Jonathan Rosenbaum's Blog: jonathanrosenbaum.com, page 35

One More Bibliographic List

Here are some links to pieces of mine that are available online elsewhere, but not (yet) on this site, in chronological order, over the past six or seven years. Many of them include various lists of their own. — J.R.



10 Favorite Offbeat Musicals (March 2006):
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/article...


Ten Overlooked Noirs (April 2006):
www.dvdbeaver.com/film/articles/noir.htm


A Dozen Eccentric Westerns [...]

The Rocky Horror Picture Cult

From Sight and Sound (Spring 1980). -– J.R.




Now that criticism and advertising are becoming harder and harder to separate in American film culture, the notion of any genuinely spontaneous movie cult becomes automatically suspect. It implies something quite counter to the megacinema of Cimino, Coppola and Spielberg — a cinema that can confidently write [...]

Menopause and Racism [PRIVILEGE]

From the Chicago Reader (March 8, 1991). — J.R.

PRIVILEGE
*** (A must-see)
Directed and written by Yvonne Rainer
With Alice Spivak, Novella Nelson, Blaire Baron, Rico Elias, Gabriella Farrar, Dan Berkey, and Yvonne Rainer.

Approached as a narrative, Yvonne Rainer’s sixth feature takes forever to get started and an eternity to end. In between its ill-defined borders, the [...]

“Doctor Kubrick”: or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Movie

From the Bard Observer, March 30, 1964. The greatest teacher I’ve ever had, by far, was Heinrich Blücher, the husband of Hannah Arendt, who taught for many years at Bard College, and this was one of the two pieces of mine in the Bard Observer that he made a point of telling me that he [...]

Restored to Power [NIGHTS OF CABIRIA]

This appeared in the August 21, 1998 issue of the Chicago Reader. –J.R.

Nights of Cabiria
Rating **** Masterpiece
Directed by Federico Fellini
Written by Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, and Pier Paolo Pasolini
With Giulietta Masina, Franca Marzi, Francois Perier, Amedeo Nazzari, Dorian Gray, and Aldo Silvana.
By Jonathan Rosenbaum
Reporting on the response to Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria at [...]

Review of Richard Schickel’s D. W. GRIFFITH

From Sight and Sound (Autumn 1984). –- J.R.


D.W. GRIFFITH: An American Life

by Richard Schickel

Pavilion, £15.00



Arriving on the heels of Donald Spoto’s Hitchcock and Richard Koszarski’s Stroheim, Richard Schickel’s massive biography of Griffith manages to steer a middle course between the compulsive narrative thrust of the former and the more scholarly negotiation of diverse hypotheses pursued [...]

Check Your Baggage [CRIMSON GOLD]

From the Chicago Reader (April 16, 2004). As much as I share my colleague’s admiration for Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film, I must confess that I find it both depressing and somewhat insulting to Panahi that this is receiving more attention and praise in some quarters than his full-fledged films ever did, including [...]

Subversion and Sexiness in Three Hollywood Depression Comedies

As much as I admire Ernest Lubitsch as a subversive force in 30s Hollywood, especially for The Man I Killed and Trouble in Paradise, I keep coming back to a particular anti-Lubitsch argument made to me by Elaine May, of all people, the one time I was lucky enough to meet her (in Bologna the [...]

All Is Forgiven [MONSTER’S BALL]

From the Chicago Reader (February 22, 2002). — J.R.

Monster’s Ball
** (Worth seeing)
Directed by Marc Forster
Written by Milo Addica and Will Rokos
With Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry, Peter Boyle, Heath Ledger, Sean Combs, Mos Def, and Coronji Calhoun.


Monster’s Ball is a Hollywood art movie; even the fancy color graphics imposed on the seedy milieu behind the [...]

Mes Petites Amoureuses (1976 review)

From Monthly Film Bulletin, July 1976 (Vol. 43, No. 510). — J.R.



Mes Petites Amoureuses

France, 1975 Director: Jean Eustache

Southwest France, circa 1950. Daniel, a schoolboy living with his grandmother, recalls hitting a schoolmate gratuitously, and getting his first erection as a candle-bearer during Mass. Impressed by a sword-swallower in a circus who lies down on [...]