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It was a great weekend at Sundance. Here's a list of what we saw: Homework, The Convincer, Another Earth, The Troll Hunter, Salvation Boulevard, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Cedar Rapids, and The Son of No One.

HIGHLIGHTS:

Nearly all of the films (exceptions being The Troll Hunter and The Son of No One) had a representative from the movie conduct a Q&A afterwards. As annoying as it can be to listen to audience members struggle through a painfully awkard question (real example: "Is it harder to get good actors for a comedic movie or for a drama?") each director/producer/editor handling the session took it all in stride, providing thoughtful answers and insight into the filmmaking process.


Mike Cahill

I especially enjoyed listening to Mike Cahill, director of Another Earth. I liked the movie anyway and Cahill's happy-go-lucky persona completely won me over. He was so friendly and completely invested in the audience's response to the movie; he greeted each person who asked a question with a genuine "Hey, how are you?" and gave the impression that there was no other place he would rather be than at that theater discussing his project. Very cool.


Morgan Spurlock, director

The representative from Morgan Spurlock's documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold actually turned out to be the editor, which was of special interest to Steve, of course. The editor had the daunting task of whittling over 400 hours of footage down to 90 minutes, a feat he accomplished admirably. This doc was definitely the most consistently entertaining of the movies we saw; I laughed out loud several times and was captivated from start to finish by Morgan's considerable moxy (he interviews everyone from Donald Trump to Noam Chomsky (!) to Ralph Nader to Brett Ratner) and general sense of humor. Morgan manages to avoid melodramatic heavy-handedness (e.g. "Advertising is a mind-numbing plague on society that must be eliminated!") while still poking fun at himself and maintaining a smart, insightful narrative flow. Mindful-playful, indeed.

Lastly, and perhaps most pathetically, was the Incident of the Drunk Girl. During the screening for The Son of No One, a girl (age unknown) and her (presumably) boyfriend walk in and sit in the row across the aisle from me and Steve. I can hear her mumbling (and occasionally shouting) incoherent things at the movie, and it gets to the point where her boyfriend decides things are getting a little out of hand and tries to escort her to the nearest exit. Which would be fine, of course, if Drunk Girl could walk. After a few painful attempts to get out of her chair she resorts to stumbling on all fours across the floor, face-planting it a couple times in the process. Two security guards, three ushers, and one wheelchair later, she is finally escorted from the auditorium, effectively ending the most interesting part of the movie. Ironically, this was the one screening where Steve and I decided to sit near the front instead of in the balcony, where we would have missed the whole episode. Life is full of tender mercies.

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I take back what I said yesterday. Sometimes you do see famous people when you go to public screenings of Sundance movies. Last night, for instance, this man was in the audience:

His name is Treat Williams and he, in his younger days, looked something like this:

I'm assuming this look is what made him famous, because heaven knows I couldn't recall anything he'd been in off the top of my head. (Turns out he most recently appeared as James Franco's character's dad in 127 Hours. My cousin plays the woman who, with her family, finds Franco after he makes it out of the canyon, which puts me at two degrees from Treat Williams. Woo!)

THE MOVIE

Last night marked another first for me, in that it was the first Sundance screening I've been to where we actually got to hear from a filmmaker of the movie. The director/writer of The Ledge, Matthew Chapman, introduced the movie and then conducted a Q&A afterward. Hearing from the creative mind behind the film always humanizes the whole experience and made me much more forgiving towards what was an otherwise mediocre picture.

Matthew Chapman

Within the first ten minutes of the movie we see a man, later identified as Gavin (Charlie Hunnam), ascending to the roof of a very tall, very imposing building and perching himself on a ledge. Police Detective "Just Call Me Hollis" (Terrence Howard), who has just learned some disheartening personal news, is tasked with talking Gavin to safety. Hilarity ensues.

I kid, of course. The movie is appropriately somber and also pervasively melodramatic, with a weirdly uneven creepy vibe that was a little off-putting for me. We learn through a sort of flashback-narrative (kudos to Chapman for accomplishing this without any sappy voiceovers) that Gavin, who is single and heterosexual but lives with a gay roommate (Christopher Gorham), has fallen for neighbor Shaina (Liv Tyler), who, happily, is also heterosexual but married to handsome Joe (Patrick Wilson), a Christian fundamentalist nutcase.

The script focuses largely on philosophical issues concerning religious idealogy; at one point, Gavin and Joe sit across a table from each other and debate the existence of God, the necessity of baptism, and the nature of heaven and hell. Such conversations can and should be enlightening and thought-provoking, but Joe is so born-again crazy that it's hard to take his character seriously, while Gavin is really only there to nail Shaina.

And here's where things get a little strange. Joe may be a religious fanatic but he turns out to be pretty astute when it comes to recognizing that his wife just might be falling for another, less intimidating, man. Without being too specific, it's possible that Joe's persistent fundamentalism combined with the jealousy he feels at losing Shaina just maybe, maaaaybe, might have something to do with Gavin being out on that ledge. The director tries, in the final twenty minutes or so, to turn the whole thing into a thrilling nailbiter, complete with a jumping-off-the-ledge countdown, a hostage situation, and a frantic man hunt. Everything falls kind of flat, though, due in part at least to Liv Tyler's vacantly monotone performance (although in fairness the stilted script did her no favors) and an almost complete lack of buildup to the final will-he-or-won't-he moment.

Grade: C

Q&A

Happily, however, we stuck around after the credits and got to hear from a very genteel Matthew Chapman. He hinted at (but didn't dwell on) his budget constraints in making the movie, which affected everything from the shooting location to his camera work to the amount of takes they were able to complete for a scene. A limited budget is no excuse for poor writing, but it does affect the overall effect of the film and could have something to do with its uneven tone. Chapman also discussed how it's best to write what you're interested in, and for him that apparently includes religion and philosophy. His script isn't exactly mindbending, but it's clear that he made a great deal of effort to include ideas that are resonant to him on a personal level. I really enjoyed hearing from him, despite the obsequious and rambling questions asked by the audience members, and felt much more generous towards the movie as a result. Which, I guess, is one of the purposes of Sundance.

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My Idiot Brother

I've got a busy week ahead and I can't guarantee daily updates, but here goes Day 1 at Sundance...

Last night we saw 'My Idiot Brother' at Peery's Egyptian Theater in Ogden. (I know, right? Ogden!) The theater itself is pretty cool...it's much bigger and cleaner and maybe newer (?) than the one in Park City, and we were treated to 45 minutes of a live prelude organ performance. There was this little old man sitting down at an organ at the base of the stage, just playing showtunes and love songs until the movie started.

Otherwise...seeing a public screening of a Sundance movie is pretty much like seeing a movie anywhere else. There are no famous people (did I mention we were in Ogden?) and the woman behind you still thinks it's okay to spend 20 minutes unwrapping her granola bar and another 20 trying to figure out where to dispose of the wrapper once she's eaten what was inside it. Pretty much the only perk to these screenings is that you get bragging rights for when the movie is widely released six months or a year from now and you can oh-so-casually mention how you saw it "at Sundance."

THE MOVIE

'My Idiot Brother' stars Paul Rudd as Ned, an easygoing hipster with a heart of gold who finds himself a little down on his luck and who must rely on his three sisters (Emily Mortimer, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel) as he tries to get back on his feet. It becomes quickly apparent that Ned's sisters have significant issues of their own -a cheating husband, a struggling career, and a commitment phobia, respectively- and that, conveniently, all of them are made to confront and deal with their problems over the course of the movie. Strangely, by the end of the film, it doesn't really feel like any of them have grown or changed in any way (as much as the movie would like me to believe otherwise, seeing as how Ned *SPOILER ALERT* got a haircut and all). This could be because none of the characters actually feel like real people or that all of the action in the movie is contrived to specifically make Ned's life as complicated as possible without actually motivating him or causing him to learn anything. I like a twinkle-eyed stoner dude as much as the next fat person, but let's be honest, unfortunate circumstances and funny scenarios do not a character arc make.

The script provides a few good-natured laughs, though not enough to really make up for its overall lack of focus. Every character takes his or her turn at being the butt of the joke; there was no one to really embrace as the moral center or the comedic foil or even the blatantly obnoxious antagonist. It was neither really funny nor totally serious, and while it's enjoyable enough to watch an eternally sunny hippie sail through potential conflicts with lots of smiles and effortless charm, I didn't care enough about him or his family to be amused at their mistakes or heartbroken by their misfortunes.

C+ (not rated yet, but in its current state will be an R when it is released later this year)