I just found the best film blog ever. Okay, I found it with the help of Professor Henry Jenkins’ blog. Gotta give credit where it’s due–I’d give credit further back, but I can’t remember where I first found Dr. Jenkins’ blog. Anyway. This is the joint blog of David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, who cowrote the text Film Art. They’re out of Univeristy of Wisconsin-Madison (aka one of the film schools I tried to get into), with degrees from University of Iowa (aka the other film school I tried to get into), pretty much the two top film studies schools in the country.

If you’re interested in film, you must check out this blog. I just voraciously read the whole thing (it’s only three pages or so, relatively new), and it’s all good. Interestingly enough, the next-to-newest post is about auteurist criticism, and the role of the screenwriter, which relates tangentially to my thoughts on adaptation. After all, if changing mediums requires adaptation, then is not every film an adaptation of its own screenplay, whether the screenplay is original or not? Hmmmm.

An earlier post deals with independent film, and requires more thinking on my part:

2.) Calling a film independent says nothing about its aesthetic commitments.

The press has exaggerated the distinctiveness of indie films. People are always looking for novelty, but the fact that something is noticeable doesn’t mean that a seismic change has hit.

A low-budget indie can be completely conventional, as The Brothers McMullen and My Big Fat Greek Wedding are. Many of the most celebrated crossover entries are in familiar genres, like mystery and crime, romantic comedy, melodrama (You Can Count on Me, In the Bedroom) and the social problem film (Boys Don’t Cry, Monster). In indie films, even the most purportedly character-driven ones, the plots tend to follow the three-act/ four-part scheme and cohere around consistent point-of-view patterns, appointments, deadlines, motifs, and other traditional narrative devices.

Part of my reaction to this is based on a perhaps misguided definition of “indie film,” but I pretty much call a film independent based on aesthetics. The term “indie” to me is an aesthetic term more than an economic one. And those films he named, feel indie to me. I mean, yes, My Big Fat Greek Wedding is fairly conventional romantic comedy–boy meets girl, boy likes girl, boy meets girl’s family and runs screaming (and vice versa), boy and girl overcome this and live happily ever after. But it feels different than a mainstream romantic comedy. The thing is, I can’t really pin down why that is. Unless it’s because of this:

3.) Indie film develops its own traditions of stories, stars, and genres.
[...]
Moreover, independent cinema has built a parallel star system own around the likes of Steve Buscemi, Martin Donovan, Lili Taylor. Julianne Moore is virtually the Greta Garbo of Indiewood. Some of these actors, like Moore, become mainstream stars.

The result is that the person who likes indie films develops skills in following their familiar features. Stars generate a following, and help sell new projects, while people come to understand the conventions of unconventional storytelling. Viewers steeped in Short Cuts, Pulp Fiction, and Magnolia can quickly come to grips with Crash or Happy Endings or Me and You and Everyone We Know.

Perhaps My Big Fat Greek Wedding, etc., feels indie to me because it doesn’t have mainstream stars. Perhaps Magnolia feels indie to me because I know that Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly and William H. Macy don’t tend to act in non-mainstream films, which counterbalances the fact that Tom Cruise does. Perhaps what I think I’m recognizing as indie sensibility is really just my subconcious knowing that it’s not a mainstream film, therefore it must have an indie sensibility. Am I just making up the fact that there is a palpable “feel” to indie films? Or am I completely missing the point of what David Bordwell is getting at (which is entirely likely, especially since he says the press has exaggerated the distinctiveness, rather than denying the distinctiveness exists)?