It’s 7:11 am, been up since 6 am. I have an 8:15 am interview with Inequality For All‘s star-auteur Robert Reich — the renowned author, Berkeley professor and former Labor Secretary under President Bill Clinton — along with the doc’s director, Jacob Kornbluth, at the Yarrow.

I have four films on the slate today: a p & i screening of Liz Garcia‘s The Lifeguard at 9:30 am, Lake Bell‘s In A World at 11:30 am or, if that doesn’t work out, Kyle Patrick Alvarez‘s C.O.G. at noon. Maybe. And then definitely Ryan Coogler‘s Fruitvale, the buzz-of-the-moment, at 2:30 pm followed by a 7 pm screening of Richard Linklater‘s Before Midnight, which received a gale of ecstatic reviews after last night’s Eccles screening.

I may try to slip into the first hour of a 5:15 pm screening of Alex Gibney‘s We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks. If it would begin at 4:30 pm I’d be in good shape.

In so doing I will be blowing off today’s screenings of Narco Cultura (sorry, Cynthia Swartz), The Way, Way Back, The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman, Afternoon Delight, Gideon’s Army, etc.

I’ve just walked out of Park Chan-Wook‘s Stoker…sorry, nope. If you’re Variety‘s Guy Lodge, it’s “a splendidly demented gumbo of Hitchcock thriller, American Gothic fairy tale and a contemporary kink all Park’s own.” For me it’s the biggest “look at how I can out-Brian DePalma and his most excessive and looney-tuney!” show-off flick I’ve seen in a long, long time. Everything is visual candy to this guy, and half-sensible human motivation and story logic be damned…watch me have fun in my sandbox! Me! Me! Wheee!

Here are some post-screening q & a moments following today’s Eccles screenings of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and The East. I’ll supply captions later this evening — figure it out. I’ve got a party to attend.

After caching two very fine films at the Eccles today, Sundance ’13 is no longer a chore or a slog. I only just had a chance to get out the Macbook Pro and paste these down. Stoker is about to start…

N.Y. Post critic Kyle Smith has very wisely and fairly slapped down Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln while appropriately tributing Zero Dark Thirty. I will never slag Smith again for anything ever again. Well…I’ll try not to, I mean. He certainly has my respect and allegiance this morning.

“Does Zero Dark Thirty condone torture?,” he writes. “Some think it does, but the film is a queasy, disquieting experience. It’s anything but a whitewash. It invites adults to think for themselves. Lincoln, by contrast, paints its central character as a folksy but brilliant charmer who never did anything worse than cut a few patronage deals to get the 13th Amendment passed.

“Zero Dark Thirty is an honest film that is promoting open and bold discussion. Lincoln, for all the (tedious) detail of its many scenes of negotiation and minor compromising that simply add a new layer of hard-headed shrewdness to the existing Lincoln legend, is at its core simple-minded Spielbergian sentiment that makes Americans feel warm, fuzzy and righteous.

“Zero Dark challenges the audience; Lincoln flatters it.

“Steven Spielberg has suckered the public into believing there once a time when it was always obvious which side of the issue was right and saints wielded the levers of power. There wasn’t, and they didn’t.”

Michael Winterbottom‘s The Look of Love, which I saw last night, was/is an almost entirely flat thing to sit through and is enlivened only by Steve Coogan‘s droll (if one-note) performance as British adult magazine and sex-biz entrepeneur Paul Raymond. An impressive recreation of ’60s and ’70s styles and mores, it’s a film that basically says that (a) erotic indulgence has its downside, (b) cocaine tends to fuck your life up and (c) it’s not a good idea to treat your daughter like a fellow bacchanalian. Fascinating!

Lynn Shelton‘s Touchy Feely, which I caught yesterday at noon, is utterly devoid of narrative energy. I started to develop an idea that it’s meant to be a piece of sly self-criticism and as such is a parody of a Lynn Shelton film. (And I’m saying this as a big fan of Humpday and one who was mildly okay with Your Sister’s Sister.) I felt narcotized and worn down by Touchy Feely — it slowly vacuumed out my life force. It’s about what happens when somewhat ordinary Seattle types (i.e., people who resemble Shelton or her friends) are either suddenly gifted with exceptional powers or talents or are suddenly left without them. It tries to get by on a faintly quirky Seattle sensibility, and I just sat there and slowly counted the minutes and napped for five-minute stretches.

James Ponsoldt‘s The Spectacular Now may be, as I’ve been told, a mildly intriguing sit but, as mentioned, I was shut out of yesterday morning’s press-and-industry screening. I guess I’ll catch the Tuesday noon show at the Eccles.

Joseph Gordon Levitt‘s Don Jon’s Addiction is, as I’ve said a couple of times, a decent character piece about the evolution of a Guido type (played by JGL). He starts out with a major porn addiction and a reliance on the Catholic church, and he ends up in a slightly more sensitive and open place. DJA could be a play if it wanted to, and it ends well. Tony Danza and Julianne Moore give the best supporting performances.

I should have seen Blue Caprice yesterday morning at 11:30 am Library showing, but I had to make a choice and I decided to see Touchy Feely instead — bad call.

I saw and reviewed The Summit on Friday — here‘s the link.

Anne Fontaine‘s Two Mothers was a rank embarassment. It’s middle-aged female-fortified soft porn without the soft porn (which at least would have been something), and with atrocious dialogue. I think it might have worked better if it had been spoken in French (i.e., Fontaine’s native tongue), but that would be absurd for a film set in Australia. I walked out after…what, 35 or 40 minutes? Way too much smiling and good-vibing and tender sensitivity. I don’t want to hear another actor or actress say to their son or daughter “are you okay?” ever again.

I really wanted to see Jeff Nichols‘ Mud in Cannes last May, but I had left for Berlin by the time it screened at the very end of the festival. I begged and begged the distributor to let me attend two market screenings and the reps blew me off, and now that it’s viewable I’m not feeling the hunger. I’ll get to it when I get to it. Let them stew for a change.

Marc Silver and Gael Garcia Bernal‘s Who Is Dayani Cristal? is a doc-narrative hybrid that offers compassion and attempts to bestow dignity and heroism upon Mexican immigrants. For me it was almost a complete wash. Question #1: If you’re so dirt-poor you’re riding a freight train all the way through Mexico in order to scale a wall in Arizona, why do you have three kids? Doesn’t it make sense for you and your wife to jointly earn at least a half-decent wage before deciding to shoulder the burdens of parenthood? (Oh, I’m sorry — is that a politically incorrect thing to say?). Question #2: How is crudely tattooing your daughter’s name across your chest an expression of profound love? The tattoo-er might want to ponder the fact that his other two kids will probably feel a tad less loved if he does that…no? Question #3: If you’re using found footage of the dead body of your lead character, why the hell would you digitally erase his face? Show it or don’t show it, but never obscure anything through CG. That’s what cheap TV shows without clearances resort to.

Everyone has told me that Kill Your Darlings is a problem and to take my time seeing it.

Good or near-great Sundance films are spiritual energy drinks, mood elevators, ecstasy tabs. But when they fail to appear this festival feels like factory work. It’s not exactly a drag to hump around this town in the cold and not attend parties (what’s the point? so I can trade pithy quips with Jeff Sneider?) and endure one less-than-satisfying film after another, but it does become something to get through rather than delight in, and you start saying to yourself, “Okay, five more days and a wake-up”…which is what I’m facing right now.

I’m going to play it tight and safe today with a four-film Eccles marathon — David Lowery‘s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints at 12:15 pm, Zat Bamanglij‘s The East at 3:30 pm, Park Chan-Wook‘s Stoker at 6:30 pm and then Richard Linklater‘s Before Midnight at 9:45 pm, which will break sometime between 11:30 pm and midnight. Am I really going to bunker down inside a single Park City structure for more than twelve hours? Apparently.

I’ve been here since Tuesday night, but the films didn’t start until Thursday night. I’ve said two or three times since that the best movie I’ve experienced so far — Morgan Neville‘s Twenty Feet From Stardom — happened that night. And then came the bracing stimulation of Jacob Kornbluth‘s Inequality For All, a profile of Robert Reich that offers a whip-smart examination of the inequality of income and the growing corruption that has been afflicting the U.S. economy for the last 30-plus years. But things have been otherwise wanting. It’s interesting to trudge around and sample films, but you need to occasionally encounter an 8.5 or a 9, and most of what I’ve been seeing are in the 6.5 to 7.5 range or worse.

I can’t remember if there’s a decent wifi signal at the Eccles, but let’s assume there isn’t. Bring your own connectivity to this festival or prepare to suffer. Without a decent signal I’m going to be limited to tweeting all day, and maybe a little copying-and-pasting on the side.

I really admired, was thoroughly engaged by and, to my surprise, was even emotionally moved by Jacob Kornbluth‘s Inequality For All, a profile of economist and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. I haven’t time to write anything with a 6 pm screening of Michael Winterbottom‘s The Look of Love breathing down my neck, but here are a couple of snaps from the post-screening q & a at Park City’s Prospector Square cinema.

(l. to r.) Robert Reich, director Jacob Kornbluth, (far right) dp Svetlana Cvetko.

I tweeted a couple of hours ago that no films have truly levitated anyone so far. A few likes, two big likes (Inequality For All, 20 Feet From Stardom) and…? You tell me. I realize, of course, that Saturday is technically only the second day so let’s not sound too dispirited. But if nothing hits big tonight, Sunday, Monday or Tuesday…just saying.

Joseph Gordon Levitt‘s Don Jon’s Addiction, which is likable if overemphatic at times, had its big screening at the Eccles last night. In a sense it’s already old news around Park City. Gotta make way for the new. I arrived late and watched it from the upper balcony, which has happened only once before in my Eccles-attending life. Then I went downstairs and took this when the q & a began. Here’s Todd McCarthy‘s Hollywood Reporter review.

I experienced a bulletproof moment last night. Fairly amazing. I fell on some ice and came crashing down on my right elbow, and nothing happened. I got right up and kept walking. My glasses were destroyed but no aches or scrapes, no bruises, no morning-after stiffness, no Advils…nothing. I could have theoretically busted my arm. A great feeling.

It was vaguely akin to that Pulp Fiction moment when John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson are shot several times by a kid who bursts out of the bathroom and yet none of them are hit — all the bullet holes are in the wall behind them. This led Jackson to want to quit being a hitman and just “walk the earth” like Caine in Kung Fu, “meet all kinds of people, get into adventures.”

The distributors we’re looking to deal with on Phase Two have been slow to pull the trigger, and so today and tomorrow I’m stuck with those loathsome ‘PUT YOUR MOVIE AD HERE” fillers. I’ve always made it a policy to fill the ad space with at least somewhat sexy-looking film ads, and now HE looks like some kind of fire-sale site. My apologies to those who are accustomed to the usual tony environment.