The Sundance Film Festival doesnât officially kick off until tomorrow, but the deal-making action is already heating up. Two more films were snapped up on Tuesday, with A&E picking up Alex Stapletonâs CORMANâS WORLD: EXPLOITS OF A HOLLYWOOD REBEL and HBO acquiring all domestic rights to James Marshâs PROJECT NIM, which will premiere at the…
It must be January. Having packed the Golden Globes, the AFI luncheon, the Broadcast Critics Film Association awards, and a zillion other galas and parties into one weekend, it’s now on to the next thing: Sundance, which kicks off on Thursday, meaning Hollywood has exactly three days to get over their hangovers, charge a few more North Face puffy jackets to the AmEx, and figure out how, exactly, to fit in three movies, four dinners, and two after-parties into one Saturday night.
Here come the judges! With the Sundance Film Festival set to kick off on Thursday, the Sundance Institute has announced the members of the five juries who will decide which films will be taking home not only happy memories from this year’s festival, but awards as well. Actor/director Tim Blake Nelson, a Sundance Institute alum,…
Mere days before the Sundance Film Festival kicks off, later this week, Sony Pictures Classics has snagged the North American, Latin American, Australian and New Zealand rights to Jeff Nicholsâ TAKE SHELTER, a psychological thriller starring Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain that will debut at Sundance in the U.S. Dramatic Competition. Deadline.com has the details…
“Sundance Channel HQ” Is TV And Digital Hub For All Of The Films, People And Happenings Of Independent Cinema’s Biggest Festival Sundance Channel sets up shop in Park City, Utah for the networkâs biggest ever exclusive, all-access, multimedia experience at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, taking place from January 20th â January 30th. Â For the…
Do we have the good people of Utah to thank for last year’s Sundance Film Festival reboot, in which director John Cooper and founder Robert Redford brushed away Hollywood commercialism like a light dusting of snow and returned the festival to its gritty indie roots, a reorientation they plan to continue this year? That may…
If you notice some Hollywood stars, directors and business types sporting white lapel ribbons at the Sundance Film Festival later this month, theyâll be wearing them âto register their opposition to the Iranian government’s treatment of acclaimed director Jafar Panahi (âOffsideâ) and fellow filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, who were sentenced last month to six years in…
Last year, the Sundance Film Festival made a point of returning to its indie roots, away from glitzy Hollywood fare and back to the riskier films on which it made its name. In keeping with this back-to-basics approach, the 2010 festival played on themes of renewal, rebirth, rebellion … “ReWork.” So what to make of…
Even if you didnât have a calendar, youâd still be able to tell that the Sundance Film Festival is about a week away from kickoff from the flurry of âHow to Survive Sundanceâ articles that appear in media outlets across the country in the days before the festival. These helpful articles offer advice on navigating…
The Sundance Film Festival is still more than a week away, but the festival-film deal-making has already begun. Roadside Attractions has snapped up the U.S. theatrical rights to Jim Kohlbergâs THE MUSIC NEVER STOPPED, which will premiere on Sundance’s opening night, Deadline.com reports. The film, based on a case-study essay by Dr. Oliver Sacks called…
If you think your home is chaotic and your family connections complex and emotionally fraught, consider the household of Olga Nenya, the subject of Julia Ivanovaâs FAMILY PORTRAIT IN BLACK AND WHITE, which will be featured in the 2011 Sundance Film Festivalâs World Cinema Documentary Competition. In a small Ukrainian Village, Nenya is single-handedly raising…
The Korengal Valley is one of the most dangerous areas in Afghanistan, so dangerous, in fact, that it’s known amongst soldiers as “the deadliest place on Earth.” It’s also the setting of RESTREPO, Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger’s Grand Jury Prize-winning documentary on the Second US Platoon that was stationed there for 14-months between May…
When I say that WINTER’S BONE has swept up since its debut in Park City, I’m not just tooting my own Sundance horn. This low-budget wonder has wowed audiences and critics alike in a big way, nabbing the Grand Jury Prize and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance, along with a recent Best Film…
Exciting news for anyone heading to the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and looking forward to the movies and events but dreading the Internet and cell-phone glitchiness the festival has also become known for. Premiering at this year’s festival: Free, reliable high-speed Wi-Fi. The Wall Street Journal reports: To improve the overall festival experience (and encourage…
Amid the short films set to debut at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival is on FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT REVISITED, directed and written by Beastie Boy Adam Yauch. Though information about the film is limited â âAfter the boys leave the party âŚâ is the only description currently available — there are a several reasons…
How did a couple of New Yorkers, Daniel Meisel and Amy Wendel, end up making a movie about a young, female third-generation Mexican-American high school athlete whose chances of breaking out of her small south Texas town are pinned on winning the state powerlifting championship? As part of its ongoing series of interviews with 2011…
Lou Reed has a reputation as a tough interview â though I honestly found him charming when I sat down with him a few years back â but in his new short film, RED SHIRLEY, which will have a special screening at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, the veteran rock star gets a taste of…
Something to seriously look forward to from the Sundance Film Festival, whether youâre headed to Park City or not, is the LIFE IN A DAY project, which promises to tell âthe story of a single day on Earth.â How, exactly, does it plan to do that? OK, hereâs the deal. A while back, the projectâs…
Enjoy a good David vs. Goliath story? Or perhaps a tale of a passionate person who lets his/her zeal turn from good to ugly? This year’s Sundance Film Festival has you covered. Both of the environmentally-themed films in the US Documentary Competition address activism and activists… warts and all.
Bill Haney’s THE LAST MOUNTAIN delves into an issue that’s become very hot among environmentalists over the past decade: mountaintop removal by coal mining companies. Focused on West Virginia’s Coal River Valley, the film explores the community’s fight against this practice, which damages both the natural environment, and the people living in the vicinity. Check out the trailer above.
After football star Pat Tillman was killed while serving in Afghanistan, he was dubbed a national hero was was posthumously bestowed with all the honors befitting that title. His family was informed that he died while charging the enemy in an insurgent attack, effectively saving the lives of the men in his unit. But it…
With more than 100 films set to screen at the Sundance Film Festival this year, festival-goers and watchers from afar can use all the help they can get in figuring out what’s headed their way. One highly useful tool is the series of interviews the website indieWIRE is rolling out in which directors whose films…
Interesting celebrity-sibling fact: Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsenâs younger sister, Elizabeth Olsen, is starring in not one but two films premiering at the Sundance Film Festival this month. In writer/director Sean Durkinâs MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE, the 21-year-old actress (a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts and the Atlantic Theater Company Acting School in…
Those of you who havenât had a bite of McDonaldâs food â a sip of shake, a single fry, a morsel of McRib â since Morgan Spurlockâs SUPER SIZE ME permanently altered your perspective will be interested to learn that the filmmaker/provocateur is returning to the Sundance Film Festival this year with THE GREATEST MOVIE…
Dee Rees, Director or PARIAH You might think a young filmmaker talented enough to have her first feature film selected to make its worldwide debut at the Sundance Film Festival would have it made in the shade. But, for Dee Rees, whose PARIAH, a coming-of-age story about a Brooklyn teenager juggling disparate identities in a…
Among the intriguing films in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival in January is Goran Hugo Olssonâs powerful-looking THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975. The film combines audio interviews with contemporary figures with 16mm archival footage documenting the Black Power movement in America, shot by Swedish journalists between 1967 and 1975 and…