Daily Loaf

We’ve been in Park City for two days now, learning the ropes and exploring.  It’s always tough to get tickets for the first weekend, and while we started out with about 8 or 9 tickets a piece, purchased online, I’ve encouraged the group to push their boundaries, see films they have no ideas about going in, meet and talk to people in line and on the free shuttles, try new things.  Most seem quite eager to take me up on that.

After a flurry of blogging to complete assignments for our class before they got on the plane for Sundance, the group has slowed down a bit, focusing a bit more on taking things in.  Here are just a few excerpts from the things we have written in these two busy first days at the Sundance film festival.

Lizzie Kirkham on her first day and her first Sundance film:

Lizzie Kirkham

My first day at Sundance is extremely incomparable to my first day doing anything else. It wasn’t as drug-induced as getting my wisdom teeth taken out, nor was it as fun as my first race in alpine skiing. It was, despite the overuse of the word, unique. I have the largest collection of tickets, one of which was to the most beautiful movie Before Tomorrow…

Park City's Egyptian Theater

Waiting in line for the film, in a cold concrete alley outside the Egyptian theater, I met Tracy, a Park City local who had been working with Sundance as a volunteer for about 6 years running. She was extremely friendly, and as a photographer, looked out for the most beautiful films in the area. She told me about 5 films that I couldn’t go on living without renting from Netflix, all of which were made outside of the US. Her perspective really helped me to enjoy the film better as we sat down next to each other…My friend Tracy absolutely loved the movie – we talked a little afterwards and I could tell that my perspective through simply talking to her had changed how the film affected me.

Jerad Ford on “Shorts Program 4“:

Jerad Ford

With the last short, Next Floor, it seemed that they had left the strangest and best short for last. To tell too much about it would really ruin a lot of the experience of actually watching it, but basically it involves a large table of rich people continuously and ravenously eating as much exotic meat that can be brought to them. but as they eat the floorboards under them start to creak, and things begin to spiral downward the more and more they eat. The scenario is a disturbing sort of black comedy satire, which presents this ridiculous situation and lets you ponder the meaning behind it. The cinematography was great, and it was really amazing watching the film and wondering how they could have made it with only a budget for a twelve minute movie. It was an exciting end to a great line-up of short films, which has me very excited about going to see other shorts while I’m here.

Matt Went on the animated opening night film “Mary and Max”:

Matt Went

The most astounding part about the movie I thought were the flies. In the opening montage and in another few parts of the movie there were flies that buzzed around. I thought they were brilliant because of their life-like qualities, the fact that they were suspended in the air, and that their wings looked so real. In fact this was the case with almost every part of the movie. Though the clay didn’t look real, everything was so believable. One was able to just be immersed and get lost in the world that this movie created. Along with that came the great ability to play with the audiences emotions. My mental state followed the characters scene for scene. When they were up, I felt a warm sense of happiness, when they were down (which happened often) I followed right along there. The characters themselves were so pathetic yet funny and inspiring. The movie overall was an odd, yet welcomed change to the normal star-gazer flick that is normal to opening night.

Rajeev Rupani on the film “Taking Chance“:

Rajeev Rupani

It is not possible for a movie to be perfect because there are always flaws. After experiencing Taking Chance, I have proven myself wrong because it is perfect in every manner. Katz conveys the story to its fullest extent and displays a different perspective behind the death of a soldier. When talking about the film making experience behind Taking Chance, Katz and Bacon both acknowledged that it had affected everyone involved with the movie and they had a special screening for the Phelps family in December. Strobl, being present for the Q and A session, said that the family hadn’t gotten past the first few pages in the book because it had been too painful for them, and thus did not know what to expect from the movie. In such volatile circumstances, given the story, Katz was able to do justice to the story and did not waiver from the original plot-line.

Kevin Bacon as Lt. Colonel Michael Strobe in <em>Taking Chance</em>

I have never been affected by a movie in such a manner and those hundred minutes will remain with me for a very long time. I had the honor of meeting the actual Lieutenant Colonel Strobl and telling him how great his story was. Chance Phelps was a young nineteen year old soldier whose death you may have read about in the papers: this is his story of coming home.

Jack Browning on “Johnny Mad Dog“:

From beginning to ending this film was intense, stylish, and disturbing. Jean-Stephane Sauvaire created a unique and truthful depiction of children soldiers in Africa. The film was shot in Liberia where there had been a civil from 1989 until 2003. Sauvaire went to Liberia and actually found 15 ex-children soldiers who had fought in the civil war in Liberia to act in the film as the children soldiers.  Now uneducated, impoverished and without family, these children struggle from day to day. Sauvaire gave them a chance to tell their story to the world.

Me on “When You’re Strange“:

Nathan Andersen

When I heard that Tom diCillo (Living in Oblivion) had a documentary on The Doors in competition at Sundance this year, I was very excited.  His 1995 film, Living in Oblivion is a bitterly funny take on the frustrations of independent filmmaking.  More importantly, The Doors was my favorite band in High School – that I believed I’d discovered myself, a few decades after their heyday – and Jim Morrison became something of a personal hero.  I had posters of him on my wall, I had all of the albums, I read No One Here Gets Out Alive and a volume of his poetry, and I even grew my hair out to look like his before he’d grown a serious paunch and facial hair.  I’ve since outgrown this fad, and Ray Manzarek’s organ just doesn’t move me anymore, but who wouldn’t want to go back and relive the exciting moments of teenaged discovery?

Unfortunately, When You’re Strange is not quite the intoxicating blast from the past I’d hoped it would be. …The problem is with the basic structure of the film, organized around the very bland and utterly conventional history-lesson narrative of a fairly unenthusiastic narrator…to explain (repeatedly) that the strange really was strange, to point out that the revolutionary really was revolutionary, is to presume that the material has lost its life, and can no longer convey its own power.  The film ends on a joke, of sorts, with the narrator pointing out that (unlike many of their contemporary bands) none of The Doors’ songs ever became a car commercial: unlike many of their contemporaries, I guess, The Doors never sold out…  But when they’ve been packaged like this, with their allure and their ups and downs explained so neatly, does it really matter whether they sold themselves out?

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