Authors — Jason Guerrasio

ACADEMY AWARDS NOMINATIONS REVEALED

Moments ago the nominations for the 82nd Academy Awards were announced. Though most of the obvious choices did come through, there were some nice surprises on the indie side, including multiple nominations for The Messenger, including Best Supporting Actor for Woody Harrelson and The Last Station (Helen Mirren for Best Actress and Christopher Plummer for Best Supporting Actor). Colin Firth received a nomination for his moving lead performance in A Single Man, and another surprise was Maggie Gyllenhaal receiving a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Crazy Heart. And for the first time since the late 30s the Academy is recognizing […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Feb 2, 2010
SUNDANCE WINNERS ANNOUNCED

Announced moments ago, the Sundance Film Festival awards were given out in Park City. The dramatic Grand Jury prize went to Debra Granik‘s Winter’s Bone (pictured), which was picked up by Roadside Attractions earlier in the day. Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington‘s look at a platoon stationed in Afghanistan, Restrepo, won the Grand Jury doc prize. Josh Radnor‘s relationship dramedy happythankyoumoreplease took the dramatic audience award, and Davis Guggenheim‘s Waiting For Superman, which was the first big acquisition of the fest, won the documentary audience award. And winning the first ever best of the NEXT films was Todd Barnes & […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 30, 2010
ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS GRABS WINTER’S BONE

Buyers are still hard at work in Park City as we close in on the Sundance awards ceremony later tonight. Variety reports that Roadside Attractions has acquired Debra Granik‘s Winter’s Bone. Deal is for low to mid six figures. Roadside plans for a summer release. Sony Classics, Apparition, Samuel Goldwyn Films, among others, were also vying for the film. Winter’s Bone follows a young mother who goes in search for her father, a meth dealer who jumped bail.
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 30, 2010
KILLER INSIDE ME GOES TO IFC

According to Variety, Michael Winterbottom‘s adaptation of Jim Thompson‘s novel, The Killer Inside Me sold to IFC in the early hours this morning for $1.5 million. The film, which had mixed reviews at Sundance for it’s controversial scenes of violence and sexual content, stars Casey Affleck as small town psychotic sheriff Lou Ford. Films also stars Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson and Bill Pullman. The film will be released in the late summer theatrically and through VOD. Read how Winterbottom adapted Thompson’s novel to the screen.
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 30, 2010
WEINSTEIN COMPANY TAKES BLUE VALENTINE

As the Sundance Film Festival comes to a close The Weinstein Company has acquired Derek Cianfrance‘s Blue Valentine in a low seven figure deal. Starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, Cianfrance’s (named to our “25 New Faces” list this past summer) look at a marriage crumbling received positive reviews when it screened at the fest. Numerous outlets are also reporting that TWC is close to nabbing another hot commodity from the fest: Amir Bar-Lev‘s powerful doc, The Tillman Story.
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 29, 2010
FOCUS LOCKS DOWN THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

According to Mike Fleming at Deadline Hollywood and The Hollywood Reporter, Lisa Cholodenko‘s much buzzed about The Kids Are All Right has been nabbed by Focus Features. Quiet at Park City after acquiring Hamlet 2 in ’08, Focus paid under $5 million for Cholodenko’s (Laurel Canyon) portrait of a modern family starring Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, and Mark Ruffalo, beating out Summit Entertainment, Fox Searchlight, Sony Pictures Classics and The Weinstein Company. Read more about the backstage deal making at the Los Angeles Times blog.
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 27, 2010
SUNDANCE FILMMAKERS LINAS PHILLIPS AND HABIB AZAR JOIN THE NEW BREED

Here’s the third of our New Breed videos on new distribution ideas and paradigms at the Sundance Film Festival. The intro: SABI filmmakers Zak Forsman and Kevin K. Shah move away from identifying the questions toward some possible answers that may, in fact, lead to the solutions we seek. Insights from Linas Phillips (Bass Ackwards), Habib Azar (Armless), Dan Mirvish, and Brian Newman are fleshed out with more thoughts from the pre-Filmmaker Summit roundtable. NEW BREED PARK CITY – Seeking the Answers, Part 1 from Sabi Pictures on Vimeo.
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 26, 2010
“ODDSAC” | director, Daniel Perez

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Tuesday, Jan. 26, 8:30 pm — Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] Deciding not to do a tour documentary on the band, which was what was first proposed. I have strong feelings about the distance between performer and audience, and I didn’t want to contribute anything more to this gap. I wanted to make something that I would be psyched to see and here it is. That and deciding which kid to kill in a scene were pretty difficult. In the end it was a combination of his hair and fake blood that did it.
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 26, 2010
“ALL MY FRIENDS ARE FUNERAL SINGERS” | writer-director, Tim Rutili

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Tuesday, Jan. 26, 9:00 pm — New Frontier on Main, Park City] The most difficult decisions on our film were made in the editing process and had to do with balancing music, tangent and story. We had one scene in particular that looked great and had a really good friend of mine and her son acting in it. Everywhere we placed the scene in our movie seemed to throw it out of balance or clutter the narrative. The last thing I wanted to do was lose some of those shots, and I especially didn’t want to cut my […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 26, 2010
“ME TOO” | co-writer-co-director, Alvaro Pastor

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Tuesday, Jan. 26, 9:00 pm — Egyptian Theatre, Park City] We made lots of hard decisions making Me Too. I think, in fact, directing is making decisions all the time. For both of us, me and Antonio Naharro, the hardest one was to ask for the real Pablo Pineda to play Daniel on this film. It was difficult because when we realized that nobody else could play this role we had no choice. In fact the film couldn’t have been made without him playing this kind of alter ego of himself. How it affected the film? Well, the […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 26, 2010

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