Medicine for Melancholy
A couple of weeks ago Lynn Hirschberg had an article on mumblecore in the style magazine of the Sunday New York Times. It featured a lead photograph of so-called mumblecore personalities, only it didn’t feature Andrew Bujalski, Greta Gerwig, or Joe Swanberg, but several other folks, who, with the exception of Jay Duplass (director of […]
The Box
As much as I admire Richard Kelly’s wildly eccentric indie debut Donnie Darko (2001), I confess that, like most people, his much anticipated second effort Southland Tales (2007) left me cold. When asked by an interviewer in Wired whether his new film The Box (2009), which I saw last weekend, was another Rubrik’s Cube, Kelly […]
In Between Days
As the typewritten title scrolls across the lower right portion of the screen, we hear footsteps crunching snow, which continue over black. Aimie (Jiseon Kim), a Korean-American teenage girl in a fur-lined parka, trudges toward us in closeup, as we see a couple of high-rise buildings in the background. Over an image of this desolate […]
13 Most Beautiful . . . Songs for Andy Warhol”™s Screen Tests
It is tempting to see many if not most of Andy Warhol’s films as portraits, even when they are mixed with narrative elements, such as The Closet, My Hustler, The Chelsea Girls, or Bike Boy. In some ways, the 472 Screen Tests, in their deceptive simplicity, provide the most accessible window into Warhol’s brilliant cinematic […]
Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America
Like Harmony Korine’s Gummo, Tony Stone’s Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America is the type of film that will polarize critics and audiences, even those sympathetic to independent film. Except for a few positive reviews – most notably by Manohla Dargis in the New York Times and a spirited defense of its originality by […]
The Journal of Screenwriting
I recently returned from the Re-thinking the Screenplay Conference (September 9–12) in Helsinki, Finland. Masterfully organized by Kirsi Rinne of the University of Art and Design, the international conference brought together over a hundred scholars from five continents, and provided a unique opportunity to discuss various aspects of the screenplay and screenwriting in general. I […]
Goodbye Solo
The location of Ramin Bahrani’s third feature Goodbye Solo (2009) has shifted from New York City – the setting for his first two films Man Push Cart (2005) and Chop Shop (2008) – to his home town of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. While the film clearly references Abbas Kiarostami’s A Taste of Cherry (1997), it actually […]
River of Grass
Since collaborating with writer Jon Raymond, Kelly Reichardt has hit her stride with two remarkable features, Old Joy (2006) and Wendy and Lucy (2008) – the latter which I consider the top indie film of last year (click here for the top-ten list). Given Reichardt’s new-found prominence, I recently took another look at her earlier […]