up his narrative with eye-popping photos illustrating just what was so shocking about the pre-Code era. This interesting period of Hollywood history ended abruptly and, unfortunately, with the puritanical “Production Code” that ushered… show more.

Peter Biskind chronicles the rise of New Hollywood in the 1970s, featuring such "movie brat" directors as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg. But he also refers to such older directors as Stanley Kubrick.

It’s written in a chatty and easy-to-read style and is full of useful tidbits of information about Kubrick and especially his new backers at Warner Brothers.