The Sundance chatter is swimming through the internets. Here's the limited lowdown.....
Visit the official site for all the goods. There are links to every film, most with a picture or two and some with video and trailers. The Hollywood Reporter also has a page with headlines, features, reviews, and the ubiquitous Twitter feed. The Daily Beast guides you through their top 15.
After trawling through the entries, here's what I think will likely be picked up and distributed to an art house cinema near you.
- Blue Valentine (Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams) - As their marriage crumbles, a young couple try to revive the romance by revisiting the hotel that brought them together.
- Mother & Child (Naomi Watts, Annette Bening, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Jimmy Smits) - A mother reconnects with the daughter she gave up for adoption while a young woman seeks to adopt her first child.
- Get Low (Robert Duvall, Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek, Lucas Black) - It's the 1930s in ol' Tennessee and a hermit throws himself a funeral party.
- Howl (James Franco, Jon Hamm, David Strathairn, Mary-Louise Parker, Jeff Daniels) - Well, Jon Hamm's in it; that's all you really need to know. (Okay, it's about Allen Ginsberg.)
- Nowhere Boy (Kristin Scott Thomas, Anne-Marie Duff, Thomas Sangster, David Threlfall) - John before Lennon.
- The Runaways (Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning) - The Bella-turns-Joan-Jett biopic that everyone's been going on about for ages.
- Welcome to the Rileys (James Gandolfini, Kristen Stewart, again) - A couple try to cope with their daughter's death, he by taking refuge with a teenage hooker.
These might not see the light of day, at least in your local AMC, but they look compelling and noteworthy nonetheless.
- Last Train Home - A documentary about China's migrant workers' journey back home for the New Year holiday.
- The Little Dragon - Um, a dragon spirit is reincarnated into a rubber Bruce Lee toy.
- The Red Chapel - A video chronicle of a comedy troupe's infiltration of North Korea.
- Vegetarian - A film from the other side of Korea about a woman who withdraws from meat, and life.
- A Small Act - Another documentary, this one about a Kenyan boy who actually got an education from those tv and mailer drives about donating a dollar a day to help some poor kid in Africa. Now he tries to return the favor.
- Waiting for Superman - The film that asks: Is our children learning?
My two special picks......
Back in real life, however, I'm most looking forward to this documentary about...the Freedom Riders. In 1961, an integrated band of college students challenged America's Jim Crow laws by riding through the segregated South. They were bruised, bloodied, beaten, burned...just so everyone could ride a damn Greyhound to fucking Biloxi if they wanted. It's a film sure to find its way to the academic stacks more easily than to the cineplex, but as long as people are watching.
