SUNDANCE TWENTYTEN -- The Adventure Continues

After a long break from blogging, I'm back to record my experiences at what will be my seventh trip to the Sundance Film Festival. Two weeks from now, myself and two movie-loving friends will trade our rain boots for snow boots and rendezvous with my sister in Park City, Utah. In the meantime, we have been preparing by registering to buy tickets, studying the Film Guide, and mapping out a game plan that lets us see at least 12 movies in four days.

We asked 10 friends and family members to enter the lottery to help us score an early ticket buying time slot. This strategy paid off, resulting in one pass (good for 12 tickets), one box office buying time (hopefully resulting in 20 more tickets), and three first day time slots for on-line buying (potentially good for 20 tickets each.) We won't need that many tickets (we're only there for three days after all), but it's good to know that we will mostly certainly arrive in Utah with tickets in hand.

Our strategy in buying tickets is complicated, but works. It goes like this:

1) Identify those films that are playing while we are there (the actual Festival is 10 days long -- we go for the first weekend.)

2) Of the films that are playing while we are there, identify the films we want to see. Sundance provides an on-line catalog once the films are announced. Over the years, we have learned a great deal about how to interpret the film guide descriptions in order to avoid the stinkers. Here's a good example from this year's guide regarding a film called Armless: "For years, John ... has secretly wanted to have his arms chopped off." Yikes, big red flag!

3) Identify any time and distance constraints. Movies play from 8:30am until midnight at eight theaters around town. The town is completely clogged with people and vehicles, so you really need to understand where a movie is showing, when it ends and how long it takes to get to the next place before you buy.

4) Map out your first through third choices for movies for every time slot and every day.

5) Stick with that plan until movies start selling out -- then throw the whole plan out the window and buy whatever you can.

Today we were able to select the 12 tickets that make up our pass. Already, one of the films we wanted was sold out and one had only two tickets remaining. Other than that, we were able to grab four tickets each to the following movies:

Women without Men - Adapted from an Iranian novel, this film tells the story of the 1953 removal of Iran's democratically elected government through the individual stories of five women. I'm hoping for a visually arresting film that alters my perceptions of Iran.

I Am Love - An Italian film (in Italian and Russian with subtitles) starring Tilda Swinton, hmmm, what's that about? That's enough to get me interested right there, but it is also described as "a feast for the senses." We'll see ...

8: The Mormon Proposition - A documentary about the Mormon church's involvement in the passage of Proposition 8 in California. I know it will make me mad, but sometimes it's good to be a little angry.

My sister, Jenn, will be hitting the Park City Box Office this Saturday to try to score 20 more tickets and we will do our best to fill in any holes through on-line ticket sales on Tuesday. For us, it's all about the movies!