ShoWest Diaries: Day Two - Hamlet 2, Kung Fu Panda, and Ang Lee

In which our intrepid reporter finally gets to Dine With the Stars, sees three movies in one day, and learns a hard lesson about the difference between a Pepsi and a Red Bull.

The first thing that happened after I arrived in Las Vegas on Saturday was daylight savings time, an hour of sleep wrested from me on top of the other hour I lost on the plane. On top of Vegas’s general discombobulating effect of the inside always seeming like night and the outside always seeming like day - or maybe it's vice versa - I was exhausted before the conference even got rolling. (Oh wah , poor diddle ting too tired for Vegas… somebody get me a walker and a Country Kitchen buffet.) But I stumbled out of bed on day two determined to persevere.

I wandered Bally’s Paris aimlessly trying to locate the promised 9 a.m. sneak peek of Monsters VS Aliens in 3D. When I finally did locate the obvious and clearly marked auditorium which I had wandered past several times already, the showing was completely full. So I missed the conference opening ceremony with an intro from Jeffery Katzenberg, and the chance to see a clip of Monsters VS Aliens 3D, but I did get a chance to go sit in the ShoWest Press Center, located in the Burgundy Room, and act hard like I both belonged there and intended to be there all along. 3D cartoons? Jefferey Katzenberg? Whatever. I’m here for the bagels.

Random Thing Overheard At ShoWest: “And so I told him, I am NOT obsessed with Matthew McConaughey. I just think he’s a really good actor.”

At 11 I ventured forth to try again, this time for the screening of Hamlet 2, the comedy darling of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. This time, I'm successful at both finding the theater and arriving early enough to get in. Hamlet 2’s star, Steve Coogan, is on hand to introduce the film, giving me my very first thrill of being thanked by a star for coming to their little show. Coogan is a British comedian better known in his home country than in the US, although I believe that may be a temporary condition. I first noticed him in the movie 24 Hour Party People, a fabtabulous film about the Brit music scene in the early '80s which, when I saw it in my 30s, only confirmed what I had long suspected during my adolescence — somewhere out there people had been having a hell of a lot more fun than me, and I should have snuck out of the house more.

Article Author: Kati Irons

I am a film and music librarian for a public library system. Like many of my kind, I suffer from RKS, or Random Knowledge Syndrome. These musings are the inevitable end result of that condition.

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