Sundance, Day 1: .500 (Updated)

Sorry for the errant blogging. As I suspected it would be, Sundance is a tough fest to do through-the-day blogging from. It's not as if you can take your laptop downstairs to the Starbucks at the Indigo bookshop between screenings, as you can at the Toronto fest, or up to the nice Orange facility in the Palais at Cannes, so as to unspool your immediate thoughts about what you've just seen. You've got some time in the press room in the early morning, and then it's a screening followed by a bus ride followed by a screening followed by going back out to the tent to get in line to the next screening followed by the screening itself followed by the walk back to the tent and punctuated, today at least, at one point, by a visit to Quisnos QuiZnos, where I was able to pick up the T-Mobile hotspot signal from the Starbucks next door and dash off one post replete with poorly implemented links (see below) Ooops!

I know, like you care about my problems. Saw four films today, one awful, two terrific, one more ultimately a disappointment. Short takes:

Good Dick: Looking at first like yet another tale of the quirky losers of L.A.'s underclass/underbelly—she's a depressive gal who obsessively rents cheesy porno from the video store! he's the living-out-of-his-car video clerk who falls for her and kinda stalks her!—the debut feature from writer-producer-director-costar Marianna Palka evolves into something even, well, less interesting. Sincere, well-meaning, and simultaneously too-much and not-enough about its characters' disturbing dysfunctions, the picture boasts (is that the right word?) one of the worst images I've yet seen in a feature screening at a major festival; one actually sees genuine video noise in many of the shots of this HD-Cam lensed feature.

Time Crimes: An engrossing, densely-plotted, four-character time-travel thriller that's less reminiscent of Primer than it is of Memento. Ingenious, tight, and, in the end, pretty disturbing. Writer-director-costar Nacho Vigalondo is one crafty talent.

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired: A spectacular documentary by Marina Zenovich about the sex-crime case against Roman Polanski that resulted in his fleeing the United States over three decades ago. It examines, in fascinating, appalling detail just how Polanski was pretty much railroaded by a justice system—or, more specifically, one player in the justice system—in thrall to a rapacious media circus. Does it let Polanski off the hook? No. But it does make one question why so many who don't have much knowledge of the case still feel qualified to pass judgement on Polanski. ("What would you sentence him to?" a rather obtuse person asked Zenovich herself at the Q&A.) I'll have more to say about this remarkable and unexpectedly moving film soon.

Blind Date: At times a compelling pas de deux for the great actors Stanley Tucci (who also directed) and Patricia Clarkson, this adaptation of a film by the late director Theo van Gogh (the Dutch provocateur was murdered by an Islamic extremist in 2004) ultimately deflates under the weight of its premise. Tucci and Clarkson play estranged marrieds who try to reconnect via a series of dates arranged through personal ads, wherein they act as if they're strangers. Their interactions unpeel the details of the tragedy in their past, and leads to a stark conclusion, but by that time the piece's conceit has been overplayed. Alas.

Most discomfiting line at a screening Q&A: "I'm Tom Arnold and I had sex with my daughter." Most beguiling moment at a Q&A: Hearing a liliting, lightly accented female voice familiar from so many films asking a question of Stanley Tucci. Turning around and seeing the asker: Lovely Isabella Rossellini.

Or was it Peter Dinklage?

UPDATE: Commenter Griff, below, requests "context" for Tom Arnold's Q&A quip. Were I a smaller, crueler man, I'd say, "context, schmontext," but I live to serve my readers and, of course, to be fair to Tom Arnold. But I warn you: it involves a spoiler. Marianna Palka's sexually mis-wired character in Good Dick rather constantly protests that she's not that way for the usual reasons—"Nothing happened to me!" she screeches at her romantic pursuer—so much so that you almost believe her. But, as it happens, something did happen to her, and Tom Arnold, as her father did it. Arnold takes so long to show up in the film that I started getting tense—would that post I did questioning his presence in two Sundance films turn out to be wrong?—but show up he does, in a predictably unpleasant turn. His Q&A quip was during the part where Palka asked the cast and crew members on stage to introduce themselves, and he was last. Everyone knew it was MEANT to be funny, but boy did it come out icky.

Comments

[lazarus]

Maybe it was Linda Hunt.

[Griff]

Most discomfiting line at a screening Q&A: "I'm Tom Arnold and I had sex with my daughter."

Context?

[don lewis]

Please, GK...go see FROZEN RIVER if you can. It's the kind of teeny weeny indie film that is just awesome and pwerful. I fear it's going to get lost in the shuffle and that sucks. I may see you at the Buck Howard screening if it's a presser...I'll say hi!

[Pete]

It's QuiZnos.

[Glenn Kenny]

Thanks. I'm sure the chain's lawyers are appreciative of your efforts.

[cadavra]

Arnold has a long history of making stupid remarks onstage. I remember one year at the Globes when he was presenting an award with Teri Hatcher and he made some dumbass crack about "thinking" not being one of her best attributes. The audience actually booed him.