Dogme 95 films - classic or dud , search/destroy

I just find the whole idea of applying a group manifesto to art or entertainment self defeating and limited. So far Dogme has produced nothing that makes me think otherwise.

It's cool if a director or writer has a "manifesto" that's individual to them. knowing what you like and dislike in a film , is in itself a kind of unwritten doctrine. Most good directors are aware of their aesthetic and tonal preferences in a very specific way anyway.

The american Dogme film I saw (Reunion) was interesting in that it didn't really have the same raw emotions on display thing going for it, which was interesting.

the thing that is really great about digital video is the way everything looks like it's someone's home video, thereby making Dogme films look like documentaries.

(I had a hard time getting past the pretending-to-be-retards shockah! of The Idiots. I watched it with a friend of mine who loves WEIRD SHIT, so he thought it was great. But I wanted something more, I guess.)

come on, Festen is one-chip-video-gorgeous.

lars VT is the MOST MANIPULATIVE ARTIST/DIRECTOR/WHATEVER EVER

everything (inc.dogme) is a stunt to get you going — i don't mean it;s a con, i mean his projects don't being and end w.his movies, he's always on: the prank never ends, the performance includes the rest of yr life blah blah

he grew up in some lefty free-love commune, so he knows a think or three abt emotional mindfuck, and what suckers we all are for "principles"

Gossip: Apparently Nicole Kidman was giving the producers and crew of Dogville hell and they fired her, but Von Trier ordered them to hire her back and promises to work with her again. I always get the sense that part of Von Trier's pranksterism has a lot to do with his working with a lot of the same people from the same little Danish film community time and again, while all the time introducing new actors and DPs etc. from around the world, and sort of setting the two camps against each other. Sort of like bringing the new girl/boyfriend to hang out with the old poker pals. . . . Also Dogville is now the frontrunner for most convoluted European coproduction: under "country" the IMDB lists:

Denmark / Sweden / France / Norway / Netherlands / Finland / Germany / Italy

I like Dogme in the sense of it telling young directors how little they need to make a good film. The problem is when people assume not having the fancier shit inherently makes their film better. I think Clerks is better than any Dogme I've seen and probably a better influence in that it says you should at least be funny if you're gonna be trite.

on the marquees here, they'll put "Xxxxxx Xxxxx DOGME FILM" so it really just boils down to people paying $1000 for a piece of paper and a few plastic letters over the theater.

i once got in an argument with a friend who wanted to lump all of trier's movies under the dogme name. there may be some similarities but i tend to view it as a strict definition. he's one of my favorite directors though, based on the movies themselves - i might kick his ass for being mean to bjork.

to call this comment "fascinating" would be an incredible understatement

i might kick his ass for being mean to bjork

it's my favorite thing about him!

i. i'd already been at a bfi panel discussion of dogme, chaired by my v.old pal j0nathan r0mney (with whom i disagree bt everything ever btw) (IMO he didn't "get" dogme and asked all the wrong questions)
ii. read everything abt dogme that had been in s&s
iii. at my friend's house we watched three documentaries (danish w.subtitles) abt dogme and lvt
iv. brainstormed an actual shape and content to my friend's son's thesis (up till then its entire content = "it's about dogme 95")
v. wrote some of it up (neither of them knew how to use the laptop)
vi. had nice meal
vii. my friend discovers a giant dead rat under the dinner table, put there — he hopes! — by his dog
(his wife is away in new york: my friend doesn't normally "do" hospitality on his own)
viii. write up some more of it, and i go home
ix. the night before it has to be handed in, friend's son fucks up his computer and loses entire thesis, every word

anyway: what you got up-thread is what i can recall realising, from watching those docs — esp.von trier — and his own discussion of his own early life (danish w.sub-titles), and then extrapolating from watching the idiots

(i have a v.close friend whose parents took her and her brothers with them to a leftoid nudist colony every year until she finally escaped by going to college: her words on this, more or less, "there is are few situations more hypocritically coercive than one in which everyone is insisting they have freed themselves from all inhibitions")