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DGSmith
Damon Smith is a New York-based film journalist. He has written features, profiles, and reviews for The Boston Globe, Time Out New York, Filmmaker magazine, Senses of Cinema ...
Wrapping Up, Part 2My last day in Park City was both fun and frustrating. I tried to get into a screening of James Marsh’s Man on Wire, a doc about rebel tightrope walker Philippe Petit, who danced on a wire between the Twin Towers in 1974, but apparently every last journalist, festivalgoer, and ... read morePosted on 01/27/2008 by DGSmith The WinnersJust caught the red eye back from Park City, and now I’m safely ensconced back in New York again, feeling a mix of relief and post-cinematic stress disorder. A few hours before I hopped the midnight plane, the Sundance press office released the names of the top prize winners at ... read morePosted on 01/27/2008 by DGSmith Wrapping Up, Part 1The press office this morning is as silent as a mortuary. Most professional festivalgoers have left already, or are on their way to the airport. If yesterday was any indication, then standing in the wait line for tickets today will be a cinch. My flight doesn’t depart until midnight, so ... read morePosted on 01/26/2008 by DGSmith Day 9: Ways of SeeingThe esteemed Village Voice critic Jim Hoberman first brought my attention to the work of avant-indie pioneer James Benning in his review of Ten Skies and Thirteen Lakes, so I’d been looking for an opportunity this past week to catch a screening of Benning’s new film, Casting a Glance, premiering ... read morePosted on 01/25/2008 by DGSmith Day 8: Pitt StopPoor Michael Pitt. The actor is in town to promote Michael Haneke’s shot-for-shot American remake of his own Funny Games, an intelligent but grotesquely disturbing film about two polite, well-dressed young men (Pitt and Brady Corbet) who invade the vacation home of an upper-middle-class couple (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth) ... read morePosted on 01/25/2008 by DGSmith Day 6 and 7Posting on a regular basis has been a bit tough—ok, impossible—the past few days, owing to our amped-up schedule. On Tuesday alone, we did 11 back-to-back interviews with a who’s who of both established and first-time filmmakers debuting new work at Sundance, as well as members of their respective casts. ... read morePosted on 01/25/2008 by DGSmith Day 4 and 5The joys of Sundance are obvious (movies movies movies). But of course, there are also rigors and hazards to the festival experience (dry red eyes, five-minute meals, lack of adequate rest). Sleep an extra hour in the morning, and you might miss something great. Wait too long before queueing up ... read morePosted on 01/22/2008 by DGSmith Day 3On my flight into Park City on Wednesday night, I had a chance to meet Walid Zaiter, the co-producer and editor of Jackie Reem Salloum’s Slingshot Hip Hop, who filled me in on all the twelfth-hour madness of trying to finish the film before its Sundance debut in the Documentary ... read morePosted on 01/20/2008 by DGSmith Day 2, part IIToday’s only half over, and it’s been a busy one for the FilmCatcher crew. This morning, we did back-to-back interviews with Tanaz Ershaghian, director of Be Like Others, a fascinating documentary about young men in Iran who undergo gender-reassignment surgery—with the full blessing of the Shiite theocracy. We also spoke ... read morePosted on 01/19/2008 by DGSmith Park City, Day 2Festival Headquarters at the Marriott Park City was humming with activity early this morning as I made my way to one of the four screening booths they have specially set up for journalists in the Sundance Press Office. Though the air outside was bone-numbing due to subfreezing temperatures, and the ... read morePosted on 01/18/2008 by DGSmith Let the Sundance BeginGripe if you like about Sundance—and believe me, people do (too much hype! too many celebs! too much talk about the zillion-dollar deals!)—there’s really nothing quite like it. Still the largest venue for Amer-indie films, Sundance has a cachet that separates it from other festivals, even if it is drowning ... read morePosted on 01/18/2008 by DGSmith |
