No, once again I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. I’ve just been preoccupied with this persistent and sometimes worsening problem with my head to which I’ve already alluded more than I would like. It’s been a bad week, and tomorrow morning I’m off to the Bay Area for my youngest brother’s Bar Mitzvah. I’m way behind this year with just about everything, and hopefully, by the time I return from five days with the family, I’ll feel better.
Meanwhile, I’ve also been preoccupied for more than just the last week with my second story for indieWIRE. The story just went online this afternoon, and will appear in tomorrow morning’s indieWIRE DAILY email newsletter. It’s a preview of the short films showing at Sundance. Unfortunately (I think), I did not have the chance to see all 73 accepted short films, but indieWIRE offered any directors who wanted their films considered for inclusion in the article the chance to send in a copy. So over the past couple weeks I received and screened 34 of the films playing. The resulting story highlights 12 that I found, for one reason or another, particularly compelling.
Unfortunately, as with any piece of writing (except for my ramblings here), I was limited to a word count. As it is, they let me run a wee bit long, but I had to cut little bits about a few other films that I did enjoy. There were also a few films that I really didn’t like, and one that I was flat-out shocked at its being accepted to Sundance. But whatever … to each his/her own. The cool thing Sundance is again doing is making many of the shorts available online after they’ve premiered at the festival. (They did this for the first time last year). So if you’re not already in or headed to Park City and you’re interested in seeing the titles about which I wrote, you’ll be able to do it for many of them via www.sundance.org. (A more direct link to the specific page to access the shorts — but a longer and more complex address as well — is right here.) As I said, the shorts become available after they premiere at the actual fest, and those dates are listed on that web page.
In the mean time, take a peak at the few which are already available, and feel free to leave comments here or on indieWIRE about whether you agree or disagree with my selections. Please note, though (again) that just because I didn’t include a title, that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it or think it was a good film. I saw a couple animated films that technically and visually were very interesting and creative, but overall they just didn’t grab and hold me. A Supermarket Love Song was a narrative short which I even wrote a paragraph about, but ultimately I had to cut it for length. The same is true for No Umbrella — Election Day in the City, a political doc that looks at the disorganization and occasional chaos in Cleveland, Ohio at one particular polling location during the 2004 presidential election.
Anyway, these shorts are the closest I’m getting to Utah this year (even if it may seem a bit early to say such a thing in January, I’ll stick to it). And I hope to be back very soon to the regular and interesting (HA!) posting I’ve been promising for weeks.
Out of Focus 