Well, it had to happen sometime. What with two weeks' worth of crushing hype mid-summer, the mumblecore kids were due for a backlash, but who knew Amy Taubin would be the one to do it? Taubin, after all, went on record in 2005 with a "Distributor Wanted" for Mutual Appreciation, exceeding all the hype two years ahead of time by calling Andrew Bujalski's work "Rohmer without subtitles." The tide turns, viciously, in a Film Comment jeremiad that goes viciously ad hominem in record time, from an opening shot bidding goodbye to "the indie movement that never was more than a flurry of festival hype and blogosphere branding." Studiously ignoring her own early championing (Matt Zoller Seitz correctly points out that Taubin seems to be suffering from "buyer's remorse"), Taubin taunts the movement for not making enough money at the IFC Center, accuses all involved of racism for not inviting So Yong Kim's In Between Days to the party "because the filmmaker is a Korean-American woman and her heroine is a Korean immigrant," and calls Joe Swanberg a "lout." These aren't criticisms of film; seemingly the spirit of political campaigning in the air has infected Taubin, whose article is as ridiculously mean-spirited as any negative ad.
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