The Nerve Insider
A daily pick of what's new and hot at Nerve.
Scanner
Your daily cup of WTF?
Nerve@SXSW 2006.
Blogging the Roman Orgy of Indie-music Festivals.
Coming Soon!
Coming Soon!
Coming Soon!
The Daily Siege
An intimate and provocative look at Siege's life, work and loves.
Kate & Camilla
two best friends pursue business and pleasure in NYC.
Naughty James
The lustful, frantic diary of a young London photographer.
The Nerve Blog-a-log: kid_play
The Nerve Blog-a-log: Super_C
The Nerve Blog-a-log: ILoveYourMom
A bundle of sass who's trying to stop the same mistakes.
The Nerve Blog-a-log: The_Sentimental
Our newest Blog-a-logger.
The Nerve Blog-a-log: Marking_Up
Gay man in the Big Apple, full of apt metaphors and dry wit.
The Nerve Blog-a-log: SJ1000
Naughty and philosophical dispatches from the life of a writer-comedian who loves bathtubs and hates wearing underpants.
The Nerve Video Blog
Deep, deep inside the world of online video.
The Nerve Blog-a-log: charlotte_web
A Demi in search of her Ashton.
The Prowl, with Ryan Pfluger
Nerve @ Cannes Film Festival
May 16 - May 25
ScreenGrab
The Nerve Film Blog
Autumn
A fashionable L.A. photo editor exploring all manner of hyper-sexual girls down south.
The Modern Materialist
Almost everything you want.
The Nerve Blog-a-log: that_darn_cat
A sassy Canadian who will school you at Tetris.
Rose & Olive
Houston neighbors pull back the curtains and expose each other's lives.
The Nerve Blog-a-log: funkybrownchick
The name says it all.
merkley???
A former Mormon goes wild, and shoots nudes, in San Francisco.
chase
The creator of Supercult.com poses his pretty posse.
The Remote Island
Nerve's TV blog.
Brandonland
A California boy capturing beach parties, sunsets and plenty of skin.
61 Frames Per Second
Smarter gaming.
The Nerve Blog-a-log: Charlotte_Web
A Demi in search of her Ashton.
The Nerve Blog-a-log: Zeitgeisty
A Manhattan pip in search of his pipette.
Date Machine
Putting your baggage to good use.

The Screengrab

Mike D'Angelo at Sundance: Part 1

Posted by Peter Smith
Mike D'Angelo reports from the Sundance Film Festival:

Sundance is playing things close to the vest this year, for some reason. Upon my arrival late Thursday night — too late, alas, to catch the opening-night attraction, In Bruges, which everyone who did see it seems to think is ill-served by its hyperactive trailer — I picked up a copy of the Salt Lake City Weekly, expecting to find my friend Scott Renshaw's capsule reviews of perhaps two dozen films that had been screened for local press before the festival proper even began. Instead, there only was a page of wild guesswork, advance screenings having apparently been scuttled. Nor were Friday's press screenings particularly appetizing, as most of the morning and afternoon was devoted to soporific-sounding selections from the World Documentary section. Did I really want or need to learn anything further about Mumia Abu-Jamal? (In Prison My Whole Life.) Would Up the Yangtze, about China's Three Gorges Dam project, be any more illuminating than Jia Zhang-ke's 2006 Venice prizewinner Still Life, just now opening in limited U.S. release? Hoping the homegrown docs might be more energizing, I stuck my head into Traces of the Trade, a personal-essay film in which the director and nine relatives tour the locations where their ancestors purchased slave labor with rum and molasses, but fled after forty minutes of unbearably self-indulgent white-liberal guilt.

As I write this, most of the potentially heavy hitters are still to come. Today, however, people are buzzing, with good reason, about yet another documentary, Marina Zenovich's Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. (Full disclosure: I roomed with Marina at Cannes a few years ago, though we barely spoke since I tend to fall asleep at festivals within fifty-two seconds of hitting my room.) As the title suggests, the film focuses on Polanski's 1977 arrest for "unlawful sexual intercourse" (plea-bargained down from rape) with a thirteen-year-old girl and his subsequent flight from justice just hours before he was due to be sentenced, resulting in what may well be lifelong exile in France. Even for those familiar with the general details of the case, though, Wanted and Desired will likely prove revelatory. Zenovich dutifully provides basic psychological context for Polanski's odious conduct — mom murdered by Nazis, pregnant wife slaughtered by Manson Family — and wittily illustrates various points with well-chosen clips from Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, The Tenant, and other favorites. Ultimately, however, she's less interested in Polanski's crime than she is in the outlandish farce of judicial corruption that the banal crime somehow inspired. If you've ever run into a celebrity and found yourself instantly transformed into a babbling cretin, this fascinating film will provide some solace: At least the celeb's life and freedom weren't in your shaking hands.
+ DIGG + DEL.ICIO.US + REDDIT
Posted Jan 20 2008, 02:50 PM
Filed under: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments

socalsurv said:

Sex with a 13 year old is a banal crime?

January 23, 2008 8:23 PM

Impertinent Questions | Early reviews of "Traces of the Trade" said:

Pingback from  Impertinent Questions    | Early reviews of "Traces of the Trade"

January 26, 2008 9:00 AM

in
Send rants/raves toscreengrab@nerve.com

Archives

  • October 2008 (59)
  • September 2008 (150)
  • August 2008 (168)
  • July 2008 (133)
  • June 2008 (146)
  • May 2008 (241)
  • April 2008 (243)
  • March 2008 (200)
  • February 2008 (210)
  • January 2008 (237)
  • December 2007 (132)
  • November 2007 (122)
  • October 2007 (106)

    • Bloggers

    • Paul Clark
    • John Constantine
    • Phil Nugent
    • Leonard Pierce
    • Scott Von Doviak
    • Andrew Osborne

    Contributors

    • Kent M. Beeson
    • Pazit Cahlon
    • Bilge Ebiri
    • D.K. Holm
    • Faisal A. Qureshi
    • Vadim Rizov
    • Vern
    • Bryan Whitefield
    • Scott Renshaw
    • Gwynne Watkins

    Editor

    • Peter Smith

    Tags

    Browse All Tags

    Places to Go

    People To Read

    Film Festivals

    Directors

    Partners

    College Humor
    The Onion
    Cracked.com
    Fark.com
    Ask Men
    Heavy.com