Sundance begins

The Sundance Film Festival got cranked up on Thursday evening. On the starting day, Julie had someone bump into her Subaru (no damage) and I had to pull out into a lane of traffic to stop a car from cruising through a pedestrian crossing (with pedestrians). Such is the film festival. Fill a small town with 40,000 visitors who all want to move from place to place all week, but have little idea of where they are going or how to get there. For the next week, we have no parking in the city and can make no left turns.

Our plan was to enjoy visits from John and Patti Steigerwald (from Raleigh) and Bill and Kathleen Donnelly (from Michigan). These two couples were out here together for Sundance three years ago. Unfortunately, Bill and Kathleen's daughter Meghan had gone from having something flu-like to pneumonia. As much as I support giving children a lot of responsibility to make them stronger, leaving her alone seemed unreasonable. At the last second, they had to cancel. We all miss having them here.

So far we are having excellent luck with movies, and terrible luck with stalking stars. Our only star sighting has been Ryan Seacrest, of American Idol fame. He is also doing the American Top 40 Countdown on the radio. They were shooting something with him in it. He's the one on the right.



Instead, we have been eating, drinking and seeing movies. The Highwest Distillery had a really cool ice sculpture bar outside. It was cold though, so we grabbed a photo and went in for a drink.



Our movies so far:

The Last Mountain: this was a documentary about the coal mining in West Virginia where they rip the tops off of mountains and dump all the non-coal earth down into the valleys. It is a terribly destructive process and the land never recovers. It was well done and very eye opening. I gave it 3 out of 4 stars. Most documentaries never make it to the big screen, but this was a good one.

Win-Win: this movie is about a lawyer who volunteers as the local high school wrestling coach. He, his family, and his friends all get tangled up with another family. It is wonderful and clearly gets 4 out of 4 stars. It will be in theaters and you should definitely see it. Funny. Great acting. Great character development.

We have another movie after dinner this evening. So far, no losers!!