J Hoberman

J Hoberman

@jhoberman.bsky.social

Occasional film critic, Columbia adjunct, old VV staff writer 📚 Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds, The Red Atlantis: Communist Culture in the Absence of Communism, 3 books on Hollywood & the Cold War 🔜Everything is Now: NYC 60s Avantgarde

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J Hoberman
@jhoberman.bsky.social

Trump got 77.3 million votes in '24 (and 74.2 million in '20) Harris got 75 million in '24. Biden got 81.2 million in '20. Of course people stayed home!

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J Hoberman
@jhoberman.bsky.social

A prodigal son returns... From Harpur College 's Facebook Page Film critic, journalist & author J. Hoberman will be on campus for a special event 7:30 pm Oct 21, Lecture Hall 6. The Harpur alum was projectionist for experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs who founded the Cinema Dept w Larry Gottheim.

J Hoberman
@jhoberman.bsky.social

Following a screening of short films, which Hoberman first saw screened by Jacobs, Hoberman will talk about his time programming the Harpur Film Society, his experiences with Gottheim, and the lasting and life-changing influence of Jacobs.

J Hoberman
@jhoberman.bsky.social

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026... Footnote to "How Scotland Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It ". (Unlike Sundance AMPAS considers 46 minutes to be "feature length.") So alba gu bràth y'all!

theguardian.comScottish film could steal The Jazz Singer’s crown as ‘world’s first talkie’Scots-written Till the Bells Ring premiered a year before the Hollywood film, which featured spoken words by Al Jolson
J Hoberman
@jhoberman.bsky.social

jewishreviewofbooks.com/contemporary... "Since 10/7/23, the Israeli govt has blocked official inquiry into the massacre & its causes [b/c] the people in power are also the people responsible for the disaster. " Bibi is not just a war criminal but a kakistocratic bungler of Biblical proportions.

jewishreviewofbooks.comTragic Failure - Jewish Review of BooksWith the Israeli Government blocking an official inquiry into October 7, the journalist Amos Harel has taken on the job himself.

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Jeff Boone
@jeffreyboone.bsky.social

Replying to @jhoberman.bsky.social

Re desk murderers: a good time to recommend Eyal Press’s excellent book Dirty Work, & his even more morally acute Beautiful Souls.

J Hoberman
@jhoberman.bsky.social

This shattering journalistic exposé of Israel's war on the people of Gaza is also an essay on AI dehumanization & total surveillance—illustrating Hannah Arendt’s oft misunderstood formulation “the banality of evil.”

J Hoberman
@jhoberman.bsky.social

www.tabletmag.com/sections/art... Renewed attention to this undead creature inspired me to revisit my 2020 piece. I don't write for Tablet anymore but appreciate that they published it as written. (My new anthology Across the Movi-Verse has another Tablet piece on another vampire, Nosferatu).

tabletmag.comMy Roy Cohn, and Ours - Arts & Letters - Tablet MagazineTwo recent documentaries, one of them streaming tonight, try to unpack the McCarthyite Trump-whisperer—progenitor of the postmodern political world we n...
J Hoberman
@jhoberman.bsky.social

www.nybooks.com/online/2026/... Amrum—a German movie about the end of WWII as experienced by a boy on the N Sea island for which the film ia titles—is both exotic & familiar. (Indeed, my own family also has WWII–era ties to Amrum & like the film, their story has elements of a German volksmärchen.)

nybooks.comGhosts of Amrum | J. HobermanThe story of Amrum—a German movie about the last days and immediate aftermath of World War II as experienced by a twelve-year-old boy on the isolated
J Hoberman
@jhoberman.bsky.social

www.villagevoice.com/stars-hype-f... Walk down memory lane: 41+ years after piece appeared in print, the vestigial Voice puts it online (and dig the cover line-up complete w Warhol). Those were the days. Thanks Bob!

villagevoice.comStars & Hype Forever: In 1985, Ronald Reagan’s Reelection Represented the “Triumph of the Irrational” - The Village VoiceJ. Hoberman's 1985 Village Voice essay covered Ronald Reagan's propensity to comfort the rich and punch down on the needy.
J Hoberman
@jhoberman.bsky.social

Copies of my anthology Across the Movi-Verse will be available. It has an essay on the film: "New ideas typically arrive from the margins. Thus, postmodern cinema comes by way of Africa. Working out his particular destiny as an ethnographer in the colonies, Jean Rouch invented the French New Wave."

Film Spotlight@filmspotlight.org

Moi, un noir with J. Hoberman (Critic) 🎞️ Moi, un noir Thursday, October 1 L'Alliance New York In Person: J. Hoberman (Critic)

filmspotlight.orgMoi, un noir with J. Hoberman (Critic)Moi, un noir - L'Alliance New York
J Hoberman
@jhoberman.bsky.social

www.nytimes.com/2026/08/12/m... Rambunctious bad boy of the New Queer Cinema, Gregg Araki burst on the indie scene w his youth-centric sex romps. Now restored, Mysterious Skin (2005) elevated his game to a new level. Tender as it is, this visionary tale of child abuse still packs a wallop.

nytimes.com‘Mysterious Skin’: One of the Great Movies of the Early 2000s (Gift Article)Gregg Araki’s coming-of-age drama, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, tracks the story of two traumas with one source: a baseball coach.
J Hoberman
@jhoberman.bsky.social

www.nytimes.com/2026/08/05/m... Less melodrama than meta-drama, the first movie to address the history of Chinese film — conflating the golden age of Shanghainese cinema (and Shanghai) w that of Hong Kong. Maggie Cheung proves herself a unique silent star — as contemporary as she is anachronistic.

nytimes.com‘Center Stage’: A Star of Shanghai’s 1930s Heyday Is (Re)Born (Gift Article)This 1991 film is at once a biopic devoted to the Chinese silent-film star, Ruan Lingyu, and a self-reflexive documentary starring Maggie Cheung.
J Hoberman
@jhoberman.bsky.social

www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/m... Dostoyevsky’s "White Nights" is a 1st-person case history of unrequited love. Visonti's daringly set-bound version transposes it from summer-solstice mid-19th C Petersburg to wintry mid-20th C Livorno—less adaptation than expression of his own unrealistic longing

nytimes.com‘White Nights’: A Loner’s All-Consuming Crush (Gift Article)Immaculately realized and restored, Luchino Visconti’s adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s short story about a chance encounter on a bridge arrives at Film Forum.
J Hoberman
@jhoberman.bsky.social

I should add that, among his many other accomplishments, Tony turned me on to Tsai's first feature Rebels of the Neon God when it appeared (in the Panorama) at the 1993 Berlin Film Festival. He was truly one of a kind.

J Hoberman
@jhoberman.bsky.social

apnews.com/article/rahm... No fan of Rahm g-d knows but whatever his motives I gotta like this. Can't wait to see him attacked as a self-hating antiSemite or Hamas stooge by the ADL, Bret Stephens, Ben-Kvir, Tablet & whatever Republican neo-crusaders are still out there.

apnews.comRahm Emanuel will assail Netanyahu in Tel Aviv speech as American politics shift against IsraelPotential Democratic presidential candidate Rahm Emanuel plans to deliver a strong message in Tel Aviv about U.S.-Israeli relations being "at a crossroads."
J Hoberman
@jhoberman.bsky.social

www.nytimes.com/athletic/742... The king Midas of shitification strikes again, transforming a team of plucky underdogs into a demoralized band of overentitled losers. (Meanwhile, the perpetually snakebit Mets rallied 2x in the 9th & 10th innings to beat the Atlanta bullies.)

nytimes.comUSMNT’s World Cup ends vs. Belgium with sloppy last-16 showing; Balogun non-factor after controversy (Gift Article)The U.S. bows out after being unable to overcome a sloppy performance. Our writers in Seattle analyze the defeat to the Belgians
J Hoberman
@jhoberman.bsky.social

This published 8 years ago. The KKK helped shut the Golden Door in 1924. Trump's father was arrested at a violent Klan rally in Jamaica, Queens, Memorial Day 1927. I've always figured him supporting the Nazi-loving German American Bund--wish someone could prove it. www.politico.com/magazine/sto...

politico.comStephen Miller Is an Immigration Hypocrite. I Know Because I’m His Uncle.If my nephew’s ideas on immigration had been in force a century ago, our family would have been wiped out.