This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
"Life in a Day"Premieres*** 1/2The crowd-sourced documentary "Life in a Day" uses an idea so simple it shouldn't really work: Get everyone — and 80,000 people in 192 countries submitted footage — to tape something from their day on July 24, 2010, and upload it to YouTube. Director Kevin Macdonald and editor Joe Walker have synthesized this data dump into an elegant 90 minutes that shows how much we all have in common. We all get up, have breakfast, get ready for work, worry about our kids, think about death (and hasten it for the animals we eat), love, laugh, walk and talk. (Note to Utah readers: No, they didn't use any footage of our state holiday, Pioneer Day.) Some of us do extraordinary things, like skydive barefoot or leap from building to building parkour-style. With fascinating vignettes and sharp montages, the movie shows that humanity's differences are far outnumbered by our similarities.
"Life in a Day" screens again at: Friday, Jan. 28, at 8:30 a.m. at the Library Center Theatre, Park City; and Saturday, Jan. 29, at 9:30 p.m. at Peery's Egyptian Theatre, Ogden.
- Sean P. Means