Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia: Film Culture in Transition - Softcover

Rosenbaum, Jonathan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226726657 ISBN 13: 9780226726656

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2010

Synopsis

The esteemed film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has brought global cinema to American audiences for the last four decades. His incisive writings on individual filmmakers define film culture as a diverse and ever-evolving practice, unpredictable yet subject to analyses just as diversified as his own discriminating tastes. For Rosenbaum, there is no high or low cinema, only more interesting or less interesting films, and the pieces collected here, from an appreciation of Marilyn Monroe’s intelligence to a classic discussion on and with Jean-Luc Godard, amply testify to his broad intellect and multi-faceted talent. Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia gathers together over fifty examples of Rosenbaum’s criticism from the past four decades, each of which demonstrates his passion for the way we view movies, as well as how we write about them. Charting our changing concerns with the interconnected issues that surround video, DVDs, the Internet, and new media, the writings collected here also highlight Rosenbaum’s polemics concerning the digital age. From the rediscovery and recirculation of classic films, to the social and aesthetic impact of technological changes, Rosenbaum doesn’t disappoint in assembling a magisterial cast of little-known filmmakers as well as the familiar faces and iconic names that have helped to define our era.

As we move into this new decade of moviegoing—one in which Hollywood will continue to feel the shockwaves of the digital age—Jonathan Rosenbaum remains a valuable guide. Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia is a consummate collection of his work, not simply for fans of this seminal critic, but for all those open to the wide variety of films he embraces and helps us to elucidate.

About this title

About the Author

Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote for many periodicals (including the Village Voice, Sight and Sound, Film Quarterly, and Film Comment) before becoming principal film critic for the Chicago Reader from 1987 until his retirement in 2008. He is the author of many books, most recently including Discovering Orson Welles and the major collection of essays Essential Cinema. He continues to write for both print and online publications and maintains a blog at www.jonathanrosenbaum.com.

From Booklist

The death of the film culture that flourished in the 1960s and ’70s and the concurrent decline of serious film criticism have been roundly lamented, but Rosenbaum—long known by cinematic cognoscenti as one of the most knowledgeable and perceptive voices writing on movies—maintains that the digital age is simply shifting film viewing from being a communal activity to a private one that’s actually more hospitable to niche tastes, and that as traditional venues for discussing cinema vanish, the activity is being revitalized online. That notion informs the most recent of the 50-plus pieces collected here, on subjects ranging from the highbrow (an astute comparison between Jacques Tati’s Playtime and Jia Zhengke’s The World, a pair of essays on Catalan experimental filmmaker Pete Portabella) to the less rarefied (Kim Novak’s midwestern roots, Marilyn Monroe’s deceptive shrewdness), all displaying Rosenbaum’s distinctive insight and erudition. Rosenbaum’s vision of a future in which cinema endures by extending the notion of the term to encompass pixels as well as nitrate, conforming to the experience of most contemporary viewers, offers hope for die-hard devotees of the beleaguered art form. --Gordon Flagg

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0226726657
• ISBN 13: 9780226726656
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 408