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.