tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5633073330174423544.post1129436490967462204..comments2023-02-28T05:27:00.195-05:00Comments on The Sun's Not Yellow: (500) Days of SummerJoel Bockohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11238338958380683893noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5633073330174423544.post-29156461854883615222010-04-06T04:20:32.889-04:002010-04-06T04:20:32.889-04:00I like this movie a lot, it reminds me of someone....I like this movie a lot, it reminds me of someone. Good.. Good..hanumhttp://hanum.staff.gunadarma.ac.idnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5633073330174423544.post-715217438094430722010-02-09T09:51:51.012-05:002010-02-09T09:51:51.012-05:00JAFB, enjoying your trip through the past weeks - ...JAFB, enjoying your trip through the past weeks - keep 'em coming!<br /><br />One of these days, I may repost comments I received on the Examiner, which I saved. One of them was for this film and to date it's the only slam I've received for one of my reviews. Basically calls me soulless and accuses me of not liking the Smiths to boot. I responded at length but of course the commentator was a hit-and-runner and never returned to defend himself.<br /><br />A magazine recently ran a cover asking, in a mock-up of the famous Time cover from the 60s "Is Indie Dead?" Their thesis was that it's become so ubiquitous that it was time to either redefine the term or re-term the definition. This has some overlap with my thoughts here (and elsewhere) but not entirely. They also define the term almost purely in terms of music and take a while to get the current image of indie, namely the twee, cozy, ultimately "safe" aesthetic.<br /><br />I'd welcome a renewed underground but also a fresh cultural approach which neither eschews the mainstream nor cowtows to it, but rather redefines it the way the 60s counterculture did. Marginalization and fragmentation, imposed and self-willed, have lasted too long.<br /><br />And finally...death to the word "indie" itself! I was actually going to write an Examiner piece about this, pending a name change from "Indie Movie Examiner" to "Independent Movie Examiner." The word indie is so self-consciously quirky, twerpy, and wimpy. It reminds me of those aesthetically unappealing, stamp-size ads which used to bug me when I was a kid, eagerly flipping through the pages of the Boston Globe looking at the big posters for Jurassic Park or The Fugitive or (next summer) The Mask. Granted, many of these ads were for movies which actually turned out to be quite good (often better than the big-budget flicks I drooled over) but if my taste has changed, I still wish independent cinema wasn't so acquiescent in its marginalization. Think big, this is cinema! True, the dirt-cheap talkfests of the 90s are over but the overly stylized subculture movies of the 00s still haven't quite broken out of the ghetto.<br /><br />Anyway, lots to talk about here, I'll try and save it for an upcoming SNY post which features that magazine cover.Joel Bockohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11238338958380683893noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5633073330174423544.post-43741052739363247372010-02-09T06:57:09.089-05:002010-02-09T06:57:09.089-05:00Brilliant review of a mediocre film, MovieMan! All...Brilliant review of a mediocre film, MovieMan! All the right points. My own observations:<br /><br />1. The film reveals its own flaws. Whatever gimmick Webb does at the editing table is negated by the script itself. After a point the chronology is inevitably set straight and the boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl and boy-wins-girl path is set back on track. Bad editing pattern I would say.<br />2. The cheap potshots at art (both in the art gallery and at the cinema hall) reveals how hypocritical all this is. In the crucial scene, when Tom lashes out against the pop culture for its shaping of people's perceptions about love and beauty, he doe snot realize that the film he is in does the same even when professing the opposite.<br />3. One can actually trace back all of the film's attention-calling choices to the moment they might have been created. "How about we split the screen and ..." "How about we shuffle the screenplay a bit and...". I think that's not a good thing.<br /><br />But there are some brilliant lines in the film, of course.<br /><br />"As the "indie" movement hits saturation point in the mainstream, (500) Days arrives, perhaps inadvertently, to bury rather than praise the milieu; to sound a death knell for a certain type of cultural artifact." - I only wish this were true. Bring back the true indie - THE UNDERGROUND!Just Another Film Buffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17880550053788464732noreply@blogger.com