Sundance Cinema, Sans the Snow

Oh, don't we SoCalers like to chuckle when it comes to matters of January weather?

Not that we're not sympathetic, truly, to our friends and relatives in other parts of the continent; we are indeed. But it is the rare LA weather post that doesn't end with the current temperature or comment on how much sunshine we've gotten.

Yep. We're a bunch of good-natured gloaters, oftentimes.

But meteorological crowing ends for a lot of LAers in mere days, as a whole airportload of movie-makers wing toward the Sundance Film Festival. Nope, Park City won't be snowless. Yep, that's a-ok, because skiing and such.

If you prefer to consume indie filmmaking without a lot of ice and sleet, there's a way. Sundance is taking its 2013 shorts program on the road, with a February stop in Long Beach. That's 90 minutes of fizzy, lickety-splity cinematic treats, one after the other, some of the best of the best.

They made it into one of the most challenging of fests to get accepted by, after all. Oh, there are eight films, over the 90 minutes, so figure this: You're into the story, boom, fast, you get the villains, heroes, goals, resolution, or not, and then credits. Don't you dig fast filmmaking?

Though making a short isn't fast, we know, but the zippy experience of watching a fine short can be akin to a caffeine jolt. Thank you, Sundance, for sending some of your best short flicks our way, so those of us who don't want to brave the mountain snow -- or can't, because of life and work reasons -- can enjoy a little taste of indiedom's most famous cineparty.

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