Sundance Sales Chart Day Seven

by Gregg Goldstein Film Section Sales Co Odds Pros Cons First Screening Today’s Top Five Spread Prem CAA/ End 3:1 Gigolo satire from sexpert helmer of “Young Adam.” Lots of T (female) and A (Ashton Kutcher). Played like a wide-release commercial film.; will Summit return to table? Some don’t feel it lives up to the…

The Spar-O At The Yarrow – Round Two (gossip)

Our earlier story about the Dowd/Anderson closed fist slap fest seems to be wrong. We now hear that Anderson had not yet written his Variety review and that Dowd was insisting on talking to him before he wrote. This frames the incident a little differently, as many critics really, really don’t want to talk to…

Sundance Brouhaha: Filmmaker and Journo Reportedly Go to Blows Over Bad Review (rumors)

Update: Apparently the players involved were Variety’s John Anderson and Jeff Dowd, producer of Dirt! The Movie. Karina Longworth over at Spoutblog has more details. This is already the buzz of the fest today; while I was sitting here discussing the incident with a friend, another journalist walked by and joked, “Careful, don’t get punched…

The Quiet (views)

I was going to call this “the silence,” but Sundance is not silent yet… but it is shockingly quiet on Main Street and elsewhere in Park City. Ask anyone who makes 10% of their annual income in these 10 days each year, whether restaurateurs, taxi drivers, or even grocers. It will be fascinating to see…

IFC Films Bites Off Domestic Rights To Norwegian Zombie Flick Dead Snow At Sundance

By Gregg Goldstein IFC Films has bitten off domestic rights to the Norwegian Midnight Nazi zombie entry Dead Snow. Tommy Wirkola’s subtitled horror flick premiered Saturday night at the Egyptian amidst many bigger titles. The gore-filled story follows eight med students on an Easter ski vacation and their encounters ravenous Nazis. Sales agent Elle Driver…

Sundance Preview Day Seven: Anna 211:, Dada's Dance, Motherhood

We’re heading into Day Seven of the Sundance film festival, and so far it’s been a great fest. Today’s highlights include a screenig of Anna:211, a documentary about Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was assasinated in 2006. Politkovskaya wrote extensively about the Russian’s brutality toward Chechnya and I’m very excited to see this one. Next…

Review: Peter and Vandy (views)

Peter and Vandy, the feature writing and directorial debut by Jay DiPietro, follows the love story of one couple through the ups and downs of their relationship. It sounds simple — and it is — but the beauty of this film is in the execution. The story is scripted in a non-linear fashion, jumping back…

The Winning Season Wins $3 Million-Range North American and UK Deal With Lionsgate

By Gregg Goldstein Was everyone just waiting for Obama to take office? Amidst a post-inauguration flurry of deals, Lionsgate nabbed North American and UK rights to James Strouse‘s dramedy The Winning Season. Sam Rockwell stars as a Bad News Bears-style coach of a high school girl’s basketball team. Emma Roberts, Rob Corddry and Shareeka Epps…

Short Take: The Winning Season (views)

James C. Strouse‘s The Winning Season, a sports drama about Bill, an alcoholic former high school basketball star and coach (Sam Rockwell) who’s given a chance to redeem himself by coaching a varsity girls’ basketball team. Feels a bit like The Bad News Bears meets A League of Their Own: a rag-tag, disorganized group of…

The New Soderbergh (news) (views)

Steven Soderbergh is rolling of his latest film tonight at 6:15p at Eccles for a crowd that is probably just expecting clips and tales of Sex, Lies AND select press… which is selected by Sundance and not, according to the film’s distributor Eamonn Bowles, Magnolia Pictures. So you will read the reviews tomorrow in Variety,…

Sundance Sales Chart Day Six

by Gregg Goldstein Film Section Sales Co Odds Pros Cons First Screening Today’s Top Five An Education World DrComp CAA 3:1 ’60s coming-of-age romance from scribe Nick Hornby with Sarsgaard, Molina, Thompson and a breakout Mulligan; Miramax’s Daniel Battsek left I Love You Phillip Morris to powwow, dropped out, but circling back Despite the pedigree,…

Sony Pictures Classics Nabs North American and Latin American Rights to An Education in $3 Million Deal

By Gregg Goldstein Sony Pictures Classics has nabbed North American and Latin American rights to An Education in a $3 million deal, following a winding series of deal moves since its Sunday premiere that had Miramax and Fox Searchlight in play. With all the buzz about Searchlight’s low bid on the 60s coming-of-age saga An…

Ashton Kutcher’s back end … (rumor)

…is one of the most bodacious selling points of Spread, the Shampoo-style sex comedy that everyone thought would sell quickly after Saturday night’s premiere, even if they didn’t think the film was quite the sum of its body parts. There his bare back end was, parading through several scenes, thrusting onto Anne Heche and other…

Another burst of Soderbergh showmanship (content)

Later tonight, Steven Soderbergh’s premiering his first of probably three features this year, his life-of-a-high-end-call-girl tale, The Girlfriend Experience as a TBA. Just before Monday morning’s IFC Films presser, Soderbergh whips out his FlipVideo to survey the assembled journos and industryites, arm upraised like Che’s in the background. He’s flanked by SXSW’s Janet Pierson and…

Meanwhile, the wild-posting beat goes on (content)

Buzz Report: The Informers Fails to Impress (rumor)

The screening of The Informers just let out, and I had conversations with several film journalists and a fest rep on their way out of the screening who said overall response to the film was very negative, and that the film is “bad … really, really, bad, just terrible,” “completely disjointed and makes no sense…

OnePiece: the future as seen by Sandra Whipham, Eddie Schmidt, Ira Deutchman, Jeff Dowd

Documentary stalwart Sandra Whipham is a producer on Havana Marking’s Afghan Star. [More video at the jump.]

OnePiece: Future musings from Braden King, Jesse Epstein, Jason Silverman (content)

Three one-minute stories of where to go next, from filmmakers Braden King, Jesse Epstein and Jason Silverman. Braden King is a contributor to Mike Plante’s Lunchfilm concept in New Frontiers, described thusly: “A filmmaker is taken out to lunch and in exchange, the filmmaker agrees to make a short film. The budget: the same cost…

Short Take: Adventureland (views)

Adventureland, the newest feature by Greg Mottola (Superbad), is a fun trip back to the ’80s, when glamour-rock, mall hair and blue eyeshadow were cool. James (Jesse Eisenberg), newly graduated from college, is planning his long-promised post-graduation backpacking trip across Europe with his college (his roommate, when his parents drop the bomb that dad’s been…

Glimpsing morning in America: a Sundance inauguration-watching breakfast (content)

The producers of Dirt, with the collaboration of producer’s rep Jeff Dowd and publicist Mickey Cottrell and convened an inauguration-watching breakfast on Main Street near the Egyptian Theater. The streets of Park City have been uncommonly quiet this Sundance and never more so than this morning. Figures scurry toward the indoor glow of plasma screens….