In the better late than never category, here's my overview of this year's Sundance Film Festival, published in the Philadelphia City Paper. Within, I take a bit of a slap at the buzzed-out about prizewinner Beasts of the Southern Wild (pictured), laud Craig Zobel's nervy Compliance and cover the latest addition to the saga of the West Memphis Three, Amy Berg's West of Memphis. Also on the docket: Joe Berlinger's Under African Skies, which covers the making of Paul Simon's Graceland and its attendant controversy, as well as Searching for Sugar Man, the audience award-winning doc about an obscure Detroit musician named Rodriguez whose albums became a touchstone of the South African freedom movement. (Those two make for a fascinating trilogy with Lionel Rogosin's recently rereleased Come Back Africa, which I reviewed for Time Out New York.) Touched briefly on Ira Sachs' Keep the Lights On and Ava Duvernay's Middle of Nowhere, both excellent character dramas of the kind Sundance was created to support and too rarely does. No room for the highly enjoyable Shut Up and Play the Hits, the chronicle of LCD Soundsystem's final show, but I'll get to writing about that one of these days.
Previously in Sundance coverage: features on Mark Webber's The End of Love and Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie, with a skosh of Rick Alverson's The Comedy.
