Hoberman & Rosenbaum - "Midnight Movies"

I haven't read that Jarhead piece since it was published (and I don't remember it being great; a lot of Rosenbaum's weekly pieces have been auto-pilot-y recently), but I think his concern was that the inherently aesthetic depictions or wartime violence in cinema glorify war, not that these images are so close to reality that we cannot handle them.

I don't think we can get "beyond" the fact that war films tend to glorify war by ignoring the fact that they do. Whether or not you find this approach particularly fruitful or interesting is another question, but I think it's silly to pretend that this point is totally irrelevant and that Rosenbaum tends (at least in his longer-form writing) to be pretty thoughtful this argument.

And of course he loves Fuller's films. He was friends with the man for years and knew him well enough to discern the politics of the films - something that is very difficult to do judging the films on their own merits, something that any asessment of Fuller's work (positive or negative) will tell you.

My point is that Rosenbaum can't seem to get beyond the "war porn" as he sees it, or the glorification of war, and look at the merits of a film on fictional terms (which Hoberman does very well in his review of "Jarhead," despite the fact that the movie sucks). Like I said, unless it's "Night and Fog," or a complete lampoon like "Small Soldiers," Rosenbaum's got a problem with it.

I'm not sure how your assertion that we should get over this very real aspect of on-screen violence by simply pretending it doesn't exist or by pretending that photographed film doesn't have an indexical relationship with reality that complicates the issue is any more reactionary than Rosenbaum is in his worst pieces.

yah, of course, but also all realities are representations themselves. the consequences of this is not the fact that movie violence is made less real, but real violence is made more like movie violence (a representation)! the ethical stakes of this are very big, but it certainly doesn't act as a means for us to indulge in film violence without guilt OR consider it always beyond the pale and corrupting.

ie, COL1N OTM

You're correct, and I wouldn't dream of debating this. Perhaps Rosenbaum has been more interesting on this subject than I am remembering. But the problem I see is that Rosenbaum rarely discusses form in terms of movie violence. Instead, he arrogantly asserts what the director has been thinking during the creation of this fictional violence (like he or anyone else can ever really be certain of this), then goes on to explain how the shot of this gun, this fist, this drop of blood is going to come out of the screen and turn us all into Ted Nugent. This way of thinking has certainly (and unfortunately) turned Rosenbaum off to great Hong Kong films, great exploitation and horror films, and great avant-garde films.

I should clarify that when I say Rosenbaum and Hoberman are the middlebrow alternative film criticism, I'm saying that they represent everything any good little Hollywood-bashing film buff is supposed to think, without any real original or new ideas on how to look at films at all. Just take a look at their contributions to the Sight & Sound poll. Gotta have one film by a female director, one by a black director, one avant-garde film, one underrated silent film... This is lazy liberalism, the kind that's ripe for caricature. There are far superior critics who represent a true alternative: Fred Camper, Gary Morris, Nicole Brenez, Adrian Martin, Jack Sargeant - all of whom have written about "violent" movies in ways that are forward-thinking, challenging, and mindful of film form (Camper not so much, though I recommend his piece on "The Loyal 47 Ronin," where he describes how Mizoguchi's film actually convinces him that the death of one of its characters is necessary!).

Rosenbaum's take on violence is very different than you pretend and usually has more to do with the ideological and rhetorical use of violence. This has little to do with assuming what a director is thinking and lot to do with what the film does, i.e. how violence is working within the context of narrative and the larger political context in which it exists.

I like all the other critics you mentioned a lot (with the exception of Gary Morris, who I just haven't read), but I don't think what they're doing is radically more progressive or "alternative" than Rosenbaum at least, and not so different than Hoberman. (he's essentially responsible for making Brenez and Martin available in the U.S. and he's the only person who regularly publishes Fred Camper).

Rosenbaum can occassionally be a little boring or didactic, but you're using him as a straw man here.

I should also mention that I do read Rosenbaum's reviews every week, and occassionally, he can be on the money. I have to give him sole credit for turning me on to Joe Dante, and I admire his frequent bravery (putting "A.I." at the top of his 2001 list was pretty gutsy). Still, he's redundant, arrogant, pessimistic (I'm no lover of J.R. Jones, but his response to Rosenbaum's 2004 list was surprising, and humbled ol' Jonathan a bit; this year, Rosenbaum only bitches about movie distribution, an argument which seems practically exhausted by 2005), and his politics are never as enlightening as his long-form writing suggest.

Which brings me back to my original post. Are Hoberman and Rosenbaum qualified to write on cult films? Hoberman, probably. Rosenbaum, doubtful. But I haven't read the book, so there you go.

(And, yes, I have read both their S&S polls, and I do not think that choices untypical of the popular canon are anything to be impressed by. My problem is that the choices seem driven more by a desire to BE alternative to the usual canon than anything else. Rosenbaum practically trumpets his own eccentricity with his comments at the end of his list.)

hoberman fired by voice

no offense to maura or other ilxors who pop up there on occasion but i can't imagine i'll ever have reason to look at the voice again

damn

bummer. been reading army of phantoms and the dream life, and they're fantastic, super entertaining cultural histories.

omg

why did he get fired? b/c he is 'old guard'?

I was always surprised (happy, but surprised) that he somehow dodged the Christgau/Eddy/Hentoff/etc. layoffs.

Yes

why did he get fired? b/c he is 'old guard'?

― gnome rocognise gnome (remy bean), Wednesday, January 4, 2012 7:46 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

prob cuz he was making too much money

:(

http://books.google.de/books?id=yHcIp0sa6MkC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false

"Not exactly trekking to the one-room schoolhouse six miles across the tundra but a schlep nonetheless for the Teenage Me to find the one newsstand in Flushing (and later, Binghamton, New York) that carried the Village Voice."

via http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/the-voice-lays-off-j-hoberman

bcz people like me (but not me) will write Voice reviews for $50 a pop, and bcz most young people only look at Metacritic/RT scores for films, if that.

xxxxp

people like me (but not me) will write Voice reviews for $50 a pop

Umm...

Hoberman's dismissal comes as I'm in the midst of reading the Paul Nelson biography. To indulge in a little gratuitous nostalgia, it always resonates with me when the world I'd constructed for myself back in university--all the music and film critics who had such an influence on me--gets chipped at a little more.

ummm wha?

no offense to maura or other ilxors who pop up there on occasion but i can't imagine i'll ever have reason to look at the voice again

― balls, Wednesday, January 4, 2012 11:32 PM (Yesterday)

titty pics of juggalettes aren't free, something had to give

as Kenny commenters mention, the final insult is the elevation of that dingaling Karina Longworth.

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2012/01/a-j-hoberman-top-ten.html

Par for course

Das Jackass

http://www.indiewire.com/article/post-voice-j-hoberman-lands-gig-at-blounin-artinfo-will-attend-sxsw

Currently enjoying Hoberman's new book, Make My Day, the third installment in the line of The Dream Life and Army of Phantoms. This one covers the years 1975-1988. The first chapter contrasts Nashville with Jaws, with the author delivering the line, "Nashville was supple while Jaws was rigid, but Nashville was superficial while Jaws ran deep."

Later Hoberman rips into Reagan-era Hollywood product, bringing back the horrors and dipshit fraudulence of that decade all too vividly. He regularly refers to the films Reagan personally screened in the White House, so it's a bit like "Reagan at the Movies."