Alexis Dos Santos‘ World Dramatic Competition entry Unmade Beds follows a Spanish guy named Axl and a Belgian girl named Vera who meet in London and, according to the catalogue description, “circle each other’s orbits—their fates almost inevitably intertwined.” In case you were having trouble deconstructing the meaning behind the film’s title, the catalogue is also helpful in that regard: “They may be slightly crumpled works in progress—like the unmade beds where they slumber—but Axl, Vera, and their friends are as vital as a crisp new day.” Also vital and crisp are Dos Santos’ answers to the 4 Questions We Ask Everyone, in which he references Nan Goldin, Monty Python and Wong Kar Wai, and contemplates spending his last hours on Earth watching porn.
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Yesterday, I made a list of five films amongst Sundance’s four competition slates that I’m particularly excited to see. Today, here’s a look at another film films that I’m looking forward to, culled from the Spectrum, New Frontier, and Park City at Midnight sidebars. This list was MUCH harder to weed down to five, and as you’ll see, I had to cheat a bit. Here we go…
Momma’s Man (Directed by Azazel Jacobs, Spectrum)
Excerpt From the Official Synopsis: “Humorous and poignant, Momma’s Man wrestles with universal themes, but its strength lies in its deeply personal details. Writer/director Azazel Jacobs cast his own parents and shot the film in their apartment, where he grew up.”
Why I’m Interested: Jacobs “own parents” are Flo Jacobs and experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs; in the film’s press notes, he says he cast his own family because he “couldn’t picture anyone else in their bed, in their kitchen, or in their place (although Peter Falk and Shelly Duval would be in my movie-movie version of it).” If the notion of the guy who made Star Spangled to Death channeling Columbo isn’t enough for you, I don’t know what would be.
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Very, very early tomorrow morning, the Spout team will decamp for Park City, Utah, where we will spend the next week plus covering the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. I hope to see somewhere between 20-30 films before coming back to New York, but here’s a look at five of the titles in competition that I’m most excited about. Tomorrow, I’ll post about the films in the Spectrum, Premieres and Midnight sidebars that I can’t wait to see.
American Teen (directed by Nanette Burstein. Documentary Competition)
Excerpt From the Official Synopsis: “American Teen intimately follows the lives of four teenagers in one small town in Indiana through their senior year of high school. Using cinema vérité footage, interviews, and animation, it presents a candid portrait of being 17 and all that goes with it. We see the insecurities, the cliques, the jealousies, the first loves and heartbreaks, the experimentation with sex and alcohol, the parental pressures, and the struggle to make profound decisions about the future.”
Why I’m Interested: It’s no secret that the media climate of My Super Sweet 16, Gossip Girl and the masterfully manipulative Laguna Beach is in need of a serious real-world corrective. I hope Burstein (who was nominated for an Oscar for On the Ropes, and whose last theatrical release was the cheekily worshipful Robert Evans doc The Kid Stays in the Picture) has managed it.
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