Thursday, January 17, 2008

Butterknife

A few years ago, the firm I work for was split into 2 small offices - one in Portland and one in Chicago. The Chicago folks eventually moved to Portland and we consolidated the company here. There was one part-time guy who didn't make the move from Chicago and his name was Joe Swanberg. Though I've never met Joe we did talk on the phone and IM a bit, and he seemed to be a really cool guy. In the last few years Joe has become one of the leading lights of a new film movement called mumblecore, which "uses handheld video, improvised plot lines and episodic story structures to express a new idiom for life as a 20-something." Sweet.

Recently around the office we'd often say things like, "Hey, did you see Joe in the New York Times?" or "Wow, there's an article about Joe in Rolling Stone", etc. It's been exciting to see his name appear in more and more mainstream publications, especially after the release of his last film Hannah Takes the Stairs (you can save it on Netflix, not available yet). I am a massive lame-o and have never actually seen any of his stuff. We had a copy of his first movie in the office for years, but I never got around to watching it - mainly because I didn't want to watch the scene where Joe beats off in the shower.

Anyway, he has a new "Phillip Marlow-esque detective web series" called Butterknife coming out this month. The trailer is below. Looks pretty fun.

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