Two Takes on one "Quiet City."

Quiet City, Aaron Katz's second feature comes out on DVD early this week via Benten Films.

"As an extra, the DVD features Joe Swanberg’s Quiet City, a cute “short film prank” concocted by Swanberg (who stars) and his key collaborator Kevin Bewersdorf (who directed). It’s a six-minute lark, hilariously lo-fi and shot on a dime, and it manages to poke some gentle fun at all the key style points of Generation DIY. As such, it’ll probably unite mumblecore lovers and haters alike. —Bilge Ebiri"

(Via New York Magazine)

Ray Carney writes about mumbling with Katz's "Quiet City."

The verbal effect is to create a monumentally laid-back relation to life. What happens, happens. What doesn’t, doesn’t. No one is pushing the river. No one is making anything happen.

That doesn’t mean that nothing happens, but rather that it appears to originate without personal or imaginative pressure being applied by the characters or by the filmmaker. The relationship of Charlie and Jamie does get somewhere, but Katz’s goal is to present the progress of a relationship that is not rhetorically inflated or narratively pressured, a relationship that is not presented as a series of heightened, dramatic “points” in the stupid movie way. The “slacker” sensibility is at the heart of the project. Hollywood uses the character’s (that is the actor’s) ego as a generator of narrative impetus and movement. Actors (and the characters they play) “make scenes” that “make the movie go.” Tom Cruise and Robert DeNiro strut and fret, and Jack Nicholson and Nicholas Cage shout and showboat their way through their movies, flattering viewers with macho visions of how powerful and powerfully expressive someone can be. Quiet City quiets, stills, and almost stops the acting. The actor becomes a reactor.

Ray Carney "Trumping Trump"
(Via Filmmaker Magazine)