“There is, or once was, a movie universe—a quasi-autonomous realm of plotlines and personalities, coincidences and crossreferences, quasars and black holes. Not just stargazers but anyone who frequented the world’s movie houses lived there, at least part of the time...”
A brand-new anthology of J. Hoberman's previously uncollected essays, tributes, reviews, and ruminations from his post-Village Voice career. Hoberman published his first piece in the Voice in February 1973 and his last in January 2012. Covering contributions from a range of publications (beginning with "After My De-Voice"), these are the work of a recovering film critic, post-2011 and post-Voice, without the burden and benefit of a weekly gig or a journalistic peg.
Hoberman considers the Spaghetti Western, "Pop Before Pop: Welles, Sirk, and Hitchcock," the films of the Obama era, the film maudit, the U.S. distribution history of Fassbinder, and Triumph of the Will; as well as reviews of films by Chantal Akerman, Mike Kuchar, Jean Rouch, Steve McQueen, Sergei Loznitsa, and Todd Phillips; tributes to Manny Farber, Jean Luc-Godard, and Elliott Gould; and two pieces—”My Debt to Jonas Mekas” and “Why I cannot review Jonas Mekas's Conversations with Filmmakers”—examining his conflicting feelings about a singular figure in cinema history and the editor who published his first pieces for the Voice.
