Director DVD

This *week* we're talking about the 2003 Jack Black vehicle from 2003, School of Rock. Is the definite article present in the title? What really happens at 11 year olds' sleepovers? Does it matter that all of this is highly illegal? Marija and I really get into it and try to work out why Richard Linklater, of all people, decided he wanted to direct this. 

For this Christmas episode we're returning back to imagination.

In this 'Very Special Episode' we have a serious discussion about a film shot entirely on camcorder on one set with three actors. One of us has postgraduate qualifications in feminist epistemology, one of us is an idiot. We try to have a delicate and nuanced discussion about consent, gaslighting and male/female power dynamics and are at least partially successful. 

The worst film to watch on drugs. Richard Linklater presents a glorified showreel of his rotoscoping software with no content and very little to say. We watched it and then tried to stay on topic talking about it with little success. The guy loves trains and pseudo-intellectual philosophy. And dreams. That's the film. 

Next: Tape (2001)

Matthew McConaughey, Ethan Hawke and Vincent D'Onofrio sleepwalk through your pretty traditional straight down the line Western that came out in the late 90s, long past the point there was still a market for these kinds of films. Here are two people with very limited knowledge of Westerns trying to parse why a major studio thought this was a good idea and additionally why on Earth they thought Richard Linklater was a good choice to direct it.  

The characters are unlikeable and bland, the story is supposedly true and all the more uninteresting because of it, and the rest is pretty competent I guess? If nothing more. Somehow even less plot seems to happen over the course of a two hour film spanning five years than in any of his previous films which took place over one day. Still, at least Linklater got his check and the next one looks like his classic blend of pretention and surface-level philosophy.

Next: Waking Life (2001)

This week we discuss the film adaptation of a play Richard Linklater probably saw one time and thought: "That'd be a great film, visually four bland racist people drinking outside a convenience store will make for peak cinema."

But hey I like Buff even if Marija really REALLY didn't. It's like if you revisited the characters from Dazed & Confused five years later and none of them had really done anything with their lives and their constant partying had become really depressing and it went on for two hours. 

Next time: The Newton Boys.

We return to the world of Richard Linklater to discuss Before Sunrise, pleasantly surprised that this film has character focus & isn't set in Texas but rather Vienna. This is one of Marija's favorite films so she has a lot to say, I begrudgingly call it "pretty" a couple times - but where does it rank? Why are we still doing this? It's been a fun experience I'm not going to lie and we'll be entering some unknown territory next, then at some point probably end up making it to School of Rock.  

B-b-b-b-bonus! No not really I'm just bad at editing audio so this is like 5 years old. 

We talk about Dazed and Confused, the 90s high school movie set in the 70s. It highlights how outdated life was then, but what's it like to watch in 2024?

Of course, you know we had to talk about Matthew McConaughey. You know we had to talk about ostensibly straight boys being obsessed with spanking littler boys' bottoms, and you know we had to talk about the fact that women aren't really allowed to be characters in Richard Linklater films (so far). 

This week we start a new show: Think Before, LinkLater. This will be the filmography of Richard Linklater from the perspective of a Linklater lover and a Linklater skeptic.

Slacker is uh... a film? Technically. More of an art project and proof of concept which is very strange to watch in the year of our lord 2024.