The Last of the Movies

Well, Sundance is over for another year and the town is now really quiet. It could also be the blizzard that kept a lot of people home yesterday....

We went to the locals screenings called "Best of Fest." 2 movies are chosen on the last night of the festival for this screening. This time it was the Documentary Audience Award winner: "Fields of Fuel" and the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize winner: "Frozen River."
Here's where the ticket strategy came into play. We had sold our Sunday tickets to this movie when we found out what was going to be in the Best of Fest. Not attending BOF because we'd already seen the film was never an option! And we got to see 2 more movies!

"Frozen River," written and directed by Courtney Hunt, is about a single mother with 2 kids whose husband has taken off just before Christmas. She's trying keep things together for her family and desperately wants a new home, but can't make the payments to have it delivered. (It's a double-wide trailer home.) She meets a young Mohawk Indian woman who uses the frozen river between Canada and New York to smuggle people across the border. The two women work together smuggling people even though they don't like each other at first.
It's a good film and the actors draw you in to their worlds. It is not a downer of a movie and has a hopeful ending. What you'd expect to see on the Sundance Channel or the IFC channel.

The "must see" film of the night was "Fields of Fuel" by Josh Tickell. It's about how to get our country free of foreign oil. It's upbeat and hopeful, and that's probably why it won the audience award. Mr. Tickell has been working on this film for 10 years and his passion is contagious. His main focus is on sustainable energy:using biodiesel fuels. We can grow all the fuel we need. We should be able to have conflict-free energy. We seem to have done that with diamonds...

Years ago he converted a van (the Veggie Van) to run on vegetable oil and has logged over 25,000 miles in it, spreading the word. Now that he has this movie, he's taking it and the van on a 50 city tour and will show the film at both party's political conventions.

He was there for the QandA and stayed after the film in the lobby for over an hour talking to everyone who wanted a word.
We learned many new things: Sweden has pledged to be petroleum-free by 2020; there is algae that can be made into oil, not in millions of years, but in days or weeks; any diesel car, truck, van, ship or bus can run on biodiesel fuel immediately, with no modifications needed.

12 films in 4 days. Whew! It was a great experience and an amazing opportunity to see films of all kinds. We were able to get tickets to everything we wanted to see, and getting around wasn't too much of a hassle. Of course, we weren't invited to any of the big parties and events on Main St....

We have to thank our friends who invited us, housed us and showed us the ropes. Early morning coffee, late night pizza and wings, adventures in souvenir-gathering, celebrity spotting, all good times! Would love to go again!

Photo idea thanks to TFOP

Sundance 4

Need to review the 3 movies from Sunday afternoon and evening.

The World Cinema Documentary Jury Prize winner was:"Man On Wire", directed by James Marsh. It is a fantastic movie that recounts the amazing Philippe Petit's wire walking event between the World Trade Center towers in 1974. The movie is adapted in part from his book, "To Reach The Clouds".

Archival movie footage, photographs, interviews and recreated scenes tell the incredible story of Petit's planning and execution process. We thought it was the best doc we saw. The director was there for the QandA and allowed as how Mr. Petit would have been there but had to return to New York. The footage of the construction of the World Trade Center towers is very nostalgic and almost heartbreaking. One of the producers is Discovery, so I imagine this will end up on TV at some point.

The Documentary Grand Jury Prize winner was "Trouble The Water" directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal. This movie shows how one New Orleans family from the 9th Ward lived through Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. The title comes from a song.

The directors explained that they had planned to film the LA National Guard unit coming home to a devastated New Orleans after being in Iraq. The directors wanted to follow soldiers as they dealt with the destruction from the hurricane, knowing they had not been able to be at home protecting their families. The government forbade filming after only a few days, so the directors went to the convention center and met Kimbery Rivers who told them she had amazing footage of the hurricane and she was looking for a "worldwide" outlet for her family's story. Using her video footage and following up for about a year after the hurricane, we see the family's courage and perseverance as well as their love for their native city. This movie does not yet have a distributor, but it should.

The third movie of the day was the Dramatic Audience Award winner: "The Wackness", written and directed by Jonathan Levine. The director wasn't there for a QandA.

The story takes place during 1994, when Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) graduates from high school with no friends and family problems. He also deals pot and sees a psychiatrist, played by Ben Kingsley. The doctor trades pot for more sessions.

It's a coming of age story with a strong hip-hop beat. The acting is great, and has some funny scenes and lines. The title comes from an exchange Luke has with his almost-girlfriend, Stephanie, played by Olivia Thrilby. She tells him he's too sad all the time because he only looks at 'the wackness" of life. She tries to look at 'the dopeness" which is much better. This might hit a theater near you sometime soon.

After a nice dinner at the Grubsteak Pub, we collapsed back home.

Snacks in the theater? It depends on the venue. Real movie theaters have normal concession stands, but some venues won't allow anything but water in the theater. The large venue at the high school auditorium had a souvenir stand in the lobby, as well as snacks to buy, but they had to be consumed in the lobby. They didn't check purses or pockets, however, so we always had a few granola bars and small water bottles with us.

Sundance 3

Saturday night's movie was "casting a glance." It is an 'art documentary' by James Benning. He made 16 trips to the Robert Smithson's art installation "Spiral Jetty" (in the Great Salt Lake) from the time of its installation in 1970 to 2005. Each time Benning set up a film camera and let it run for several minutes. He also changed the camera position several times on each visit. The movie shows 5 minute segments from each of the visits. We see beautifully photographed shots of the changing landscape-different seasons, different water levels, etc. Ambient sound and some introduced effects create the background. The only problem is that it's hard to watch basically a series of still photos for 90 minutes! We stuck it out, however, and I plan to go visit the Spiral Jetty at my first opportunity....

Sunday: Up at the usual 5:30 am to get to the Gateway Center Box Office early. This time we were #6 in line! Many people selling extra tix and waiting to see what would be shown when. Today most of the award-winning movies are shown. Check out the Sundance site for the list of winners. The schedule was drawn up listing the award for that time slot, but no one knew the movie for that award until Saturday night. So we had to see the final list posted on the box office door before we could plan the day's movies and see what tickets we should sell.

The other wrinkle is that Utah locals have the opportunity to see 2 movies on Monday night(called "Best of Fest") for free, but those aren't announced until today as well. Our hosts had 4 tickets for each Monday night movie, but also had some tickets for Sunday's award winner showings, so we didn't want to have the same tickets for both days. If you are still following this, I'm impressed! We spent our time in line trying to get it all straight.....

It turned out that we had Sunday tickets for one of the Monday night movies, so we were able to sell the Sunday tix to people in line. That turned out to be "Frozen River", which won the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize award.
We bought the Documentary Grand Jury Prize winner, which was "Trouble the Water."

We kept the Dramatic Audience Award winner:"The Wackness" for Sunday evening.

We also decided to sell tickets to "World Dramatic Prize winner:" "King of Ping Pong" in favor of "World Documentary Jury Prize winner": "Man On Wire." More on those movies in the next post.


The weather turned very windy and snowy today, with the big storm heading in tonight and tomorrow. My expression in the picture means "Please don't let the camera get wet!"

On to the 3rd movie of the day, so will continue later!

Sundance Day 2

Friday night's movies were: "Savage Grace" directed by Tom Kalin, starring Julianne Moore. It's a true crime story about a severely dysfunctional family. Emphasis on severely. The acting is pretty amazing because there are several very disturbing scenes.....
The last act is searing and violent. We would have liked to stay for the QandA but we couldn't because we had another movie to get to--another wrinkle in the Sundance experience: you have to plan your routes and know how much time it takes to get from one place to another.

The second movie we saw was "Phoebe in Wonderland" directed by Daniel Barnz and starring Elle Fanning as Phoebe, Felicity Huffman as the mother, Bill Pullman as the father, and several other great actors. It's about a girl whose Tourette Syndrome symptoms are beginning to emerge and how she and the people around her deal with this. It's beautifully photographed and all the characters have fleshed-out personalities.

As we got in line for this movie, I turned around and the people in line behind us were friends from Alabama. How "small world" is that????

Saturday morning found us back at the main box office in line with about 20 people ahead of us. There seemed to be fewer tickets available, but we made our selections and again got in and out quickly, even scoring a ticket for a film with only 8 available seats!!!! We even found out that you can exchange tickets for face value minus $2.

The first movie was "CSNY:Deja Vu". This was at 9:15 am! But they filled every seat in a large theater. This movie documents the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young 2006 "Freedom of Speech" tour. I thought this was a '2 for 1": a protest movie and a concert movie. For baby boomers, this is really "deja vu." And we seem not to have learned anything much from the Viet Nam War.

We ate lunch in a small pizza/sub shop near the second movie and saw "Puujee." This is about a Mongolian family made by a Japanese film director. I thought it would be something you might see on the Discovery Channel or the Travel Channel: customs and lifestyle, that kind of thing.

But I was wrong. It's about how one girl from a nomadic herding family, Puujee, captures the hearts of the film crew and they keep coming back to spend time with the family and see how she grows up. The ending is extremely sad, as the film crew finds out on a visit to the family in 2004 that Puujee is killed in a car accident when she was 12. The photography is wonderful and you really get insight into how their traditional way of life is quickly disappearing. The director, Kazuya Yamada, was there for the QandA and it was interesting to hear his thoughts on the film.

Last film for the day will be "casting a glance." More on that tomorrow.

Did see Felicity Huffman at the movie last night, and Regina Taylor (from the TV show "The Unit") at the movie this am.

Still low on the star count.

Sundance!

Am lucky enough to be spending a few days in Park City, Utah with friends to take in a few movies. I've seen 2 movies so far, and 2 more movies this afternoon and evening. There are many ins and outs to negotiating this event, and our friends have been extremely helpful. Today in PC alone there are 47 movies showing at 9 different venues between 8:30 am and midnight. 18 other movies are being shown in Salt Lake City and 2 other ski area venues, one of which is the Sundance Resort.
We got in line at 6:15 am at the Main Box Office in order to get tickets for today's movies. A list of all the movies with available seats (and the no. of seats ) is posted on the door of the box office. We had plenty of time to scope out the list and make our decisions. The box office opened at 8 and because we were there early we were about 15th in line and we got in and out quickly. We were back on the street at 8:10 am (BO opened at 8) with all the tickets we were hoping to get for today. Will do the same for tomorrow. I imagine that there were at least 150 people standing in line when we left the box office.




Inside the ticket office




Last night I went to see a documentary called "Dinner With The President:A Nation's Journey". It was made by 2 Pakistani filmmakers who requested to have dinner with President Pervez Musharraf and he agreed. The film explores the contradictions of democracy and seeming dictatorship. I thought it gave a lot of insight to the situation in modern Pakistan and why democracy is such a foreign concept to most of the people there.
The second movie I saw was "An American Soldier: The Recruiter." It follows an Army recruiter (one of the top recruiters in the country) through a year of his life and his recruits as they go into basic training. It really humanizes the soldiers and what they go through. It also points out just how young these soldiers are and what a huge task we are asking of them.
Another interesting facet of the film festival is that the director and sometimes the actors are available after the film for questions and answers (known as the "QandA"). The questions from the audience run the gamut from thoughtful to arcane.

So far, everyone has been extremely helpful, polite and friendly. Haven't seen huge crowds, but we've also managed to steer clear of downtown at peak times. Watch this space for more updates!

Holidays in Colorado

Just got back from a lovely family holiday in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. It was so cold and snowy this year! There were 16 of us in our extended family group, and that was great to see everyone! We skied in the blizzard and fog, and in the freezing cold! The snow was light and powdery, thanks to the cold temps.

The trees never lost their snowy caps, because the sun wasn't out for very long and it never warmed up. I don't think it got above 20 degrees the whole time we were there.





New Year's Eve is celebrated on the mountain by a torchlight parade and fireworks. The ski instructors hold flares and ski down the front face of the ski area. Fireworks conclude the show. Then we go to dinner at The Butcher Shop for a great meal and back home to watch the ball drop in Times Square.

Our traveling worked well this year-we managed to avoid the terrible storms and delays that plagued other places. Thanks to the family for such a nice trip!