Movie Wars - by Jonathan Rosenbaum (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"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

"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

"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

"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


"Essential reading for anyone who cares about movies." --Martha P. Nochimson, Film Quarterly


"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

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.