celluloid dreams

I’m not sure this is a point New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis wanted to underscore in her paean to the poor struggling foreign fims that are trying to emerge from under Hollywood’s big, bad shadow,** but she let it slip in a squib about Richard Linklater’s forthcoming Fast Food Nation:

when it comes to critiquing America, few do it better than outraged Americans

So true.

And so old.

(But something tells me Linklater’s movie isn’t a hate-fest, either***)

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**This piece from 2003 (”We Aren’t the World”) is fairly convincing about the fact that America’s culture is no longer the dominant one across the globe and that it will decline with increased globalization—a view endorsed by Indian filmmaker Shekhar Kapur.

Kapur believes that “American culture has been able to dominate the world because it has had the biggest home market.” But the growing commercial importance of Asia — China, India, Japan — along with the larger markets of the Mideast and North Africa will change that, he argues. In other words, cultural globalization is far from a recipe for American dominance; it is an opportunity for other cultures and markets to assert themselves.

***The trailer looks great, and I love Richard Linklater. I once went to a panel discussion and asked him whether he’d ever make a sequel to Before Sunrise

and whaddaya know, but he went and did it with Before Sunset: