| Print |

Written by Pete Timmermann Saturday, 28 January 2006 18:00

I’m pretty sure that Danny McBride should be cast in every new movie from now on.

 

I have to catch my shuttle to the airport at 1:45 today, and I thought the library opened at 10 a.m. (as it does every other day), so I had planned on coming here, writing this last entry at a leisurely pace, and then hopping on the shuttle. Instead, the library opens at 1 p.m., so I was bored for about three hours, and now have to rush to write this, check my flight information, and run back and get the shuttle. Oh well.

I mentioned yesterday that I was going to try to see the Beastie Boys concert doc, Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That!, but didn’t expect to get in, because the auditorium that it was showing in was very small and it was a public screening and I didn’t have a ticket. Well, I got in the wait list line about 135 minutes before the film’s scheduled start time, and was number 23 in line. The theatre has a capacity of 156 people. Still, I got in.

The idea behind Awesome is that the Beasties gave 50 fans DV cameras at their October 2004 Madison Square Garden show, and more or less told them that they could do whatever they wanted, so long as they kept shooting the whole time. The resulting film is the concert as edited together from this footage. While I think this idea is really cool, and the execution was pretty good, I’m not really a fan of the Beastie Boys (although I can tolerate them), so I didn’t really enjoy it that much. I bet people who really like the Beastie Boys will love it, though, and, while if this happened it would be a blatant rip off, I would also like to see this filmmaking technique applied to a concert from a band that I like.

At midnight last night I saw The Foot Fist Way, a very funny indie comedy starring Danny McBride, who is best known for playing Bust-Ass in All the Real Girls. McBride plays the purveyor of a Tae Kwon Do class for kids, and the film follows him through the exploits of finding out his wife is cheating on him, meeting his Chuck Norris–type hero, creating demo tapes, etc. Although it doesn’t really sound particularly inspired on paper, it’s actually extremely funny in execution. I’m pretty sure that McBride should be cast in every new movie from now on.

Also, in between those two films I saw yesterday, they announced the award winners, which are over at www.sundance.org. Although I saw 40 movies this year (plus five or so more that I had already seen coming into the festival), I had only seen two films that won an award—A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints and Stephanie Daley. The same thing happened last year, which is frustrating. Also, Steel City came away empty handed, and despite my not thinking it was overly fantastic, I was still rooting for the Webster kids to make good. Still, it got a great review in both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, so awards or no, it has a good shot at getting a distribution deal.

And so wraps up Sundance 2006. I’m kind of disappointed that I didn’t break my record of seeing 44 films in 11 days last year, but whatever. It’s hard to fault yourself too much when you spend nine straight days seeing 7 to 10 hours’ worth of movies and standing in line for four to six hours a day. Despite the fact that this will be my last Sundance 2006 diary entry, be sure to keep your eye out for the February “Celluloid Atrocities,” wherein I will write about my favorite and least favorite films of the festival—hopefully in a much more coherent manner than I have done here.