andrew bujalski

Support the Girls

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The cast of Support the Girls

Support the Girls is an Andrew Bujalski film and so comes loaded with expectation. He’s often cited as the “inventor of mumblecore”, the go-to genre for white hipsters of a certain age, the cultural late arrival at a party already full of shoegazey indie bands. Since breaking into the scene with 2002’s Funny Ha Ha and consolidating his status with Mutual Appreciation, Bujalski has edged away from the brand he helped build. Beeswax disappointed many fans because it looked like an attempt to go mainstream. Then Computer Chess came along, a “revenge of the mumblecore” movie about chess-playing nerds. Bujalski vindicated. Results was another shot at a Bujalski-meets-Hollywood movie, a look at the … Read more

Computer Chess

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Patrick Riester in Computer Chess

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 9 March Bobby Fischer born, 1943 On this day in 1943, the future chess grandmaster Robert James Fischer was born in Chicago, Illinois, USA. The son of a communist teacher and of either the physicist Paul Nemenyi or the biophysicist Gerhardt Fischer (the FBI believed it was the former), Bobby learnt to play chess aged six and became immediately fascinated with the game. He played against his first master, Max Pavey, aged eight and though he lost it led to an introduction to the Manhattan Chess Club, where he was tutored by William Lombardy, and then the Hawthorne Chess Club, where … Read more

Mutual Appreciation

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Justin Rice, Andrew Bujalski and Rachel Clift in Mutual Appreciation

A micro-budget black-and-white indie drama, written and directed by one of its co-stars, Andrew Bujalski, who plays the college lecturer graciously helping out old school friend and budding rock musician Alan (Justin Rice) after he relocates to New York. Failing to commit, being vaguely rubbish, avoiding maturity, just sort of drifting about, that’s the over-riding atmosphere delivered by Bujalski’s bittersweet second film, after the highly influential Funny Ha Ha. His inspiration would appear to be the naturalism of early Jim Jarmusch, the awkwardness of Woody Allen, and Bujalski is keen on situations where what is not said is twice as powerful as what is. Embarrassment looms large too, inevitably, so anyone who’s ever … Read more