Owen Gleiberman (born 24 February 1959) is an American film critic for Entertainment Weekly, a position he has held since the magazine's launch in 1990. From 1981–89, he worked at the Boston Phoenix.
Besides Entertainment Weekly, his work has been published in Film Comment, and collected in the film criticism anthology Love and Hisses. He also reviews movies for National Public Radio and for NY1, New York City's 24-hour cable news station. A member and former chair of the New York Film Critics Circle. He graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in English.
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Early years
Gleiberman's first foray into journalism came at Ann Arbor Pioneer High School while working as the film critic for "The Optimist," the student newspaper. There, he gained notoriety for his review of "The Apple Dumpling Gang" (1975), in an article entitled "Dumplings of Justice" wherein he praised the eponymous "gang" as a "proto-typical revolutionary People's movement opposing the forces of crypto-fascist capitalism as represented by Don Knotts."
In an earlier issue, he wrote a scathing review of Tom Sawyer, in which he condemned the film as "bourgeois pablum packaged as a xenophobic attack on progressive politics." While earning praise for highlighting the plight of "Injun' Joe", many readers were puzzled by his critique of Jodie Foster's performance when he wrote, "hell, even I look better in a gingham dress – and I can prove it!".[citation needed] A group of his most loyal friends and admirers in high school formed "The Owen Gleiberman Club", and dressed for functions wearing Gleiberman's trademark University of Michigan sweatshirt.
Performance
Gleiberman has acknowledged that he has difficulty dealing with the grading system at EW and that it has "never been [his] favorite thing."[1]
On the film review website Rotten Tomatoes, Gleibermann agrees with the Tomatometer (proportion of critics who label the movie "fresh" or "rotten") 74% of the time.[2]
References
External links
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