Michel Gondry, je t’aime…
The unfortunate side of leaving for Cuba last Friday was that I had to wait a full week until we got back to see Michel Gondry‘s latest film Be Kind Rewind. I gotta shout from the rooftops… this is a fantastic movie. In case my in-depth review and ringing endorsement isn’t enough, I set forth a challenge to anybody who reads this… just try watching the trailer and NOT wanting to go see the movie when it’s done. It’s impossible.
You have to see the movie really to understand what I’m about to say, but Gondry totally gets the mash-up remix culture and I couldn’t help but draw some parallels between what the community ends up doing to save the store and the whole DIY culture of the web nowadays. Sites like YouTube and MySpace have basically liberated the web so that anybody can share anything… no matter how poor you are and how little talent you have. Be it music or video or photo or art, if you can make it there’s an easy way to publish it on the web and share it with the world. It’s fun, it’s cheap, and anybody can do it. It’s the whole user-generated content revolution and while it does produce more than it’s fair share of crap it’s all about empowering the little guy and leveling the playing field so amateurs can reach the same audiences as the big boys. I think that’s what I liked most about the movie – the message that anybody can create and be creative.
Plus Gondry just blows my mind with how inventive he is behind the camera… that finger piano was brilliant!
(Well this just confirms it… found this link right after I finished writing the post)
Thee Oh Sees, Black Lips, The Sheepdogs, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Frankie Miller, The Rolling Stones, Kiss, Hayden, Al Casey, Thin Lizzy, Sloan, Takeshi Terauchi, The Kinks, The Ventures, The Black Keys 
