Sundance Wednesday, January 25

I only managed to see one movie today.

The End of Love - Mark Webber writes, directs, and start as himself. His wife has died and he is left alone to raise his infant son. The first 20 minutes or so involve him and his son waking up and eating breakfast. That's about it. I almost fell asleep.

Eventually he goes to an audition. He takes his son in the room with him, which means he has to keep breaking character to talk to his son. Then he goes to the cemetary to see his wife's grave. He goes home again.

I don't know if the movie was improvised, but if there was a script, it was 2 pages long. Nothing much happens, and the only reason for this movie to be made was so Mark Webber could have a home movie of the two of them. There is a bit of a plot regarding a woman he likes, but it goes nowhere. I walked out after about 45 minutes.

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I spent a bit of time walking around Main Street today. I checked out the sponsors and giveaways and stuff. I also visited New Frontier. They always have come cool, intersting things there. There was a cool 3-D video collage of a bunch of scenes from Hollywood movies. It was called Evolution. I spent a while trying to identify all the different movies the images were taken from.

There was also something cool called Hunger in Los Angeles where you put on a virtual reality helmet and you can see and interact with people in line at a food bank in LA. I saw people try it but I was not able to try it myself. There was only one helmet and you can wait a very long time before you get a turn.

That evening I went to the Music Showcase: BMI Snowball produced by BMI. I saw several great musical performances including Donovan and Rodriguez. As much as I love bands, there is something special about one guy and an acoustic guitar. All the performances were just vocals and acoustic guitars. Very cool.

The last thing I did was go to the after hours lounge at The Yard. I met the 3 women who were there for Young & Wild. They are Marialy Rivas (writer, director), Alicia Rodriguez (actress) and the real girl who wrote the blog youngandwild (I forgot her name). Marialy told me about how at one screening, the audience didn't react at all. She thought they were not liking the movie. After during the Q&A, she asked them about it. They said it was just because they were so into it. She realized that as long as people aren't walking out or booing, it's a good sign.

I also met the team from Can, which is the first movie from Turkey to get into Sundance. I met Burak Akidil (producer) and Tamer Ciray (composer). They were very nice, and I promised to see their movie before the festival was over.