giorgos lanthimos directs
christos sergioglou
michele valley
aggeliki papoulia
mary tsoni
hristos passalis
and anna kalaitzidou
rating: 'not subtle'
you feel affected by the fact that the cast actually participated in making 'dogtooth' maybe more than you feel affected by robert downey jr.'s participation as the lead in 4+ iron man-related movies
you feel abstractly affected by the family construct within the movie and how it relates to your own
you think 'religious ass' and 'magical realism' repeatedly while screening this movie but feel like these are somehow false reactions/interjections and question the relationship between the themes in this movie and certain associative 'religious' and 'zany' neuron clusters in your brain
you feel surprised that 'dogtooth' seems uncomfortably dissimilar to your interpretation of 'dark comedy'
themes in this movie:
prostitution
animal cruelty
incest
pornography
explicit language
expressive dance
self-harm
assault with a deadly weapon
attempted homicide
faking pregnancy
blatant falsification of common knowledge
restricting technology
invention and destruction of an entity created to instill fear
11/04- NEW YORK @ CINEMA VILLAGE
11/11- LOS ANGELES @ DOWNTOWN INDEPENDENT
11/18- SAN FRANCISCO @ ROXIE THEATER
11/18- DALLAS @ TEXAS THEATRE
11/18- PHOENIX @ FILM BAR
11/29- MINNEAPOLIS @ THE TRYLON
12/02- SEATTLE @ NORTHWEST FILM FORUM
12/02- PORTLAND @ HOLLYWOOD THEATRE
12/02- BELLINGHAM @ PICKFORD FILM CENTER
12/06- MINNEAPOLIS @ THE TRYLON
12/09- SAN LUIS OBISPO @ PALM THEATRE
2012
01/06- ATLANTA @ PLAZA ATLANTA
More dates to be announced soon.
Grand Jury Prize, Best Documentary Feature, SXSW 2011
Grand Jury Prize, Best Cinematography, SXSW 2011
Grand Jury Prize, Best International Feature, HotDocs 2011
Directed by Tristan Patterson
Produced by John Baker
Executive Producer Christine Vachon
Cinematography by Eric Koretz
Editors Jennifer Tiexiera, Lizzy Calhoun
Music by T. Griffin
Soundtrack Mexican Summer"
on july 2nd, 2009, on tao's birthday, you witness megan boyle and tao lin meet for the first time 'irl' at a book release party in manhattan, new york. you say, 'tao, this is megan, megan, tao...', tao says, 'i know you from the internet' to megan
mid-2010 you hear that tao lin is having a reading in baltimore during part of the promotional tour for his second novel, 'richard yates'. megan asks you if you will be there. you say you will be there. you don't attend the reading. megan later tells you tao stayed at her apartment
in november of 2010 you see that megan and tao 'founded' MDMAfilms, via facebook, and are listed as 'in a relationship'
on january 8th, 2011, you read an article revealing that tao and megan, in fact, got married in las vegas, a day prior to the events in their movie 'bebe zeva', early november, 2010
they subsequently release three films in 2011:
MDMA: megan and tao take ecstasy in a car in manhattan, drive some, take a train, get off the train, get on another train, get off that train in manhattan, take a cab to times square, walk to toys 'r' us, and ride ferris wheel
MDMA (TRAILER 1) from MDMAfilms on Vimeo.
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i don't feel inclined to enumerate the ways in which tao or megan's style of filmmaking seems similar to their writing
however, i think it is 'worth it' to draw similarities between the various media that they brand themselves with and the products' effect
in narrative, poem, 'art', and film, tao seems detached, distracted and hypersensitive to 'himself' and documentation of 'himself' seems the primary goal, discerning meaning and 'relevance' is, it seems, divided as both a subsequent pursuit, assessed during revision/editing, and a constant bilateral to his experiences
he also seems fascinated with 'boundary-pushing' as if he were leveling the field of collective discomfort by testing the spatial and sensory boundaries of others
megan produces poetry that—and appears in this film to be—constantly assessing 'okay-ness' and vast quantities of information being provided by the surrounding circumstances and a vague sense of her relationship to them coupled with a sort of brown-out observation of—and fascination with—life, desires, and consequences
co-branding their experiences in this mostly unbroken account of one evening in new york city seems a unique, natural way of collaborating and experimenting with ´the movie´as a medium
BEBE ZEVA: megan and tao meet rebecca 'bebe zeva' hershkovitz in a hotel, drive to another hotel, take a cab to a mall, return to the second hotel, drive to [another?] mall, walk through the mall, travis mcfarland joins them, they walk through a casino type area, they drive back to the second hotel, get into a jacuzzi, then get out of the jacuzzi
while watching this movie, i felt the same range of deeply affecting emotional/analytical responses that i feel watching 'any other "indie" movie', with two exceptions, i think:
one, i did not feel myself become 'immersed' in the plane of view/perspective of the camera, i felt very aware that it was a movie despite there being no credits and seemingly chronological jump cuts
two, i felt no interest in dissecting/discerning technique employed to derive narrative, it seemed like self-conscious people trying to have a 'memorable' experience and seemed honest in its presentation of this, as opposed to implementing narrative tact/wealth to create an illusion of honesty
the 'hollywood-style' title 'mash-up' i might use to pitch this movie is: '"jackass: the movie" meets "the devil wears prada", with warholian sensibility/authenticity/vulnerability'
MUMBLECORE: megan and tao, in a not-necessarily-chronological narrative, travel between new york, maryland, ohio, north carolina, louisiana, and nevada. at the 'climax' of the movie they get married
this film completes 'the trilogy', though it was filmed entirely prior to BEBE ZEVA
the film's clearly labored-over documentation of an essentially 'fucked' relationship harkens strongly to its titular generic relative, though its existence, independently, and especially as dissimilar to its predecessors, which vague the lines between documentation and narration instead of fusing them, has, simply by existing, created a new genre
falling somewhere spectral between mumblecore, pimplecore, and the well-established 'indiewave' movie—now a serious part of the hollywood 'machine'—i think MUMBLECORE establishes muumuucore (a la tao's publishing company) as a definite movie genre, in a similar way that lin and boyle's writing seems to have permanently altered literature
on october 23rd, 2011, you receive an email from tao, authorizing you to view and review for mutual publicity MDMAfilms's current filmography
~.5 hours later, tao's facebook relationship status goes from 'married' to 'single', megan boyle 'likes' this status update
a 140+ comment shitstorm 'arises', with the primary contributor, a certain james morrill, asserting that megan is an 'idiot' and 'slut'
according to megan's formspring account, you see that she still has ~30 copies of BEBE ZEVA left
on october 26th, you see that gossip blog, hipster runoff, has utilized the filmmakers' 'separation' as a national-enquirer-esque buzzline to help 'launch' tao's DJ career, to which article you see tao replied 'jesus' via facebook status update
MDMAfilms's movies are available for purchase on their website, information regarding their movies can be viewed and modified on their IMDb page and individual wikipediapages, all trailers, short-form movies, and event coverage can be found on their vimeo
the artistic medium that affects me the most is commonly called a 'movie'. i watch movies 'on dvd' via various dvd-type 'players', movies downloaded via torrent websites in high and low reproduction quality. movies via movie theaters, some in 3-d. movies via the internet, sub-via netflix, hulu, youtube, pornhub, etc. i think that movies are products. i think that how i experience a product informs my emotional and volitional perception of the abstract life-narrative that i experience. movies seem like products that prevent boredom, provoke moods and thought processes and provide a prestige-based hierarchy and social ‘web’ constructed by-and-for people fascinated with and interested in making movies, to validate their association and contemplation of movies as products and sustain their lives in the context of 'product-development' as a profession
the terms 'cinema', 'film', 'video', and 'picture' are used to define products derivative of the concept 'movie', which has become the most-widely used term, in my experience, to describe this product-base. 'cinema' seems to denote the highest level of prestige, however, the 'newness' of the medium prevents a literature-style hierarchy of prestige in current movie criticism networks. in some cases specific movies that are densely derivative of previous movie, literary, musical and theatrical history, despite the medium's relative youth, produce (in me) a sense of precision in execution that the product seems to have an indelible prestige, eliciting a mood or thought process i associate with 'classic literature' or 'classical music'
i feel hyper-aware that certain movies are affecting in this manner because of a perceived hierarchy of 'quality', predefined by notions of potential canonical longevity, which are based on the preservation, translation and reproduction of previous works of literature and music that are considered 'telling examples of the human condition and zeitgeist in their respective eras'. these works have thus set an abstract 'standard' to which temporally transcendent media must adhere to. because movies require multiple 'players' or hardware used to interpret the audio-visual data as a consumable product, the medium seems more temporary than its predecessors
by making a product that exists in a variety of media and is securely stored with all of the hardware needed to experience the product, one might increase chances of indefinite longevity. 'ancient' literature and musical instruments which have, despite their age been capable of continued lingual and tonal extrapolation seem 'enduring', though their means of interpretation have changed consistently since their inception (papyrus vs. 'eco-friendly' paper, early lutes vs. electric guitar), but the existence of physical evidence and explanation of how the media functions has provided a 'framework' for how to produce approximations of said works for further consumption/product development. it seems that any assertion that a product made in the present day will maintain future standards of longevity with any certainty is negligible, because at any given time innumerable works are produced with varying levels of quality/senses of 'zeitgeist'. consequently, the act of consciously, definitively usurping the majority's concept of 'a great movie' (or any other product) is in every sense 'impossible'
movies that seem to lack concern about longevity and are just densely labored over products made by perceptive humans seem affecting because they are like 'oral histories' to me, subtly changing how future movies are produced; what humans want to experience; how humans memetically understand narratives. 'blockbusters' seem less affecting because of the extreme, revenue-based natures of their production and the fact that the crew's access to massive resources can, like a corporately-funded construction crew building a house for poor land-owners in order to garner 'mad sympathy hits' for the corporation, efficiently manipulate viewers' basic sense of empathy and elicit extreme emotions, abstractly branding the experience with that corporation, without triggering thought processes that challenge the audiences' perspective of subjective experiences or how humans successfully utilize volition despite socio-political-corporate constructs
if a film challenges perspective in a complex, subtly emotional way, the product seems more enduring because its honesty affects perceptive audiences so deeply that the influence 'snowballs', infiltrates the zeitgeist and eventually warps how 'blockbusters' are produced, even without movie historians knowing where the influence came from. this can happen with 'blockbusters' too but usually only if they are a zeitgeist-channeled re-telling of a story that grew 'naturally' to gigantic levels of fame because of its honesty, subtlety and the hard work of its creators. if elements of the story or production are lacking or 'forced' to create a spectacle, the story seems weird
i like movies about humans, animals, brands, ideas, personified 'beings', mythological entities, phenomena and historical events that are from a perspective-challenging (as opposed to a perspective 'normalizing' -- i.e. propaganda, 'sympathepics', performance art) production approach, and that i feel concretize some aspect of my life narrative that felt very abstract, subjective or emotion-based, because i think life is more enjoyable when humans share unfamiliar perspectives on familiar experiences and methods of thinking
near the end of high school you only apply to one university. you apply to study 'cinematic arts' at the university. you are accepted to the university but not the 'cinematic arts' program. you choose 'japanese' as your 'second choice' major, which does not require additional application
you meet your future college roommate and his mother in new york city with your family ~2 months prior to the beginning of your freshman year. his mother is a lawyer-turned-divorcée/teacher. she suggests you all go to an expensive downtown bar/grill to get acquainted. you discuss the possible outcomes of your and your new acquaintance's mutual decision to study 'filmmaking' ~3000 miles away, in los angeles, california, and your respective parents' experiences with 'impending separation anxiety anxiety'
after a few months of living together your roommate expresses extreme disbelief that as an 'aspiring filmmaker' you have 'never'—or 'almost never', with the exception of having seen the trailer for his most popular movie—which you only vaguely recall seeing—heard of 'wes anderson'
you subsequently purchase both movies available on itunes that were directed by wes anderson ('rushmore' and 'the royal tenenbaums') using your father's credit card account, and ask your floor-mate to borrow 'the life aquatic with steve zissou', to which he obliges
you soon discover torrent technology primarily out of an intense desire to view anderson's seminal movie, 'bottle rocket', which is obscure and has not yet acquired the 'superior' criterion collection status the other movies have
a year later, a video by anderson is available for free on itunes entitled 'hotel chevalier'. you read that it is 'part i' of anderson's new movie, 'the darjeeling limited', which will have a limited release at a nearby hollywood cineplex (accessible by train) within a few months
you see the movie with a friend you made videos with in high school. one week later, you see the movie again with your parents when they come to visit you. your mother grips your hand and openly cries during the movie
your parents correspond with you frequently asserting that they rented various wes anderson movies via netflix and have 'x' thoughts on characterization, 'y' thoughts on mise-en-scene, and 'z' thoughts on various aspects of the writing—always with polarized opinions
you attend a filmmaking course your sophomore year entitled 'originating ideas for film' in which the professor holds a preference for abstract, non-narrative videos. a mandatory 'exploration' of 'emotional expression' occurs
you simultaneously attend a filmmaking course in which you focus on utilizing digital media to express concrete narratives about 'conventional' subject matter. you write and shoot a short screenplay about a failing relationship as an assignment
you feel 'insanely' bored
you decide to write a feature-length screenplay
you stop attending classes
you complete the first draft of the aforementioned screenplay
your parents purchase a one-way plane ticket, beginning your indefinite return to their home, near washington, DC
you see a series of videos advertising cellular phone plans on television and immediately recognize them as directed by anderson
two years later you move in with a girl. you download anderson's new movie, 'fantastic mr. fox' via torrent. you watch it with her
a year and three months later you and the same girl vacation with a group of friends to a beach house on the eastern tip of long island. the house is one $200 round-trip ferry ride away from the on-location set of anderson's movie-in-production, 'moonrise kingdom'. you spend ~1 hour contemplating whether it is 'worth it' to spend $200 and 2 hours to (possibly) be in close proximity to anderson for less than an hour before having to catch the last ferry back to the beach house
you decide to read a first edition copy of bret easton ellis's 'less than zero' that you found in one of the bedrooms instead
later, you find the below video on the internet, after google searching 'wes anderson' and/or 'french new wave' for >1 hour:
