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Every Time a Bell Rings
It’s a Wonderful Life has been a holiday mainstay for 80 years, and Emily St. James and Lauren Theisen celebrate that milestone with their eclectic essay collection, Every Time a Bell Rings: The Legacy of It’s a Wonderful Life, America’s Most Beloved Holiday Film.
Why, they wonder, is the film so resonant and relevant? “What are we nostalgic for . . . ? Is it the version of community presented in the film? Or . . . the versions of ourselves who watched the movie years and years ago, perhaps with people we miss acutely now? Or . . . is it both?”
St. James and Theisen find answers via enthusiastic, insightful analyses of the film’s location (“You Are Now in Bedford Falls”), place in history (“1946: A Movie Year Like No Other”), director Frank Capra and more. Every Time a Bell Rings also zooms in on side characters (“The Many Wonderful Weirdos of Bedford Falls”) and the complexities of conjuring up falling snow.
Fans will treasure this wide-ranging, fascinating tribute; it’s the perfect accompaniment to yet another viewing of the beloved holiday classic.
I Am the Night
Batman: The Animated Series debuted in 1992 and, over 85 episodes, “change[d] what it means to create a superhero cartoon,” writes Daniel Dockery in his passionate tribute, I Am the Night: The Ultimate Unauthorized History of Batman: The Animated Series.
The Emmy-winning series “allowed for the form to expand, blending it with genres like horror, noir, Western, martial arts, comedy, and more in a way that was breathtaking and cinematic.” Understandably, it imprinted on the minds of viewers, influenced cartoons and films that came after and has remained “perhaps the superhero genre’s lone constant. It’s just too damn good.”
Dockery distills the series’ magic via extensive research, creator interviews and insidery tidbits about network politics, voice actor casting and the introduction of Harley Quinn, “the most famous comic-book villain-creation of the modern age.” He dives into other 1990s cartoons, too, including Tiny Toon Adventures and Freakazoid!
I Am the Night is an engaging, comprehensive chronicle of BTAS—a great pick for fans of animation, noir mysteries, superhero tales and, of course, the Caped Crusader himself.
★ Jungle Red!
Thanks to Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, 1939 was a banner year—but The Women deserves top billing, too. Actor and film historian Illeana Douglas’ Jungle Red! The Making of MGM’s The Women showcases the film’s social commentary, creative achievements and off-set drama among the starry cast.
Rosalind Russell, Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer starred, while director George Cukor, hairstylist Sydney Guilaroff and clothing designer Adrian brought the film to gorgeous life. In her lively introduction, fellow film historian (and friend of Crawford) Jeanine Basinger notes the Golden Age hit “has 135 juicy roles for women (even the pets are female), with not a single male actor walking around and getting in the way.”
As Douglas explains in her remarkably detailed chronicle, The Women is based on the successful 1936 Claire Booth Luce play about the lives, loves, rivalries and beauty treatments of wealthy Manhattanites. The author’s conversational verve makes for an intriguing, entertaining read, and movie stills, advertisements and script excerpts add to the fun in this essential addition to the cinemaphile’s library.
Just a Shot Away
It’s fun to speculate whether a Hollywood personage’s life informs their work, and Mark Binelli leaves no biographical stone unturned in his intensively researched Just a Shot Away: Martin Scorsese’s Life in Film.
He leads readers from the writer-director’s youth in New York City’s Little Italy to his ascension to the cinematic firmament via detailed recountings of creative endeavors, family goings-on, romances, friendships and drug use on Scorsese’s path to acclaim for Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and more.
Binelli’s voice is assured and wryly funny; about GoodFellas, he quips, “Like Henry in those climactic moments, Marty had intimate experience with cocaine, paranoia, megalomaniacal multitasking, the maladroit juggling of wives and girlfriends, stressing about sauce sticking to the pot . . . Only someone who has survived such drug-fueled insanity could pull off such a loving portrait of a character managing the same.”
The 500-plus-page opus (which ends with GoodFellas but includes a coda listing subsequent milestones) will be catnip—and an excellent must-watch resource—for film buffs, Scorsese admirers and the gangster-curious alike.
Who’s That Girl?
Break out the rosé and deep-dish pizza (but maybe not the rock candy): it’s time to read Who’s That Girl: The Untold, Definitive History of New Girl, an in-depth, eminently appealing behind-the-scenes exploration of everything New Girl by Thea Glassman, author of Freaks, Gleeks, and Dawson’s Creek.
Newer fans who’ve helped make the 2010s sitcom (per Glassman, “arguably the last great network hangout show”) a streaming rewatch hit may not know it only got its seventh and final season in 2018 after the cast entreated the network to approve it. Glassman’s interviews with creator Liz Meriwether and select cast and crew offer insight into the show’s beginning, middle and heartfelt end, during which favorite guest stars returned, romantic storylines resolved and more.
Fans of the series will find fun in every chapter, including closer looks at iconic scenes; a reminder that “adorkable . . . found its way into the dictionary”; and new details about the casting of Prince and Taylor Swift. Who’s That Girl is the perfect pick for readers who view the denizens of Apartment 4D as America’s sitcom sweethearts.