One of my favorite music sites, Palebear, offers a nice little review of a recent podcast by East River Pipe.  Turns out that the podcast is Merge Records’ first foray into podcasting.  Each track features a quirky little prelude from East River Pipe frontman (only man?) F.M. Cornog, who seems to be a bit overly fond of gratuitious drug talk…but I guess I won’t argue if it helps him keep writing interesting songs (it also happens to be the overriding theme of the podcast, I guess).  One thing that I didn’t realize: East River Pipe / Cornog doesn’t tour at all…so this does elevate the podcast to something of a novelty in terms of being able to hear the band in a non-album setting.  Here’s the word directly from Merge.  Or you can skip all of the critical hulabaloo and the overview from Merge and go straight to the music.

Tuesday morning, January 24, 2006.  Definition of factotum: "An employee or assistant who serves in a wide range of capacities," or, in other words, someone who holds a lot of jobs.  Based on the book Factotum by Charles Bukowski, the film stars Matt Dillon as Henry Chinaski, an alcoholic writer who follows the Beatnik ethos of life.

The film follows classic black comedy routines in tracing Chinaski’s life through a series of deadend jobs, a pair of relationships (featuring Lili Taylor and former Oscar winner Marisa Tomei), and countless cigarettes and shots of scotch.  As an audience member, I couldn’t help but laugh at the pathetic means at which he lumbers through life, making one obviously bad decision after another.  In one scene he applies for a job at a pickle factory because, he says, pickles, "remind me of my grandmother."  In another scene he fills out an application at a local newspaper office while attempting to fend off a merciless bout of crabs.  The comedic highlight of the film occurs when he and a coworker go on a winning spree at the local horse track, though to get to the track they must cut out of work at a bicycle repair shop five minutes early and drive like Batman through Gotham to arrive at the betting booth on time. 
Factotum certainly followed the "dark" theme at this year’s festival.  Though I’ve laughed out loud a few times upon recalling a few of the scenes, overall I found the movie to trudge on a bit too long.  Matt Dillon delivered a likeable if uninspired performance in the role.  IFC found something to like about the film, however, acquiring North American distribution rights for a bit of a song.  No doubt there are enough English PhDs with Bukowski obsessions out there to go see the film at the local college arthouse and make something of ol’ Henry Chinaski after all.

Monday night, January 23, 2006.  This one wins, in my opinion.  Though it didn’t actually clear any official Jury awards at Sundance, Forgiven, was the best film at the fest in my opinion as well as that of my festival-going gang, Kelly, Molly and Molly.  Writer, director and star Paul Fitzgerald delivered an amazing political thriller about a bible-beating politician and his face-to-face run-in with his past.  The film features a standout performance by Don Henderson Baker as a recently pardoned death row inmate who was originally convicted by Fitzgerald’s character Jake Miles.  This film hits on all levels: story, acting, plot and provocativeness.  The scene that transpires about 2/3 of the way through the film, set in an unfinished home construction site, is one of the tensest and well-delivered 10 minutes of film I’ve seen.  A modern day Greek tragedy, complete with political ambition, family drama, and the utterly intertwined fate of two seemingly disparate individuals, this film may catch some slack for its overt political leanings, but to me it is a timely and needed comment on a society that seems to find value in leaders who are unable to admit faults when they occur. 

Monday evening, January 23, 2006.  Ok, speaking of personal identification…it doesn’t get much closer than this one.  This one hit home.  Literally.  Set in or near my LA neighborhood of Silver Lake, this film is about a husband and wife who live through a bio-terrorist attack on LA that occurs one morning while the wife is driving to work.   And the first 25 minutes of the film, while the attack is unfolding, is one of the tensest 25 minutes of film I’ve watched.  I’m sure that the scenes of downtown LA in flames with poisonous gasses overhead caused me more horror than they would most, since the shots look like they could have been taken from the vantage point over downtown LA that exists about 30 feet from my front door.  These shots helped the film take home some hardware, winning the Excellence in Cinematography award in the dramatic competition category.  The film tried to take a different angle than 28 Days Later or other films about terrorism.  Rather than focus on the literal terror, it nobly attempted to focus on the trivialities of interpersonal relationships and how a terrorist attack does not interrupt the bickering and selfishness that are unfortunately a part of even the most healthy of relationships.  Unfortunately, this angle just didn’t quite work…and instead left me not really identifying with either of the characters.

Monday afternoon, January 23, 2006.  This was the only documentary I saw at the festival.  It tells the story of the two giant buddha statues which existed in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, until the Taliban destroyed them in 2001 (prior to September 11).  This powerful film by an Oscar-nominated Swiss director, Christian Frei, contained stunning footage of pre-9/11 Afghanistan as well as some fascinating interviews at the Al-Jazeera headquarters in Qatar.  The film was preceeded by a 20-ish minute short called Fantome Afrique that was produced at my graduate school alma mater, the University of London’s Goldsmiths College.  I must say that I didn’t really follow the short…though the scenery was fairly beautiful.  I believe it was a comment on American cultural imperialism…though this would suprise me out of Goldsmiths, which is much more critically up-to-date in its views on media transnationalism and cultural hybridity.

Sunday midnight, January 22/23, 2006.  Another Jury award winner, this one won the World Dramatic competition.  It was my second favorite film of the festival.  The less you know about this film, the more you will enjoy it…so I won’t share much.  It starts off with a figurative bang by creating a tension-filled tone…and it ends with a literal one.  The black and white aesthetic and sweeping score help it maintain the Hitchcockian feel, but it is the way in which director Gela Babluani manages to portray extremely violent situations by focusing on the mental anxiety that they create rather than their physical portrayal that helps him truly capture the essence of Alfred.

Sunday night, January 22, 2006.  I really want to like this film…but I just can’t muster much enthusiasm about it.  Its backstory is quite inspiring: Director Mark Darnford-May went to South Africa and established a theater collective.  Many of the members of the troop had never seen a play or film prior to joining his ensemble.  Within a few years, the troop had produced this film, Son of Man, which takes the New Testament story of the life of Christ and places it in a contemporary setting in Africa.  The concept could have worked very well.  The film featured beautiful song and dance by the cast and a stunning physical setting…but I felt that the story often stayed too literal to the actual biblical story when there were so many opportunities to make meaningful interpretations.  Toward the latter half of the story, the film seemed non-committal as to whether it wanted to make Jesus a secular/political leader or a spiritual one.  It settled for attempting to make him both, someone who could perform spiritual miracles such as exorcisms as well as inspire citizens to stand up to government oppression.  Granted, the same could be said about Jesus’ role in biblical Jerusalem, but the Jesus in Son of Man did seem to have a political agenda, which made his spiritual associations seem a bit out of place.  The film did end on an academically interesting note, with the crucifiction of Christ actually representing the Resurrection — which Kelly pointed out is actually how the Christian church "resurrects" Christ today in that the cross is the symbol used by the church for Christianity.

Sunday evening, January 22, 2006.  Named after a Cure song, this film about two Korean-American teenagers dealing with the dual tribulations of teenagerness and cultural assimilation promised to keep the mood on a less-than-cheery note.  And it succeeded.  This was one of three films I saw at the festival that won post-festival awards, winning the Special Jury Prize for Independent Vision.  If The Proposition was true to the original mandate of the festival, In Between Days honored the festival’s mid-1990s aura with a very raw and very "indie" aesthetic.  Indeed, it was director So Yong Kim’s first film — and she "discovered" starring actress Jiseon Kim working at a coffee shop in New Jersey.  I saw this one solo, Molly, Kelly and Molly decided to go back to the condo to rest (two of them had gone to an 8am screening of Kinky Boots, which I had skipped), and I’m glad that I went to see it.  It has a Wong Kar Wai sort of feel to it that helps its tone immensely.  And its setting, in a non-descript urban enviromnent — somewhere in the shadows of a big city — helps underscore the shadowed identities that the two protagonists are struggling to shed.

Sunday afternoon, January 22, 2006.  From comedy to d-a-r-k…and I don’t know if they get any darker than this…well, yes, I think most of what I saw did.  With a screenplay penned by dark-minded Aussie and indie music genius Nick Cave in "a couple of weeks" (to quote Cave), The Proposition out-CormacMcCarthied Cormac McCarthy.  This film, starring Guy Pearce, takes Sundance back to its original programming days of westerns and American nationalist films, but places the story in the wilds of the 19th century Australian Outback.  A must see for anyone who loves Westerns, the story succeeds — like many of the films I saw at Sundance — in keeping most of the characters grey — most had some redeeming qualities but also very fatal flaws.  Don’t see this one if you have a queezy stomach or distaste of extreme violence…and it will also make you think twice next time you say a prayer at the Christmas dinner table…

Saturday night, January 21, 2006.  Yes, I was there at the Saturday night premier…the night that the infamous Katie Holmes sex scene went missing.  Molly pointed out the press coverage of the "controversy" to me, and I must say that it is pretty darn laughable.  First of all, I don’t personally recall any "booing" from the crowd when director Jason Reitman mentioned that the scene had somehow not played due to a "projection error".  And I also find it funny that news articles claimed that Tom Cruise had decided to skip the screening to hit the slopes…since the screening was after dark (Park City does have night skiing…but it was below 10 degrees that night and somehow I don’t see skiing as much of a possibility).  For the record — and this will be the end of my celebrity gossip — Katie Holmes also was not even in attendance (contrary to some "news" reports of the event).  In fact, when the audience asked where she was that night during the Q&A, Reitman replied, "somewhere in love…".  Anyway, Molly and I waited outside in the cold for 2 hours to try to get scalped tickets to the screening while Kelly and the other Molly waited in the wait list line.  They were turned down for waitlist tickets…but I did manage to get four scalped tix…three of which magically came to me 10 minutes before showtime (note to future Sundancers: if at Eccles and needing tickets, wait at the shuttle bus dropoff in the BACK of Eccles, not in the front).  Overall impressions of the film: pretty funny and inventive, especially the scenes of the weekly MOD Squad meetings between the PR faces of the Tobacco, Firearms and Alcoholic Beverages industries.  Everyone will get a chance to see this film, as Fox Searchlight bought it before it even screened at Sundance.  As for the Katie Holmes scene…