The 2012 Sundance Film Festival drew to a close over the weekend with a flurry of additional distribution deals, as well as a Saturday night awards ceremony. The fest’s out-of-nowhere buzz hit Beasts of the Southern Wild was among the big winners, nabbing not only the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize, but the US Dramatic Excellence in Cinematography award. The Documentary Grand Jury Prize went to The House I Live In, an examination of the war on drugs from director Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight). The Israeli film The Law in These Parts won the World Cinema Jury Prize for Documentary, while the Latin American musical drama Violeta Went to Heaven won the Dramatic World Cinema Jury Prize.
True to my history of excellent scheduling judgment, your humble correspondent saw not one of those films during my eight days in Park City, though I did take in — and greatly enjoy — the US Audience award winners The Invisible War (Documentary) and The Surrogate (Drama); the latter film also won a richly-deserved US Dramatic Special Jury Prize for Ensemble Acting. My favorite film of the fest, Mike Birbiglia’s warm, winning comedy Sleepwalk With Me, won the Best of NEXT Audience Award; another favorite, the wry time-travel comedy/drama Safety Not Guaranteed, won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award.
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1. Tracy Morgan was taken to a hospital yesterday after he collapsed during a dinner at the Sundance Film Festival; apparently the cause of the incident was “a combination of exhaustion and altitude,” but according to one person who was there, Morgan “seemed out of control, yelling and falling onto the ground.” [via USA Today]
2. Swizz Beatz would like you to know that he is not the CEO of Megaupload (he was still in negotiations for the gig when everything went down last week), and “is in no way connected to the crimes of which they are being accused.” [via MTV]
3. Claire Danes has been named 2012 Woman of the Year by the Hasty Pudding Theatricals of Harvard University, and as such, will lead a parade through Cambridge on January 26th; the group has yet to announce who its Man of the Year will be. Any nominations? [via EW]
4. Steve Buscemi will reprise the role of private detective Len Wosniak in an upcoming episode of 30 Rock that he’ll also be directing. The promising premise: “Jack wants Len to help him form a private police force where the salary starts at $5 million, so the police have the same interest in protecting the rich.” [via InsideTV]
5. Nicki Minaj’s highly-anticipated sophomore album Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, which was originally scheduled to come out on Valentine’s Day, apparently won’t be dropping until April 3rd now. How do you think this news makes poor little Sophia Grace feel? [via Vulture]
Bonus Buzz: 30 Beautiful Sunsets From Around The World
One of our most anticipated titles at this year’s Sundance Film Festival (oh, yeah, did we mention we’ll be at the Sundance Film Festival? Because we totes will) is Room 237, a new documentary by Rodney Ascher about the obsessive fans of The Shining. According to Entertainment Weekly, one of them posits an intriguing two-part conspiracy theory. First, he holds that Kubrick “directed” the faked Apollo moon landings while shooting 2001 — itself a mere cover for his bigger job. (This one’s been floating around for years — hell, it inspired its own “mockumentary,” Dark Side of the Moon.) But here’s the kicker: the fan also contends that, since Kubrick would have faced dire consequences if he ever revealed his involvement in the moon landing, he instead smuggled clues into The Shining, using his Stephen King adaptation as a giant coded message to tell the world about the ruse.
“It’s a film-nerd love-fest,” according to Sundance programmer Trevor Groth. “These obsessive people dissect The Shining, and they’ve watched it thousands of times, all finding their own coded meaning and language in it.” Reading about Room 237, and salivating for it, got us thinking about some of our other favorite “film-nerd love-fests”; after the jump, we’ve compiled ten of our favorite documentaries about famous films.
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Welcome to “Trailer Park,” the Friday feature where we collect the week’s new trailers all in one place and do a little “judging a book by its cover,” ranking them from worst to best and taking our best guess at what they may be hiding. This week, we’ve got seven new trailers, ranging from killers (Lucky) to things you want to kill (Alvin and the Chipmunks 3: Chipwrecked!) — check ‘em out after the jump.
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Thanks to Funny or Die, “Successful Alcoholics,” a dark comedic short that was well-received at both Sundance and South by Southwest, is finally online. TJ Miller (who you might remember as the dude who did that hilarious live-action Yogi Bear audition tape) and Lizzy Caplan play a co-dependent couple who is “young, successful, in love, and constantly shitfaced.” (An interesting bit of trivia: these two previously shared the screen in JJ Abrams’ Cloverfield.) The lovely Tony Hale has a small role as well. If you’ve got 25 minutes or so to spare (come on, it’s Friday afternoon), click through to check it out now, but be warned: it’s kind of heartbreaking.
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Sean Durkin’s directorial debut Martha Marcy May Marlene — a dramatic thriller which tells the story of a woman (Lizzie Olsen) who escapes from a cult in the Catskills and attempts to reconnect with her sister (Sarah Paulson) and brother-in-law (Hugh Dancy) — was one of the buzziest films to come out of Sundance this year, and garnered him a Best Director award. Now those of us who didn’t make it out to Utah can finally see why. Olsen is gut wrenching as broken, confused Martha, who is haunted by flashbacks of her time in Upstate New York; John Hawkes (Winter’s Bone) gives a chilling turn as the cult’s Charles Manson-esque leader. Click through to watch the trailer, and let us know in the comments if you plan on checking this one out.
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The Sundance Film Festival kicks off today in Park City, Utah, welcoming a crush of filmmakers, industry types, cinephiles, critics, paparazzi, and gift-bag hoarders for eleven days of film fun in the freezing cold. This year, Sundance will present 118 feature-length films, representing 29 countries by 40 first-time filmmakers. You’ll hear all about them in the days to come — the big premieres, the star Q&As, the breakouts, the flame-outs, the high dollar distribution deals. You might even hear about some good films! (Maybe.)
But most of us can only look over the slate longingly and leave it at that. This year and forevermore, we will never have the actual Sundance experience, for a variety of reasons: day jobs that get suspicious if you call in sick for eleven days in a row, pricey airline tickets, pricey festival passes, pricier accommodations (hotel rooms will run you at least a grand a night). Without a pretty healthy expense account, most of us are probably stuck having the Sundance experience in our living room.
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The Sundance Film Festival kicks off tomorrow, with indie film blogs and glossy TV entertainment new shows alike converging in Park City to spotlight this year’s crop of would-be Tarantinos. The narrative, of course, is that you make your independent film, get into Sundance, and wow the potential distributors, prompting a fierce bidding war, theatrical release, and rock-star treatment now and forevermore. (Though, as we discussed last week, the translation of Sundance buzz to box-office dollars isn’t always as easy as it looks).
But what of the thousands — literally, thousands, every year — of filmmakers who don’t make that brutal Sundance cut? For the filmmaker, that Sundance rejection letter can feel like nothing less than a death certificate for their labor of love. And while a spin at the ‘dance can certainly help an unknown film’s chances of breakout success (see Reservoir Dogs, The Blair Witch Project, El Mariachi, sex, lies, and videotape, and many more), there are plenty of Sundance rejects who found success anyway. Here’s just a few of them.
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Reservoir Dogs. sex, lies, and videotape. El Mariachi. Clerks. Slacker. The Blair Witch Project. Blood Simple. Napoleon Dynamite. Memento. Yes, the Sundance Film Festival (which kicks off less than a week from today) is the Holy Grail for aspiring indie filmmakers, who can rattle off those titles (and more) as examples of the wildest-dream scenario: Make a movie on the cheap, take it to the ‘dance, ignite a fierce bidding war, sell it to a scrappy and ingenious distributor with deep pockets, watch as they unleash it on the world, do big box office, become the next Tarantino or Soderbergh.
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For the past six years, Franklin Leonard, a mid-level studio executive, has put together the annual Black List — a compilation of the year’s best unproduced screenplays according to him and 300 or so of his industry pals. But these aren’t just projects that will never see the light of day. A few of the films are in production now, and six of the top 10 screenplays — which we’ve posted after the jump — have already been scooped up by studios. Let us know in the comments what you think sounds the most promising; our money’s on Jackie, a film about Jacqueline Kennedy’s life in the days following her husband’s death, which is set to be directed by Darren Aronofsky.
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