We went to Sundance on the coattails of the good people of IndieGoGo. Thanks to Deano for guessing that their site was built with RoR, so that I could look smart talking to Eric about it. Deano is a good guesser.

I sat on my ass

8 movies in 4 days.

I'm pretty sure that this is more than I've seen (in-theatre or as rental) in the prior 365 days. "Transformers", "Little Miss Sunshine", and The Simpsons" is all I can remember seeing. God, I suck. There might have been one or two more, but definitely not 8.

We also went skiing and didn't fall down too much, and had a tasty brunch with the wonderful Wesley Morris.

We got lucky

We didn't buy any tickets in advance. We got lucky and bought our first day of tix online due to a glitch on the festival web site. Everything else we saw by wait-listing at Holiday Village.

Holiday Village is the best place to wait-list for tickets at Sundance. The theatres are tiny, but most of the films showing aren't the big hype movies with long lines. Since it's a multiplex you can almost always get out of one film and hop right to the front of the wait-list line for another. You can also get in two wait-list lines at once.

The theatre is in a mini-mall with an Albertson's (and in-store starbucks), China Panda Buffet, Sushi Maru, and a pizza/subs place. I love you Holiday Village.

The catalog of ships

The Guitar

This film, about a woman who saves her life by maxing out her credit cards to purchase high-end consumer goods from catalogs, sleeping with the delivery guys and girls, and learning to play electric guitar from a cheesy video, is absolute crap. The plot mostly moves forward through deus ex machina. It's kind of pretty to look at but has no real content.

The Wackness

It's 1994, Ben Kingsley is in a wig, doing drugs, young Jewish pot dealers fall in love. It's like "Kids" except all the characters are good, caring people deep down inside. Maybe that's because they're not quite as poor as the kids in "Kids" were.

Sunshine Cleaning

Same production company as "Little Miss Sunshine". Alan Arkin reprising more-or-less the same role. A setting of genteel suburban poverty. Ouchy confrontations between romantic rivals in a gas station. The word "Sunshine". Despite being quite a different film - a drama about sisters rather than a comedy about parents and children - there are a lot of similarities between "Sunshine Cleaning" and "Little Miss Sunshine". Unfortunately "Sunshine Cleaning" is nowhere near as good. The filmmakers would have done much better to play down the connections between the two films.

King of Ping Pong

A Swedish movie about a lugubrious fat kid and his popular un-fat younger brother in a small town in the North of Sweden. It felt really true emotionally, it was heart-breaking, and I'm amazed that the director was able to pull off a warm ending without making things feel too contrived.

Short Program II

"Wrestling" (about Icelandic Wrestling and male love) was the best of this batch.
"Chief" (about a Samoan chief running from his past) was solid.
"A Relationship in Four Days" (about a trustafarian playboy in new york) was cute.

Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest, Part 5

A music video with no music, invoking the surrealist films of the 1920s and '30s. Seven beautiful Chinese men and 3 beautiful Chinese women dress up in the uniforms of various professionals and strike poses around Shanghai. It's unclear which are the 7 intellectuals of the title - let's make the most sexist assumption. A transvestite sings an emotional ballad. Clothes are removed. Baseball is played, on a roof, poorly. Fights break out. There's some scuba diving. Many chefs pour into a hall.

The film notes suggest that this is an abstract retelling of a Chinese legend. I suspect that someone with the cultural background to understand the references would still need a cheat sheet. This was the only really strange/experimental film we saw and it was very pretty. I took a nap for part of it. There was lots of full-frontal male nudity, which there should always be more of in movies.

Patti Smith: Dream of Life

Stephen Sebring filmed Smith in daily life over a 10 or 12 year period and edited the footage together into a fairly coherent, non-linear, natural portrait of a driven artist. It's not at all the standard VH-1 rockumentary. The only narration comes from Patti Smith herself. There's some excellent concert footage as well, including her performance of the declaration of independence.

The Q/A after the screening, with Smith and Sebring answering questions, was awesome - the most starstruck moment of my weekend. Her son Jackson shrinking in embarrassment at the clips of his adolescent self - "I can't believe I was such a douche-bag!" - was an extra bonus.

Quid Pro Quo

A mystery about a parapelegic NPR reporter and a hot psycho lady who wishes she were paralyzed loses points for uneven acting and plot twists that were clear from far, far away. Vera Farmiga was stunning as an ever-so-slightly unhinged woman who is just compelling enough that you have to take a chance.

From what I saw and learned at PFA's deaf film festival, I suspect that the disabled community would consider this film to be passively exploitative - nothing is terribly wrong or insulting with the depiction of the main character, but disability is used as a plot device, the realities of living in a wheel-chair aren't given a serious treatment, and the disabled community doesn't really make an appearance.