Given To Fly
There are three major flight paths outside my window: Newark, LaGuardia, and JFK. With the frequent buzz of tourist helicopters and Hudson River air traffic, the skies above me are constantly crowded with jet engines, propellers, and blinking red lights.
It's an apt metaphor for New York City, really. Or, for that matter, my brain.
Friday night, though, found Chris and I wandering an empty Nantucket wharf. The water was still. The Steamship Authority's klieg lights illuminated empty docks. Slips were barren. Cottages were vacant. ...
Nantucket, Massachusetts (Winter 2008)
January 27th, 2008
Sundance 2008: Get Yourself Together
I finally had my Sundance Moment.
The long threatened "severe winter event" for which I adjusted my travel plans finally materialized overnight. I woke to the sound of snowplows in reverse, and walked to the window. Everything was brushed white. Six inches of it, and still falling.
I went for what may constitute the shortest, slowest, most labor-intensive jog of my brief career, slogging through thigh-high snow. At its best, it felt like water skiing; at worst, walking.
Back at the condo, I washed down a Cliff Bar with a cup of ...
Sundance 2008: The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh
On Line: I am surrounded by dudes with beards typing into their iPhones and Blackberries. I am one of them. As a huge Michael Chabon fan, my hopes are high. As a huge Michael Chabon fan who hasn’t cracked the novel since its 1989 release, though, I have no idea what I'm in for. I’m hoping for a “Wonder Boys” prequel.
In The Theater: Ten minutes in and I'm crystal clear on the plot. It’s a coming-of-age story about a petty gangster's son stuck in a bizarre love triangle. Witty diner banter, slow-motion sex scenes, and car chases ...
Sundance 2008: What Just Happened?
On Line: I'm surrounded by olds. This fact -- coupled with one-two punch from the dude who whispered under his breath, "I heard it's not that good," and my esteemed colleague Larry Carroll's minimalist review ("It starts like 'The Player' but ends like 'Simone'") -- does not bode well for the film. Sometimes, though, one's schedule picks one's screenings here, not the other way around.
In The Theater: It does not begin well. I'm sandwiched between one guy spooning repulsive smelling soup into his face and another whose parka spills well ...
Sundance 2008: Slammed
I made any important discovery about myself walking into town just now.
I want to be on the guest list, I just don't want to have to ask to be on the guest list.
* * *
I'm standing on the patio of Treasure Mountain Inn, home base of the anti-Sundance, Slamdance.
The steps of the Inn, here high atop Main Street but within eyesight of The Egyptian Theater (where Sundance was born in 1978) are crowded with what passes in Brooklyn for hipster: bookworm glasses, buffalo plaid flannel, tight sweater, military cap. The crisp mountain air ...
Sundance Film Festival 2008
January 20th, 2008
Bono & The Edge: U2 3D
Benjamin Wagner: What do you notice in yourselves and each other in 3D that you didn't before?
The Edge: I was struck by the separateness really yunno we're up there quite individual and quite separate something about the 3D the depth of field you really feel that
Bono: Are you saying you felt lonely up there, The Edge?
The Edge: Nah, I felt lonely for Larry.
Bono: He likes being by himself.
The Edge: I was moved.
Bono: Did you go and bring him a bottle of water?
The Edge: ...
Sundance 2008: Faraway (So Close)
There was nothing between The Edge, Bono and me except Jerry Penacoli.
Incidentally, the Xtra correspondent is not a small man. I'm gonna' wager 6' 4", 225. Nor was he very happy with me at the moment.
The "U23D" red carpet was the single most crowded press line I've seen in the last four years of an ever-escalating Sundance Film Festival. And not surprisingly: The World's Best Band was running it through. This place (heck, this planet) craves celebrity, but this was something else. It was the most-talked about event of the weekend. The ...
Sundance 2008: Bullet The Blue Sky
Park City sprawls out below The Lodge At Mountain Village at the base of Park City Mountain Resort. Looking east from Room 270, the sun is crowns the Wasatch in cool pink. Below, steady streams of red brake lights flow towards the highway.
Following a largely uneventful (though painfully early) flight, and an equally chill commute from Salt Lake to Park City, I have arrived.
I've been at Sundance about five hours, three of which I spent sleeping, the remainder of which I spent eating, drinking, and planning.
See, it's all about the ...
