It's official. The cinetrix currently hates the city too busy to hate, which was the site of the philistine clusterfuck alluded to below.
Which is not to say that there weren't absolutely wonderful people there--old friends and new. But there were also energy-sucking ignoramuses and other assorted blowhards who, in their complete cluelessness about film, totally harshed my mellow.
Then I read Filmbrain's latest post and was reminded of why I will go to the hustings again and again for the films that take risks and for the students I teach, who deserve better than "film via the Lifetime Movie Network" [or, in one case, a LOGO After School Special, if such an abomination of a genre existed. Seriously: this flick made The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love look like, well, Maedchen in Uniform or Je, Tu, Il, Elle or something].
Here's an excerpt from Herr Filmbrain:
...of late I find that few films require any sort of active engagement. Directors are happy to show us how clever/sensitive/witty they are, but they leave us with nothing to discuss, let alone think about. As small films made outside of the studio system, they needn't succumb to the lowest common denominator, but do nonetheless. I'm growing weary of independent and/or foreign films that are as compelling as a made-for-TV drama, that rely on heavy-handed symbolism while hammering their message into us. Films that tackle political/social issues, or moral struggles, and reduce them to childlike simplicity, with poorly written characters that exist purely as functions of the plot. More often than not these films are all about the third-act "big moment", which rarely comes as a surprise as the filmmaker has been dropping less-than-subtle hints throughout. With their meaning wrapped up and dispensed in a neat, foolproof package, these films not only discourage and resist discussion/analysis/interpretation, they're barely pleasurable even as divertissements.
Amen and hallelujah. Now go read the whole fucking post, s.v.p.
