Spike Jonze joined Sundance's opening-night madness on Thursday, debuting his brand-new short I'm Here as part of the festival's rock-solid Shorts Program One. Which sounds a little yawnily non-descript, I know, until you break its four terrific films down as the ones by a former Oscar nominee, two future Oscar nominees, a Kennedy clan representative and Sweden's bright new hope -- all of whom were on hand, with Jonze weighing in on video after the jump.
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When Movieline met up with Joseph Gordon-Levitt yesterday at Sundance's New Frontier area, he taped a video for Movieline readers to convey just how much he wants to work with you at his site hitRECord.org. As you'll be able to tell from our extended talk, he really means it! Gordon-Levitt is evangelical about discovering new artists online and collaborating with them, regardless of whether they're a first-timer. (Hey, it certainly worked for Marc Webb!) Here are some of the highlights from our conversation:
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And here we have the trailer for Cyrus, an Oedipal love-triangle comedy from the Duplass brothers that premieres at Sundance tomorrow night. John C. Reilly taps into his inner lonely schlemiel persona, a self-described "Shrek" who lays his heart bare at his ex-wife's engagement party through a series of self-pitying drunken monologues and a karaoke rendition of Human League's "Don't You Want Me." But wait! All hope is not lost.
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Both slighter and more experimental than a traditional biopic, Howl stars James Franco as celebrated beat poet Allen Ginsberg, author of the hallucinatory epic poem from which it draws its title. It begins in 1955, with black-and-white scenes of a 29-year-old Ginsberg, chugging from a jug of rotgut and reciting -- almost davening -- his new composition to a rapt audience at San Franciso's Six Gallery. Then we cut to an older Ginsberg, in color, submitting to a Time interview about his life and craft. ("Approach your muse as frankly as you talk to your friends or self," he advises.) Franco plays Ginsberg at both ages, all creative vulnerability, tortured neuroses and submerged sexuality. When he admits towards film's end that his homosexuality, something he had resisted for years, was the "catalyst for why I'm different," you don't hesitate for a moment to believe him. And then there's those flashes suggesting intellectual brilliance -- a look, a stammer, a smile -- and the illusion that this mind could have produced a work of Howl's magnitude is complete.
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So, your Movieline staff is off to the highly anticipated premieres of Howl (starring James Franco) and the Sundance shorts program featuring Spike Jonze's robot love story I'm Here. Keep an eye out tonight, tomorrow, and through the weekend for reactions to these films, as well as interviews with some of the festival's top talent and up-to-the-minute news as it breaks. Now, if you'll excuse us, it's time to dart into a dark theater and see what Sundance 2010 has to offer...
We've already established that Robert Redford is ready to move into the next, wide-open era of the Sundance Film Festival, but not before one wistful look back at some of the best and worst Sundance has had to offer in the nearly 30 years he's been overseeing the Park City institution. Like many of his previous pre-fest summits of years past, it was articulate, honest and sincere, with shout outs to all the filmmakers who've made Sundance such a watershed on the festival landscape. But with that rise came the leeches -- and as Redford attests in the video below, he's not sad to see the recession stomp them out.
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It's only the first day of Sundance, and we have our first deal struck before any film has even premiered. The lucky winner is Davis Guggenheim's documentary Looking for Superman, which digs into the public education crisis. Paramount (who distributed Guggenheim's An Inconvenient Truth) will pick it up and slap the Paramount Vantage label on it. Deals! [Variety]
It's Jan. 21 in Park City, where Robert Redford saw his shadow and thus ushered in another in another 10 days of the Sundance Film Festival. The actor/producer/director/festival potentate this afternoon hosted his customary State of Sundance Address for a typically packed house at the Egyptian Theater -- his first such opening-day appearance that anyone here can remember without former fest director Geoffrey Gilmore at his side. But the past was way past for Redford and Gilmore's successor John Cooper (above left), both of whom spoke of Sundance's mandate to push beyond the mythology, glitz and snow -- and, candidly, Gilmore himself -- in the new decade ahead.
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It's the first day of Sundance, I'm over at the New Frontier on Main Street (consider it Sundance's multimedia division), and I just talked to featured artist/Banksy fan/Movieline favorite Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Gordon-Levitt is here at Sundance promoting his website and production company hitRECord.org, and he's hoping to pull in a couple more Sundancers for a personal collaboration that he details in this exclusive Movieline video.
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Chosen earlier this week as one of the likeliest subjects of a Sundance 2010 bidding war, Buried has a new trailer featuring pretty much exactly what we expected: Ryan Reynolds underground, in a box. It also appears to answer a key question we had going into the film's premiere tomorrow in Park City -- to wit, if the whole film is set in a coffin beneath the surface of the Iraqi desert, how and when do Reynolds's co-stars appear? That spoilerish theory (and the video) in a special Two-Minute Verdict after the jump.
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Banksy's Sundance debut Exit Through the Gift Shop was announced only hours ago, but the notorious graffiti artist has already made his mark on Park City -- and we don't simply mean he gave it a welcome jolt of hipster frisson. Sundance mainstay Joseph Gordon-Levitt just noticed that the elusive Banksy stencilled his design on a wall across from the New Frontier area, an impressively stealth achievement considering that the skies have just been dumping snow on us since last night. Anyway, the design: I think it's a metaphor for how the documentary filmmaker destroys that which he observes. Either that, or it's a teaser for a really rad Banksy party this week! Wahoo! [hitRECordJoe]
Here's one film where the director absolutely won't be doing interviews in Park City: Exit Through the Gift Shop, the feature filmmaking debut of infamously anonymous British street artist Banksy. And even that status is under suspicion this morning, as no one actually knows if Banksy directed the "pseudo-documentary" or if its classification as "a Banksy film" is just another of the world-class hoaxster's curious stunts. But! It's not all mysterious; click through for what we do know -- including a trailer!
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As the 2010 Sundance Film Festival beings today, Kerry Washington's accomplished the the indie cred-burnishing feat of having two buzzy films here. The first is Tanya Hamilton's Night Catches Us, where Washington reunites with her She Hate Me costar Anthony Mackie in the story of two ex-Black Panthers, and the second is Rodrigo Garcia's female triptych Mother and Child, which made its well-received debut in Toronto last fall and costars Annette Bening and Naomi Watts.
Before either of us left for Sundance, I spoke to Washington about her festival entries, the limits of control, and the challenges of her current Broadway stint in David Mamet's Race.
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Saying you go to "Sundance for the docs" may come off as sincere as "I read Playboy for the articles," what with all the voluptuous scripted indie delights so tantalizingly within reach; but time and again, the non-fiction competition proves to be where the meat of this festival lies. Last year's standouts included The Cove, Afghan Star, and Burma V.J., and this year's lineup looks to be equally promising . Here's a few we have our eyes on.
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Your Movieline crew is preparing to brave the snow, swag and spectacle of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, which can mean only one thing: Reckless predictions of this year's titles most likely to ignite a distribution bidding war. Granted, Sundance isn't the market it was 10 years ago (or even five years ago); few buyers have any real money to lavish on acquisitions, and a "bidding war" today might mean a producer strings out a few interested parties overnight for a million-dollar (or less) deal. It could mean a couple cable channels scrapping over a documentary. Or, in more traditional style, it could mean buyers fighting to release the one where Kristen Stewart plays a hooker. Anything goes!
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