Last Sundance links

Just two more bits of Sundancana, and then I'll (hopefully) go back to regular blogging. First: on Netscape, a look at three overlooked Sundance gems, including On The Road With Judas, pictured above. Then, Ryan asked me to do a festival recap for Cinematical, and I spat back a list of five films that are likely to survive the transition from Park City to the real world.

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Sundance Stories on Netscape

With just a couple of days left in the Fest, and my work all but done (I may have one more film-specific feature, then I'll do a fest wrap-up after the Awards on Saturday night), here's a look at the stuff I've cranked out thus far. I'll update this post with links to any further stories.

• Above: An interview with Daniel Kerslake and Bishop Gene Robinson, director and star of the documentary For The Bible Tells Me So.
• My feature on Ghosts of Abu Ghraib is (predictably) drawing a good deal of hate mail from the Netscape faithful. I always say I'd rather get a death threat than no reaction at all; today, I'm starting to think that's a really fucking stupid thing to always say.
• A report from a press event held in concert with the premiere of Charles Ferguson's devastating Iraq documentary No End In Sight.
• Zoo director Robinson Devor explains his attraction to the deceased zoophile at the center of his film: "This was a guy who was a conservative man at one point, and those ideas started breaking down for him. I think that 9/11 triggered a lot of it. But he was [also] in the center of one of the most secretive military complexes. Meanwhile, he listened to a lot of left-wing radio, he questioned everything our government was involved in, and he was ethically conflicted about his job and the money he was making. That's the core fascination for me."
• Blah blah blah Grace is Gone, blah blah blah Harvey Weinstein...
• Lynn Hershman-Leeson's Strange Culture was my early favorite film of the festival; it's fallen to the bottom of my Top Five, but it's still a fascinating story and essential viewing for anyone worried about the Bush administration's offenses against the First Amendment.

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Grace is Gone on Netscape

My second Sundance feature is now live on Netscape. I tried to focus on the sale rather than give away too much of what I really think: though I admired Strouse's refusal to force the middle-American conservative to show growth by abandoning his support of the war, I suspect Grace is Gone is actually the same shitty indie roadtrip film we've seen a thousand times before. Good work from Cusack, though.

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Strange Culture on Netscape

My first story from Sundance 2007 is now live on Netscape :
The Work of Art in the Age of Post-9/11 Paranoia: Lynn Hershman Leeson's Strange Culture

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Vlogging Sundance

Subscribe to Sundance Channel on YouTube

Jesus Christ, these two have come a long way in two years. Their intro to their daily Sundance vlog plays like a recap of the past 750 days or so, so watch it if you need to catch up.

I'm going to be doing some vloggy stuff from Sundance, too, for Netscape, as well as 7-8 features on highly-politically-charged films at the Fest. In addition, I've got a couple of freelance assignments in the works, and right now it also looks like I'll be doing a festival rumor/gossip post once a day on Cinematical. I've been kind of trying to distance myself from my little Frankenstien for the past few months -- the fact that publicists still send me pitches for a site I haven't run for almost a year makes me feel just fabulous about my identity -- but Ryan Stewart, the incoming EIC over there, asked me to lend a hand, and I couldn't say no. Well, I probably could have, but I like screening-line gossip as much as the next girl, so I didn't.

I leave tomorrow. Shit - I better finish packing.

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Golden Globe Recap on Netscape

"The Globes are selected by members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a loosely-defined, corruption-ridden organization that seems to grant membership to any interested party boasting a non-U.S. passport and an affiliation with the entertainment media. Think of it this way: these are the greatest achievements in film and television as decided by the people who produce the Argentinean version of Entertainment Tonight."

Read more here. See also Heather Havrilesky's fab analysis at Salon, and a cell-phone-pic adorned recap at Defamer (yes, I stole the above Arnold shot from them. Gawker has no legal standing to complain about that sort of thing).

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Music Morning Links, 1-04-07

• We're going to see The Fiery Furnaces at North Six tomorrow night, in what is supposedly one of the last shows there before Bowery Presents takes the place over. Above, the Gondry-esque video for "Tropical Iceland" (I actually like the album version of this song better, but this is better than nothing).
• That Little Round-Headed Boy has been powering through a Bowiethon, ostensibly in honor of his upcoming 60th birthday. Today, TLRHB explains what's really going on: "[Y]our Little Round-Headed Boy asks himself: TLRHB, why are you devoting so much real estate to a recording artist you don't really like that much? While I admire Bowie's decades-long ability to remain fashionably hip, he's not my favorite singer or actor, by a long shot. I don't currently own a single album of his...No, my whole Bowie obsession really comes down to one song: 'Changes'."
• Pitchfork points to a stream of the first single off Modest Mouse's first album with Johnny Marr on guitar. It works a lot better than I thought it would; I have not yet forgiven Modest Mouse for the egregious use of saxophone on their last album, and they're still overusing the horns budget in a pretty serious way, but I'd dance to this after a couple of drinks. I still liked this band better when they were speed-addled teenagers, though.

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reporting on out-of-body experiences in a parallel universe

I'm interrupting my self-imposed vacation from blogging for an essential blockquote: with the Top Ten list the latest battleground in the epic mass plea for attention pissing contest that is film bloggery, J. Hoberman prefaces his '06 list with a predictably spot-on reclamation of the practice:

A curious form of journalism, film reviewing is highly topical yet essentially timeless. It consists of reporting week after week on out-of-body experiences in a parallel universe—subject to its own laws but intermittently visited by millions of others and filled with references to so-called real life. For this reason, a reviewer's annual 10 Best list is not just a barometer of taste. It's an exercise in autobiography (however veiled) and a contribution (however modest) to the history of the present.

Film criticism as an exercise in public autobiography? It sounds accurate, if not necessarily palatable.

Full disclosure: S.T. Van Airsdale and I are friendly colleagues; Hoberman is a former professor of mine; my own crimes in the name of attention-seeking have been well documented (mostly by me).

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