Time to check out Andrew Bujalski

Now that I’ve gotten a taste of so-called mumblecore movies (see “Humpday” at the Magic Lantern), I want to see more. Here are the two that I want to check out: “Funny Ha Ha” and “Mutual Appreciation.”

Here’s what Scott Foundas said about Bujalski on the Web site cinema scope :

“Any cursory description of the films of writer-director-actor Andrew Bujalski risks making them sound like a thousand others that have attempted, motivated either by genuine curiosity or crass marketing instincts, to depict the trials and tribulations of young people in their 20s as they try to establish a foothold in a strange and often forbidding grown-up world. But with the exception of ‘Before Sunset’ (2004), Noah Baumbach’s ‘Kicking and Screaming’ (1995) and a select few others, I’d happily trade most of the lot for Bujalski’s ‘Funny Ha Ha’ (2002) and ‘Mutual Appreciation’ (2005) – two films that, together, have probably been seen by fewer people than tune into a given week’s broadcast of ‘The O.C.’ ”

The rest of the article is a pretty good description of the independent filmmaking process.