Day 4 (Sunday, January 21):

AOL has a presence at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, which is probably surprising to you because you didn’t realize AOL was still in business. But still in business AOL is! (Apparently.) AOL owns MovieFone, which is apparently also still in business, and together they have sponsored the AOL Cyberlodge on Main Street.

We know about the AOL Cyberlodge because AOL put notepads and pens with the AOL logo in everyone’s mailboxes at the press office. I went to the cyberlodge first thing this morning, figuring that since its whole purpose is to provide people with a place to use the Internet, surely they would have an electrical outlet into which I could plug my ancient laptop.

Sometimes I wonder how I manage to remain so optimistic despite enduring one failure after another. Surely I should be the subject of one of those inspirational billboards.

The AOL Cyberlodge is decorated with modern furniture and flat-screen TVs (showing MovieFone film-pimping features), and adorned with 19 laptops, free to be used by anyone. Within moments, I located four unused electrical outlets! But do not be excited, dear reader, and please disregard the premature exclamation point. For all of these electrical outlets had been covered up with electrician’s tape, to prevent anyone from using them.

I asked the sultry blonde managing the place if there was an outlet I could use. She said there was not, but that the coffee shop two doors down had outlets, and I’d be able to access AOL’s free wifi server there. I said, as if seeing them for the first time, “Oh, I see you’ve even covered up these empty outlets.” She said yes, that was a necessary precaution, because if people plugged into them, it would overload the system.

I admit that my knowledge of electricity is rudimentary at best, but I find it hard to believe that the AOL Cyberlodge has EXACTLY enough power to handle the 19 laptops, and that if even one more laptop were to be plugged in, it would blow a fuse and plunge all of Main Street into darkness. But I am not one to argue with sultry blondes, especially nice ones who offer viable alternatives, so I thanked her and walked to the adjacent cafe.

The cafe was your basic coffee shop, with tasty pastries and hot beverages and several electrical outlets near the tables. The fact that the AOL Cyberlodge’s wifi server does not, in fact, actually reach to the cafe seemed irrelevant, what with the delectable hot chocolate I drank there.

I headed down to the Yarrow/Holiday Village area next, for an 11:30 a.m. press screening of “Fido.” This is another movie with a great-sounding premise: It’s the 1950s, and the nation has been overrun by zombies, but scientists have devised a restraint collar that, when placed on a zombie’s neck, renders him docile and harmless. People keep them in their homes as domestic help, and the film’s protagonist, a little boy named Timmy, finds that his zombie is soon a friend, a playmate, a protector, and a confidante.

While it has some solid laughs and a fantastic production design (cheery ’50s colors abound), it’s ultimately not a great movie. Its fun premise wears thin halfway through. Turns out zombies-as-pets isn’t quite enough to sustain a whole film. Who’d have thought?

Very shortly after “Fido” was another film with an intriguing premise. It’s called “Zoo,” and it’s a documentary about the Washington man who died in 2005 as the result of injuries suffered while having intimate relations with a horse. Predictably, the screening room was packed. Who doesn’t like to watch the anatomy of a trainwreck?

Alternate titles for the film were flying fast and furious among the assembled members of the press. The best one I heard was “Horseback Mountain” (or perhaps “Mountin’”), though I liked what The Oregonian’s Shawn Levy said, too: “… And the Horse You Rode in On.”

Once again, however, we were let down. The filmmakers treated the subject with a disappointing amount of seriousness. What’s more, they turned it into an ethereal, experimental sort of doc, with reenactments, voice overs from some of the man’s friends, and a strange interview with the police officer hired to play a police officer in the reenactment. Double-you tee eff? All in all, it was a snoozer — not nearly as interesting as you expect a movie to be when it’s about a man being horsed to death.

Afterward, Weinberg, Kim Voynar, and I ate at Burger King (well, Weinberg and I ate; Kim eschews fast food), discussing the film as we did so. (If you are wondering whether the topic makes for appetizing lunch conversation, the answer is no.) We talked about the things the movie SHOULD have addressed: What constitutes “animal abuse”? Was the horse actually harmed? What’s up with the people — “zoophiles” — who have what they consider to be romantic relationships with animals, and where on the Internet can we find video footage of them?

Next up was “On the Road with Judas,” which just might beat out Crispin Glover’s ludicrous “It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine.” for worst film of the festival (so far, anyway; it’s only Sunday). It’s about a guy who writes a novel about a young man and a young woman’s relationship. In his mind, these characters really exist. Then the book is made into a movie, so actors are hired to play the characters. Then a talk show interviews the “real” people (who only exist in the writer’s head, mind you), as well as the actors playing them, and we see the whole story, sometimes with the actors doing the scenes, sometimes with the “real” people doing them.

The whole thing’s an insufferable wankfest, the kind of crap where the filmmaker thinks he’s being all clever and postmodern by actually mentioning the fact that nothing happens in his story. But guess what, Hector: Acknowledging the fact that you suck as a storyteller doesn’t excuse the fact that you suck as a storyteller.

My fourth film of the day proved to be the best: “Resurrecting the Champ,” in which a sports journalist played by Josh Hartnett finds a former professional boxer, played by Samuel L. Jackson, living on the streets. The film is more about journalism than you’d expect, and more about fathers and sons than you’d think, too, and Hartnett is surprisingly good in the role. He still has that unibrow, though, which you’d think some makeup technician would have dealt with by now.

Having thus far spent three full days at Sundance without going to a party, event, shindig, soiree, or even a to-do, I really wanted to attend the affair being sponsored by Film.com. The slave-drivers at Salt Lake City Weekly insisted I file reviews and reports, however, but I figured I could fart that stuff out pretty quick and then get to partyin’. Writing was easy enough once I found an electrical outlet (in the middle of the Yarrow Hotel lobby, on the floor), and filing the reports was OK once I located some wifi (in the lobby outside the closed-for-the-day Sundance press office).

Film.com is a great domain name, of course, and it was a decent Web site until 2001, when it went defunct. Now it is being relaunched, and the party was in celebration of that fact. The guy who invited me, curiously enough, was on the junket with me that resulted in my “I Was a Junket Whore” article last August. He is not a junket whore (it was only his second one ever), which is how we are able to be pals now.

The party was at the Star Bar, Sundance’s official music venue, located way the hell up at the very top of Main Street. You get off the shuttle bus, and then you walk straight uphill for several blocks in the 10-degree cold, taking a sherpa with you if necessary, though often even the sherpas will say, “I cannot go any farther, sir! I urge you to return to the base camp!” The frozen bodies of previous explorers litter the sidewalks.

I trekked up the hill, however, and into the party, which was in full swing. A series of indie bands were performing — first West Indian something, and then Apples of something something — and many young hipsters were milling around, enjoying the open bar and the dim lighting. The classiest part of the evening for me was when I finished my Coke beverage and, believing the drinking vessel to be a disposable plastic cup, dropped it into a garbage can, only to realize after I’d let go of it that it was a regular glass-glass. It shattered when it hit the bottom of the can. Whoops. Put it on Film.com’s tab, I guess.

I ran into a few Utah friends, along with the non-whore who had invited me, chatted for a while, and then headed back to the condo. It turns out I like the idea of partying more than actual partying, but I guess that’s true of a lot of things.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 12:50 am and is filed under Sundance Film Festival. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.