Sundance debuts Canuck gore film

The U.S. premier showcase of independent film opens Thursday with an opening night slate that includes an Irish crime romp and documentaries about Harry Belafonte and a chimpanzee raised like a human child.

The scattergun selection of features and shorts opening the Sundance Film Festival represents artistic director John Cooper's attempt to return the festival to its indie roots.

"It was almost impossible to find a film that represented the entire program, and if you have one opening film, it's so talked about, it's the only thing happening and tends to be the lead story. I wanted the lead story to be a lot of films and a lot of subjects," Cooper said.

Fourteen Canadian films are set to screen over the next 10 days in Park City, Utah, among them Denis Villeneuve's critically acclaimed Incendies, which is highlighted in the Spotlight program.

The Canadian contingent also brings aboriginal stories and a film about a hobo with a thirst for vengeance to screen at the popular Park City in the Midnight program.

That film is Nova Scotia director Jason Eisener's debut feature, Hobo with a Shotgun, which has sold out its first four midnight showings. The gore-soaked B-movie stars Rutger Hauer as a vagrant vigilante who blows away bad guys with his own brand of justice.

Eisener's road to Sundance began with a fake trailer that ran between the Grindhouse films, a pair of horror flicks written by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez that screened together three years ago.

Eisener conceived and created the fake trailer with his best friend Johnathan Davies in less than three weeks, entering it in a contest to win a slot between the Grindhouse films.

"Once we heard the idea for that contest we knew we had to jump on it. We actually started shooting the trailer the night we heard about the contest," Eisener said in an interview with CBC News. After the Grindhouse debut in Los Angeles, producer Alliance Films called Eisener and requested a full feature treatment. They couldn't believe their luck with B-movie great Hauer signed on to the project.

Eisener and Davies misspent their youth in Dartmouth, N.S., watching horror flicks and they hope Sundance's Midnight viewers have the same tastes.

"I just hope there's an audience there that will get into this film and dig it," Eisener said.

It's his second trip to Sundance — his short film Treevenge screened there three years ago.

Other Canadian features to premiere include:

* I Melt with You, a Canada-U.S. co-production by Mark Pellington.
* The Salesman (Le Vendeur) by Sébastien Pilote.
* Vampire, a Canada-U.S. co-production by Iwai Shunji.
* Family Portrait in Black and White by Julia Ivanova.

Nathalie Cavezzali, a Montreal actress who stars in Quebec director Pilote's Le Vendeur, said the sad, sweet story will resonate with Americans suffering through the economic downturn.

"What really pleased the Americans is the truthfulness of the film," she said. "It's a simple story, very touching. It's the kind of film that when you go out of the movie theatre you stay with it for a while."

It follows car salesman Marcel Lévesque whose livelihood is threatened by the decline of jobs and industry in his small town.

"They have big economic problems right now in the States so I think they can relate very much to that," Cavezzali said.

Three Canadian filmmakers have a place in the Sundance presentation of films by aboriginal filmmakers as well as in the overall short film competition.

Among them is Danis Goulet, whose short film Wapawekka is an intensely personal exploration of native family life.

"It was based on my experiences growing up in Saskatchewan. It's really about the intergenerational differences in a family," she told CBC News.

"My dad grew up hunting and fishing and really living on the land and within the span of one generation, there is such immense change. I don't speak Cree and I live here in Toronto, now."

Wapawekka is the name for the lake near La Ronge where Goulet grew up and where she shot the film. She cast her father, her uncle and many other local people in the film.

Her cousin plays the lead role of an aboriginal teen who chafes at spending time there.

"He's a hip-hop artist. He's got places to go, people to see, so being stuck at a cabin with his dad is the last thing he wants to do. They've got to find a way to be together," Goulet said.

Goulet is a Métis artist who says she rarely saw her own life reflected on screens when she grew up.

"In a general audience, people respond to [aboriginal stories] because they are under-represented, but also they enrich our understanding," she said.

The native film program at Sundance also includes The Cave, by Helen Haig-Brown of B.C., about a hunter on horseback who accidentally discovers a portal to the afterlife and Choke by Michelle Latimer, the actress who played Trish Simpkin on Paradise Falls, about a man who encounters the lost souls of the city after leaving the reserve.

The Sundance Film Festival will screen 120 feature films and 80 shorts over the next 11 days.

Stars expected to attend include Don Cheadle, Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, Pierce Brosnan, Katie Holmes, Kevin Spacey and Tobey Maguire.

News From: www.cbc.ca

Andre Balazs And Chelsea Handler dating

 Chelsea Handler new boyfriend,  Andre Balazs,  Chelsea Handler dating, Chelsea Handler Spotted Kissing New Man at Sundance

Chelsea Handler and the man she was with on Saturday night looked like they could have used a room while out at the Sundance Film Festival.

The good thing is her close companion was hotel mogul Andre Balazs.

Handler and Balazs, who used to date Uma Thurman, were first spotted kissing at a Florence + the Machine concert at the Bing Bar.

Next, the two headed over to Tao at the Samsung Galaxy Lift, where we’re told they sat next to each other on a banquette. “They kissed for a bit and left together” at around 3 a.m., a source tells Gossip Cop.

But that wasn’t all.

The following night, Handler and Balazs dined with a friend at the restaurant 350 Main Brasserie.

Looks like Handler has made a change from 50 Cent.

News From: www.gossipcop.com

Smith finds Sundance buyer

Smith finds Sundance buyer for new film: Himself

PARK CITY, Utah -- Kevin Smith has premiered his latest movie at the Sundance Film Festival and sold it to the highest bidder - himself, for $20.

Smith had indicated he would auction off distribution rights to his fundamentalist horror film "Red State" after its Sundance premiere Sunday night, and he brought up the movie's producer, Jonathan Gordon, to handle the sale.

Gordon told the audience the bidding was open, Smith offered $20, and his producer proclaimed the film sold.

The auction was a stunt to emphasize Smith's real plans - to release "Red State" himself, without the tens of millions of dollars in marketing money that Hollywood pours into its releases.

Smith says he will take "Red State" out city to city beginning in March.

News From: www.washingtonpost.com

Sundance Crazy Basically Blue Valentine Lite

Sundance Hit Like Crazy Basically Blue Valentine Lite

We've got a new British ingenue on our hands. Two years ago, the Sundance Film Festival launched Carey Mulligan into stardom with the one-two punch of An Education and The Greatest, and this year, Drake Doremus's long-distance romance Like Crazy -- which Paramount just snapped up for $4 million -- could do the same for the heretofore little-known actress Felicity Jones. An intriguing blend of Anna Kendrick and Gemma Arterton, Jones has an avid on-screen presence and pursed sex symbol lips (most recently, she played daughter to Helen Mirren in Julie Taymor's version of The Tempest). The movie works its way to a point where Jones and Winter's Bone star Jennifer Lawrence are both vying for Anton Yelchin's affections, and though Doremus dims Lawrence's star wattage enough that it becomes an unfair fight, Jones is so irresistible that she hardly need the handicap.

Like Crazy can boast three appealing leads in Jones, Yelchin, and Lawrence, and they're sensitively directed by Doremus; if only the movie itself had a little more ingenuity. Like the recent Ryan Gosling/Michelle Williams drama Blue Valentine, it's the years-spanning ups-and-downs story of young couple Jacob (Yelchin) and Anna (Jones), who go from adorable lovers to passive-aggressive fighters. The movie even cribs a sad, blue-tinted shower scene from Blue Valentine, but it's not as explicit or depressing as that film, something that seems to be the modus operandi of Like Crazy: Anything Blue Valentine did, Like Crazy can do a little bit tamer. (Maybe Blue Valentine just needed a falling-in-love montage on the Santa Monica Pier?)

Jacob and Anna meet in college, but the British native is so enamored of her new boyfriend that she stays in California over the summer, violating her visa. When she heads back to England for her sister's wedding, expecting to be gone for only a week, she is detained while trying to return to the U.S. and unable to return there for years. Over that span of time, Jacob and Anna vow their undying love, gradually break up, meet other people (including Lawrence as Jacob's new flame Sam) and then tentatively swerve back together again. Their reunions are often short-lived, but neither can deny that there's something there -- whether it's the stuff that a long-lasting relationship is made of, however, is unclear.

Like Blue Valentine, the film is heavily improvised, and while the performances are appealingly natural -- in particular, Yelchin has shed the precocious self-consciousness he had as a younger performer, and is all the better for it -- the scenes tend to play out familiar situations with banal, perfunctory dialogue. (The movie's got a single memorable line, when Lawrence prepares breakfast in bed and notes, "I don't share bacon.") Jones is a find and she and Yelchin have real chemistry, but Like Crazy is too mild to fully capitalize on it. Their cinematic forebears Gosling and Williams had emotional, NC-17-skirting sex that revealed uncomfortable truths about both characters. Jones and Yelchin are content to simply spoon.
news from: nymag.com

Elizabeth Olsen The Sundance Horror-Thriller 'Silent House'

Olsen Twins' Sister Elizabeth Stars In An Exclusive Clip From The Sundance Horror-Thriller 'Silent House'

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

In 2004, the filmmaking team of Chris Kentis and Laura Lau captivated Sundance Film Festival audiences with the quietly creepy "Open Water." That film, about a couple who are left to grapple with sharks when they become separated from a scuba excursion, went on to become a critical and box-office success. Kentis and Lau are hoping the same is true for their new psychological horror-thriller "Silent House," which is playing as part of this year's Sundance Film Fest's Park City at Midnight series. Check out an exclusive clip from the film below.

Based on the acclaimed Uruguayan film "La Casa Muda," "Silent House" stars Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's younger sister Elizabeth Olsen as Sarah, a young girl who returns with her father and uncle to fix up her family's summerhouse after it's violated by squatters in the off-season. It's an innocuous enough beginning, but things quickly take a turn for the sinister when Sarah begins to hear strange sounds emanating from the walls of the boarded-up house.

Is someone or something trying to get out? Is the house haunted? Or is Sarah just going stark raving mad? Judging by the clip above, which shows a terrified, blood-soaked Sarah desperately trying to escape the house, it seems that she has some legitimate cause for alarm. Then again, we never do get a glimpse of what Sarah is running from, so it could all be in her head -- a popular device in films of late.

Either way, it'll be interesting to see how the film is received. Kentis and Lau's "Open Water" slowly and masterfully built tension throughout the course of the movie, and "Silent House" promises to do the same. Plus, we're interested to see what kind of acting chops 21-year-old Olsen has. She's been getting some strong buzz these days, and it's a safe bet that she's come a long way since playing herself in those direct-to-DVD "Adventures of Mary-Kate and Ashley" movies.


News From: moviesblog.mtv.com

Stars gather downtown for Salt Lake City Sundance premier

SALT LAKE CITY -- Stars of screen, television and rock and roll were all together for the Salt Lake City premiere of the Sundance Film Festival Friday night. Friday's premier film, "The Music Never Stopped," is based on a real case study of a man who could only relate to life through a certain type of music. The writers, director and cast say it has a message which they believe the film festival will help them spread.

The film follows the struggles of a young man with a benign brain tumor who only connects with the world through the music of his teenage years, the 1960s.

Popular actor J.K. Simmons plays the father. He's "Chief Pope" on TNT's "The Closer," and is also a Sundance veteran -- third time, being the charm, he says.

"They've already made a deal to have the movie distributed," Simmons said Friday night. "The other two times I was here were with really, really nice movies -- hundreds of people saw them. This one, I think, will do a little better than that."




Emmy winner Julia Ormond plays a music therapist.

"The character that I play is based on a wonderful woman called Connie Cimino, and she was basically doing cutting-edge musical therapy based on the belief that music helps to you to tap into a different side of the brain," Ormond explained.

Some of the music that helps the young man was created by rock band The Grateful Dead. Two of the band members came to Friday night's premiere, remembering meeting the real young man whose life this film is based on.

"We were part of this movie, what was it? Twenty-five, 30 years ago? More? And then we just found out we were part of it, and now we're here to be part of it officially," said musician Bob Weir.

"In real life, before the screenplay and all of that, the character in the movie had visited our stage and was transformed by the power of music," musician Mickey Hart said. "This is what the story is all about."

There are more Sundance screenings in Salt Lake, Ogden, the Sundance Resort and, of course, Park City.

News From: www.ksl.com