UHF baby.

I can't really think of any. Although there are a lot of party scene movies out there, I think that before they get too the core of the matter, that endless party scenes are ultimately hollow and unfulfilling despite all of their many attractions, they generally either get sidetracked into talking about the dangers and/or glories of drugs and alcohol, which leands them into an oversimple afterschool special kind of moralizing and sentimentality or a sort of 'fuck the man! we'll do the drugs anyway!' ethic which is just about as realistic or instructive. I can't think of anything in the last twenty years that really comes close, but then, I haven't been watching many contemporary movies in the last 10 years or so, so I easily could have missed something.

Nothings like La Dolce Vita, but The Anniversary Party was pretty good.

i like the party scene in garden state.

I like the thought of Garden State doing for our generation what a Fellini movie did for one past. However, I have a feeling that a movie that actually said something broadly about our present culture would have to account for the possibility that someone of our generation could regard a movie like Garden State as potentially playing this role for our contemporary culture.

I've never seen anything by Fellini, I might add, but CM, I think your referring to Boogie Nights is totally valid. Another one that crossed my mind is 24 Hour Party People. It would be perfectly fitting that a movie that can speak to, I don't know, current hipster culture or whatever, in an insightful way would be about a time gone by- the movie both responds to and feeds the fetishization of some bygone party-oriented culture, and manages to weave in a sort of... I don't want to say "moral commentary" but I can't think of anything more accurate.

One step better than this in my mind would be to incorporate some kind of look at the way the "moral commentary" that is sort of built into the mythology depicted in either of these movies is actually part of the fetish- what I mean to say is, the corruption or seediness or decay that's the flip side of fun becomes part of what people seem to try to conjure in their retro efforts. I.e., it's not about learning something and improving, it's about appreciating the fetishized culture for both its pleasure and its corruption.

Garden State: The party scene was probably the best in the film, but it lost its way by the end, focusing on a sobbing Natalie Portman needing a man to show her the way.

24 Hour Party People: I've seen it, but I don't really remember the mood it evoked. I think I was busy identifying the allusions and the soundtrack.

Uh, are we likening Fellini and Zach Brafh (sp?). I mean, Garden State was good, and filled with a great soundtrack ripped straight from KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic, but it was pretty rife with flaws and sort of slight. Without Portman, who everyone who watched the film fell in love with (baring CM and maybe Kalinda), it would have been passable, but she is the reason I like the film. In fact, La Dolce Vita would have rocked if Portman was in it.

I apologize for my earlier transgression. I was in a silly mood
at the time-- and that 0 responses was staring right at me.

You now, that foul movie Kids from the 1990s (foul because it was over-hyped and not very good) had a lot of party scenes in it
that are probably still relevant if not a little over the top.

"I have no legs. I have no legs." I do not see why that near pedofile, Larry Clark, is still allowed to make films. I guess he is better than Victor Salvo, of Jeepers Creepers and Powder, who is an actual convicted pedofile.

We aren't likening Fellini to Braff. Remember what I said in the post: "It wouldn’t be a remake exactly, nor would it attempt to emulate Fellini, but it would capture whatever’s behind the endless party pictures you find on Flickr or lastnightsparty.com."

disagree about the "sobbing n.p. needing a man to show her the way" completely. you have it totally backwards: she's an easy device by which z.b.'s life is changed. i have affection for that movie, though it is by turns pedestrian and predictable. mostly, it's a promisingly artsy, cool and funny picture.

and it's heretofore only the third thing i have ever liked natalie portman in. and "leon" and "beautiful girls" shouldn't count, not really.

i think you're right about n.p.'s role for the first 95% of the movie. but in the last 5%, i think that concept was lost, and it all became about z.b. making the final decision.

meh. he just needed an ending. it's weak, but it's not as intentional as you think it is.

oh i don't think it was intentional either. just latent sexism/egoism.

i love la dolce vita.

I love your idea for a Dolce Vita of this generation. Often the life of the rich and bored portrayed in great novels like Gatsby or Lolita (I'm thinking about Cue more than Humbert) seems very distant from anything I can imagine people doing, but the party culture of today (which, as a college student, is always in my face)has the same emptiness. Thank you for showing me that connection. If I were a director or anything, I'd take you up on the idea.