Linas Phillips and Alpaca Friend in Bass Ackwards

Back home after covering the second half of Sundance 2010, there are a few films that I haven’t addressed until now because, well, they required more consideration (and, regarding ODDSAC, serious decompression).

Bass Ackwards: The feature debut from Linas Phillips, who created a small indie stir several years ago with the documentary Walking to Werner, has received attention because a) it was executive produced by Mark Duplass (one of four Duplass-y projects at the festival) and b) it was one of several films made available for rent on YouTube in conjunction with Sundance 2010. In terms of indie-film distribution, bypassing the studio system is all the rage. Even Hollywood seems enamored by newer services like video-on-demand and companies such as New American Vision, which connects niche films with their audiences.

Fans of the Duplass Bros. work and other filmmakers in the so-called mumblecore genre (Andrew Bujalski, Joe Swanberg, Greta Gerwig, and others) should be engaged by Bass Ackwards, in which Linas Phillips stars as … Linas, a mid-30s guy meandering through life in Seattle who finds much-needed focus at the conclusion of his cross-country van trip. Despite a series of proverbial bumps in the road, he leaves behind an ill-advised affair, a series of odd jobs (wedding videographer, alpaca-farm assistant), and nights spent crashing at a friend’s house. Events that sustain him while on the road include running out of gas, getting drunk and simultaneously trying to get laid, and placing phone calls to his (real-life) dad.

The film’s most appealing expression is how Linas is influenced by the people he encounters; namely, Paul (Paul Lazar), a grieving, civic-minded gas-station attendant and Jim (co-writer Jim Fletcher) a slightly older man as equally adrift as Linas. Quiet moments with these men do wonders for Linas’s delayed manhood; by the time the end credits roll, Linas looks less like Joshua Leonard‘s character from Humpday and more like a guy ready for his next act in life.

I’ve seen a handful of films like Bass Ackwards over the last few years. At best I’ve found these types of stories pleasant, honest, and for the most part, unassuming. Typically, they’re as male-centric as Judd Apatow‘s films with more subtle humor yet similar dramatic resolutions — the dudes tend to mature into well-intentioned adults. Personally, I feel as though you have to identify with a character such as Linas to truly connect with a film like Bass Ackwards; otherwise, watching such a journey out of delayed manhood can be quite an undertaking.

Contracorriente: This Peruvian drama from director Javier Fuentes-Leon earned the World Cinema category’s audience award. It left me feeling at odds. The story is centered on a fisherman engaged in an affair with another man, unbeknownst to his pregnant wife and, for a while, everyone else in his village. After an hour-plus of beautifully shot scenes full of man-for-man longing, Miguel (Cristian Mercado) ultimately rejects blue-eyed painter Santiago (Manolo Cardona) and tries in vain to return to Mariela (Tatiana Astengo) and their about-to-be-born son. By the time Miguel has been outed by some local gossip, he’s already grieving not just Santiago’s sudden death/suicide, but the fact that his soul is not at rest. In other words, he’s dealing with one life coming into being and another who met a tragic end.

A Still from Contracorriente

As the drama unfurled, I kept wondering if the story was an adaptation since the amount of metaphor and symbolism felt pulled in from elsewhere and made to fit around every scene. (It’s Fuentes-Leon’s original screenplay.) All the sandy love-making, misty eyes, and candle-giving was straight up Harlequin to me; more so, it overemphasized an already high-stakes affair. The locations were so romantic, so thoroughly pristine, they spoke directly to the theme of a tightly knit community and its sense of tradition in contrast with Miguel’s divided nature. Folding in the ghost story gave the drama some mystery, but there was little finesse to Santiago’s appearances after we learned he was waiting for Miguel to make the decision to be with him or remain in his real-world life.

What I can’t quite resolve is a statement made by Fuentes-Leon in the film’s press notes. Paraphrasing the filmmaker, he indicates an important aspect of his story is the power that can come from facing our own internal prejudices despite social conventions and the false expectations we tend to set for ourselves. But here it really is an external pressure that forces Miguel to make the difficult, noble decision to confront his own sexuality, which is to confront everything and everyone around him. The man was already haunted by his deceased lover, and I assert this alone should have been Miguel’s motivation to make right by his loved ones. That he had to react against rumors about him weakened his character and Contracorriente’s intended overall theme.

Literally and figuratively, Contracorriente is not for me, but the story is important and the film itself is well composed, and I can see it playing well with festival and general audiences. It will register with people who feel the need to closet their orientation due to external or internal pressures. But we have seen this kind of story in this genre again and again from around the world; in keeping with Sundance’s central theme this year, I don’t think there’s anything rebellious about this work. It’s well done and it falls in line with all the similar stories that have come before it.

ODDSAC: As a band, Animal Collective can be as harsh as they are cuddly, moving from periods of harmonic beauty to gnashing, enduring noise. And their drum programming always makes my chest feel tight in the only good way that can occur. Music writers spill over their legacy, but a quick way of framing their sound and appeal is to say their core members are two sets of childhood friends, and LSD was introduced in early life for most (all?) of them. So you can imagine what this might look like on film.

A Still from ODDSAC

Danny Perez shot and edited ODDSAC over the last three years. He’s behind some of the band’s videos and, since ODDSAC was created as a visual album, Perez’s bond with the musicians and their sound makes for a huge step forward in statement from the entire group. Narrative is essentially non-existent, but we get a sense of their love for horror films (bandmember Josh Dibb appears as a vampire who feasts on a campfire family before burning into ash), but mostly this is a case of music and visuals influencing one another without a narrative purpose.

It’s the sort of film you might watch for a few minutes in a museum if you aren’t familiar with the creators, and you might try to interpret if you’re a devoted Animal Collective fan. I got into them about two years ago after my best friend promised to disown me if I didn’t listen to their record Feels. From there I worked backward and forward through their discography until reaching a point where I’m comfortable saying they’re the most progressive “discovered” band this country has to offer. And the fact that this work represents their decision to move beyond accessible music (consider this a relative term here) has me thinking in weird little stories influenced by ODDSAC‘s imagery.

The Zo: This hand-animated short played before ODDSAC. First-time filmmaker Glenda Wharton assembled some 5,000 drawings into a skittering nightmare based on her experiences with domestic violence. Ms. Wharton indicated she thinks her work pairs well with ODDSAC, and I think Animal Collective ought to consider The Zo to be ODDSAC‘s opening act when they push the film out to their audience later this year.

Debra Granik, director of Winter's Bone

Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic – Winter’s Bone

Grand Jury Prize: Documentary – Restrepo

Directing Award: Dramatic – Eric Mendelsohn for 3 Backyards

Directing Award: Documentary – Leon Gast for Smash His Camera

Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award – Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini for Winter’s Bone

Excellence in Editing Award: Documentary – Penelope Falk for Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

Excellence in Cinematography Award: Dramatic – Zak Mulligan for Obselidia

Excellence in Cinematography Award: Documentary – Kirsten Johnson and Laura Poitras for The Oath

Special Jury Prize: Dramatic – Sympathy for Delicious

Special Jury Prize: Documentary – GasLand

Audience Award: Dramatic – Happythankyoumoreplease

Audience Award: Documentary – Waiting for Superman

World Cinema Audience Award: Dramatic – Contracorriente

World Cinema Audience Award: Documentary – Waste Land

Best of Next Award: Homewrecker

World Cinema Jury Prize: Dramatic – Animal Kingdom

World Cinema Directing Award: Dramatic – Juan Carlos Valdivia for Southern District

World Cinema Screenwriting Award – Juan Carlos Valdivia for Southern District

World Cinema Cinematography Award: Dramatic – Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat for The Man Next Door

World Cinema Special Jury Prize: Dramatic – Tatiana Maslany for Grown Up Movie Star

World Cinema Jury Prize: Documentary – Mads Brügger for The Red Chapel

World Cinema Directing Award: Documentary – Christian Frei for Space Tourists

World Cinema Excellence in Editing Award: Documentary – Joel Alexis for A Film Unfinished

Excellence in Cinematography Award: Documentary – Michael Lavelle and Kate McCullough for His & Hers

World Cinema Special Jury Prize: Documentary – Enemies of the People

Alfred P. Sloan Award – Obselidia

Director Rodrigo Cortés and Ryan Reynolds in Park City

Buried: OK, so Ryan Reynolds is undeniable eye candy, and in Buried he serves up a believable performance as a trucker doing contract work in Iraq (though the movie was shot in Barcelona) who is kidnapped and interred in a coffin, outfitted with only lighter and a cell phone. Spaniards are continuing to prove they are the master of creating tense, visceral thrillers such as [Rec], and Buried is no exception. Director Rodrigo Cortés succeeds in finding creative ways to lense the story to make the audience feel claustrophobic, serving up multiple camera perspectives despite the tight confines of a box.

At times the credibility of the character’s actions are ridiculously unpractical, yet this thriller succeeds in grabbing you by the cojones, pulling tight, and not letting you go until the end credits roll. Similar to Sherlock Holmes, the film also offers a couple of off-camera voices worth looking up later.

All My Friends Are Funeral Singers: Spirits confront a fortune teller played by Angela Bettis of May fame in this talky, handsome experimental film/long-form music video/mescaline trip from Tim Rutili, leader of the Chicago indie-folk band, Califone. Consciously freaky and resolutely outsider, I think the film would work best with Califone playing the score live (which they did at its Sundance premiere). Otherwise, it could feel like a major character is missing from the piece. Strangely, Rutili’s gift for lyrical imagery, one of Califone’s strongest offerings, is mostly absent here.

Enter the Void: What you expect from Gaspar Noé of Irreversible infamy. Noé has a signature style, but there are advancements here in terms of his use of hyper-technicolors, refined camerawork, respect for J-culture, and Void‘s invigorating opening credits, which have earned insider respect at Sundance. The credits demand you pay attention as Noe takes you on a journey based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead and centered on a brother/sister duo with a bond that cannot be broken, even in death. Noé’s signature violence and sexual peccadilloes are on display here, but his new film is also incredibly romantic and hopeful, despite what his usual naysayers might proclaim. In fact, his ideas are incredibly mainstream and the emotions he uncovers are universal, as long as you allow yourself to endure the sex and violence.

Please Give: Catherine Kenner can do no wrong; she has the ability to spit out one-liners that tap into a series of emotions: brittle, sensitive, painful, giving, and caustic. In Please Give, however, we see a softer side of C.K. in the soon-to-be-released film from Sony Pictures Classics. The story is a day in the life of disparate New Yorkers navigating obligations to family, to their own moral dilemmas, and the challenges of living in a city where contradictions exist around every corner. True to writer-director Nicole Holofcener‘s previous work, she has a knack for delivering comic dialogue in the most uncomfortable situations. She knits together an ace cast, including a surprisingly credible performance by Oliver Platt, and a refreshingly caustic Amanda Peet, who obviously has been cutting her teeth in the school of Neil LaBute (she was recently in LaBute’s ill-fated Broadway plan, Reasons to Be Pretty). The story is timely since it taps into the human side of the paranoia and interpersonal conflicts that are fueled by today’s economic climate. The fact that it doesn’t offer any feeling of escapism might make it tricky to market, but Holofcener has posse so we’re not fretting.

Splice: This sci-fi/thriller benefits from commitment of two strong actors, Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley. The mix of body horror and fantasy is overseen by executive producer Guillermo del Toro, and Dren, the creature created and nurtured by a pair of bio-chemists, is a definite homage to Pan’s Labyrinth. Dark humor and wicked twists abound, but in truth, Splice could use a cut (edit). And though it might be edgy for non-genre fans, it might not go far enough for people steeped in the genre. Furthermore, this might be a clichéd case too many cooks involved behind the scenes; I feel like one group of producers want it to be really grungy similar to Frank Henenlotter movie (Basket Case or Bad Biology), while the other set want something more accessible, given the amount of time and money spent on the project.

Frozen: Taking a cue from the school of “what would happen if…”, Frozen primarily delivers the suspense and scares, with a cast of appealing actors, a wintry setting, and distributor Anchor Bay’s penchant for aggressively loud sound design to inflict horror upon the auditory senses. Overall it’s an effective thriller from Adam Green, the director of Hatchet (Hatchet 2 is in production now). Minor continuity problems include some make-up inconsistencies; moreover, there’s a simple solution to the predicament here (snowboarders trapped on a chairlift with no help in sight), but the characters make decisions that usually end in stupid, bloody results. To be fair, check your brain at the door and just go along for the ride.

Director Jason Spingarn-Koff's Avatar

Catfish, GasLand, and Restrepo are the buzziest documentaries this year, but I will assert that Life 2.0, which has lower-level awareness at this point (and no distribution deal) is one of the most potent docs I’m seen at the festival — or anywhere else in quite a while. Jason Spingarn-Koff makes the jump from television documentaries to his first feature doc; better said, he creates his own avatar and enters the 3D virtual world Second Life to chronicle the experiences of four people fully immersed in this environment.

In ascending order of disquieting alternate lives, there’s “Asri,” a 30-year-old woman who awakens around 6pm each day and proceeds to spend the next 15-20 hours online as the owner of a successful clothing store; in first life, “Ayya” is a young married male, but in second life she’s an 11-year-old girl; “Blunty” and “Amie” are married to different people (in different countries) in the non-virtual world, but in SL they’re together and readying for the first offline meeting. Spingarn-Koff’s video-camera holding avatar achieves a level of intimacy with his subjects in both first and second lives; I believe the director’s presence is therapeutic for each of his subjects to different degrees and his work offers jumping off points for discussion about how we can and cannot separate our everyday lives from those of our Internet personas, our desire for secrecy in first lives, and how human nature is exhibited in unflattering ways whether you’re offline or otherwise.

Asri in First and Second Lives

It’s not hard to telegraph what motivates Life 2.0‘s subjects, or what can happen when, say, two people abandon their marriages and rush right into a new relationship, or the concerned wife of an SL addict realizes she isn’t a part of the world her husband considers more real. There are instances of abuse, neglect, and scenarios that bring out the pop psychologist in all of us.

The most unprecedented subject is “Asri”‘s successful lawsuit against a fellow SLer who hacked her clothing designs and began selling them at cut rates throughout SL. “Asri”‘s lawsuit connects with footage of an SL exec (San Francisco-based company Linden Labs created SL) describing the need for jurisdiction in the virtual world in order to protect everything from copyright to what you might call emotional felonies. It was interesting to note that only one Linden rep was profiled for the project, and I read the look in his eyes at a mixture of mistrust and … SL addiction?

Worth noting were the sounds of the audience’s reactions to the film, part disbelief, with some ridicule and empathy in equal measure. Right as the credits began, we all turned on our cell phones, checked Facebook, tweeted, etc. But that’s like totally different from entering Second Life, right?

The Kids Are All Right Ensemble

Lisa Cholodenko rebounds 6 years after the wayward Cavedweller with The Kids Are All Right, a queer-family drama and alternative-family comedy that has turned a standing-ovation premiere into a lucrative deal with Focus Features, one of few muscley indie distributors still standing in 2010.

Artificial insemination is an au courant topic in Hollywood; arriving in a couple months is The Back-up Plan, and The Baster is expected in the fall. Ms. Cholodenko edges past Jennifer Lopez and Jennifer Aniston‘s respective situations with a story centered on Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore), lesbian mothers who each conceived a child through the aforementioned process. Their youngest child, 15-year-old Laser (Josh Hutcherson), convinces college-bound Joni (Mia Wasikowska), to look up their donor.

The theatricality occurs as biological dad Paul (Mark Ruffalo) quickly bonds with Joni, then Laser, and then, carnally, with Jules. Aside from the twitchy family dynamics that flow (and only sort-of ebb), the movie devotes time to the individual characters and how their singular lives are changed by the events. The family is pushed forward, but it’s unclear if the revelation of some secrets and lies will make them stronger as a unit. Along the way amazing one-liners, Bening/Moore sex scenes (while watching gay-male porn), and relatable personal and interpersonal situations are sewn together with style.

Ms. Cholodenko’s natural dialogue is custom-fit for every performer here. Mia Wasikowska, who is about to become a celebrity with Alice in Wonderland, has these moments in the third act where you feel as though she really could have been nurtured in Annette Bening’s womb. Josh Hutcherson emerges from his collection of forgettable movies as he takes a punch from his crappy only friend, spits out blood, and walks away into manhood. There’s also a serious lack of leading lady Botox, and the Benning vs. Moore on-screens duels shove the story towards its conclusion without venturing into melodramatic territory. Mark Ruffalo gives his best performance since You Can Count on Me (clearly I’m barring Zodiac for dramatic effect). One of the many things I loved about the look of the movie is Mark Ruffalo’s styling, an updated take on 70s-era Warren Beatty with his bohemian jewelry, denim shirt opened up to the chest, and post-coital hair and skin, which is always welcome.

Nothing else I saw yesterday was as noteworthy, though Blue Valentine is the kind of film you’d expect from Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams: superbly acted and heartbreaking, with many debts to John Cassavetes. Harvey Weinstein was in attendance, and the film feels like a movie he likes to champion.

Happier Than Their Film: Cianfrance, Williams, and Gosling

Writer-director Derek Cianfrance looks at the dissolution of a blue-collar marriage, though as the crumbling begins, he craftily re-directs the narrative to the point where the romance between Dean (Gosling) and Cindy (Williams) takes root. The construct confirms that Gosling and Williams are two of the finest young American actors who, quite simply stated, want to make art films more than commercial fare.

Both actors know how to use nuance to create fully realized characters. Gosling is cigarettes, beer, unshaved, in love with his family and failing himself. (The only oops is his perfect manicure.) Williams is exhausted, checked-out, and, we soon learn, haunted by how she became a mother and then found her husband. One of the most depressing notions Blue Valentine offers is the notion that Dean provided Cindy with her first orgasm, though he was maybe her 25th sex partner. This kind of moment and insight is embedded in Cianfrance’s writing and it’s obvious that Gosling and Williams, who both executive produced the project, developed their characters to points of miserable perfection.

Less developed was Diego Luna‘s feature directorial debut, Abel, which feels like a half-formed Almodovar idea stripped of its color, electricity, and climax. Titual Abel is a troubled little boy who returns home from a stint in psychiatric ward, where he assumes the role of his absent father. Just as his mother and two siblings begin to flourish with the new dynamic, the father returns, yet Abel refuses to give up his post as head of table.

There’s a lack of harmony between the comedy, drama, and mystery here, and I think the screenplay could have used some time at a Sundance Screenwriting Lab.

Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine star in Tucker & Dale vs Evil

I descended into Park City today, turned up the collar on my winter coat, grabbed my press credential, and skidded into the first of two screenings.

As a horror-comedy send-up, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil hits all the right notes that make for a potential cult fave; the fact that it’s the first feature from writer-director Eli Craig earns a one-two knockout hit for the movie and its mastermind. The plot’s greatest conceit is so sublimely genius, you could almost hear all the frustrated screenwriters in attendance texting themselves “why did I not think of this first?”

Starring Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine — are there dreamier leading men, really? — T&DvE concerns a carload of college kids gearing up for a weekend camping trip, only to cross paths with Tucker (Tudyk) and Dale (Labine), two bro-mantic hillbillies looking to spend the weekend fishing and drinking beer at Tucker’s new vacation home in the mountains.

During their fateful encounter at a run-down convenience store, the judgmental kids are freaked out by the locals, while Dale becomes smitten with one of the students, Allison (Katrina Bowden, in a role that could turn her into some new kind of scream queen). Allison, of course, already has a suitor in the form of Chad (Jesse Moss), all mall-punk-lite attire, sneer, and anger-management issues.

As night sets in, booze, pot, and horror stories make the young people kinda paranoid, while Tucker and Dale get blasted in their rowboat. From here, it seems like mere moments between Allison hitting her head on a river rock, Dale saving her and overseeing her recovery, and Allison’s friends thinking she’s being held captive by redneck psychos. Let the showdown begin.

Without venturing into spoiler territory, the aforementioned conceit here is: the only evil present is a matter of perception. There’s nothing but goodness within Tucker, Dale, and most of the kids, but a grisly sequence of further misunderstandings causes liters of blood to be spilled and a villain to emerge from the chaos.

By the end of the first act, it was clear that homage was being paid to classic slasher films (love those ’80s-style kills and use of practical effects) as well as the lo-fi weirdness of Cabin Fever. However, I realized the movie has just as much in common with any episode of “Three’s Company,” only if Jack Tripper thought Mr. Furley to be a killer, and then Janet Wood, Larry Dallas, and nearly everyone else started dying.

That’s all I really want to say, because if this genre is your bag, cross your fingers for a worthwhile distribution deal, then go see it in a packed theater. It plays well with a crowd, and there are a lot of non-sequiturs, effectively scary fake-outs, asides, and other giggly moments. There’s also late-1980s flashback where Technotronic’s “Pump Up the Jam” is used amazingly, and the back story is teased out a bit.

All that said, I really hope this isn’t the last we see of Tucker and Dale.

Joan Rivers is a survivor of a slightly different kind. A year of her life — to be exact, her 75th — is chronicled by co-directors Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg (The Trials of Darryl Hunt, The Devil Came on Horseback), who offer sobering views into her obsessive work ethic, family dynamics, and showbiz milestones.

Feeling a bit long even at 84 minutes, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work works best when the comedienne is rattling off one-liners as startling now as they were 50 years ago when she was getting her start on television. Some aspects of her current efforts to stay relevant and employed were tough to watch in ways you might expect, though certain stretches, such as her attempt to stage a new play, weren’t edited effectively for me. Pacing issues can always be addressed before a general release, though, right?

Fortunately, we don’t have to contend much with her forays into plastic surgery, her QVC jewelry empire, or even her partnership with daughter Melissa as red-carpet correspondents. (Viewers do get to hear, which profane succinctness, exactly what she thought of her TV interviewer gigs, however.) Elsewhere, that whole “Celebrity Apprentice” win was just a springboard for Joan, since her current booking calendar — a cherished item — is as busy now as when she was named the permanent guest host for “The Tonight Show”.

The Johnny Carson era brings about perhaps the documentary’s greatest reveal as well as it chief weakness: as Joan acknowledges that Carson never spoke to her again when she made the jump to Fox for her own show and she was black-listed by NBC, it’s as if the film itself stiffens up and cuts away. The suicide of her second husband, Edgar Rosenberg, receives the same treatment; the eyes well with tears, she’s about to offer her unique perspective, and then we speak of it no more.

These are the layers I want to see as they’re peeled back by the relationship between subject and filmmaker. I wondered if perhaps Joan didn’t let her directors in. Then, as the credits rolled, my movie-going companion said, “You know what’s weird to me, Joan Rivers revealed more about her life, her late husband, and her spooky/lavish home in an episode of “Celebrity Ghost Story”.

And from what I’ve now researched, he’s 100% right.

Best Buzz: HappyThankYouMorePlease, Frozen, Buried, Winter’s Bone, Catfish, Waiting for Superman, Obselidia, Animal Kingdom, Boy

FFF: (Fine Festival Film…but that’s about it): Howl, Welcome to the Rileys,** Jack Goes Boating, Restrepo, Bran Nue Dae, The Company Men, Get Low, The Shock Doctrine, Casino Jack and the United States of Money

Worst Buzz: Hesher,** Sympathy for Delicious, Night Catches Us, Daddy Longlegs

Further Observations:

In the post-screening Q&A Phillip Seymour Hoffman protested too much that his film, Jack Goes Boating, was not the play it was originally based upon but a film, and a very different thing. But, despite his efforts and protest, the film still feels like a filmed play. Hoffman gets very good performances from his four leads, including himself. Jack is one of those arrested development adults that proliferate in independent cinema and Jack gets a chance to start his life anew when he’s set up with Connie (Amy Ryan) by their mutual friends Clyde (John Ortiz) and Lucy (Daphne Rubin-Vega). Jack bumbles into committing to cook a dinner for Connie which he has to do at Clyde and Lucy’s since they have a kitchen. While Jack and Connie are making tenuous steps towards a relationship, Clyde and Lucy are hanging on to theirs in spite of their history. It makes for an eventful evening and allows for some serious acting but not a very cinematic experience.

Babe Ruth, it is said, was not only the leader in home runs in many of his Yankee years, he was simultaneously the leader in strike outs. If that applies to making movies then Mark Ruffalo is soon going to bring forth Citizen Kane. I know because as director of Sympathy for Delicious, he has swung for the fences so hard, and fanned so colossally, that the air reverberating out of the theater where it debuted fluttered the pages of the hymn books of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir some 20 miles away in Salt Lake City.

Sympathy, from its pretentious title to the laugh-inducing final scene (and final song!), is so epically bad that it engenders its own kind of staggering, self-propelled energy, like watching kids sledding down a hill so steep that you know that they’re going to tip over but you find that you can’t look away.

Christopher Thornton wrote Sympathy and he plays the lead character “Delicious” Dean. Delicious is a DJ, a scratcher of some renown, who is paralyzed from the waist down (as is Thornton in real life). One morning, after attending a sham faith-healing service Dean discovers that he has the power to heal people. His gift is then appropriated by a local priest (Mark Ruffalo, going down with the ship), who starts to offer up Dean’s abilities as a gift from God. Dean is so self-consumed, however that he prostitutes his talents to a local, bad rock band. The band is led by The Stain (Orlando Bloom. Wow, Orlando.) and has (Juliette Lewis) as Mary Magadalene/back-up guitarist. Also doing penance is Laura Linney as a record promoter/manager.

All the actors get to include this in the “Charitable Gifts” category of their tax returns this year.

It must be said that Delicious is freighted with real-life human consequences outside of the film itself. Thornton is indeed consigned to a wheelchair and the film is dedicated to Scott Ruffalo, Mark’s brother who was killed in 2008. It’s easy to imagine where the earnest, forward thrust to this movie came from, even though Delicious was in pre-production when the tragedy occurred. But that doesn’t change the fact that this film, on its own, is a lamentable mess.

Casino Jack had some good buzz but it’s a surprisingly long, rather didactic tale of Jack Abramoff, the disgraced, imprisoned lobbyist whose greed was legendary. It is too ham-handedly jokey in one respect (Ralph Reed does not need to be lampooned further by animating religious iconography around him) and also tries to cover too much ground (did we really need to know that his partner, Michael Scanlon, moonlighted as a lifeguard?). Director Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) seems so outraged by the graft and avarice that it made him party to characterizing these hideous individuals, which is beneath him and his film.

Radnor at happythankyoumoreplease

Writer/director/star Josh Radnor‘s HappyThankYouMorePlease is the best film I’ve seen at Sundance (so far).  Oftentimes any film that isn’t bleak and depressing gets consigned to the bin of  “crowd-pleaser” by the critics and is just as quickly summarily dismissed. But Happy is blessed with a script worthy of the best work of  James L. Brooks and performs a deft balancing act. It interweaves the story of three young New York couples (with an ensemble cast), in various stages of falling in and out of love. Normally, there’s a couple of Sundance red flags right there: interweaving, young, New York couples, ensemble, and writer/director/star. Yet, almost improbably Happy makes each one of these cliched elements of bad past Sundance movies into attributes.

Happy will likely be compared to Garden State, another Sundance phenom helmed, written and starring a popular TV star star, Zach Braff. And Garden State is fine in its capacity, as a angst-ridden comedy, post-coming of age.

But Happy transcends even the generational tethers to approach something more timeless and universal (and yes, I do appreciate the irony of this being said in that most evanescent of publication methods, the blog).

It rests upon a gimmicky setup. Sam (Radnor) is a writer who finds himself the unlikely guardian of a boy who becomes separated from his family in the subway. Sam’s best friend is Annie (Malin Akerman), who has atrichia, a genetic condition which makes her hairless. Annie appears to be even more congenitally drawn to losers, though a lawyer at her workplace, Sam #2 (Tony Hale), as he bills himself , is wooing her in desperation. Sam #1 is busy wooing Mississippi (Kate Mara), a waitress who wants to be a cabaret singer. Sam #1′s other dear childhood friend, Mary Catherine (Zoe Kazan) is trying to decide whether to move to California with her boyfriend (Pablo Schneider). They’re all at crossroads though they’re not aware of it and Radnor’s subtle and persuasive presentation of their decisions makes for a believable, winning movie. You will hear more from happythankyoumoreplease.

Other things:

• Michael Moore at the Restrepo premiere looking rotund again.
• A wildly disparate group at The Company Men premiere including Harvey Weinstein, David Hyde Pierce, Tom Arnold and Demi Lovato (at least I think it was her).
• Saw Bran Nue Dae, an homage to Golden Age musicals which is a joyful, playful romp by Rachel Perkins
• Have heard great things about many of the documentaries here, as usual, including Catfish and Waiting for Superman.
• Night Catches Us is a meandering film that seems to want to slow our heart-rate down to a 1970′s pace (when the film is set). Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington turn in their usual solid performances but the film remains inert.
• Winter’s Bone may end up being the most haunting film in the festival. Director Debra Ganik brought the devastating Down to the Bone to the festival in 2004 and she repeats the feat of producing another harrowing film. Winter’s Bone is about a young girl from the Ozarks, wonderfully played by Jennifer Lawrence (look for more great things from this actress), who has to find her meth-cooking father or she and her young siblings will be ejected from their home.

I first met Posey in 2002 at Sundance. She was here with Personal Velocity and the IMDb team was here to launch IMDbPro. After our announcement we went to Cisero’s, a below-street-level establishment where a pretty raucous party was going on. Even Roger Ebert, who rarely goes to anything but screenings in Sundance, had been coaxed out.

We were interested in talking to Parker because, a year earlier, IMDb had lost, for the first time, a “Best Entertainment Site” prize at the Webby Awards, and she had been on the jury. Big back in the Internet Bubble days, the Webby Awards had some cache and we wanted to know if we’d lost because of something we had done (or not done), so we were curious about the caucusing and the process.  Parker is lovely in person; sweet and bright. I once knew a girl who had gone to school with her. She claimed that Parker was so beloved, and so special at their high school, that she went around bestowing bright red and pink kiss marks on those who pleased her, whether for a cute outfit or a recent school achievement. They were called “Parker Marks” and this friend claimed that, rather than being deemed some hideous Heathers-like fad of the popular clique that they sound like now, were deemed, by virtually everyone, as something rarefied; a gift from an ethereal being.

We’d been denied our Parker mark, of sorts, at the Webby awards so we approached her. She was with a hulking, behemoth of a guy, dressed in a sweater that, on a normal person would have draped and sagged but on his frame was stretched out like a rugby shirt on a rugby player.

After some back and forth we realized that Parker didn’t actually know anything about our site, the competition that had won, or the web in general. This was even more of a surprise to me since, seven years earlier, her Party Girl had been one of the first movies “streamed,” albeit unsuccessfully, on the web in conjunction with a company that I’d helped found; Film.com. I had just missed the event but the founder and the Point of Presence still regaled me with tales of Posey coming into our small offices, chain-smoking and acting incredibly fidgety.

She wasn’t fidgety with us though. She was just obtuse. The capper, as we drilled into why the jury had chosen another site only to have her continually evade any question we posed, was her counter. “You see,” she said, “I’m on the Web but I’m not really (and here she made air quotes) ‘on’ the web. I have a really small apartment.”

We were left to solve that one ourselves as the party, as parties do, shifted groups and realigned conversations. I found myself talking to the hulking behemoth who, it turned out, was a very nice guy. But he was worried about revealing much and wouldn’t tell me his name. I assumed he was a professional athlete but still don’t know his identity to this day. About this time he and I started to get hit with little bits of rolled-up beer labels and bits of coasters. Parker, whom I’m going to have to assume for her sake had gotten a bit potted in the ensuing time in the bar, was, in a good-natured but insistent way, pelting both me and the behemoth with anything she could find at her end of our table, about seven feet away. After this had gone longer than it really should have I took the bottle cap from my Bud, placed it between my thumb and middle finger, pointed my elbow in her general direction and flick-snapped it at her. The cap sliced through the air and pinged off of her pate. She showed pluck and grit by flinching, raising her arms and batting as if I had an arsenal of caps to Mask-like flick at her. Her behemoth boyfriend, in what I still view as a pretty classy move, stepped in front of me with a booming, “Hey!” “She was throwing crap at us,” I countered, justifying my actions. “Yeah but…” he left it with the impression that further flicking wouldn’t be tolerated and I certainly didn’t push it.

But I’ll be interested to see, after the winners are announced at Sundance this year, whether Parker Posey uses the same judging standards she set for herself in years past. I’d hate for a good film to get passed over because she’s got a really small apartment.

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

The most moving part of the conference, and the day, however, was when Redford came down to say hello to Roger Ebert, who was in the crowd of critics with his wonderful wife, Chaz. Roger had massive surgery to deal with cancer in his jaw and his appearance is much changed. He remains the same in the written word, however, and he likely wants no tears or sympathy. His courage at appearing back in public is evidence of that. He’s still using his prose and criticism to elevate great films and tear into bad ones with as much vigor as always.

Mali Elfman from ScreenCrave captured this amazing moment:

Just prior to the Redford conference was the New Frontier conference. It featured various artists such as Ragnar Kjartansson and Pipilotti Rist. Also in attendance was Joseph Gordon-Levitt. To be honest it was a lot of the same stuff one hears at all of these panels, about using the new medium in exciting ways (except DreamWeaver, everyone seemed to espouse serious hate for DreamWeaver) and the possibilities of film. Levitt and crew were engaging, however, and he wore a tie, which endeared him to me even more.

Levitt at the New Frontier Room

Tonight’s films are Howl and Restrepo, the documentary co-directed by Sebastian Junger, following soldiers in Afghanistan. There’s been very good buzz around Restrepo.