Richard Linklater Day

Today marks the release of Richard Linklater's new film, The Bad News Bears. Linklater is one of my favorite filmmakers, and one of the few truly unique voices in modern American cinema. Linklater's someone whose career can be pretty easily split into personal films and more general studio stuff. Slacker, Waking Life, the Before duology, these are all more personal/indie stuff, while Newton Boys, School of Rock and Bad News Bears are studio stuff. Not surprisingly, the projects he has written are generally speaking much better. And, coming off perhaps his greatest film, Before Sunset, it's a bit disappointing that he chose to do this remake of the Bad News Bear. But, it is Linklater and I suspect it'll be a fun film. Plus, we've got an awesome film in the future, the animated Philip K. Dick adaptation A Scanner Darkly.

So, a review of Bad News Bears will be on here as soon as I see the film, but in the meantime, peruse some articles from the past that I've written about Linklater.

Finding Meaning in Discussion: On Linklater and the Before Duology
Top Ten Films of 2004
My 2004 Oscar Nominations
Review of The Newton Boys
Review of Suburbia

The first article is essential reading, the others are more peripheral in their discussion of Linklater, but are there for completion sake.

Coming Soon: I rewatched Magnolia Monday and I've been writing up a big piece about that film which should be up soon. When I see Bad News Bears, I'll review that. And perhaps we'll thrown in a personal update on what's up with me. So, look for all that soon.