The Sundance Chronicles: A Recap
Well, it's all over now. Have had some time to reflect on the movies we've seen over the last nine days. We have seen sixteen movies at Sundance plus one wide release. These include one with a nymphomaniac, one where the main character has vagina dentata (which means exactly what you think it means), and one where the twelve-year-old main character gets raped. First thing I did when I got home was take a very long, very cleansing shower.
All in all, I consider it a very successful trip but not one I'll do again in the near future. For one thing, vacationing without Mrs. Hillbilly isn't much fun even though we both agreed this would not exactly be her ideal holiday. Secondly, watching movies all day is tough! Especially since I set precedents early with respect to blogging and reviewing movies. In any case, both Ian and I agreed that the earliest we'd do something like this again would be Toronto in 2008, partially because it's in September when it's warmer and partially because it's in Canada and we're more familiar with the levels of crazy up there.
I think we were very lucky with how the logistics worked out for our trip. Staying in Salt Lake City was perfect because we got to see movies there as well as in Ogden. Staying in Park City would have been pretty stressful, I think, although we would have seen more stars, I'm sure. Doubt we would have found a place as comfortable as the Shilo for the price we paid, though. And for that, many thanks go to Pal Joey for his mastery of Priceline.
Our "movie velocity" rate was good, too. We saw only one movie the first day in the evening which allowed us a chance to scope things out. Without that time, we wouldn't have discovered, for example, that parking is actually very easy to come by in Park City. We paid for parking the first day and never again. We also slowed down on the movies near the end, seeing only one a day for the last two days. This gave me time to catch my breath and wind down before heading back to the real world.
The day of discovery also helped us figure out how to get tickets to movies we didn't have. We were able to cozy up with the people at the SLC box office which helped us a lot during the course of the week. Spent a total of ten minutes at the Park City box office which was about nine minutes too long. We also got to check out a "wait list" line during the day which was long enough to determine that we never wanted to try it ourselves. Not that they should get rid of wait lists. They're a great place to pawn off tickets.
In the end, I don't think I would do anything differently next time, except perhaps book the hotel directly (and I have no doubt we'd get a good rate with the people we met there). The hotel was great, staying in SLC was an unexpected boon, and we saw almost all the movies we set out to see.
On that note, here are the ones I would have liked to have seen but didn't:
- Grace is Gone
- Fido
- The Good Life
- My Kid Could Paint That
- Snow Angels
- Son of Rambow
So until the next festival, much congratulations to Bob and the crew for an entertaining event. And Kate, can you send my clothes on to my place? I'm rather fond of that shirt.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.