list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around The Puffy Chair on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/The_Puffy_Chair/257514/default.aspx Title: The Puffy Chair
Year: 2006
Director: Jay Duplass
Plot: Dejected by his failure to achieve fame as a New York City indie-rocker and unable to figure out just when it was that his life took a sharp turn for the worse, a small-town boy who had once harbored big dreams for the future sets out on a cross-country adventure to give his father a birthday the old man will never forget in director Jay Duplass' nostalgic road trip comedy. Josh (Mark Duplass) may not have found the success he was hoping for in the big city, but he's determined not to go back home empty-handed. When an eBay browsing session leads Josh to a vintage Lazy Boy recliner just like the one that used to grace his childhood living room, the loving son opts to purchase the purple relic and deliver it to his father as a surprise birthday gift. Josh's simple plan is suddenly complicated by the appearance of his emotionally demanding girlfriend, Emily (Kathryn Aselton), and his granola-munching brother, Rhett (Rhett Wilkins) -- who both insist on joining him on his homeward-bound mission. While the hapless would-be rocker sets out with them on a mission to deliver a piece of his childhood to his father back home, he might also learn a thing or two about himself and his relationships in the process. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 8
Number of Lists: 8
Number of blog posts: 13
Number of discussion threads: 2
SpoutRating: 3
]]>Sun, 15 Mar 2009 20:01:29 GMTThe Puffy Chair2006Jay DuplassDejected by his failure to achieve fame as a New York City indie-rocker and unable to figure out just when it was that his life took a sharp turn for the worse, a small-town boy who had once harbored big dreams for the future sets out on a cross-country adventure to give his father a birthday the old man will never forget in director Jay Duplass' nostalgic road trip comedy. Josh (Mark Duplass) may not have found the success he was hoping for in the big city, but he's determined not to go back home empty-handed. When an eBay browsing session leads Josh to a vintage Lazy Boy recliner just like the one that used to grace his childhood living room, the loving son opts to purchase the purple relic and deliver it to his father as a surprise birthday gift. Josh's simple plan is suddenly complicated by the appearance of his emotionally demanding girlfriend, Emily (Kathryn Aselton), and his granola-munching brother, Rhett (Rhett Wilkins) -- who both insist on joining him on his homeward-bound mission. While the hapless would-be rocker sets out with them on a mission to deliver a piece of his childhood to his father back home, he might also learn a thing or two about himself and his relationships in the process. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide8Taggedy Taggged (6-10)81323http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/u07053t93pz.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/The_Puffy_Chair/257514/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2009/3/15/41058.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 3/15/2009 4:01:29 PM
Body: As filmmakers, Mark and Jay Duplass make naturalistic, character-based comedies that use laughs almost as a part of a bait-and-switch to distract from how far they’re burrowing under the skin. The acting style that makes this method work, embodied by Mark’s starring performance in The Puffy Chair, has been a natural fit for films with similar methods, if different aims; as an actor, it makes sense that Duplass would pop up in lo-fi, highly improvised films like Hannah Takes the Stairs and Humpday. Craig Johnson’s True Adolescents is an example of how that type of closely-observed, behavioral comedy can be wrangled into a comparatively conventional, crowd-pleasing indie film of higher-gloss variety. The result may not be mind-blowingly insightful or particularly creatively inspired, but it’s faced-paced and fun, and it’ll definitely play to the Alamo Drafthouse’s queso and beer crowd — and, if marketed right, to the wider world. Sam, Duplass’ proudly smoking, designer headphone-sporting 34 year-old hipster, plays a show with his band Effort (get it?) and shortly after is rendered homeless when dumped by his exotically hot girlfriend. With nowhere to go and nothing in the bank, Sam calls on his Aunt Sharon (Melissa Leo), a post-hippie single mom struggling connect with her 14 year-old son Oliver. When Oliver’s dad fails to show up for a planned weekend in the woods at the last minute, as a show of gratitude to Sharon, Sam and ends up taking Oliver and his best friend Jake on a camping trip. Prickly male bonding, misunderstandings, and eventual mutual recognition ensues. Duplass is essentially doing a broader version of a character we’ve seen him play before, the former (Humpday) or current (Hannah, Puffy) slacker fighting off some form of adult responsibility as hard as he possibly can without actually having to do much of anything. He’s really good at playing that guy, but he’s getting too old to play that guy, and that’s part of True Adolescents’ foundational joke. The actor has visibly aged since Puffy, and on some level it might be interesting to see him play another incarnation of commitment-phobe slack-ass in another four years. Unlike Paul Rudd, whose baby face belies the fact that he’ll turn 40 this year, if Duplass continues to do the same thing in progressively larger-scale, more accessible films, the performance will actually feel different, more tragic. I digress into consideration A Consideration of the Career of One Mark Duplass, because True Adolescents doesn’t give one much else to say. It unabashedly prioritizes the natural punchlines of its premise over anything deeper or weirder, it loses considerable steam about half way through when a plot contrivance mandates a search through the woods, and the film’s major crisis is resolved as neatly as you surely expected it would be (another crisis is, disappointingly, not resolved at all — the film teases at a more literal definition of bromance than usually seen, but then lets that thread float away). But it’s hard to fault it for not hitting heights that it doesn’t seem to be aiming for. I’m writing about it not because it’s a such a success or such a failure creatively, but because I think people will genuinely enjoy it. In recent years, there’s been a vast gulf at SXSW between the tiny films critics and bloggers love and champion throughout the year (as in, virtually every other film Mark Duplass has been involved with) and the big movies that studios introduce to the audience in Austin which then become certifiable hits (as in, Knocked Up, or last year’s SXSW opening night film and eventual sleeper blockbuster 21). In scale and intention, True Adolescents feels squarely in the middle of those poles. I’m interested to see what its future brings, if it ends up drifting to one camp or another, or if it actually manages to bring the disparate fates together. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Sun, 15 Mar 2009 20:01:29 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog3/15/2009 4:01:29 PMAs filmmakers, Mark and Jay Duplass make naturalistic, character-based comedies that use laughs almost as a part of a bait-and-switch to distract from how far they’re burrowing under the skin. The acting style that makes this method work, embodied by Mark’s starring performance in The Puffy Chair, has been a natural fit for films with similar methods, if different aims; as an actor, it makes sense that Duplass would pop up in lo-fi, highly improvised films like Hannah Takes the Stairs and Humpday. Craig Johnson’s True Adolescents is an example of how that type of closely-observed, behavioral comedy can be wrangled into a comparatively conventional, crowd-pleasing indie film of higher-gloss variety. The result may not be mind-blowingly insightful or particularly creatively inspired, but it’s faced-paced and fun, and it’ll definitely play to the Alamo Drafthouse’s queso and beer crowd — and, if marketed right, to the wider world. Sam, Duplass’ proudly smoking, designer headphone-sporting 34 year-old hipster, plays a show with his band Effort (get it?) and shortly after is rendered homeless when dumped by his exotically hot girlfriend. With nowhere to go and nothing in the bank, Sam calls on his Aunt Sharon (Melissa Leo), a post-hippie single mom struggling connect with her 14 year-old son Oliver. When Oliver’s dad fails to show up for a planned weekend in the woods at the last minute, as a show of gratitude to Sharon, Sam and ends up taking Oliver and his best friend Jake on a camping trip. Prickly male bonding, misunderstandings, and eventual mutual recognition ensues. Duplass is essentially doing a broader version of a character we’ve seen him play before, the former (Humpday) or current (Hannah, Puffy) slacker fighting off some form of adult responsibility as hard as he possibly can without actually having to do much of anything. He’s really good at playing that guy, but he’s getting too old to play that guy, and that’s part of True Adolescents’ foundational joke. The actor has visibly aged since Puffy, and on some level it might be interesting to see him play another incarnation of commitment-phobe slack-ass in another four years. Unlike Paul Rudd, whose baby face belies the fact that he’ll turn 40 this year, if Duplass continues to do the same thing in progressively larger-scale, more accessible films, the performance will actually feel different, more tragic. I digress into consideration A Consideration of the Career of One Mark Duplass, because True Adolescents doesn’t give one much else to say. It unabashedly prioritizes the natural punchlines of its premise over anything deeper or weirder, it loses considerable steam about half way through when a plot contrivance mandates a search through the woods, and the film’s major crisis is resolved as neatly as you surely expected it would be (another crisis is, disappointingly, not resolved at all — the film teases at a more literal definition of bromance than usually seen, but then lets that thread float away). But it’s hard to fault it for not hitting heights that it doesn’t seem to be aiming for. I’m writing about it not because it’s a such a success or such a failure creatively, but because I think people will genuinely enjoy it. In recent years, there’s been a vast gulf at SXSW between the tiny films critics and bloggers love and champion throughout the year (as in, virtually every other film Mark Duplass has been involved with) and the big movies that studios introduce to the audience in Austin which then become certifiable hits (as in, Knocked Up, or last year’s SXSW opening night film and eventual sleeper blockbuster 21). In scale and intention, True Adolescents feels squarely in the middle of those poles. I’m interested to see what its future brings, if it ends up drifting to one camp or another, or if it actually manages to bring the disparate fates together. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2009/3/15/41057.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 3/15/2009 4:01:16 PM
Body: As filmmakers, Mark and Jay Duplass make naturalistic, character-based comedies that use laughs almost as a part of a bait-and-switch to distract from how far they’re burrowing under the skin. The acting style that makes this method work, embodied by Mark’s starring performance in The Puffy Chair, has been a natural fit for films with similar methods, if different aims; as an actor, it makes sense that Duplass would pop up in lo-fi, highly improvised films like Hannah Takes the Stairs and Humpday. Craig Johnson’s True Adolescents is an example of how that type of closely-observed, behavioral comedy can be wrangled into a comparatively conventional, crowd-pleasing indie film of higher-gloss variety. The result may not be mind-blowingly insightful or particularly creatively inspired, but it’s faced-paced and fun, and it’ll definitely play to the Alamo Drafthouse’s queso and beer crowd — and, if marketed right, to the wider world. Sam, Duplass’ proudly smoking, designer headphone-sporting 34 year-old hipster, plays a show with his band Effort (get it?) and shortly after is rendered homeless when dumped by his exotically hot girlfriend. With nowhere to go and nothing in the bank, Sam calls on his Aunt Sharon (Melissa Leo), a post-hippie single mom struggling connect with her 14 year-old son Oliver. When Oliver’s dad fails to show up for a planned weekend in the woods at the last minute, as a show of gratitude to Sharon, Sam and ends up taking Oliver and his best friend Jake on a camping trip. Prickly male bonding, misunderstandings, and eventual mutual recognition ensues. Duplass is essentially doing a broader version of a character we’ve seen him play before, the former (Humpday) or current (Hannah, Puffy) slacker fighting off some form of adult responsibility as hard as he possibly can without actually having to do much of anything. He’s really good at playing that guy, but he’s getting too old to play that guy, and that’s part of True Adolescents’ foundational joke. The actor has visibly aged since Puffy, and on some level it might be interesting to see him play another incarnation of commitment-phobe slack-ass in another four years. Unlike Paul Rudd, whose baby face belies the fact that he’ll turn 40 this year, if Duplass continues to do the same thing in progressively larger-scale, more accessible films, the performance will actually feel different, more tragic. I digress into consideration A Consideration of the Career of One Mark Duplass, because True Adolescents doesn’t give one much else to say. It unabashedly prioritizes the natural punchlines of its premise over anything deeper or weirder, it loses considerable steam about half way through when a plot contrivance mandates a search through the woods, and the film’s major crisis is resolved as neatly as you surely expected it would be (another crisis is, disappointingly, not resolved at all — the film teases at a more literal definition of bromance than usually seen, but then lets that thread float away). But it’s hard to fault it for not hitting heights that it doesn’t seem to be aiming for. I’m writing about it not because it’s a such a success or such a failure creatively, but because I think people will genuinely enjoy it. In recent years, there’s been a vast gulf at SXSW between the tiny films critics and bloggers love and champion throughout the year (as in, virtually every other film Mark Duplass has been involved with) and the big movies that studios introduce to the audience in Austin which then become certifiable hits (as in, Knocked Up, or last year’s SXSW opening night film and eventual sleeper blockbuster 21). In scale and intention, True Adolescents feels squarely in the middle of those poles. I’m interested to see what its future brings, if it ends up drifting to one camp or another, or if it actually manages to bring the disparate fates together. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Sun, 15 Mar 2009 20:01:16 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com3/15/2009 4:01:16 PMAs filmmakers, Mark and Jay Duplass make naturalistic, character-based comedies that use laughs almost as a part of a bait-and-switch to distract from how far they’re burrowing under the skin. The acting style that makes this method work, embodied by Mark’s starring performance in The Puffy Chair, has been a natural fit for films with similar methods, if different aims; as an actor, it makes sense that Duplass would pop up in lo-fi, highly improvised films like Hannah Takes the Stairs and Humpday. Craig Johnson’s True Adolescents is an example of how that type of closely-observed, behavioral comedy can be wrangled into a comparatively conventional, crowd-pleasing indie film of higher-gloss variety. The result may not be mind-blowingly insightful or particularly creatively inspired, but it’s faced-paced and fun, and it’ll definitely play to the Alamo Drafthouse’s queso and beer crowd — and, if marketed right, to the wider world. Sam, Duplass’ proudly smoking, designer headphone-sporting 34 year-old hipster, plays a show with his band Effort (get it?) and shortly after is rendered homeless when dumped by his exotically hot girlfriend. With nowhere to go and nothing in the bank, Sam calls on his Aunt Sharon (Melissa Leo), a post-hippie single mom struggling connect with her 14 year-old son Oliver. When Oliver’s dad fails to show up for a planned weekend in the woods at the last minute, as a show of gratitude to Sharon, Sam and ends up taking Oliver and his best friend Jake on a camping trip. Prickly male bonding, misunderstandings, and eventual mutual recognition ensues. Duplass is essentially doing a broader version of a character we’ve seen him play before, the former (Humpday) or current (Hannah, Puffy) slacker fighting off some form of adult responsibility as hard as he possibly can without actually having to do much of anything. He’s really good at playing that guy, but he’s getting too old to play that guy, and that’s part of True Adolescents’ foundational joke. The actor has visibly aged since Puffy, and on some level it might be interesting to see him play another incarnation of commitment-phobe slack-ass in another four years. Unlike Paul Rudd, whose baby face belies the fact that he’ll turn 40 this year, if Duplass continues to do the same thing in progressively larger-scale, more accessible films, the performance will actually feel different, more tragic. I digress into consideration A Consideration of the Career of One Mark Duplass, because True Adolescents doesn’t give one much else to say. It unabashedly prioritizes the natural punchlines of its premise over anything deeper or weirder, it loses considerable steam about half way through when a plot contrivance mandates a search through the woods, and the film’s major crisis is resolved as neatly as you surely expected it would be (another crisis is, disappointingly, not resolved at all — the film teases at a more literal definition of bromance than usually seen, but then lets that thread float away). But it’s hard to fault it for not hitting heights that it doesn’t seem to be aiming for. I’m writing about it not because it’s a such a success or such a failure creatively, but because I think people will genuinely enjoy it. In recent years, there’s been a vast gulf at SXSW between the tiny films critics and bloggers love and champion throughout the year (as in, virtually every other film Mark Duplass has been involved with) and the big movies that studios introduce to the audience in Austin which then become certifiable hits (as in, Knocked Up, or last year’s SXSW opening night film and eventual sleeper blockbuster 21). In scale and intention, True Adolescents feels squarely in the middle of those poles. I’m interested to see what its future brings, if it ends up drifting to one camp or another, or if it actually manages to bring the disparate fates together. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/joem18b/archive/2008/11/19/37428.aspx Post By: joem18b
Post To: joem18b Blog
Post Date: 11/19/2008 1:54:00 AM
Body: First paragraph of a review that I posted last year:"If I'm in the mood for a Western, I want horses. If I'm in the mood for explosions, I go to a Jerry Bruckheimer or Michael Bay movie. In either case, I don't want, say, Max Von Sydow playing chess with Death in some black-and-white hovel on the rocky shores of Sturnnveggloven. In the same way, if I'm in the mood to watch echo-boomer twenty-somethings filming their friends hanging out with each other in small apartments and on the urban stoop and in the homes and basements of their parents and grandparents, none of whom will ever appear onscreen, then for those of you who haven't seen one such film before, this would be mumblecore."My assigned movie, "Funny Ha Ha," would be perhaps the first film in the mumblecore genre. Did I read something somewhere about how frequently, for some mysterious reason, the first in a genre is also the best? Homer, Milton, and Cervantes were mentioned. Could this be true of FHH? Is it the purest, as well as the first, mumblecore expression of newly-adult American modern life on the hoof, before the mumblecore melodrama of Mutual Appreciation or the variations on a theme in "LOL" or the psychological depth of The Puffy Chair? A question to keep in mind as I watch.Haven't heard much from the mumblecore community lately. What's the buzz? What's the buzz around saying what's the buzz? Stephen Holden called Baghead a mumblecore movie - comedy/horror mumblecore? Are movies like In Search of a Midnight Kiss moving mumblecore into some new merged genre? Was Old Joy really mumblecore, as it's often listed; some genre morphing might have already taken place in that one. Andrew Bujalski, who wrote, directed, and starred in FHH, hasn't made a feature film in years; he's done some acting but not made any movies. Kate Dollenmayer, who plays Marnie, the lead in FHH, appeared in Bujalski's next film and then disappeared behind the camera. There's an album with her name on it; otherwise, she's light on the google.FHH caught me in one of my watching-the-last-half-of-the-movie-first phases. I've recently finished Rules of the Game and War, Inc. that way. Watching those two films backwards helped them, in my estimation. I'm guessing in advance that watching "Funny Ha Ha," starting at the 45-minute mark, will not harm my enjoyment of the film and may help it. But we'll see.Fooey! Now I've slipped up and taken a peek at the first few paragraphs of A.O. Scott's FHH review in the NYT, wherein he tells us that the film is about a young woman's fruitless search for a little love and meaning in her life. Why did I read that? So now why should I bother dropping into the middle of the movie, already knowing that? The adventure and mystery are ruined. Feh. But I'll do it anyway. So. There Marnie is, passed out in a car. Now she stays with a girlfriend and her girlfriend goes on a job interview. Oops, Marnie is the girlfriend, not the drunk in the car. Confusion. Good. That's how I like it to be. No harm done reading a little A.O. Scott. Meanwhile, the theme of the movie is made clear in minutes, middle start or not, once I've got Marnie in my sights. Perhaps my initial excitement was a little attenuated, but now I'm involved, so onward!Marnie is wearing a T-shirt from a Newton grammar school. Newton is an upscale community in the Boston suburbs. Always made me think of fig newtons, not Isaac. I seem to remember a mall there, back in the 60s, out on Commonwealth Avenue. Bujalski was born in Boston. A good place to locate a movie about the just-graduated and I speak as one who swam in that social sea after college for a couple of years. Youth, out of school at last. FHH is the pure unvarnished article. The essence of mumblecore. Absolute minimum script, or so it appears onscreen. The meta experience identical to the dramatic experience; that is, there are two layers working here, carrying the same message: (a) level one, the young woman moving along through her first adult life structure while (b) level two, the actors live their lives for us by acting onscreen, so that, for this viewer at least, the element in FHH most profoundly moving is the sight of these twentysomethings struggling with their craft, new adult members of society, now with the responsibility of paying rent and negotiating car insurance (no small task in Massachusetts!), with the need to discover meaning in the challenges that they face and in their responses to those challenges. Not the characters, you understand, but the actors themselves. A reviewer comments "The semi-improvised performances seem so natural that it is tempting to confuse the actors with their characters," but the point is that these performances highlight the actors not as the characters they portray but as individuals working - that is, acting. Or am I just being fooled into thinking that I'm seeing the actors, not the characters, because of Bujalski's style? But no. I know nothing about the actors; perhaps they have something in common with their characters, perhaps not. There is a signature cadence in untrained improvisation, with its small pauses not heard in everyday conversation, neither conversation between those who know each other nor that between strangers, tiny pauses born of the actor's interior monolog, pauses which replace the verbal overlaps and gaps found in everyday talk. So that as we watch, the actors think about their lines, or the direction just provided offscreen, or the act of acting, anything but the less conscious social drivers propelling the rest of us day-to-day in casual conversation. Each actor steps into the frame with an ineffable sense of innocence, usually with an embarrassed grin, and speaks, and we understand that here onscreen are living reminders of already-came-of-age, struggling with dialog as an instantiated metaphor for the whole all-of-it struggle involved in becoming an adult. I find this evocative in the extreme, a spiritual supermagnet pulling me back to that same time in my own life, with all the memories, nostalgia, speculations, and regrets attendant to it - a time in my own life when I'm more than ripe for that to happen. Could I, would I, do better a second time around? That question forms the emotional core of the movie for my demographic; the same thing happens when we watch our own children in their twenties. Where else can you get that in cinema? Not in The Incredible Hulk, that's for sure.The Boojer, by the way, saves the juiciest scenes in the movie for himself - an excruciating dinner and a later sort-of-extended-date with Marni. Cultural extra credit: compare and contrast the boy/girl dinners in FHH and I Think I Love My Wife.At the end of the second half, I return to reviewland and find:A.O. Scott: "What gives this film its quiet pathos is not so much the relative bleakness of Marnie's circumstances but the modesty of her expectations. At one point, she makes a to-do list, and its lack of ambition - spend more time outdoors, make friends with Jackie, learn to play chess - is both funny and sad."Carina Chocano: "Mainly, Marnie is staying afloat and trying to connect with others who are equally lost."Seems like I've seen a lot of this kind of hangdog vibe around the FHH reviews - negatives about mood and lifestyle - and I am not down with that (although I otherwise agree with the NYT and LA Times FHH review content). Perhaps having reached the top of the mountain makes it hard for Scott and Chocano to see those younger who are still way back down in the foothills. Marnie and her friends in FHH are newly-minted adults living life in that broad, spacious, undefined socioeconomicsphere found in first-world countries, a landscape where middle-class children find themselves free to roam, after emerging from college, if they happen to be situated in the middle of the startingout spectrum: neither at one end on the turf of the cinematically-ever-popular male slackers so often seen onscreen, nor the other end on that of the striving medical-school, law-school, and computer-geek proto-professionals; that is, Marnie and her friends are living the unfocused life that many of us lived in our twenties. I speak as one who stumbled off the college campus for the last time to find myself, at the age of 23, living alone in Boston, working at a job I wasn't interested in, and looking for love after refusing to commit to marriage and being dropped by my intended, who switched to her Plan B awfully quickly, it seemed to me. The quiet pathos for my demographic didn't happen then, it's happening to us now, in our dotage, on the viewer's side of the screen. Where is the pathos in Marnie's freshness and energy and in the potential of youth, for Marnie and her friends with an open and unknowable and limitless future stretching ahead of them, or in the knowledge that Kate Dollenmayer herself has moved on into that future, or in Bujalski's vision? Marnie's to-do list in no way lacks ambition; is in no way funny or sad. The act of making that list metaphorizes the ambition of the young; the contents of the list highlight the innocence of youth; it's a list drawn up by someone with all the time in the world and, interestingly, it is a list quite similar to such a one as made up by someone at the other end of life, without much time remaining.So I asked my daughter about this quiet-pathos thing, her being 23 and a recent graduate and living in Boston, all the same as Marnie; her reply: "As far as waitressing goes, I feel embarrassed about it at times, but I've actually made some valuable connections and now have places to stay and help finding employment if I want to go to South Carolina, Maui, Australia, or Columbia (have business cards/notes/emails from all of these people). Plus I make ok money, work with nice people, take home free food (ok, thats not completely kosher but its not like I get a salary or even hourly pay that amounts to anything after taxes). Plus, Im learning to speak Haitian Creole while simultaneously turning enemies into friends (the cooks didnt like me at first bc they assumed I was racist and told me so, but when I asked to learn their language they are suddenly happy to see me each day). So from my lowly job Im gaining: communication skills, agility training, extreme multi-tasking experience, networking opportunities, and employee benefits (that's the free food). Sounds almost ambitious when phrased correctly. This isnt to say I dont doubt what Im doing because I do, every day, multiple times a day. I get asked time and again by my bosses, co-workers and customers "why are you here if you have a degree from an Ivy League school??" One person even went so far as to say I was being selfish because letting my parents spend all that money to send me to a good school only to "disregard" my qualifications by working in a chain restaurant was just like throwing all that tuition money in the trash. Obviously obtaining "street smarts" and trying to experience different ways of life before choosing the "purpose-driven" one is something only misfits and failures do... So what am I trying to say here? Maybe im just trying to rationalize my own current existence when in reality it is just as ambitionless and lost as Marnie's. But maybe if the reviewers got off their NY Times and La Times high horses and really thought about what it means to EXPERIENCE and LIVE life, they might see things a wee bit differently. Or maybe not. Am I giggly all the time? as my friend Lynnea would say: "HELLS no!" But I dont think Ill look back on this period of my life and see it as a time of just "staying afloat" (my high school years on the other hand...)."One more take on the pathos meme, quickly, before getting on with the movie: Marnie celebrates her birthday quietly. Proactive note to lugubrious reviewers: this also is not pathos. What the heck did I do on my birthdays back in Boston? Who knows? I do remember being in a laundromat at North Station on Christmas Eve one year. It was snowing. Neither the Bruins nor the Celtics were in town, so The Garden was deserted except for me and an old woman. I went back to my room and drank. I still remember that, so I guess it means something to me, but I didn't feel pathetic at the time. I felt lonely but pretty good.Ginormous. I've had that word in my head. I'm thinking that if I write it down here, maybe it will go away.And so on to the first half of FHH.Oh my God. Bujalski saddles Marnie with an unrequited-love jones, up front. Booge, how could you? What were you thinking? This is something a novice twenty-something filmmaker would do. Oh, right. But this is why watching War, Inc. backwards helped the movie so much; the process cut out loads of unnecessary plot points till it was too late to matter. In the same way, I was able to watch the downslope of FHH without these moulting feathers of love annoying me. Hmm. Now Marnie liplocks some dude at the twenty-eight minute mark. I would never have predicted that. Oh, no, and then she osculates again three minutes later with her married-dude friend. I'm so glad I'm coming to this at the end and not at the beginning. Why? Because in the second half she's staring into the future without seeing beyond the walls of her room, locked in her head while her anger percolates unfelt somewhere down there lower in her body - after the drinking and smooching fail her - but I understood that, in the second half of the movie, without the presumptive romance-o-motivation of the first.No. I'm overreacting. Belay that last paragraph. I've been Hollywoodpavlovianized. This is not Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in the last minute of Sleepless in Seattle or You've Got Mail. This is random lowkey young adult semijoyless evolutionary smootching, pebbles in a pond that cause no ripples. Marnie pretends that it didn't happen, isn't happening, and I'll do the same. Romance is a big deal for these kids, perhaps the biggest deal. My twenties were mostly a history of bad dates. Easy to put off career issues to the next decade while getting the living part right. So Booge perforce makes use of that, but not so much that we can't shrug when the lips meet, and then move on. But still, this series of fraught encounters with men, I don't know; quit beating the drum, Booge. This does remind me, though, that I watched the original Forsythe Saga backward. As with Marnie and Alex in the second half of FHH, something heavy had obviously gone on between Irene and Soames, and Fleur's life was constantly perturbed by it, but it seemed more romantic to me to not know what that something was, not to know what had happened - seemed more romantic than watching the first half and seeing whatever it was that happened actually happen. Thesis: nostalgia coupled with imagination is always stronger than dramatic invention, probably because lived experience, including the actual act of imagination, is more visceral than skoptophilia and its milder brethren.New-Age side note: Coincidence #1: Earlier in this screed I wrote a sentence using the word "evolutionary" and then I started FHH up again and watched the last ten minutes of the movie, which I hadn't seen yet (minutes 35 to 45) and Marnie says to Alex or Alex says to Marnie, "You're the most evolved person I know." Coincidence #2: Later that day, I went to Blockbuster to return Get Smart (I'm rating it "j" on a scale of 1 to q) and while there I picked up The Last Request, which somebody somewhere liked a little bit, and while I was checking out, the clerk asked me how I liked Get Smart and I said, Anne Hathaway is no Barbara Feldon, and when I got home and started The Last Request, there Barbara was, in a starring role. The odds of plucking up a Barbara Feldon movie at random? Antiginormous. Coincidence #3: Marnie's shirt has the number 18 on its back. I'm 18b. My daughter, I learned THE SAME DAY, is living in apartment #18 in her building on Concord St. Consult your Jung! These coincidental whorls in the universal fabric happened ON THE SAME DAY as Obama's election and mean that FHH is connected to the core zeitgeist of the planet. You read it here first.Propositions: (1) The first half of a movie is usually better than the second half when the movie is watched in normal order. (2) Watching the second half of a movie first often improves the movie. Sometimes, watching the second half is sufficient in itself. (3) Thus, perhaps whichever half you watch first is the best.I had to ask Wilson, who assigned this movie to me, what the last two spoken lines of the last scene were. They seemed crucial in defining the mood of the movie, but mumblecore being named mumblecore for a reason, I couldn't make out what Alex and Marnie said to each other. Fortunately, Wilson could. And those two lines bear out my contention, or so I think, that Bujalski is a deeply optimistic guy and FHH is, in the end, a celebration, not a paean. In that final scene, Marnie shows some anger, a desire to move out into the world, and a rejection of the feckless Alex. Good for her and good for a society and economy (knock on wood) where youth is able to rattle around a little. I watched a mumblecore movie made by Joe Swanberg a while back, in which the protagonists grow stronger in the face of Swanberg's efforts to render them helpless; Bujalski throws down some marbles in Marnie's path, but his affection for her never lets her fall hard enough to break anything.This film that launched a genre reminds us that being young and being old are two entirely different things. (Bujalski turned 30 this year.)
]]>Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:54:00 GMTjoem18bjoem18b Blog11/19/2008 1:54:00 AMFirst paragraph of a review that I posted last year:"If I'm in the mood for a Western, I want horses. If I'm in the mood for explosions, I go to a Jerry Bruckheimer or Michael Bay movie. In either case, I don't want, say, Max Von Sydow playing chess with Death in some black-and-white hovel on the rocky shores of Sturnnveggloven. In the same way, if I'm in the mood to watch echo-boomer twenty-somethings filming their friends hanging out with each other in small apartments and on the urban stoop and in the homes and basements of their parents and grandparents, none of whom will ever appear onscreen, then for those of you who haven't seen one such film before, this would be mumblecore."My assigned movie, "Funny Ha Ha," would be perhaps the first film in the mumblecore genre. Did I read something somewhere about how frequently, for some mysterious reason, the first in a genre is also the best? Homer, Milton, and Cervantes were mentioned. Could this be true of FHH? Is it the purest, as well as the first, mumblecore expression of newly-adult American modern life on the hoof, before the mumblecore melodrama of Mutual Appreciation or the variations on a theme in "LOL" or the psychological depth of The Puffy Chair? A question to keep in mind as I watch.Haven't heard much from the mumblecore community lately. What's the buzz? What's the buzz around saying what's the buzz? Stephen Holden called Baghead a mumblecore movie - comedy/horror mumblecore? Are movies like In Search of a Midnight Kiss moving mumblecore into some new merged genre? Was Old Joy really mumblecore, as it's often listed; some genre morphing might have already taken place in that one. Andrew Bujalski, who wrote, directed, and starred in FHH, hasn't made a feature film in years; he's done some acting but not made any movies. Kate Dollenmayer, who plays Marnie, the lead in FHH, appeared in Bujalski's next film and then disappeared behind the camera. There's an album with her name on it; otherwise, she's light on the google.FHH caught me in one of my watching-the-last-half-of-the-movie-first phases. I've recently finished Rules of the Game and War, Inc. that way. Watching those two films backwards helped them, in my estimation. I'm guessing in advance that watching "Funny Ha Ha," starting at the 45-minute mark, will not harm my enjoyment of the film and may help it. But we'll see.Fooey! Now I've slipped up and taken a peek at the first few paragraphs of A.O. Scott's FHH review in the NYT, wherein he tells us that the film is about a young woman's fruitless search for a little love and meaning in her life. Why did I read that? So now why should I bother dropping into the middle of the movie, already knowing that? The adventure and mystery are ruined. Feh. But I'll do it anyway. So. There Marnie is, passed out in a car. Now she stays with a girlfriend and her girlfriend goes on a job interview. Oops, Marnie is the girlfriend, not the drunk in the car. Confusion. Good. That's how I like it to be. No harm done reading a little A.O. Scott. Meanwhile, the theme of the movie is made clear in minutes, middle start or not, once I've got Marnie in my sights. Perhaps my initial excitement was a little attenuated, but now I'm involved, so onward!Marnie is wearing a T-shirt from a Newton grammar school. Newton is an upscale community in the Boston suburbs. Always made me think of fig newtons, not Isaac. I seem to remember a mall there, back in the 60s, out on Commonwealth Avenue. Bujalski was born in Boston. A good place to locate a movie about the just-graduated and I speak as one who swam in that social sea after college for a couple of years. Youth, out of school at last. FHH is the pure unvarnished article. The essence of mumblecore. Absolute minimum script, or so it appears onscreen. The meta experience identical to the dramatic experience; that is, there are two layers working here, carrying the same message: (a) level one, the young woman moving along through her first adult life structure while (b) level two, the actors live their lives for us by acting onscreen, so that, for this viewer at least, the element in FHH most profoundly moving is the sight of these twentysomethings struggling with their craft, new adult members of society, now with the responsibility of paying rent and negotiating car insurance (no small task in Massachusetts!), with the need to discover meaning in the challenges that they face and in their responses to those challenges. Not the characters, you understand, but the actors themselves. A reviewer comments "The semi-improvised performances seem so natural that it is tempting to confuse the actors with their characters," but the point is that these performances highlight the actors not as the characters they portray but as individuals working - that is, acting. Or am I just being fooled into thinking that I'm seeing the actors, not the characters, because of Bujalski's style? But no. I know nothing about the actors; perhaps they have something in common with their characters, perhaps not. There is a signature cadence in untrained improvisation, with its small pauses not heard in everyday conversation, neither conversation between those who know each other nor that between strangers, tiny pauses born of the actor's interior monolog, pauses which replace the verbal overlaps and gaps found in everyday talk. So that as we watch, the actors think about their lines, or the direction just provided offscreen, or the act of acting, anything but the less conscious social drivers propelling the rest of us day-to-day in casual conversation. Each actor steps into the frame with an ineffable sense of innocence, usually with an embarrassed grin, and speaks, and we understand that here onscreen are living reminders of already-came-of-age, struggling with dialog as an instantiated metaphor for the whole all-of-it struggle involved in becoming an adult. I find this evocative in the extreme, a spiritual supermagnet pulling me back to that same time in my own life, with all the memories, nostalgia, speculations, and regrets attendant to it - a time in my own life when I'm more than ripe for that to happen. Could I, would I, do better a second time around? That question forms the emotional core of the movie for my demographic; the same thing happens when we watch our own children in their twenties. Where else can you get that in cinema? Not in The Incredible Hulk, that's for sure.The Boojer, by the way, saves the juiciest scenes in the movie for himself - an excruciating dinner and a later sort-of-extended-date with Marni. Cultural extra credit: compare and contrast the boy/girl dinners in FHH and I Think I Love My Wife.At the end of the second half, I return to reviewland and find:A.O. Scott: "What gives this film its quiet pathos is not so much the relative bleakness of Marnie's circumstances but the modesty of her expectations. At one point, she makes a to-do list, and its lack of ambition - spend more time outdoors, make friends with Jackie, learn to play chess - is both funny and sad."Carina Chocano: "Mainly, Marnie is staying afloat and trying to connect with others who are equally lost."Seems like I've seen a lot of this kind of hangdog vibe around the FHH reviews - negatives about mood and lifestyle - and I am not down with that (although I otherwise agree with the NYT and LA Times FHH review content). Perhaps having reached the top of the mountain makes it hard for Scott and Chocano to see those younger who are still way back down in the foothills. Marnie and her friends in FHH are newly-minted adults living life in that broad, spacious, undefined socioeconomicsphere found in first-world countries, a landscape where middle-class children find themselves free to roam, after emerging from college, if they happen to be situated in the middle of the startingout spectrum: neither at one end on the turf of the cinematically-ever-popular male slackers so often seen onscreen, nor the other end on that of the striving medical-school, law-school, and computer-geek proto-professionals; that is, Marnie and her friends are living the unfocused life that many of us lived in our twenties. I speak as one who stumbled off the college campus for the last time to find myself, at the age of 23, living alone in Boston, working at a job I wasn't interested in, and looking for love after refusing to commit to marriage and being dropped by my intended, who switched to her Plan B awfully quickly, it seemed to me. The quiet pathos for my demographic didn't happen then, it's happening to us now, in our dotage, on the viewer's side of the screen. Where is the pathos in Marnie's freshness and energy and in the potential of youth, for Marnie and her friends with an open and unknowable and limitless future stretching ahead of them, or in the knowledge that Kate Dollenmayer herself has moved on into that future, or in Bujalski's vision? Marnie's to-do list in no way lacks ambition; is in no way funny or sad. The act of making that list metaphorizes the ambition of the young; the contents of the list highlight the innocence of youth; it's a list drawn up by someone with all the time in the world and, interestingly, it is a list quite similar to such a one as made up by someone at the other end of life, without much time remaining.So I asked my daughter about this quiet-pathos thing, her being 23 and a recent graduate and living in Boston, all the same as Marnie; her reply: "As far as waitressing goes, I feel embarrassed about it at times, but I've actually made some valuable connections and now have places to stay and help finding employment if I want to go to South Carolina, Maui, Australia, or Columbia (have business cards/notes/emails from all of these people). Plus I make ok money, work with nice people, take home free food (ok, thats not completely kosher but its not like I get a salary or even hourly pay that amounts to anything after taxes). Plus, Im learning to speak Haitian Creole while simultaneously turning enemies into friends (the cooks didnt like me at first bc they assumed I was racist and told me so, but when I asked to learn their language they are suddenly happy to see me each day). So from my lowly job Im gaining: communication skills, agility training, extreme multi-tasking experience, networking opportunities, and employee benefits (that's the free food). Sounds almost ambitious when phrased correctly. This isnt to say I dont doubt what Im doing because I do, every day, multiple times a day. I get asked time and again by my bosses, co-workers and customers "why are you here if you have a degree from an Ivy League school??" One person even went so far as to say I was being selfish because letting my parents spend all that money to send me to a good school only to "disregard" my qualifications by working in a chain restaurant was just like throwing all that tuition money in the trash. Obviously obtaining "street smarts" and trying to experience different ways of life before choosing the "purpose-driven" one is something only misfits and failures do... So what am I trying to say here? Maybe im just trying to rationalize my own current existence when in reality it is just as ambitionless and lost as Marnie's. But maybe if the reviewers got off their NY Times and La Times high horses and really thought about what it means to EXPERIENCE and LIVE life, they might see things a wee bit differently. Or maybe not. Am I giggly all the time? as my friend Lynnea would say: "HELLS no!" But I dont think Ill look back on this period of my life and see it as a time of just "staying afloat" (my high school years on the other hand...)."One more take on the pathos meme, quickly, before getting on with the movie: Marnie celebrates her birthday quietly. Proactive note to lugubrious reviewers: this also is not pathos. What the heck did I do on my birthdays back in Boston? Who knows? I do remember being in a laundromat at North Station on Christmas Eve one year. It was snowing. Neither the Bruins nor the Celtics were in town, so The Garden was deserted except for me and an old woman. I went back to my room and drank. I still remember that, so I guess it means something to me, but I didn't feel pathetic at the time. I felt lonely but pretty good.Ginormous. I've had that word in my head. I'm thinking that if I write it down here, maybe it will go away.And so on to the first half of FHH.Oh my God. Bujalski saddles Marnie with an unrequited-love jones, up front. Booge, how could you? What were you thinking? This is something a novice twenty-something filmmaker would do. Oh, right. But this is why watching War, Inc. backwards helped the movie so much; the process cut out loads of unnecessary plot points till it was too late to matter. In the same way, I was able to watch the downslope of FHH without these moulting feathers of love annoying me. Hmm. Now Marnie liplocks some dude at the twenty-eight minute mark. I would never have predicted that. Oh, no, and then she osculates again three minutes later with her married-dude friend. I'm so glad I'm coming to this at the end and not at the beginning. Why? Because in the second half she's staring into the future without seeing beyond the walls of her room, locked in her head while her anger percolates unfelt somewhere down there lower in her body - after the drinking and smooching fail her - but I understood that, in the second half of the movie, without the presumptive romance-o-motivation of the first.No. I'm overreacting. Belay that last paragraph. I've been Hollywoodpavlovianized. This is not Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in the last minute of Sleepless in Seattle or You've Got Mail. This is random lowkey young adult semijoyless evolutionary smootching, pebbles in a pond that cause no ripples. Marnie pretends that it didn't happen, isn't happening, and I'll do the same. Romance is a big deal for these kids, perhaps the biggest deal. My twenties were mostly a history of bad dates. Easy to put off career issues to the next decade while getting the living part right. So Booge perforce makes use of that, but not so much that we can't shrug when the lips meet, and then move on. But still, this series of fraught encounters with men, I don't know; quit beating the drum, Booge. This does remind me, though, that I watched the original Forsythe Saga backward. As with Marnie and Alex in the second half of FHH, something heavy had obviously gone on between Irene and Soames, and Fleur's life was constantly perturbed by it, but it seemed more romantic to me to not know what that something was, not to know what had happened - seemed more romantic than watching the first half and seeing whatever it was that happened actually happen. Thesis: nostalgia coupled with imagination is always stronger than dramatic invention, probably because lived experience, including the actual act of imagination, is more visceral than skoptophilia and its milder brethren.New-Age side note: Coincidence #1: Earlier in this screed I wrote a sentence using the word "evolutionary" and then I started FHH up again and watched the last ten minutes of the movie, which I hadn't seen yet (minutes 35 to 45) and Marnie says to Alex or Alex says to Marnie, "You're the most evolved person I know." Coincidence #2: Later that day, I went to Blockbuster to return Get Smart (I'm rating it "j" on a scale of 1 to q) and while there I picked up The Last Request, which somebody somewhere liked a little bit, and while I was checking out, the clerk asked me how I liked Get Smart and I said, Anne Hathaway is no Barbara Feldon, and when I got home and started The Last Request, there Barbara was, in a starring role. The odds of plucking up a Barbara Feldon movie at random? Antiginormous. Coincidence #3: Marnie's shirt has the number 18 on its back. I'm 18b. My daughter, I learned THE SAME DAY, is living in apartment #18 in her building on Concord St. Consult your Jung! These coincidental whorls in the universal fabric happened ON THE SAME DAY as Obama's election and mean that FHH is connected to the core zeitgeist of the planet. You read it here first.Propositions: (1) The first half of a movie is usually better than the second half when the movie is watched in normal order. (2) Watching the second half of a movie first often improves the movie. Sometimes, watching the second half is sufficient in itself. (3) Thus, perhaps whichever half you watch first is the best.I had to ask Wilson, who assigned this movie to me, what the last two spoken lines of the last scene were. They seemed crucial in defining the mood of the movie, but mumblecore being named mumblecore for a reason, I couldn't make out what Alex and Marnie said to each other. Fortunately, Wilson could. And those two lines bear out my contention, or so I think, that Bujalski is a deeply optimistic guy and FHH is, in the end, a celebration, not a paean. In that final scene, Marnie shows some anger, a desire to move out into the world, and a rejection of the feckless Alex. Good for her and good for a society and economy (knock on wood) where youth is able to rattle around a little. I watched a mumblecore movie made by Joe Swanberg a while back, in which the protagonists grow stronger in the face of Swanberg's efforts to render them helpless; Bujalski throws down some marbles in Marnie's path, but his affection for her never lets her fall hard enough to break anything.This film that launched a genre reminds us that being young and being old are two entirely different things. (Bujalski turned 30 this year.) http://www.spout.com/groups/Mumblecore/I_want_to_see_this/489/26683/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: tworyan
Post To: Mumblecore
Post Date: 3/27/2008 8:40:47 PM
Body: I have never heard of "Mumblecore" before and it reminded me of something like "Emocore" or some sort of sub-genre created to categorize things and it makes me smile, but I like the films that are considered part of this genre. The Puffy Chair is a film that I saw on this list that i had heard of that i was interested in. I had watched a short by the Duplass Brothers called This is John, about a guy who is reseting his answering machine and I really enjoyed it. This is how I came across the trailer for The Puffy Chair and I need to see this film is looks like it is very heartfelt and I want to see it.
]]>Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:40:47 GMTtworyanMumblecore3/27/2008 8:40:47 PMI have never heard of "Mumblecore" before and it reminded me of something like "Emocore" or some sort of sub-genre created to categorize things and it makes me smile, but I like the films that are considered part of this genre. The Puffy Chair is a film that I saw on this list that i had heard of that i was interested in. I had watched a short by the Duplass Brothers called This is John, about a guy who is reseting his answering machine and I really enjoyed it. This is how I came across the trailer for The Puffy Chair and I need to see this film is looks like it is very heartfelt and I want to see it. http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/1/24/24313.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 1/24/2008 3:00:34 PM
Body: Mark and Jay Duplass made their Sundance debut in 2005 with their critically acclaimed feature The Puffy Chair. This year they return with Baghead, a tale about desperate young filmmakers trying to make a movie. In this interview Jay talks about drawing inspiration from months spent on the festival circuit, and the art of making movies without waiting for the Hollywood machine to catch up. Also on SpoutBlog: Sundance 2008: Greta Gerwig -An interview with Baghead star Greta Gerwig. Jay Duplass Interview Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:00:34 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com1/24/2008 3:00:34 PM Mark and Jay Duplass made their Sundance debut in 2005 with their critically acclaimed feature The Puffy Chair. This year they return with Baghead, a tale about desperate young filmmakers trying to make a movie. In this interview Jay talks about drawing inspiration from months spent on the festival circuit, and the art of making movies without waiting for the Hollywood machine to catch up. Also on SpoutBlog: Sundance 2008: Greta Gerwig -An interview with Baghead star Greta Gerwig. Jay Duplass Interview Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/1/23/24279.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 1/23/2008 8:01:14 PM
Body: Greta Gerwig is a well-connected actor in a growing network DIY independent filmmakers (here’s a flowchart). She starred as Hannah in Joe Swanberg’s Hannah Takes the Stairs alongside Mark Duplass. Now Mark and his brother Jay are following up their 2005 Sundance hit The Puffy Chair with Baghead, starring Gerwig. In this interview we talk about living in the woods in Texas, improvised dialog, and the dream of a low-budget indie Victorian period piece. Also on SpoutBlog: Sundance Video: Promotion -Joe and Ronnie follow Greta into a Sundance “gifting” session where accepting a free blow drier has unexpected consequences. FilmCouch #35 -Karina puts the smack-down on Gawker’s “review” of Hannah Takes the Stairs at the New Talkies: Generation DIY festival last summer at IFC Center. Greta Gerwig Interview Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Thu, 24 Jan 2008 01:01:14 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com1/23/2008 8:01:14 PM Greta Gerwig is a well-connected actor in a growing network DIY independent filmmakers (here’s a flowchart). She starred as Hannah in Joe Swanberg’s Hannah Takes the Stairs alongside Mark Duplass. Now Mark and his brother Jay are following up their 2005 Sundance hit The Puffy Chair with Baghead, starring Gerwig. In this interview we talk about living in the woods in Texas, improvised dialog, and the dream of a low-budget indie Victorian period piece. Also on SpoutBlog: Sundance Video: Promotion -Joe and Ronnie follow Greta into a Sundance “gifting” session where accepting a free blow drier has unexpected consequences. FilmCouch #35 -Karina puts the smack-down on Gawker’s “review” of Hannah Takes the Stairs at the New Talkies: Generation DIY festival last summer at IFC Center. Greta Gerwig Interview Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/paul/archive/2007/12/21/23065.aspx Post By: paul
Post To: paul on spout.com
Post Date: 12/21/2007 4:15:33 PM
Body: Mumblecore, is it a bona fide movement in filmmaking? Some people believe it is. One thing is certain, for being so far outside the mainstream, filmmakers like Joe Swanberg (Hannah Takes the Stairs), the Duplass brothers (The Puffy Chair) and Susan & Arin (Four Eyed Monsters) have gotten a lot of people talking. Download FilmCouch #24 or subscribe in the iTunes store (search for “filmcouch” or click here to launch iTunes) and a new free episode will download every Friday. Join the FilmCouch group Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Paul
]]>Fri, 21 Dec 2007 21:15:33 GMTpaulpaul on spout.com12/21/2007 4:15:33 PMMumblecore, is it a bona fide movement in filmmaking? Some people believe it is. One thing is certain, for being so far outside the mainstream, filmmakers like Joe Swanberg (Hannah Takes the Stairs), the Duplass brothers (The Puffy Chair) and Susan & Arin (Four Eyed Monsters) have gotten a lot of people talking. Download FilmCouch #24 or subscribe in the iTunes store (search for “filmcouch” or click here to launch iTunes) and a new free episode will download every Friday. Join the FilmCouch group Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Paul http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2007/10/26/21206.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 10/26/2007 11:01:17 AM
Body: Yet another gem from the Silent Movie’s stellar fall schedule that I somehow forgot to mention: The New Naturalists, with Saturdays in December devoted to a handful of works from “America’s new-fly-on-the-wall auteurs.” The Puffy Chair, Mutual Appreciation, Frownland and Old Joy and will be joined by Jennifer Shainin and Randy Walker’s Apart From That. All that, and not an M-word in sight. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:01:17 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com10/26/2007 11:01:17 AMYet another gem from the Silent Movie’s stellar fall schedule that I somehow forgot to mention: The New Naturalists, with Saturdays in December devoted to a handful of works from “America’s new-fly-on-the-wall auteurs.” The Puffy Chair, Mutual Appreciation, Frownland and Old Joy and will be joined by Jennifer Shainin and Randy Walker’s Apart From That. All that, and not an M-word in sight. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2007/8/16/18229.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 8/16/2007 2:00:43 PM
Body: If you read a lot of film blogs, you might have noticed a virus going around called Dentler Takes the Stairs. It’s all the brainchild of Matt Dentler, who is like the P.T. Barnum of the SXSW Film Festival, and who, by being the first person to program movies like Kissing on the Mouth and Dance Party, USA, has played a huge role in legitimizing this wave of no-budget American indie filmmaking over the past few years. Dentler conducted interviews with the major players in Hannah Takes the Stairs (the Joe Swanberg drama starring Greta Gerwig and filmmakers Mark Duplass, Andrew Bujalski, Kent Osbourne, Ry Russo-Young and Todd Rohal), and asked a number of us film bloggers to each broadcast one of these interviews on our blogs. Matt asked me to carry the interview with Mark Duplass, and of course, I complied. I reviewed The Duplass Brothers’ The Puffy Chair, which Mark starred in and co-wrote, in 2005 after seeing the film both at SXSW and the Chicago International Film Festival. At the time I said this: It’s amazing how [The Puffy Chair] nails the mealy-mouthed way people my age have of saying what we mean by dressing the same words, over and over again, in different kinds of inflection. Between Rhett and Josh, the word “dude” has a thousand meanings; Emily isn’t satisfied being referred to by any of them. Fleshing out that tension, between what is being said and what it obviously means, is where The Puffy Chair really succeeds. After the jump, I turn it over to Matt and Mark, who talk about Hannah’s Atari-fueled set, Andrew Bujalski’s boxers, and what Duplass did to get the film’s mythic stairs cut out of the picture. (more…) Originally posted on:Spoutblog
]]>Thu, 16 Aug 2007 18:00:43 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com8/16/2007 2:00:43 PMIf you read a lot of film blogs, you might have noticed a virus going around called Dentler Takes the Stairs. It’s all the brainchild of Matt Dentler, who is like the P.T. Barnum of the SXSW Film Festival, and who, by being the first person to program movies like Kissing on the Mouth and Dance Party, USA, has played a huge role in legitimizing this wave of no-budget American indie filmmaking over the past few years. Dentler conducted interviews with the major players in Hannah Takes the Stairs (the Joe Swanberg drama starring Greta Gerwig and filmmakers Mark Duplass, Andrew Bujalski, Kent Osbourne, Ry Russo-Young and Todd Rohal), and asked a number of us film bloggers to each broadcast one of these interviews on our blogs. Matt asked me to carry the interview with Mark Duplass, and of course, I complied. I reviewed The Duplass Brothers’ The Puffy Chair, which Mark starred in and co-wrote, in 2005 after seeing the film both at SXSW and the Chicago International Film Festival. At the time I said this: It’s amazing how [The Puffy Chair] nails the mealy-mouthed way people my age have of saying what we mean by dressing the same words, over and over again, in different kinds of inflection. Between Rhett and Josh, the word “dude” has a thousand meanings; Emily isn’t satisfied being referred to by any of them. Fleshing out that tension, between what is being said and what it obviously means, is where The Puffy Chair really succeeds. After the jump, I turn it over to Matt and Mark, who talk about Hannah’s Atari-fueled set, Andrew Bujalski’s boxers, and what Duplass did to get the film’s mythic stairs cut out of the picture. (more…) Originally posted on:Spoutblog http://www.spout.com/blogs/moviebabe/archive/2007/7/18/15271.aspx Post By: MovieBabe
Post To: MovieBabe Blog
Post Date: 7/18/2007 7:51:00 PM
Body: By Tricia Olszewski If you like your relationships just the way they are, for God’s sake, avoid the meandering group road trip. Josh knows this. Therefore, when the 20-something goes online to buy The Puffy Chair’s titular piece of furniture, a comfy purple replica of the chair his father favored back in the day, he plans to pick up the chair solo. The movie, director Jay Duplass’ feature debut, begins with Josh (Mark Duplass, the film’s writer and the director’s brother) and his longtime girlfriend, Emily (Kathryn Aselton), on the eve of the trip, having a giggly, baby-talk-laden dinner—until Josh takes a phone call and goes beyond talking about the business at hand to yakking about setting up some friends. At which point Emily knocks her dish off the table and storms out. Of course, Josh then feels obligated to take her with him. And when they stop to visit Josh’s New Age–y brother Rhett (Rhett Wilkins), it’s decided the party will become three. “I need to reconnect with Dad, dude!” Rhett says, rationalizing that his presence will be his birthday present to the old man, so what if his brother tracked down that godawful chair and picked it up and everything. “Dude,” by the way, is the siblings’ favorite word, with Josh even peppering his conversations with the quite feminine Emily with the frat-boyism, but The Puffy Chair is hardly the stoner flick that might lead you to expect. Indeed, the squirmily funny film is less Harold & Kumar than The Squid and the Whale. Each of the characters gets his or her own moment of slap-worthiness: Josh goes to George Costanza–ish lengths to save $10 on a motel room. Emily repeatedly asks, “What do you love about me?” when Josh is trying to sleep. Rhett believes in love at first sight—at least until the next morning. The relatively green performers are nonactorly enough to seem real yet artful enough to play with your sympathies throughout the movie’s swift-moving 85 minutes. They’re aided by a script that never stoops to melodrama or contrivance—OK, maybe the overly righteous motel manager is a bit idealized—in reminding us that we’re all a bitch to get along with once in a while. Presumably because Josh is a failed musician, there’s plenty of upwardly mobile mope rock on the soundtrack, including Spoon and Death Cab for Cutie. That probably won’t help The Puffy Chair escape its own indie ghetto, but no matter: Going somewhere sometimes sucks anyway.
]]>Wed, 18 Jul 2007 23:51:00 GMTMovieBabeMovieBabe Blog7/18/2007 7:51:00 PM By Tricia Olszewski If you like your relationships just the way they are, for God’s sake, avoid the meandering group road trip. Josh knows this. Therefore, when the 20-something goes online to buy The Puffy Chair’s titular piece of furniture, a comfy purple replica of the chair his father favored back in the day, he plans to pick up the chair solo. The movie, director Jay Duplass’ feature debut, begins with Josh (Mark Duplass, the film’s writer and the director’s brother) and his longtime girlfriend, Emily (Kathryn Aselton), on the eve of the trip, having a giggly, baby-talk-laden dinner—until Josh takes a phone call and goes beyond talking about the business at hand to yakking about setting up some friends. At which point Emily knocks her dish off the table and storms out. Of course, Josh then feels obligated to take her with him. And when they stop to visit Josh’s New Age–y brother Rhett (Rhett Wilkins), it’s decided the party will become three. “I need to reconnect with Dad, dude!” Rhett says, rationalizing that his presence will be his birthday present to the old man, so what if his brother tracked down that godawful chair and picked it up and everything. “Dude,” by the way, is the siblings’ favorite word, with Josh even peppering his conversations with the quite feminine Emily with the frat-boyism, but The Puffy Chair is hardly the stoner flick that might lead you to expect. Indeed, the squirmily funny film is less Harold & Kumar than The Squid and the Whale. Each of the characters gets his or her own moment of slap-worthiness: Josh goes to George Costanza–ish lengths to save $10 on a motel room. Emily repeatedly asks, “What do you love about me?” when Josh is trying to sleep. Rhett believes in love at first sight—at least until the next morning. The relatively green performers are nonactorly enough to seem real yet artful enough to play with your sympathies throughout the movie’s swift-moving 85 minutes. They’re aided by a script that never stoops to melodrama or contrivance—OK, maybe the overly righteous motel manager is a bit idealized—in reminding us that we’re all a bitch to get along with once in a while. Presumably because Josh is a failed musician, there’s plenty of upwardly mobile mope rock on the soundtrack, including Spoon and Death Cab for Cutie. That probably won’t help The Puffy Chair escape its own indie ghetto, but no matter: Going somewhere sometimes sucks anyway. http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/awesome/MemberTagFilms.aspxawesome
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