The Academic Bubble

Passport to Pimlico and Ealing’s Canons

Over the decade after its release, Passport to Pimlico became a cornerstone of how Ealing’s comedies and other films, as well as those of its…

May 7 • Dion Georgiou

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April 2026

Thomas the Tank Engine (1946)

The second book in The Railway Series introduced its most iconic character, whose childlike qualities appealed to a young audience even as they…

Apr 30

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Stop, Look, and Listen #56

A round-up of what I have been reading and listening to this past week.

Apr 27 • Dion Georgiou

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Dead Man’s Wire

A film that captures the economic discontents and ideological confrontations of 1970s America, albeit in ways that elide some of the dynamics at play in…

Apr 23 • Dion Georgiou

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Stop, Look, and Listen #55

A round-up of what I have been reading and listening to this past week.

Apr 21 • Dion Georgiou

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The Secret Agent

This political thriller draws upon motifs of carnival and film genre to evoke the paranoia, lawlessness, and inequality of 1970s Brazil.

Apr 16 • Dion Georgiou

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Stop, Look, and Listen #54

A round-up of what I have been reading and listening to this past week.

Apr 13 • Dion Georgiou

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March 2026

Balcon, Ealing, and Institutional Identity

As head of Ealing Studios, Michael Balcon routinely told a story about the studio that cohered with the narratives of the films it made, and helped…

Mar 13 • Dion Georgiou

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February 2026

Stop, Look, and Listen #53

A round-up of what I have been reading and listening to this past month, on the Global War on Terror; Trump and the international order; the remaking of…

Feb 24 • Dion Georgiou

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Idi Amin: Lion of Africa (2010)

In writing a revisionist account of Idi Amin’s rise to power and expulsion of Uganda’s Asian minority, Manzoor Moghal simultaneously asserted his own…

Feb 17

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Refugee Narratives on The Reunion

Episodes of BBC Radio 4 programme The Reunion have given refugees to Britain opportunities to narrate their stories in dialogue with each other, but…

Feb 10 • Dion Georgiou

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December 2025

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere

This biopic frames the making of Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska in the context of his own psychological turmoil, at the omission of the broader…

Dec 8, 2025 • Dion Georgiou

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