Blurbex

We wound up closing out Sundance by seeing 6 films in 2 days.  Friday morning, we wait-listed for “Bottle Shock,” a film that is based on a true story about California wines winning a French wine tasting contest in 1976.  It was a very enjoyable film to watch.  Although it had some Hollywood elements, which would have been better received had I been drinking some wine, the subject matter was dear enough to my heart that I enjoyed it thoroughly.

After leaving the Egyptian Theatre on Main Street, we headed down to the Sundance House for the Delta Sponsor giveaway.  Every day, sponsors give away swag items at this venue, so we wanted to check it out.  Getting plastic luggage tags was slightly disappointing and we wound up giving them to some people on the street who were on their way there.  At the bottom of Main Street, we found ourselves at the Alpine Internet Café, where we spent an hour drinking coffee and numbing our brains on the Internet.  When we left, we headed up Main Street to go to the 4:00pm Wine Escape at the Filmmaker Lodge for more free Turning Leaf wine.  While it can easily be used as just an excuse to drink and get out of the cold, we did have the pleasure of rubbing elbows with several filmmakers, including the ones responsible for one of the movies we wanted to see but just didn’t have time for – “The Linguist.”  We followed this with dinner at the Wasatch Brewery and were sufficiently intoxicated for our night time films.

“Fear(s) of the Dark” is a black and white animated piece, featuring all kinds of violent acts and phobias.  It was told as 4 different vignettes with little coherency between the story lines other than the trippy designs with voice overs which preceded each new theme.  We counted 14 people who walked out during it, but it kept us entertained.

“Hell Ride,” a 70s-style biker gang film, was our midnight screening. Produced by Quentin Tarantino, it features Larry Bishop and Michael Madsen (who were there for the Q & A) as well as a couple other classic Tarantino tapped cast members like Dennis Hopper and David Carradine.  While it was fun in the B movie sense, it was far from cinematic brilliance.  This was clearly apparent after the film with the melt down Q & A.  Loaded with fan boy inane questions such as, “You’re hot!” and “Can I take my picture with you?” and “I think you worked with my friend. What was it like working with him?” it was quite possibly, the worst Q & A we have experienced.  Michael Madsen looked like he was high as a kite, which helped the insanity.  He was singing, jittery, and began taking apart the microphone, much to the dismay of the sound techs.

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Wednesday finally saw the beginning of our ticket package, which will provide us tickets to 10 films and access to other festival venues. We may not be industry, but we can look the part.

Our first film of the day, “The Wackness,”  was a flashback to 1994 New York. Luke (played by Josh Peck) is a teenage drug dealer trying to work out various issues in his life before going off to college. Ben Kingsley plays his hilarious psychologist, who dishes out therapy in exchange for bags of weed. Earlier this week, we had been blissfully unaware of who Josh Peck is. At least, until we overheard some guys in line who were so star struck by him that they had to literally call everyone in their cell phone address books to tell the story of meeting him. Over the course of an hour, we had to endure long explanations of “Peck!  No, P-E-C-K. From Nickelodeon!  He’s famous!” 

Unfortunately, headache-inducing exchanges like this are all too common during Sundance. It makes it easy to separate the festival novices from the rest of the jaded masses. Here is a picture of the director during the Q & A:

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The weather Tuesday morning was fabulous.  Clear skies and lots of fresh powder from the day before.  However, this is not a skiing blog, this is a film festival blog! We decided to take a rare opportunity to sleep in today.  After another meal at my new home away from home, Squatters brew pub, we headed to Starbucks to try to get this crappy laptop to connect to a wireless network.  No such luck.  I had no problems connecting to various wireless networks in Tampa but Park City must be some sort of kryptonite for this machine.  After a couple of frantic calls to the company IT guy and a friend who knows everything about computers, we are still lugging around an expensive and useless paperweight.  In a last ditch attempt to solve the problem, we headed to the store to get another wireless adapter to plug in to the paperweight.  Long story short, it is still a useless paperweight. 

Headed on down to Main Street again after giving up on the Internet with the lure of the free wine reception at the Film Maker’s Lodge, available only to individuals with credentials.  We have both been to much better gatherings, but it is hard to argue about a place to go out of the cold where they give you cheap wine and you can pretend to be someone important.  Once the last call was sounded at 6pm we headed to Bangkok Thai for dinner. 

Dinner was wonderful and bountiful.  We had a nice half bottle of pinot noir with our meal which complimented it nicely.  While we were wrapping up our left overs I looked up and saw LL Cool J dining at the table adjacent to us.  Much to Hazy’s protest of it being tacky, I busted out the camera and took an undercover spy shot. 

Momma said knock you out:

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Monday was officially the fifth day of the Sundance Film Festival if you count the Gala in Salt Lake City.  The fourth in Park City.  And it was our third full day here.  This is a day that is generally characterized with a lot of transition.  The opening weekend is in the books and many folks that only come for the first weekend (since that is when the majority of the bigger films open) head out of town.  This year sees yet again most of the first weekend opening films already lined up with distribution by major channels.  So with great film geekness, we are getting excited about these next 2 swing days and then the start of our package B selections. 

Driving in Park City is always a challenge and parking is damn near impossible.  With that in mind, we head on down to the box office on Main Street to pick up our tickets for the second half of the festival.  While looking for a parking spot, I spy a bunch of freshly stapled posters for the movie we wanted to see tonight, “Goliath.”  So I jumped out and grabbed one for Hazy.  Nothing like below freezing mercury to make sure that you cannot feel your fingers wince in pain while pulling staples out off poles.  Once at the box office, we were pleasantly surprised to see there was one ticket available for “Goliath.”  So tonight’s wait-list was already off to a great start.

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We arrived in Park City on Saturday afternoon a little too late to wait-list for our first selection – the premier of “What Just Happened” at 6:15pm. Since we wanted to jump right into the Sundance experience, we headed to Main Street for some evening people watching and to shoot some filler footage for our film.Here is a shot of Main Street at night:click for more sundancing… (more…)

updates from park city starting this weekend!