The Daily Show's Wyatt Cenac Does Mumblecore
The trailer for Medicine For Melancholy starring Wyatt Cenac and Tracey Heggins. How totally original does this look? It doesn't look like any other movie:
There's a little bit of Before Sunrise, Slackers, and the mumblecore classic Hannah Takes The Stairs in there, but otherwise it seems like totally its own thing (and it got great reviews at SXSW last year.) Medicine For Melancholy opens on January 30 at the IFC Center in NYC, and will be available on OnDemand a week later.
Posted by Lindsay at 2:15 PM in Trailer
Tags: Medicine For Melancholy | Mumblecore | Tracey Heggins | Wyatt Cenac
Calling Hannah Takes the Stairs a "classic" would be premature even if the movie was good.
But this one does look kind of neat.
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I meant it in a "first mumblecore movie I ever heard of" way, not a "good movie" way.
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Interest relatively piqued. I haven't actually seen any mumblecore, but I've heard enough about it to know what to expect.
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This is kind of original for that genre in that it has black people in it, I guess.
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Wyatt Cenac feels the same way about San Francisco as I do.
Finally, mumblecore that speaks to who I am!
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I feel a little embarrassed for anyone still using the phrase "mumblecore". It's kind of the equivalent of your annoying coworker who still does his Borat impression, but no one says anything because they don't want to hurt his feelings. It's like "torture porn" was a few years ago: one idiot uses it in a review, and soon it becomes a full-fledged "genre". Maybe Eli Roth and Joe Swanberg will collaborate on a "torturecore" or "mumbleporn" film. Actually, "mumbleporn" does sound intriguing...
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Nobody uses the word "mumblecore" seriously. God help us if anyone does.
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David Edelstein's no idiot.
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why, oh, why is it shot in black and white? can we please stop using black and white as an indicator of "substance" and "integrity" and "artistic vision." the reason godard shot in black and white is because COLOR FILM WASN'T INVENTED YET, not because it means something.
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Sorry, I can't let this go.
First use of color film: "Cupid Angling" in 1918
Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz released in 1939
Jean-Luc Godard born in 1930
Godard's first film: the short "Operation Concrete" in 1954
A few films that used b&w when they easily could have used color: Psycho, Raging Bull, Night of The Living Dead, Schindler's List, Clerks, Good Night and Good Luck, et al.
I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm just a big fan of black & white.
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What about the little girl in the red coat? (Love, That Asshole.)
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This is how I feel about the Luddites who stubbornly continue to shoot film in 2D.
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There are heaps of valid reasons for using b&w stock, aesthetic choice being one of the most prevalent. When done well, b&w can look amazing, partly because the dp needs to put much more focus on contrast. Monochrome is much tougher to shoot on then color. Personally, I'd love to see more filmmakers use b&w.
Your reasoning is comparable to asking why Win Butler would choose to use a decades-old church organ on Neon Bible when he could have just used a plug-in replica on an M-Audio controller, or why Jeff Tweedy would use a '65 Deluxe Rev on A Ghost is Born when there are plenty of newer, cleaner sounding amps to choose from. It's not always an act of pretentiousness.
Oh, and Godard's Band of Outsiders was released in '64, when the majority of major films were using color. So, your argument is pretty much null and void.
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OK, i guess i didn't fact-check that -- thanks for the lesson. Anyways, black and white usually sucks. sorry, film students.
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Agreed on B&W, no reason it can't be great. I'd add Rumblefish to the good use of it even though the fish are in color. Which was awesome too btw.
I like the "mumblecore" stuff usually even if the term isn't that great. But the fact that it's sort of DIY where everybody does everything is cool. Having worked on a few crappy movies and videos I know how much fun it is to work on a project with douchebags. So if you're friends it's that much better.
Best of luck to MfM. Tracy Heggins is gorgeous for the record.
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I don't know if any of you were too busy to notice, but this film isn't even in black and white, its just heavily desaturated.
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I have seen this movie. It is terrible. Wyatt Cenac is good on the Daily Show and his acting is all right in this movie. But the plot of this movie is pretty much.. How can I be indie and black at the same time?! Literally. They say that in the movie. The whole thing is about race which I found to be a let down...
And it is not in black and white...the colors are just kind of dull.
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Maybe I should see this movie, because I've always understood indie and black as being opposites. I need my horizons widened.
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just one more thing: wasn't the reason a lot of directors didn't use color film when it first came out because it was too expensive?
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couldn't be objective b/c at :35 the title with sxsw misspelled the word "world" as WOLRD. Is that some kind of intentional Austin-hipstery thing?
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