Hey folks, Harry here with Steebo Gazeebo and his look at his weekend of film going at Sundance 2009. Here ya go...
What up Harry! I hit up Sundance this year FINALLY and wanted to send in a few quick impressions of some of the flicks I caught. None of them were the biggest premieres as I guess I’m not cool enough to get in to them, but I did see a few good ones. FRIDAY: Toe to Toe This is written/directed by Emily Abt and was basically about a rich white girl befriending a black girl form the wrong side of the tracks and their story of friendship during high school. It was very well directed, the two actresses (Louisa Krause and Sonequa Martin) played the parts very well, and I thought the production level was very well done. The problem (as my girlfriend pointed out) with the movie is that the story is basically a Lifetime movie, which it pretty much feels like during the movie. But at 100min, it didn’t overrun it’s course or piss me off at all, so it was enjoyable for what it is. I definitely want to check out Abt’s next flick to see what else she can bring to the table. The September Issue This documentary I was definitely looking forward to see. Directed by RJ Cutler and basically a 9 month view of what goes on at Vogue magazine for their huge September issue of Vogue, it had me very interested. Also, this was the Gala premiere of it and we went to the reception beforehand, so I was nice and lubed up before heading in. The doc was extremely well paced, directed and shot. It focused on Anna Wintour (main editor at Vogue) the most as well as some of the other editors and people at the magazine. There were funny parts, sad parts, but no real mouth-gaping awe moments. I was expecting Anna to be a bit more cold and intense, but it was nice to have an intimate look at her and the magazine. The best part of the doc was Bob the camera man though as he got a page in the September issue of the magazine with a hilarious part in the doc too. At the Q&A, the sound designer said a very interesting thing. He used a boom mic exclusively instead of lavaliere mics for the people being interviewed as they wanted the people at Vogue to feel as natural as possible. He said there was over 300 hours of footage. I couldn’t even imagine holding a boom mic for 300 hours over the period of 9 months. Excellent doc and a great time all around. SATURDAY: Shorts Collection V I won’t touch on all the shorts even though they were all really good in their own right. The only one I want to talk about is my second favorite part of being at Sundance (I’ll touch on the other two below). Captain Coulier (Space Explorer) was a fucking amazing short. It started out the shorts program, was about 10min long and had me in tears laughing the entire time. The guys that wrote and starred in this need to be hired for Apatow’s next flick right fucking now. This short was comedic gold, and they were Canadians to boot! Also of note from the collection was Knife Point, which was a really well done thriller that looked as good as any movie at the fest. Spring Breakdown/Killing Room Let me give you a story of how I was supposed to not see this movie but the killing room (this is my favorite and least favorite part of the festival all at once). We wait-listed Friday morning to get in to the Killing Room. It is a psychological thriller that looked a lot like Cube and Primer rolled in to one. Needless to say, the Killing Room and Dead Snow were my most anticipated flicks to see (I never got in to Dead Snow unfortunately). My girlfriend and I were numbers 5 and 6 in the wait-list line, so we were confident that we would get in. The volunteer came to the line about 15min before the movie was going to start and said there was only 10 seats left in the house, so we thought we were golden. He came back to the line about 5min before the movie was going to start and said the house was full. We were both really bummed as this was the first flick of the fest we were trying to catch. It kind of put a downer on our day, but we knew we would try to see the midnight screening Saturday night. So Saturday morning we waited in line at the box office at 7am to get tickets, which we got for the midnight screening of of Killing Room in Salt Lake. Saturday night we did some drinking around SLC and left to go to the theatre about 11:15pm. Since we are from Detroit, my buddy who was out with us and knows his way very well around SLC movie houses directed us to the theatre where the movie was playing. At the time, none of us looked at the tickets as I put my trust in his directions. We show up at the theatre, sell an extra ticket we had to a wait-list line person, hand our tickets to the volunteer, they tear them and we all go in. We sit down at 11:50pm and are ready to see some killing! The director gets introduced and he comes out fired up and says “You guys ready to see Spring Breakdown?!?” My girlfriend and I look at each other as if it is a joke, ask the person next to us what he is talking about and realize we are at the completely wrong theatre. It was too late to go to the other theatre across town to see Killing Room, so we had to sit there and watch Spring Breakdown. The funny thing is the volunteer never looked at our tickets at all when we first went in, they just tore it and in we went. So on to Spring Breakdown... it sucked. I thought having Parkey Posey, Amy Poehler, Rachel Dratch, Amber Tamblyn and Missi Pyle in a movie about going back to Spring Break to relive their partying youth would be good, but it wasn’t. I don’t know if it was the shock of not seeing Killing Room or just the fact I didn’t ‘get’ the comedy, but I barely laughed the whole time, and I was pretty buzzed as well. Shit happens... I guess we’re just cursed from seeing the Killing Room. SUNDAY: The Clone Returns Home I’m a big sci-fi nerd and love Japanese flicks, but this one didn’t seem to interest me much. It was describe as an art house sci-fi movie about a guy who gets cloned then finds his dead body and tries to return it home. It was actually extremely well produced, directed, written and acted. The music in it was wicked good too. I can’t recommend this film enough to anyone that likes sci-fi, Japanese futuristic pieces and just well done movies. Interestingly, the script for this won some awards a few years ago at a Sundance Institute contest and the writer/director said he has re-written it over 25 times trying to tweak it. This one was a wicked piece of pure film goodness and definitely one I will check out again. My third part of the festival was riding the bus with one of the PC High School kids that was flippin hilarious. A total stoner that said some funny shit the whole bus ride around Park City. I’ve got nothing else for you as I wanted to do some mountain stuff in the Wastach region that day then had to head back to the D for work. If you use this, call me Steebo Gazeebo. Thanks dude!
