August 16, 2005
Over at Green Cine, David Hudson links to a brief piece on Andrew Bujalski's progress - or lack thereof - in finding distribution for his most recent film, Mutual Appreciation, and then writes "Distributors: Entertainment Weekly may be looking forward to Panic Room in the sky, but more modest outfits like this one - thing is, see, we're legion - would urge our readers to be rattled by Bujalski any day of the week instead."
This legion of modest outfits - and the constituencies that takes their suggestions to heart - is a beautiful thing indeed, and something I neglected to think about when I was writing my review of Broken Flowers the other day and trying to keep myself for launching into a full blow polemic against American audiences (I just cut the review off short instead).
I regrettably neglected to write about Bujalksi's Funny Ha Ha when I saw it a few months ago, during its small rollout across the country. It was a wonderful theatergoing experience; I remember seeing it in the afternoon, and that it was raining when I left, although perhaps I'm romanticizing the memory a bit. After all, how often does one see an extremely personal, extremely low-fi and (as a result of those first two extremes) extremely good independent film on the big screen? I almost thought I could hear the 16mm magazine whirring just off camera during all those quiet, awkward scenes. It felt like it was 1997 again.
Posted by David Lowery at August 16, 2005 11:23 AM