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January 19, 2009

Live from Sundance: Monday 1.19.09

Ah, the joys of connectivity – finally restored via Ethernet cable in my hotel room. Sitting here listening to a download of the song “Work the Wound” from “Passing Strange,” courtesy of a giveaway postcard I picked up in the press office.

 

To be honest, after a morning spent writing and posting in the lobby of the Marriott before my first screening, I barely had time between screenings yesterday to write, let alone post to my website. I had enough time to have a beer in Coach’s, the bar/bistro upstairs from the Racquet Club screening venue, get my reviews written for next week’s Star and send them off. Nice strong WiFi signal up there – and at the headquarters Marriott.

 

But in trying to make it from venue to venue for four screenings on Sunday, there was barely time to boot up and find a signal, let alone then take the time to write and put it in the kind of shape I’d like before going public.

 

Like I’ve got all the time in the world here this morning. It’s 6:50 a.m. Monday and I want to get this up, shower and head off for my last day in Park City, beginning with a 9:15 screening of “I Love You, Philip Morris,” the unsold gay-themed film with Jim Carrey.

 

Still, I had time to wonder (because I haven’t really been keeping up with what’s being written about what’s going on here): Which current event are writers finding mirrored in the films of this festival? As a former newspaper writer who was expected to file that kind of b.s. analysis, I can only imagine: “These films reflect the swelling hope of the coming Obama presidency” or “You can feel the fear and tension of the collapsing economy reflected…” or – well, you name it. It’s probably out there.

 

Anyway, Sunday, bloody Sunday – four films, three of them at the freaking Racquet Club, an indoor tennis court converted into a screening room – ah, the glamour of Sundance. It’s just far enough away from everything that you’ve got to take the bus if you want to get anywhere in anything close to a timely fashion.

 

It was actually a pretty good day, starting with the day’s best film: “Cold Souls,” a delightfully bizarre little metaphysical comedy starring Paul Giamatti as himself. He’s playing Paul the tortured actor, who can’t shake the despair of the character while rehearsing for a production of “Uncle Vanya” in which he plays the title role. His agent mentions an article in the New Yorker – which leads him to Soul Storage, an ultra-modern facility overseen by the slightly slippery Dr. Flintstein (David Strathairn) – a place where you can have your soul extracted and kept in cold storage, so you can live life without being tortured by your own pain.

 

It’s a heavy conceit, played with the kind of lightness and wit that Charlie Kaufman used to have. Giamatti is such a skilled actor that he manages to be hilarious as the tortured artist – and he’s beautifully matched by Strathairn, who seems imminently reasonable even as he mouths the most outrageous dialogue. The only comparison that comes to mind is “Being John Malkovich,” but only in the size of the ideas it approaches and makes funny; it’s not nearly as antic. But, in some ways, it’s funnier and more, well, soulful.

 

My second favorite film of the day was “Arlen Faber,” a consistent romantic comedy about hiding from – and opening yourself up to – life. The title character, played by Jeff Daniels, is a reclusive author who, 20 years earlier, wrote a massive best-seller, “Me and God,” which became a new-age sensation: “You have 10 percent of the God market,” his agent tells him. Since then, he’s been hiding in plain sight, not answering the bags and bags of mail asking him for answers about how to deal with life.

 

But he reengages after a bad back forces him to crawl to a neighborhood chiropractor, played by Lauren Graham. She’s got issues of her own, as the overprotective mother of a 7-year-old – but he sees a woman who makes him want to reengage with life. For good measures, there’s a recently rehabbed alcoholic (Lou Taylor Pucci), who owns a failing used-book store. They all come together in funny, touching ways; though it falls off in the final 20 minutes, it’s a film that continually surprises you with its wit and generosity of spirit.

 

I also liked “Big Fan,” a twisted little comedy starring comedian Patton Oswalt as Paul, a kind of Rupert Pupkin of New York Giants fans. He lives with his mother in Staten Island, works as a parking-garage attendant – and spends his time writing rants to spew when he calls in to a local sports-talk radio show, where he can badmouth Phil from Philly, his counterpart among Eagles fans.

 

Then a chance encounter with his idol, a Giants defensive back, ends with the mammoth football player beating the crap out of him in a strip bar. The player is suspended – but Paul can’t get himself to bring charges or file a lawsuit against the player. But Paul is suddenly at the center of a scandal that distracts the team into a losing spiral (hello, Plaxico?) – and everyone thinks he’s an even bigger loser than before. Written and directed by Robert Siegel (who wrote “The Wrestler”), it features a complex performance by Oswalt – funny and pathetic and conflicted.

 

I also saw “When You’re Strange,” a documentary about the Doors by filmmaker Tom DiCillo (“Living in Oblivion”). In terms of information, it doesn’t have much that’s new – but it offers a trove of previously unseen footage of the band in concert and behind the scenes. DiCillo has edited it into a trippy, impressionistic collage that shows what was, at the time, the coolest band in the universe, as a bunch of regular guys suddenly propelled into orbit. It’s fairly unsparing about Jim Morrison as a raging ego run amok on alcohol and drugs – what else is new? But that footage – wow.

 

Oh, and I also saw the 40-minute doc, “I Knew It Was You,” an homage to the late actor John Cazale by director Richard Shepard (“The Matador,” “The Hunting Party”). It’s fascinating to see the guy’s relatively small body of work dissected and analyzed by the people who knew and loved him, including Al Pacino, Francis Coppola, Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, Gene Hackman and others. It’s a lovely elegy that captures the sense of a huge talent in a life cut far too short.

 

So on to Monday – a relatively slack day with only three movies on the sked, as well as a pair of interviews.

 

 

 

 

 

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