Final Thoughts from Our Man in Utah/Final Ballots in the Mail

Good Morning.

Sundance 2012 is in the books.  The three titles that emerged that seem to be the most intriguing: "The Surrogate", "Beasts of the Southern Wild" and "The Words".

Our man in Utah who had the front row seat, Gant Lee of Cinema Bebop files his final report at:
 http://cinemabebop.tumblr.com/

I have reproduced it here:

Sundance 2012 Recap!

After a fun vacation in the mountains, life sped up and kept me from doing this. Even though I’m still busy, I’ve found the time to write this quick little bit full of goodies.
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THE AWARDS
Taking home the big one is Beasts of the Southern Wild. It picked up the highest ranking award for dramatic films, the Grand Jury Prize, Dramatic. This really came as no surprise here. During my stay in Park City, I heard a lot of great things about this film, but I tried my hardest to stay away from too much info. At one point, I even stood in line for 4 hours to get a ticket into the film (with no success). The film got picked up by Fox Searchlight and will presumably be hitting theaters sometime later this year.
Taking home the Grand Jury Prize, Documentary was The House I Live In. The film is about the “war on drugs” and the way we view it. I’ve heard it’s quite gripping and oh, by the way, Danny Glover is an executive producer. It hasn’t been picked up yet for distribution, but I’m sure that it will given its award and positive responses.
A list of all of the awards can be found here ——-> http://www.sundance.org/press-center/release/2012-sundance-film-festival-awards/
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HERE IS THE LIST OF WHAT I WATCHED AND HOW I SCORED EACH FILM
Simon Killer 8/10
The Comedy 7/10
Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie 8.5/10
Room 237 9/10
L 5.5/10
Red Lights 4.5/10
Wrong 6/10
SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS 8/10
Indie Game: The Movie 7.5/10
Smashed 9/10
I wasn’t unhappy to sit through any of these screenings. I may not care to sit through 2-3 of them again for a very long time, but it was a fun time nonetheless.
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FINAL THOUGHTS
1) Independent film is great. In some instances, you can argue that the independent filmmaker is more creative and has the ability to do whatever they want. They answer to themselves, not a studio. What you get at Sundance is a truly unique and eclectic group of films and filmmakers that are trying to cater to a number of different audiences, not just one wide audience. This makes every film seem less generic and more original. This is the Mecca of independent film and I love it.
2) Volunteers are so helpful. In their instantly recognizable orange jackets, you could ask them just about any question about the festival and they will have the answer for you or they will know somebody who knows the answer. For every one nice person that approaches a volunteer, there are about 3 people who aren’t nice. The volunteers don’t get enough credit when it comes to running the festival. They have some really great crowd control skills and they’re doing it for free, out of the goodness of their hearts. I didn’t say “thank you” to them enough…
3) Next time, I will purposefully try to go see films that have not been picked up for distribution. There are plenty of great films that go through there that somebody may never see. I don’t want to miss out on those in favor of something I can see in theaters 6 months later. After missing both The Surrogate and Beasts of the Southern Wild at the end of one day, I decided to go to guaranteed screenings. The festival is more fun that way.
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SPECIAL THANKS
I would like to give a shout out to my mom for going with me to Park City. It was fun having her with me and talking about the films that we had seen. I wouldn’t have been there in Park City or blogging right now without her. So thank you Liz Lee!
Next, I want to thank Michael Patterson for promoting my writing on his Telluride film blog. If you wanna check out awards season talk or anything regarding Telluride, visit his website at http://michaelstelluridefilm.blogspot.com/. He’s great and very rich with information!
Lastly, I want to thank my readers for reading me! I can track how many times my links have been read, and I know there are a few of you! So thank you for your continued support. I really appreciate it.
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I’ll try making it back here every once in awhile to fill everybody in on details concerning future Sundance dealings and happenings. Until next time!


THEY'RE IN THE MAIL

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has the final Oscar ballots in the mail as of yesterday afternoon.  They must be returned no later than Feb. 21st at 5p.m.  The Oscars are Feb. 26th.

To my Academy member acquaintances...I say...vote well...with great ballots come great responsibility!

Later!

Follow me on Twitter @Gort2

Special to MTFB/FAC: Hazanavicius Wins/Sundance Concluding

Good Morning, World!

The Director's Guild of America named "The Artist" director Michel Hazanavicius the winner of its award for directing feature films last night.  Needless to say, that throws more fuel on the "It's a lock" for Best Picture fire.  I think that notion is probably true.  I have been thinking that one could make a reasonable case for the chances of an upset by "Hugo" or "The Descendants" or possibly even "The Help".  But probably not.

The SAG awards are tonight.  We'll have those results for you in tomorrow's post and also the parsing of them to see if they reveal any surprises or new wrinkles for the conventional wisdom as we edge closer to Oscar Day/Feb. 26.

Here's the complete skinny on last night's DGA awards from Rope of Silicon:
http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/2012-directors-guild-awards-michel-hazanavicius/

SUNDANCE CONCLUDING

The Sundance Film Festival is ratcheting down and they announced their awards last night.  Again, it seemed that there were two big, buzzy films: "Beasts of the Southern Wild" and "The Surrogate".  The awards list underscores that.  Here, from HitFix is the complete Sundance Awards rundown:
http://www.hitfix.com/articles/2012-sundance-film-festival-jury-awards-winners
IMDb page for "The Surrogate": http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1866249/
and for "Beasts..": http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2125435/


I am hoping to receive another dispatch or two from Our Man in Utah, Gant Lee of Cinema Bebop to pass along about his Sundance experiences.
http://cinemabebop.tumblr.com/

Later...

Our Man in Utah: Sundance Review: Shut Up and Play the Hits

OUR MAN IN UTAH

Cinema Bebop's Gant Lee continues his Sundance Film Festival experience with a screening of "Shut Up and Play the Hits".  Here's his review...


SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS

Part concert film and part interview/documentary, SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS chronicles the ending of a band called LCD Soundsystem. It’s not a sad story full of heartbreak and disaster, but a story about a group of people that were literally in control of their own destiny. At the top of his career, James Murphy decided to walk away from rockstar status and not overstay his welcome. Although the film offers an extraordinary portrait of one of the most self-aware artists of the last decade, the film’s inability to show you the full Chuck Klosterman interview or the full concert keeps it from feeling complete. It feels like a short documentary with a few music videos in between or a short concert film with the DVD extras playing throughout. Regardless, you’ll be happy with anything you can get.





Concert film- If you’re a fan of the band, then you’ll obviously love it. If you’re new to the band but have the slightest interest in hybrid rock, the band is easy to get into, especially given the band’s passionate live performances. I’d suggest Youtube-ing the band before you make a judgment on whether or not you want to see this film (if/when it’s available). But the film completely hinges on it. So if you’re not on board with the music you’re hearing, then it’s best that casual audiences stand aside. As far as the concert footage goes, it’s great. I haven’t seen an awful lot of concert DVDs or films, but this is by far in the higher rankings of what I’ve seen. The footage is pretty standard and isn’t really anything out of the ordinary (besides a few choice shots and angles from Spike Jonze). I would say that the film accurately portrayed the experience of the concert, but we only see about a quarter of the four hour event. The concert is full of emotion, no doubt, but I’m sure it was more grand and epic than the film ultimately made it out to be. All of the editing and filmic shortcomings aside, the band can play. I mean, they can play really well. The volume was high and the screen was big. If the only problem with this part is that it was too short, I’d say that’s a pretty good problem. Good films (documentaries, especially) capture a moment of time and immortalize it. Credit directors Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern. By the way, awesome thank you music using the theme for Twin Peaks. I nearly cried……. :P


Documentary/Interview- I’m a little biased here because I love Chuck Klosterman. If you asked me to pick one writer that has influenced me, it’s him. Seriously, this guy is awesome. Although Real-life Klosterman and Writing Klosterman are different, I still cherish hearing him. The guy can interview like crazy and write even better. So I was happy to learn that he was going to be interviewing James Murphy throughout the movie. But like the concert portion of the film, I knew that something was missing. Chuck Klosterman asked about 7 questions during the film. While they were good questions that garnered interesting responses, there wasn’t enough there to seem like a full interview had taken place. Also, there is no denying that a guy like James Murphy deserves to get the majority of the film dedicated to him, but it may have been cool to get a take on the ending of events from some of the other band members. They’re there and you get little bits and pieces from them, but it was never in an interview setting. The non-interview parts of the documentary segments were full of character and, despite there not being a large story told, were appreciated.


When it comes to reviewing a film, I immediately have to force myself to find something wrong with what I just watched because I can sometimes get caught up in how great the experience was, perfect or not. With this film, it was pretty hard. I highly recommend this film to fans of the band. I slightly recommend this to potential fans. I don’t really recommend this to people I don’t see as potential fans. THE FILM IS GREAT. It just feels like there are two films about this story that I want to see: the entire concert film and a more in-depth documentary. It’s hard to imagine the two seperately, so hopefully there can be a big Special Edition Blu-ray release or something that compiles all of the extra footage and interviews. There is only so much good that you can pack into a feature-length film, and they did the best they could. 8/10

Later!

Follow me on Twitter @Gort2