The Sundance Diaries – Of Music and Movies

 
A major theme at the festival this year is the connection between music and movies, so there have been great opportunities to see some fantastic artists perform live. One such musician that I’ve been wanting to see for a very long time is the talented and environmentally-friendly Jason Mraz.

Jason has been involved in an online competition called “In Search of Incredible” to find a touching video of inspiration that shows off the human spirit. In honour of this, he introduced the winner and then took to the stage at the Bing Bar, which has become my second home here at the fest (next to all the various theatres, of course) and played a concert of songs from his new album, Love is a Four Letter Word, including a wonderfully-titled track called You F***ing Did It, which he dedicated to the competition winner Daniel Hedlund who is a cancer survivor.

After Jason, Gary Clark Junior performed as part of the happy hour Bing Bar has been running. This guy is probably the reason there was very little snow that day – he and his band are scorching!

More music came from the movie I am  Not a Hipster , which one festival vet I spoke to described as a “typical Sundance film” – made with heart but has little commercial appeal. It’s been compared to Once in the sense that it has a lot of original music that is played by the lead actor Dominic Bogart as part of the story. It was a touching film. I also quite enjoyed the little comments it also made on the hipster scene, in this instance in San Diego, but relevant to other pockets of it too.

Finished off the night – yes, back at the Bing Bar – with a little Wiz Khalifa, and his hipster take on “snow-bunny chic.”