Baghead in Austin.

You'll have likely seen Michael Cieply's report in the New York Times by now: segueing off the festival circuit, the latest feature from Mark and Jay Duplass will see its theatrical premiere in the directors' hometown, Austin, on June 13. "Then Baghead will probably move on to Dallas, Houston or, maybe, Portland, Ore - cities that, in the words of Tom Bernard, the co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, 'tend to connect with what's new and different.' In July or August, if all goes well, Baghead will finally make it to screens in Manhattan and West Los Angeles, where independent film gems are supposed to be discovered by sophisticated viewers who live on the culture's cutting edge. Or used to. Whether the reverse rollout of Baghead is an aberration or the tip of a trend remains to be seen. But that it is happening at all signals a change in the way independent film executives view the delicate business of shaping tastes."

Ok: "Let's start at the beginning," as Josh Rosenblatt puts it in his cover story for the Austin Chronicle. He does. The Duplass Brothers' story is told. Then it's on to the movie itself:

Baghead is many things: a drama about people in their 20s and 30s struggling to communicate, a satirical send-up of actors who decide to write movies for themselves after it becomes clear their careers are going nowhere, a classic slasher genre film plucked right out of the 1970s, complete with a cabin in the woods, a homicidal maniac, and exposed breasts. Or maybe Baghead is really just about the increasingly blurry line between movies and reality in our media-saturated age, a study in postmodern self-reflexivity and irony taken to confusing heights: a movie about out-of-work actors getting tormented by a man with a bag over his head making a movie about out-of-work actors getting tormented by a man with a bag over his head.

Then it's back to the Duplass story. If you're in a hurry but also in need of a quick smile, find "This is a true story" about halfway in. Enjoy.

Sidebar: "A short, unreliable survey of the bag in recent cinema."

Posted by dwhudson at June 5, 2008 1:26 AM