Going to try to do the whole thing in one post, except for the Sunday of the Fest – that’s its own story.
For me, the film fest started on Thursday, although I’d been to two volunteer trainings already. I worked at home, and took a break to go out to airport, and pick up a filmmaker, Stefano Galli, who was getting a Golden Badger Award for his film Lamerica. My volunteer instructions said to take him to his hotel, and wait and take him to the Barrymore, but he’d had to get up at 2:00 AM to get a flight from L.A. and wanted to shower and nap – so I disobeyed the instructions and left him. He’s an adult, I figured. Later the festival director, Ben Reiser, told me that Stefano got to the Barrymore before all the rest of them anyways.
We had some dinner, although I can’t remember what, maybe we just ate whatever, because I ran out of time to actually cook. Then back to the Barrymore for Hunt for Wilderpeople. They’d installed a brand new screen, and at the intros, Ben went on about what a peach Steve Sperling, the Barrymore manager, was to work with. On the way out I stuck my head into Steve’s office to say they’d been saying nice things about him, and he said, “ah, never listen to that stuff.” Later I learned the screen was some kind of negotiation between the Barrymore and the Fest, but it stays at Barrymore. No wonder they thought Steve was great – he bought them a screen.
I liked Hunt for the Wilderpeople. It’s about an older couple in New Zealand who foster a tough kid, and the old lady dies, and to avoid having the kid go back into the system because there’s no mum around, the old man and the kid take off into the bush. Sam Neil is quite good as the irascible old guy. I think my favorite scene is when foster care shows up at the couple’s place, and the tough lady cop says she has to inspect the premises. She looks around for 30 seconds and says, “yep, you’ll do”.
Still from Hunt for the Wilderpeople
On Friday, I had the last of the face-to-face meetings for my how to teach good online class, then came home, bought catfood and went to the library, and then headed out to the far east side for the WI Library association literary awards committee meeting. Then out to Sundance for my first real shifts of the Fest, from 5:00 to 9:00. Our next movie was I Promise You Anarchy, a pretty grim view of skateboard kids in Mexico City.
On Saturday we biked to the first outdoor farmer’s market, and of course it was gorgeous and sunny for sitting in movies all day. Not much to buy at the market, but nice to walk around. We drank coffee from Colectivo and ate a cherry Danish and chocolate croissant from L’Etoile for breakfast while we were sitting on a stone wall on the walkway to the Capitol, in the sun. I worked a shift at the Marquee Room at Union South, and the two films playing there I kind of wish I’d seen: Valley of Love and Nothing Lasts Forever, from 1984, with Bull Murray.
Gérard Depardieu & Isabelle Huppert in Valley of Love
Two more movies and a work shift back at Sundance wrapped up Saturday. John From, with a charming young actress as 15-year-old Rita, but I thought it was just generally kind of weird – tropical superstition taking over a a town in Portugal. And, Tale of Tales, beautifully filmed, and beautiful costumes, with every fairytale cliche imaginable. The barren and jealous and beautiful Queen, old women miraculously made young, the princess carried off by an ogre ….
Rita in John From
And, since I am saving Sunday for its own post, that leaves our last film of the Fest, on Thursday, Sunset Song, based on the novel of the same name by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. It was another one that was so pretty we didn’t want to stop watching, but it was terribly slow. And it had the kiss of death for a movie based on a book – lots of voice over readings from the book, to try to explain things. But somehow, despite the narration, the characters’ actions never really seemed to make sense, and the unnecessary for an English-speaking audience subtitles for the Scottish accents were beyond annoying.
The End.