David O. Russell, who began his movie career as a Sundance Film Festival ticket taker in 1991, woke up today to find that his film THE FIGHTER had nabbed seven Academy Award nominations, including best picture and, for him, best director. It was a triumph for the filmmaker, who has experienced career ups and downs…
Despite an all-star cast featuring Al Pacino, Channing Tatum, Ray Liotta, Juliette Binoche and Katie Holmes and solid advance buzz, Dito Montielâs THE SON OF NO ONE has been dubbed the 2011 Sundance Film Festivalâs âfirst bomb.â At a screening for press and industry members on Monday, the crime drama, which is scheduled to close…
As you prowl around looking for Sundance Film Festival news, in between dashes from screening to screening in Park City or from blog to blog on your couch, permit us to point you to some of the nifty festival coverage on our sibling site AMC. AMC News will be blogging from the festival and will…
More deals closed Monday at the Sundance Film Festival. Among them: Andrew Rossiâs PAGE ONE: A YEAR INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES: Magnolia Pictures and Participant Media have partnered to purchase the U.S. rights to the film, a documentary that takes viewers behind the scenes at the venerable broadsheet, with a theatrical release planned for this…
Fox Searchlight Pictures has snapped up two Sundance Film Festival films in rapid succession. On Sunday night, Fox Searchlight presidents Stephen Gilula and Nancy Utley announced that the company had acquired âmost worldwide rightsâ to first-time filmmaker Gavin Wiesenâs HOMEWORK, a coming-of-age story starring Freddie Highmore, Emma Roberts, Michael Angarano, Elizabeth Reaser, Rita Wilson, Sam…
“I was living life as a man trapped in a female shell,” Chaz Bono says in Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey’s documentary chronicling his gender reassignment, BECOMING CHAZ, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Sunday. “Now for the first time I’m living in my body.” Bono, who was greeted by a standing ovation…
Kevin Smithâs RED STATE, which opened at the Sundance Film Festival on Sunday night amidst protests by the inflammatory Christian fundamentalist group that inspired it (and counter-protests, in which Smith himself participated), is âcleverly contrarian enough to get a rise out of almost any audience,â Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy writes in one of the…
Another Sundance Film Festival movie getting good buzz: John Michael McDonaghâs Irish-inflected buddy-cop film THE GUARD, starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle, which premiered Thursday night as part of the festivalâs World Cinema Dramatic Competition. Some critical responses: âIt’s McDonagh’s wicked one-liners – and the skillful timing of Gleeson and Cheadle – that gives this…
With his MY IDIOT BROTHER, Jesse Peretz seeks to follow in the delicate footsteps of successful dramatic-comedy hybrids from past Sundance Film Festivals like LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE and “(500) DAYS OF SUMMER,” the Los Angeles Times notes. Paul Rudd plays the film’s bearded, Croc-wearing, granola-eating, idealistic title character, who works his way through the households…
Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions announced Sunday that, following all-night negotiations, they had teamed up to acquire the domestic distribution rights to J.C. Chandorâs financial-industry thriller MARGIN CALL. The film, which officially debuts at the Sundance Film Festival on Tuesday, Jan. 25, but was screened for the press and members of the industry on Friday morning,…
James Francoâs installation at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, THREEâS COMPANY: THE DRAMA, sounds like something you have to experience firsthand to fully appreciate. In it, he seeks to examine the classic â70s sitcom, featuring those three kooky roomies Chrissy, Janet and Jack, by, according to the official description, âbreaking out individual elements of narrative,…
In what Entertainment Weekly is calling âthe first big saleâ at the Sundance Film Festival, Drake Doremusâs LIKE CRAZY got snatched up by Paramount Pictures on Saturday night following âan all-night bidding session.â The film, a long-distance love story starring Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones, from the director who brought the very different film DOUCHEBAG…
With all the attention paid to the filmmakers, actors, and other Sundance Film Festival movers and shakers, wonât anyone take a moment to consider the unsung heroes of this and other film festivals, the screeners? The Los Angeles Times has. The paper notes that these dedicated workers sign up to watch hundreds of films of…
What prompted Harry Belafonte to throw his support behind a documentary about his life and the work he and others did to advance civil rights in the United States and around the world? At first, the 83-year-old singing/acting/activist icon wasnât sure he was up for it. “It looked like self-indulgence,” he told Reuters. But as…
And one more thing about Elizabeth Olsen, the 21-year-old younger sister of famous twins Mary-Kate and Ashley who stars in two buzzed-about films at this yearâs Sundance Film Festival, the aforementioned (see previous post) MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE and the horror film SILENT HOUSE: Olsen, who goes by the nickname Lizzie and is being hailed…
Hereâs a curious (vaguely creepy) detail about the making of MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE, directed by Sean Durkin and starring Elizabeth Olsen (in a breakout role — the New York Post is calling her “the new supernova in the Sundance galaxy”) as a girl who escapes from a cult in the Catskills and struggles to…
Tom McCarthy’s WIN WIN, starring Paul Giamatti as a small-time New Jersey lawyer and high school wrestling coach who takes over guardianship of one of his elderly clients, is shaping up to be an early Sundance Film Festival favorite. Marshall Fine, writing in the Huffington Post, calls the film âtouchingly funnyâ and says it features…
So whatâs with the continued disparity between the proportion of women directors represented at the Sundance Film Festival (27 of the 117 features screening at the festival this year were directed by women) and the number of women making big films in Hollywood (only three of 2010âs 100 top-grossing were made by women)? Brooks Barnes…
The Sundance Film Festival is many things to many people. And for some actors and filmmakers, the Los Angeles Times notes, itâs the place they go to reinvent themselves. Because so many show business eyes are focused on so few films, Sundance also can facilitate rĂ©sumĂ© rewrites. As the received wisdom goes, an appearance in…
At the very beginning, a hint of the end. As the Sundance Film Festival gets rolling, a trailer for the festivalâs closing night film, Dito Montielâs THE SON OF NO ONE, has just been released. The picture stars Channing Tatum and Tracy Morgan as two men who got away with murder as young boys and…
If the flurry of pre-Sundance Film Festival acquisition deals has made you wonder if Hollywood was back in an indie-film shopping mood after the recession, the New York Timesâ Brooks Barnes reports that, yes, wallets are open, but theyâre a little less fat. Among other factors, the strong box-office performance of specialty films over the…
Morgan Spurlockâs THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD has sold. On Thursday, Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions announced that it had snapped up the U.S. and Canadian rights to the documentary, which is set to have its world premiere Saturday at the Sundance Film Festival, the Hollywood Reporter reports. The film, in which the SUPER SIZE ME…
It honestly hadn’t occurred to us to be concerned that Robert Redford might retire and hand over the Sundance Film Festival reins anytime soon, but now we really don’t have to worry about it. In response to a reporter’s inquiry about retirement plans at the opening press conference for the 2011 Sundance Film Festival on…
For those of us who are stuck at home during the Sundance Film Festival once again this year, gazing longingly at the films and the fun from afar, Flavorwire has come up with a list of five ways to enjoy the festival from the comfort of our own couches. Ideas include watching this year’s movies…