The best band of the world

I just found a blog on blogspot that is dedicated to Evanescence. It's in Spanish but my spanish skills are somewhat limited, especially when it comes to translating the excited and probably nonsensical rantings of an Amy Lee-obsessed Los Angeles teen blogger.

So for now I'm waiting on some friends from Notre Dame.

Yesterday I revisited "Reality Bites" and I feel like at this point in my life I'm ready to evaluate it for what it really is. When the movie came out, I was eight years old. I saw it a few months after it came out on video--my sister got it for her birthday and we watched it together. What I remember most about seeing it for the first time was that everyone in the movie reminded me of my sister--especially Winona Ryder's character. I didn't get anything they were talking about but I fell in love with it because the characters reminded me of the cool people that my sister hung out with. And I thought Ethan Hawke was cute.

I've watched this movie several times since and now it carries extra weight with me. Especially now that I get what's happening. But mostly I feel like this movie is really important to me and to other people for the same reason it was important to me when I was a kid. The characters captured the essence of Generation X (which is a term that I am reluctant to use, but oh well) and the film itself speaks really strongly of a particular time in history.

"Reality Bites" is different than a film like "American Graffiti" which profiles a specific pocket of time in retrospect. Ben Stiller made "Reality Bites" about a group of grungy college graduates in 1994...in 1994. If the film were to be made next week, it would be completely different because we'd have the ability to objectively evaluate culture in the early nineties. Ben Stiller took what he knew about himself and the members of his generation and exploited that information. It works.

I guess this is why I like films like "Reality Bites" and "Swingers" and "Slacker"--even "American Beauty" is one of these films in many ways. It always fascinates me when directors and writers are able to step back and realize certain aspects of their own humanity at a specific and current point in time. "Swingers" has been dismissed as a cult film because of the way it looks at the short-lived swing revival of the nineties. But it also explores some pretty timeless stuff. There will always be guys picking up girls in bars, trying to make names for themselves, and attempting (with difficulty) to move on from failed relationships. All of this stuff just happens to occur in the underground bars of LA in 1996. So maybe there's swing dancing and shameless homages to Quentin Tarantino. It happens.