Not the Younglings!

As 2007 closes and 2008 comes into the forefront, it strikes me that the world needs another film and cinema blog.

Not the Younglings! is just that blog.

In one sense, it is a call out to one of the most ill-conceived lines of movie dialog ever written (thank you George Lucas for Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith). In another sense, it is about what I want to see in cinema - films made for and focusing on "not the younglings".

What the hell are younglings anyway? My guess is that the word "youngling" is filmmaker slang for that lowest common denominator film-goer that all of the marketing and focus groups seem to want to please.

The year 2007 seemed like a nice step in the right direction. Much hay has been made over the fact that three major American films (Knocked Up, Waitress, and Juno) seemed to take a stand on the abortion issue, but I think the real bit of cultural zeitgeist that has been captured in the films of this year is the real sense of things not being sewn up in perfectly happy endings.

I think of some of the great endings I have witnessed and the ones that really stuck with me were the friendship-ending shot at the climax of 'Superbad', the final interview segment in 'Atonement', the last speech of 'No Country for Old Men', the unresolved conclusion of 'Zodiac', and the ending of the documentary 'No End in Sight'.

These endings were ones of uncertainty. They ended with the feeling that there were no pat answers and that the best thing we need to do as an audience is grow up.

This makes me excited for 2008.