Watched two Hal Hartley flicks recently: No Such Thing and Henry Fool. Jesse had told me about them eartlier when we went to see the benshi performance, and I finally got around to renting them. Liked both of them. It was refreshing to see a couple of non-Holleywoodian American movies. I guess the independent cinema still exists, though the monster film was produced by American Zoetrope. Yet, it only cost $5 million.

The earlier Henry Fool seemed less coherent, but then it didn't have the horror genre to structure it. The male protagonists in both films are similar and perhaps a mouthpiece for the director, though in interviews he's comes off as mild mannered. Literate screenplays with lots of witty dialogue. Lots of contempt for the world (read America) and ones fellow man (read humankind). Acting and direction a pleasure throughout.

Curious post-911-ism in No Such Thing there's a newscast near the beginning about terrrorism up by 70% and nerve gas being released in the subway. In an interview, Hartley said that after 911 even Spinal Tap had deeper meaning. And the bit about publishing Simon's poem on the "internet thing" seems a little ahead of the curve, since Henry Fool was released in 1997.