I slept in this morning for the first time in a while. I went at noon to see The Clone Returns Home, an arty Japanese sci-fi similar in theme and tone to Solaris. I went in with an open mind, which, it turns out, is exactly what you need in this film. It moved verrrrrrry slowly. Sometimes painfully so. Still, I liked it. It was gorgeously shot (the best-looking film I've seen so far), and very philosophical, dealing with what happens to the soul when someone is cloned. I was inspired, and it stayed with me.
Following the screening I went for lunch with two of the other guys that were with me. The Egyptian Theater, where we saw Clone Returns Home, is in the middle of the old town area of Park City, where it's most popular to walk and soak up the small-town charm. That means that every place to eat is completely packed, and features a special Sundance menu with doubled prices. Still, we figured it would be worth it to eat out at least once. We ended up in a booth across from the guys who made Black Dynamite, a blaxploitation satire that I'm seeing tomorrow. The burger was good too.
Directly afterward we hopped on the bus and saw Cold Souls by a first-time director, a French woman, starring Paul Giamatti. It was about a place that can extract and store your soul, and Giamatti, playing himself, loses his soul to the Russian black market. Absolutely hilarious. Not the best film overall, but Giamatti owned the screen. A genius performance.
Giamatti was there after the show for a Q&A, but he looked completely miserable. I wanted to say hi to him, but I saw another fan take a photo with him, and he literally frowned in the photo with the fan. I decided to leave him be.
A few hours later, at 11:30pm, we went in to see Mystery Team, a comedy by the Derrick Comedy Group, who apparently have a huge online following. They demonstrate how thanks to the internet, success can come in so many different ways. Mystery Team is about a group of teenagers who used to be child detectives when they were kids, solving mysteries of fingers in pies and missing diaries, and still haven't grown out of it. They are then faced with solving a murder mystery, and the humor comes from grown-up children in adult situations. Also very, very funny, if sometimes they cross the line.
I'm starting to understand what makes this festival so important and famous. Every theater you go to is packed with people that are all excited to see the movie, and are all in some way passionate about movies. It's an electrifying energy. On top of that, I don't think you'll see a truly terrible film. It's Sundance. It will probably range from amazing to decent, but chances are it won't be awful. And that's good when you're seeing anywhere from three to five movies a day.
