At Sundance all the unwritten rules dictating social interactions amongst strangers are suspended. Movies are the common denominator for just about everyone here (well, movies, gift bags, swag, star-gazing, networking and cocktail-swilling. Actually there are all sorts of common denominators here). You can start a conversation with just about any one with the following all-purpose ice-breakers:
1. So, what have you seen so far?
2. What have you seen so far that you've liked?
3. What are you here for? Represent yo' squad, fool! Whether you're str8 up repping the Weinstein Company or Lesbian Geriatric Digital Documentarian Monthly throw up your set!
4. Are you blogging bout The 'Dance? (Note: don't use
this one with people over the age of 40. They'll just look at you funny and change seats as quickly as possible)
5. Have you seen Lucky Number Slevin? It's really clever and fun (I of course would never use this one but I've been hearing it around town an awful lot. Tactfully eavesdropping on the conversations of others is one of the great unheralded pleasures of Sundance.)
Another potential ice-breaker for those looking to win friends and influence people to see their short film, check out their magazine or see their cousin's band's showcase is to furtively steal a downward glance at everyone's credentials pass, which helpfully indicates which film/press outlet/company festival goers are representing and unhelpfully does so in print so tiny you practically need a high-powered magnifying glass just to I.D motherfuckers.
The info on the credentials pass lets your colleagues know where you stand in the great movie world ecosystem, whether you're a powerful bigwig to be catered to or a mere press parasite to be treated with contempt and disdain. The good people here at Sundance make it a little easier to tell the power brokers from the wannabes by handing out different colored credentials passes but the whole color-coding thing is rather primitive and allows for only so many levels of gradation. That's why I'm proposing that the size of the credentials passes of Sundance attendees should reflect their power and importance. For example someone like Harvey Weinstein or Robert Redford would have a pass the size of a hardcover book while the Internet press would have matchbook-sized passes. And should P-Diddy descend upon Park City in the future he should rock a platinum pass festooned with diamonds and rubies roughly the size of a midget. Are you listening, Robert Redford? Cause you should be. I'm doling out this awesome advice for free.
But enough about passes and credentials and other such foolishness. Onto the films!
Songbirds
The two people I saw this movie with both bolted after 20 minutes and they had plenty of company as this film's mind-boggling awfulness prompted the kind of frenzied mass exodus not often seen outside fires in crowded buildings. Only a strange cinemasochism and sense of duty prevented me from joining the fleeing herd. The premise of
Songbirds is as simple as it is surreal: inmates at a British women's prison discuss their lives and crimes and then sing and rap their way through god-awful homemade music videos. This
"documentary musical" might have worked if it had explored the process by which prison inmates became off-key purveyors of terrible, terrible pop music but other than a brief shot of inmates in a recording studio it doesn't deal with that subject at all. Instead it simply alternates between self-serving, unchallenged monologues in which the inmates blame their incarceration on society, abusive boyfriends and basically everyone but themselves and the aforementioned music videos. This is the absolute dregs, bleeding-heart liberal documentary filmmaking at its worst.
The Proposition
By this point the revisionist western is as tired and clichéd as the squeaky clean Roy Rogers/Gene Autry variety, a sad fact further confirmed by
The Proposition, an assaultively unpleasant Aussie Western written by gothic troubadour Nick Cave that's boring and pretentious in equal measure. The filmmakers have rounded up an impressive cast (Guy Pearce, Danny Huston, John Hurt, Noah Taylor, Emma Watson), all of whom apparently relished the notion of being covered in flies and layers upon layers of grit and grime while playing rapists, murderers, racists, outlaws and other folks you wouldn't want moving in next door. In true Cave fashion The Proposition is filled with heavy biblical overtones but it's hard to ascertain exactly what the filmmakers hoped to accomplish by shoving the audiences' faces in horseshit, metaphorically speaking, for 104 minutes.
The Hawk Is Dying
After
American Splendor and Sideways it's refreshing to see Paul Giamatti finally playing a fidgety, depressed, socially awkward misfit who exudes such titanic levels of despair that the stench of his failure can be picked up from outer space. In this unrelentingly grim adaptation of Harry Crew's novel Giamatti plays a character so forlorn and pathetic he makes his Sideways and American Splendor schlemiels look like James Bond by comparison. Here Giamatti plays the depressed owner of a car-customizing store who lives a life of increasingly loud desperation with his morbidly obese sister and her mentally challenged son. A relationship with pot-smoking nymphomaniacal college student Michelle Williams only adds to his misery. His only solace in a cruel world is his love of birds and his obsession with training a beautiful hawk. Birds in movies and books tend to be abused as all-purpose metaphors for transcendence but The Hawk Is Dying actually earns its semi-happy ending through hard work and an uncompromising darkness and Giamatti once again excels as the kind of guy for whom full-on eye contact for more than a few seconds constitutes an unbearable level of intimacy. Also, whoever played the hawk did an excellent job. I totally bought him or her as a bird of prey and word 'round the festival is that they even did their own flying. It should be noted however that The Hawk Is Dying is nowhere near the light-hearted chucklefest its title
promises.
Your Man On The Ground,
Nathan Rabin
P.S. Word round the fest is that my main man Ralph Nader is a no show. Homeboy must be afraid to party with me. Don't be scurrrred Mr. Nader. Oh well. We'll just have to kick it at next year's fest