The Sundance Institute announced today the the films that will screen in eight different cities nationwide on Jan. 28th for their inaugural Sundance Film Festival USA series. The filmmakers will be dispatched from Park City to cities across America, where they will introduce and screen their films and engage in Q&As with local audiences. The films are: Cyrus — Ann Arbor, MI — Michigan Theater Directors and screenwriters: Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass –A recently divorced guy meets a new lady. Then he meets her son who is, well…interesting. Cast: John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, Jonah Hill, Catherine Keener. World […]
Opening with a blistering, misogynistic monologue by Caleb (a terrific Adam Scott), a newly unemployed construction worker who’s recent breakup has left him with an unquenchable hate for all things feminine, The Vicious Kind seems to announce its intentions very quickly: dramatizing the bitterness of a young, damaged man and the toll his misanthropy exacts on his small, middle class New England family over one long holiday weekend as his virginal brother (Peter Frost) and his gothy, bright eyed girlfriend (Brittany Snow) also return for Thanksgiving. However, as it slowly unwinds, The Vicious Kind reveals a family torn apart by […]
“A dolphin’s smile is nature’s greatest deception.” That’s a line given in the beginning of Louie Psihoyos’s gripping documentary, The Cove. And the man who says it, Ric O’Barry, is one of the most intriguing subjects in a doc you’ll see this year. Ric O’Barry captured and trained the five female dolphins that played Flipper in the 1960s TV series. He lived twenty steps from them for close to ten years. But everything changed when Cathy, the lead Flipper, committed suicide in O’Barry’s arms. The next day he was arrested for trying to free a dolphin from a marina and […]
The Sundance Institute announced today the slate of shorts which will be screened at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. I’m Here, directed by Spike Jonze; The Fence, directed by Rory Kennedy; Logorama, directed by François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy, and Ludovic Houplain; and Seeds of the Fall, directed Patrik Eklund will premiere the first Thursday to kick off the start of the competition screenings. The Sundance Film Festival will run January 21-31 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. The full list of shorts are below. U.S. DRAMATIC SHORTS Charlie and the Rabbit (Directors: Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck and […]
A while back I posted a call for Sundance and Slamdance filmmakers to send me information about their own DIY marketing and release plans. After the Sundance selection this week, many of its filmmakers are scrambling for publicists (Ted Hope has published a helpful list of indie film publicists here at his Truly Free Film blog) but others are also building up their own marketing infrastructure. One of those filmmakers is Mike Mohan, whose One Too Many Mornings is premiering in the new Next section. The film has an excellent blog containing posts from Mohan and his actors, including a […]
So you didn’t get into Sundance…. I’m sorry. Trust me, I feel your pain. As a producer I’ve received both the acceptance calls as well as the rejection ones. (Actually, the rejection call is sometimes not even a call, but a form email or letter.) In some cases, I’ve known that the film probably didn’t have much of a shot, although in others, the rejection came as a shock — one that threw our director and production team into a quandary over the film’s future direction. So, what do you do if your film didn’t get into Sundance? The first […]
So what’s your favorite film of the decade — Lost in Translation or There Will Be Blood? Who’s your favorite director — the Coen brothers or Steven Soderbergh? We want to hear what our readers feel was the best in American independent and specialty films in the 2000’s. Take our survey and the results will be printed in our upcoming Winter issue. And by taking the survey you’ll receive a discount code to half-off a print subscription. UPDATE: After you’ve done your survey, head over to our Forums where we created a Best of 2000’s section. Discuss the your favorites […]
Although as I write this its Tomatometer is at 89%, Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air is something of a Rorschach test for critics, with some finding the film to be both canny and empathetic, a Hollywood picture calibrated for the emotional temperature of a country with a 10% unemployment rate. Others see its Hollywood sheen and evocation of the family as obviating the economic reality it is set against. (J. Hoberman of the Village Voice writes: “… a satire unsullied by anger, Up in the Air floats above the pain.” I am solidly in the “pro” camp, feeling that […]
Paul Rachman, whose feature documentary American Hardcore, premiered at Sundance in 2006 and then was sold to Sony Classics, penned a 17-page chapter of Chris Gore’s Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide. Here are some of the tips listed in the chapter: – Your festival preparation starts the day you find out you have been accepted. If you are not working nonstop from that moment until your World Premiere, then you are most likely leaving important things undone. – The most important thing about your major festival world premiere is to keep it that way—a premiere. Do not start sending the […]
The Sundance Institute has announced the titles that will be in the non-competition categories for the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Notables going to Park City in January include Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, Nicole Holofcener, the Duplass bros, Michael Winterbottom (with two films), the Safdie bros, Gaspar Noé and Philip Seymour Hoffman‘s directorial debut. Also announced are the films taking part in the newly created NEXT series, where films and their filmmakers will travel the country showing their films in theaters during the fest. The Sundance Film Festival will runs January 21-31 in Park City, SaltLake City, Ogden and […]