Many Movies & Sad News

The last couple of days were filled with movies and a few parties sprinkled in, altho some of our condo-mates were certainly hitting the high life in terms of parties. There were a few I just could justify attending as I needed to watch as many films as possible. On Sunday we saw ARBITRAGE at the Eccles with filmmakers in attendance (expensive film-ok storyline), THE COMEDY (bad film about rich ugly zeros), RED LIGHTS, a highly anticipated thriller that fell down in the end, with Robert DeNiro and my fave gal Sigourney Weaver, then a really nice and heartfelt MIDDLE OF NOWHERE about a woman keeping her marriage together while her husband is in jail. Really liked it.

Monday started out with SMASHED, about a woman who decides that it's time to go sober and how it affects her marriage, then SAVE THE DATE, a perfectly fine inde/sundance/relationship film about a woman who has a hard time committing and her friends and family. After that we headed over to the Sundance Channel party, a party I look forward to every year. Sarah Barnett, the head of the Channel is a friend and our gracious host. Here's snap mid-party.

Over the weekend we all heard that Bingham Ray, longtime distributor and exhibitor of independent film had suffered two strokes while here at Sundance. Then yesterday the sad news that he had passed away. Most recently Bingham had taken over the reigns as Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Society, producers of the San Francisco Film Festival. In the short time that I knew him I felt he was a truly original person, who cared a great deal for his family. He had a lot of good friends who will miss him, and our heart goes out to his family.