Our Man in Utah: Day 3

Gant Lee of Cinema Bebop continues his assault on the Sundance Film Festival. Here's his latest post: Day 3 Man, things are speeding up around here quickly. I wish I could bore you with details, but I saw 4 films tonight and I forgot an event from yesterday. So I’m gonna make this quick. Last night, I had the privilege of attending a live performance/event for Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s production company, hitRECord. This open production company allows for people to upload their work to hitRECord.org and collaborate with other artists? Wrote a story? Someone will turn it into a song. Have little drawings? Someone will animate them. Throughout the event, people were encouraged to record the happenings to later upload for a particular Sundance project. One of such recordings that JGL conducted included me singing a song I’ve never heard before on a stage with a ton of strangers. I was nearly 2 feet away from JGL, so that’s cool……. For reasons unknown, none of my devices that I have on me can successfully upload pictures to this post. So, check out my Facebook or lesleyll.tumblr.com to see some pics from the event. It was a blast! Glad I made it in to something yesterday. Saw a Greek film this morning titled L. Didn’t like it as much as I expected. In the essence of time, suffice to say that it wasn’t as good as Dogtooth even with some same main crew members. 5.5/10 Caught a screening for Smashed with the only ticket that I was given all festival. It was fantastic. Mary Elizabeth Winstead did amazing and lived up to the hype. She was also there with the director to answer questions, smile, and just be pretty. The film did a great job showing the downsides to sobriety, something that isn’t really explored in other films. The script was fantastic and had one of the saddest lines I’ve ever heard in a movie. Perhaps Winstead’s acting just made the writing seem better, but probably not. It was a well written script and a great film all around. By the way, Ron Swanson is awkward in this; it went over well with the crowd. 9/10 Brady Corbet freaks me out; his role in the American version of Funny Games is still frightening to me. In his latest film Simon Killer, he continues his streak of weird characters. When his long-term relationship ends, Simon travels to France. His visit steadily goes down an odd path and ultimately to a point where it’s hard to root for the main character. The acting was brilliant (hence our hatred for Simon), the soundtrack was great, and the cinematography was very unique. And original vision, for sure. Brady and director Antonio Campos were there to field questions and are much nicer than this dark film would have you believe. A hard film to recommend to everybody because it’s so dark… 8/10 Lastly, I checked out the midnight screening of Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie. This mini-review is simple… If you love Tim and Eric, you’ll love this. If you don’t like Tim and Eric’s comedy, then you probably won’t like this. I could have seen this online had I wanted to (it was released on-demand today), but I wanted to experience it with a crowd full of fans. Without the restrictions of television, Tim and Eric have so much more freedom to do whatever they want with the film, something exemplified in the crude nature of the film. Sometimes, it felt like there was too much of a story, an odd concern for most films that aren’t adapted from 15-minute shows of unique humor. It never dragged; it just felt like they were trying too hard to make it a solid narrative through some middle parts. But that mildness and linearity was ruined often, and the audience was thankful for it. These problems were light and hardly did anything to make the film bad. It was hilarious! After the film, the programmer welcomed Tim and Eric to the stage… Except it was Tim and David Cross. A good time was had by all as David kept answering questions as Eric and Tim gave ridiculous answers to almost all questions. As they were leaving the theater, I patted Tim on the back and said, “Great job!” He smiled and said thanks. As for David, I shared with him a particular anecdote about my grandparents and a wedding he attended that he actually remembered. He said my grandparents were awesome, and then I should his hand. So yeah, pretty good screening. 8.5/10 Tomorrow is my last day! I hope I can make it special!