Every so often festivals feature films that so offend the sensibilities of audience members that post-screening Q&As take an ugly turn, with upset viewers voicing their beefs, and loudly, straight to the filmmakers in attendance. This year that provocation came in the form of Craig Zobel's Compliance, a drama based on an outrageous real-life crime that drew immediate backlash from some in attendance. Is being this year's The Killer Inside Me/The Woman a buzz-building coup for the film?
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I ran into Salt Lake Tribune critic Sean Means tonight at Sundance in a packed RV decked out with a mini tiki bar, neon lights, and a booming sound system -- also known as the RVIP Lounge and Karaoke Cabaret, a tricked-out mobile karaoke mecca and the jammingest place you’ll find in Park City all week. Since the word’s out (read his account of the karaoke madness), here are my two cents: You can have your Drizzy Drake concerts and Bing Bar bashes, but for my money there’s no better way to thaw out from the snow and mingle with Sundance strangers than while belting a karaoke jam or two.
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Expect Twitter to explode shortly with reactions to the Sundance premiere of Gareth Evans' The Raid, the Indonesian actioner that blew minds at Toronto but has been kept largely under wraps until now by Sony Classics, who smartly snatched up the pic and will distribute it this March. I caught The Raid last week at a pre-Sundance screening with its new score by composer Joe Trapanese and Mike Shinoda -- yes, of Linkin Park -- and can attest that the early praise was well-earned because holy crap, it's amazing. Everything you've heard about it? True.
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“That was excruciating,” exhaled director Kieran Darcy-Smith as the lights came up on the Sundance opening night premiere of his first feature, the Australian dramatic thriller Wish You Were Here. The theater buzzed with appreciation, sure enough, and the film’s emotional blows strike as sharply thanks to strong performances by Joel Edgerton and Felicity Price. But movies like these almost always prompt that irksome question: Are we all at risk of suffering a case of the film festival goggles?
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Park City was eerily peaceful early this morning with nobody around and last night’s dusting of snow on the ground. Soon enough – by this afternoon, or this evening, or certainly tonight – that will all change as filmmakers, press and industry folks roll in and the dreaded promoters (“leveragers,” Sundance founder Robert Redford called them in his inaugural address today) pimp out this snowy mountain town like a toddler in a tiara. Appropriately, Redford pointed to the current hardships for filmmakers, and the world at large. “Times are hard and grim,” he acknowledged, later offering optimism. “Independent film is healthy. That doesn’t mean it’s easy.”
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