Sundance Post Pajamas

In January of this year, the Sundance Film Festival commenced in person for the first time since COVID burst on the scene in spring of 2020. We weren’t sure how lingering crowd avoidance and the online availability of some screenings would impact the festival’s attendance or how we would feel about going back to theaters after the convenience of watching screenings in our sweats at home. Here’s what transpired, what we saw, and our thoughts on it all.

Jason and I watched three films at the festival this year, significantly less than the two prior years, those in which we critiqued films from our couch. Per our usual, our curiosity got caught up in the documentaries, and that’s all we saw. Why fewer? Traveling and waiting in lines are part of the great festival time suck. The hours on roads and in queues add up and it’s not feasible to do a whole slew of screenings, unless you have no other assigned life tasks.

Did others find the festival unbearable without their pjs? There wasn’t much of a line at our first screening even though we arrived later than we typically prefer, just 35 minutes prior to start time. Our theater didn’t hold a huge number of people, about 140. It did fill up, and two other auditoriums were loaded for screening the same show at the same time. Since we didn’t enter the others, it is impossible to guess how packed they were. Our second screening was in the Grand Theatre, which holds 1,100. It was about 80% full. For our final movie, back in the same theater as our first, every seat was again occupied. Attendance seemed solid but probably not as high as in the past. What about the shows themselves?

The Longest Goodbye, which was part of the World Cinema Documentary Competition, is specifically about keeping astronauts sane in space and more broadly about the impact of isolation on mental wellbeing. For a space mission, the breaking point of each piece of equipment must be calculated and tested extensively. Unlike that equipment, the soft, squishy humans, vital components of mission success, can’t be quantified. How do you predict, control, and rectify the psychological impact of separation, stress, and lack of privacy on space explorers? With a three-year mission to Mars on the horizon, the question of how to keep fallible humans mentally sound, motivated, and productive is a difficult but critical one.

What were some of the most interesting nuggets panned from this flick? Space travel is evolving. In the 50s and 60s, it was about quick-thinking heroics in brief situations. Now, it is more like a marathon where astronauts must fight sensory monotony as much as high-stakes situations.

I appreciated the film’s portrayal of astronauts as human beings foremost and heroes secondary. Today’s astronauts, like their predecessors, are not superhumans but talented, regular people striving toward greatness. However, that doesn’t mean they easily acknowledge their human shortcomings. As this documentary conveyed, they often resist opening up about their psychological strains because they fear they will not be chosen again for space travel if their inward struggles are known. This drastically impedes NASA’s ability to monitor and understand the mental state of their crews.

Although their reporting system has flaws, NASA has put considerable effort into understanding isolation psychology. Their studies on the topic have helped more than people above; they’ve helped people below. NASA assisted authorities in keeping 33 Chilean miners and their families rational and functional when the miners were trapped underground for over two months in 2010.

Larger takeaways from this documentary? You don’t have to be in space to experience seclusion. In 2020, we all suffered ample amounts of alone time. It may take decades before we understand the full impact of that isolation.

The Q&A for The Longest Goodbye featured the two primary filmmakers, Ido Mizrahy and Nir Sa’ar. They spoke about how hard it was to get access to the active astronauts featured in the film. Apparently, NASA was much more comfortable with the idea of the documentary when they heard PBS was on board. Yes, PBS will be distributing this film, and you should be able to watch it in early 2024.

Our second show, Deep Rising, was in the Premieres category at Sundance. This documentary is fundamentally about who do the seas belong to? And what is the cost of companies extracting metal-rich nodules from the bottom of the ocean’s deep, two to three miles down, to power the battery cells of electric vehicles?

Rare minerals like nickel and cobalt are used in energy storage for the batteries found in everything from electric vehicles to cell phones. As the electric vehicle market has boomed, the quest for these uncommon metals has escalated. Although EV drivers regularly pat themselves on the back for their environmental awareness, the metals used in their batteries often come from mining operations catastrophic to ecosystems and fueled by coal. For instance, nickel-rich soil is being torn out beneath rainforests via a grimy coal-powered operation in Indonesia. The country has made a deal with Tesla to buy that dirty nickel for five billion dollars. “Green” energy isn’t as green as you’d think.

Deep Rising
Pictures in Sundance’s dark theaters never turn out fantastic.

The latest jeopardized environment in the quest for battery components is one of the least understood ecosystems on the planet, the deep ocean. Nodules found on deep-sea floors are high in scarce minerals. Hence, companies are now competing for the technology to extract these potato-sized stones and the legal authority to do so. The International Seabed Authority, an organization created by the United Nations back in the 1990s, is supposed to oversee deep-seabed mining and the environment fallout from it. However, since international waters belong to no nation, this group appears to have many conflicts of interest.

What does that potential money behind nodule extraction and the disorder of the only organization with some authority over these operations mean for the oceans’ darkest waters? Unfortunately, we don’t know enough about these mysterious regions to ascertain that. We do know these nodules only grow millimeters in millions of years, so they cannot be readily replaced, and mining operations inevitably disrupt ocean floors. Those should be enough reasons for pause and consideration before commencing a deep-sea free-for-all, but vigilant heads often do not prevail when lucrative gains are at stake.

Along with gorgeous and fascinating footage of gelatinous life forms in the abyss, this documentary provided a substantial amount of information on a subject we knew little about. In fact, that was one of the filmmaker’s primary incentives to make the movie. He logically feels that because the oceans belong to all of us, we should be knowledgeable about the interests potentially threatening their wellbeing.

While informative, the film jumps around quite a bit making it hard to follow at times. Plus, it doesn’t give an indication of where we should go from here. What is the call to action? What are the alternatives to providing demand for these minerals and depleting our oceans?

The Q&A, which included director Matthieu Rytz and the Chilean scientist featured in the film, Dr. Sandor Mulsow, offered clearer solutions. Those solutions? Green hydrogen, produced from the electrolysis of water, along with batteries made from more common metals like iron phosphate. Iron phosphate is slightly heavier and less efficient, so it doesn’t stay charged for quite as many miles as other types of EV batteries. However, iron is much more common in the Earth’s crust and, therefore, much easier to source without devasting environmental impact. Tesla is trying to decrease its dependency on nickel and cobalt and now does offer a lithium iron phosphate battery. About half of the company’s vehicle production has switched to utilizing these batteries.

Jason Momoa is the narrator of the film and was at the festival but didn’t come to our screening, probably because it wasn’t in Park City and many actors don’t venture out of the Park-City scene when attending Sundance. Take note filmmakers, the Salt Lake City crowd is much more representative of real audiences than the Park City peeps. Getting outside the Hollywood bubble is worth it.

Judy Blume Forever, the last documentary we saw at Sundance, is about, you guessed it, Judy Blume. Judy Blume has written over 25 books, many for children and young adults. Such favorites as Tiger Eyes, Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret, Blubber, and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. These titles will sound familiar to those who grew up in the 70s and 80s. I read her books as a kid. However, I wasn’t aware of how many of her works got banned in those days for candidly covering the awkwardness of puberty and adolescence.

Judy Blume Forever incorporates interviews with Judy as well as some of her readers. Her motivation for writing those controversial books? She believed she should be honest as an author and include situations kids were going through but adults wouldn’t talk to them about. She hated adults “keeping secrets” when she was a kid.

Judy Blume, currently in her 80s, isn’t writing anymore but is still full of spunk and candor. She continues to fight against the “moral majority” that now seems more intent on banning books than ever. Through the decades, she has gone out of her way to respond to readers who wrote to her, establishing long-lasting relationships with some of them. These letters are now at the Yale University Archives.

We found Judy Blume Forever a vibrant documentary with good flow and interesting content. Amazon bought it, so expect it to show up in Prime. Our screening was followed by a Q&A with the directors Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok, along with one of the producers.

Attending Sundance in person for the first time in three years was mostly an upgraded experience. It meant we couldn’t see as many shows due to the required driving time and theater lines, but it also meant we could enjoy screenings with friends again. Two came with us to The Longest Goodbye. And although Q&As via Zoom back in the COVID gap were still enjoyable and enlightening, it was more rewarding to interact with directors and producers physically present. Like those Zoom years, each of our 2023 screenings had a Q&A. Yay!

Season Celebrations: The 2022 Edition

Most of us have at least a few friends who would appreciate a cheeky Christmas gathering. For Jason and me, that group has been established for decades. Every year we hold a wacky holiday event with the same crowd. Here’s how it went last December.

I’m a lumberjack!
One of the white elephants we contributed was lumberjack themed.

We had a gang of 16 attend as two couples were absent due to vacations and sickness. The meal consisted of brisket and chicken cordon bleu, which was ordered from an official caterer. We weren’t interested in repeating the previous year’s issues that made our meal an hour late. (See that post for the details on how someone’s dishonesty caused our delay. Shame on you Jason C.!) Getting all the foods in our bellies wasn’t entirely impediment-free though. The caterer forgot our cheesecakes, and we had to have a friend pick up substitution cookies on her way. However, since cookies also contain a high quantity of sugar, that was only a minor inconvenience.

seasonal and silly
Juvenile pictures are a standard at our seasonal shindig.

We usually play Just Dance at this shindig but not this time. Jason insisted it was a no-go because I couldn’t participate. My foot was just barely free from a two-month, boot-enforced hiatus resulting from a fractured talus, and dancing was still on my list of forbidden activities. As fate would have it, there wouldn’t have been any time for grooving anyway. We finished the white elephant exchange at 10:20 and had to hurry and clean up so we could be out of the facility by its 11:00 closing. Note to self, exchanging white elephants takes between 1.25 and 1.5 hours… those pale beasts sure are needy.

Charlie’s something or other
We ladies aren’t immune to the puerile.

That’s my shortest post in a long time. Though it does not necessarily follow that it’s also the sweetest. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good fall!

The Upside and Downside of the Upside Down

Decorating for our Halloween party is always a major task. In 2022, it was more than that; it was a love note to one of our favorite shows: Stranger Things.

For this theme, our favorite to date, we took on quite a few large and unusual projects that required construction, programming, painting, coloring, and even gardening skills. Let’s talk about a few of those projects.

Eddie’s last stand
If you don’t know the referenced scene, you aren’t a fan of Stranger Things.

We attempted to recreate the tunnel maps from season two of the series. While our exuberance did not go so far as to replicate the thousands of sheets used in the filming of the show, we did color 186 pieces of paper. I scribbled 36, Jason colored 63, and our niece completed 87. For this endeavor, we bought a box of 800 crayons. The scheme ended up not requiring as many Crayolas as anticipated. Anyone in need of 750+ crayons?

scrawling insanity
Jason harnessed his inner Will and scribbled like a shirtless boy possessed.

Jason decided to build a portal complete with escaping vines. I thought this undertaking had a high likelihood of turning out less than spectacular due to its complex nature. I was happy to be wrong. We didn’t stop cultivating vines there though. Utilizing some kind helpers, we fashioned dozens more of them for our Upside Down backyard employing foam pipe insulation, pliable wires, and black duct tape. These also turned out better than expected. By the way, if you find online tutorials for making these vines that include instructions for coating them in a layer of latex, don’t bother. We tried that, and the latex didn’t add much except stickiness, so it wasn’t worth the bother.

portal production
Good thing Jason took woodshop classes back in high school; portal construction is a necessary life skill after all.

Another project that proved time consuming was a strand of lights Jason and a helper programmed in Arduino to flash 20 different phrases from the Upside Down in connection to a vinyl alphabet displayed on the wall. Such a setup can provide hours of diversion, just ask the Byers family.

Tunnel what?
Our tunnel maps confused or delighted guests depending on their familiarity with Stranger Things.

We also transformed our garage into the Snowball Dance. Like any self-respecting 80s, middle-school dance, it had cheesy streamers, a disco ball, a balloon arch, strings of lights, and plenty of metallic fringe. Awkward tweens were the only thing missing… plenty of those came later.

prized nostalgia
The nostalgia and neon were thick at our event.

In addition to our big projects, we made sure Easter eggs were stashed throughout the event space. These included a Lite Brite with “Run” twinkling on it, a boombox playing “Running Up That Hill”, “Papa” pictures, Have You Seen Me? posters, the rainbow art on Eleven’s door, slimy blue slugs, and crayoned drawings of the Mind Flayer.

jute suit riot
Jason patiently knotted all the jute for Dusty’s ghillie suit.

Since our decorating tasks were extensive, I was thrilled I didn’t have to sew costumes at least. However, our getups did require a lot of jute knotting and hot gluing, which required a lot of sacrificial hand burning. I glued both ends of over 100 nails and painted gore on them. These were attached to trashcan lids for Eddie and Dusty. My fingers weren’t the only digit casualties during our preparations. Jason also fell and jammed his finger horribly while carting decorations up the stairs.

mixed signals
We look like just buddies, right?

Other extremities were bigger problem makers. My ankle was broken, and therefore I was wearing the mandatory boot for such an injury during all of this. That boot made party preparations exponentially more tiring and uncomfortable. I was on my feet for 18 hours one day and nearly that long the next. Have you ever tried to stay on your feet for 18 hours while you are wearing a massive boot and have a fractured ankle? I wouldn’t recommend it. Plus, the boot made navigating the many boxes and decorations littered about our house much more hazardous. The stairs were particularly perilous. I nearly toppled many times, and going up and down them while holding all that stuff? Even worse. It’s surprising Jason was the only one who tumbled.

a subway surplus
We were completely committed to our tunnel map motif.

Fortunately, we had kind volunteers assisting us and our extremities. One friend came to help many days after work. Another shared her artistic talents by painting vines while her husband labored on our programming problems. A brother-in-law and multiple nieces and nephews helped create fringe and tunnel drawings and took on full ownership of a section of our portal tunnel. Our niece said decorating for our party was as fun as coming to our party.

snowball ostentation
Wavy streamers and lights provided the correct amount of ceiling tackiness for our Snowball Dance.

After all that, how did the event go? We were still scrambling until right before it started. It turns out making portals and vines and talking lights and 80s dance scenes takes up a lot of time. Luckily, our costumes did not require much effort to put on, or we would have been very late to our own shindig.

Never gonna give the 80s up!
I’m never gonna give you up. Also, I am your father. Anyone want to go to Camp Crystal Lake?

We had about 72 guests that evening, which was manageable but almost too many. Party happenings included three 40-minute D&D campaigns led by a veteran Dungeon Master, carnival games, bingo, an outdoor screening of The NeverEnding Story, an opportunity to vote for Steve or Eddie, a contest for deciphering messages from the Upside Down via Joyce’s lights, a selfie spot, and a photo booth with a professional photographer. Food came in the form of corndogs and fries from the Corndog Commander, cupcakes and cookies from Alisha’s, and waffles from Eleven’s Eggo Buffet. The buffet featured a toaster, chocolate chips, marshmallows, fruit, whipped cream, Biscoff Cookie Butter, and Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup, along with the required Eggos of course.

a heap o’ creep
We always have a heap of costume contest prizes at our party.

This year, for the first time since 2020, we opened up the main floor of our house for the party. The mix of inside and outside space seemed appreciated though external temperatures were warmer than the previous all-outside year.

variations in the key of E
Jason made a fantastic Eddie, but he didn’t know how to hold his guitar.

I put together 68 party favors encompassing a selection of options. For starters, I compiled two dozen bags for the younger kids filled with a gnarly assortment of 80s goodies. Back-to-school sets with Trapper Keepers and 4-Color pen combos were another alternative as were Stranger Things coloring books paired with themed color pencils. (Friends Don’t Lilac and Frozen Waffles are always in vogue hues.) Rubiks cubes and banana clips, 80s standards, were the stars of yet other favors, and Dungeons & Dragons starter kits provided an additional possibility. Finally, I built nearly 30 character-themed bags focused on either Max, Eddie, Steve, or Eleven. These bags contained items like bracelets made from recycled skateboards, waffle shaped bath balms, 80s metal band pins, and replicas of Eddie’s guitar pick necklace. After the event, we had 13 favors left, six child and seven adult ones, only because some people apparently have an aversion to neon.

a perfect portal
Our portal turned out far better than I expected.

Although the party required an incredible amount of work, we enjoyed sharing our love of Stranger Things with other appreciative fans. That extended beyond the confines of our shindig. On Halloween, we set up our portal and gave candy away in our backyard. We went through 198 candy bars, and the portal was a hit. Kids returned with their parents and texted their friends to come too. Eddie was a rock star and greeted warmly by many.

stranger haven
Stranger details were scattered throughout our house and yard.

Many thanks to our totally tubular aides who helped turn our world upside down last fall and our radical party guests who helped turn it right side up.