Sundancing, Swaying To The Music

It’s time once again for the Sundance Film Festival. a ritualistic orgy of snow crunching, buzzmaking and trendy schmendricks becoming targets of mockery as they strut around trying to look smooth while their nostrils are filling with ice and they slip down a street in Utah.

This will be my fifth trip to the festival, as I like to come here as a volunteer. Why? Because I get into everything for free, and working midnight shifts means I have all day to see stuff, and then can occasionally see the shows I’m working without even bothering with tickets. Plus, free housing, reimbursed travel costs and free winter clothing. It’s a great deal, and it’s definitely worth having to shepherd drunks around.

So I’m here in Park City, which likely used to be a rustic mountain town before this film festival exploded to make this a ridiculously yuppie-ish ski resort. Check out the LA Times and their list of 23 Facts about the festival to get a sense of the history.

Meanwhile, after getting a chance to look over the catalog of films I’ve narrowed things down to a very long short-list of things I’d like to see. When I get the full-on schedule in the nifty pamphlets they have here, we’ll be weeding out the stuff I don’t have time for/don’t want to get up to see at 8:30am. It will also likely be modified by the mood I’m in, how much time I have, whether or not I feel like sitting in line for two hours, and whether or not people come up to me and yell “DUDE, you’ve got to see this movie!” This is how buzz is made, my friends - word of mouth, literally.

So here’s my list, by categories. The movies I actually get to see will likely be a hell of a lot fewer than this:

DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION:

American Teen - Following four Indiana teenagers through a year of high school. Having grown up in neighboring Ohio, I may just have to see this to see how it compares. I tell you right now, the bare midriffs and general slutty-teen clothing trends could’ve helped make my high school experience a lot more bearable.
Fields of Fuel - About the domination of petrochemical industry and the way the country is finding ways to halt the dependence on oil. Entirely necessary.
Flow: For Love of Water : Water shortages are becoming a desperate situation throughout the world, and there are “disturbing realities that drive the global water business.” I’m sure I’ll find out all about how bottled water is evil, too. This and The Price of Sugar will further convince me that there is nothing in the world you can eat or drink in America that isn’t somehow delivered to you thanks to rape and oppression.
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: One of God’s original prototypes. He’s some kind of high-powered mutant not even considered for mass production. Come on, man. This is Bat Country.
Patti Smith: Dream of Life - I consider myself a quality music fan (with notable exceptions), but I’ve never really gotten into the legendary Patti Smith. Sometimes it takes a documentary and some context to slap a guy upside the head and say “this is why you need to listen to her.”
Secrecy - About the various levels of classification in government, why it happens, and whether or not it should.
Trouble the Water - People have forgotten about New Orleans already. This’ll be a reminder.

DRAMATIC COMPETITION:

Choke - A Chuck Palahniuk adaptation starring the incredibly talented and criminally underrated Sam Rockwell.
Downloading Nancy - Internet Romance makes it to the big screen, and not in the You’ve Got Mail way, but rather for desperate adulterers Maria Bello and Jason Patric.
The Last Word - Wes Bentley might finally come back to good movies as a guy who makes a living composing other people’s suicide notes until he winds up falling for Winona Ryder.
Phoebe In Wonderland - I love Felicity Huffman and Patricia Clarkson, but there’s also a Fanning in it.
Pretty Bird - Paul Giamatti and Billy Crudup try to build a rocket belt.
Sunshine Cleaning - It’s already been recommended to me. Amy Adams and Emily Blunt start a business in cleaning up crime scenes and suicide sites. Their father is Alan Arkin. I’m sold.
The Wackness - Ben Kingsley, Method Man and Mary-Kate Olsen in the same film. What the hell.

WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION:

A Complete History of My Sexual Failures: A loser does the High Fidelity thing and grills his exes on why they ditched him.
Dinner with the President: A Nation’s Journey: Filmmakers score a dinner with President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, a place we could all stand to know more about.
Durakovo: Village of Fools: A profile of a rural town in Russia where old-school purifying fascists are starting a movement to expunge democracy from the fatherland.
Recycle: The story of a man trying to survive in the terrorist hotbed of Zarqa, Jordan.
Stranded: The actual Uruguayan rugby team who crash-landed in the Andes Mountains and stayed alive for 72 days on a glacier tell their stories. None of this Alive Ave Maria stuff.

WORLD DRAMATIC COMPETITION:

Absurdistan: Village women withhold sex from the men until they finish building the water pipe, which starts a feud that prevents a young couple from having true magic love sex.
Just Another Love Story: The plot of While You Were Sleeping, but turned into an unpredictable noir kind of thing.
Mancora: The first entry in the catalog I’m perusing through that looks like it might be the weird sex-filled film that you can enjoy at Sundance but might otherwise want to keep to the privacy f your own home. Three Peruvian partiers pick up a “bohemian hitchhiker” and go to the titular town and, presumably, see titulars.
Mermaid: Another movie that’s been pitched to me as ‘absolutely beautiful’ modern-day fairy tale about a wish-granting girl in Moscow.
Under the Bombs: A woman and an odd cab driver search Lebanon for missing family during the 34-day bombing campaign in 2006.

PREMIERES (the big movies with the big stars that are supposed to be good - i.e. The Oscar Farm):

Assassination of a High School President: I saw Mischa Barton and said ‘meh.’ Then I saw “Bruce Willis’s campy and over-the-top principal” and said SIGN ME UP.
Be Kind Rewind: I know my beloved Jack Black is a bit overexposed lately, but Jables and Mos Def making a bunch of movie parodies and being directed by Michel Gondry earns a look-see from me. Although it’s more likely that this movie will get ignored, since the film already has distribution and is due to come out pretty soon. The point of being here is to see stuff you may not ordinarily ever see.
CSNY Deja Vu: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young attack today’s issues.
The Deal: William H. Macy and LL Cool J. ‘Nuff said.
Death In Love: I’m a proponent of Josh Lucas, and playing the son of a Holocaust survivor bent on avoidance and skulldugggery, I think he’ll open some eyes.
Diminished Capacity: Alan Alda and Matthew Broderick both losing their minds. Worth a look. Broderick is hit or miss for me, but Alda is always gold.
The Escapist: Brian Cox as a prison lifer who must escape to see his ailing daughter. BRIAN COX, I tell you. Uncle Argyle.
The Great Buck Howard: It doesn’t matter that Tom and Colin Hanks are playing father and son. The picture on the page sold me - John Malkovich in a combover looking weird and cross-eyed, and Steve Zahn in a bushy Civil-War mustache.
Hamlet 2: Likely to have packed screenings, the fantastic Steve Coogan plays a high school teacher trying to stage a sequel to Hamlet before he gets laid off.
In Bruges: Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are two hitmen who have to lay low in the tourist trap. After seeing him in The General, I’ll watch Gleeson in anything.
The Merry Gentleman: Michael Keaton is directing AND starring. SOLD AMERICAN. I’m pissed that this guy isn’t getting more work in general. Opposite Kelly Macdonald, whose great work in No Country for Old Men has been overshadowed, I know I’m gonna dig it.
A Raisin in the Sun: Starring Puff Daddy and Claire Huxtable. Who’da thunk?
Smart People: Sarah Jessica Parker isn’t really a selling point for me, but Ellen Page and Thoams Haden Church sure are. Dennis Quaid was after Innerspace, but not so much after Dragonheart.
Transsiberian: After the head-trip that was The Machinist, I’ll certainly try to catch director Brad Anderson’s movie about dangerous intrigue on the Transsiberian Express.
What Just Happened?: A Hollywood satire starring Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis, Stanley Tucci and John Turturro. I generally dislike films about show business, but I’ll make the exception here.

SPECTRUM:

Anvil! The Story of Anvil: A documentary about the Canadian metal band Anvil, who influenced the genre immensely and then immediately faded into obscurity.
Made in America: A documentary about the history of South Central Los Angeles from the Dogtown and Z-Boys guy.
Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?: Morgan Spurlock is back, and I’ve been told this movie is hilarious. We shall see.
Birds of America: Matthew Perry, who sold me on his talent in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, playing an eldest son who had to raise his siblings after their parents died.
Red: Brian Cox, I tell you! Brian Cox goes on a quest to drag an apology out of the three teenaged ne’er-do-wells who killed his dog.

MIDNIGHT (where the freaky horror movies tend to come out):

Donkey Punch: Because the movie is called ‘donkey punch,’ a euphemism for a sexual act one can only hope was devised by snickering ignorant teenage virgins. Yet, it’s a horror movie that takes place on a fancy yacht in the Mediterranean. Curiouser.
George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead: The zombie master is back with a movie about people trying to spread the truth about the growing number of zombies over the internet.
Hell Ride: Quentin Tarantino presents a movie about rival biker gangs led by a guy named Pistolero. Potentially a grindhouse movie, but without the winking ironical badness.