Richard Linklater

Quote:
“Slacker” is a movie with an appeal almost impossible to describe, although the method of the director, Richard Linklater, is as clear as day. He wants to show us a certain strata of campus life at the present time — a group of people he calls “slackers,” although anyone who has ever lived in a campus town will also recognize them under such older names as beatniks, hippies, bohemians, longhairs, peaceniks, weirdos or the Union Regulars (for surely every campus with a student union also has a seemingly permanent body of current and former students who hang around all day drinking free coffee refills and wondering whether life as they know it exists outside the union).Read More »

Quote:
Richard Linklater’s follow-up to Slacker, Dazed and Confused, flopped at the box office, but Dazed and Confused went on to become a huge cult hit. It’s set somewhere in suburban Middle America (filmed in Texas) on May 28, 1976, on the last day of school, and everyone’s looking for something exciting to do. First, however, the incoming freshmen students must spend the day fleeing from bizarre initiation rituals from paddle-wielding, abusive seniors – while everyone else does their best to get stoned or get laid. Set over the course of 24 hours, Linklater’s observations about the rituals of teenage life, and about small town mentality, is spot on – as is his attention to the smallest details of time and place. The camera swerves between some two dozen youngsters and a handful of stories, but Linklater keeps everything and everyone on the same level. All parties congregate at a huge beer bust in the middle of the woods, but amidst the keg parties, fights, dope-smoking, classic rock tunes, and endless partying, not much happens.Read More »

Synopsis (by David Gregory Lawson – filmcomment.com)
Richard Linklater’s first feature, It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (88), is the travelogue of a young man, played by Linklater, riding the rails, hitching, and driving through the southwestern United States. The unnamed protagonist flounders about pleasantly in Austin, visits a friend in Missoula, and hoofs around San Francisco by his lonesome (chatting up strangers, though the conversations can’t be heard, covered by city noise, or waves crashing against rocks at a lighthouse by the bay). Then he returns to Austin, babysits his mother’s dog, and, finally, is given a cassette tape by Daniel Johnston, whom he does not know. During their spontaneous meeting Linklater reveals that the film’s title is written on one of the T-shirts he’s been wearing the whole time: “Old Russian proverb,” he says.Read More »

Quote:
American director Richard Linklater returns to the tale of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) that he began seventeen years ago in Before Sunrise (1995) with 2013’s Before Midnight. Set nine years after the events of Before Sunset (2004), this is an eloquently scripted dissection of a now middle-aged couple’s relationship. Reflective in tone, we open to Jesse reluctantly sending his son back to the States, before heading off to an idyllic Greek villa he and his wife have been staying in. The glowing couple appear happy, with Jesse writing yet another novel, Céline starting a new job in Paris and twin gold-ringleted daughters of their own.Read More »

A young man and woman meet on a train in Europe, and wind up spending one romantic evening together in Vienna. Unfortunately, both know that this will probably be their only night together.Read More »

Quote:

When “Before Sunrise” was released in January of 1995, it came and went in theatres, receiving some acclaim before being relegated to the video shelves, doomed to be forgotten like so many films, without making much of an impact.Read More »

The plotline follows separate subplots that all coalesce around the meatpacking industry. From the meat company executive sent to investigate charges of shoddy processing, to the processing plant use of illegal immigrant labor, to all the lives that are collaterally touched by each participant in the food chain, the movie examines the entire US ethic of providing a packaged experience better, faster, and cheaper. The movie does not leave out gory details, but instead lets the viewer decide what the end result should be by providing no neat conclusions, nor happy endings, but more importantly imparts a series of possible topics for discussion with a background of how the problem developed and the interdependent parties involved. In total, the film could easily be shown as an instructional video for a college level course in corporate responsibility.
Author: risserobRead More »

Quote:
It’s too long into “Before Sunset” that we see Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) reunited after nine years…and it’s only two or three minutes into the movie. In 1995, Hawke and Delpy starred as the characters in “Before Sunrise,” a film co-written and directed by Richard Linklater (“School of Rock,” “Waking Life”) about two 20-something students who meet on a train travelling across Europe, and spend an evening in Vienna just talking, making a connection that transcends mere physical attraction, though clearly one exists. At the end of “Sunrise,” they promise to meet up again in six months.Read More »

Description
Richard Linklater’s Slacker presents a day in the life of a subculture of marginal, eccentric, and overeducated citizens in and around the University of Texas at Austin. Shooting the film on 16mm for a mere $23,000, writer/producer/director Linklater and his close-knit crew of friends eschewed a traditional plot, choosing instead to employ long takes and fluid transitions to create a tapestry of over a hundred characters, each as unique as the last, culminating in an episodic portrait of a distinct vernacular culture and a tribute to bohemian cerebration. Slacker is a prescient look at an emerging generation of aggressive nonparticipants, and one of the keynote films of the American independent film movement of the 1990s.Read More »