You may remember my glowing praise of little-known indy flick, Brick, back in May. In case you’re interested it’s still sitting comfortably in the top spot for best film of the year. Then again Garden State happily wandered along in that spot for most of last year and finally came in with shameful shameful bronze in my Top 5 for that year, so you never can tell.
A hypothetical reader who’s paying altogether too much attention and who really should go and find something better to do might note that, since I noted Dirty Rotten Scoundrels as my favourite Steve Martin movie, I’m obviously a fan of the con-man genre. Like I said, that hypothetical reader is way too interested in my opinions on movies. Leaving that aside, let’s put film-of-the-year-so-far and really-great-genre together and see what we come up with.
Well if it isn’t the promise of a con-man movie from Brick writer/director Rian Johnson. Awesome! And despite Brick‘s success he’s staying independent so that he doesn’t have to sacrifice control of the film to a studio. (By the way, if you’re wondering what effect removing full creative control from a visionary film-maker has on a movie, compare Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Serenity. Urgh.)
I just really don’t have any interest right now in doing studio work or being a director for hire or doing other people’s material or selling my material for other people to do. Right now I’ve got a couple of stories in my head and I want to be able to tell them in my own way. I want to be able to make my own movies.
It’s still a long way away, not planned for release until 2008, but The Brothers Bloom is going to sit prominently on my movies to look forward to list in the mean time.