Cinematical

After seeing Breaking the Waves and Festen, I cared about Dogme 95; in fact, I deeply cared (despite the improbable ringing at the end of Waves, which I simply ignored while caring deeply about the rest). But after seeing Dancer in the Dark and then It's All About Love, Dogme was basically dead to me, as I found myself feeling mistreated by its principal auteurs - this, despite friends trying to persuade me every so often to see the latest Dogme movie trolling the festival circuit.

You may have read our own Chris Campbell's recent article about Von Trier's latest, The Boss of it All, ironically titled "Von Trier Stays Home." He stayed home from Cannes, sure, but did you know he literally could have just... stayed home? Boss made the lineup of the London Film Festival, whose site indicates that the film was shot using automatic randomized cameras. It's a new process for which Mr. Von Trier has coined the phrase Automavision. Boss is supposed to be a dark comedy, begging the obvious question - do automatic cameras know comedic timing? How does one program Automavision to capture the subtleties of Scandinavian dark comedy? I know one of Dogme's goals is to reduce the amount of intervention and translation between the story and the audience's reception of it, but isn't this somewhat extreme? I think I liked Waves and Festen as much as I did because I could feel the intelligence and ambition of the directors shimmering behind the screen. I suspect this new automatic camera thing is a bit more, er ... mechanical than visceral ... but then, I haven't seen the movie.

Automavision! Isn't this how Cartman tried to trick Butters into revealing his innermost secrets?