You must remember this...

In the role of a lifetime, City Pages film editor Rob Nelson wrote movie reviews that spoke to the wider culture for 14 years before his job was eliminated last month. To quote Bob Cowgill, "he was a volcanic force for the good of film in this city. His writing was always valued; but it was as a film editor who made sure that everything--and I mean everything--of film-related interest in this town was covered that he had his largest impact on deepening audience interest, awareness, and understanding." Part of this legacy is that City Pages now possesses one of the most exhaustive databases of film reviews available online. Rob also programmed the wonderful, now-defunct City Pages Get Real Documentary Film Festival from 2001 (here's 2002, 2003, and 2004) to 2005, and nourished some of the best writing on movies in newsprint.

It's a career worth catching, and here's one fan's highlight reel, beginning with his treasure-trove cover story on that made-in-Minnesota classic, The Heartbreak Kid, which (poetically enough) is being remade in L.A., San Francisco, and Mexico (with Ben Stiller more or less reprising his Meet the Parents variation on Charles Grodin's role): Freeze Frame: Forget Fargo and A Simple Plan: A quarter-century ago, The Heartbreak Kid had Minnesota down cold (12/16/98), Mission: Interminable: Stanley Kubrick's long-delayed Eyes Wide Shut sets out to baffle and bore Tom Cruise fans--and succeeds impeccably (7/21/99), Saving Stanley Kubrick: With A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Steven Spielberg tries to rescue the world's most elusive filmmaker from an unhappy ending (7/4/01), Go Digital or Die: 'One Hour Photo' takes an ugly snapshot of the retail employee (9/4/02), The Long Goodbye: Keillor's 'Prairie' makes a fine pasture for Altman (6/7/06), L.A. Plays Itself: The 'Transformers' premiere party runs out of gas (7/4/07). Visit his author's archive for more.