Jonathan Rosenbaum facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Jonathan Rosenbaum
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Rosenbaum in 2013
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| Born | February 27, 1943 Florence, Alabama, U.S. |
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| Alma mater | Bard College |
| Period | 1969–present |
Jonathan Rosenbaum (born February 27, 1943) is an American film critic and author. A film critic is someone who watches movies and writes about them. They share their opinions and ideas about films.
From 1987 to 2008, Rosenbaum was the main film critic for The Chicago Reader newspaper. He has written and edited many books about movies. He has also written for important film magazines like Cahiers du cinéma and Film Comment.
A famous French director, Jean-Luc Godard, once said that Jonathan Rosenbaum is a very good film critic. He compared him to other great film writers.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Jonathan Rosenbaum grew up in Florence, Alabama. His grandfather owned several movie theaters there. Jonathan lived with his father, Stanley, who was a professor, and his mother, Mildred. Their home, the Rosenbaum House, was designed by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
He went to The Putney School in Putney, Vermont. One of his classmates was the actor Wallace Shawn. Jonathan finished school there in 1961.
As a teenager, Jonathan became very interested in jazz music. He often talks about jazz in his movie reviews. He later went to Bard College. There, he played piano in a jazz band. The band included future actors Chevy Chase (on drums) and Blythe Danner (singing). Jonathan studied literature at Bard, hoping to become a writer.
His Career in Film
After college, Jonathan moved to New York City. He got a job editing a collection of movie reviews. This was his first step into the world of film criticism.
In 1969, Rosenbaum moved to Paris, France. He worked for a short time with director Jacques Tati. He even appeared as an extra in a movie called Four Nights of a Dreamer. While in Paris, he started writing about movies and books for magazines like The Village Voice, Film Comment, and Sight & Sound.
In 1974, he moved to London, England. He stayed there until 1977. Then, he was offered a teaching job at the University of California, San Diego.
Becoming a Lead Critic
In 1987, Jonathan Rosenbaum became the main film critic for The Chicago Reader. He worked in this role until he retired in 2008.
He has also written many books about movies and how they are reviewed. Some of his books include:
- Placing Movies: The Practice of Film Criticism (1995)
- Moving Places: A Life at the Movies (1980)
- Movies as Politics (1997)
- Essential Cinema (2004)
His most well-known book is Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Limit What Movies We Can See (2002). He also wrote a book about Jim Jarmusch's film Dead Man. This book includes interviews with the director.
Working with Famous Directors
Jonathan Rosenbaum helped with important projects related to famous director Orson Welles. He edited a book called This Is Orson Welles (1992). This book was a collection of interviews and other materials about Welles.
Rosenbaum also helped with the 1998 re-editing of Welles's film Touch of Evil. This new version was based on notes Welles had written in the 1950s. In 2018, he helped finish Welles's movie The Other Side of the Wind, which was released after Welles had passed away.
In 2007, he wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times about the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman.
Other Contributions
Rosenbaum often wrote for the DVDBeaver website. He shared his own lists of favorite films there. He also writes a column called Global Discovery Column for the film journal Cinema Scope. In this column, he reviews international movies released on DVD that are not easy to find. He also writes for the Spanish magazine Caimán Cuadernos De Cine.
From 2010 to 2011, Jonathan Rosenbaum was a visiting professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. He taught film in the art history department.
He also took part in the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll. This poll asks critics to list their favorite movies of all time.
In 2009, Rosenbaum appeared in a documentary called For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism. In the film, he talked about the work of film critic Manny Farber.
His Favorite Films
In 1998, the American Film Institute (AFI) published a list of the 100 greatest American movies. Jonathan Rosenbaum then made his own list. His list included different kinds of films, especially those by independent American directors like John Cassavetes and Jim Jarmusch, who were not on the AFI list. Later, the AFI's second list included five movies from Rosenbaum's choices.
In his 2004 book Essential Cinema, he added a longer list of his 1,000 favorite films from all over the world. More than half of these were American movies. He marked his top 100 favorite films on this list. These included classic movies like Citizen Kane and also harder-to-find films.
Jonathan Rosenbaum has also made "best of the year" movie lists for many years, from 1972 to 1976 and from 1987 to 2022. These lists show what kind of movies he enjoyed most over the years.
See also
In Spanish: Jonathan Rosenbaum para niños
