Jonathan Rosenbaum

Jonathan Rosenbaum’s website functions as a clearinghouse of sorts for almost everything he has ever written, right on down to his first published critical work for a high school newspaper as a teenager in the 1950s.  So the immediate thing one often misses is his thoughts on current issues — though his reprints usually come with a few paragraphs worth of contemporary reflection.  Of course, Rosenbaum has retired as a full-time critic, so one can read his employment of online resources as a pensioner’s pastime.

As any other self-respecting cinephile should, I hold The Criterion Collection in the highest regard.  I can think of no other institution that has instilled such a widespread introduction to international cinema with such consistent quality and grace.  Quite simply, for the home video generation The Criterion Collection is our Cinematheque Francaise.

Arguably the greatest features of The Criterion Collection (if one discounts the films themselves) are the in-depth essays that accompany each release.  These essays, written by some of the greatest critics on the cinema, constitute a brilliant canon of film history.  The day will surely come when they are all collected in an edited volume but until then we have the website for accessing a majority of these archived pieces.  Therefore the Criterion website is a wonderful resource for those looking into this film history and a place where one can enjoy some of the greatest writing on film that the internet has to offer.

The blog by Girish Shambu has become a wonderful clearinghouse for online film criticism and other cinema-related media.  It is also well-known for the extensive discussions that take place in the comments sections of his postings.  The traffic to this site is excellent and those taking part in the discussions often read like a who’s who of the critical world.  Though it is rare that one will find passionate and detailed dialogue about specific films and filmmakers because of the genteel tone that most of the visitors adhere to (as well as the general nature of the posts).  There is more backslapping and glad-handling than anything, no doubt due to the notoriety of many of the posters and perhaps a general unwillingness to get down and dirty with each other about issues one believes in.

One can find this blog to be more of a guide that opens the door to good content, even if it does not rigorously debate that content.  Oftentimes there are links to rare pieces that have been lingering somewhere in digital space waiting to be examined.  In this sense Girish’s blog functions similar to Film Studies For Free, though a bit less rigidly academic and more “popular” instead.