RichardGlatzer Tagged Articles at Cinematical

American independent cinema frequently introduces us to customs and traditions we might not see otherwise. Films about unfamiliar wedding ceremonies, ethnic neighborhoods and religious ceremonies are given exposure year after year, thanks mostly to audiences who want to see something new or different. Sure, the films may often be the result of minority filmmakers representing their backgrounds for all to see, but it is the common moviegoers who curiously accept and enable these cultural showcases.

Now we have Quinceañera, which skips the representative filmmaker and fittingly shows us a community from a detached perspective -- our perspective, and the filmmakers'. Written and directed by two white guys (Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland), the film looks at the coming of age of a young Mexican-American girl, and of her L.A. neighborhood, Echo Park, from clearly an outsider's point of view.

Our friends over at Indiewire conducted their first ever poll of critics and journalists at Sundance, and found that the group of 50 critics they interviewed (which, we must point out, did not include anyone from Cinematical - should we be offended?) voted overwhelmingly for Ryan Fleck's Half Nelson as their fave dramatic film. Indiewire's story doesn't specify the scientific validity of their polling method, or how it was conducted. Was it a poll conducted by impartial, official pollsters? Or was it more the type of poll where you ask everyone you meet over many drinks at a Sundance party which film they liked the best, and then trust your half-fogged memory to keep accurate track of the results?

At any rate, according to their results, the runner-up, Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland's Quinceañera, which won both the Sundance jury and audience prizes, and the other runner up, Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep, each received less than half the votes Indiewire  tallied for Half Nelson. The results Indiewire posted don't give us hard numbers, but if we remember our grade school math correctly, we can estimate that Half Nelson probably received somewhere around 25 votes, with Quinceañera and The Science of Sleep splitting the rest.