Sundance drank my milkshake this year (sorry, can’t stop doing that). I had a few fun, incredibly busy days and then whammo! I was struck down with a weird flu bug that made my lungs feel like they were full of little needles. So this is an apology for my lack of blogging - Jesse has been a trooper and you can read lots from her on Festival Focus. I saw a few wonderful films and still have some interviews to post up so please stay tuned.

I just arrived in Park City and have done the necessary grocery schlep to Albertsons to stock up on essentials (oranges so I don’t get scurvy, beer so I don’t get sober, Airborne so I don’t die). I’m now combing through all the films and starting to get really excited about the days ahead.

Jesse Epstein and I will be blogging over at the Shooting People Festival Focus blog so please follow all our adventures there.

I feel faintly embarrassed to admit that I read advice columns. But Cary Tennis is on Salon and he says things like this:

What about having a little humility and saying, You know what, I feel better when I paint duck decoys, so I’m painting duck decoys. And fuck you, get out of my garage. And don’t call them figurines. They’re duck decoys.

I’m still reeling, floored from seeing There Will Be Blood last night. Like many people, I’m not sure I can write about it yet. It’s still settling down in my psyche where I’m sure it will have a prominent place for many years to come. I’ll just say that I can’t get over how utterly astonishing Daniel Day Lewis’s performance is and I’m going to have to go see it again just to be able to drink it all in. For those of you who have seen the film, The IFC Blog has collated a series of critical opinions on the last scene. I think I love this insane ending but I’m not sure. Crikey, it’s hard to write about films that affect you so powerfully. I’d be a rubbish film critic.

I want to write more on this at a later date but Chris “Long Tail” Anderson’s next book is going to be about how more and more stuff will be offered for free. Gratis. Nada. Zip. Read this post to understand how Ryan Air can offer $10 flights across Europe and how Moore’s Law and the Gift Economy will change our future as producers and consumers.

For some reason I always cry when I watch people vote. It seems epic somehow, that humans come together to do this. I wasn’t exactly weeping over the New Hampshire Primaries but I went to see A Promise To the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman last night at the IFC Center, where it was the opening night of the latest season of Thom Powers’ Stranger Than Fiction series, and got all teary when I watched old footage of Pinochet being voted out of office. In 1994 I wept buckets in my room at university when the first free South African general elections were held. The elections don’t have to be particularly historical or important, however. I also used to shed a tear voting in very dull local elections in East London when I lived there.

Ariel Dorfman has led a wonderful, heartbreaking, and divided life, with exile connecting all the dots. He said he was happy to show the film in New York, “a place where I feel intimately, sensually welcome.” Perhaps I am just waxing lyrical due to my emotional state about voting and elections but I sat in the audience last night feeling really thrilled to be in a city where I can pop to the IFC Center after work and sit in the audience behind Walter Mosely while Ariel Dorfman does a Q&A on stage (and drink wine with filmmakers afterwards!).

This morning I walked to work listening to a really moving episode of This American Life about miscommunication and division between Muslims and non-Muslims (readers of this blog know I’m currently obsessed with This American Life - in last week’s episode David Sedaris talked about people pooing in Target, what’s not to love!). When I got to work I read this thoughtful post from Tom Hall on his top 10 cinematic moments of 2007 which made me wish I was a more thorough and insightful blogger but I’m grateful that other people are out there to do it properly!

And now, I drink your milkshake. Yes I’m finally going to see There Will Be Blood tonight. I’m excited. A little over excited perhaps. Can’t sit still. Can’t concentrate. Need to pee a lot. That kind of thing.

Well not MY life, I have far more important things to do. I do. Really. But if you are going to lose minutes of your life watching YouTube, this video is quite funny. I like the “rising tide of communism” at the very end.

This has been doing the rounds recently. I know if I had made a film I would probably be very upset to think of people watching it on their phones and iPods but I also think that you have to let people watch stuff in the way they want to watch it. Otherwise you just end up sounding crabby and elitist. I still prefer to see films in the popcorn-aroma cinema surrounded by other people in a dark and magical room, of course I do, but if I want to watch something on my “fucking telephone” then I will. So there.

Yesterday AJ Schnack announced the launch of a new nonfiction filmmaking awards event to take place at the IFC Center in NYC on March 18th this year. Readers of Schnack’s blog will know that he has been a very vocal critic of the Oscar shortlist for being too issue-based and not recognizing the importance of the craft of filmmaking and storytelling. These new awards are designed to correct this and the lovely folk at Indiepix have come on board to support the endeavor. The awards will be co-chaired by AJ Schnack and Thom Powers, Documentary Programmer of the Toronto International Film Festival and the nominating committee included programmers from North America’s top film festivals, all of whom are champions of documentaries in all their many and wonderful forms:

Thom Powers (Chair), Documentary Programmer, Toronto International Film Festival
Phoebe Brush, Director of Programming, Full Frame Film Festival
Matt Dentler, Producer, South by Southwest Film Festival
Sean Farnel, Director of Programming, Hot Docs
Tom Hall, Director of Programming, Sarasota Film Festival
David Kwok, Director of Programming, Tribeca Film Festival
Cara Mertes, Director of Sundance Documentary Film Program, Sundance Film Festival
David Nugent, Director of Programming, Hamptons International Film Festival
Rachel Rosen, Director of Programming, Los Angeles Film Festival
Sky Sitney, Director of Programming, SilverDocs
David Wilson, Director, True/False Film Festival
Brit Withey, Artistic Director of Festivals, Starz Denver Film Festival

It’s also really nice to see that filmmakers will not have to sell their children to be included in this list and that films are not being excluded for rogue foreign broadcasts and other Academy misdemeanors. I’m so glad to see The Monastery on this list for example as it was definitely one of my favorite films of last year. You can read more about the genesis of these awards and about the eligibility rules on Schnack blog. This is the shortlist of films for Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Filmmaking which certainly includes more of my favorites than the Academy shortlist although I wish The King of Kong was on here and I’m sure I’ll start thinking of other films when my coffee kicks in:

BILLY THE KID
DEEP WATER
THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK
GHOSTS OF CITE SOLEIL
IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON
INTO GREAT SILENCE
LAKE OF FIRE
MANDA BALA (SEND A BULLET)
THE MONASTERY - MR. VIG AND THE NUN
NO END IN SIGHT
SICKO
TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE
THE UNFORESEEN
ZOO

Good work AJ and everybody else involved! It makes me really happy when discussions in the documentary community turn into tangible results like this. It makes you realize that we’re not all just farting in a jar and that is very inspiring. Makes me want to DO SOMETHING DO MORE this year.

I love NYC so much that I give it a great, big bear hug most days but if I don’t escape every so often to stare at the horizon and look at some trees then I start to go a bit ker-azy. So my recent blog silence can be explained by the fact that I was in Canada hanging out on this beautiful Pacific beach.

A belated Happy New Year to you all. My friend says this is THE YEAR OF JOY which sounds like a very nice year indeed. Much better than last year which was THE YEAR OF THE BATHTUB (don’t ask).