Jonathan Rosenbaum's Blog: jonathanrosenbaum.com, page 31

Chaplin

From the Chicago Reader (December 1, 1992), though this version of the capsule is corrected and slightly tweaked from the original. 2013 postscript: Last year, while preparing to teach a brief course about Chaplin in Brazil, I wound up reading the first good Chaplin biography I’ve encountered so far (as well as one of the [...]

L’Amour Fou

From the Chicago Reader (May 18, 2007). — J.R.

Rightly described by Dave Kehr as Jacques Rivette’s “breakthrough film, the first of his features to employ extreme length (252 minutes), a high degree of improvisation, and a formal contrast between film and theater,” this rarely screened 1968 masterpiece is one of the great French films of [...]

Best DVDs and Blu-Rays of 2012 (My DVD Beaver Ballot)

At the suggestion of a reader, Philadelphia cinephile David Ortega, here is the ballot I submitted to DVD Beaver’s poll late last year. Note: Sadly, the absence of any titles from the excellent U.K. label Masters of Cinema can probably be explained by the fact that this label stopped sending me any of its releases [...]

Interview on Chaplin & Film Criticism for Estado de Minas

I was interviewed by Estado de Minas, the largest newspaper in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, shortly before and in connection with my plans to teach a ten-hour course on Charlie Chaplin there in mid-August 2012. (They ran some of my comments on criticism but omitted what I had to say about Chaplin.) Here are their questions [...]

Meat, John, Dough [PRETTY WOMAN]

From the Chicago Reader (July 13, 1990). I wish I could remember now which Reader staffer thought up the brilliant headline; it wasn’t me. — J.R.

PRETTY WOMAN
(Worthless)
Directed by Garry Marshall
Written by J.F. Lawton
With Richard Gere, Julia Roberts, Ralph Bellamy, Jason Alexander, Laura San Giacomo, Alex Hyde-White, and Hector Elizondo.

Having missed Pretty Woman when it opened [...]

Luc Moullet’s Short Manifesto

From Cinema Scope No. 45, Winter 2011. -– J.R.





As a postscript to and short commentary on the closing section of Ted Fendt’s interview with Luc Moullet in the previous issue of Cinema Scope,l’d like to propose that (a) Moullet’s two most recent shorts, Toujours moins and Chef-d’oeuvre?, provide a kind of summary of Moullet’s work [...]

Lies About Lying (INFAMOUS)

From the Chicago Reader (October 13, 2006). — J.R.


Infamous **
Directed and written by Douglas McGrath
With Toby Jones, Daniel Craig, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Daniels, Peter Bogdanovich, Sigourney Weaver, and Hope Davis

Two recent features about Truman Capote, coincidentally made around the same time, concentrate on Capote’s work on his true-crime best seller In Cold Blood, about the [...]

Review of THEORY OF FILM PRACTICE

From the Village Voice (February 28, 1974). -– J.R.


Theory of Film Practice
A book by Noël Burch
Praeger, $3.95 and $8.95



“These comments were written before the release of Tati’s ‘Playtime’. Even if they still hold true for films in general, they are not applicable to Tati’s film, the first in the history of cinema that [...]

Ivan

From the Chicago Reader (June 1, 2002). — J.R.

Alexander Dovzhenko’s first sound film, revolving around the construction of a giant dam on the Dnieper River, is one of his greatest, though it was poorly received in the Soviet Union when it came out in 1932. It’s only one of the eccentricities of this lyrical and [...]

Elia Kazan, Viewed from 1973

I wrote the Preface to this 1973 article in 2009 for its eventual reprinting in Kazan Revisited, edited by Lisa Dombrowski (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2011). Note (early 2013): My favorite Kazan film, Wild River, has just been released on Blu-Ray, and it looks better than ever. — J.R.



Preface (2009): Rereading this essay 36 [...]