Be sure to check out our new studio albums including exclusive photos with Directors and Artists from HOMEWORK, WIN WIN, ANIMALS DISTRACT ME, and the Sundance Channel original BRICK CITY. Be sure to satisfy all your festival needs with the latest buzz, top stories, and celebrity interviews from Sundance Channelâs coverage of the 2011 Sundance…
Still from US Dramatic Competition film ANOTHER HAPPY DAY.
I met costume designer Stacey Battat way back when she was still working for Marc Jacobs in their Mercer Street store, which probably explains her close relationship to Sofia Coppola. Flash-forward to today, she was most recently the costume designer for Sofia’s newest film, Somewhere, as well as the recent Gwyneth Paltrow musical vehicle, COUNTRY STRONG.
Filmmakers are elated to be at Sundance. Want to see more? Check out clips from the festival here. Be sure to satisfy all your festival needs with the latest buzz, top stories, and celebrity interviews from Sundance Channelâs coverage of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
Forest Whitaker and Newark Mayor Cory Booker (Photo Credit: Michael Buckner/Getty Images). For more images from this party, check out the photo gallery.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker was âin the houseâ on Sunday, which is how he was introduced at a screening of the documentary series BRICK CITY, whose second season premieres next Sunday on Sundance Channel.
Wearing jeans, hiking shoes, and a black zipper-neck sweater, Booker was in non-politician mode as he spoke with the showâs executive producer Forest Whittaker, and co-directors Marc Levin and Mark Benjamin in front of a small audience gathered at the Bing Bar on Main Street. Also in the house: Isabella Rossellini and Rosie OâDonnell, who before the screening was posing with a small rescue dog wrapped up in a snow-suit. âItâs going to be a photo spread, me and my puppy,â OâDonnell joked.
This season of BRICK CITY, which feels like a docu-version of The Wire, focuses more singularly on Booker as he fights for re-election, and faces severe budget-cuts, a rising crime rate, and a faith-losing constituency.
The year âwas a battle for him,â Benjamin said of Booker. âBecause every incumbent in America is suffering a lot of pushback because of government and dwindling funds and resources for everything… Itâs been a tough year for him.â
By Sunday morning, with the snow taking a break and the sun shining, the deal-making aspect of Sundance finally kicked into high gear. Woohoo!
Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions announced that theyâd closed a deal for MARGIN CALL, the Kevin Spacey financial thriller that excited early interest from buyers and is considered one of the more broad-reaching films here.
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,…
Lizzie Olsen at Sundance Channel HQ. A week ago, Elizabeth âLizzieâ Olsen was just another 21-year-old senior at NYU who happened to have two very famous half-sisters: the TV-movie-fashion-and-overall-marketing phenomenon known as Mary Kate and Ashley. This week, thanks to the Sundance Film Festival, where sheâs starring in two much-buzzed about films (MARTHA MARCY MAY…
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…
Morgan Spurlock (Photo by Jeff Vespa/WireImage).
There arenât many people who can figure out how to make a documentary featuring both Noam Chomsky and Ben Silverman, but Morgan Spurlock is one of them. In his new film, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, which premiered on Saturday afternoon, having already picked up distribution from Sony Pictures Classics, Spurlock sits down with both the cognitive scientist and bad boy former TV exec to talk about branding.
The film is a documentary-within-a-documentary experiment in which Spurlock sets out to make a movie about our marketing and advertising-addled culture, and yet have that culture (i.e., sponsors) pay for it.
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…
With everyone fussing about who the new, fresh faces are at Sundance, not much has been said about one of the older, less fresh faces who is nonetheless emerging as one of the festivalâs early delights: Brendan Gleeson, the 56-year-old Irish actor who was once told by a Hollywood agent that he was “too old…
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…
Who knew that a chimp could get in the middle of a human love triangle? And enjoy the pleasures of marijuana? 2008 Sundance Grand Jury (and 2009 Oscar) winner Director James Marsh, evidently, whose new documentary, PROJECT NIM, is about the chimpanzee (Nim), who in the 1970âs was taken from his mother and sent to…
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…