Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Limit What Movies We Can See

by Jonathan Rosenbaum

Overview

Is the cinema, as writers from David Denby to Susan Sontag have claimed, really dead? Contrary to what we have been led to believe, films are better than ever—we just can’t see the good ones. Movie Wars cogently explains how movies are packaged, distributed, and promoted, and how, at every stage of the process, the potential moviegoer is treated with contempt. Using examples ranging from the New York Times’s coverage of the Cannes film festival to the anticommercial practices of Orson Welles, Movie Wars details the workings of the powerful forces that are in the process of ruining our precious cinematic culture and heritage, and the counterforces that have begun to fight back.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781556524547
Publisher:	Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	07/01/2002
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.52(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Rosenbaum is a film critic for the Chicago Reader and is the author of Moving Places, Placing Movies, Movies as Politics, and Dead Man. He is a frequent contributor to Film Comment and Cinéaste. He lives in Chicago.

Read an Excerpt

Excerpted from Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Conspire to Limit What Films We Can See by Jonathan Rosenbaum. Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved.

bias.

pressure, such as Edward Dymtryk and Robert Rossen, by offering scant resistance to HUAC; he even took out an ad in The New York Times defending his own behavior and never subsequently apologized or expressed any serious misgivings. According to this argument, Kazan was not only cooperative with the Hollywood blacklist, he was complicitous, and he was rewarded for his behavior with a lucrative studio contract. For many if not all members of the Hollywood left, honoring such an individual even four decades later was an unconscionable act—perhaps even comparable to Ronald Reagan's notorious Bitburg speech that forgave the atrocities of Nazi soldiers.

arguments in the form of a self-dialogue that explains why I think the audience is closer to being right than most industry "experts" admit.

Editorial Reviews

Movie Wars is a cherry bomb in the lap of critical complacency and orthodoxy—and a bold challenge to the movie industry. . . . This brief text is packed with more ideas than any other film book you’re likely to read this year.” —Premiere



“The work of a tough and principled critic whose insights into movies in the age of tie-ins and Disney are as rude and witty as they are sharp, Jonathan Rosenbaum’s Movie Wars is a bracing job of cultural muckraking.” —Tom Carson, the Washington Post


“Jonathan Rosenbaum is the best film critic in the United States—indeed, he’s one of the best writers on film of any kind in the history of the medium.” —James Naremore, author of Acting in the Cinema

“Rosenbaum's journalistic style makes this animated treatise accessible to film buffs who want to know more about how movies get made, while his sound arguments make it a good bet for academic readers as well.” —Publishers Weekly


“Movie Wars is invigorating in the way it argues not only that movies of lasting value are being made all the time, but also that movies can actaully enlarge an audience's comprehensionof the world.” —Vue Weekly



“Essential reading for anyone who cares about movies.” —Martha P. Nochimson, Film Quarterly

From the Publisher

...exposes producers who maul directors' work; distributors who hoard gems; and critics who enable big, dumb movies to get even bigger and dumber.

Chicago Magazine

Jonathon Rosenbaum has become our leading writer in the zone where academic film studies overlap reviewing.

San Diego Union-Tribune

Rosenbaum expands notions of what should constitute our film culture, and does so in a way that's exciting to anyone who cares about movies as an art form.

National Post

The work of a tough and principled critic whose insights into movies in the age of tie-ins and Disney are as rude and witty as they are sharp...This testy, expertly informed book makes invigorating reading not only for cinema fans bur for anyone left uneasy by our ever more triumphalist culture.

Washington Post

Enjoyable, entertaining, and highly recommended reading.

Outsider

Essential reading for anyone who cares about movies.
— Film Quarterly

Martha P. Nochimson

Movies are better than ever, claims Rosenbaum, film critic for the but the industry does not allow people to see the good ones. He explains how movies are packaged, distributed, and promoted, and how at every stage of the process the potential moviegoer is treated with contempt. Among his examples are how Miramax often buys distribution rights to a movie it never distributes in order to keep competitors from making it available, and how the corporate ownership of movie theaters defies antitrust laws. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Is the cinema really dead, or are modern films better than before? Movie Wars examines how movies ar promoted, packaged and distributed, and how potential movie viewers are treated with contempt. Industry secrets - such as how movie distributors stifle movies and competition - are revealed in the course of an intensely critical examination of the methods and ethics of the movie industry.

Movie Wars is a thoughtful and precise study of what's wrong with Hollywood these days.

Winston-Salem Journal