Mary Elizabeth Winstead needed to prove herself.
After years of hopping from genre to genre, she wanted to shed her Scott Pilgrim vs. the World dye job and bloody Final Destination 3 history and find a complex role that would be a game-changer for her career.
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Smashed has been built up as Mary Elizabeth Winstead's career-maker — a character-driven piece about an alcoholic woman entering AA — although time will tell if the addiction dramedy has the mojo to muscle in on the awards race with folks like Marion Cotillard and Jennifer Lawrence hogging all the buzz with their respective festival hits. But take a look at the first Smashed trailer and four additional clips, co-starring Aaron Paul, Octavia Spencer, Megan Mullally, and Nick Offerman (courtesy of Sony Classics) and get to early prognosticating on Winstead's chances.
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I wouldn't brag were it not Monday morning and it's the only thing keeping me from walking in front of a bus, so: The final piece of Movieline's Sundance 2012 Bidding-War puzzle has fallen into place, with director James Ponsoldt's boozehound relationship drama Smashed going to the estimable Sony Pictures Classics. Five-for-five! High five?
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Critic faves Beasts of the Southern Wild and The House I Live In took top Grand Jury Prize honors tonight at the Sundance Film Festival, where the John Hawkes Oscar hopeful The Surrogate and Kirby Dick's The Invisible War nabbed this year's audience awards. Also earning Sundance 2012 kudos were the music doc Searching for Sugar Man, Mike Birbiglia's Sleepwalk With Me, and the Aubrey Plaza starrer Safety Not Guaranteed.
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No matter how many gifting suites, D-list "celebrities" and/or head-splitting parties the malevolent forces of modern commerce may stuff into the wintry idyll of Park City over the next week, we'll always have the movies. And as usual, "we" also means studios and distributors with money to burn and release slates to fill. Let the Sundance bidding wars begin!
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Now that Golden Globe winner Octavia Spencer's sitting pretty with her Best Supporting Actress trophy, the L.A. Times breaks out a choice quote from an October visit to the set of her Sundance 2012 pic Smashed: "You do a movie like [The Help] to get a movie like this," she said of her new film, which sees her go from spitting retorts and baking special pies as The Help's Minny to helping Mary Elizabeth Winstead battle alcoholism. "It’s nice... to play roles when I'm not just a sassy black woman." Hear, hear. Now let's get Spencer the Oscar, already. [LAT]
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