Five on Focus
David D'Arcy
Five Things I Took Away From the 2008 Sundance Film Festival
David D'Arcy is a critic for Screen International, and writes for a number of other international publications and websites (including GreenCine Daily. For 20 years, D'Arcy was a cultural correspondent for National Public Radio.
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Cheap, Crafty Films
With Baghead, I was reminded that a clever, indie-mocking, deftly crafted film can be made for $20 thousand, and look like it was made for $2 thousand. Eat your heart out, Roger Corman.
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Roman Polanski
Among an audience that has the memory of a nano-second for film history, it was reassuring to see Roman Polanski's life and work exhumed in all its ambiguity in Marina Zenovich's doc Roman Polanski: Wanted And Desired. Any substance to the persistent rumor at the festival that title has been changed to Roman's Holiday?
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Not finding Osama Bin Laden
I was pleased not to spot Osama bin Laden, although the food in Tora Bora can't be any worse or more expensive than it was in Shark City. I just assumed he was on one of the buses stuck in Shark City's traffic on the way to the Racquet Club, or poised to drop a bomb on the limo-locked town to get the maximum kill-ratio during the first few days of the festival. Typical Shark City – develop every inch of land, and make yourselves sitting ducks in gilded SUV-lock for an act of terrorism or any other disaster.
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Bafflement
Good Dick - the ultimate "what were they thinking?" film. This, out of ten thousand submissions? Somebody turn off the porno tape and please explain...
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Even More Bafflement
Mysteries Of Pittsburgh and August and Bottle Shock — the penultimate "what were they thinking?" films. Josh Hartnett as a ballsy entrepreneur, as a ballsy anything? Peter Sarsgaard as a mob wise guy? Nick Nolte as a mob chieftain? Sienna Miller as a classical violinist ? Bring back Cameron Diaz as an orthopedic surgeon. A California wine infomercial on the Sundance program? Weren't these guys supposed to be paying to be around as the corporate sponsors?

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