Okay, okay — I should have gone to see Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman‘s Catfish late yesterday morning. An MCN link calls it “Sundance’s sensation of the hour” and Marshall Fine says it’s “a film whose emotional journey is wholly unexpected and which takes the viewer on a ride he can never anticipate. It’s as visually low-tech as a movie can be, but these filmmakers prove that, with the right story, the images are in service to something much, much larger.”
Time and again at film festivals I’ve shown a remarkable genius for accidentally missing, sidestepping or deliberately not catching the proverbial “hot film.” I had just come out of Get Low yesterday morning and the notion of trudging it over to the Library for the 11:30 am Catfish screening was considered and discarded. Not enough time, didn’t have a hard ticket, hated (and still hate) the title, averse to docs about cyber relationships, etc. I’ll be able to see Catfish today at a 4:30 pm press showing, but I have a ticket to the highly anticipated terrorist comedy Four Lions at the Egyptian at 5:30 pm.