Sundance With the Best of Them
Attended Sundance the other weekend. If I go again, I’ll have to make sure that I either plan much farther in advance or am much cooler than my current self. As-is, I had a lot of trouble getting in anywhere. The first weekend, every bar and restaurant is reserved for a private party, none of which seemed to have me on their lists.
I managed only to see one movie, Songbirds, a documentary by Brian Hill about women in a British prison. Lots of suffering and liberal guilt, your two staples of independent film-making, though it wasn’t laid on as thick as I had worried. Perhaps because it was done as a musical. I’m not sure I’d want to see more than one musical documentary, but they managed to pull it off well this time. Some of the songs were less than stellar, but I was especially fond of “Mule It,” an upbeat song about all the different places you can hide drugs while crossing the border.
I also tried to get into The Illusionist and failed miserably. I only wanted to see it because I liked the write-up, but apparently it was a popular film. I’ve only just now realized that Edward Norton is in it, which might have something to do with it. Anyway, in our ignorance we initially tried to get into the premier, not realizing it was such, and were turned appropriately discouraged by the volunteer staff. We then tried to see it the next day and got to spend two and a half hours waiting in line only to be denied entrance.
The writeups for these movies are some fantastic pieces of prose. The writeups for the documentaries aren’t so bad, but for the fictional and “art” pieces they can be downright ridiculous. Take, for example, this from the writeup of Allegro:
Christoffer Boe, whose award-winning debut, Reconstruction, established his fascination for filmic ideation and creativity, again creates a figurative universe in Allegro: a realm both real and unreal, at once a fictional place and a concrete reality. …
Allegro is that rare cinematic treat that eludes easy categorization, and sometimes even effortless comprehension, but is entirely engrossing and stimulating. Its complex visual style mirrors the cerebral vision of its maker, and its exploration of metaphorical
realities and the mysteries of memory and the subconscious is richly conceived and wonderfully acted and executed.
All of the writeups have their authors listed, and this one is attributed to one Geoffrey Gilmore, a Sundance festival director. I can’t help but notice that the synopsis
of Underworld: Evolution on Rotten Tomatoes does not have an author listed, and I think that leads to the text being much easier to read. Mr. Gilmore may very well have perfected the style appropriate for academic papers in film criticism, but I don’t think it works here. This writeup is all we have to go on when deciding which film we should spend waiting three hours in line to see. I guess it’s hard to make several dozen films all sound like the best movie ever made without busting out the thesaurus.
In tribute, I would like to post my short synopsis of Gremlins 2: The New Batch
Joe Dante, laureled director of Amazon Women on the Moon, deigns grace unworthy mortal eyes with Gremlins 2. In this cinematic opus worthy of his namesake, Dante leads us through the circles of a modern hell, wherein his earthbound demons overrun a metonymic tower already befouled by that most ignominious mortal sin, greed. … Also, one of the gremlins is smart, and he sings like Frank Sinatra.
Actually, this is really hard stuff to come up with. Go, Geoffrey! I probably shouldn’t have used “us”. This is among the reasons I don’t review films for a living.
Update: There are a lot of stars around Park City during Sundance, and everyone is on high alert to spot them. I myself saw Nick Nolte’s chin. Also, a girl at a bar looked at me, turned to her friend and said “Oh my God! … Oh. I thought that was Matthew McConaughey.” It’s always exciting when you get to disappoint people you don’t even know.
January 29th, 2006 at 9:23 am
Is “Mule It’ set to the tune and unstoppable rhythm of “Beat It”?
Check out Ebert’s critique of The Doom Generation, in which he singles out the press release for punishment.
January 31st, 2006 at 5:52 pm
hilarious. the write-up of Allegro reads like a college paper written at 7 am before a 9 am class…such an elucidating and redundant exploration of the term “figurative” has never before received such press….
September 27th, 2006 at 7:46 pm
Do you really want to go to the parties? Boring, lots of loud music. You could get that at home. It’s much more interesting to go to the *movies*.
September 27th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
P.S. If you don’t have a pass or ticket package, the best way to get in to films is to show up at the ticket office really early in the morning. They release tickets each morning for the films showing that day.
September 27th, 2006 at 8:56 pm
True, though I think I’ve realized that I am not a film festival kind of person. I was much happier paying my $10.50 to see The Illusionist than waiting in line in the snow for 2 hours. And I knew about the box office thing and just couldn’t bring myself to wake up that early!