Three months after its Sundance debut, Zal Batmanglij's stunning drama Sound of My Voice has landed a distribution deal with Fox Searchlight. The studio previously nabbed rights to Sundance '11 pick-ups The Art of Getting By (AKA Homework), Martha Marcy May Marlene, and Another Earth -- the second of two sci-fi-tinged Sundance entries co-written and starring phenom Brit Marling. Read Movieline's Verge interview with the multi-talented Marling and get ready to want to follow her anywhere. [Deadline]
In Mark Pellington's divisive Sundance entry I Melt With You, Jeremy Piven plays a hard-partying Ari Gold-type reuniting for one crazy weekend with three college besties (Thomas Jane, Christian McKay, and Rob Lowe). But Pellington's psychological thriller is much darker than its Hangover-esque premise suggests, and as it takes the turns that alienated many critics in Park City, Piven plumbs intensely complex emotional depths. He spoke with Movieline about the polarizing film, his anti-Ari Gold roots, and -- why not? -- Miley Cyrus.
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If you thought last year's Sundance bounty yielded a strong crop of Academy Award nominees, just wait 'til the 40+ films to get distribution out of Park City hit theaters and start campaigning for Oscar glory. Should breakout star Lizzie Olsen start composing her acceptance speech now? Which film will emerge the Winter's Bone of 2011? Movieline's panel of experts look back on Sundance and weigh in: Which Sundance films will make it to next year's Academy Awards?
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The midnight movie crowd at Sundance hooted for the grindhouse pic Hobo with a Shotgun, but it downright fell in love with the charming horror-musical short that played in front of it in a brilliant stroke of spot-on programming. The twists in Jerome Sable and Eli Batalion's 12-minute short The Legend of Beaver Dam are best left unspoiled, but suffice to say it involves a campfire tale, screaming children, plenty of gore, and a metal rock sing-off between a nerdy kid hero and a bloodthirsty killer. Sable and Batalion are supposedly working on a feature along the lines of Beaver Dam, so take a peek at this teaser and keep an eye out for more from these two. [StumpySam.com]
Tired of those run-of-the-mill biopics and staid Iraq war dramas that avoid sensationalism out of respect for their subjects? Want a peek into the orgiastic, debauched, ultra-violent underbelly of Saddam Hussein's Iraq? Director Lee Tamahori brought all that and more to an unsuspecting audience -- and conjured his own comparisons to David Fincher's The Social Network, naturally -- with The Devil's Double, the guiltiest thrill of Sundance 2011.
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Although it wasn't quite as universally panned as Dito Montiel's Son of No One, and no one lost it and shouted at the filmmakers in a post-screening rant, Mark Pellington's dark bromantic thriller I Melt with You was the most controversially-received film at this year's Sundance Film Festival to land a distribution deal. (Read Movieline's assessment of the film and its disastrous first screening.) Hours after it was announced that Magnolia Pictures would release the polarizing film, Movieline caught up with Pellington and screenwriter Glenn Porter to discuss how they've been processing the negative reviews, how the deal with Magnolia went down, and what kind of tweaks will be made to the film before its theatrical release.
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Forget Lizzie Olsen; the breakout star of Sundance 2011 is clearly 67-year-old Rutger Hauer, who's taken Park City by storm with his star turn in Jason Eisener's grindhouse homage Hobo with a Shotgun. To celebrate the gory, tongue-in-cheek vigilante tale about -- yes -- a homeless hero with a shotgun, the Hobo folks hosted a thematically relevant Bloody Mary hour this morning where Hauer walked in wielding his titular firearm and regaled Movieline with six important revelations/life lessons:
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The mass walkouts were the first indication that Mark Pellington's I Melt with You was heading for a rocky Sundance reception; even critics who'd made it through couldn't wait to spill out into the hallways and let the vitriol fly. I Melt with You was, effectively, the first hands-down bomb of the festival. But does Pellington's midlife-crisis male-bonding thriller -- which was picked up today by Magnolia Pictures -- deserve all the flack?
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When Lucky McKee's Sundance horror entry The Woman premiered in Park City and promptly elicited walkouts, a panic injury, and one irate moviegoer's infamous YouTubed rant, some -- okay, Movieline -- wondered if it was all a stunt. (For a personal retelling of the shouting match that followed, read Drew McWeeny's firsthand account.) To set the record straight, Movieline went straight to the source for McKee's version of what went down when the credits started rolling.
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Park City got downright crazy Sunday night, with Kevin Smith's Red State "auction" alienating sales agents and bloggers alike and reports of audience unrest at a midnight screening of Lucky McKee's latest horror pic. And then Korean director Bong Joon-Ho (The Host, Mother) took the mic at the raucous Fantastic Fest/Magnet Releasing karaoke party to warble a little Billy Joel as hundreds of partygoers cheered him on.
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Do tongue-twisting, pretentious-sounding, or generic movie titles turn you off of a film even before you see it? Precious, renamed from the unwieldy Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire after its 2009 Sundance debut, we're looking at you. But every year yields a new batch of mildly nondescript-to-annoying-to-hard-to-remember film titles, and Sundance 2011 seems inundated with them, from movies from Win Win to Like Crazy to Martha Marcy May Marlene (which I dare you to remember correctly). And so, Movieline put it to our panel of critics and bloggers: Which of this year's Sundance movie titles would you rename if you could?
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Actor/writer/director and recent NYU film grad James Franco stopped by Movieline's Sundance HQ at the Levi's Dockers House in Park City for a lengthy chat with Elvis Mitchell on the smaller passion projects that drive his inner artiste, including an update on when his SNL documentary, Saturday Night, will finally hit theaters. Get your James Franco quick fix after the jump!
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Between taking to the web to pull a Tyler Perry, announcing a public auction for distribution rights, and issuing his own press release publicizing a protest of the protest of his film, Kevin Smith's done all he could to wring every ounce of publicity out of his Sundance entry, Red State. (What is this, Slamdance?) But how much does anyone care, really?
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"Let's tear this place apart!" So instructed director Jason Eisener before Friday's midnight premiere of Hobo with a Shotgun, the unabashedly campy Canadian-American grindhouse flick about a homeless drifter who cleans up the streets of a depraved urban metropolis with only a pawn shop shotgun and plenty of gloriously insane death-dealing catchphrases in his arsenal. And while it may have disappointed Eisener and Co. that an actual riot didn't erupt before or after their film, they must have been pleased that Hobo played exactly right to just the genre-loving crowd it was made for.
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