First day

Its Sundance once again. Getting off the plane in Salt Lake is already a scene as planes arrive at the same time from all corners of the country carrying filmmakers and industry, and they are all getting their luggage at the same time...crazy. I was lucky to run into Jason Kliot, film producer with Open City, who is one of the jurors at the festival this year. As a jury member Jason is assigned a driver who will stick with him throughout the whole festival, starting at the airport where he came to pick him up. Jason is a great guy, and true to his kind nature he offered me a ride to my hotel in Park City. And so we ended up driving through the snowy mountainous road from Salt Lake to Park City in style. Thank you Jason.

Arriving at Headquarters in the Mariott, the place was buzzing with folks getting in, registering, setting up meetings, and buzzing about the new films. Everywhere you go you run into people you know, a great gathering place. One of the first people I ran into was the wonderful David Strathairn who is in Howl, one of tonight's opening night films. That film has the biggest buzz in town so far, can't wait to see it.

Another film everyone has been talking about is Davis Guggenheim's (An Inconvenient Truth) Waiting for Superman which was just acquired by Paramount, the first big acquisition in Sundance. I'm interviewing Davis on Monday for a video segment, very excited about that. Will make sure to see the film first of course.

After the Mariott and after sitting down with Stewart with whom I'll be doing the video interviews, I headed off to the main Supermarket here to stock up on some basic healthy foods - fruits, vegetables, juice...and of course, I kept on running into colleagues there as well. As I was standing there between the milk and the yogurts chatting with Sandy Dubowski, an old filmmaker friend, another one joined us, joking that this is THE place to meet friends...and he was right...

Soon I'm going to see Restrepo though, a film documenting one year, one platoon, in the deadliest valley in Afghanistan. Should be very strong. We're interviewing the filmmakers in a couple of days also.

Tomorrow promises to be a very busy day. Lots of movies; the Woodstock Film Festival party, other parties. Will try to catch some sleep later on as after that the Sundance marathon will be in full force.

Until next time.