After yesterday's depressing movies, it was good to see a very fun comedy, "Hamlet 2", today. This time I did laugh along with the rest of audience at this tale of a Tucson high school drama teacher (Steve Coogan), who has tried, unsuccessfully, to produce staged versions of popular movies (such as Erin Brockavich). The bane of his existence is the ninth grade newspaper critic who repeatedly rips into his shows. Eventually, the school department cuts budgets and the theater department is on its last legs. In order to save the department, Coogan's character ends up writing a ridiculous, musical sequel to Hamlet, which includes elements of time travel so that characters that died in original can be saved. I won't spoil things by saying what else is included in the performance. It's some very funny stuff. Elizabeth Shue has a great role in playing herself as a Tucson nurse. Catherine Keener costars as Coogan's wife and David Arquette plays their roommate. Arquette doesn't do much in the film, but he gets some good laughs with some simple gestures. 4 ½ stars (out of five).
I then went to see the "Animation Spotlight", a program of animated shorts. One of the shorts, "Madame Tutli-Putli" was just nominated for an Academy Award, but after seeing it, I wouldn't pick it to win – it was just bizarre. This series was hit or miss, with a couple of the shorts, "Lapsus" and "For the Love of God", being quite clever, while others were just strange. Overall rating: 3 stars. FYI, many of the shorts that played in the festival will be available for viewing via iTunes, Netflix, and Xbox Live.
The Prospector Square midnight crew always loves the final Saturday night of the festival. This is the night when the brilliant schedulers at Sundance decide that there should be an 8:30pm screening of the Documentary Award Winner, which is not announced to us until about 8:25pm. Up until that point, everyone in line keeps asking us what film will be playing. They all think that we are lying when we tell that we don't know. We even made signs saying that we would tell them as soon as we know. They do this every year and every year we tell them how silly it is. Then, after the first screening, everyone crowds around the winners lists we have posted around the lobby. Some nice patrons even stole some of the posted lists. Oh well. People are funny. Our final midnight screening was of a flick called "Funny Games." I didn't watch it, but apparently it was quite disturbing as many people left about a third of the way through. A couple people were in tears as they left. I've never seen that sort of reaction from a Sundance crowd before.
Tomorrow, I'm going to try to see a couple of the award winners and then I'll be working my last volunteer shift in the afternoon/evening. The festival has gone by so quickly.
Until the next report…
Your Sundance correspondent,
Ted
PS – I know that I posted pictures within my missives last year, but I'm just going to post my favorite Sundance photos from this year once I get home.
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