Sundance/X-Dance/Let’s Dance?

In case you didn’t know I’ve been in Utah for the past week and will be here for the next few weeks. Yay! We just wrapped up Boobcon, wherein a bunch of my girl snowboarder friends came to SLC to get their shred on. It was mucho fun. Need to recap that too.

Right now it’s Sundance Film Festival time. I’ve already been to 3 and got at least 3 more. I also went to one X-Dance film festival screening. X-dance is an action sports film festival.

So the first film we saw was at X-Dance and called Against the Grain. It’s a documentary about the life of pro snowboarder Tara Dakides. You can read more in my blog post over at Powder Room.

Monday night we went to see Die Welle (The Wave). It’s about a German high school class learning about autocracy. Coincidentally we had a german girl with us who had just graduated from high school last year.  The teacher start teaching his class about autocracy by requiring them to stand when they speak, wear uniforms, and follow several precepts. Eventually it turns into a fascist movement that harasses student who aren’t part of the Wave. This is actually based on a real life event at a high school in Palo Alto in the 50’s.  I was curious about that so I found an essay the teacher who led the class wrote about his experience. I really liked this film. Eva said the subtitles weren’t that great and she didn’t think Americans would get all the humor. We went up and talked to the director afterwards. He had said they just finished editing the movie a few days before.

Last night I saw two movies and a short.  The feature films were part of  Sundance Espanol. The first movie was called Sugar, and was about a Dominican player trying to make it in pro baseball. He eventually gets to A ball and gets some culture shock when he ends up in Iowa. Eventually the pressures get to him and he ends up running off to New York. This was a really interesting film because it was half in Spanish and half English. The writer/director team said they had written the film in English then translated to Spanish. Most of the Dominican actors were recruited on a trip to the DR where they went to ball fields and taped castings. The guy who played sugar was very good for being a non actor.

After that we ran across the street for some Mexican (how aprospos!) I was starving.

The next was an Irish short film called The Sounds of People. I liked it.

Then we saw Mancora. Wow! This is a film set in Peru. It’s about a guy who’s somewhat famous father commits suicide. His step sister comes to visit him and the go to the resort town of Mancora with her husband. On the way they pick up a Brazilian hitchhiker named Batu. One of the striking thing about this movie is that everyone is gorgeous. Not always in a conventional sort of way, but seriously eye candy.  The story line was interesting too.

Ok, so one of the things about Sundance is that they have writers, directors, producers, cast, etc show up to do Q&A  after the film. This is generally pretty cool as last night the stars of Mancora and Sugar were there. However people ask some dumb questions. For example at the very end of Mancora someone off screen says Xime’s name. Obviously the director wanted this left to the audience’s imagination otherwise he would have shown the person. But some idiot had to ask who it was. Duh.

More films tonight - the Jack Black movie Be Kind Rewind and Assassination of a High School President. My popcorn eating muscles are getting a workout.

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