Comments on: Reel Politique: Links of Interest, Rosenbaum Retires

By: JMW

JMW — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 04:35:12 +0000

Thanks for playing, Sir. Very good of you…

By: Jonathan Rosenbaum

Jonathan Rosenbaum — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 05:53:50 +0000

If what you mean by “the rule” is how most people read or regard me, you might be right. If so, I couldn’t care less, because I never thought of myself as someone who either wrote for most people or who wanted to. I’m not into the numbers game, and I’d rather say a lot to a few people than a little to millions of them. I know plenty of people who don’t regard me as remote or austere, and who find many other examples in my work of humor and self-revelation than the two I cited. That doesn’t mean that you have to agree them, or with me. If you want to regard all these people as exceptions, that’s okay with me. And if you regard yourself as a fan because you like my austerity and remoteness and don’t respond to the rest, that’s also your privilege. For me, austerity and remoteness aren’t very enjoyable or edifying in themselves–but maybe I’m an exception.

By: JMW

JMW — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 03:34:54 +0000

Rosenbaum, sir, might I tempt you with one further question? If one concedes your examples as evidence of humor and self-revelation, is it still possible that such oddities are really the exceptions that prove the rule? The rule being your general austerity and remoteness? I ask as a fan.

By: Jonathan Rosenbaum

Jonathan Rosenbaum — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:25:26 +0000

I don’t want to spin this out indefinitely. But to respond to JMW’s request for examples, here are two from my collection MOVIES AS POLITICS, both of which appeared originally in the Chicago Reader: personal details and confessional passages in “The Significance of Sniggering: Zwigoff’s CRUMB”; humor in “ACE VENTURA Reconsidered”. I hasten to add, though, that subjective reactions still apply. It’s possible that dropping LSD with my youngest brother and then going alone to see BARBARELLA exists for DK Holm “high above the quotidian” and that he considers my finding Luc Moullet belching funnier than Jim Carrey farting an impersonal, intellectual judgment that merely proves my lack of humor.

By: dkholm

dkholm — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 06:36:37 +0000

One doesn’t wish to enter into a pissing match with an esteemed critic who is one of the top 10 international writers on film and who can marshal his trademark sharp intellect and rhetorical skills to bat away pesky Internet flies such as myself. But I think it is indisputable that Mr. Rosenbaum’s reviews are humorless, which isn’t a bad thing. He doesn’t view an 800-word review as a stand up comedy routine, as Anthony Lane does. He proffers no jokes. Yet in a climate in which there is too much bad writing on film, Mr. Rosenbaum’s seriousness is a tonic. I merely assert that “humorlessness” is a part of the Rosenbaum “gestalt,” a facet of his work, something he is known for. One only guesses that Mr. Rosenbaum is “computer-phobic” because computer references, the Internet, and web searches don’t figure in his columns as they do, say, in Roger Ebert’s more casually written prose, and also by the fact that he didn’t avail himself much of the film blog that the Chicago Reader set up on its site. That he shops on line is clear from his Cinema Scope DVD reviews, however, so if in fact he is a mighty processor of digital words, a nuanced web searcher, a podcast-maker, an image-capturer, a movie downloader, and a disc burner, then he is enjoying the best that computers have to offer to the movie buff. Finally, though, I think it is equally indisputable that Mr. Rosenbaum is not confessional or even really directly personal in his writings. But perhaps I am the only person to find his memoir, Moving Places, first published in 1980 at the grand old age of 40 (by my calculations) an entertaining but rather narrowly cast, oddly circumspect book. In any case, I merely assert that in the Reader he maintains an impersonal public persona. Yes, a reader knows when Mr. Rosenbaum has attended a festival or met a director, or that he has enjoyed reading Eric Hobsbawm’s The Age of Extremes, but it’s all on a plane high above the quotidian, far from where more self-obsessed writers dwell. And again, it’s not a sin, it’s simply what his prose feels like to an average reader. One gleans nothing of his private relationships, his aches or pains, office politics, or backstage festival shenanigans as these and other personal experiences might inform or augment his appreciation of the content of the films he reviews and reveres, and he doesn’t even complain about his pet peeves, unless, of course, they now include insignificant bloggers who presume to define him from their cramped burrows.

By: JMW

JMW — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 05:03:20 +0000

Hey, a debate! Rosenbaum, might you provide examples?

By: Jonathan Rosenbaum

Jonathan Rosenbaum — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 00:02:16 +0000

Why does DK Holm pretend to be familiar with my work in the Chicago Reader? It’s clearly a matter of opinion whether or not my reviews are “completely” without humor or whether I “seem” to be computer-phobic, even if I’m puzzled by what might have led to these conclusions. But to say that my reviews lack personal details or “confessional” passages can only mean that he hasn’t read very many of them.