Film Friday: Favorites of 2009
When Chris Anderson used the phrase “long tail” in Wired, he was referring to the way information is gradually detaching from the physical world. Music no longer needs shelf space in stores, and books and movies will surely follow. For businesses who sell physical objects, it’s been helpful to have consumers who cluster around a few big titles. That way they know how many disks to make, how many books to print. But a world where shelf space doesn’t matter looks pretty different. There may still be big hits, but the demand for more obscure items from deep in the... read more
Found in: Movies, ColumnsThe 25 Best Movies of 2009
Our favorite movies of 2009 belie a diverse appreciation ranging from a quiet rumination on death to gruesome horror; from a mostly ad-libbed, low-budget character study to the most expensive movie of all time. read more
Found in: Blogs, List of the DayBeeswax
In his first two features, Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation... read more
Found in: Movies, ReviewsCatching Up With... Beeswax's Andrew Bujalski
People like to make easy sense of Andrew Bujalski, but his work... read more
Found in: Movies, FeaturesSXSW Film 2009: Don't Use the M-Word
For good reasons — like the fact that all of Joe Swanberg's features have played here — the annual South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas, has a reputation as the adopted home of mumblecore. The dreaded M-word is used more and more negatively these days, but any term that labels films as diverse as Frownland, LOL, and Mutual Appreciation is a coinage looking for a definition. It was bound to fizzle at some point. The terminology may be disintegrating, but the filmmakers behind these movies are still collaborating and still growing. This year, Andrew Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha,... read more
Found in: Blogs, Festivus