Posts tagged "rants"
I got around to watching Boogie (aka Summer Holiday) by Radu Muntean who is now going around with his new film, Tuesday, After Christmas (which is also fantastic). This is not so much a film review as a little commentary on some of the themes in the film & my own history as a filmmaker. Muntean has made some excellent films starting with Furia (Fury) and now with Tuesday, After Christmas he’s scaled back A LOT in characters & on screen drama. His newer films which I think Boogie ushered in have been uber-personal & much more serious. Often times feeling like a snapshot of life. His camera finds it’s place & just shoots the acting/action. There’s something very exciting in this kind of filmmaking. It’s the stuff you’re told to avoid when you’re making films on a budget. I won’t go into it here but there’s a lot of stupid things going around about what you should & shouldn’t do as well as how you should hide your budget (as if you lie, you’ll somehow have a chance at the gold ticket & make Blair Witch money) with newer filmmakers. It’s all untrue. Just watch Boogie.
I’m also a filmmaker like Muntean but I’m also a Romanian filmmaker like him, as well. I’m an exile in the US since the 80s but I feel that the more art, film, writing, & music I seek out from back home (Romania) the more I see myself & my ideas in that world or universe. There’s this romantic notion of sentimentality that sets in to find your ‘home’ or your ‘roots’ in your 30s. Many find it by going a few decades back & others find it in the classics now many decades from when they first ‘had to read’ the classics. That’s been my reaction to Boogie & Furia & The Ticket Will Be Blue (another film by Muntean).
Why does Muntean have an obsession with infidelity & lies appearing true? Why this slow & controlled style? Such a departure from Furia. In many ways I see his work exiled in this new style that works so well & seems so original. I’ve made a home in the states & I’ve killed the last of my accent. For all intensive purposes, I’m as American as they come but I don’t see myself as American. Dragos Bucur (his male lead who is nicknamed Boogie) performance of Bodgad doesn’t see himself as cheating. He also doesn’t see his wife as suffering & cant’ help her. The film lingers in this meditation of exiles in modern life & it does so brilliantly. Nothing resolves & nothing really needs to. There’s no car chases & football game mobs in his films anymore. It works well so why add it?
I hope I get to meet Muntean & Bucur one day. Not sure what they’d think of my films but I rarely want to know what my friends think of my strange queer, violent, subversive films. Check out Summer Holiday or Boogie if you can. The payoff is wonderful & quiet reminiscent ‘The Wonder Years’ but as grown adults. It’s really lingered with me now 2 weeks after I saw it.
Remembering ‘the internet’
Remember when we thought AOL was ‘the internet’? Well these days, facebook seems to be the internet. Or so everyone likes to tell us how social networks have changed the playing field. Have they? We heard this before. A few years ago, it was Myspace & Google.com. They were big game changers, too, right? Tonight, I stumbled up on this TV commercial on youtube (remember youtube was ‘the internet’ a few years ago, too).
I think the biggest lesson I get from this (now very aged & dated) commercial is that what works brilliantly about ‘the internet’ is exploration & content, which can’t be contained & hoarded. I’m talking to you Mr. Network Police & Mr. Cable/Telecom & Mr. Social Network. But I’m mainly talking to the user which is the most valuable part of the equation yet gets overlooked for the ‘revenue’.
The desire to hoard & trap attention spans is driven by that much outdated ‘content VS ad revenue’ fantasy that has taken down so many companies/brands. When will we move away from that fantasy & see that ‘the internet’ doesn’t give a damn about ad revenue but is driven by interesting modular experiences & unique content? Should every site become a mini-studio? No, but every site should look at their fantasy that ad revenue is king.
When will we let go of the TV & publishing models & admit that they slowly became vulgar & not worth paying for? How many commercials & ads did it take to make you stop watching or paying for that magazine or watching that tv show/network? Revenue is NOT enough when it comes to ‘the internet’ (& possibly not enough for other mediums). Maybe I’m wrong but maybe I’m on to something. Sometimes an idea or fantasy can spread like a virus & poison other ideas.
Surely, there’s enough intelligent minds in the room to try a different model. Or create one. Anyone? Anyone? Maybe we’ll just sit around & hoard only to find ourselves looking back on how tacky & outdated our thinking was (like this commercial)?
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