so mumblecore

  Recently I read a couple pieces in the NYTimes (on I think consecutive weekends) about young independent filmmakers.  I was intrigued because I like films and I like to be aware of what is happening in the young/indie scenes and I had never heard of any of these fools.  Also the articles used funny terms like "mumblecore" and "slackavetes" to describe commonalities amongst the loose grouping.  All the filmmakers were loathe to be so categorized even though they sort of started it.  My feelings of being left out grew and I was anxious to see some of the source material so I could say "meh, good not great".  
  Cut-to: walking through Harvard sq. to buy coffee and the Brattle theatre has a big Hannah Takes the Stairs poster with all kinds of exclusive engagement nonsense plastered all over it.  Being as my interest was already picqued I totally fell for it and after a week of working and one thwarted attempt (thanks Benno) I peeped it out.  
  As I say I did not want to like a film that fell into the "mumblecore" movement.  I guess they use this term because the characters talk a lot but not in a Woody Allen-stylee, it has more of a "holy shit that's retarded but I have been in some situations that turn out about that astute" feel.  And so I pretty much summed-up why I ended up liking Hannah.  Every painful exchange of late-twenties ennui extends beyond the joke, through the self-importance and into a weirdly sympathetic moment.  I am reminded (slightly) of Todd Solondz in the quickly shifting sympathies.  (IE he's making fun of them oh no wait he's one of them)  Or, and I really didn't want to give them this, a little bit of Cassavetes at least where the length of conversations is concerned.  Cassavetes hits hard because so many scenes play out beyond the lines that would easily define his characters and they get downright awkward.  There's a lot of this in Hannah.  Maybe this plays especially well to me because I am inclined to be above the dilemmas (my job sucks, i wanna be an artist, i'm romantically indecisive) but in the beats after these dilemmas are expressed I realize that I'm not and then what sounds terse 
and stupid becomes pathetic but real.  It's real, it's some real shit.  Wow, so I kind of hate this review/
myself for thinking this way about a movie but I must cop to thiking it was pretty well-done.  
AND I know also that I'm a total sucker for a film that was made cheap/looks cheap/and everybody that's in it gets co-writing credit.  
  On that tip!  I was riding the T home from seeing Yo la Tengo do the Sounds of Science last night 
(maybe i'll write some more about that sometime soon, it was AWESOME) and this scruffy looking youth that I was sitting next to leaned over and said "I know this 
might sound weird but were you in the Nincompoops?"  HAHA  FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME
(he was a friend of Derek Wilson, the brother of one of my co-filmmakers, Andrew/"Norm")