Anyone doing anything great this weekend? One of my friends is having a Pre-Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday with a bunch of people so I’m excited about that. It’s potluck so I still have to decided what I want to bring. Other than that I’ll be doing alot of writing. I have been contracted to work on some project in my freelance writing business. I’m very grateful to have work coming my way. Hope you have a good one, and here’s a short list of some film-related posts I have come across the web this week…
The End of Love // When the mother of his two-year-old son suddenly passes away, struggling actor Mark is forced to confront his shortcomings. With his fate and his son’s now intertwined, he grapples with his ability to grow up - stuck between the life he once knew and the one waiting for him. When he has a meaningful encounter with a young mother, Mark is no longer able to live in the comfort of denial. Set against the backdrop of Los Angeles,this is an intimate and honest slice-of-life portrait of a father and son in transition.
I saw this film in my first couple of days at Sundance 2012. I really liked the half-home movie, half-film accounting a very sweet story (writer/director Mark Webber uses his own son and mirrors some of his own experiences as a struggling actor while using other actors (Jason Ritter, Michael Cera, Amanda Seyfried) to play “themselves” and shows us a side of the industry we rarely get to see). I found the movie really effective in showing us a man who is trying to balance being a great father and a successful actor, all with the best intentions but not quite getting there. The End of Love was be On Demand in January and released in theaters in February.
Prior to the festival, the Sundance Institute releases videos of filmmakers discussing their films chosen to be screened that year in their “Meet the Artist” series. Check out Mark Webber discussing this film:
Watch more films in this series from the 2012 festival here and here.
Day 1 [Jan 20]: I’m finally down in Park City again! After a drive into downtown, I reached the heart of it all. I love this cute little town. Most of the day I spent chilling on Main Street, specifically in the Sundance Channel HQ, Co-Op, and HP cafe/lounge. The cool thing about hanging out is getting the free stuff. The sponsors of Sundance are everywhere and since this is not my first time, I know where to go to get the swag - in lounges people keep coming up to me with trays of free snacks, the signature free festival water bottle (Sundance is green, folks), giveaways in the Co-Op, and people handing out free products on the streets. The best thing though is celeb spotting and I had some good ones. Now that I think about it, all of my really Main street sightings have been around the same place - at the corner of Heber and Main where the Entertainment Weekly Photo Studio sits. My first was being surprised by James Marsden walking towards me on the empty sidewalk (I think he was trying to find the studio). It shocked me firstly because I didn’t expect him to just be in front of me when I looked up from the phone and secondly because he is so much hotter in person. He stopped behind me so I got to snap a picture. I also ran into Anthony Mackie as I crossed the streetby the EW studio later that day and again around the same area later that evening. I do have a sort of connection to him as he is a friend of a friend. I’ll leave it at that ::smile:: I tried to see my first movie for this year’s festival through the waitlist, Celeste and Jesse Forever (starring Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg; about a a married couple in their early 30s who has been together since high school and decide to break up since they have not experience dating but try and remain friends) but unfortunately not a single person from the waitlist got in. That’s the risk you take when you don’t have a ticket, especially when it was the premiere of a movie. Better luck tomorrow, hopefully.
stoppe