Another Day of 4 Films

This morning Mark Ruffalo came and discussed his movie Sympathy for Delicious. It was a good discussion. It made me realize that Mark Ruffalo is just like anyone else trying to figure out things in life just like we are. A month before Mark started shooting the film, his brother died tragically and he ended up dedicating the movie to him. The picture of him on the right is not great, but he's the guy on the left. I also learned that Mark Ruffalo had brain cancer.

The first movie I saw was called 3 Backyards and it's the worst movie I've seen at sundance, so I won't spend much time talking about it. I didn't connect with any of the characters, they annoyed me. There also was minimal to zero plot and the movie moved SOOOO slow. Also, the characters made random decisions that didn't fit within the movie. I could have missed the movie though. Maybe if they had taken out the piercing soundtrack, it might have been bearable. It was the place where we started our memorable moments from Sundance, which we have found quite amusing.

The second movie was called Blue Valentine and it's about a married couple who try to fall back in love with each other. There were a lot of unnecessary scenes, but the idea of looking at a marriage and discovering what went wrong is a topic not widely thought about for a movie. There were quite a few good points, especially about communication between spouses, but there were a lot of things you need to overlook in order to get those points. The director is pictured on the left in the front. One of the Sundance programmers is in the back.

The third movie I saw today was called Nuummioq. It's about a guy who is terminally ill and avoids telling his family for a while. It was slow moving, but definitely better than 3 Backyards. It was dark lighting for almost the entire movie which made it extremely difficult to know who was doing what in close up shots. It could have been a lot better, but I don't think I'd classify it as terrible. Ryan G. and I literally ran to the theater to get there in time. We barely made it.

Lucky was my fourth and final movie of the day and it is definitely in my top five Sundance films. It is a documentary about powerball lottery winners after they have received their money. It was really interesting to see how different people handle large amounts of money. The six of us loved it. One quote the captures it is from a friend of William "Bud" Post ($16 million lottery winner), "Winning the lottery is like putting miracle grow on your character defects." That quote is completely true. They made the point that no one teaches you how to suddenly have a lot of money. Different people went about it in different ways. Some didn't do much with it, others completely changed their lives and moved away, some donated a significant portion, and yet others spent almost all of it. The movie made me question what I would do if I were ever in that situation. It's a good question to ask because it says a lot about yourself. We found out that despite economic downturns, lottery ticket sales increase. Perhaps because it's a small hope of something better. As one woman in the film said, "I will not stop until I get it (lottery)." This woman buys lottery tickets twice a day and has been doing this for 30 straight years. It's an interesting addiction. The guy in the black has directed episodes of The Office, including last year's Super Bowl episode in which Angela throws her cat through the ceiling, but it falls through the ceiling. It was one of my favorite Office moments. These two directors will be coming tomorrow (or technically today) to talk to us about their movie. I'm very excited to hear more about it.

Tomorrow is the last day of film watching. I hope it's good. Now for sleep, which Rikki, Ryan G., and I are currently lacking as we stayed up to blog and write papers. We weren't always successful as we were distracted for most of the time. Mostly by YouTube videos. It's a common problem these days. We watched this one, this one, and this one.