Assessing the first IFC-produced chapter of Trapped in the Closet, I wrote that “From the first shot, it’s immediately apparent that Trapped’s production values have been elevated somewhat since Chapter 12 was released two years ago” and expresed concern that this and other noticeable changes “could have profound implications on Trapped’s signature, quasi-Brechtian manner of storytelling.” Then IFC TV’s general manager was like, “No you didn’t.”
“Star-making is not just a hobby of the delusional rich, as it is in Sunset Boulevard; it’s not quite the cosmic structuring myth that it becomes in A Star is Born. It’s sexual fetish, and as such, it’s somehow simultaneously frivolous and primal.” With Anthology Film Archives paying tribute to Vincente Minnelli’s melodramas, I took a closer look at The Bad and the Beautiful.
On the podcast, Kevin and Paul got their hearts broken by No End In Sight, and I wondered if celebrities should break up with their causes after watching The 11th Hour.
“Screw the script–that voyeuristic long shot of Molly Ringwald on the stairs is how John Hughes became the voice of (highly commercial) teen alienation.” In the latest installment of The Micro Five, I take a look at dancing-in-the-library scene from The Breakfast Club, plus four other 80s musical interludes.
I got the day’s second Xanadu reference out of Andrew Grant who, along with his Benten Films partner Aaron Hillis, dished pop cultural preferences for The Media Diet.
If you read a lot of film blogs, you might have noticed a virus going around called Dentler Takes the Stairs. It’s all the brainchild of Matt Dentler, who is like the P.T. Barnum of the SXSW Film Festival, and who, by being the first person to program movies like Kissing on the Mouth and Dance Party, USA, has played a huge role in legitimizing this wave of no-budget American indie filmmaking over the past few years. Dentler conducted interviews with the major players in Hannah Takes the Stairs (the Joe Swanberg drama starring Greta Gerwig and filmmakers Mark Duplass, Andrew Bujalski, Kent Osbourne, Ry Russo-Young and Todd Rohal), and asked a number of us film bloggers to each broadcast one of these interviews on our blogs.
Matt asked me to carry the interview with Mark Duplass, and of course, I complied. I reviewed The Duplass Brothers’ The Puffy Chair, which Mark starred in and co-wrote, in 2005 after seeing the film both at SXSW and the Chicago International Film Festival. At the time I said this:
It’s amazing how [The Puffy Chair] nails the mealy-mouthed way people my age have of saying what we mean by dressing the same words, over and over again, in different kinds of inflection. Between Rhett and Josh, the word “dude” has a thousand meanings; Emily isn’t satisfied being referred to by any of them. Fleshing out that tension, between what is being said and what it obviously means, is where The Puffy Chair really succeeds.
After the jump, I turn it over to Matt and Mark, who talk about Hannah’s Atari-fueled set, Andrew Bujalski’s boxers, and what Duplass did to get the film’s mythic stairs cut out of the picture. …Read more
Last night, I was reading a story on Twitch, and I noticed a banner ad trumpeting the DVD release of something called Valerie On the Stairs. My instant reaction was, “Uh-oh. That’s going to be really confusing, what with Hannah Takes The Stairsopening next week.” Upon further research, I discovered that Valerie was directed by Mick Garris, for Showtime’s Masters of Horror series. In the interest of obliterating any further confusion, I made the following side-by-side comparison of the two films:
Valerie: About spooky goings-on at “a large apartment filled with unsuccessful writers where they can live rent-free until they make their first publication.” Hannah: Director Joe Swanberg and his actors/co-writers shared an apartment for a month in Chicago while filming.
Hannah: “A sexy slacker tale.” — Gerald Peary Valerie: “A sexually-charged tale of terror.” — Some guy on Wikipedia
Hannah: Not literally about stairs. Valerie: Literally about stairs. Ghost stairs.
I assume you’ve figured out by now that this post is just another excuse to plug the upcoming New Talkies festival, which begins a week from tomorrow with the premiere of Hannah, and continues at the IFC Center through Labor Day weekend. My associated coverage will begin on SpoutBlog later this week. In the meantime, if you’re going to be in New York during the festival, you can and should buy tickets now via IFC’s website.
The Cinetrix went to Independents Week at the Harvard Film Archive, and came back raving about the dance scenes in three of the films that screened there. The films were Hannah Takes the Stairs, Quiet City, and a film I had not previously been aware of called Finally, Lillian and Dan, directed by a local filmmaker named Mike Gibisser. Here’s what The Cinetrix had to say:
[In] all three films there are spontaneous, visceral dance sequences that soar. Mike Gibisser’s real-life granny dances rapturously to a Jolie Holland tune; Hannah and roommate Rocco rock out as they work through Hannah’s romantic confusion; and Jamie, Charlie, Robin, and Kyle dreamily groove to an r&b track replaced by the diegetic music of Keegan DeWitt [rights issues]. These inarticulate idealists connect through the physical movement to music in a way that makes the cinetrix’s bricolage-lovin’ heart sing.
The ‘trix goes on to seek suggestions on great “musical moments in non-musicals.” I saw Hannah and Quiet City at SXSW in March, where they formed another non-musical dance scene trio with a film that did not screen at Independent’s Week, Ry Russo-Young’s Orphans. The dance scene in Orphans is a dizzying concoction of love, envy, double entendre, competition, ill-fitting party dresses, resentment and Absolut Citron. It’s not only my favorite of the three scenes, but it’s probably one of my favorite scenes in any American film of this decade.
I find it fascinating that naturalistic dance scenes are becoming as much of a hallmark of these Mumblecore films as improvised dialogue and hand-held video. Within the context of these relatively static narratives, the dances become as spectacular as a climactic car chase or series of explosion in a Hollywood movie.
I also recently watched Macao for the first time, a non-musical which has an amazing scene of Jane Russell singing “One For My Baby.” But that’s not really a dance scene, so I’ll save that discussion for another time.
Hannah Takes the Stairs director Joe Swanberg recently married Kris Williams, his girlfriend of 7-plus years, who has appeared in/collaborated on most of Joe’s projects, and who is a filmmaker in her own right. Kent Osbourne, who occupies one corner of the love triangle that forms the meat of Hannah, has produced a video in three parts documenting the festivities. If you’re familiar with this whole “mumblecore” crowd, you’ll see a lot of familiar faces: Greta Gerwig, Kevin Bewersdorf, Ry Russo-Young, etc. SXSW impressario Matt Dentler posted just the third part on his blog; I’ll post the second part here, because the drawing of Kris and Joe captioned “this is the only relationship that should ever exist” is so cute that it brought tears to my eyes. Also, I love the stuff with the ducks.
I type this from the Cleveland Airport, where I’m heading into hour 3 of an indefinite layover, but I couldn’t wait to get out of purgatory to tell you about a press release I’ve just received. Joe Swanberg’s Hannah Takes the Stairs, the current hallmark of the burgeoning “mumblecore” wave, will screen in New York and on cable this August, courtesy of IFC’s First Take day-and-date program. The film, which you surely remember from Spout’s SXSW coverage and from the recent mumblecore episode of FilmCouch, opens August 22 at the IFC Center in the West Village; it should be available for on-demand rental several days later. As a huge fan of both Swanberg and the IFC In Theaters model, I think this is great news–this hyper-intimate character study is ideally suited to the on-demand experience.
If you made it to SXSW this year, you saw at least one of the Festival trailers, directed by Swanberg and starring the Hannah crew. My favorite is embedded below.
I like the films coming from Swanberg, Duplass, Bujalski, et al mentioned in Kristin’s Mumblecore post. Kevin and I watched Joe Swanberg’s new film, Hannah Takes the Stairs at SXSW and I had the same response to it I’ve had to his other films (LOL, Kissing on the Mouth). I didn’t leave the theater riding on one emotion. I left talking about all the brilliant little gems, the pieces that are more relevant in his films than the whole. As Kristin put it, the films are a series moments so acutely portraying people trying to communicate.
As far as labeling this family of film–and the friendships growing between the filmmakers–as a “movement.” Well, I bristle at the idea. What is it about coining a movement that (in this case before these filmmakers even reach the age of thirty) we find comforting? Does it somehow validate watching films which individually may confuse us? Now that they’re grouped together, like the French New Wave, are we now able to analyze them? Where as before, we just had to watch them like we would any other movie.
If a group of like minded people gather together, it’s normal. But if those like minded people gather together and make something interesting, like European painters exiled to New York after World War II, they’re labeled a movement. Their work is not close and intimate, it’s recognized by themes and concepts demarcating that movement. In short, trying to stamp “mumblecore” on the work of a filmmaker like Joe Swanberg I think defeats what his films try to achieve: A moment of real intimacy and connection with the audience. The moment when a 25 year old girl sits in a theater wading through the film and suddenly says to herself, “Whoa! This is me! My boring little life is on a big screen and now, suddenly, it’s interesting!”
Maybe now instead of having that moment, that 25 year old girl will say, “Hmm. This is Mumblecore.”
Assessing the first IFC-produced chapter of Trapped in the Closet, I wrote that “From the first shot, it’s immediately apparent that Trapped’s production values have been elevated somewhat since Chapter 12 was released two years ago” and expresed concern that this and other noticeable changes “could have profound implications on Trapped’s signature, quasi-Brechtian manner of storytelling.” Then IFC TV’s general manager was like, “No you didn’t.”
