Nathan Rabin
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Nathan Rabin (Template:IPAc-en) is an American film and music critic.[1] Rabin was the first head writer for The A.V. Club,[2] a position he held until he left the Onion organization in 2013.[3] In 2013, Rabin became a staff writer for The Dissolve, a film website operated by Pitchfork Media.[4] Two of his featured columns at The Dissolve were "Forgotbusters" (looking back at films that were among the top 25 box office earners in their release years but had not had cultural or popular endurance) and "Streaming University" (reviewing documentaries that were available through sites such as Netflix and Hulu).
On April 29, 2015, Rabin announced he had parted ways with The Dissolve.[5] He later returned to The A.V. Club as a freelance writer.[6]
In April 2017, Rabin announced that The AV Club had canceled his My World of Flops column, and that he was establishing his own Patreon-funded website, Nathan Rabin's Happy Place.[7]
Early life and education
Rabin grew up on the north side of Chicago.[8]
Career
He coined the phrase "manic pixie dream girl" as a cinematic archetype in 2007.[9] He was a panelist on the short-lived basic cable show Movie Club with John Ridley on American Movie Classics. In 2007, he began My Year of Flops on The A.V. Club, where he reevaluated films that were shunned by critics, ignored by audiences, or both, at their time of release.[10] As of January 2008, the year was finished, but he continued the project as a bimonthly feature. Other ongoing features Rabin wrote for The A.V. Club include Dispatches From Direct-To-DVD Purgatory, a tongue-in-cheek look at DVD premieres; reviews for TV shows like Louie; Silly Little Show-Biz Book Club,[11] a humorous exploration of trashy books about entertainment, and Ephemereview, which offers critiques of sub-reviewable pop-culture detritus.
Rabin released his memoir in 2009, The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought To You By Pop Culture, (2009) which was published by Scribner.[12] The Washington Post gave the book a negative review, calling it a "...failed project brought to you by pop culture."[13] while The New York Times wrote, "[Rabin] has packed [The Big Rewind] like a cannon, full of caustic wit and bruised feelings" in its more positive review.[14] The book uses novels such as The Great Gatsby, musical recordings such as The Charm of the Highway Strip by The Magnetic Fields and other pop culture items as a springboard to discuss its author's tragi-comic adolescence as a guest of a mental hospital, a foster family whose patience and generosity he jokes "knew only strict, unyielding boundaries" and the Jewish Children's Bureau group home system, as well as his career with The A.V. Club and the short-lived film review show Movie Club With John Ridley on which he appeared.[14] The book ends with a chapter about Rabin's unsuccessful audition to fill in for Roger Ebert as a guest critic on At the Movies. Scribner also published a book version of My Year of Flops (2010).[15]
On April 23, 2013, The A.V. Club announced that Rabin, Tasha Robinson, Genevieve Koski, and Noel Murray would be leaving to start a new web-based project with former staffers Scott Tobias and Keith Phipps.[3] On May 30, 2013, this project was revealed to be The Dissolve.[4] In addition to criticism for The Dissolve, Rabin also wrote the biweekly feature Forgotbusters,[16] a reexamination of now-culturally obscure Hollywood films whose box office grosses were among the top 25 of any film released in their year.
He has also written books on the Insane Clown Posse, Phish,[17] and "Weird Al" Yankovic.[18][19]
Personal life
Rabin is Jewish.[20][21] He is married to Atlanta native Danya Maloon; they have two sons together.[22][23] He lives in Marietta, Georgia with his family.[22]
In a 2009 AV Club article about the 1996 baseball comedy film Ed, Rabin described himself as "a longtime Chicago White Sox super-fan",[24] although in a 2021 blog post he confessed to having lost interest in following sports since his adolescence.[25] In 2024, he announced that he had recently been diagnosed with autism, moderate ADHD[26] and bipolar II disorder.[27]
Books
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References
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- ↑ The Onion's Nathan Rabin Time
- ↑ Articles by Nathan Rabin Template:Webarchive at The AV Club
- ↑ a b An Update from the AV Club Template:Webarchive The AV Club April 26, 2013
- ↑ a b "Introducing The Dissolve, A New Film Site" Template:Webarchive, Pitchfork Media, May 30, 2013
- ↑ Facebook Post Regarding Rabin Leaving The Dissolve. Template:Webarchive, Facebook, April 30, 2015
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- ↑ Movie Critic Nathan Rabin, The A.V. Club & The Dissolve Template:Webarchive True to Me Too
- ↑ Manic Pixie Dream Girls: A Cinematic Scourge? Template:Webarchive All Things Considered, October 9, 2008
- ↑ 'Onion' writer Nathan Rabin rewinds big-time for memoir Template:Webarchive USA Today, July 6, 2009
- ↑ Silly Little Show-Biz Book Club Template:Webarchive at the AV Club
- ↑ The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought To You By Pop Culture Template:Webarchive promotional page at Simon & Schuster
- ↑ The Layers of a Pungent Life Template:Webarchive The Washington Post
- ↑ a b Memories of a Train Wreck Diverted Template:Webarchive The New York Times, July 21, 2009
- ↑ "My Year of Flops" Template:Webarchive promo page at Simon & Schuster
- ↑ Forgotbusters Template:Webarchive at The Dissolve
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- ↑ In a Perhaps Unsurprising Development, It Turns Out That I Am Autistic and have ADHD - Nathan Rabin's Happy Place
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External links
- Nathan Rabin's Happy Place
- Template:Trim/ Template:PAGENAMEBASE at IMDbTemplate:EditAtWikidataScript error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".
- Pages with script errors
- 1976 births
- 21st-century American Jews
- 21st-century American memoirists
- American film critics
- American humorists
- American male journalists
- American male non-fiction writers
- American music critics
- American writers with disabilities
- Jewish American journalists
- Jewish American memoirists
- Jewish American non-fiction writers
- Jewish humorists
- Living people
- The Onion people
- People with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
- People with bipolar disorder
- Writers from Chicago
- Autistic writers
- University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni