(Jeff Michael Vice, aka Jerk-bot, is attending and covering his 18th Sundance Film Festival this year … yikes! He will be blogging and Tweeting throughout the festival’s 10-day run.)
CUSTOMARY FESTIVAL BLOG NO. 1 FEELS THE BUZZ!
As usual, I’ll get my customary bits of festival advice out of the way at the start: Try to get your hands on a “hard copy” of festival catalog, which are available at all of the Sundance venues and ticket offices; try to see as many foreign films and documentaries as possible (most of them don’t get nearly the level of theatrical distribution that the star-laden premieres and other features do); don’t be afraid to get on the waiting list for supposedly sold-out screenings (you can now do so online); and check the official festival Website (www.sundance.org/festival) for updates on screenings and various special events.
Now for the chest-puffery. Having been to so many Sundances, as well as many of the unrelated festivals and mini-festivals that accompany it here, you’d think I would be tired of all the endless hyperbole … all the movie and celebrity hype (well, overhype). You’d be wrong, though. I’ve been doing my homework by studying, with a certain level of amusement, the topics that are currently “trending” on various social media. They include:
FIIILLLMMM!!!
This year’s Sundance selections include “Life Itself,” a documentary about legendary film critic and Sundance regular Roger Ebert. It’s already one of the festival’s hottest tickets. Elsewhere, the festival’s Documentary Competition features “Mr leos caraX,” a profile of the pseudonymous filmmaker, Leos Carax (“Holy Motors”).
Sundance Collection screenings see filmmakers Wes Anderson and Kevin Smith returning to screen previous Sundance hits (“Bottle Rocket” and “Clerks,” respectively). And Sundance’s ubiquitous Richard Linklater (“Slacker,” “Before Sunrise,” “SubUrbia,” “Waking Life,” “Tape,” Before Sunset,” “Fast Food Nation,” “Before Midnight”) will debut his latest, “Boyhood,”
HAPPY AND GAY … WELL, GAY AND SOMETHING!
Always a strong supporter/proponent of gay rights and so-called “Queer Cinema,” the festival is debuting the documentary “The Case Against 8,” an update on California’s Proposition 8 (a law that repealed gay couples’ right to marry).
“Love is Strange,” a comedy-drama in the Premieres category, stars John Lithgow and Alfred Molina as a long-time, same-sex couple that finally ties the knot, only to be met with intolerance and loss of employment. And openly gay “Star Trek” star (and social media butterfly) George Takei is profiled in the documentary “To Be Takei.”
JGL.
Better known as Joseph Gordon-Levitt to the rest of us, the “Dark Knight” co-star and teen and twenty something heart-throb has been a Sundance regular of late, thanks to his role in the 2009 romantic comedy “(500) Days of Summer” and the premiere of his directorial debut, 2012’s indie hit “Don Jon.”
This time, he returns with “hitRECORD on TV,” a New Frontier performance piece that incorporates works from his multimedia project “hitRECord,” which got its launch at the festival in 2010. (For those unfamiliar with the concept, hitRECord is an online collaborative production company that allows artists to work collaboratively on projects and to get paid if their work.)
MUSIC STRIKES THE RIGHT CHORD
Transgendered musician Rae Spoon will perform at Sundance, and is the subject of the documentary “My Prairie Home.” And fans of musicians Nick Cave and Belle and Sebastian front man Stuart Murdoch are hoping for performances from both or either. (Cave is profiled in the documentary “20,000 Days on Earth,” and Murdock wrote the featured musical romance tale “God Help the Girl.”)
SEQUEL-ITIS
“Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead” follows up the 2009 Sundance hit, which turned Nazis into flesh-hungry zombies. The martial-arts/police thriller “The Raid 2” picks up the story directly from where the first “Raid” film (a 2011 Sundance smash) left off. And “The Trip to Italy” re-teams director Michael Winterbottom and stars/screenwriters Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, who were responsible for the witty, 2010 comedy travelogue “The Trip” (well-worth seeking out for the comic duo’s Michael Caine impression “duel”).
Jeff Michael Vice, aka Jerk-bot, can be heard reviewing films, television programs, comics, books, music and other things as part of The Geek Show Podcast (www.thegeekshowpodcast.com), as well as be seen reviewing films as part of Xfinity’s Big Movie Mouth-Off (www.facebook.com/BigMovieMouthOff).