list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around American Teen 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/American_Teen/358642/default.aspx Title: American Teen
Year: 2008
Director: Nanette Burstein
Plot: In this biting cinema verte, director Nanette Burstein follows a group of four Indiana high school seniors as they navigate the social mazes of adolescence, prepare for graduation, and generally deal with the often surprising and strange situations that arise simply from being 17. Incorporating intimate footage, interviews, and animation, Burstein reveals all the gritty details about life as a teenager in Midwestern America, from drugs, alcohol, and peer pressure, to cliques, first love, and heartbreak. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 86
Number of Lists: 12
Number of blog posts: 10
Number of discussion threads: 1
SpoutRating: 3
]]>Mon, 23 Feb 2009 08:52:12 GMTAmerican Teen2008Nanette BursteinIn this biting cinema verte, director Nanette Burstein follows a group of four Indiana high school seniors as they navigate the social mazes of adolescence, prepare for graduation, and generally deal with the often surprising and strange situations that arise simply from being 17. Incorporating intimate footage, interviews, and animation, Burstein reveals all the gritty details about life as a teenager in Midwestern America, from drugs, alcohol, and peer pressure, to cliques, first love, and heartbreak. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide86Tag Target (>10)121013http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/s358642.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/American_Teen/358642/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/dibot/archive/2009/2/16/40485.aspx Post By: dibot
Post To: dibot Blog
Post Date: 2/16/2009 5:33:55 PM
Body: American Teen is an interesting documentary following a group of kids as they go through their senior year of high school. It doesn't get too in depth on any of the four main kids, but gives enough that I remembered why I'm glad high school is over. Intercut with the teens interviews and clips of them in their daily activities, are cartoons symbolizing their hopes and fears. I enjoyed the movie, but I didn't love it. Some of the scenes felt too scripted to be a real documentary.Hamlet 2 has several laugh-out-loud moments, most of which come at the expense of Steve Coogan ("Tropic Thunder")'s pride. Coogan stars as a failed writer/actor who now teaches high school drama and must write a great play to save the program from cancellation. No cows are sacred in this movie and that mostly adds to the humor. Sometimes, though, it's too over the top. A funny movie, but not the year's best comedy.I was really entertained by Kung-Fu Panda. Jack Black ("Tropic Thunder") voices the title character, a dreaming, over-weight panda who is inexplicably chosen to be a kung-fu hero. The film has a good message, if you believe in yourself, you can do anything. And the animation is really good.Revolutionary Road seemed to get the most press for reuniting Kate Winslet ("The Reader") and Leonardo DiCaprio ("Body of Lies"). They play a married couple in the 50s who realize that their dreams no longer coincide. This is a really depressing movie. The acting is mostly good, except when DiCaprio starts channeling Jack Nicholson for no reason. And just when the film has dragged you down so far, Michael Shannon ("Before the Devil Knows Your Dead") busts in for some much needed shock and humor. It's worth seeing. Just take some anti-depressants first.Now, Hotel for Dogs, on the other hand, is a super cute story of two orphans who start a home for stray dogs. Pretty much just like the title implies. I thought the story was sweet. But my husband said it was dreadful and that my pregnancy hormones were influencing my reviewing skills. I told him that he better get used to this kind of thing. Because once we have a kid, we're going to be seeing a lot more movies like this.
]]>Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:33:55 GMTdibotdibot Blog2/16/2009 5:33:55 PMAmerican Teen is an interesting documentary following a group of kids as they go through their senior year of high school. It doesn't get too in depth on any of the four main kids, but gives enough that I remembered why I'm glad high school is over. Intercut with the teens interviews and clips of them in their daily activities, are cartoons symbolizing their hopes and fears. I enjoyed the movie, but I didn't love it. Some of the scenes felt too scripted to be a real documentary.Hamlet 2 has several laugh-out-loud moments, most of which come at the expense of Steve Coogan ("Tropic Thunder")'s pride. Coogan stars as a failed writer/actor who now teaches high school drama and must write a great play to save the program from cancellation. No cows are sacred in this movie and that mostly adds to the humor. Sometimes, though, it's too over the top. A funny movie, but not the year's best comedy.I was really entertained by Kung-Fu Panda. Jack Black ("Tropic Thunder") voices the title character, a dreaming, over-weight panda who is inexplicably chosen to be a kung-fu hero. The film has a good message, if you believe in yourself, you can do anything. And the animation is really good.Revolutionary Road seemed to get the most press for reuniting Kate Winslet ("The Reader") and Leonardo DiCaprio ("Body of Lies"). They play a married couple in the 50s who realize that their dreams no longer coincide. This is a really depressing movie. The acting is mostly good, except when DiCaprio starts channeling Jack Nicholson for no reason. And just when the film has dragged you down so far, Michael Shannon ("Before the Devil Knows Your Dead") busts in for some much needed shock and humor. It's worth seeing. Just take some anti-depressants first.Now, Hotel for Dogs, on the other hand, is a super cute story of two orphans who start a home for stray dogs. Pretty much just like the title implies. I thought the story was sweet. But my husband said it was dreadful and that my pregnancy hormones were influencing my reviewing skills. I told him that he better get used to this kind of thing. Because once we have a kid, we're going to be seeing a lot more movies like this. http://www.spout.com/blogs/mconrad3/archive/2009/1/17/39626.aspx Post By: mconrad3
Post To: mconrad3 Blog
Post Date: 1/17/2009 4:03:48 PM
Body: I'm only a few years out of high school so a lot of the memories from those four years are pretty fresh in my mind. It was a mix of a lot of different moments ranging from amazing to horrible, but overall a fun four years if it hadn't been for the homework. When I see documentaries about high school and the kids that attend them, I often find that most of them don't really represent the experience my peers and I had. That bein said, I didn't grow up in a rural town or a big city. Suburban New Jersey life may be extremely different from the way the rest of the world is run, I don't know, but I know now that it's still different from Indiana. American Teen follows the lives of a group of teenagers during their senior year of high schools. There's the usual triumphs and tragedies that accompany the final year of high school, but there aren't a whole lot of surprises. If the director saught out to find the stereotypical examples of the kids you'd find in a high school, then she certainly succeeded in that effort. There is the jock, the geek, the queen, the artist, and the freaks. We are introduced to these students over the course of the film and get to learn about their lives as we go along. It helps us understand the characters better, but it doesn't do anything more than the Breakfast Club did. There were a lot of moments I found myself wondering whether or not it was at all possible for some of these events to be occurring. For example, the kinds of antics Megan, the princess of the school, gets away with and orchestrates border on manipulative megalomania. And on the other end, there are some painfully awkward moments coming out of resident geek Jake. Who at 17 shows up at your date's house with a bouquet of roses? Props to him for having the guts to do it, though. I don't know, maybe my high school experience was so different from this that I can't connect with it very well, but overall I think a competent job was done in executing the story. The cartoon sequences that illustrate some of the students' hopes, dreams, and fears were very well done and I wish they had presented themselves more often throughout the film. Overall, I think American Teen does a good job of painting a picture of high school life in Warsaw, Indiana, but perhaps not everywhere else. I'm starting to think more and more that you'd need to have a documentary for every high school to properly represent most people's high school career.
]]>Sat, 17 Jan 2009 21:03:48 GMTmconrad3mconrad3 Blog1/17/2009 4:03:48 PMI'm only a few years out of high school so a lot of the memories from those four years are pretty fresh in my mind. It was a mix of a lot of different moments ranging from amazing to horrible, but overall a fun four years if it hadn't been for the homework. When I see documentaries about high school and the kids that attend them, I often find that most of them don't really represent the experience my peers and I had. That bein said, I didn't grow up in a rural town or a big city. Suburban New Jersey life may be extremely different from the way the rest of the world is run, I don't know, but I know now that it's still different from Indiana. American Teen follows the lives of a group of teenagers during their senior year of high schools. There's the usual triumphs and tragedies that accompany the final year of high school, but there aren't a whole lot of surprises. If the director saught out to find the stereotypical examples of the kids you'd find in a high school, then she certainly succeeded in that effort. There is the jock, the geek, the queen, the artist, and the freaks. We are introduced to these students over the course of the film and get to learn about their lives as we go along. It helps us understand the characters better, but it doesn't do anything more than the Breakfast Club did. There were a lot of moments I found myself wondering whether or not it was at all possible for some of these events to be occurring. For example, the kinds of antics Megan, the princess of the school, gets away with and orchestrates border on manipulative megalomania. And on the other end, there are some painfully awkward moments coming out of resident geek Jake. Who at 17 shows up at your date's house with a bouquet of roses? Props to him for having the guts to do it, though. I don't know, maybe my high school experience was so different from this that I can't connect with it very well, but overall I think a competent job was done in executing the story. The cartoon sequences that illustrate some of the students' hopes, dreams, and fears were very well done and I wish they had presented themselves more often throughout the film. Overall, I think American Teen does a good job of painting a picture of high school life in Warsaw, Indiana, but perhaps not everywhere else. I'm starting to think more and more that you'd need to have a documentary for every high school to properly represent most people's high school career. http://www.spout.com/groups/Forever_Young/Re_The_Brat_Pack/85/35934/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: seely
Post To: Forever Young
Post Date: 10/6/2008 10:21:30 AM
Body: I completely agree. In my opinion, the potrayal of the average teen has gone from someone whom actually looks/acts like a teenager to a nearly thirty-something (see: 'The OC') playing a seventeen-year-old who acts like a nearly-thirty-something. Being in my mid twenties myself, I find myself relating more to 90's and millenial teen dramas than I did when I was in highschool watching them. They were funny, entertaining, and made me wonder why my life wasn't like that at the time. I remember watching 'The Breakfast Club' in highschool, around the time 'American Pie' came out, and thinking to myself that I could really relate to TBC a lot more than AP. That being said, has anyone seen the previews for American Teen? It is being called the new Breakfast Club by some. Seems to be a potential trend-setter for post-new-millenial teen films, as its shot almost more like a documentary. Seems like its shot with crappy lighting and a handheld, in an attempt to look as 'real' as possible. From the trailer, it looked like it has a lot of potential to be good and generated a lot of buzz at Sundance. I have my fingers crossed. [quote user="filmgal81"] Instead of the actors behaving like teens, clumsy, self-conscious and Insecure ( to varying degress), they acted more like the 20 -somethings that were playing them. In fact i'll go as far to say that the " new" movie teens act more like the adults that 80s teens they knew that they weren't. You don't see as much of that struggle between adulthood and teendom as you did in earlier teen movies. We no longer see the evolution into adulthood- teens who are starting to form their own ideas, but did not have the world figured out yet and had some idea when they were in over their heads. [/quote]
]]>Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:21:30 GMTseelyForever Young10/6/2008 10:21:30 AMI completely agree. In my opinion, the potrayal of the average teen has gone from someone whom actually looks/acts like a teenager to a nearly thirty-something (see: 'The OC') playing a seventeen-year-old who acts like a nearly-thirty-something. Being in my mid twenties myself, I find myself relating more to 90's and millenial teen dramas than I did when I was in highschool watching them. They were funny, entertaining, and made me wonder why my life wasn't like that at the time. I remember watching 'The Breakfast Club' in highschool, around the time 'American Pie' came out, and thinking to myself that I could really relate to TBC a lot more than AP. That being said, has anyone seen the previews for American Teen? It is being called the new Breakfast Club by some. Seems to be a potential trend-setter for post-new-millenial teen films, as its shot almost more like a documentary. Seems like its shot with crappy lighting and a handheld, in an attempt to look as 'real' as possible. From the trailer, it looked like it has a lot of potential to be good and generated a lot of buzz at Sundance. I have my fingers crossed. [quote user="filmgal81"] Instead of the actors behaving like teens, clumsy, self-conscious and Insecure ( to varying degress), they acted more like the 20 -somethings that were playing them. In fact i'll go as far to say that the " new" movie teens act more like the adults that 80s teens they knew that they weren't. You don't see as much of that struggle between adulthood and teendom as you did in earlier teen movies. We no longer see the evolution into adulthood- teens who are starting to form their own ideas, but did not have the world figured out yet and had some idea when they were in over their heads. [/quote] http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/7/25/33091.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 7/25/2008 2:01:29 PM
Body: Nanette Burstein’s American Teen has become ubiquitous since its Sundance premiere, both on the festival circuit and, thanks to a poster carefully calibrated to target Gen X nostalgia, online. Its title suggests a wishful universality, as if to say, “This is it! This is an unfiltered portrait of averageness!” Certainly, its semi-rural Indiana location was chosen for its middleness, both geographically and demographically––or, at least, to conform to a coastal idea of what that looks like. Certainly, in choosing to focus on a cross-section of subjects playing into our media-fed concepts of high school stereotypes, Burstein manages to show life at the same high school from a variety of different angles, whilst simultaneously playing up the idea that all American Teens are––really––hopelessly insecure dreamers stuck in a variety of systems and strictures that they’re desperate to break out of. But everyone prevails, because that’s what totally mythic average Americans do –– it’s, like, rugged individualism! Much has been made in regards to Burstein’s alleged “manipulation” of her subjects and their lives: did she recreate email/text message exchanges or the reactions they caused? Does it matter if she did? I’ve seen the film twice, and neither time did these shot-reverse shot depictions of near-instant communication seem to get in the way of a larger truth. But there are other elements of American Teen’s construction which are troubling––not because they came after-the-fact and weren’t produced organically in real life, but because Burstein either isn’t aware of or has made a conscious decision to ignore the very fact of “non-fiction” filmmaking that her subjects and their peers are likely most exposed to: MTV’s various reality shows, including True Life, The Real World, and, especially, Laguna Beach and The Hills. Check out this Burstein quote in a recent story on the film, by Mark Olsen for the L.A. Times: “I think it’s unusual to have a very narrative documentary, so people aren’t used to it,” she continued. I think people have a hard time believing teenagers are willing to be that intimate on camera. So sometimes I feel I’m being criticized for what the film’s achievements are.” This is a bafflingly solipsistic statement coming from a filmmaker whose work has been criticized for being too “glossy” and “mainstream.” Her “achievements,” this “very narrative” form of documentary that she apparently thinks she’s pioneering, looks an awfully lot like the “non-scripted” content that MTV has been producing for 15 years or more, which has evolved from teenagers and young adults being actually, naively “intimate” in front of a camera––which more often than not meant exhibitionism in lieu of real intimacy (have you watched the first season of the Real World lately?)––to teenagers delivering a rote, practiced version of what television has told them looks like intimacy. Of course, this transition has reached its apex with the stunningly successful The Hills, a reality show in-name-only that miles more stylish and satisfying than most scripted media about Americans of the same age. That Paramount Vantage would acquire American Teen is a no brainer: it accomplishes many of the same things, stylistically and thematically and atmospherically, that have lured a massive audience of eye and brain candy hungry youth to the other “non-fiction” products of Viacom––whether Burstein is ready to admit it or not. There are scraps of voiceover in American Teen that come across as every bit as hollow (if not scripted) as the narrative catch-up which opens most episodes of Laguna Beach, suggesting, at the very least, that Burstein’s subjects have internalized the cadences used by “real” people on television. Formally, the film’s use of comic cutaways––such as talking head testimony about Megan (aka: The Bitch, aka My Favorite) laid into footage of Megan shooting guns––seems borrowed from the countless reality shows where we see visual irony used to subtly and not-so-subtly mock the contestants; if this is one of Burstein’s “achievements,” it’s one she shares with Flavor of Love. But ultimately, what really pisses me off about American Teen is the way Burstein––following countless mainstream non-fiction productions before her––privilieges the female victim at the expense of asking difficult questions about the psychology of victimhood and its roots in social constructs like high school. American Teen propagates the same, modern-day martyr, constant victim-as-star bullshit that L.C. plays out season after season on The Hills. And even that, it gets wrong. There’s not a single scene featuring American Teen victim/hero Hannah that’s anywhere near as elegant, sympathetic and purely satisfying as the final shot of the recently-released trailer for the next season of The Hills. As frequent watchers know, L.C. wears a lot of eye makeup –– grease paint armor against a camera primarily concerned with collaging her every eye roll out of context. But here, in a fight with a female friend, the poster girl for the cool, enigmatic eye twitch allows a single tear to carry a stream of mascara down her cheek. It is the moment that Hills fans––nay, the entirety of the culture––have been waiting for for three years. Nay, the entire decade! Burstein clearly has a fondness for certain for her subjects, which allows her to present them sympathetically, even when their behavior is less than admirable. Unfortunately, this leads to an almost total lack of interrogation of Hannah, an artsy girl whose “unlikely” Achilles’ heel is attractive men. Burstein privileges Hannah’s milquetoast heartbreaks over the exploits of “princess” Megan, which I think is a shame; for all her non-conformist posturing, Hannah reveals herself to be so easily led by the concept of traditional romance that you end up wishing that someone would just slap her with a copy of Sexual Personae and make her education compete Meanwhile, Megan, who survives Burstein’s regrettable stab at “humanizing” her mean girl behavior through a gently montage describing a family tragedy, is clearly a great, natural villian who revels in her caste-based supremacy. She’s a wildly compelling and infuriating socio-sexual manipulator straight out of Dangerous Liasons (or, maybe more accurately, Cruel Intentions)––except, though comfortably upper-middle-class, she can’t quite hide behind the excuse that money breeds depravity. She’s just not a nice person, and that’s real. There is, I’m sure, an amazingly insightful film somewhere in American Teen’s discarded footage, purely about Megan and the social psychology of high school power. And I’m dying for it. But as its title suggests, American Teen is shooting for a wider scope, which might be more interesting if Burstein wasn’t so complicit in reinforcing tired stereotypes in her unwillingness to cast her camera outside of them. In one of the film’s most egregious fuck yous to objectivity, Burstein implicitly condones the scarlet letter outcasting of Megan’s rival for her male friend’s affections, by discarding that character from the narrative as quickly as Megan does from her circle. This girl, whose ill-advised willingness to send a crush a smutty photo resulted in her being ostracized from the cool kids table and, we are led to believe, more or less total shame from the community––if THIS girl is not an American Teen, who is? Note: Scant portions of this review appeared in a piece previously published during SilverDocs. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:01:29 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog7/25/2008 2:01:29 PM Nanette Burstein’s American Teen has become ubiquitous since its Sundance premiere, both on the festival circuit and, thanks to a poster carefully calibrated to target Gen X nostalgia, online. Its title suggests a wishful universality, as if to say, “This is it! This is an unfiltered portrait of averageness!” Certainly, its semi-rural Indiana location was chosen for its middleness, both geographically and demographically––or, at least, to conform to a coastal idea of what that looks like. Certainly, in choosing to focus on a cross-section of subjects playing into our media-fed concepts of high school stereotypes, Burstein manages to show life at the same high school from a variety of different angles, whilst simultaneously playing up the idea that all American Teens are––really––hopelessly insecure dreamers stuck in a variety of systems and strictures that they’re desperate to break out of. But everyone prevails, because that’s what totally mythic average Americans do –– it’s, like, rugged individualism! Much has been made in regards to Burstein’s alleged “manipulation” of her subjects and their lives: did she recreate email/text message exchanges or the reactions they caused? Does it matter if she did? I’ve seen the film twice, and neither time did these shot-reverse shot depictions of near-instant communication seem to get in the way of a larger truth. But there are other elements of American Teen’s construction which are troubling––not because they came after-the-fact and weren’t produced organically in real life, but because Burstein either isn’t aware of or has made a conscious decision to ignore the very fact of “non-fiction” filmmaking that her subjects and their peers are likely most exposed to: MTV’s various reality shows, including True Life, The Real World, and, especially, Laguna Beach and The Hills. Check out this Burstein quote in a recent story on the film, by Mark Olsen for the L.A. Times: “I think it’s unusual to have a very narrative documentary, so people aren’t used to it,” she continued. I think people have a hard time believing teenagers are willing to be that intimate on camera. So sometimes I feel I’m being criticized for what the film’s achievements are.” This is a bafflingly solipsistic statement coming from a filmmaker whose work has been criticized for being too “glossy” and “mainstream.” Her “achievements,” this “very narrative” form of documentary that she apparently thinks she’s pioneering, looks an awfully lot like the “non-scripted” content that MTV has been producing for 15 years or more, which has evolved from teenagers and young adults being actually, naively “intimate” in front of a camera––which more often than not meant exhibitionism in lieu of real intimacy (have you watched the first season of the Real World lately?)––to teenagers delivering a rote, practiced version of what television has told them looks like intimacy. Of course, this transition has reached its apex with the stunningly successful The Hills, a reality show in-name-only that miles more stylish and satisfying than most scripted media about Americans of the same age. That Paramount Vantage would acquire American Teen is a no brainer: it accomplishes many of the same things, stylistically and thematically and atmospherically, that have lured a massive audience of eye and brain candy hungry youth to the other “non-fiction” products of Viacom––whether Burstein is ready to admit it or not. There are scraps of voiceover in American Teen that come across as every bit as hollow (if not scripted) as the narrative catch-up which opens most episodes of Laguna Beach, suggesting, at the very least, that Burstein’s subjects have internalized the cadences used by “real” people on television. Formally, the film’s use of comic cutaways––such as talking head testimony about Megan (aka: The Bitch, aka My Favorite) laid into footage of Megan shooting guns––seems borrowed from the countless reality shows where we see visual irony used to subtly and not-so-subtly mock the contestants; if this is one of Burstein’s “achievements,” it’s one she shares with Flavor of Love. But ultimately, what really pisses me off about American Teen is the way Burstein––following countless mainstream non-fiction productions before her––privilieges the female victim at the expense of asking difficult questions about the psychology of victimhood and its roots in social constructs like high school. American Teen propagates the same, modern-day martyr, constant victim-as-star bullshit that L.C. plays out season after season on The Hills. And even that, it gets wrong. There’s not a single scene featuring American Teen victim/hero Hannah that’s anywhere near as elegant, sympathetic and purely satisfying as the final shot of the recently-released trailer for the next season of The Hills. As frequent watchers know, L.C. wears a lot of eye makeup –– grease paint armor against a camera primarily concerned with collaging her every eye roll out of context. But here, in a fight with a female friend, the poster girl for the cool, enigmatic eye twitch allows a single tear to carry a stream of mascara down her cheek. It is the moment that Hills fans––nay, the entirety of the culture––have been waiting for for three years. Nay, the entire decade! Burstein clearly has a fondness for certain for her subjects, which allows her to present them sympathetically, even when their behavior is less than admirable. Unfortunately, this leads to an almost total lack of interrogation of Hannah, an artsy girl whose “unlikely” Achilles’ heel is attractive men. Burstein privileges Hannah’s milquetoast heartbreaks over the exploits of “princess” Megan, which I think is a shame; for all her non-conformist posturing, Hannah reveals herself to be so easily led by the concept of traditional romance that you end up wishing that someone would just slap her with a copy of Sexual Personae and make her education compete Meanwhile, Megan, who survives Burstein’s regrettable stab at “humanizing” her mean girl behavior through a gently montage describing a family tragedy, is clearly a great, natural villian who revels in her caste-based supremacy. She’s a wildly compelling and infuriating socio-sexual manipulator straight out of Dangerous Liasons (or, maybe more accurately, Cruel Intentions)––except, though comfortably upper-middle-class, she can’t quite hide behind the excuse that money breeds depravity. She’s just not a nice person, and that’s real. There is, I’m sure, an amazingly insightful film somewhere in American Teen’s discarded footage, purely about Megan and the social psychology of high school power. And I’m dying for it. But as its title suggests, American Teen is shooting for a wider scope, which might be more interesting if Burstein wasn’t so complicit in reinforcing tired stereotypes in her unwillingness to cast her camera outside of them. In one of the film’s most egregious fuck yous to objectivity, Burstein implicitly condones the scarlet letter outcasting of Megan’s rival for her male friend’s affections, by discarding that character from the narrative as quickly as Megan does from her circle. This girl, whose ill-advised willingness to send a crush a smutty photo resulted in her being ostracized from the cool kids table and, we are led to believe, more or less total shame from the community––if THIS girl is not an American Teen, who is? Note: Scant portions of this review appeared in a piece previously published during SilverDocs. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/7/25/33090.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 7/25/2008 2:01:19 PM
Body: Nanette Burstein’s American Teen has become ubiquitous since its Sundance premiere, both on the festival circuit and, thanks to a poster carefully calibrated to target Gen X nostalgia, online. Its title suggests a wishful universality, as if to say, “This is it! This is an unfiltered portrait of averageness!” Certainly, its semi-rural Indiana location was chosen for its middleness, both geographically and demographically––or, at least, to conform to a coastal idea of what that looks like. Certainly, in choosing to focus on a cross-section of subjects playing into our media-fed concepts of high school stereotypes, Burstein manages to show life at the same high school from a variety of different angles, whilst simultaneously playing up the idea that all American Teens are––really––hopelessly insecure dreamers stuck in a variety of systems and strictures that they’re desperate to break out of. But everyone prevails, because that’s what totally mythic average Americans do –– it’s, like, rugged individualism! Much has been made in regards to Burstein’s alleged “manipulation” of her subjects and their lives: did she recreate email/text message exchanges or the reactions they caused? Does it matter if she did? I’ve seen the film twice, and neither time did these shot-reverse shot depictions of near-instant communication seem to get in the way of a larger truth. But there are other elements of American Teen’s construction which are troubling––not because they came after-the-fact and weren’t produced organically in real life, but because Burstein either isn’t aware of or has made a conscious decision to ignore the very fact of “non-fiction” filmmaking that her subjects and their peers are likely most exposed to: MTV’s various reality shows, including True Life, The Real World, and, especially, Laguna Beach and The Hills. Check out this Burstein quote in a recent story on the film, by Mark Olsen for the L.A. Times: “I think it’s unusual to have a very narrative documentary, so people aren’t used to it,” she continued. I think people have a hard time believing teenagers are willing to be that intimate on camera. So sometimes I feel I’m being criticized for what the film’s achievements are.” This is a bafflingly solipsistic statement coming from a filmmaker whose work has been criticized for being too “glossy” and “mainstream.” Her “achievements,” this “very narrative” form of documentary that she apparently thinks she’s pioneering, looks an awfully lot like the “non-scripted” content that MTV has been producing for 15 years or more, which has evolved from teenagers and young adults being actually, naively “intimate” in front of a camera––which more often than not meant exhibitionism in lieu of real intimacy (have you watched the first season of the Real World lately?)––to teenagers delivering a rote, practiced version of what television has told them looks like intimacy. Of course, this transition has reached its apex with the stunningly successful The Hills, a reality show in-name-only that miles more stylish and satisfying than most scripted media about Americans of the same age. That Paramount Vantage would acquire American Teen is a no brainer: it accomplishes many of the same things, stylistically and thematically and atmospherically, that have lured a massive audience of eye and brain candy hungry youth to the other “non-fiction” products of Viacom––whether Burstein is ready to admit it or not. There are scraps of voiceover in American Teen that come across as every bit as hollow (if not scripted) as the narrative catch-up which opens most episodes of Laguna Beach, suggesting, at the very least, that Burstein’s subjects have internalized the cadences used by “real” people on television. Formally, the film’s use of comic cutaways––such as talking head testimony about Megan (aka: The Bitch, aka My Favorite) laid into footage of Megan shooting guns––seems borrowed from the countless reality shows where we see visual irony used to subtly and not-so-subtly mock the contestants; if this is one of Burstein’s “achievements,” it’s one she shares with Flavor of Love. But ultimately, what really pisses me off about American Teen is the way Burstein––following countless mainstream non-fiction productions before her––privilieges the female victim at the expense of asking difficult questions about the psychology of victimhood and its roots in social constructs like high school. American Teen propagates the same, modern-day martyr, constant victim-as-star bullshit that L.C. plays out season after season on The Hills. And even that, it gets wrong. There’s not a single scene featuring American Teen victim/hero Hannah that’s anywhere near as elegant, sympathetic and purely satisfying as the final shot of the recently-released trailer for the next season of The Hills. As frequent watchers know, L.C. wears a lot of eye makeup –– grease paint armor against a camera primarily concerned with collaging her every eye roll out of context. But here, in a fight with a female friend, the poster girl for the cool, enigmatic eye twitch allows a single tear to carry a stream of mascara down her cheek. It is the moment that Hills fans––nay, the entirety of the culture––have been waiting for for three years. Nay, the entire decade! Burstein clearly has a fondness for certain for her subjects, which allows her to present them sympathetically, even when their behavior is less than admirable. Unfortunately, this leads to an almost total lack of interrogation of Hannah, an artsy girl whose “unlikely” Achilles’ heel is attractive men. Burstein privileges Hannah’s milquetoast heartbreaks over the exploits of “princess” Megan, which I think is a shame; for all her non-conformist posturing, Hannah reveals herself to be so easily led by the concept of traditional romance that you end up wishing that someone would just slap her with a copy of Sexual Personae and make her education compete Meanwhile, Megan, who survives Burstein’s regrettable stab at “humanizing” her mean girl behavior through a gently montage describing a family tragedy, is clearly a great, natural villian who revels in her caste-based supremacy. She’s a wildly compelling and infuriating socio-sexual manipulator straight out of Dangerous Liasons (or, maybe more accurately, Cruel Intentions)––except, though comfortably upper-middle-class, she can’t quite hide behind the excuse that money breeds depravity. She’s just not a nice person, and that’s real. There is, I’m sure, an amazingly insightful film somewhere in American Teen’s discarded footage, purely about Megan and the social psychology of high school power. And I’m dying for it. But as its title suggests, American Teen is shooting for a wider scope, which might be more interesting if Burstein wasn’t so complicit in reinforcing tired stereotypes in her unwillingness to cast her camera outside of them. In one of the film’s most egregious fuck yous to objectivity, Burstein implicitly condones the scarlet letter outcasting of Megan’s rival for her male friend’s affections, by discarding that character from the narrative as quickly as Megan does from her circle. This girl, whose ill-advised willingness to send a crush a smutty photo resulted in her being ostracized from the cool kids table and, we are led to believe, more or less total shame from the community––if THIS girl is not an American Teen, who is? Note: Scant portions of this review appeared in a piece previously published during SilverDocs. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:01:19 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com7/25/2008 2:01:19 PM Nanette Burstein’s American Teen has become ubiquitous since its Sundance premiere, both on the festival circuit and, thanks to a poster carefully calibrated to target Gen X nostalgia, online. Its title suggests a wishful universality, as if to say, “This is it! This is an unfiltered portrait of averageness!” Certainly, its semi-rural Indiana location was chosen for its middleness, both geographically and demographically––or, at least, to conform to a coastal idea of what that looks like. Certainly, in choosing to focus on a cross-section of subjects playing into our media-fed concepts of high school stereotypes, Burstein manages to show life at the same high school from a variety of different angles, whilst simultaneously playing up the idea that all American Teens are––really––hopelessly insecure dreamers stuck in a variety of systems and strictures that they’re desperate to break out of. But everyone prevails, because that’s what totally mythic average Americans do –– it’s, like, rugged individualism! Much has been made in regards to Burstein’s alleged “manipulation” of her subjects and their lives: did she recreate email/text message exchanges or the reactions they caused? Does it matter if she did? I’ve seen the film twice, and neither time did these shot-reverse shot depictions of near-instant communication seem to get in the way of a larger truth. But there are other elements of American Teen’s construction which are troubling––not because they came after-the-fact and weren’t produced organically in real life, but because Burstein either isn’t aware of or has made a conscious decision to ignore the very fact of “non-fiction” filmmaking that her subjects and their peers are likely most exposed to: MTV’s various reality shows, including True Life, The Real World, and, especially, Laguna Beach and The Hills. Check out this Burstein quote in a recent story on the film, by Mark Olsen for the L.A. Times: “I think it’s unusual to have a very narrative documentary, so people aren’t used to it,” she continued. I think people have a hard time believing teenagers are willing to be that intimate on camera. So sometimes I feel I’m being criticized for what the film’s achievements are.” This is a bafflingly solipsistic statement coming from a filmmaker whose work has been criticized for being too “glossy” and “mainstream.” Her “achievements,” this “very narrative” form of documentary that she apparently thinks she’s pioneering, looks an awfully lot like the “non-scripted” content that MTV has been producing for 15 years or more, which has evolved from teenagers and young adults being actually, naively “intimate” in front of a camera––which more often than not meant exhibitionism in lieu of real intimacy (have you watched the first season of the Real World lately?)––to teenagers delivering a rote, practiced version of what television has told them looks like intimacy. Of course, this transition has reached its apex with the stunningly successful The Hills, a reality show in-name-only that miles more stylish and satisfying than most scripted media about Americans of the same age. That Paramount Vantage would acquire American Teen is a no brainer: it accomplishes many of the same things, stylistically and thematically and atmospherically, that have lured a massive audience of eye and brain candy hungry youth to the other “non-fiction” products of Viacom––whether Burstein is ready to admit it or not. There are scraps of voiceover in American Teen that come across as every bit as hollow (if not scripted) as the narrative catch-up which opens most episodes of Laguna Beach, suggesting, at the very least, that Burstein’s subjects have internalized the cadences used by “real” people on television. Formally, the film’s use of comic cutaways––such as talking head testimony about Megan (aka: The Bitch, aka My Favorite) laid into footage of Megan shooting guns––seems borrowed from the countless reality shows where we see visual irony used to subtly and not-so-subtly mock the contestants; if this is one of Burstein’s “achievements,” it’s one she shares with Flavor of Love. But ultimately, what really pisses me off about American Teen is the way Burstein––following countless mainstream non-fiction productions before her––privilieges the female victim at the expense of asking difficult questions about the psychology of victimhood and its roots in social constructs like high school. American Teen propagates the same, modern-day martyr, constant victim-as-star bullshit that L.C. plays out season after season on The Hills. And even that, it gets wrong. There’s not a single scene featuring American Teen victim/hero Hannah that’s anywhere near as elegant, sympathetic and purely satisfying as the final shot of the recently-released trailer for the next season of The Hills. As frequent watchers know, L.C. wears a lot of eye makeup –– grease paint armor against a camera primarily concerned with collaging her every eye roll out of context. But here, in a fight with a female friend, the poster girl for the cool, enigmatic eye twitch allows a single tear to carry a stream of mascara down her cheek. It is the moment that Hills fans––nay, the entirety of the culture––have been waiting for for three years. Nay, the entire decade! Burstein clearly has a fondness for certain for her subjects, which allows her to present them sympathetically, even when their behavior is less than admirable. Unfortunately, this leads to an almost total lack of interrogation of Hannah, an artsy girl whose “unlikely” Achilles’ heel is attractive men. Burstein privileges Hannah’s milquetoast heartbreaks over the exploits of “princess” Megan, which I think is a shame; for all her non-conformist posturing, Hannah reveals herself to be so easily led by the concept of traditional romance that you end up wishing that someone would just slap her with a copy of Sexual Personae and make her education compete Meanwhile, Megan, who survives Burstein’s regrettable stab at “humanizing” her mean girl behavior through a gently montage describing a family tragedy, is clearly a great, natural villian who revels in her caste-based supremacy. She’s a wildly compelling and infuriating socio-sexual manipulator straight out of Dangerous Liasons (or, maybe more accurately, Cruel Intentions)––except, though comfortably upper-middle-class, she can’t quite hide behind the excuse that money breeds depravity. She’s just not a nice person, and that’s real. There is, I’m sure, an amazingly insightful film somewhere in American Teen’s discarded footage, purely about Megan and the social psychology of high school power. And I’m dying for it. But as its title suggests, American Teen is shooting for a wider scope, which might be more interesting if Burstein wasn’t so complicit in reinforcing tired stereotypes in her unwillingness to cast her camera outside of them. In one of the film’s most egregious fuck yous to objectivity, Burstein implicitly condones the scarlet letter outcasting of Megan’s rival for her male friend’s affections, by discarding that character from the narrative as quickly as Megan does from her circle. This girl, whose ill-advised willingness to send a crush a smutty photo resulted in her being ostracized from the cool kids table and, we are led to believe, more or less total shame from the community––if THIS girl is not an American Teen, who is? Note: Scant portions of this review appeared in a piece previously published during SilverDocs. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/6/23/31545.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 6/23/2008 11:02:49 AM
Body: Nannette Burstein’s American Teen has become ubiquitous since its Sundance premiere, both on the festival circuit and, thanks to a poster carefully calibrated to target Gen X nostalgia, online. Its title suggests a wishful universality, but in fact, when looked at alongside two less-lauded films about American teens against which it screened here in Silver Spring, its document of five white high school seniors in a semi-rural suburb of Indiana seems as niche as it gets. World premiering here on Friday before beginning a run on HBO Monday night, Hard Times at Douglas High is a fly-on-the-wall work of activism documenting a year in the life of an all-black Baltimore high school, as teachers, students and administrators struggle to comply with No Child Left Behind. Made by the directors of the seminal reality series An American Family, it makes visible the reverberations of blind bureaucracy on living and breathing institutions, making the home and personal lives of its students a spectre, but not a direct concern. Taking the inverse tactic, Going on 13’s intimate portrait of four girls passing through puberty (or, “puberey”, as one subject refers to it early on) over the course of four years in a barely middle-class Northern California community touches on the institutions that contain their lives only incidentally. Seen together in a single weekend, each of the three seem to say less about age than the variables of fate as played out through place and race. It should be noted that these are films of wildly varying degrees of visual accomplishment and technical proficiency. American Teen looks as expensively and professionally made as the highest caliber of unscripted TV. Despite the impressive resume of its makers, Hard Times‘ camerawork seems, at best, less than deliberate, and at worst, absolutely amateur. Though its the only film of the three without a corporate production partner, Going on 13 fits somewhere in between. The technical specs seem important, because that’s where the filmmakers’ hands in shaping these stories is most evident. Much has been made in regards to Nannette Burstein’s alleged “manipulation” of her subjects and their lives: did she recreate email/text message exchanges or the reactions they caused? Does it matter if she did? I’ve seen the film twice, and neither time did these shot-reverse shot depictions of near-instant communication seem to get in the way of a larger truth. I do think the trickier––and braver––aspect of American Teen’s stylization is the use of animation, wherein each major “character” is given a sequence through which the reality of their current lives is carried over into their dreams for the future. Bitch about the ethics of “construction” if you must, but this is where Burstein shows us that she’s on her subjects’ side, even as she later presents evidence that she doesn’t always condone what they do (and nor should the bulk of their youthful mistakes be condoned). Cynics should also take some comfort in the notion that if the marketing campaign has gone out of its way to recall the Breakfast Club, it stems from the fact that––again, like it or not, and for me it’s not all of a piece–– the director herself strains to drop her characters into achetypical boxes (the art freak, the jock, the rich bitch) that fit the poster’s references. At least the gimmick stems from the content, even if––spoiler alert!––that blonde boy at the top of the cluster doesn’t quite deserve to be represented by the black, fingerless glove in the end. As dreamy as Judd Nelson? Maybe. As obstinately anarchic in that way that only a boy with a warm, safe bed and a conviction that he’s nonetheless got nothing to lose can pull off? Hardly. Going on 13 also makes use of animation, but less successfully; its notebook-scratch transitions are a distancing device which cut up the true meat of the story. But, refreshingly, its subjects defy easy typifying. Directors Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and Dawn Valadez tracked four loosely-connected girls from ages 9 to 13: Arianna, a black tomboy living with a single mom; Isha, the daughter of a traditional Indian family whose intelligence and commitment to cultural traditions render her an outcast at school; Esmeralda, an overweight, sexually curious Mexican girl; and Rosie, a half-Nicauraguan child of divorce whose mentally unwell mother disrupts attempts at a balance between school and home. The diversity of their cast makes for instant dynamism, but the directors truly impress through their evidently close relationships with the girls. In tracking their subjects from late elementary school through their entrance into high school, their cameras are able to become invisible enough to capture certain moments as if unawares (there’s an incredible shot where Arianna, serving as a bridesmaid at her mother’s wedding, approaches a tilted-up camera with her face first quaking in fear, and then melting into tears); other moments intriguingly betray the long-term effect of the cameras on the subjects’ lives, as when Esmeralda can barely remove her head from behind her arms whilst discussing her first break up. 13 touches more often and more deeply than these other two films, so if it stops short of offering a Grand Statement about The Way Kids Live Now, that seems okay––as a portrait of the inner lives of teen girls in a single community, its most complete. Hard Times gives the sense that in an urban school in crisis, the students have no time for the personal developmental indulgence seen in the other two films. The richest, most popular girl in American Teen has ample time to torment her classmates; the students of Douglas High aren’t thinking about pettily evil agendas because, more often than not, they’ve got babies to raise––unless they’re out nurturing their criminal careers. As one of the school’s most on-top-of-it teachers inform us, something like three quarters of the incoming freshman class has “disappeared” by the 12th grade. Most teachers see less than a handful of parents at Back to School Night, and in spite of No Child Left Behind’s emphasis on tough love testing, teachers are encouraged to give seniors as many second chances as they need to qualify for graduation. The simple fact is, the school needs to get rid of them––a department head faculty meeting gives the impression that even with the school’s sorry state of matriculation, there aren’t enough books and desks as it is. Hard Times has undeniably strong moments––a post-basketball loss pep-talk forms the core of the film and delivers its defining message: “Shit that don’t kill you, do what? Make you stronger!”––but in concentrating on the uncertainty of the administration and the helplessness of the teachers, it unavoidably colors the students as the roiling mass of Other. Though the bulk of the adults at Douglas High are, like the minors storming its halls, black and native-born to the community, the actual American teens on screen are rarely interrogated as people, and are in fact most often treated en masse as a problem to be wrangled, to which ultimately, with their apparently indifferent parents and almost total lack of respectable options, neither the filmmakers nor the school professionals seem to have any unsatisfying answers. If Hard Times is the messiest film of the three visually, you can’t say it’s unwarranted by the content; it’s the one film that leaves you with the impression that, in the current climate, the kids are definitely not alright. Full disclosure: In 2004, I spent a weekend logging tapes for a documentary Nanette Burstein made about Marion Jones. I found the job on Craig’s List and never actually met the director. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:02:49 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog6/23/2008 11:02:49 AM Nannette Burstein’s American Teen has become ubiquitous since its Sundance premiere, both on the festival circuit and, thanks to a poster carefully calibrated to target Gen X nostalgia, online. Its title suggests a wishful universality, but in fact, when looked at alongside two less-lauded films about American teens against which it screened here in Silver Spring, its document of five white high school seniors in a semi-rural suburb of Indiana seems as niche as it gets. World premiering here on Friday before beginning a run on HBO Monday night, Hard Times at Douglas High is a fly-on-the-wall work of activism documenting a year in the life of an all-black Baltimore high school, as teachers, students and administrators struggle to comply with No Child Left Behind. Made by the directors of the seminal reality series An American Family, it makes visible the reverberations of blind bureaucracy on living and breathing institutions, making the home and personal lives of its students a spectre, but not a direct concern. Taking the inverse tactic, Going on 13’s intimate portrait of four girls passing through puberty (or, “puberey”, as one subject refers to it early on) over the course of four years in a barely middle-class Northern California community touches on the institutions that contain their lives only incidentally. Seen together in a single weekend, each of the three seem to say less about age than the variables of fate as played out through place and race. It should be noted that these are films of wildly varying degrees of visual accomplishment and technical proficiency. American Teen looks as expensively and professionally made as the highest caliber of unscripted TV. Despite the impressive resume of its makers, Hard Times‘ camerawork seems, at best, less than deliberate, and at worst, absolutely amateur. Though its the only film of the three without a corporate production partner, Going on 13 fits somewhere in between. The technical specs seem important, because that’s where the filmmakers’ hands in shaping these stories is most evident. Much has been made in regards to Nannette Burstein’s alleged “manipulation” of her subjects and their lives: did she recreate email/text message exchanges or the reactions they caused? Does it matter if she did? I’ve seen the film twice, and neither time did these shot-reverse shot depictions of near-instant communication seem to get in the way of a larger truth. I do think the trickier––and braver––aspect of American Teen’s stylization is the use of animation, wherein each major “character” is given a sequence through which the reality of their current lives is carried over into their dreams for the future. Bitch about the ethics of “construction” if you must, but this is where Burstein shows us that she’s on her subjects’ side, even as she later presents evidence that she doesn’t always condone what they do (and nor should the bulk of their youthful mistakes be condoned). Cynics should also take some comfort in the notion that if the marketing campaign has gone out of its way to recall the Breakfast Club, it stems from the fact that––again, like it or not, and for me it’s not all of a piece–– the director herself strains to drop her characters into achetypical boxes (the art freak, the jock, the rich bitch) that fit the poster’s references. At least the gimmick stems from the content, even if––spoiler alert!––that blonde boy at the top of the cluster doesn’t quite deserve to be represented by the black, fingerless glove in the end. As dreamy as Judd Nelson? Maybe. As obstinately anarchic in that way that only a boy with a warm, safe bed and a conviction that he’s nonetheless got nothing to lose can pull off? Hardly. Going on 13 also makes use of animation, but less successfully; its notebook-scratch transitions are a distancing device which cut up the true meat of the story. But, refreshingly, its subjects defy easy typifying. Directors Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and Dawn Valadez tracked four loosely-connected girls from ages 9 to 13: Arianna, a black tomboy living with a single mom; Isha, the daughter of a traditional Indian family whose intelligence and commitment to cultural traditions render her an outcast at school; Esmeralda, an overweight, sexually curious Mexican girl; and Rosie, a half-Nicauraguan child of divorce whose mentally unwell mother disrupts attempts at a balance between school and home. The diversity of their cast makes for instant dynamism, but the directors truly impress through their evidently close relationships with the girls. In tracking their subjects from late elementary school through their entrance into high school, their cameras are able to become invisible enough to capture certain moments as if unawares (there’s an incredible shot where Arianna, serving as a bridesmaid at her mother’s wedding, approaches a tilted-up camera with her face first quaking in fear, and then melting into tears); other moments intriguingly betray the long-term effect of the cameras on the subjects’ lives, as when Esmeralda can barely remove her head from behind her arms whilst discussing her first break up. 13 touches more often and more deeply than these other two films, so if it stops short of offering a Grand Statement about The Way Kids Live Now, that seems okay––as a portrait of the inner lives of teen girls in a single community, its most complete. Hard Times gives the sense that in an urban school in crisis, the students have no time for the personal developmental indulgence seen in the other two films. The richest, most popular girl in American Teen has ample time to torment her classmates; the students of Douglas High aren’t thinking about pettily evil agendas because, more often than not, they’ve got babies to raise––unless they’re out nurturing their criminal careers. As one of the school’s most on-top-of-it teachers inform us, something like three quarters of the incoming freshman class has “disappeared” by the 12th grade. Most teachers see less than a handful of parents at Back to School Night, and in spite of No Child Left Behind’s emphasis on tough love testing, teachers are encouraged to give seniors as many second chances as they need to qualify for graduation. The simple fact is, the school needs to get rid of them––a department head faculty meeting gives the impression that even with the school’s sorry state of matriculation, there aren’t enough books and desks as it is. Hard Times has undeniably strong moments––a post-basketball loss pep-talk forms the core of the film and delivers its defining message: “Shit that don’t kill you, do what? Make you stronger!”––but in concentrating on the uncertainty of the administration and the helplessness of the teachers, it unavoidably colors the students as the roiling mass of Other. Though the bulk of the adults at Douglas High are, like the minors storming its halls, black and native-born to the community, the actual American teens on screen are rarely interrogated as people, and are in fact most often treated en masse as a problem to be wrangled, to which ultimately, with their apparently indifferent parents and almost total lack of respectable options, neither the filmmakers nor the school professionals seem to have any unsatisfying answers. If Hard Times is the messiest film of the three visually, you can’t say it’s unwarranted by the content; it’s the one film that leaves you with the impression that, in the current climate, the kids are definitely not alright. Full disclosure: In 2004, I spent a weekend logging tapes for a documentary Nanette Burstein made about Marion Jones. I found the job on Craig’s List and never actually met the director. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/6/23/31544.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 6/23/2008 11:01:01 AM
Body: Nannette Burstein’s American Teen has become ubiquitous since its Sundance premiere, both on the festival circuit and, thanks to a poster carefully calibrated to target Gen X nostalgia, online. Its title suggests a wishful universality, but in fact, when looked at alongside two less-lauded films about American teens against which it screened here in Silver Spring, its document of five white high school seniors in a semi-rural suburb of Indiana seems as niche as it gets. World premiering here on Friday before beginning a run on HBO Monday night, Hard Times at Douglas High is a fly-on-the-wall work of activism documenting a year in the life of an all-black Baltimore high school, as teachers, students and administrators struggle to comply with No Child Left Behind. Made by the directors of the seminal reality series An American Family, it makes visible the reverberations of blind bureaucracy on living and breathing institutions, making the home and personal lives of its students a spectre, but not a direct concern. Taking the inverse tactic, Going on 13’s intimate portrait of four girls passing through puberty (or, “puberey”, as one subject refers to it early on) over the course of four years in a barely middle-class Northern California community touches on the institutions that contain their lives only incidentally. Seen together in a single weekend, each of the three seem to say less about age than the variables of fate as played out through place and race. It should be noted that these are films of wildly varying degrees of visual accomplishment and technical proficiency. American Teen looks as expensively and professionally made as the highest caliber of unscripted TV. Despite the impressive resume of its makers, Hard Times‘ camerawork seems, at best, less than deliberate, and at worst, absolutely amateur. Though its the only film of the three without a corporate production partner, Going on 13 fits somewhere in between. The technical specs seem important, because that’s where the filmmakers’ hands in shaping these stories is most evident. Much has been made in regards to Nannette Burstein’s alleged “manipulation” of her subjects and their lives: did she recreate email/text message exchanges or the reactions they caused? Does it matter if she did? I’ve seen the film twice, and neither time did these shot-reverse shot depictions of near-instant communication seem to get in the way of a larger truth. I do think the trickier––and braver––aspect of American Teen’s stylization is the use of animation, wherein each major “character” is given a sequence through which the reality of their current lives is carried over into their dreams for the future. Bitch about the ethics of “construction” if you must, but this is where Burstein shows us that she’s on her subjects’ side, even as she later presents evidence that she doesn’t always condone what they do (and nor should the bulk of their youthful mistakes be condoned). Cynics should also take some comfort in the notion that if the marketing campaign has gone out of its way to recall the Breakfast Club, it stems from the fact that––again, like it or not, and for me it’s not all of a piece–– the director herself strains to drop her characters into achetypical boxes (the art freak, the jock, the rich bitch) that fit the poster’s references. At least the gimmick stems from the content, even if––spoiler alert!––that blonde boy at the top of the cluster doesn’t quite deserve to be represented by the black, fingerless glove in the end. As dreamy as Judd Nelson? Maybe. As obstinately anarchic in that way that only a boy with a warm, safe bed and a conviction that he’s nonetheless got nothing to lose can pull off? Hardly. Going on 13 also makes use of animation, but less successfully; its notebook-scratch transitions are a distancing device which cut up the true meat of the story. But, refreshingly, its subjects defy easy typifying. Directors Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and Dawn Valadez tracked four loosely-connected girls from ages 9 to 13: Arianna, a black tomboy living with a single mom; Isha, the daughter of a traditional Indian family whose intelligence and commitment to cultural traditions render her an outcast at school; Esmeralda, an overweight, sexually curious Mexican girl; and Rosie, a half-Nicauraguan child of divorce whose mentally unwell mother disrupts attempts at a balance between school and home. The diversity of their cast makes for instant dynamism, but the directors truly impress through their evidently close relationships with the girls. In tracking their subjects from late elementary school through their entrance into high school, their cameras are able to become invisible enough to capture certain moments as if unawares (there’s an incredible shot where Arianna, serving as a bridesmaid at her mother’s wedding, approaches a tilted-up camera with her face first quaking in fear, and then melting into tears); other moments intriguingly betray the long-term effect of the cameras on the subjects’ lives, as when Esmeralda can barely remove her head from behind her arms whilst discussing her first break up. 13 touches more often and more deeply than these other two films, so if it stops short of offering a Grand Statement about The Way Kids Live Now, that seems okay––as a portrait of the inner lives of teen girls in a single community, its most complete. Hard Times gives the sense that in an urban school in crisis, the students have no time for the personal developmental indulgence seen in the other two films. The richest, most popular girl in American Teen has ample time to torment her classmates; the students of Douglas High aren’t thinking about pettily evil agendas because, more often than not, they’ve got babies to raise––unless they’re out nurturing their criminal careers. As one of the school’s most on-top-of-it teachers inform us, something like three quarters of the incoming freshman class has “disappeared” by the 12th grade. Most teachers see less than a handful of parents at Back to School Night, and in spite of No Child Left Behind’s emphasis on tough love testing, teachers are encouraged to give seniors as many second chances as they need to qualify for graduation. The simple fact is, the school needs to get rid of them––a department head faculty meeting gives the impression that even with the school’s sorry state of matriculation, there aren’t enough books and desks as it is. Hard Times has undeniably strong moments––a post-basketball loss pep-talk forms the core of the film and delivers its defining message: “Shit that don’t kill you, do what? Make you stronger!”––but in concentrating on the uncertainty of the administration and the helplessness of the teachers, it unavoidably colors the students as the roiling mass of Other. Though the bulk of the adults at Douglas High are, like the minors storming its halls, black and native-born to the community, the actual American teens on screen are rarely interrogated as people, and are in fact most often treated en masse as a problem to be wrangled, to which ultimately, with their apparently indifferent parents and almost total lack of respectable options, neither the filmmakers nor the school professionals seem to have any unsatisfying answers. If Hard Times is the messiest film of the three visually, you can’t say it’s unwarranted by the content; it’s the one film that leaves you with the impression that, in the current climate, the kids are definitely not alright. Full disclosure: In 2004, I spent a weekend logging tapes for a documentary Nanette Burstein made about Marion Jones. I found the job on Craig’s List and never actually met the director. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:01:01 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com6/23/2008 11:01:01 AM Nannette Burstein’s American Teen has become ubiquitous since its Sundance premiere, both on the festival circuit and, thanks to a poster carefully calibrated to target Gen X nostalgia, online. Its title suggests a wishful universality, but in fact, when looked at alongside two less-lauded films about American teens against which it screened here in Silver Spring, its document of five white high school seniors in a semi-rural suburb of Indiana seems as niche as it gets. World premiering here on Friday before beginning a run on HBO Monday night, Hard Times at Douglas High is a fly-on-the-wall work of activism documenting a year in the life of an all-black Baltimore high school, as teachers, students and administrators struggle to comply with No Child Left Behind. Made by the directors of the seminal reality series An American Family, it makes visible the reverberations of blind bureaucracy on living and breathing institutions, making the home and personal lives of its students a spectre, but not a direct concern. Taking the inverse tactic, Going on 13’s intimate portrait of four girls passing through puberty (or, “puberey”, as one subject refers to it early on) over the course of four years in a barely middle-class Northern California community touches on the institutions that contain their lives only incidentally. Seen together in a single weekend, each of the three seem to say less about age than the variables of fate as played out through place and race. It should be noted that these are films of wildly varying degrees of visual accomplishment and technical proficiency. American Teen looks as expensively and professionally made as the highest caliber of unscripted TV. Despite the impressive resume of its makers, Hard Times‘ camerawork seems, at best, less than deliberate, and at worst, absolutely amateur. Though its the only film of the three without a corporate production partner, Going on 13 fits somewhere in between. The technical specs seem important, because that’s where the filmmakers’ hands in shaping these stories is most evident. Much has been made in regards to Nannette Burstein’s alleged “manipulation” of her subjects and their lives: did she recreate email/text message exchanges or the reactions they caused? Does it matter if she did? I’ve seen the film twice, and neither time did these shot-reverse shot depictions of near-instant communication seem to get in the way of a larger truth. I do think the trickier––and braver––aspect of American Teen’s stylization is the use of animation, wherein each major “character” is given a sequence through which the reality of their current lives is carried over into their dreams for the future. Bitch about the ethics of “construction” if you must, but this is where Burstein shows us that she’s on her subjects’ side, even as she later presents evidence that she doesn’t always condone what they do (and nor should the bulk of their youthful mistakes be condoned). Cynics should also take some comfort in the notion that if the marketing campaign has gone out of its way to recall the Breakfast Club, it stems from the fact that––again, like it or not, and for me it’s not all of a piece–– the director herself strains to drop her characters into achetypical boxes (the art freak, the jock, the rich bitch) that fit the poster’s references. At least the gimmick stems from the content, even if––spoiler alert!––that blonde boy at the top of the cluster doesn’t quite deserve to be represented by the black, fingerless glove in the end. As dreamy as Judd Nelson? Maybe. As obstinately anarchic in that way that only a boy with a warm, safe bed and a conviction that he’s nonetheless got nothing to lose can pull off? Hardly. Going on 13 also makes use of animation, but less successfully; its notebook-scratch transitions are a distancing device which cut up the true meat of the story. But, refreshingly, its subjects defy easy typifying. Directors Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and Dawn Valadez tracked four loosely-connected girls from ages 9 to 13: Arianna, a black tomboy living with a single mom; Isha, the daughter of a traditional Indian family whose intelligence and commitment to cultural traditions render her an outcast at school; Esmeralda, an overweight, sexually curious Mexican girl; and Rosie, a half-Nicauraguan child of divorce whose mentally unwell mother disrupts attempts at a balance between school and home. The diversity of their cast makes for instant dynamism, but the directors truly impress through their evidently close relationships with the girls. In tracking their subjects from late elementary school through their entrance into high school, their cameras are able to become invisible enough to capture certain moments as if unawares (there’s an incredible shot where Arianna, serving as a bridesmaid at her mother’s wedding, approaches a tilted-up camera with her face first quaking in fear, and then melting into tears); other moments intriguingly betray the long-term effect of the cameras on the subjects’ lives, as when Esmeralda can barely remove her head from behind her arms whilst discussing her first break up. 13 touches more often and more deeply than these other two films, so if it stops short of offering a Grand Statement about The Way Kids Live Now, that seems okay––as a portrait of the inner lives of teen girls in a single community, its most complete. Hard Times gives the sense that in an urban school in crisis, the students have no time for the personal developmental indulgence seen in the other two films. The richest, most popular girl in American Teen has ample time to torment her classmates; the students of Douglas High aren’t thinking about pettily evil agendas because, more often than not, they’ve got babies to raise––unless they’re out nurturing their criminal careers. As one of the school’s most on-top-of-it teachers inform us, something like three quarters of the incoming freshman class has “disappeared” by the 12th grade. Most teachers see less than a handful of parents at Back to School Night, and in spite of No Child Left Behind’s emphasis on tough love testing, teachers are encouraged to give seniors as many second chances as they need to qualify for graduation. The simple fact is, the school needs to get rid of them––a department head faculty meeting gives the impression that even with the school’s sorry state of matriculation, there aren’t enough books and desks as it is. Hard Times has undeniably strong moments––a post-basketball loss pep-talk forms the core of the film and delivers its defining message: “Shit that don’t kill you, do what? Make you stronger!”––but in concentrating on the uncertainty of the administration and the helplessness of the teachers, it unavoidably colors the students as the roiling mass of Other. Though the bulk of the adults at Douglas High are, like the minors storming its halls, black and native-born to the community, the actual American teens on screen are rarely interrogated as people, and are in fact most often treated en masse as a problem to be wrangled, to which ultimately, with their apparently indifferent parents and almost total lack of respectable options, neither the filmmakers nor the school professionals seem to have any unsatisfying answers. If Hard Times is the messiest film of the three visually, you can’t say it’s unwarranted by the content; it’s the one film that leaves you with the impression that, in the current climate, the kids are definitely not alright. Full disclosure: In 2004, I spent a weekend logging tapes for a documentary Nanette Burstein made about Marion Jones. I found the job on Craig’s List and never actually met the director. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/6/4/30479.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 6/4/2008 11:00:24 AM
Body: In response to Paramount’s consolidation of the marketing divisions of Paramount Pictures and Paramount Vantage, I went looking for a mash-up trailer that would give us a sense of what we’re in for. Because advertising for specialty films is typically different from advertising for major studio films. But seeing as Vantage has already done a fair enough job lately trying to make a documentary look like a teen comedy, the consolidation may not really be that noticeable after all. Anyway, I couldn’t find a good mash-up that re-cut a recent independent film to resemble a blockbuster, so here’s something else entirely that I found during my search. It’s a Wonderful Life “made to look like the movie is about George Bailey’s descent into madness.” Consider it a belated celebration of James Stewart’s centennial (he would have been 100 on May 20th). Or consider it merely a fun re-imagining of a classic. And consider this assignment for mash-up enthusiasts: how about a reverse re-imagining of There Will Be Blood as a Capra movie? By the way: despite the fact that Paramount did not produce It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra’s Liberty Films made it, for distributor RKO Radio Pictures), the studio is the distributor of the film on DVD (thanks to Viacom’s purchase in 1998 of Spelling Entertainment, which owned Republic Pictures, which — here it get’s complicated. Paramount also owned the rights to the film from 1947 to 1951, the period in which it owned Liberty). And Paramount Vantage produced/distributed There Will Be Blood. So, the mash-up almost fits my original search criteria. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:00:24 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com6/4/2008 11:00:24 AM In response to Paramount’s consolidation of the marketing divisions of Paramount Pictures and Paramount Vantage, I went looking for a mash-up trailer that would give us a sense of what we’re in for. Because advertising for specialty films is typically different from advertising for major studio films. But seeing as Vantage has already done a fair enough job lately trying to make a documentary look like a teen comedy, the consolidation may not really be that noticeable after all. Anyway, I couldn’t find a good mash-up that re-cut a recent independent film to resemble a blockbuster, so here’s something else entirely that I found during my search. It’s a Wonderful Life “made to look like the movie is about George Bailey’s descent into madness.” Consider it a belated celebration of James Stewart’s centennial (he would have been 100 on May 20th). Or consider it merely a fun re-imagining of a classic. And consider this assignment for mash-up enthusiasts: how about a reverse re-imagining of There Will Be Blood as a Capra movie? By the way: despite the fact that Paramount did not produce It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra’s Liberty Films made it, for distributor RKO Radio Pictures), the studio is the distributor of the film on DVD (thanks to Viacom’s purchase in 1998 of Spelling Entertainment, which owned Republic Pictures, which — here it get’s complicated. Paramount also owned the rights to the film from 1947 to 1951, the period in which it owned Liberty). And Paramount Vantage produced/distributed There Will Be Blood. So, the mash-up almost fits my original search criteria. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/dunedonkey/archive/2008/5/7/28335.aspx Post By: dunedonkey
Post To: film phlegm
Post Date: 5/7/2008 11:09:58 PM
Body: Have you ever been catapulted head first into a brick wall at 150 mph? Now imagine that brick wall was high school, and imagine that catapult was American Teen. Last night, I was instantly transported back 13 years to my high school days. The nervous tick came back. The pain pulled from the very depths of my innermost, repressed soul came shooting to the surface. I was reminded of my own high school experiences, the same experiences that molded me, the tough love I received from my peers, and the thick skin I developed as a result. But I was also reminded of how unhealthy an environment adolescence can be in the US for those living it. Nanette Burstein documented the lives of Warsaw, Indiana high school students, immaculately picking out what almost seemed like caricatures of the different types of students we all knew in high school. We follow four main students: the jock, the popular girl, the artsy girl, and the band geek. We become intimately involved in all aspects their high school lives; the pressures they face from their peers, their parents, and their futures. However, these students weren’t caricatures, they were real, dealing with the reality that has become the disgusting state of American teen culture taken from American pop culture and exploited in the worst manner ever in our public schools. What this film made very clear, is that the state of parenting, of education, of adolescence, of human values is so amazingly warped, that American families have completely lost touch with reality. The things that matter most are the things that should matter least and vice versa. We’ve led such sheltered lives that we forgot what it means to be human, and American Teen documents this reality very well. I realized that high school was no longer about getting a scholastic education, rather high school has taken on a far larger role of parenting - forcing our kids into the harshest of environments into a sort of “baptism by fire”. Parents have forgotten how to raise kids, and teachers have forgotten how to teach them. The best education a kid is getting in high school is from other kids. I could pontificate on the deplorable state of American families and American education, but all you need to do is watch this film to realize how scary a state it’s in. That said, Nanette Burstein did a fantastic job of filming American Teen. There were warmer moments throughout the film, but the dark undercurrent of each of these moments was never swept under the rug, and lingered uncomfortably among the viewers. I feel like this film is like taking medicine, it’s something you hate to do, but you know you have to…if for no other reason than to educate and remind yourself what it means to be young, to be human, to be a parent, and to influence the fragile and vulnerable lives of those around you.
]]>Thu, 08 May 2008 03:09:58 GMTdunedonkeyfilm phlegm5/7/2008 11:09:58 PMHave you ever been catapulted head first into a brick wall at 150 mph? Now imagine that brick wall was high school, and imagine that catapult was American Teen. Last night, I was instantly transported back 13 years to my high school days. The nervous tick came back. The pain pulled from the very depths of my innermost, repressed soul came shooting to the surface. I was reminded of my own high school experiences, the same experiences that molded me, the tough love I received from my peers, and the thick skin I developed as a result. But I was also reminded of how unhealthy an environment adolescence can be in the US for those living it. Nanette Burstein documented the lives of Warsaw, Indiana high school students, immaculately picking out what almost seemed like caricatures of the different types of students we all knew in high school. We follow four main students: the jock, the popular girl, the artsy girl, and the band geek. We become intimately involved in all aspects their high school lives; the pressures they face from their peers, their parents, and their futures. However, these students weren’t caricatures, they were real, dealing with the reality that has become the disgusting state of American teen culture taken from American pop culture and exploited in the worst manner ever in our public schools. What this film made very clear, is that the state of parenting, of education, of adolescence, of human values is so amazingly warped, that American families have completely lost touch with reality. The things that matter most are the things that should matter least and vice versa. We’ve led such sheltered lives that we forgot what it means to be human, and American Teen documents this reality very well. I realized that high school was no longer about getting a scholastic education, rather high school has taken on a far larger role of parenting - forcing our kids into the harshest of environments into a sort of “baptism by fire”. Parents have forgotten how to raise kids, and teachers have forgotten how to teach them. The best education a kid is getting in high school is from other kids. I could pontificate on the deplorable state of American families and American education, but all you need to do is watch this film to realize how scary a state it’s in. That said, Nanette Burstein did a fantastic job of filming American Teen. There were warmer moments throughout the film, but the dark undercurrent of each of these moments was never swept under the rug, and lingered uncomfortably among the viewers. I feel like this film is like taking medicine, it’s something you hate to do, but you know you have to…if for no other reason than to educate and remind yourself what it means to be young, to be human, to be a parent, and to influence the fragile and vulnerable lives of those around you. http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/1/15/23909.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 1/15/2008 1:00:46 PM
Body: Very, very early tomorrow morning, the Spout team will decamp for Park City, Utah, where we will spend the next week plus covering the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. I hope to see somewhere between 20-30 films before coming back to New York, but here’s a look at five of the titles in competition that I’m most excited about. Tomorrow, I’ll post about the films in the Spectrum, Premieres and Midnight sidebars that I can’t wait to see. American Teen (directed by Nanette Burstein. Documentary Competition) Excerpt From the Official Synopsis: “American Teen intimately follows the lives of four teenagers in one small town in Indiana through their senior year of high school. Using cinema v??rit?? footage, interviews, and animation, it presents a candid portrait of being 17 and all that goes with it. We see the insecurities, the cliques, the jealousies, the first loves and heartbreaks, the experimentation with sex and alcohol, the parental pressures, and the struggle to make profound decisions about the future.” Why I’m Interested: It’s no secret that the media climate of My Super Sweet 16, Gossip Girl and the masterfully manipulative Laguna Beach is in need of a serious real-world corrective. I hope Burstein (who was nominated for an Oscar for On the Ropes, and whose last theatrical release was the cheekily worshipful Robert Evans doc The Kid Stays in the Picture) has managed it. (more…) Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » karina
]]>Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:00:46 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog1/15/2008 1:00:46 PM Very, very early tomorrow morning, the Spout team will decamp for Park City, Utah, where we will spend the next week plus covering the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. I hope to see somewhere between 20-30 films before coming back to New York, but here’s a look at five of the titles in competition that I’m most excited about. Tomorrow, I’ll post about the films in the Spectrum, Premieres and Midnight sidebars that I can’t wait to see. American Teen (directed by Nanette Burstein. Documentary Competition) Excerpt From the Official Synopsis: “American Teen intimately follows the lives of four teenagers in one small town in Indiana through their senior year of high school. Using cinema v??rit?? footage, interviews, and animation, it presents a candid portrait of being 17 and all that goes with it. We see the insecurities, the cliques, the jealousies, the first loves and heartbreaks, the experimentation with sex and alcohol, the parental pressures, and the struggle to make profound decisions about the future.” Why I’m Interested: It’s no secret that the media climate of My Super Sweet 16, Gossip Girl and the masterfully manipulative Laguna Beach is in need of a serious real-world corrective. I hope Burstein (who was nominated for an Oscar for On the Ropes, and whose last theatrical release was the cheekily worshipful Robert Evans doc The Kid Stays in the Picture) has managed it. (more…) Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » karina http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/love/MemberTagFilms.aspxlove
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