REM

The classic hard-boiled detective tale takes a turn for the high tech in Dawid Marcinkowski's mind-bending interactive cinema experience. This 'choose your own adventure' neo-noir centres on a mystery that 'could baffle a philosopher, much less a simple detective.' Awakening in a macabre medical clinic specializing in experimental rejuvenation treatments, private investigator Ivan Johnson must negotiate three treacherous floors as he searches for a missing woman. A cavalcade of shadowy men and femme fatales prowl the low-lit rooms and death lurks around every corner. While breaking new ground for audience-driven cinema, Marcinkowski's film teems with familiar names (Norma Desmond is a clinic resident) and faces (blink and you might miss REM). With its heady m lange of pop culture allusions, satirical jabs, creepy imagery and pulsing music (including songs by Sonic Youth and Glass Candy), Sufferrosa creates a truly nightmarish environ for you to immerse yourself in. While Marcinkowski will be on hand to guide the audience through his complex tale, it will be left to the viewers to decide which strange tangent the narrative follows next. Twenty locations, 110 scenes, 25 characters and three alternate endings promise a host of dark possibilities...

Director Gary Hustwit has an impressive track record when it comes to exploring the world of design. His popular essay films Helvetica and Objectified profiled the mak ers of graphics and household objects, respectively, by combining smart interviews with stylish cinematography. His latest film completes a design trilogy and hits even closer to home by looking at cities. In Urbanized, we meet architects, politicians, city planners, activists and others who bring fresh approaches to urban living. The film presents invigorating new strategies for meeting the challenges faced by popula tions that are expanding (like Mumbai) and shrinking (like Detroit). City planning has inspired many great writers from Jane Jacobs to Rem Koolhaas, who are both covered in Urbanized but not as many filmmakers. Yet cinema has a great advantage, as Hustwit demonstrates by transporting us around the world to visually experience urban projects. In Santiago, the architect Alejandro Aravena tours new mod els for low-income housing. In Cape Town, landscape architect Tarna Klitzner explains how better walking paths in the Khayelitsha township helped reduce violence by forty per cent. In New Orleans, the artist Candy Chang solicits local input, placing stickers on abandoned buildings that read I Wish This Was… In Bogot , mayor Enrique Pe alosa implements a plan to put public transporta tion ahead of private automobiles. Describing his mission, he quotes the Colombian con stitution, which stipulates, All citizens are equal before the law. As Pe alosa pointedly adds, This is not just poetry. Over half of today s world population lives in cities; demographers expect that number to rise to seventy-five per cent by 2050. Urbanized looks at how governments implement decisions from the top down, but also how movements can rise from the bottom up. In Detroit, residents of a blighted neighbourhood clear vacant lots to plant vegetable gardens. In Stuttgart, protestors fight a plan to c

PHOENIX -- Thousands of people go missing every year and many are never found, which leaves families in a constant state of the unknown. But Arizona lawmakers are considering a bill that would change the way police approach missing and unidentified persons cases. At 23 years old, Molly Dattilo had her whole life ahead of her. Her cousin, Amy Dattilo told us, 'She excelled in school. She excelled in sports. She was a long-distance runner.' Six weeks after Molly moved to Indianapolis, she vanished. As Amy rem

Indie songstress Ingrid Michaelson performs a stunning rendition of R.E.M.'s 'Nightswimming' at the Sundance Film Festival's ASCAP Music Cafe on Friday, Jan. 27.