list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around Baghead 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/Baghead/313218/default.aspx Title: Baghead
Year: 2008
Director: Jay Duplass
Plot: The Puffy Chair filmmaking duo Jay and Mark Duplass return to the realm of cinema with this tale of a man, a bag, and the strangeness that occurs when the two independently inconsequential factors come together. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 51
Number of Lists: 6
Number of blog posts: 17
Number of discussion threads: 1
SpoutRating: 2
]]>Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:14:28 GMTBaghead2008Jay Duplass<a href=/films/257514/default.aspx style='text-decoration:underline'>The Puffy Chair</a> filmmaking duo Jay and Mark Duplass return to the realm of cinema with this tale of a man, a bag, and the strangeness that occurs when the two independently inconsequential factors come together. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide51Tag Target (>10)61712http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/s313218.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/Baghead/313218/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/christhilk/archive/2009/1/21/39764.aspx Post By: ChrisThilk
Post To: ChrisThilk Blog
Post Date: 1/21/2009 6:01:09 PM
Body: The first half hour or so of Baghead is pretty standard Mumblecore fare. Four friends, two guys and two girls, decide that in order to seize their own movie business destiny they’re going to go to a cabin in the woods and write something for themselves. There are various romantic connections between the three. One guy loves one of the girls but is too afraid to say anything. The other guy is also attracted to that girl but has a history with the other one and they seem to still be occasionally sleeping together. It’s all complicated and everyone has trouble expressing themselves. It’s that first half hour that actually winds up being the weakest part of the movie. It’s filled with most of the usual tropes of the Mumblecore genre and, while I’m usually a fan of that stuff, it doesn’t quite gel for me. After that, though, when they’re at the cabin and they start seeing a mysterious figure appearing outside wearing a paper bag over his head, the movie kicks into gear and becomes quite entertaining and enjoyable. After leading you down several paths the resolution is real and doesn’t at all feel like a cop out, even if it’s something that you might be able to predict early on. In talking about the movie to FilmCouch’s Paul Moore, I said that maybe my problems with the first part of the movie stemmed from my knowledge that there was something different coming and I was anxious for the movie to get there. If, like me, you can get over the hump you’ll probably enjoy this unique take on the horror genre.        Originally posted on:Chris Thilk
]]>Wed, 21 Jan 2009 23:01:09 GMTChrisThilkChrisThilk Blog1/21/2009 6:01:09 PMThe first half hour or so of Baghead is pretty standard Mumblecore fare. Four friends, two guys and two girls, decide that in order to seize their own movie business destiny they’re going to go to a cabin in the woods and write something for themselves. There are various romantic connections between the three. One guy loves one of the girls but is too afraid to say anything. The other guy is also attracted to that girl but has a history with the other one and they seem to still be occasionally sleeping together. It’s all complicated and everyone has trouble expressing themselves. It’s that first half hour that actually winds up being the weakest part of the movie. It’s filled with most of the usual tropes of the Mumblecore genre and, while I’m usually a fan of that stuff, it doesn’t quite gel for me. After that, though, when they’re at the cabin and they start seeing a mysterious figure appearing outside wearing a paper bag over his head, the movie kicks into gear and becomes quite entertaining and enjoyable. After leading you down several paths the resolution is real and doesn’t at all feel like a cop out, even if it’s something that you might be able to predict early on. In talking about the movie to FilmCouch’s Paul Moore, I said that maybe my problems with the first part of the movie stemmed from my knowledge that there was something different coming and I was anxious for the movie to get there. If, like me, you can get over the hump you’ll probably enjoy this unique take on the horror genre.        Originally posted on:Chris Thilk 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/blogs/karina/archive/2008/7/11/32449.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 7/11/2008 5:01:07 PM
Body: A few bits of news have been trickling in this afternoon on some upcoming events: It’s Lebowski Fest this weekend in Louisville, Kentucky. Something I would never, ever go to myself, but sort of appreciate on the grounds that there should be more batshit insane social events structured around films which didn’t make a whole lot of money. More info here; it also looks like Whitney is live-Twittering. Frank V. Ross’ Present Company is premiering tomorrow night at my much-beloved Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago. I reviewed the film at SXSW, where we also interviewed Ross and his cast. The film also screens on Tuesday. On July 18, Matt Dentler will be moderating an indieWIRE-hosted conversation at the Apple Store between the Duplass Brothers and their Baghead stars, Greta Gerwig and Ross Partridge. Sony Classics will be opening the movie here in NYC the following Friday. We’ve covered that one a bunch, too. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:01:07 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog7/11/2008 5:01:07 PMA few bits of news have been trickling in this afternoon on some upcoming events: It’s Lebowski Fest this weekend in Louisville, Kentucky. Something I would never, ever go to myself, but sort of appreciate on the grounds that there should be more batshit insane social events structured around films which didn’t make a whole lot of money. More info here; it also looks like Whitney is live-Twittering. Frank V. Ross’ Present Company is premiering tomorrow night at my much-beloved Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago. I reviewed the film at SXSW, where we also interviewed Ross and his cast. The film also screens on Tuesday. On July 18, Matt Dentler will be moderating an indieWIRE-hosted conversation at the Apple Store between the Duplass Brothers and their Baghead stars, Greta Gerwig and Ross Partridge. Sony Classics will be opening the movie here in NYC the following Friday. We’ve covered that one a bunch, too. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/7/11/32446.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 7/11/2008 5:00:58 PM
Body: A few bits of news have been trickling in this afternoon on some upcoming events: It’s Lebowski Fest this weekend in Louisville, Kentucky. Something I would never, ever go to myself, but sort of appreciate on the grounds that there should be more batshit insane social events structured around films which didn’t make a whole lot of money. More info here; it also looks like Whitney is live-Twittering. Frank V. Ross’ Present Company is premiering tomorrow night at my much-beloved Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago. I reviewed the film at SXSW, where we also interviewed Ross and his cast. The film also screens on Tuesday. On July 18, Matt Dentler will be moderating an indieWIRE-hosted conversation at the Apple Store between the Duplass Brothers and their Baghead stars, Greta Gerwig and Ross Partridge. Sony Classics will be opening the movie here in NYC the following Friday. We’ve covered that one a bunch, too. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:00:58 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com7/11/2008 5:00:58 PMA few bits of news have been trickling in this afternoon on some upcoming events: It’s Lebowski Fest this weekend in Louisville, Kentucky. Something I would never, ever go to myself, but sort of appreciate on the grounds that there should be more batshit insane social events structured around films which didn’t make a whole lot of money. More info here; it also looks like Whitney is live-Twittering. Frank V. Ross’ Present Company is premiering tomorrow night at my much-beloved Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago. I reviewed the film at SXSW, where we also interviewed Ross and his cast. The film also screens on Tuesday. On July 18, Matt Dentler will be moderating an indieWIRE-hosted conversation at the Apple Store between the Duplass Brothers and their Baghead stars, Greta Gerwig and Ross Partridge. Sony Classics will be opening the movie here in NYC the following Friday. We’ve covered that one a bunch, too. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/6/3/30384.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 6/3/2008 11:01:09 AM
Body: In this New York Times story (cleverly topped with a 600px wide still featuring Greta Gerwig in a bikini), Michael Cieply reports on Sony Pictures Classics’ plan to premiere the Duplass Brothers’ Baghead first in Austin, and then spread the film out to strategically-selected cities throughout the country before opening the film in New York or Los Angeles. Why do it this way? The implication is that Sony is hoping to benefit from positive word of mouth and blog coverage in college towns, hipster meccas and smaller cities where a recommendation from a friend carries more weight than a film review. But in order to convey that message, Cieply has to implicitly diss the publication in which his story is published. An excerpt: Professional reviews and expensive advertising in the national media centers matter less. Internet buzz and the folkways of a flourishing festival culture now count for more. “It’s a cumulative effect,” [Sony's Tom] Bernard said. Critics in the big media centers, he argued, have generally gotten into the habit of writing for one another more than for movie viewers. Meanwhile, audiences in regional centers like the Texas cities he has in mind for Baghead have become well informed about films thanks to the widespread availability of information on the Web. Later in the piece, Cieply notes that Baghead won’t even screen for critics in New York until after its June 13th Austin premiere. If I read a story like this about a film with which I wasn’t familiar, I would assume that the movie was one or all of the following: a) completely awful; b) ridiculously low-brow; c) otherwise critic-proof. But Baghead is none of those things, and in fact, the idea that this is a film that critics “won’t get” is laughable––it so far carries a 100% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an almost-rave from Variety’s Peter Debruge factored in. So I wonder if this isn’t something sort of akin to what’s going on with the marketing of War, Inc––is Sony really worried that the whiff of critical acclaim will ruin Baghead’s credibility with a young audience? Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:01:09 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog6/3/2008 11:01:09 AMIn this New York Times story (cleverly topped with a 600px wide still featuring Greta Gerwig in a bikini), Michael Cieply reports on Sony Pictures Classics’ plan to premiere the Duplass Brothers’ Baghead first in Austin, and then spread the film out to strategically-selected cities throughout the country before opening the film in New York or Los Angeles. Why do it this way? The implication is that Sony is hoping to benefit from positive word of mouth and blog coverage in college towns, hipster meccas and smaller cities where a recommendation from a friend carries more weight than a film review. But in order to convey that message, Cieply has to implicitly diss the publication in which his story is published. An excerpt: Professional reviews and expensive advertising in the national media centers matter less. Internet buzz and the folkways of a flourishing festival culture now count for more. “It’s a cumulative effect,” [Sony's Tom] Bernard said. Critics in the big media centers, he argued, have generally gotten into the habit of writing for one another more than for movie viewers. Meanwhile, audiences in regional centers like the Texas cities he has in mind for Baghead have become well informed about films thanks to the widespread availability of information on the Web. Later in the piece, Cieply notes that Baghead won’t even screen for critics in New York until after its June 13th Austin premiere. If I read a story like this about a film with which I wasn’t familiar, I would assume that the movie was one or all of the following: a) completely awful; b) ridiculously low-brow; c) otherwise critic-proof. But Baghead is none of those things, and in fact, the idea that this is a film that critics “won’t get” is laughable––it so far carries a 100% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an almost-rave from Variety’s Peter Debruge factored in. So I wonder if this isn’t something sort of akin to what’s going on with the marketing of War, Inc––is Sony really worried that the whiff of critical acclaim will ruin Baghead’s credibility with a young audience? Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/6/3/30383.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 6/3/2008 11:01:00 AM
Body: In this New York Times story (cleverly topped with a 600px wide still featuring Greta Gerwig in a bikini), Michael Cieply reports on Sony Pictures Classics’ plan to premiere the Duplass Brothers’ Baghead first in Austin, and then spread the film out to strategically-selected cities throughout the country before opening the film in New York or Los Angeles. Why do it this way? The implication is that Sony is hoping to benefit from positive word of mouth and blog coverage in college towns, hipster meccas and smaller cities where a recommendation from a friend carries more weight than a film review. But in order to convey that message, Cieply has to implicitly diss the publication in which his story is published. An excerpt: Professional reviews and expensive advertising in the national media centers matter less. Internet buzz and the folkways of a flourishing festival culture now count for more. “It’s a cumulative effect,” [Sony's Tom] Bernard said. Critics in the big media centers, he argued, have generally gotten into the habit of writing for one another more than for movie viewers. Meanwhile, audiences in regional centers like the Texas cities he has in mind for Baghead have become well informed about films thanks to the widespread availability of information on the Web. Later in the piece, Cieply notes that Baghead won’t even screen for critics in New York until after its June 13th Austin premiere. If I read a story like this about a film with which I wasn’t familiar, I would assume that the movie was one or all of the following: a) completely awful; b) ridiculously low-brow; c) otherwise critic-proof. But Baghead is none of those things, and in fact, the idea that this is a film that critics “won’t get” is laughable––it so far carries a 100% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an almost-rave from Variety’s Peter Debruge factored in. So I wonder if this isn’t something sort of akin to what’s going on with the marketing of War, Inc––is Sony really worried that the whiff of critical acclaim will ruin Baghead’s credibility with a young audience? Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:01:00 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com6/3/2008 11:01:00 AMIn this New York Times story (cleverly topped with a 600px wide still featuring Greta Gerwig in a bikini), Michael Cieply reports on Sony Pictures Classics’ plan to premiere the Duplass Brothers’ Baghead first in Austin, and then spread the film out to strategically-selected cities throughout the country before opening the film in New York or Los Angeles. Why do it this way? The implication is that Sony is hoping to benefit from positive word of mouth and blog coverage in college towns, hipster meccas and smaller cities where a recommendation from a friend carries more weight than a film review. But in order to convey that message, Cieply has to implicitly diss the publication in which his story is published. An excerpt: Professional reviews and expensive advertising in the national media centers matter less. Internet buzz and the folkways of a flourishing festival culture now count for more. “It’s a cumulative effect,” [Sony's Tom] Bernard said. Critics in the big media centers, he argued, have generally gotten into the habit of writing for one another more than for movie viewers. Meanwhile, audiences in regional centers like the Texas cities he has in mind for Baghead have become well informed about films thanks to the widespread availability of information on the Web. Later in the piece, Cieply notes that Baghead won’t even screen for critics in New York until after its June 13th Austin premiere. If I read a story like this about a film with which I wasn’t familiar, I would assume that the movie was one or all of the following: a) completely awful; b) ridiculously low-brow; c) otherwise critic-proof. But Baghead is none of those things, and in fact, the idea that this is a film that critics “won’t get” is laughable––it so far carries a 100% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an almost-rave from Variety’s Peter Debruge factored in. So I wonder if this isn’t something sort of akin to what’s going on with the marketing of War, Inc––is Sony really worried that the whiff of critical acclaim will ruin Baghead’s credibility with a young audience? Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/4/22/27664.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 4/22/2008 6:00:38 PM
Body: Ain’t It Cool has pictures from the Morocco set of The Green Zone, a Paul Greengrass film about the war in Iraq starring Matt Damon. AICN’s tipster says the U.S. military has refused to provide props for the film because of the script’s critical stance towards the war. I don’t know that it’s exactly standard practice for the military to lend equipment to Hollywood productions anyway, but LIBERTAS says this is just one more sign that filmmakers who question the war are “enablers of evil willing to squander tens-of-millions in the hope of watching untold numbers of abandoned Iraqis fed into the meat grinder of death squads and terrorists.” Eugene at indieWIRE notices the similarities between the new poster for Baghead, and the poster for 60s sex farce Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (starring young Elliott Gould….drool). I think the Baghead poster is kind of awesome––I love it that it downplays the totally (and I’m sure somewhat intentionally) unconvincing horror aspect of the film. Vulture counts down budding filmmaker Madonna’s five worst in front of the camera contributions to the music video canon. The big loser is the partially-animated “Dear Jessie”, which is truly awful, but also enough of an oddity that it’s a shame it’s already been removed from YouTube. To close the day on the most prurient note possible: the tabloids say Lindsay Lohan’s drinking again, but Radar says she’s just an avid Facebook updater who takes both her sobriety and alleged lesbian lover Samantha Ronson very seriously. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:00:38 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog4/22/2008 6:00:38 PM Ain’t It Cool has pictures from the Morocco set of The Green Zone, a Paul Greengrass film about the war in Iraq starring Matt Damon. AICN’s tipster says the U.S. military has refused to provide props for the film because of the script’s critical stance towards the war. I don’t know that it’s exactly standard practice for the military to lend equipment to Hollywood productions anyway, but LIBERTAS says this is just one more sign that filmmakers who question the war are “enablers of evil willing to squander tens-of-millions in the hope of watching untold numbers of abandoned Iraqis fed into the meat grinder of death squads and terrorists.” Eugene at indieWIRE notices the similarities between the new poster for Baghead, and the poster for 60s sex farce Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (starring young Elliott Gould….drool). I think the Baghead poster is kind of awesome––I love it that it downplays the totally (and I’m sure somewhat intentionally) unconvincing horror aspect of the film. Vulture counts down budding filmmaker Madonna’s five worst in front of the camera contributions to the music video canon. The big loser is the partially-animated “Dear Jessie”, which is truly awful, but also enough of an oddity that it’s a shame it’s already been removed from YouTube. To close the day on the most prurient note possible: the tabloids say Lindsay Lohan’s drinking again, but Radar says she’s just an avid Facebook updater who takes both her sobriety and alleged lesbian lover Samantha Ronson very seriously. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/4/22/27663.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 4/22/2008 6:00:28 PM
Body: Ain’t It Cool has pictures from the Morocco set of The Green Zone, a Paul Greengrass film about the war in Iraq starring Matt Damon. AICN’s tipster says the U.S. military has refused to provide props for the film because of the script’s critical stance towards the war. I don’t know that it’s exactly standard practice for the military to lend equipment to Hollywood productions anyway, but LIBERTAS says this is just one more sign that filmmakers who question the war are “enablers of evil willing to squander tens-of-millions in the hope of watching untold numbers of abandoned Iraqis fed into the meat grinder of death squads and terrorists.” Eugene at indieWIRE notices the similarities between the new poster for Baghead, and the poster for 60s sex farce Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (starring young Elliott Gould….drool). I think the Baghead poster is kind of awesome––I love it that it downplays the totally (and I’m sure somewhat intentionally) unconvincing horror aspect of the film. Vulture counts down budding filmmaker Madonna’s five worst in front of the camera contributions to the music video canon. The big loser is the partially-animated “Dear Jessie”, which is truly awful, but also enough of an oddity that it’s a shame it’s already been removed from YouTube. To close the day on the most prurient note possible: the tabloids say Lindsay Lohan’s drinking again, but Radar says she’s just an avid Facebook updater who takes both her sobriety and alleged lesbian lover Samantha Ronson very seriously. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:00:28 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com4/22/2008 6:00:28 PM Ain’t It Cool has pictures from the Morocco set of The Green Zone, a Paul Greengrass film about the war in Iraq starring Matt Damon. AICN’s tipster says the U.S. military has refused to provide props for the film because of the script’s critical stance towards the war. I don’t know that it’s exactly standard practice for the military to lend equipment to Hollywood productions anyway, but LIBERTAS says this is just one more sign that filmmakers who question the war are “enablers of evil willing to squander tens-of-millions in the hope of watching untold numbers of abandoned Iraqis fed into the meat grinder of death squads and terrorists.” Eugene at indieWIRE notices the similarities between the new poster for Baghead, and the poster for 60s sex farce Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (starring young Elliott Gould….drool). I think the Baghead poster is kind of awesome––I love it that it downplays the totally (and I’m sure somewhat intentionally) unconvincing horror aspect of the film. Vulture counts down budding filmmaker Madonna’s five worst in front of the camera contributions to the music video canon. The big loser is the partially-animated “Dear Jessie”, which is truly awful, but also enough of an oddity that it’s a shame it’s already been removed from YouTube. To close the day on the most prurient note possible: the tabloids say Lindsay Lohan’s drinking again, but Radar says she’s just an avid Facebook updater who takes both her sobriety and alleged lesbian lover Samantha Ronson very seriously. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/2/1/24600.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 2/1/2008 10:00:22 AM
Body: An unforeseen hangover from the Sundance Film Festival, like the freezing and thawing of the earth, slowly drags up thoughts and pondering on the state of movies in America. The conclusion looks much like the political landscape: Two parties, sharply divided, moving further apart. Talking to Baghead director, Jay Duplass, and Zeroville author, Steve Erickson. (Subscribe to FilmCouch in the iTunes store and an episode will download each Friday) FilmCouch 55 Baghead Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:00:22 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com2/1/2008 10:00:22 AM An unforeseen hangover from the Sundance Film Festival, like the freezing and thawing of the earth, slowly drags up thoughts and pondering on the state of movies in America. The conclusion looks much like the political landscape: Two parties, sharply divided, moving further apart. Talking to Baghead director, Jay Duplass, and Zeroville author, Steve Erickson. (Subscribe to FilmCouch in the iTunes store and an episode will download each Friday) FilmCouch 55 Baghead Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/paul/archive/2008/2/1/24599.aspx Post By: paul
Post To: paul on spout.com
Post Date: 2/1/2008 10:00:13 AM
Body: An unforeseen hangover from the Sundance Film Festival, like the freezing and thawing of the earth, slowly drags up thoughts and pondering on the state of movies in America. The conclusion looks much like the political landscape: Two parties, sharply divided, moving further apart. Talking to Baghead director, Jay Duplass, and Zeroville author, Steve Erickson. (Subscribe to FilmCouch in the iTunes store and an episode will download each Friday) FilmCouch 55 Baghead Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Paul
]]>Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:00:13 GMTpaulpaul on spout.com2/1/2008 10:00:13 AM An unforeseen hangover from the Sundance Film Festival, like the freezing and thawing of the earth, slowly drags up thoughts and pondering on the state of movies in America. The conclusion looks much like the political landscape: Two parties, sharply divided, moving further apart. Talking to Baghead director, Jay Duplass, and Zeroville author, Steve Erickson. (Subscribe to FilmCouch in the iTunes store and an episode will download each Friday) FilmCouch 55 Baghead Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Paul http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/romance/MemberTagFilms.aspxromance
Number of films tagged: 7162

Number of people who tagged: 169

Number of times used: 1004

]]>Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:01:30 GMT71621691004Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/murder/MemberTagFilms.aspxmurder
Number of films tagged: 8748

Number of people who tagged: 157

Number of times used: 830

]]>Fri, 04 Dec 2009 02:57:25 GMT8748157830Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/friendship/MemberTagFilms.aspxfriendship
Number of films tagged: 6791

Number of people who tagged: 154

Number of times used: 980

]]>Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:42:20 GMT6791154980Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/horror/MemberTagFilms.aspxhorror
Number of films tagged: 261

Number of people who tagged: 110

Number of times used: 347

]]>Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:01:29 GMT261110347Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/escape/MemberTagFilms.aspxescape
Number of films tagged: 2868

Number of people who tagged: 76

Number of times used: 279

]]>Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:51:44 GMT286876279Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/horrible/MemberTagFilms.aspxhorrible
Number of films tagged: 72

Number of people who tagged: 42

Number of times used: 73

]]>Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:19:31 GMT724273Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/jealousy/MemberTagFilms.aspxjealousy
Number of films tagged: 1295

Number of people who tagged: 39

Number of times used: 120

]]>Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:13:05 GMT129539120Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/friends/MemberTagFilms.aspxfriends
Number of films tagged: 157

Number of people who tagged: 36

Number of times used: 181

]]>Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:50:40 GMT15736181Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/dream/MemberTagFilms.aspxdream
Number of films tagged: 414

Number of people who tagged: 35

Number of times used: 49

]]>Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:54:25 GMT4143549Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/nudity/MemberTagFilms.aspxnudity
Number of films tagged: 297

Number of people who tagged: 31

Number of times used: 99

]]>Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:36:31 GMT2973199Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/man/MemberTagFilms.aspxman
Number of films tagged: 1310

Number of people who tagged: 26

Number of times used: 40

]]>Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:02:59 GMT13102640Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/killer/MemberTagFilms.aspxkiller
Number of films tagged: 326

Number of people who tagged: 25

Number of times used: 52

]]>Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:59:55 GMT3262552Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/Sundance/MemberTagFilms.aspxSundance
Number of films tagged: 154

Number of people who tagged: 24

Number of times used: 161

]]>Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:57:41 GMT15424161Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/lust/MemberTagFilms.aspxlust
Number of films tagged: 188

Number of people who tagged: 22

Number of times used: 53

]]>Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:50:40 GMT1882253Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/woods/MemberTagFilms.aspxwoods
Number of films tagged: 24

Number of people who tagged: 21

Number of times used: 33

]]>Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:47:46 GMT242133Tag