Setting out as a mockery of self-indulgence (but always ending up as a sophistry of solipsism), “indie” movies cast in provinciality the very counterculture which they seek to distinguish. Through this inadvertent pigeonholing, the naked value of “independence” - as defined by the indie set - exposes itself as a caricatured derivation of all that it could’ve been. The result, then, is an exaltation neither of culture (nor counterculture), but lazy, telegraphed irony. Just as The New Yorker’s over-the-top attempt at Obama-maniacal satire fell flat under the heft of its own truth, so indie-ironic nihilism deflates from the pressure of its own forthright aplomb. So it is that this month’s indie iteration reverberates with the formulaic echoes of the mainstream flicks that it seeks to malign. “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist,”...
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