Bitch

Bitch is one of the few great, legitimately funny student shorts I have seen. The story is simple -- somewhere in West LA, an bitchy but secretly self-conscious record store clerk catches an antisocial punk stealing records (he refuses to sample beats off of anything but vinyl because he's "a real musician") but the two misfits somehow up falling for each other. However, there is much more than a simple love story here. The Los Angeles backdrop acidly satirizes superficial youth subculture and fakeness. Vandenburgh manages to shred both buffoonish pseudo-radicals in Che t-shirts and vapid, anorexic MTV spring breakers in the same stroke. There are really no holes in this movie -- the writing, acting, casting, beautiful black and white cinematography and snappy editing are all done right. I hope to see more of Vandenburgh's work in the future, she has a bright one.