Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Conspire to Limit What Films We Can See FROM THE PUBLISHER
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. Along the way, it exposes industry secrets, such as that Miramax often buys distribution rights to movies it then fails to distribute, thus ensuring that its competitors don't get them. And it shows, for the first time, why the corporate ownership of movie theaters defies antitrust laws and precedents stretching back over fifty years." "While the average American can usually find a book or record that has not been endorsed by the mainstream media, when it comes to movies, consumers are powerless against what Rosenbaum calls "the media-industrial complex." Using examples ranging from the New York Times's coverage of the Cannes film festival to the anticommercial practices of Orson Welles, from the American Film Institute to the major studios, and from Small Soldiers to Starship Troopers, 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.
SYNOPSIS
Questioning the assumptions that govern our culture, this book focuses on one medium-the movies. In particular, it examines how movies are packaged, distributed, and promoted, exposing industry secrets such as how Miramax often buys distribution rights to movies it then fails to distribute, presumably to make sure its competitors don't get them. The book shows, for the first time, how the corporate ownership of movie theaters defies antitrust laws and precedents stretching back over 50 years. While the average American can usually find a book or record that has not been endorsed by the mainstream media, when it comes to movies, consumers are powerless against what Rosenbaum calls "the media-industrial complex."
FROM THE CRITICS
Martha P. Nochimson - Film Quarterly
Essential reading for anyone who cares about movies.
Chicago Magazine
...exposes producers who maul directors' work; distributors who hoard gems; and critics who enable big, dumb movies to get even bigger and dumber.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Jonathon Rosenbaum has become our leading writer in the zone where academic film studies overlap reviewing.
National Post
Rosenbaum expands notions of what should constitute our film culture, and does so in a way that's exciting to anyone who cares about movies as an art form.
Washington Post
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...This testy, expertly informed book makes invigorating reading not only for cinema fans bur for anyone left uneasy by our ever more triumphalist culture.Read all 11 "From The Critics" >
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