The Movie Cricket: All about flicks by Sean P. Means
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Groth steps up
The Lone Ranger had Tonto, Batman had Robin, Johnny Carson had Ed McMahon - and John Cooper has Trevor Groth.
Cooper, installed in March as director of the Sundance Film Festival, has chosen Groth (pictured above, on the red carpet at CineVegas) to fill Cooper's old job as the festival's director of programming.
Cooper and Groth essentially have grown up together in the Sundance hierarchy. Cooper has been with the institute for 20 years, while Groth has been on the programming staff for 16 - and volunteered for the Filmmakers' Labs before that.
Groth, a Salt Lake City native, has been a senior programmer since 2003, one of the select few who picks both narrative and documentary films for the festival. He's also led the festival's short-film selection.
Groth also is the artistic director of Cinevegas, an indie film festival held every June in Las Vegas.
Cooper and Groth lead a strong team of programmers: Caroline Libresco, David Courier, Shari Frilot and John Nein - as well as shorts programmers Jon Korn, Todd Luoto, Shane Smith, Hebe Tabachnik and Kimberly Yutani.
Cooper and Groth will make one of their first public appearances together next week at the Cannes Film Festival. They will be the subject of a panel discussion on Sunday, May 17, at the American Pavilion at Cannes.
More audiences soon may see "Tha Carter," a documentary about rapper Lil Wayne - one that premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival - now that a judge has denied a preliminary injunction to stop the film's producers from distributing it.
The colorfully written but legally scant lawsuit claimed that Wayne (a k a Dwayne Michael Carter Jr.) was supposed to have final cut over the movie - particularly regarding scenes "that might depict or describe any of [Lil Wayne]'s actions or activities as criminal in nature or that might have any adverse affect on [Lil Wayne]'s pending criminal trials."
The scenes Wayne's people objected to was video proof of the rapper's prediliction for - some would say addiction to - prescription cough syrup, something he sometimes mentions in his rap.
The Tribeca Film Festival launches Wednesday night in New York City, with the premiere of Woody Allen's latest, "Whatever Works."
With the opening of Tribeca comes the annual attempt to determine whether the eight-year-old event is measuring up to its older rival, the Sundance Film Festival.
Certainly, as this story in The Hollywood Reporter reports, Tribeca pulled a couple of notable titles from obscurity last year - "Man on Wire," which won the Oscar for best documentary, and the acclaimed Swedish vampire flick "Let the Right One In."
But "Man on Wire" played Sundance first last year, and "Let the Right One In" had its premiere elsewhere. So what was Tribeca's contribution? The old "if you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere" cachet of being noticed by the New York media.
As director Ian Olds, whose got a documentary in competition at Tribeca, says:
"More and more, it has this reputation for being a great starting place for American films. Before, there was Sundance. Now people are paying more attention to Tribeca."
Of course a director who got his movie into Tribeca, but not Sundance, would say that.
The game-changer this year, though, is the arrival of Sundance's former director, Geoffrey Gilmore, to a top spot at Tribeca's parent company. Gilmore, according to Tom Bernard, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, "can shape and bring a more distinct personality to the festival."
Former Sundance Film Festival director Geoffrey Gilmore is settling into his new gig as chief creative officer at Tribeca Enterprises - parent company of the Tribeca Film Festival.
He delivered a welcoming message - part introduction, part state-of-the-union address - on the Tribeca web site, in which he summarizes where the independent-film world has been and where it might be going.
Gilmore sums up how the nation's economic downturn has affected indie film (less equity capital floating around to finance films), as well as the impact of technology, global reach and the changing role of film festivals.
We live in an age where information is overwhelming, but knowledge is scarce. The generation who now sees films knows far more about cinema, about global filmmaking and independent art and aesthetics than my generation did in the '70s. But I daresay that it cares about it a lot less. Is this true? Is it a condemnation or a statement of fact?
But Gilmore remains optimistic: "The last century of filmmaking has reached a conclusion. The next is soaring within the reach and aspiration of a new generation of artists and filmmakers."
Just as one chair is refilled at Robert Redford's Sundance Institute, another goes empty: Ken Brecher, Sundance's executive director, resigned on Thursday - effective April 30.
Redford recruited Brecher - who had experience as a foundation president, museum director and artistic director for theater - in 1996 to shepherd the non-profit arts organization.
Among Brecher's accomplishments: Expanding the filmmakers' labs to the Middle East, establishing the Sundance Documentary Fund, attracting major donations from foundations, and encouraging growth of the festival's documentary, international and New Frontier programs.
Brecher will stay on for a two-year stint as "strategic advisor," according to a Sundance press release issued late Thursday. A search for Brecher's replacement is underway.
This is the second high-level departure from Sundance this year. In February, festival director Geoffrey Gilmore quit for a job at Tribeca Enterprises, the parent company of the Tribeca Film Festival. John Cooper, the Sundance festival's programming director, was promoted to Gilmore's old job.
If you didn't like "The Carter," the documentary about rapper Lil Wayne that premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival, you're not alone.
Lil Wayne didn't like it either, according to Radar Online, and he's suing the producers - including Quincy Jones III, son of music legend Quincy Jones, and the company Digerati Holdings.
The lawsuit claims that Lil Wayne (a k a Dwayne Michael Carter Jr.) was supposed to have final cut over the movie - particularly regarding scenes "that might depict or describe any of [Lil Wayne]'s actions or activities as criminal in nature or that might have any adverse affect on [Lil Wayne]'s pending criminal trials."
That didn't happen, the lawsuit claims, and the cut that played at Sundance showed footage - as The Los Angeles Times' Chris Lee reported - of Lil Wayne's "addiction to prescription cough syrup."
The lawsuit itself (and Radar Online has the document for your perusal) has enough bombast and name-dropping to be a rap song itself. Note this opening paragraph:
"Corporate greed and fraud reached its zenith in 2008. Bernard Madoff stole $56 billion dollars from unsuspecting victims. A prominent attorney pretended to be someone else and made off with $380 million dollars. Apparently not content to sit on the sidelines and see these brazen hustlers make off with all of the money, Digerati Holdings, LLC decided it wanted to participate in its own massive con game."
If there's one aspect of the Sundance Film Festival that never gets enough attention, it's the short film program.
Every year, some of the most creative works at Sundance come in packages shorter than 40 minutes. Some come and go in a minute or two.
They have been springboards for filmmakers who went onto feature glory: Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, Todd Field, Spike Jonze and Jason Reitman - just to name a few.
On Saturday night, the Sundance Institute celebrates the short film with a showcase of nine films - along with a panel discussion with the directors of all nine films, plus Sundance programmers Trevor Groth and Todd Luoto.
Here are the films:
"Short Term 12," by Destin Daniel Cretton, this year's Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking winner, about life in a residential facility for at-risk teens.
An untitled work by Jesse Epstein, whose documentary short "Wet Dreams and False Images" won the Sundance Online Film Festival Jury Award in 2003.
"Pie Fight '69," directed by Sam Green, a SFF 2001 documentary about an infamous pie-fighting incident at the 1969 San Francisco Film Festival.
An untitled new film by Jared Hess, director of "Napoleon Dynamite" and the pride of Brigham Young University.
"The Youth in Us," a 2005 SFF love story by actor-turned-director Joshua Leonard ("The Blair Witch Project," "Humpday").
"Sikumi (On the Ice)," a SFF 2008 short by Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, about an Inuit hunter who witnesses a murder on the ice; the first movie ever made in the Inupiaq language.
"575 Castro St.," a documentary by Jenni Olson that played this year's festival, shot on the set of "Milk" and employing the actual tape Harvey Milk recorded "in the event of my death by assassination."
"Little Canyon," an autobiographical short drama (and SFF '09 entry) by Olivia Silver, about a father moving his family and half the household - without Mom.
"Foxy & The Weight of The World," a 2004 short by David & Nathan Zellner (whose feature "Goliath" played SFF '08), about a dog learning the cruel realities of life.
Saturday's program at the Rose Wagner Cente for the Performing Arts, 138 W. 300 South, Salt Lake City, splits the shorts into two programs - one at 5 p.m., the other at 8 p.m. - with a panel discussion in between at 6:30 p.m. All the programs are free to the public. Check it out.
Shake-ups on the staffs of some of America's major film festivals has launched a flurry of introspection and speculation among the movie-industry media.
In The Los Angeles Times, reporter John Horn surveys the landscape of hires and departures - Peter Scarlet leaving the Tribeca Film Festival, Sundance's Geoffrey Gilmore headed to Tribeca's parent company, John Cooper being promoted to Sundance's top spot, Rebecca Yeldham taking over the LA Film Festival, and so on - to point out the volatility of the festival world, and how important it is for a festival to have the right person at the top.
One of the big question marks, Horn reports, is how Sundance - now the granddaddy among U.S. festivals - will adapt to changing times, and with Cooper ascending to Gilmore's old job.
"The times might be calling for a new strand of programming," Cooper told Horn. "People want to see something - the fulfillment of a dream - in Sundance, which is a lot of pressure. You're not going to make everybody happy, but you have to stay close to our mission."
Meanwhile, Variety's Dade Hayes engages in some idle speculation - suggesting "one major potential shift" of moving the Tribeca Film Festival from its April-May slot to October or November.
The move - which Tribeca's Jane Rosenthal denies is happening - would put Tribeca in direct competition with the tonier New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center (which had a recent staff cut). It would also make Tribeca an important stop on the fall Oscar-season calendar, picking up titles that don't play the Toronto International Film Festival in September, and possibly steal some of Sundance's thunder.
For all the talk about what movies get picked up for distribution at the Sundance Film Festival, sometimes the real fun is seeing what gets left behind - and who comes along later to pick over the scraps.
Cherien Dabis' cross-cultural drama "Amreeka," about a Palestinian mother and son who try to make a new life in middle America, has been picked up by National Geographic Entertainment (which last year released the concert doc "U2 3D").
Senator Entertainment - which made a splash at the festival when it bought Antoine Fuqua's cop drama "Brooklyn's Finest" - has secured distribution rights to "The Greatest," Shana Feste's weepie starring Pierce Brosnan, Susan Sarandon and the festival's breakout actress, Carey Mulligan (pictured at right).
Zeitgeist Filmshas picked up "Afghan Star," the documentary that won both the World Cinema Documentary Audience Award and the Directing Prize for Havana Marking. The movie follows the journey - as Ryan Seacrest would say - of four contestants in Afghanistan's version of "American Idol," which is also the first real-time experiment in democracy the war-torn nation has ever had. (By the way, if anyone has seen Daoud Sidiqi, the emcee of the Afghani TV show, please let the folks at Zeitgeist know - just after appearing in Park City with the film, he apparently defected.)
In the future, every film festival in the world will be run by a Sundance veteran.
This week, Sundance programming director John Cooper was bumped upstairs to the top spot - replacing Geoffrey Gilmore, who left for a job with the Tribeca Film Festival's parent company. And senior programmer Trevor Groth moonlights as the artistic director of CineVegas, Sin City's super-cool summer film fest.
Now comes word that Rebecca Yeldham, who was a senior programmer at Sundance from 1997 to 2001 (where she once admonished the Cricket to turn off his cell phone when a screening was about to start), has been picked to be director of the Los Angeles Film Festival, which takes place every June.
Yeldham is an independent film producer whose recent credits include "The Motorcycle Diaries" and "The Kite Runner." Before that, she ran U.S. production for Britain's FilmFour.
Yeldham replaces Rich Raddon, who resigned last November under fire because he donated (at the urging of the leaders of the LDS Church, of which he is a member) $1,500 to support California's gay-marriage ban, Prop. 8.
The Sundance Film Festival didn't have to go far to replace its director, Geoffrey Gilmore.
John Cooper, the festival's programming director since 2003, will take over the big chair starting today.
Cooper has worked his way up through the ranks since joining Sundance in 1989, when he worked as a print runner - driving film prints to theaters in the back of a Honda Civic.
Cooper is credited with expanding the festival's New Frontier on Main program, boosting the festival's web site, and taking a lead role in organizing the institute's Art House Project, which connects regional audiences (through 18 theaters, including the Broadway and Tower in Salt Lake City) with Sundance filmmakers.
And this year Cooper was more visible at the festival than ever before. He was one of the interview subjects in the festival's trailers (including a funny remembrance of when the festival scheduled a screening of "The Big Lebowski" and forgot to get the print), and he even conducted the only Q-and-A with Vogue editor Anna Wintour after a screening of "The September Issue."
Gilmore announced last month that he would be leaving Sundance after 19 years as programming director and (later) director, to take a job with Tribeca Enterprises - the parent company of the Tribeca Film Festival.
One of the most emotional movies at this year's Sundance Film Festival was "The Cove," Louie Psihoyos' heist flick/expose of a secret dolphin slaughter in a Japanese town.
The most emotional moment is toward the end, when dolphin trainer-turned-activist Ric O'Barry straps a TV to his chest and walks into an International Whaling Commission meeting, showing the world footage of the slaughter.
At Sundance's closing-night awards ceremony, where "The Cove" won the Audience Award, O'Barry embarrassed one of Sundance's bigger sponsors - the Japanese broadcaster NHK - by urging them to play the movie and end Japan's media blackout of the topic.
Here, as the late Paul Harvey would have said, is the rest of the story: According to the Miami New Times, O'Barry is being sued by a Dominican ocean park that was buying dolphins from the Japanese town. The lawsuits claim O'Barry interfered with the park's dolphin purchase and defamed the park's general manager.
O'Barry's lawyer, Deanna K. Shullman, calls the lawsuits an effort to silence her client. "The only way he interfered was through pure political speech," she told the Miami New Times.
Jeff Dowd lives and dies for independent film. In his long career as movie producer, producer's rep and all-around film supporter, Dowd has befriended many directors and championed their films. (He was so influential to the Coen brothers in the early days that he inspired Jeff Bridges' character "The Dude" in "The Big Lebowski.")
So when Dowd gets passionate about something regarding film, it's wise to listen.
Dowd, in a recent interview with the Cricket (printed in today's Culture Vulture column in the ink-and-paper Salt Lake Tribune), made the argument that the Sundance Film Festival should do one simple thing to improve the films that play there: Make the submission deadline earlier.
The current schedule - which has filmmakers submit their films by late September, which means they don't find out if they're in the festival until Thanksgiving weekend - doesn't give filmmakers enough time in post-production, or time for test screenings to tweak the final cut.
"The entire timeline is out of sync with the raison d'etre of the Sundance Institute," Dowd says.
For the first time in nearly two decades, the Sundance Film Festival will have to go on without its most vocal crusader - festival director Geoffrey Gilmore.
Gilmore (pictured) will leave Sundance at the end of the month to take a job in New York as chief creative officer to Tribeca Enterprises, the parent company of the Tribeca Film Festival.
The Cricket isn't sure what Tribeca will be like with Gilmore in the mix - though many bloggers, including Jeffrey Wells and David Poland, speculate on this.
It seems pretty clear, though, that whoever replaces Gilmore at Sundance (if Robert Redford & Co. do replace him - they could decide to shuffle Gilmore's duties around and go without a full-blown director) could learn a few lessons from the festival's departing leader:
Lesson No. 1: It's the films, stupid - Sundance gets a bad rap sometimes for the celebrity quotient, but Gilmore frequently bucked that tide. In the last decade, two of the festival's opening-night movies were documentaries ("Riding Giants" and "Chicago 10"), and this year's was a stop-motion animated tale whose most recognizable voice actors - Toni Collette and Philip Seymour Hoffman - were no-shows in Park City.
Lesson No. 2: You'll never walk alone - Gilmore's team of programmers is the best in the business - and all of them will likely stay around. (Did anyone else notice that Gilmore's right-hand man, programming director John Cooper, was more front-and-center this year? Coincidence?)
Lesson No. 3: Keep your friends close and the "gifting lounges" closer - Festival organizers did something very smart this year: Instead of fighting the "ambush marketers" who give swag to celebrities, they hired one of the "gifting lounge" creators to do the same thing for Sundance's official sponsors. This move made the sponsors happy (since the celebs were photographed with their products, not somebody else's) and quieted the Turkish-bazaar aspect of Park City's Main Street substantially.
Lesson No. 4: Copy editors are your friends - Gilmore, God love him, had one weakness as a festival director: His descriptions of movies in the Sundance film guide often had the opaque wordiness of an art-gallery pamphlet. (In past years, the Tribune published a "Sundance-to-English" translation guide - noting that a phrase like "eschews traditional narrative" actually meant "the movie's ending comes somewhere in the middle.") An effort toward simpler prose would be welcomed by filmgoers everywhere.
On the same day the Sundance Film Festival's Geoffrey Gilmore announced he was New York-bound, a different Sundance-Big Apple connection unraveled a bit.
Sundance spokeswoman Brooks Addicott toldThe New York Post's Lou Lumenick that the festival's 10-day mini-fest at the Brooklyn Academy of Music - "Sundance at BAM," launched in 2006 - would "take a break" this year.
Don't blame the down economy, Addicott said, but the strain the program puts on Sundance's programmers. Instead, a smaller event - featuring New York filmmakers whose works premiered in Park City in January - is being contemplated at BAM in June.
After 19 years of having Robert Redford for a boss, Geoffrey Gilmore is going to work for Robert DeNiro.
Gilmore, the director of the Sundance Film Festival, is leaving Redford's organization to become chief creative officer for Tribeca Enterprises - the parent company of the DeNiro-founded Tribeca Film Festival - officials at both organizations announced Tuesday.
Gilmore's last day at Sundance is Feb. 28.
"I believe that Tribeca Enterprises is well positioned to develop a film organization that can create a new paradigm for the future," Gilmore said in a statement issued by Tribeca.
Tribeca co-founder Jane Rosenthal called Gilmore "one of the most accomplished creative forces in our industry," adding that Gilmore's experience will help Tribeca with its global strategy -- including development of a Tribeca-sponsored film festival in Doha, Qatar.
In his statement, Gilmore said he was grateful to Redford for a "wonderful 19 years."
Redford made a statement expressing his "personal fondness" for Gilmore and "a deep respect for his encyclopedic knowledge of and total commitment to independent film."
"Our festival's 25th anniversary has been a time of candid reflection," Redford said. "I support completely his decision. The timing is right to move on. We wish Geoff only the best as he embarks on the next phases of his life and career."
The Cricket stormed through four U.S. Dramatic competition entries on Sunday - including the best movie he's seen so far.
That is "The Greatest," writer-director Shana Feste's heartfelt drama about parents (Pierce Brosnan, Susan Sarandon) dealing their son's death - and the news that he had a girlfriend (Carey Mulligan) who's now pregnant. The movie is a touching examination of grief, and a tender love story.
Also on today's viewing: The gritty drama "Big Fan," starring Patton Oswalt as a New York Giants obsessive; the sweet-and-spicy romantic comedy "Arlen Faber," starring Jeff Daniels as a misanthropic author; and the so-so science-fiction existential tale "Cold Souls," starring Paul Giamatti as Paul Giamatti. (Also check out the review of "Sin Nombre," posted today.)
(Photo: "The Greatest" writer-director Shana Feste, with cast members Pierce Brosnan, Susan Sarandon and Carey Mulligan.)
On Saturday, the third day of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, the Cricket encountered glossy documentaries in the daytime and celebrity-filled parties at night.
The movies the Cricket saw and reviewed were "Art & Copy," Doug Pray's too-kind appreciation of the advertising industry's most talented people, and "The September Issue," R.J. Cutler's insider look at Vogue magazine and its fashion-icon editor Anna Wintour (who avoided a Q&A with the festival audience, taking questions instead from programming director John Cooper).
(More reviews posted today: The heartbreaking documentary "Over the Hills and Far Away," about parents going on an unlikely quest to help their autistic son; Tom DiCillo's eye-opening documentary on The Doors, "When You're Strange"; and the much-hyped but still delightful semi-documentary "Paper Heart.")
At night, the Cricket managed to get himself into two very crowded parties with high celebrity quotients - but he had more fun having a beer with two sound designers from Chico, Calif., who he met in the frozen line outside one of the parties. (More on this in Tuesday's Culture Vulture column.)
The first full day of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival meant lots of screenings, plenty of parties, and enough glitz to belie the fears that the recession would put a damper on the celebrity-studded festivities.
Two interesting changes the Cricket noticed Friday: The seats in the Racquet Club Theatre have been reconfigured without center aisles, which means better sightlines but more having to move to let someone get past; and the no-parking rule on Main Street seemed to lighten traffic immensely.
The Cricket saw and reviewed three movies in the U.S. Dramatic competition Friday: Lynn Shelton's male-bonding comedy "Humpday," Emily Abt's racially charged high-school drama "Toe to Toe," and Lee Daniels' harrowing but heart-touching urban drama "Push: Based on a Novel by Sapphire."
Also look for reviews of these movies: The Inuit drama "Before Tomorrow," Kevin Bacon's riveting performance as a Marine in "Taking Chance," and the documentary examination of New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, "Reporter."
The Sundance Film Festival is marking its 25th anniversary - or, at least, the 25th year that Robert Redford's Sundance Institute has been running things - and the signs are everywhere.
The posters and graphics emphasize the years from 1985 to 2009. The festival trailer features interviews with past Sundance attendees - including John Waters, Morgan Spurlock, Lili Taylor, Sherman Alexie and Steven Soderbergh - talking about their Sundance memories.
At the opening-night party at Park City's Legacy Lodge, one of the favorite activities was to write down one's favorite Sundance memor, which would then be put up on a plywood kiosk for all to read.
Even Redford seems to be getting a little tired of the nostalgia thing.
"It seems like we've been celebrating our 25th anniversary for three years," he said at Thursday's opening-night screening.
No worries. On Friday, as the new movies start unspooling in Park City, nostalgia takes a back seat to checking out the next thing.
(For the Cricket's review of the opening-night film, "Mary and Max," go here.)
With the announcement this afternoon of the competition slate of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, it's time again for the Salt Lake Tribune's Sundance blog to get you prepared for the big event.
Check out the blog, and check out the Tribune's Sundance page at 2 p.m. Mountain time for the competition slate.
Pre-registration is now open for Utah residents to buy individual "locals only" tickets to the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.
The pre-registration period runs through next Wednesday, Dec. 10.
Those who pre-register will be assigned their timeslots for purchasing tickets on Dec. 15. The purchase dates are Jan. 3 and 4, before the national ticket sales start.
The Sundance Film Festival's director, Geoffrey Gilmore, is a busy man these days.
Gilmore (pictured here with his boss, Robert Redford) just locked down the 2009 festival's lineup (which will be announced Wednesday and Thursday), and tonight he is to receive the American Cinematheque's first Sydney Pollack Award.
The award, according to Anne Thompson's story in Daily Variety, goes to "someone who has been of critical importance and continuing influence in nonprofit film exhibition, film preservation and/or independent film promotion and distribution - people whose work Sydney supported and found to be so valuable, who are not often recognized for their efforts."
It's an appropriate honor, since Pollack was a founding board member of the Sundance Institute - and is the guy who told organizers of the fledgling Utah/U.S. Film Festival (which later morphed into the Sundance Film Festival) that they should move the event from Salt Lake City in September to Park City in January.
For independent filmmakers around the world, Thanksgiving week is the week of holding your breath.
Each one is waiting for the phone call confirming his or her film has made the slate of the Sundance Film Festival.
A couple of filmmakers have already received that call for the 2009 Sundance Film Festival - and were so excited that they broke festival rules and trumpeted the news on the Internet.
The blog for the movie "Stingray Sam" - which appears to be a space-cowboy musical by The Billy Nayer Show, the makers of 2001 Sundance entry "The American Astronaut" - announces that the movie will have its world premiere in Sundance '09's New Frontier program.
The movie blogs FilmDrunk and Quiet Earth both have the scoop that "Black Dynamite," an homage/parody of '70s blaxploitation movies starring Michael Jai White (who appeared in "The Dark Knight"), has made it into Sundance.
If you didn't get your passes for the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, Tuesday's the day to spring into action.
Pre-registration for individual ticket sales for Sundance '09 starts Tuesday. Go here to get your name on the list.
Pre-registration for Utahns to get "locals only" tickets starts Dec. 2.
The festival begins Jan. 15 in Park City - and no, it's not moving to Taos, N.Mex., no matter how what some protesters want the festival to leave Utah.
The 2009 Sundance Film Festival will open with a feat of clay.
The clay-animated story "Mary and Max," about an unlikely pen-pal friendship, will have its world premiere at Sundance's opening night, Jan. 15 at Park City's Eccles Center Theatre.
The movie centers on two characters: Mary, a lonely 8-year-old living outside Melbourne, Australia, and Max, an obese 44-year-old Manhattanite suffering from Asperger's syndrome (a mild form of autism). The characters are voiced by Toni Collette and Philip Seymour Hoffman, and the movie is narrated by Barry Humphries (who voiced Bruce the Shark in "Finding Nemo," and is best known as the over-the-top Dame Edna).
"Mary and Max" is directed by Australian animator Adam Elliot, whose short film "Harvie Krumpet" played at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and went on to win an Oscar.
Two filmmakers and a playwright have been named Time Warner Storytelling Fellows by the Sundance Institute, meaning they will get support for the next four years to get their works to an audience.
Kirsten Greenidge is getting a fellowship for her play "Bossa Nova," the story of a girl in a black bourgeois family who begins an affair with a professor at the predominantly white girls' school she attends. Greenidge participated in the 2008 Sundance Theater Lab.
John Magary is receiving his fellowship for "Blood Abundance, or the Half-Life of Antoinette," a screenplay he is writing and directing. It centers on the chaotic life of a woman raising seven children in New Orleans. Magary participated in the 2008 Sundance Filmmakers' Lab.
Dee Rees received a fellowship for her screenplay (which she will direct), "Pariah," about a lesbian teen in the Bronx juggling the multiple identities she shows to friends and family. The screenplay is an expansion of the short film Rees debuted at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Rees was also a participant in the 2008 Sundance Filmmakers' Lab.
You've only got three days to pre-register for passes and ticket packages for the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.
The most expensive item on the list is the Express Pass A, the $3,000 Wonka's golden ticket that gets you into everything for the first five days of the festival.
The cheapest item is the $200 Official SFF09 Credential, which sounds like a lot of money to be a poser with a laminated badge around your neck. But the credential sounds like a good deal for people who just want to buy a few individual tickets, but still get into the non-screening stuff - like the Music Cafe, the panel discussions at the Filmmakers' Lodge, and the avant-garde material at New Frontier on Main.
And remember, it's only 99 days until the festival starts.
A reminder for Utah residents wanting to partake of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival: Registration for "Locals only" passes and ticket packages ends Friday at 5 p.m. Mountain Time.
There are a variety of passes and packages available, including one Sundance organizers neglected to mention last week when they first announced the registration period: Ticket Package B, which gets you 20 tickets for screenings and panel discussions for the second half of the festival, Jan. 21-25, as well as a ticket to the Awards Night Party, for $650.
Also available to Utah residents:
Advance availability for the Express Pass B. Cost: $2,500.
The Locals Quick Pass, which now includes Salt Lake and Ogden screenings. Cost: $230.
Discovery Package, 10 tickets for any screening or panel except Premieres. Cost: $325.
Film Lovers Package, 12 tickets. Cost: $225.
The Salt Lake City/Ogden Preferred Package. Cost: $375.
The Locals-Only Student Preferred Package. Cost: $300.
The new Official SFF09 Credential, which allows admission to Sundance non-screening venues. Cost: $200.
To register for "Locals only" deals, go here. If you don't live in Utah (or if you do and don't like the options above), registration for national passholders is here (the deadline is Oct. 10).
One of the growing missions of the Sundance Institute is the encouragement of movies about science - due largely to the sponsorship of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Thanks to the Sloan Foundation, the Sundance Film Festival now gives a $20,000 prize to a movie that spotlights science and technology, or features a scientist, engineer or mathematician as a major character. (This once prompted writer-actress Guinevere Turner, at a Sundance awards-night ceremony, to dispense this advice to filmmakers: "Dude, stick a robot in your movie - this is $20,000.")
Today, the Sundance Institute announced a commissioning grant and a fellowship to filmmakers for their science-themed projects.
The grant, of $25,000, goes to filmmaker Michael Almereyda, for his film "The Stanley Milgram Project," which profiles the Yale professor whose studies of human behavior in the 1960s showed how people could - when following orders from authority figures - inflict serious pain on other people. (The studies were cited in documentaries about the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.) Almereyda has been at the festival before, with the vampire drama "Nadja" (1994) and his modern take of "Hamlet" (2000).
The fellowship goes to Ryan Knighton for his screenplay "Cockeyed," based on his memoir of his life as a punk rocker and poet - and the unexpected onset of blindness due to retinitis pigmentosa. Knighton workshopped his script at this January's Sundance Screenwriters' Lab.
The cable-TV arm of Robert Redford's indie-film empire, The Sundance Channel, is being sold for $496 million to Rainbow Media, according to Daily Variety.
Rainbow, which is part of Cablevision, already owns AMC and the Sundance Channel's main rival, the Independent Film Channel.
The Sundance Channel was co-owned by NBC Universal, CBS's Showtime and Redford's Sundance Group.
UPDATE: According to The New York Times, Redford will remain with the channel. The Times also reports that some analysts are suggesting that the Sundance Channel and IFC will merge into a single channel.
Further proof that the Sundance Film Festival has attained a special place in the American consciousness: It got skewered on "The Simpsons" last night.
The episode, "Any Given Sundance," found Lisa's homemade documentary about her family's bad behavior getting into Sundance - but with the rest of the family upset at how horribly they were depicted.
The "Simpsons" writers and artists did their homework - they drew the marquee of Park City's Egyptian Theatre quite nicely, indie maverick Jim Jarmusch was funny as Lisa's self-appointed film-festival mentor, and John C. Reilly has a funny bit at the end.
When we first see the Sundance programmers (sign outside: "Sundance Film Festival: Do Not Feed Ben Affleck"), the lead programmer - who looks rather like festival director Geoffrey Gilmore - is going over the submissions. When he picks up Lisa's, it seems to fit everything Sundance wants:
"A vegetarian [other programmers gasp], intellectual misfit [more gasps] - people, you have to control your gasps at this altitude! - and she's eight years old! [Gasps, followed by fainting]."
When the Simpsons take the winding mountain drive to Park City - "where Parker Posey meets parka-ed posers," reads the banner over Old Main - Marge soon learns that movie titles are misleading: "Regularsville" shows a sad transvestite, "Candyland" has a scene of junkies about to shoot heroin. "I get it - every title means the opposite of what it means," Marge says.
Meanwhile, Principal Skinner and Superintendent Chalmers, who are the producers of Lisa's movie, can't get into the screening. When Skinner suggests they go over to Slamdance, Chalmers replies, "I'd rather die." (Ooo, burn.)
Lisa's film is an instant hit, but Jarmusch teaches her that "festival buzz is, like my movie 'Coffee and Cigarettes,' a funny thing." Another documentary - this one by Springfield bully Nelson Muntz (with an ending taken from "The 400 Blows") - becomes the new festival sensation. As one festivalgoer says, "I like this movie way better than the one by that little girl, because I saw this one today."
As they have said before on "The Simpsons," it's funny 'cuz it's true.
UPDATE:Hulu has the whole episode available. Watch and enjoy. (Hat tip: Karina Longworth at the Spout blog.)
Utah may be in the first cold snap of fall, but do we already have to think about the snows of January? Yes, because people who want to buy passes for the 2008 Sundance Film Festival have to pre-register this week.
Here are the details on passes and packages, and the directions to pre-register between today and Oct. 5.
Utah residents (and you have to show a valid ID - just claiming you know Donny Osmond doesn't count) get an added advantage, as pre-registration for locals-only packages and passes begins today through Oct. 1.
This site gives locals all the details, along with info about when to pre-register in December for individual ticket sales.
The system isn't perfect, and every year there is kvetching that people didn't get everything they wanted. But this system does have one unique advantage: It gives Utahns get first crack at tickets, before the rest of the country does.
RSS Feed