Spread

Ashton Kutcher and crew answer questions from the audience  

EGYPTIAN THEATRE, PARK CITY  

I'm now awaiting the dimming lights of my fifth screening of the day.  It's amazing how doing little other than seeing movies all day can completely wear you down.  Today I had five films.  Tomorrow I have six.  That's going to be interesting, since two of them are back to back in completely different locations. We'll see how my sprinting skills shape up against the thin air of 6,000 feet someone like myself who lives at sea-level is unaccustomed to.  Part of the Sundance experience.  

Before landing myself here at the Egyptian I caught the world premier screening of "Spread," a new comedy from director David Mackenzie starring Ashton Kutcher and Anne Heche.  Seemingly inspired by the tradition of classic films like "American Gigolo" and "Shampoo", "Spread" follows the trails and tribulations of a sexual grifter working to sleep his way to wealth and success.  It's not a film that breaks any new ground, but still manages to provide for a really enjoyable, eh hem, experience regardless.  Rising to the top only means that you've got further to fall.  Ultimately it's a comic love story that was surprisingly decent.  I'll admit that I went into it with incredibly low expectations, but the experience was really quite enjoyable.  There's heart, but don't expect anything terribly deep or insightful.  Kutcher feels all too at home in this sexually charged role, but pulls it off in a believable way.  And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it's likely the film's going to get cut a bit more before any kind of theatrical release in order to land an R rating.

Now I await the screening of "Dead Snow."  Undead Nazis are patrolling the theater and posing for pictures as we speak.

Tyson

Mike Tyson and James Toback run a Q&A session following the film

EMPIRE AVENUE, PARK CITY

Would you knowingly choose to lock yourself in a room with Mike Tyson for 30 hours in the name of cinema?

I'm back in the warmth for a few brief moments before heading off to my next screening. Just moments ago I left a screening of "Tyson," a brutally frank, no-holds barred documentary about the life of former world heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson. Winning standing ovations from the audience tonight as well as those at the Cannes film festival last May, this film definitely opens your eyes to the soul of a unique and frightening individual. From director James Toback, "Tyson" tracks the boxer's career from his days as a teenage thief and drug dealer in Brooklyn, to undisputed world boxing champion, to his dramatic fall from grace and incarceration for rape. The film mixes archive footage with raw interviews Tyson himself. Through the course of the film, Tyson himself reveals how he lost more than $300m in the last few decades and once sought to conquer and possess the women in his life.

This film does a phenomenal job humanizing Tyson. While not the first film to do so, it's certainly the first to really gain wide exposure and acceptance. Told entirely through Tyson's own words, this film cuts deep into his persona, exposing a raw, no-holds-barred look at his own success and failure. More than once, Tyson even breaks down and cries on camera. This, my friends, is a unique window into an amazing character.

Following the film, Tyson and Tobeck took questions from the audience. Not surprisingly, most questions centered on Tyson's own journey and not so much on the film itself. Tyson said he was actually quite "intimidated" by getting up in front of the audience tonight since he was so far out of his element. He stated that more than anything he was "working on being humble" and trying to be a better person who was finally at peace with the world. He had spent so much of his life being "afraid of failure" that he wasn't even aware of who he'd become. "I was just a moral mess," Tyson said, going on to talk about how it was "very hard to watch" the film because it meant that he had "become very vulnerable." Speaking on the subject of his heyday as Heavyweight Champion, he said that he "became scared of that guy [on the screen]." "[At the time] I never understood why people looked at me and made those judgements against [my character]." It must be amazing to look at himself now in such a different light.

Even for those who aren't into boxing (I'm not at all), this is still a pretty amazing film as a window into a larger-than-life character. It will no doubt find a large audience.

Glad I caught this film. Trying to get there from "Over the Hills and Far Away," I quite literally had to throw myself on the hood of a taxi to make it in time. Shuttle busses were backed up or so full people were being crushed by the doors. I entered the theater with less than one minute left to spare.

Over the Hills

LIBRARY CENTER, PARK CITY

Just got out of the world premier of "Over the Hills and Far Away." This documentary follows a family's journey as they travel halfway across the world in search of a miracle to heal their autistic son. The father is a British
journalist and human-rights activist. The mother a psychology professor from suburban California. A perfect life begins to unravel when their son is diagnosed with autism at age three. They try conventional therapies, diets, and medication, all without luck. The father feels that traditional healing is the only route remaining and, seeing a special bond that his son has developed with horses, seeks to find a place where shamanic healing and horseback riding can be combined. That place, it turns out, is Mongolia. And so, they set off on a month-long journey to Ulaanbaatar and travel on horseback searching for reindeer herders and the most powerful shaman in the country.

Directed by Michel Orion Scott, it's an amazingly spiritual film that finds you questioning your own relationships and personal journey. And I know you're asking this: does the journey "cure" Rowan's autism? In many ways, yes. Miracles occur and Rowan finds a new footing. But, as his father is quick to point out in the film, the autism itself is still very much there. That hasn't changed. What did change is the physical and psychological manefestations of the autism that were keeping Rowan from leading a "normal" life. Gone are the tantrums. Gone is the propensity for Rowan to completely pull into himself and escape from physical and emotional human contact. Was he healed by the shaman or merely the Mongolian journey itself? Difficult to say.

I'm not certain if this film has been picked up or not, but it's straight up the alley of HBO. I sincerely hope that this film finds a larger audience because it's honestly one of the best documentaries I've seen.

During a quite emotional Q&A following the screening, the film's director along with both of Rowan's parents spoke further on their amazing journey and how their views toward autism have changed over the course of their time with Rowan. Pretty amazing stuff.

Learn more at http://www.horseboymovie.com

"Over the Hills and Far Away" was preceeded by a screening of the short film "The Kinda Sutra," directed by Oscar-winner Jessica Yu. It's a comic mixture of animation and live-action interviews that digest the crazy stories we're fed as children about where babies come from. Very well done.

Brooklyn's Finest

Director Antoine Fuqua and writer Michael Martin discuss Brooklyn's Finest

EMPIRE AVENUE, PARK CITY

Grabbing a quick lunch following the world premier screening of Antoine Fuqua's newest film, "Brooklyn's Finest." The film is a return to a familiar genre for Fuqua and could, in many ways, be pitched as the New York version of "Training Day." Here once again we find ourselves in a gritty, raw world of cops and crooks with lines constantly blurred between the two. Ultimately it's a story of corruption and attempted redemption for three unconnected Brooklyn cops who find it necessary to take the law into their own hands. As writer Michael Martin put it during the Q&A, it's essentially "one story told three times." Sure, on paper the basic premise seems a bit cliché, but Fuqua as you'd expect finds plenty of ways to bring the concept to a brutal reality. The end point is that there are plenty of cases where there's no such things as right or wrong - as Martin put it, "nothing is ever black or white, but shades of grey." He continued saying that the script was all about "complexity and levels" as a way to "see behind the [murder] headlines" to get a glimpse of the decisions and situations that lead up to something going horribly wrong. Without Denzel Washington, the film doesn't carry quite the emotional punch of Training Day, but the cast, including Ethan Hawke, Don Cheadle, Wesley Snipes and Richard Gere (playing against type), all pull strong performances.

This is classic Fuqua, so if you like his style of brutal realism in service overall story, then this film is for you. Those not comfortable with people getting gunned down at close range, then "Brooklyn's Finest" is not a film you're likely to get very far through.