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

by Jonathan Rosenbaum (Author)

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.

Author Biography

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.