Five Film Books From Austin

House of Psychotic Women

Former Alamo Drafthouse booker Kier-La Janisse's personal rebuttal to the cinemtic trope of the hysterical woman is already an underground classic. For this 10th anniversary edition, Janisse has undertaken the tiniest of editorial changes to the existing copy, removing deadnaming but never second-guessing the writer she was then. Indeed, the author has always rejected the idea that this was a definitive guide to the topic, but rather a subjective assessment of her relationship with films in which women are abused, gaslit, and occassionally victorious. Yet this reprint gets closer, with over 100 new capsule reviews adding to its encyclopedic nature.

Making the Best Years of Our Lives

The scars of World War II were sometimes physical but just as often mental, and before war movies became adept at discussing – and even naming – post-traumatic stress disorder, characters suffering from shell shock were either cowards or came to their heroic senses after a good slap. In her new book, Alison Macor, author of definitive Austin movie history Chainsaws, Slackers, and Spy Kids, salutes William Wyler's 1947 Oscar-winning smash that gave that pain a space on the silver screen, even as the filmmakers were targeted in the Red Scare.

Making the Best Years of Our Lives: The Hollywood Classic That Inspired a Nation by Alison Macor, University of Texas Press, 240 pp., $45

Wakanda Atlas

Who better to take you inside the borders of Marvel's magnificent Afrofurist utopia than NYC-to-Austin transplant Evan Narcisse? The author of the Rise of the Black Panther graphic novel and narrative design consultant for the Black Panther: War for Wakanda expansion to the Marvel's Avengers game is your guide in this sumptuously illustrated guide to the geography and history of the kingdom and its comic book roots.

Cinema Speculation

Originally concieved as a history of the battle between New Hollywood and the studio system, the erstwhile Austinite's decade-in-the-writing first nonfiction work is part film history, part coming-of-age tale as he rewatches the (often highly age-inappropriate) movies his mom took him to as a kid. The next best thing to digging through his legenday archive of 35mm prints.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Another Oscar-winning ex-Austinite, master fabulist GDT finally embraced the magic of stop-motion with his sumptuous adaptation of Carlo Collodi's tragicomic tale of the little wooden boy. The former resident of Oak Hill is not simply the subject of this extensive new making-of book, but also penned the foreword, as Gina McIntyre follows the animators through every tiny motion that brought Pinocchio to life.