Charles Burnett: To Sleep With Anger
In thinking about a topic for “The Ambitious Failure Blog-a-thon" on William Speruzzi’s [This Savage Art], I felt somewhat at a loss because I prefer to write about films I really like rather than films that I consider aesthetic failures. As a result, I’ve decided to interpret “ambitious failure" to include a really terrific film that […]
Todd Rohal: The Guatemalan Handshake
In one of their podcasts for Four Eyed Monsters, entitled “Losers," Susan Buice and Arin Crumley list the many reasons they consider themselves to be losers. One is that their film didn’t get into Sundance, but rather Slamdance, thus making them losers because they were unable to come away with a distribution deal. The result […]
Mumblecore and Four Eyed Monsters
In terms of Andrew Bujalski, the subject of my last post, one significant change that has occurred in the meantime has been the fact that his work has become associated with a number of other regionally-based young indie filmmakers, now generally referred to by the term “mumblecore." There’s a diagram that charts the various connections of […]
Mutual Appreciation + Old Joy
Last September, Scott Tobias on the A.V. Club Blog pleaded for audiences to support the theatrical runs of Andrew Bujalski’s Mutual Appreciation (2005) and Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy (2006). He wrote: “If you care at all about American independent films, you’re required to see these movies." Tobias concluded his post: “So vote with your dollars, […]