I love the video and completely agree that "Boyhood" should have won Best Picture. I'm completely baffled when people say, in regards to Linklater's movies such as "Boyhood" and the "Before" series, that nothing much happens. If ever there where movies where seemingly everything happens it's those movies. These movies are seemingly obsessed with how people change. Linklater is such a sly filmmaker that it feels that people don't really take measure of his work in ways they would other movies. In the most simplest terms these movies are often described as being about time, or obsessed with time. But time is merely measurement in these stories, not what they are about. One night in "Before Sunrise" changes two characters. Eighty minutes in "Before Sunset" changes these two characters completely. In "Boyhood" it's not the 12 years that changes the family but what they go through in those years. These films are really about context: what these characters covet, what they face, the things they reconsider, and how they change. These films show that time doesn't matter. Change can be slow; change can be fast. It all depends upon the context. And in the case of the "Before" series (which I call instead of a "trilogy" in case "Before Midnight" wasn't the end) you get two characters whose history only gets richer with each film because of their context. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of "Before Sunrise" last month I made a mashup video of the "Before" series, playing with their contexts. And "Dazed and Confused" was, yes, a "last day of school party" film but in a different context it's a movie about America's Bicentennial, showcasing teens in 1976 with focus on a high school quarterback debating about signing a sobriety pledge in order to play football--will he play into the system or will he go his own way, declaring his own independence? Linklater's films run deeper than they can let on. He really loves to tell stories that approximate life, never hitting you over the head with what his agenda is but telling a stories that run deep enough for enormous discovery.

Joseph, that's a wonderful testament to Linklater. Love the video. If I could embed it, I'd feature it on the blog.

Thank you so much Scott! I actually didn't know one couldn't embed the video. I couldn't enable embedding on the video so I tried deleting and re-uploading the video with the proper settings but it still wouldn't work. So I uploaded the video to vimeo which allows for embedding (at least at the moment) if you still would like to feature it: https://vimeo.com/user38039852/httpsvimeothebeforeseries On another note I sometimes wonder if Linklater making "Boyhood," the "Before" films and "Dazed and Confused" from a distance is what gives him the grace and mastery to tell these stories. "Dazed" seems autobiographical because it takes place at a time when he himself would have been Mitch Kramer, but told over 17 years later, giving Linklater the time to consider being 14 and also of the perspectives of the people around him to inform his story, not just his experience. Linklater is 10 years older than Jesse and Celine in the "Before" series when he made those films, and 10 years older than Olivia and Mason Sr. in "Boyhood" as well. Where some filmmakers tell personal stories about their lives around the time they make their films Linklater's personal stories are never specifically about the time he's making them. It's funny since "Boyhood" and the "Before" series are often about being in the moment. Yet "Before Sunset" is partly about how it took years of writing on and off for Jesse to write the book of that one night with Celine. I suppose to Linklater one should always strive to live in the moment, and if one wants to tell the story of that moment then allow time to pass and illuminate the moment for all that it was.

Joseph, thanks for making the video available for embed. And I think your analysis of Linklater in relation to his storytelling is spot-on. He seems to have the ability to both dwell in the moment of his stories, yet also have the requisite distance from them to give him a perspective on them, especially important when telling personal stories that reflect on his own life. Look for a blog post tomorrow!