Since I revamped this blog in August of last year, I worked one festival between then and February: Sundance. And what a ride this season was. I’m so grateful to my wonderful team this year for keeping me grounded and on task.
These are some of the highlights of working Sundance 2020: Our quote board, heavily curated by my Coordinator Kim, in which she quoted us in every which way (it quickly spiraled into memes). Sales days (and food)! Except that one time tech convinced us to get pizza two sales in a row. Middleburgh, Parana (an ‘in-joke’ where our ticketing system would sometimes wipe people’s addresses and write “Middleburgh, Parana”, a city in New York and a State in Brazil as a weird default. The emails we would get would be strangely panicked.) Our ticketing team in general – during fest, our ticketing chat would be off. the. charts.
I know this is posted a bit late but, I still wanted to get these out there. Enjoy!
Films I saw and links to trailers or reviews:
Possessor – dir. Brandon Cronenberg – Not a bad genre film, but not something I’d necessarily see again. Pretty interesting Q&A – considering that a woman asked a pretty rude question and the director just had a sassy answer. Because, you know, his dad just own’s a pet store.
Amulet – dir. Romola Garai. Honestly my least favorite of what I saw this year. From a screenwriting perspective, and perhaps an editing one, there seemed to be a lot left unexplained or assumed that seemed to be a product of potentially being left out because she wrote too many drafts (I did this once or twice in grad school with one of my scripts: you know the story so well, that when you delete bits rewriting, you mentally fill them in and don’t actually write them down). On the flip side, she would play me in a movie.
Tesla – dir. Michael Almereyda. Okay, so this one divided those that saw it. It has a Drunk History feel to it, so if you like that maybe you’ll like this. I enjoyed it and it’s meta qualities. Don’t take it as a serious biopic. Am I sorry I saw it? No. Will you miss anything by missing it? Also no. But I was in the same room with Kyle Maclachlan!
The Glorias – dir. Julie Taymor. Now, this was one of my favorites, tied for second with His House. A biopic on Gloria Steinem, please leave expectations at the door. The section on finding yourself when your travel really spoke to me as a person that travels for work (It made me teary that someone could put it so eloquently into words that I have been trying to explain to some). With Taymor’s unique touch, this left me feeling empowered.
His House – dir. Remi Weekes. Definitely tied for Second and so great at combining a sort of possessed house horror type and breathing a new sort of life. I think this guy will be one to watch. While a woman in the audience compared it to Us (literally didn’t see why she made that comparison) I thought it felt more like Under the Shadow, another Sundance film to check out from 2016.
Sylvie’s Love – dir. Eugene Ashe. If you love Douglas Sirk, I totally recommend this. I enjoyed it, particularly all the music choices. Plus, Tessa Thompson! She is definitely becoming one of my very favorite actresses and people!
Ema – dir. Pablo Larrain. This was also an amazing and very sexy movie. The dance sequences were great. This one is definitely not for the kids. Since it played in the Spotlight section of the fest, I’ve attached the trailer. Plus, I love that when we exited the theatre, my friend Dan said, “well…that was…a very sexy movie.” Which really is an understatement – not one for the kids if you get the drift.
Nine Days – dir. Edson Oda. This was absolutely my favorite of the festival. Like no words could describe the beauty of it. And the ending scene! Plus, one of my close friends worked on it and it was very exciting to see her name in the credits! I know some that hated it, but if you liked things like Marjorie Prime – understated Scifi – then I recommend.
Falling – dir. Viggo Mortensen. Did I watch Lance Hendrickson act his way to an Oscar nomination? Tune in the next awards season! Did I constantly question why a Viggo made his character gay as a tension-building character device? Definitely, considering the number of profanities and racist comments it gave Hendrickson’s character to spew. Did I enjoy the film? Sure. Did it make me late for the film after? Technically no since it was in the same theatre. Did it start 30 mins late because the director was late to intro it? Yes. Do I still have so many more questions? Absolutely.
Ironbark – dir. Dominic Cooke. Cumberbatch! Jessie Buckley and Rachel Brosnahan in a scene together! Cold war drama! A great way to close out the festival for me, even if the first half felt like a comedy and the second a serious drama.
Special Event – Max Ritcher performs “From Sleep” with an ensemble. Except this was an hour and a half excerpt, not the full eight hours. A pretty nice treat for myself that I got out and saw this. Always makes me remember how close Classical Music is to the core of me.
Redheaded Rewrites 