The first film I saw was called Frozen. It is coming out in theaters February 5th. It's about 3 college students (actors pictured on right) who scam their way to get cheap ski lift tickets. They convince the chair lift operator to let them up for one more run and that's when they get stuck on the lift. It's a very intense movie and quite gory (I covered my eyes for certain scenes) with these 3 college kids in an impossible and quite honestly, hopeless situation. It was a very well done movie for the kind of movie it is, but I just didn't care for it. The actors were actually on a physical chairlift 50 feet in the air to do all the filming. They said it was brutal because of the cold and they could only get down about every 6 hours since it took so long to get the chairlift down to the ground.
The four of us went out to Quizzno's for lunch and then we waited for what seemed like forever for a bus to take us to our next film, Freedom Riders. It is about the freedom riders who rode buses through the south in order to try and stop segregation. It was very well done and incredibly well researched. The director, Stanley Nelson (pictured left) and his team researched the freedom riders and were able to find a kid that had video taped a bus bombing on his 8 mm camera, which was taken away and the team acquired it again from the government after a long hassle. I liked it, but I felt it went a little long. The audience was very moved. During the Q & A session after the movie, Nelson brought out two freedom riders who were apart of the groups of people standing up for equality. One of them, Jim Zwerg, was a pretty famous rider as he was one who got extremely beaten up and probably most people would recognize when he was younger. It really added to the affect of the film.John, Kathy, Brad, Rikki, Ryan G., Josh, and I all went out to dinner at a mexican restaurant and talked about film, but specifically Freedom Riders and what issue we would 'ride' for. Other topics and questions were brought up as a result of that causing the conversation to be full of quality thoughts. It's conversations like this that make me fully appreciate films and what can be taken away from them. They cause us to ask ourselves questions we probably would not have asked ourselves otherwise. Also in conversations such as this, it makes me appreciate the people who are on this trip and their contributions and thoughts in our team. The team has the ability to stay up and talk for such a long time about family, life, and of course film, but a lot of other things as well.
After dinner, Rikki, Brad, and I went to the church where we were expecting to relax for a little bit until our next film, but we were unable to fulfill that desire. We walked into the church and realized they were played a documentary called Dreams. It's about interpreting dreams with a Biblical foundation. It was fascinating. It felt new agey, but at the same time there were so many situations that were true that it's hard to disregard what they were saying. There was this one guy who had such a vivid dream about all the teeth on the left side of his mouth falling out that he woke up and instantly started looking for them. He called one of the dream interpreters in the film and asked for her opinion. She said she thought he was biting off something more than he could chew without looking at all the details. That afternoon he had a meeting with his lawyer to thoroughly review a contract he was about to sign for a new salon he was going to open. They found a loophole that would have cost him $50,000 dollars. I realize this sounds absolutely nuts, but it's an idea worth giving a second thought to. All three of us agreed it had at least some truth to it, but we're still trying to figure it out. It's such a weird idea that we can't fully wrap our minds around.
We soon ventured off to our last film of the day called, Cane Toads: The Conquest 3D. And yes it was in 3D. It was probably the best 3D movie I've seen in terms of actual 3D, beating Avatar by the way. I was wondering how the heck they were going to fill enough time for a feature length film all about toads. But they did it and I must say, it was really funny. It's about the cane toads in Australia and how they have basically taken over the country. All of us really wanted to keep the glasses, but they made us give them back. In return, they gave us cane toad pins. Oh boy. Director, Mike Lewis is pictured on the right.At this point we are all fairly exhausted and tomorrow will be our most emotionally draining day. 4 of us will see 4 films pretty much back to back. Thankfully we'll be finished by dinner. One of the filmmakers said about her movie, "I hope it haunts you for the rest of your days." I'll reveal what movie it was said about tomorrow. And now time for some much needed sleep. We all were a bit loopy by the end of the night...
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