JAY LIGHT HAS A BLOG

It’s hard to believe that our time here at Sundance is almost over. I’ll get all sentimental whenever we actually leave, though, because there’s no room for that right now. I have too much to catch you guys up on.

Yesterday, I decided to take a break from Sundancing and check out the Slamdance Film Festival - Sundance’s younger, defiant brother, which takes place in Park City at the exact same time. A friend of mine from Cannes had a short film that she executive produced in competition, so I checked it out along with a few others:

• The Good Person, a Japanese short about mistaken identity and gorillas, was delightfully strange and uproariously funny, thanks to the over-the-top performances by all of the actors involved and the sharp writing.
• 33 Teeth, my friend Kelsey’s film, was a tight little comedy about a boy’s crush on his next-door neighbor. Also, it was set in Austin, which only ups the awesomeness levels.
• I’m Coming Over - my favorite of the block - was a hilarious story about an unconventional “holistic happiness” instructor who eschews modern technology for simpler pleasures and spreads his enlightened knowledge to those in need.
• Blind Deaf was the only disappointment of the four shorts. A British drama about a blind deaf woman who has a guardian angel of sorts living in her house without her knowledge, it was awkward, paced too slowly, and seemed incredibly out of place with the comedies that had already been screened

I also got to interview Jake Schreier, the director of Robot and Frank and a Sundance first-timer. He was very humble, great to meet, and filled with insight on being a first-time feature director. We’ll post the video when we’re back in Elon.

This morning, I saw my last screening of the festival: Smashed, a dramedy starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Aaron Paul as married alcoholics. When Winstead’s character Kate decides to get sober, her life begins to shift in ways she didn’t expect. Director and co-writer James Ponsoldt, a Sundance veteran, crafts an incredibly moving film about the struggles of addiction without ever letting it devolve into mindless melodrama, while keeping plenty of humor in the process as Kate works through overcoming her alcoholism. It was moving, hilarious, and far and away one of my favorites of the festival.

All I have left now is an interview with the cast of Goats and a final volunteer shift, and then I’m on a plane back to Elon. Weird.

Well, it finally happened. I saw my first bad movie, and it was Rick Alverson’s The Comedy - a shame, really, considering how high my hopes were when I read the summary and saw that it was starring Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim (of a movie I actually did like, the previously-blogged Tim And Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie). It was bound to happen, I just wish it wasn’t with this one.

I’ll start out with what worked: the soundtrack was fantastic and filled with a wide variety of music, ranging from danceable party music to stuff more suited to relaxing. All of the musical cues felt very appropriate and the mood that the song choices helped create was very nice. Tim Heidecker also turned in an incredibly solid performance as Swanson, an aging member of the “hipster” generation who has to deal with the death of his father. Heidecker absolutely nails it, showcasing an incredible sense of reaction to Swanson’s often-ridiculous friends and environment, both of which he clearly is starting to question why he even keeps up with in the first place. He plays Swanson as a man who is used to seeing the world through layers of irony and treating it with a sense of bemused detachment, but is quickly realizing that as he ages, there’s no point in treating the world that way. The loneliness and uncertainty Swanson feels throughout the film play out beautifully on Heidecker’s expressive face, and he is without a doubt the most fully realized character in the entire film.

Aside from these two bright spots, The Comedy unfortunately doesn’t live up to the hype. The film is paced far too slowly, is filled with characters who feel more like caricatures than real people, and is filled with shots and entire sequences that do nothing to further the story or flesh out the motives of the characters. I appreciate Alverson’s ambition - the technical aspects of the film show that he clearly knows what he’s doing in that regard - but the weakness of the story and the characters severely hampered the film’s effectiveness. Hopefully Alverson’s next effort will be better handled.

Greetings, friends! I blog at you today in the depths of a ridiculous snowstorm that has been raging on and off all day. It’s made walking around incredibly difficult - especially considering I forgot to Scotchgard my boots - but it’s been such an interesting day that I don’t mind at all.

I started off after breakfast with a trip to the furthest theatre in Park City - the Temple Har Shalom. Yep, a theatre in a synagogue. It was one of the coolest venues I’ve been to so far and also hosted the first documentary I’ve seen during the festival: DETROPIA. Coming from Oscar-nominated directors Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp), the film is a portrait of Detroit in decline during the late-2000s financial crisis. Described by Grady and Ewing as a tapestry of the city, we follow several different story threads: a teacher-turned-blues club owner’s growing disdain with the state of the city he was once proud of, the president of the local chapter of United Auto Workers as he works to negotiate with manufacturers, the attempted restructuring of the city by mayor David Bing to prevent Detroit from going bankrupt, and the crumbling arts scene that can’t stay alive since its once-wealthy patrons are feeling the effects of the recession as hard as the city’s poor, just to name a few.

What I liked most about DETROPIA was that the directors didn’t take a stance, and instead chose to let the inhabitants of Detroit tell their own stories without adding bias. The frustrations, joys, and passions of Detroit’s diverse citizens are fascinating in their own right, and while it was pointed out at the Q&A that not all of the city’s aspects were shown fully, I was okay with that - the patchwork quilt that Grady and Ewing stitched together to show the husk of this once-great American city was eye-opening and thankfully not preachy. I have high hopes for its chances in the U.S. Documentary competition.

After DETROPIA, I trekked over to the Yard, where the New Frontier exhibits were set up. The New Frontier is essentially an experiment in mixing art and film, with installations like a virtual reality game set at the L.A. Food Bank, a 3D amalgamation of set pieces from major blockbuster movies, and an exploded computer that only showed video of gamers getting pissed off at their own computers. While I only spent about 30 minutes at the Yard, I was definitely glad I went - it was a weird, artsy side of the festival I haven’t been able to really explore (aside from watching Perceptions the other day) and I enjoyed seeing how film can be used used for non-narrative purposes.

I also had my first volunteer shift at the Holiday theatre, where the press and industry retreat to when they want to see movies without the crush of festival-goer traffic, which has significantly increased over the past few days. I shoveled snow for the first time in my life, made sure that people went into the right theatre door, and made new friends and contacts, including the director of the Palm Springs Short Film Festival, which I might have to make a trek to come the end of June.

But now, it’s time to kick back, relax, and enjoy some peanut butter toast. See you tomorrow, friends.

I really, really, really, really liked it. So glad I was able to make it into the premiere and be amongst hundreds of diehard Tim and Eric fans. Also, I made Tim Heidecker laugh, which is enough validation to keep me going for a while.

If you want to see my full rundown post for class, you can check it out here.

I’ll keep this brief because I feel like it. Sorry if you wanted another wall of text like my last couple posts.

First on the list for today was Your Sister’s Sister, Lynn Shelton’s second feature after 2009’s Humpday. Starring Emily Blunt, Rosemarie DeWitt, and Mark Duplass, the film - a story about people trying to find themselves in a cabin off the coast of Seattle - was a great mix of comedy and drama. The performances from all of the actors were strong and natural, and Shelton’s decision to keep the film almost entirely contained amongst those three hanging out in a cabin in the woods and dealing with the mistakes they’ve made was a great decision. It’s a strong, heartfelt feature and was definitely worth waking up early this morning to go see.

Next up was The Perception of Moving Targets, an experimental first feature from Weston Currie. The screening got off to a rough start - someone delivered the wrong film to the theatre, and we got delayed by around 45 minutes - but it was worth the wait. Having never seen a feature-length experimental film, I wasn’t sure what to expect and didn’t quite catch on to the purpose at first, but after a little bit I was able to finally see the film for what it was: a work of art. Part of Sundance’s “New Frontier” selections, Perception is designed to make you feel uncomfortable and mesmerized at the same time. Currie switches between filming formats, extensively uses video and sound editing tricks, and is scored by Grouper, an ambient electronic band whose bleeps, bloops, and tones helped emphasize the weirdness of the film. It’s definitely not for everyone - as evidenced by the dozens of people who walked out during the screening - but it was a new film experience for me and I’m glad I decided to go check it out.

Now I’m off to dinner, drinks, and an attempt to see the midnight screening of Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie. Wish me luck!

I’ve lived in the South for most of my life. I was born in New Orleans, lived in Texas for 11 years (yes, it is part of the South, don’t sass me), and attend school in North Carolina. My mom is from Louisiana, my dad is from Arkansas, and nearly my entire extended family is scattered somewhere along the Gulf of Mexico. Yet, there’s something about the standard Southern identity that I don’t possess that makes people think I’m not from there. My lack of an accent, my distaste for seafood, my vote for Barack Obama in the last election. Maybe I just don’t say “y’all” enough. Who knows?

But I do know this: you don’t just have to be a Southerner to enjoy Beasts of the Southern Wild, Benh Zeitlin’s stunning debut feature. In the film, Zeitlin paints a gorgeous picture of rural Louisiana and its inhabitants. We see the town known to the locals simply as The Bathtub through the eyes of Hushpuppy, a young girl living with her father Wink, her mother having left some time ago. As she and the rest of The Bathtub’s citizens weather a devastating hurricane that leaves them all stuck floating on top of several feet of water, Zeitlin lets us watch as Hushpuppy matures through the ordeal, at a few times against her will.

The film is spellbinding. From powerhouse performances by newcomers Quevenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry to the captivating score - which Zeitlin also helped create - to the mesmerizing visuals of the decadent decay that permeates The Bathtub, I couldn’t have imagined a more entertaining first festival film to watch. At the post-screening Q&A, Dwight Henry said that he believes this film is about resilience; how even in the face of immense strife, something about the South breeds its denizens to be hardy individuals. While the characters in Beasts sometimes make decisions that seem more foolhardy than hardy, I agree with Henry. Zeitlin’s film shows the lengths that people will go to in order to protect their way of life in a thrilling fashion, and by allowing Hushpuppy to be the lens through which we see all of this, her innocence and growing understanding keep the film’s emotional core in the right place. Sure, the writing can get gimmicky at times, and the plot gets a little muddled at points, but I would certainly label Beasts as a great film and one that I wholeheartedly recommend should it find a distributor.

The first day is far from over - I’m catching a screening of Beasts of the Southern Wild in a couple hours, because what good is the first day if I don’t even get to see a movie? - but it’s already been packed with great times. Let’s run things down:

• Volunteer training was pretty straightforward, and I got a bunch of swag, including a sweet jacket, a scarf, a water bottle, and aftershave for some reason.
• I got to reunite several times over with Cannes friends, and will continue to do so at Beasts.
• Sat in on the tail end of an entertaining, enlightening interview with some folks from Faircourt Editorial, a media organization out here in Utah.
• Wanted to nap but fought the urge (because at film festivals, sleep is for the weak).
• Had a random lunch with other volunteers at a delicious Mexican restaurant, where I learned the intricacies of Utah alcohol law, why Wyoming has some of the best skiing in the nation, and that people here at Sundance are some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet.

I’d say things are off to a good start.