a 10 year, 30 movie dive into mumblecore, from funny ha ha to frances ha

this is based on order of release, and starting 2017 i'll watch one a week and log it with a review each monday. reviews will be in the notes.

mumblecore was a pejorative term used to describe dozens of practically no budget films starring no name actors that came out in the mid 2000s and were featured in film festivals around the county, particularly at south by southwest in austin, texas. they were generally decried by the public and cinephile alike, with the common criticism being that they were boring movies about straight middle class white men and women where nothing of note happens. mumblecore became such a popular buzzword and pejorative for a subset of low budget independent films that many of the filmmakers associated with it went out of their way to distance themselves from the term.

i don't really think the word is even used anymore today. that brand of filmmaking has long died out, though some of its pioneer creators still make films today. in fact, joe swanberg just released an entire netflix series this year.

many of them, in fact, have gone on to greater successes. greta gerwig is about to be nominated for an oscar this year for 20th century women, lena dunham is going into her 6th season of her own emmy-nominated hbo show girls, mark and jay duplass also created an acclaimed hbo show— togetherness, and have acted in several films—jay is fantastic on amazon's transparent for example. and every few years another of them breaks out into the public consciousness—this is barry jenkins's and damien chazelle's year, with moonlight or la la land possibly winning the best picture oscar. so it's going to be interesting to watch the films of the movement they came out of.

if anyone's reading this, i'd love for you to join in too because there just isn't that much conversation today about this wave of films and creators— i'd love to hear what other people here think about these movies as i watch them too.

i'm planning to start in january — i need some time to collect these films and find ways to see them.

focus will be on american mumblecore, i'll do a separate one another time to examine international mumblecore- ex. films from south korea, india and germany- that have adopted or have already been using similar mumblecore characteristics.

i also might do a mumblegore series too