JANUARY 27, 2005. How to Read a Film Festival Guide:

The job of the film festival catalog is to tell you about the individual films and why they were selected to be there. Because film festivals, as a whole, like the people who come out and to pay to see the movies, the write-ups in the catalog are generally favorable and generally kind. But most films in film festivals aren't that great. Perhaps it's out of guilt, or some subconscious conscience, but the programmers DO let you know what they really think. The secret is that there is a code, let's call it the Cineballah, in every film festival catalog, a language that can alert you to the true content of the film in question. Here is a quick reference guide to what certain phrases really mean in Cineballah:

1. "Highly atmospheric" translates to "You will regret buying a ticket for this movie within fifteen minutes"
2. "Based upon his short" translates to "This guy's been flogging the same idea for six years now"
3. "Resonates with authenticity" translates to "shot on DV with no budget"
4. "Sophisticated cinematic lexicon" translates to "I'm sleeping with the director"
5. "As in a Henry James novel" translates to "boring"
6. "Powerfully intimate experience" translates to "Will appeal to 3% of the audience."
7. "Cleverly steering around realism" translates to "completely incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't eat, sleep, and drink film"
8. "Portrays the dysfunction of family" translates to "Director never got a pony. Never got therapy."
9. "Transcends genre" translates to "will not be shown after this festival"
10. "Deliciously brilliant satire" translates to "berates middle America"
11. "Coming-of-age film" translates to "contains obligatory masturbation scene "
12. "Delightful modern fable" translates to "about Brits on the dole who do something extraordinary in their community. Will star Brenda Blethyn."
13. "Wonderful sense of place" translates to "shot on about three locations, all interiors"
14. "dispensing with conventional narrative building blocks" translates to "random as all get-out. We're not even sure what this guy is doing."
15. "Perfectly controlled minimalist film masterpiece that operates seamlessly on symbiotic, aesthetic and emotional levels" -- "I'm getting paid by the character."

JANUARY 26, 2005. The Squid and the Whale is a classic Sundance film. It's a well-turned, thoughtful movie that plays to critics and audiences but can probably only survive as a viable vehicle in the thin air of Park City, and the thick air of Santa Monica and Soho.

Maybe it's the irrational exuberance of a successful opening night here that sets these Sundance classics up to be sold to the public. Maybe it's the studio's longing to have some small piece of a work of integrity that isn't just focused on the bottom line. But when you hear rumors of something like Squid being picked up for distribution by acquisitions folks (those who are in the market of getting films to the theater) you have to scratch your head.

It's a truly lovely film, please don't get me wrong, and it could be boosted by strong critical reviews, but I can't see anyone watching this unless they get the New York Times (and not just the Sunday edition).

The film stars Jeff Daniels, in what may be the performance of his long and solid career. He plays Bernard Berkman, a novelist and professor and elitist. He spends most of his energy belittling things and people (he instructs his son that "A Tale of Two Cities" is minor Dickens). He's a master of the fine art of passive/aggressive relations. Joan Berkman (the always fine Laura Linney) tries to deflect his derisiveness away from her two sons, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and Frank (Owen Kline).

Walt is turning into a young man but he's a complete dilettante. He only knows the summary judgment of Kafka's "The Metamorphosis"—provided by his father--he hasn't actually read it. Frank considers himself a philistine, unwilling to succumb to the literary tradition of his father.

When these two strong parents announce their separation, the two boys are torn. Walt immediately sides with his father and wants to live at his new place. Frank wants to stay with his mother. Both boys begin to do odd things in what seem like covert reprisals of their parents, while Walt begins to be disillusioned by his father's true nature.

Written and directed by Noah Baumbach and supposedly based on his childhood experiences with his parents, Squid is done with true finesse and it certainly deserves to be in the public eye…I just don't know if the public will go.

That's certainly true of Reefer Madness by director Andy Fickman. Based upon the off-Broadway hit (which Fickman also directed), Reefer is itself based upon the curious 1938 cautionary tale originally entitled Tell Your Children but more famously known by the same title of this musical.

With high end production values it looks great, though the songs, save two, don't exactly stick with you. With two fine leads Kristen Bell and Christian Campbell reprising their stage roles (as do several others including Robert Torti) and some fine turns by newcomers (Amy Spanger plays Sally DeBains with gusto) the movie has a polished feel to it, but several of the songs are lackluster at best and they take their own sweet time wrapping up. by Keith Simanton

JANUARY 25, 2005. How crazy is Sundance this year? So crazy that multiple Oscar nominee, Incredibles-creator Brad Bird ended up walking around the screening of The Jacket looking for a seat (I would have given him mine in gratitude for The Iron Giant alone but he had his very pretty wife with him so it wouldn't have done him much good). Don't fret though, special seating was arranged for the folks who were still trying to get in. The crowds have died down from the weekend but the theaters are packed (sold out, usually).

Harvey Weinstein strolled (I can't use "lumbered" any more, he's really lost a lot of weight) up Main Street without the usual detritus of assistants trailing behind him. He almost looked—gulp—sanguine as he went from one evening event to the next.

The loudest, most steadfast proclamations I've heard, for any film, come for Shake Hands with the Devil. Shake Hands is a documentary about Romé Dallaire, the Canadian general sent by the United Nations to attempt to halt the escalating violence in Rwanda in 1994. Praise has been universal (it elicits very strong and passionate fervor from those who have seen it) and the screenings sold out.

I was fascinated by Grizzly Man, a documentary by Werner Herzog about Timothy Treadwell, a controversial outdoorsman and filmmaker who made movies about grizzly bears in Alaska. Considered a dilettante by many, Treadwell and his female partner were killed by one bear, sparking a debate about his intentions and the fate of this very different person.

Very different for a very different reason, Kung Fu Hustle is a very entertaining, very imaginative film by director Stephen Chow. A cross between a kung fu film and a CGI fantasy, it begins to be a little much near the end, but if you're ordering dessert, you may as well walk away wishing you hadn't had that last mouthful. Let's hope it gets better distribution than Chow's last film, Shaolin Soccer. Soccer was given three release dates by Miramax which were never met. It was released in a few theaters and the thinking was that since the film had been available for home video in the international market, it couldn't sell.

The Jacket fares reasonably well as a sci-fi suspense film. Adrien Brody is Jack Sparks, a Gulf War vet who is wrongly accused of killing a cop and put in a psychiatric hospital. There he's subjected to a cruel experiment in his rehabilitation; he's strapped inside a straight jacket, given mind-altering drugs and shoved inside a morgue closet. Inside, after numerous disturbing scenes recollecting the war, his mind transports him to the future where he meets Keira Knightley, a person whose life he had affected in the past. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays another doctor at the hospital who wants to help Sparks. Though minor tears appear in the fabric, it is a bracing little movie and could achieve a kind of cult status eventually.

by Keith Simanton

JANUARY 23, 2005.The great thing about press screenings is you don't have to pay for admittance and you really don't have to wait in line. (Actually, you do, and it's the critic's line. The worst thing you have to deal with there is listening to other critics whine about the same thing you've been whining about, making you feel all the less original and all the more whiny.)

The Sundance Press people were very smart this year. In previous years the press would see screenings at such exotic locals as The Garage (a converted garage that was always really cold), The Library (with a large auditorium) and the Black Box (a quarantine zone right off of the big theater in town, the Eccles). This year they stuck all of the press and industry folks (the business people deciding if they're going to make an acquisition bid for a particular film) in three theaters very close to one another. This keeps the critics out of the circulation of the general populace which is a healthy thing for everyone concerned.

The one major catch to the press screening schedule is that they usually don't accommodate everything that you want to see. Thus there can be three morning screenings of films you have little interest in, and, conversely, there will be three afternoon screenings of three films you want to see programmed for the same time. And, if you need to do things like post updates then you're going to miss something. So you have to make some choices based on very little evidence, mostly word of mouth.

The buzz for some films has been positive, though not overwhelming. I've heard good things about Layer Cake, Rize, Brothers, Brick, and Shake Hands with the Devil. I've heard very good things about Matando Cabos. I didn't go to any of those films.

No, I went to Forty Shades of Blue and made it forty minutes into it before I'd had enough and walked out. Blue stars Rip Torn as a Memphis music legend who has retained his randy ways from his days of fame which shoves his passive Russian wife into the arms of his own son.

I also bolted from Lonesome Jim, the second directorial effort from Steve Buscemi. Seemingly shot during a solar eclipse this under-exposed treatise on clinical depression, lousy familial situations, and aborted maturity is one of those hottie-seduces-complete-loser movies that may have improved later but, by the point that I departed, I really didn't care.

Word is that walking out on 9 Songs is not only common, it's become part of the experience of the film, like Rocky Horror only you don't have to dress up or bring toast.

The best thing I've seen so far has been Unconscious. Directed with spirit and panache by Joaquin Oristrell the film is a comedy and a satire, making room for both physical comedy, screwball situations, and overall pointed statements about psychoanalysis and the fallen condition of man. Unconscious has two fine, fine leads in Luis Tosar and Leonor Watling (from Habla Con Ella). Though Tosar is great Watling is an absolute joy.

She plays Alma, a woman nine months pregnant who discovers her husband has run out on her. In attempting to track her down she enlists the help of her brother-in-law (Tosar) a man who is helplessly in love with her even though he's married to her sister. Watling is a complete joy to behold. She has crisp comic timing and is utterly winning in her role as the confused, yet completely resolute abandoned wife.

Unconscious is overly long. It wears out its welcome, which a comedy should never do, but it makes for entertaining viewing.

Another thing that one discovers on the crosswalks of Park City are the little insights that place your world in a broader perspective. As Chevy Chase was walking by I heard him explain the reason that famous people wear sunglasses. It is not to disguise who they are or because they're drugged out and bleary-eyed it's "so you don't have to make eye contact."

It's very good advice for the weekend in Sundance when everyone from around the area comes in to catch a glimpse of some celebrity actually moving and breathing. I saw Keira Knightley and she is every bit as incredibly gorgeous as she is in anything she's ever appeared in. She's in town for The Jacket for which I've heard very negative and very positive reviews. Her hair is cut short and she's very natural and poised. Jennifer Jason Leigh, also in the film, has the demeanor of a retiring social worker. She looks like she just wants to end her shift, go home and put her feet up. And would someone please tell Adrien Brody to stop wearing his hair like that; it's ludicrous in person, rather like the punk grandson of Alfalfa.

Naomi Watts was also running around, supporting Ellie Parker, and she exudes a certain strength and poise as well. None of them were wearing sunglasses even though it's bright and clear here and there are multitudes of people that you wouldn't want to make eye contact with. by Keith Simanton

JANUARY 22, 2005

The big news at Sundance? Brian Grazer used the word "epistemological" in the Q&A for Inside Deep Throat. The documentary is getting good word of mouth (sorry, couldn't help it) from nearly all quarters though it's doubtful it could make the transition to mainstream acceptance.

Grazer, the über producer behind many of Ron Howard's Imagine projects, has been fascinated by the record-breaking, barrier-shattering porno film ever since his hair began to get spiky; maybe it's what made it get spiky. One imagines it will be on HBO soon.

More than likely NOT coming to HBO, but probably IFC, is Ellie Parker. Starring Naomi Watts (who inhabits almost every digital scene) Ellie, is a low-rent Nights of Cabiria, and I mean that in a good way. Written and directed by Scott Coffey, and based upon the short he directed earlier, it is a promising debut for what it dares to accomplish and a feature of no lasting impact for what it doesn't.

Watts play the titular character, an actress whose auditions only serve to debase her, while her personal life is an even bigger disaster. She goes from one humiliating event to another, meeting very few people she can trust, all set against the backdrop of L.A. Watts is a brave actress and not afraid to put herself on the line, which she does again, and again, and again. The could have named it Ellie Parker, Ellie Parker.

It too, lacks any hope of being commercial. It's shot entirely on DV and looks terrible. DV has that hangover glaze about it. It works better in Sundance, where most of the people watching the movies ARE hungover and take no notice of the blur or just think it's them and not the film.

Many of them would be nursing their head from the very fun Rize party, celebrating the premiere of David LaChappelle's new film, a documentary (with some good buzz) about the art of "krumping." Krumping, as I was to learn, includes very fast syncopated body movement (think Madonna voguing, only very, very aggressively; a little bit like she's having a seizure). The Rize party featured krumping on an elevated stage which was fun to watch, if not necessarily, understand.

by Keith Simanton

JANUARY 21, 2005

What's a person to do when you don't know what's going to be good and what's going to turn out to be a filmmaker's protracted screed against his parents and/or the Thatcher/Reagan/George H.Bush/George W. Bush regimes?

In Sundance, you go, initially, with what you know.

When you're going through the guide, you make small stars next to the new films that look promising and make mental notations. Sadly, you look for names that you're familiar with, solidifying the notion that a film has to have a "name," to sell it. It goes like so:

• Hal Hartley: He has a new film here. Named The Girl From Monday. It's about, let's see, "a time in the near future when citizens are happy to be property traded on the stock exchange." That sounds interesting. And his career just CAN'T start and end with The Unbelievable Truth. Small star next to that one.
• The Ballad of Jack and Rose by director Rebecca Miller: Hmmmm…she won big here in 2002 with Personal Velocity. She's the daughter of renowned playwright Arthur Miller (and was once, and may very well still be, quite the hottie) and she's married to Daniel Day-Lewis, who is in the movie. Little star next to the famous hottie's movie.
• Michael Hoffman: That's the director who made Soapdish, an underrated comedy in my book. He's directed something called Game 6 which, according to the guide is about, "the historic 1986 World Series and a day in the life of a playwright who skips opening night to watch the momentous game." I love watching Sox fans suffer. It also has Robert Downey Jr. who was good even in last year's high-expectations tragedy The Singing Detective. This could be entertaining, a rare commodity in Sundance. Small star.
• Steve Buscemi made another movie. All right, I didn't see Trees Lounge, but that's not my fault. I quit getting the IFC. The plot synopsis for Lonesome Jim says "Failing to make it on his own, 27-year-old Jim moves back in with his parents and deals with crippling family obligations." Weee-haaa, that sounds fun. And it stars Casey Affleck. I still haven't forgiven him for Gerry. No star.
• Mysterious Skin by director Gregg Araki: Gregg Araki's still alive? Why does he spell his name with two "g"s? Who was I with when I first watched Doom Generation? That movie was in 1996? Good Lord, that was nearly nine years ago. I'm so old. Half a star just for old times' sake.

The stars, and the mental notations are usually all wrong, a product of faulty memory or the passage of time and often don't have anything to do with what's worth it at Sundance. To find that out you have to keep your ears open. The best places to hear about the best movies are on the buses, in the queue, and in the bathroom. And here, I hope.

by Keith Simanton

JANUARY 20, 2005.

I normally arrive in Park City on opening day of the festival. You collect your press pass (a laminated card that hangs around your neck from a lanyard) before the mad rush. You can buy the Sundance tchotchkes of choice (they usually sell out early). I've never gone to the opening night film.

First of all, it's historically been in Salt Lake. Not that I have anything against Salt Lake. It's a beautiful, clean city. But it's a half-hour to the west and there's usually snow. It's much better to settle into your room, make a trip to the local grocery store (in this case, Albertsons, a very clean, well-run chain pervasive in the Northwest) to buy food in preparation for week ahead.

Second of all, the opening night film is usually a well-meaning non-starter such as The Laramie Project, Edge of America or last year's Riding Giants.

The opening picture tonight--which is actually in Park City this year, I believe they started this trend last year--is Happy Endings, starring Lisa Kudrow, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Tom Arnold. It's being billed as a "wildly original and supremely self-conscious comedy by a filmmaker Don Roos, who clearly embraces the complexity and ambivalence of modern life."

The plot outline says it's about a "filmmaker blackmailing a woman about a son she long ago gave up for adoption; a gay man whose partner was, or perhaps wasn't, the sperm donor for two of their best friends, a lesbian couple; and a 30-something girl who shacks up with a young man trying to convince his father he's straight and then moves on to the dad."

The only thing harder than making a large ensemble piece with an interweaving plot come off at Sundance (think Love in the Time of Money) has to be writing up the synopsis for a large ensemble piece with an interweaving plot.

Every year across our great land film festival personnel craft exquisitely pithy blurbs about the films arriving at their event. These brave souls write up the kindest description of the film imaginable. When the films are good they must be very easy. But when the films are bad…well then look for words such as "eclectic," "unconventional," and "creative audacity."

I'll have to wait for the press screening to find out if Happy Endings is any of the above. Even though it's in Park City (the Salt Lake premiere is tomorrow; it's On a Clear Day) I think I'd rather just settle in.
by Keith Simanton