Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Rosenbaum raves!


It's no secret that Jonathan Rosenbaum is a tough critic to please. Especially when it comes to mainstream Hollywood fare. The Hours? It "reduces Virginia Woolf and her art to a set of feminist stances and a few plot points, without reference to style or form." Grosse Pointe Blank? "An unholy mess that becomes steadily more incoherent--morally, dramatically, and conceptually."

But Rent... that's another story. Here at last is a film worthy of his precious regard. Those melodramatic plasticky pop songs that insult the aesthetic of the mid-80s East Village? They're "nicely realized, and fondly reminiscent of dopey early-70s musicals like Tommy and Jesus Christ Superstar." And how can you go wrong when "the property itself is a knockout, with great tunes and engaging portraits of bohemians"?

Those bohemians were just so exotic, weren't they? Seriously, I can see why he likes it. It was an homage (that means "rip-off") to a highfalutin opera, La Boheme. And it reminds us that AIDS is, like, bad and stuff. And you get to see Idina Menzel's pale white ass. What a hibrow treat!

You just know Rosey was tickled pink when the traveling production came here a few years ago. I can just picture him tapping his foot and doing the white-boy head-bob during "La Vie Boheme."

20 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This entry...so perspicacious! So biting!

So...wrong!

Look at the capsule again.

http://onfilm.chicagoreader.com/movies/briefs/

Do you see what I see?

8:34 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ooops...sorry, cut off the last bit o' the link:
http://onfilm.chicagoreader.com/movies/briefs/29019_RENT.html

8:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Rosenbaum didn't write that review, yo.

9:24 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Y'know, if you're gonna try to bring the crit, it helps to be smarter than the source material. As it is, you come off as a tool, the snark being sub par at best.

This town could use some snide critique of it's journalism. One note, obsessive fault finding note was tiresome back when the reader nearly invented it with BobWatch in the Reader and Neil "Hi Honey I'm Home to Beat On You" Steinberg was the person hiding behind a nickname. Look how well hate turned out for him.

Take a nap, read some TWoP, The Black Table and some old Spy magazines, then try again grandpa grumpypants.

10:25 PM  
Blogger spacecog said...

Boy, get one blithering idiot at the Reader mixed up with another blithering idiot at the Reader and all hell breaks loose in the comments, with jan mothafuckin trenchant gettin all ghetto in the hizzouse with her talk of "bring[in] the crit" and "grandpa grumpypants."

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy those lovable scamps and their colorful songs in RENT. I'd rather stick an AIDS-laced needle in my eye. Well, in YOUR eye would be better, but we can't always get what we want now can we?

1:08 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow. What a lame comeback, Mr. Cog.

You aren't very good at this, are you, old man? You'd think someone who writes so slowly would have something to say.

8:15 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

spacehog, I'm with you 100%. AIDS needles for all the masturbatory utterances of angsty pricks in ironic hooded sweatshirts.

1:17 PM  
Blogger Spiky said...

I don't actually mind being savaged (well, "savaged") over a mistake, but sheesh what a BUMMER that Anonymous and Jen Trenchant and are obviously Reader staffers. Hey guys, does the IP address 65.201.198 mean anything to you?

7:13 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Actually most, if not all, of the comments aren't from the reader ISP, asswipe. Add lying to the exceeding sadness of this blog. So very very sad. Trolling you isn't even fun now.

7:31 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Does anyone actually think the Reader is in anything but classified ads duded up with friends of friends writing about friends or people their friends know about. Come on! The Reader is a fucking joke, a rag, and NO one in Chicago takes it for more than that and NO ONE outside of Chicago knows it exists.

9:18 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You (whomever the writer of this site might be, oh brave one) do seem to focus on trivia. There is so much to criticize the Reader for: flimsy cover narratives; poor sourcing; a fetish for "artists" who seem to talk more about making art than actually making any art; the prime real estate given to bland reports about Wicker Park loft parties and the like; knee-jerk responses to gentrification and city politics; a general ignorance of the city's nonwhite population and the roles they play in city politics and economics; a general lack of shit-stirring journalism, especially with cover stories; a focus more on style and attitude than meaty reporting; etc. etc. etc.

Yet all you seem to do is bash Miner and Rosenbaum (or who you think is Rosenbaum). Come on, man--try some serious media criticism instead of ranting about IP addresses.

By the way, I don't and never have worked at the Reader.

2:55 PM  
Blogger spacecog said...

dude (may I call you dude?), the reader is such a piece of shit it doesn't even deserve a "serious" media critique. or a frivolous one, really. it's just that spiky and I, for some reason, feel compelled to write this stuff. it's like a sickness or something.

spiky and I try to keep our actual exposure to the reader to a minimum. we literally just read it long enough to find something that annoys us enough to write about. I don't think I've read a cover story all the way through since we started the blog.

as for the reader staffer issue, our traffic log shows that a big chunk of our piddling readership comes from people at the reader. we can't tell if they're the ones making comments or not, I guess not in this case, but this particular story seemed to inspire a big burst of visitors from inside the belly of the beast.

4:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

One has to appreciate the fact that, as a Dorkfest, The Feckin' Bleeder is quite remarkable...

10:09 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thad,

You miss the point. The goal is to say The Reader Sucks even when doing the same thing they criticize in the Reader.

Thus a blog based on gleeful attacks on errors and arrogance gets whiny and dismissive when held to the same standards. Note how they haven't bothered to correct this entry or any mistakes they've made.

You see, Thad, this isn't about credibility or media criticism, but whiny bullshit. It may seem like a missed opportunity to you, but any attention is validation for some.

12:55 PM  
Blogger spacecog said...

mr. or ms. anonymous, please point out any errors we've made in any posts but this one and I will be happy to respond to them, though most likely in a whiny manner.

1:39 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I never suspected Mark Twain was writing this blog, but I have to agree with them: There's no reason you'd get so angry about it unless you value your shit-shoveling job at the Reader WAY to much. This is a tiny little blog. Your sacred employer is a huge local tastemaker. Get back to your desks and make Miner fun and Rosenbaum readable.

2:27 PM  
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5:38 PM  
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5:38 PM  
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5:38 PM  
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6:57 AM  

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