"My favorite short film of 2007, Matthew Lessner's By Modern Measure is a masterfully executed gem, which uses beautifully grainy black-and-white film and French New Wave techniques to comment on just how difficult it is to make an honest romantic connection in our commercialized and corny modern world. But there's a sincerity and gravity to the work that makes it more just mere satire and elevates it to greatness. This, my friends, is what short films should be."

Yeah

HERE
http://tillamookheadlightherald.com/main.asp?Secti..8&SubSecti..8&ArticleID=8306&TM=52112.7

"Love stories are unique, thrilling and romantic. Aren't they? Choosing the form of a black and white road movie, Matthew Lessner caricatures the banality of fiction films that sell the illusion of love as a mixture of destiny and entertaining dialogues. As in Richard Linklater's BEFORE SUNSET, a boy and girl meet by coincidence and spend a day together. Since they are both Americans falling in love in front of an American Taco store, they are not threatened by the foreseeable separation of Linklater's protagonists, who share only one day in Vienna before they must continue on journeys with different destinations. So, what could prevent the couple from staying together? Perhaps indifference, boredom and the fact that they both suffer from skewed perceptions, fed by the odds and ends of internet information and the omnipresent imagery of advertisements and interchangeable action films. A highly entertaining criticism of a visual and emotional conformism, the film is vital proof of an innovative art, that claims America back from the producers of American stereotypes."


HERE

Exciting piece by Noralil Ryan Fores

HERE

"Boredom at Its Boredest" by Michael Tully
April 28, 2007

"BY MODERN MEASURE could very well be my number one cinematic revelation of 2007. This is what short films should be. A smart, funny idea executed to perfection. .... To festival programmers out there, track down Matthew to get a copy of BY MODERN MEASURE! You're program is sadly lacking if you don't program this short film."

FULL POST HERE

BEWARE...... CLICK HERE IF YOU DARE

http://bymodernmeasure.blogspot.com/

Lots of fun details, what kind of cereal we're into at the moment, what we though of last night's Top Model, etc.

"Matthew Lessner's "By Modern Measure," makes a more poignant comment about the decided lack of such political agitation in our own generation. As a pair of young lovers bond over their mutual love of Taco Bell, Mountain Dew and Doritos, the short film's French narrator calmly mentions the falling of bombs over Iraq half the world away. When the two profess to love Che Guevara, they tellingly can't articulate why."

- Kristin MacDonald
Cin?ma v?rit?
The Michigan Daily