Oregonian film critic Shawn Levy is catching as many movies as he can at the Sundance Film Festival. This week, he'll share his thoughts on what he sees.

I spent Sunday watching documentaries and came up with a great mix.

First up was "A Very British Gangster," a portrait of the crime lord of Manchester, England, a sadistic, saucy, cruel, sentimental and gay fellow named Dominic Noonan. It was longish but beautifully made.

Next up was "Zoo," a film by the Seattle team of Robinson Devor and Charles Mudede. It deals with a man in Washington state who died of internal bleeding after having sex with a horse. The film tries to present the "zoophile" community in an evenhanded fashion. (The jurors who live in my head are still debating this one.)

The third doc I saw was "My Kid Could Paint That," a mystery about whether a 4-year-old girl in upstate New York truly did paint the remarkable abstract canvasses that were being sold as her work for tens of thousands of dollars.

After my doc-athon, I did a little party-hopping. The best oddball juxtaposition of the night was the Discovery Films/Channel party, where I could swivel my head and see two embodiments of '60s Americana: astronaut Buzz Aldrin and Jeff "The Dude" Dowd, the inspiration for the Jeff Bridges character in "The Big Lebowski."

Tuesday, January 23, 2007
The Oregonian
http://www.oregonlive.com/living/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/living/1169510104224680.xml&coll=7