SHARKFORUM: OPINION WITH TEETH

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PACKING FOR SUNDANCE each year, I tote along a valuable guidebook about the history of the Sundance Festival's hometown, called "Park City Underfoot." I leave it on the coffee table of the condo, and no one ever consults it. The first draft of history is more urgent. Who needs backstory when there's a hailstorm of privileged moments. Still, there's a wealth of backstory in this mining town, not limited to the past 25 years of the festival or the last decade or so of exurban sprawl. Whenever I pass this cemetery on the edge of town, which is largely populated by children, I think of the movies and hopes and careers that have been interred at festivals past: call this portrait "Sundance Class of '96."

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Joseph Smith's wilderness is easier to escape than it once was, especially on Sunday morning on the way to the Salt Lake City airport (SLC, tagged on luggage parked in foyers, mud rooms and basements nationwide).

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And it's especially easy if you're being ferried by Town Car.

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The largest venue, The Eccles, is also a high school auditorium. You can't smoke and you can't see the racier movies there.

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The packs thin toward the last several days of the festival. Still, writers and reviewers gather in flocks to fashion consensus.

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The swag shacks up and down Main Street are shuttered, the freshly stenciled logos freshly scraped off, such as Hollywood Life(less) House.

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Lush, fluffy snow fell for a few hours on Saturday, as this view from inside the press office's hospitality suite.

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But inside hospitality, interviews still. I have no idea who's parked in the Cowboy Seat.

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A presentation for alternative distribution for Slamdance 2005's Four Eyed Monsters, with an evangelist from GenArts and a camerawoman in chiarascuro.

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Earlier, I saw a satisfying composition of a newshen and her camerabear against the backdrop of the nearby hills, but didn't catch them in time: quickly, he turned his bright light on my oh-just-taking-shots-of-the-sky-doh! act.

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If Hollywood is a place where you can die of encouragement, is Park City where you can languish from detours?

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Or to die from a simple YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE?

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Utah's not another country: the Burger King stars-'n'-stripes droop and drape here as well.

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From the multiple screens of the "anterior" press tent during the closing night awards, Terrence Howard (not yet Oscar-nominated) is natty, speaking fluent Howardese.

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And Chuck & Buck director and juror Miguel Arteta wears a goofy t-shirt and goofier grin.

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In the din of the underpopulated after-party, critical colleague Robert Koehler and I are shouting about So Yong Kim's prize-winning mood gem In Between Days and move on to Claire Denis' L'intrus and Hou Hsiao-hsien's underrated mood piece, Millennium Mambo, when a quartet of women schooled in twirling light up one of the party's favors, streaking Hou-like neon colors across the drab confines of the tent.

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Outside, across the hills, into the sky, the night is timeless.



More photos here.