SUNDANCE HULLABALOO FESTIVAL
Aaaaaaah... The crisp mountain air. The white aspen trees. The billowing smoke from cottage chimneys. The hoards of people crammed into buses gawking at D-list celebrities and hootched-out skanky party girls on Main St. This is Park City for a week out of the year. This is the Sundance Film Festival. I was lucky enough to jump on a plane with some friends and explore all it had to offer. And offer, it did. Oh, it did.
I skiied for 2 days out of the 4-day trip. Hit The Canyons and Park City Resort. The Canyons had a ginormous amount of acreage while Park City had essentially a lift funnel, where every ski lift led to approximately the same location. I enjoyed them both, but the snow really could have been better. Icy at times, which led to the few falls that I experienced. After viewing some pictures from the trip, I look like a damn puffed-up ball of North Face apparel.
The evidence lies here (I'm the grey nylon beast on the right):
Aside from the romping in the icy snow, there were movies. Lots of movies. I saw 4 of 'em. Now presenting my very brief blurbs about each of them. These are in the order in which I viewed them.
THE SAVAGESI haven't seen many of the movies that he has been featured in, but I love the guy, Philip Seymour Hoffman. He can do so much with facial expressions and his realistic pathetic-ness. This is one of those movies that comes to Sundance that will very likely make it to the nearest theatre near you.
This was my first experience of the Sundance Film Festival and so waiting in line was just as much an adventure. We were probably 5th in line out of the actual ticket-holders. There was a waitlist line too. The friendly New Yorker in front of us was a film critic for an up-and-coming movie review website. It was a joy to get his perspective on the festival as a whole and the movies he had seen already. I think he took a liking to us as well, because he included a blurb about my friends and myself in his blog: http://www.comingsoon.net/blog/2007/01/premiere_the_savages.html
I think he was pretty accurate in describing the events leading up to the movie too. Being 5th or so in line means that when you enter the facility, the seats are already 1/2 occupied by sponsors and entourage members. It was amazing. I feel sorry for those people who were at the end of the line. Probably made them scoop their own popcorn.
This one surrounds two siblings who have to deal with a parent diagnosed and dealing with dementia. As depressing as that sounds, there really is a genuine comedic element that livened up the Eccles audience at quite a few moments. It's strong in showing the importance of family relationships and love.
If I was given the paper voting slip that the Sundance organization uses, I would have torn through the 4 (out of 5).
HOW IS YOUR FISH TODAY?I love fish. This movie isn't about fish, really. I didn't love it, but I liked it. Give it some credit. The movie is a director-described "experimental documentary" which follows two somewhat parallel paths. One is a (possibly) true documentary about a tv and movie scriptwriter, while the second is the (definitely) fictional path that his character takes. Honestly, that's probably the best I'll be able to explain it.
There are some very enjoyable elements to this Chinese film. No, not the subtitles, but there were subtitles. This picture up here, the snowy boat and snowly land, not doing this film justice at all. In fact you don't really see the snow very much until the last quarter of the movie. It jumps from Beijing to the Siberian North of China, and involves real and fake people all along the way.
The most interesting part about this film is that the original story in which this screenwriter was trying to get across, was pre-censored, so that the movie would actually make it to production. The director told us after the movie that the original plot was destined to be illegal. I'm disappointed they changed it, but I'm glad that I got to see at least some form of the original. Oh, which also reminds me of another director comment. She claims that since this movie made it to Sundance, it is already pirated on DVDs in China. She's proud of this...a sort of open-source marketing of her own film. Not angry at the loss of money, but proud of the exposure.
There is also an amazing scene where an old stove mimics the Aurora Borealis. Tres cool. I gave this one a 3. I didn't waste my time watching it. If I could it would get a 3+. Just not a 4.
MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPESImagine you've walked into an art gallery and they have a special photography exibit available for your viewing this occasion. Now imagine that instead of walking at your own pace, viewing what you are interested in at length, and passing quickly by what you consider "crap," you are forced onto some kind of Disney Haunted Mansion ride forcing each image down your throat at the convenience of the filmmaker. OK, honestly it wasn't that bad, but I think it was approaching this idea.
I enjoyed this film, regardless of what I just wrote. It had amazing scenes of environmental devastation caused by politics and economic polarity. There was E-waste in China, the Three Gorges Dam, oil tanker deconstruction in Bangladesh, and a few other amazing situations.
It's a documentary following the photographer Edward Burtynsky. He's awesome. I would truly enjoy viewing his work on exhibit. I didn't enjoy as much watching him click away with his camera, sometimes pausing and telling one person to move 5 inches to the left so that the reflected light isn't as dull or whatever.
I actually was pretty pleased with this movie until the director answered questions after the showing and used the term "Plutonium ash" to describe what was on the ground in one scene. I'm not sure if my friend heard me, but I think I coughed "b*llsh*t" into my hands. Look people, we all know that there are environmental catastrophes in this world, but you don't have to try and make it sound worse by inventing terminology that has absolutely nothing to do with the technology!
For your reference, we do not burn Plutonium as we do coal. Please read an American Nuclear Society pamphlet or something. Get a brane you moran. I gave this one a 3, but probably a 3-.
DRIVING WITH MY WIFE'S LOVERI literally have to hold myself back from writing a film studies thesis on this brilliant work by Kim Tai-Sik. Well, it's probably not that great of a movie, but I really really really liked it a lot. I don't think because I was comparing it to the previous two viewed movies either. This movie had so many great elements of humanity. It ran through so many emotions and beat those emotions down with an empty bottle of Soju. It had flagrant and absurd symbolism, some of which required explanation from the director after the show. I liked that though. I enjoyed the ridiculous situations and comedic yet horrific dream sequences.
It's about a simple stamp (the wooden signature kind) carver who finds out that his wife is cheating on him. The man sleeping with his wife is a taxicab driver, and so as a sort-of revenge or anger-induced confrontation, the stamp-maker travels to Seoul in order to meet this cheater in his own element, his taxi. They end up having quite an adventure together and the plot takes twists and turns that you could never really expect. Surprises are abound! I love that. Not so predictable.
There's one scene that I'd really like a youtube clip of. Imagine two grown men standing at the edge of a cliff peeing. Slowly comes in the low drone of a machine. It gets louder. It gets A LOT louder. All of a sudden two helicopters shoot out of the cliff like Airwolf out of a volcano, the rotar blade wind blowing all of the urine right back at the peeing men. I was crying. Crying tears of hilarity.
Also, I felt like I really liked each of the characters, even though some were scum in the context of their actions. Those that were charismatic and those that were pathetic both made you feel a little bit of warmth, friendship, sympathy, anger, etc. Such a rainbow mix of emotions.
The director, speaking through a translator, was friendly and attentative. This was at 2am. I shot my own question out too. Didn't really get the answer I was looking for, but by this time I was way too content and pleased with the entertaining movie that I had just experienced. I gave this one the highest rating of 5. If it comes out on DVD, even if you have to go to a local Korean movie store, see it. I order you.
