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Three videos of note on the Facebook page (you may have to sign in and become a fan to see it) for Andrew Bujalski’s Beeswax: two intros for Bujalski’s work made for Canadian TV, one starring Shawn Sides as Elvira and the other featuring Alex Karpovsky as Dracula. In both, bats flutter by on strings, as Bujalski himself looks on, silent but bemused. “Tonight I have a thirst,” Elvira drawls. “A thirst for a spine-tinglingly cold taste of American independent cinema!”
This is doing it right.
And then there’s this, also embedded above. I saw this on YouTube and thought it was a joke, like that thing with Kent Osborne in the garage, but apparently it’s an actual ad for a film series on Channel 4 in the UK. The ad features young attractive people standing in front of graffitied walls (very first season Real World), earnestly informing us that there’s a type of movie in which “there are no buldings blown to hell in slow motion, and you know what? That’s okay, because these films are about people!” The kicker: “There’s something going on here.” Cut to slow-talking redhead girl: “And that something, is a little something called mumblecore.” She then looks at the camera with one of those “this is just between you and me” smiles that are most often seen on television in the promotion of feminine hygeine products.
This is doing it wrong.
Beeswax opens at Film Forum on August 7 and expands to several other cities shortly after that. I like it.
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We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Wow, I thought I was watching a deleted scene from Reality Bites II there for a second.
[...] Karina Longworth has linked to several videos designed to promote various Mumblecore films. The first three were produced by Mumblecore director Andrew Bujalski and feature parodies of Elvira and Dracula, complete with homemade effects. The segments were produced for Canadian television, and as Karina observes, the goofy humor and low-budger effects work well. The other is an ad from BBC 4 promoting the broadcast of a few Mumblecore films that, well, looks like something left on the cutting room floor of Reality Bites II: The Mumblecore Years. Complete with quick cuts and “young attractive people standing in front of graffitied walls,” the actors in the advertisement seem about as connected to Mumblecore as Winona Ryder and Ben Stiler seemed to “Generation X.” The BBC ad is worth watching just to see how Mumblecore is packaged as a concept. [...]
Now what’s the difference between reality bites and Funny ha ha again? Oh yeah right? funny ha ha is real. The people are a tad less attractive and the subject matter is very serious. I forgot. Keep pretending. Just remember compared to a mike leigh film or any number of other films or what’s going on in the world off the blogs funny ha ha is reality bites II….but it was kinda neat and i enjoyed it…
Also had the fella who directed reality bites seen some cassavetes and ozu films before he’d made that film his film oddly enough may have in fact then resembled funny ha ha or mutual appreciation pretty closely. Then he’d have been standing around looking slightly bemused, cute and oh so artistcally mature…
Hey I remember that UK ad for mumblecore. It was short lived, although we do love us some mxc. Those batches of films get pretty frequent showings on that channel every few months.
p.s. Elvira & Mumblecore is like Karina’s Twilight.
@ Pierre: TOTALLY, except that unlike film blogs that get lots of traffic from covering TWILIGHT and thus make advertisers happy, finding cross sections between Elvira and mumblecore makes no one happy except for me.
@Galms: The “fellow who made Reality Bites” was Ben Stiller.
Bujalski is obviously a little more subtle of a filmmaker than Ben Stiller. I mean for one thing Stiller would probably just cgi the bats and that’s no good because that would miss the whole point. I can’t really remember reality bites and I actually didn’t check out the promos or trailers you mention but I did see funny ha-ha and mutual appreciation and I thought they were good flicks but I don’t think they’re radical enough of a departure from your standard fare to warrant some of the indignation and smugness from some of the films cheerleaders. As far as I can remember the films have very of the moment music, haircuts, and clever banter in them as well. That’s what reality bites was too wasn’t it. Kudos to Bujalski for getting some solid performances and putting a little more thought and detail in and doing it on a shoestring but Bujalski is far closer to being a commercial filmmaker right out of the gate and much further from being an unschooled underdog than a lot of people I know. The best ads for the films though are probably gonna be made by a savier bunch though…you’re right….
down with dope up with hope
I’ll still see Beeswax but in all honesty I’m really not that enthusiatsic about Elvira being in it…
[...] via. [...]
I really feel like if Bujalski made a film about a small business owner at this point in time and people aren’t walking out of the theater wrecked…I mean absolutely wrecked …then he’s actually not quite as in touch as everyone seems to think. That’s a little hypercritical coming from someone like me who’s never been even able to complete a whole film but just the same it’s something to think about. These mood stabilizers that everyones taking are no good.
next time you see Bujalski ask him something for me…ask him how much in kick backs he’s getting from the pharmaceticul industry. Just ask him. It’s probably not a lot and he surely won’t tell you the truth for obvious reasons but ask him anyway