[Note: Reeler editor S.T. VanAirsdale is taking the week off, but the blog is in the good hands of trusted friends and colleagues; click here for other entries in the series. Jamie Stuart is a New York-based filmmaker. His series Mutiny City News appeared on MCN in 2005, and his current site is www.mutinycompany.com.]
All right. Never wanted my own blog. Never wanted to blog at somebody else’s blog. So when The Reeler e-mailed me in a sweaty, clammy panic and pleaded for me to sub one day while he jetted off to Fiji or St. Tropez or wherever, I decided I’d take him up on the offer just so I could write about how much I don’t want to blog.
Funny thing that creative process. As I sat down to write my nuclear treatise, which was to run complete with half-naked MySpace photos taken with Photobooth on my Mac (using the stretch effect), I decided there was too much goddamned negativity already out there. And as I’m anything but a conformist, I decided instead to make this argument:
In terms of quality output, the period ranging from roughly 1999-2003 will go down as one of the most significant in film history, not unlike the late 1960s/early 1970s. This era featured a convergence of generational shifts, millennial angst and the adoption of digital both professionally and in the consumer spectrum. Most observers still point to the ’90s indie revolution as the last great period, however, I’d argue that it was already over by the time the media jumped on it–Pulp Fiction was the end, not the beginning. Even though by nature I prefer the concept of independence, the ’99-’03 phase that saw the rise of the dependents was more dynamic–and with that, idiosyncratic filmmakers who had emerged independently (Paul Thomas Anderson, David O. Russell) or via music videos (David Fincher, Spike Jonze) were able to further their creativity by having modest budgets to play around with. The energy created by these new talents was met with the returns of Terrence Malick, George Lucas and Stanley Kubrick, and it also sparked the second golden era of Steven Spielberg, whose films best illustrated the immediate impact of 9/11 (he formally led the charge to reinvigorate movies with ideas after accepting blame for getting ’em kicked out in the first place). Meanwhile, with the releases of The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix and Harry Potter, the modern FX blockbuster serial was born.
Book-ended by Wes Anderson’s Rushmore in late 1998 and Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in early 2004, we received: The Thin Red Line; Fight Club; Minority Report; Elephant; Bowling For Columbine; Eyes Wide Shut; Lost In Translation; The Matrix; The Lord of the Rings; Being John Malkovich; Magnolia; Election; The Blair Witch Project; Donnie Darko; Requiem For A Dream; The Royal Tenenbaums; O Brother Where Art Thou? ; All About My Mother; Amelie; Three Kings; Mulholland Drive; 28 Days Later; City Of God; The Shape Of Things; The Sixth Sense; One Hour Photo; The Limey; Y tu mama tambien; Catch Me If You Can; Adaptation; The Fog Of War; Kill Bill; Ghost World; 21 Grams; Dancer In the Dark; American Splendor; Touching the Void; Punch-Drunk Love; Spider-Man; About Schmidt; Talk to Her; 25th Hour; The Pianist; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Traffic; Far From Heaven; In the Bedroom; The Man Who Wasn’t There; Waking Life; Auto Focus; A.I.: Artificial Intelligence; and American Beauty — not to mention Apocalypse Now Redux and a 70mm re-release of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I’m sure I missed more than a few. But you get the point. The good news is it happened. The bad news is that it’s over. And so is my anomalous blog attempt.

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