Sundance Diary: Day 10
Day 10 (Saturday, January 26):
As usual, this 10th day of the fest was a cheat, as I didn’t do anything Sundance-related. There are no press screenings on the final Saturday, and there weren’t any public screenings that I felt compelled to wedge myself into. They did announce the awards, though, so here they are:
JURY AWARDS:
U.S. Documentary: “Trouble the Water,” about an aspiring rapper and her husband trying to survive during Hurricane Katrina.
U.S. Documentary Director: Nanette Burstein for “American Teen,” which was my favorite film of the fest.
U.S. Documentary Editing: Joe Bini for “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired,” about the noted rapist and occasional filmmaker.
U.S. Documentary Cinematography: Phillip Hunt and Steven Sebring for “Patti Smith: Dream of Life,” about the rocker. If I cared one iota about Patti Smith, I would have seen the movie.
U.S. Documentary Special Jury Prize: Lisa F. Jackson, director of “Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo,” for her “piercing, intimate look into the struggle of the lives of rape survivors.”
U.S. Dramatic: “Frozen River,” which I never heard anyone mention the entire festival. The press screening was the first day. It got bought by someone, so it will turn up in theaters eventually.
U.S. Dramatic Director: Lance Hammer for “Ballast.”
U.S. Dramatic Screenwriting (the Waldo Salt Award): Alex Rivera and David Riker for “Sleep Dealer.” I smell a rat. Could the fact that the not-very-good screenplay was workshopped in the Sundance Institute’s writing program have anything to do with it?
U.S. Dramatic Cinematography: Lol Crawley for “Ballast.”
U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Prize: “Anywhere, USA,” for having “the spirit of independence.” I heard nothing but bad things about this movie, but apparently it has the spirit of independence, whatever that means.
U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Prize: “Choke,” for the work of its ensemble cast.
World Documentary: “Man on Wire,” about a guy who did a tightrope walk between the Twin Towers back in the ’70s. Heard from several people that it was pretty good.
World Documentary Director: Nino Kirtadze for “Durakovo: Village of Fools,” about a castle near Moscow where initiates for a right-wing movement are trained.
World Documentary Editing: Irena Dol for “The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins,” about an artist’s attempt to adopt some twins.
World Documentary Cinematography: Al Massad for “Recycle.”
World Dramatic: “King of Ping Pong.” No buzz on this one.
World Dramatic Director: Anna Melikyan for “Mermaid.” From Russia. That’s all I know.
World Dramatic Screenwriting: Samuel Benchetrit for “I Always Wanted to Be a Gangster,” an existential comedy from France.
World Dramatic Cinematography: “King of Ping Pong.”
World Dramatic Special Jury Prize: Ernesto Contereras, director of “Blue Eyelids.”
AUDIENCE AWARDS:
U.S. Documentary: “Fields of Fuel,” about America’s addiction to oil.
U.S. Dramatic: “The Wackness.” I predicted this.
World Documentary: “Man on Wire,” a fairly rare instance of the jury and audience awards going to the same film.
World Dramatic: “Captain Abu Raed,” the first feature film to come out of Jordan in about 50 years.
* * * * *
And so another year at the Sundance Film Festival draws to a close. The movies were so-so, with just a few standouts, but the atmosphere was livelier than last year. That’s pretty subjective, of course; it could just be that I happened to have more fun with my Sundance friends than I did last year. The point is, I had a great time, I saw some very good movies, and I’ll be back next year. Let’s just try to do something about all the snowfall, OK?
January 28th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Anywhere, U.S.A.: You suck, your adorable child star notwithstanding. I want my money back. Not to mention the awful afternoon spent driving and waiting around in freezing, snowy, awful weather.
January 28th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Ahem, if you had read the comments on your blog (which you clearly had loads of time to do, of course), you would’ve heard from two people about how wonderful “Frozen River” was. I actually said so twice (on two different diary entries). Not huge buzz, I know, but high acclaim it was.
Man on Wire was terrific too. It really did unfold like a caper movie. Until the last ten minutes or so, which were kind of a let down.
But hey, I think this is the first year I’d actually seen a couple of the movies that won prizes!
January 29th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
out of the 27 movies I have seen this festival there were 3 I hated: The Worst of the Worst is Death In Love, if you thought Downloading Nancy was bad, this was horrid, I meam how many times do we need to see scenes of masturbation, nazi torture including brain dissection, and people you hate so much, even more then yuo could possibly hate the characters in Nancy (I actually appreciated Downloading Nancy as a film with some of the best acting I have seen in years, plus I found it quite powerful). I alos hated Adventures of Power and Love Comes Lately.
I loved The Visitor and Frozen River, my 2 favorites. But I don’t ever listen to the buzz. The buzz is wrong 90% of the time. I have learned how to decipher the Sundance book, and it is amazing how much you can understand by a film from the catalogue once you know which sundance staff member backed it up and thus wrote the write up for it. Some names I just stay away from, others I question. For example Trevor Groth is mostly hit or miss, he tends to like the disturbing, crazy, twisted flicks, Like Donkey Punch which I loved also.
I really had a good movie year at Sundance this year, best ever actually, i picked all amazing films and stayed away from the post festival hype since I purchase my tickets ahead of time. Best overall year, but there was nothing quite like Once or The Waitress this year though, but there were only 3 films I would rate under 3 stars this year, so overall excellent..