GRAND JURY PRIZE
Winter's Bone- stars Jennifer Lawrence (The Burning Plain) and centers around a girl trying to hunt down her drug dealing father-- sounds sort of familiar with 2008's Grand Jury Prize winner Frozen River, which was also written and directed by a woman, Winter's Bone was written and directed by Debra Granik. Currently no distributor has purchased the film, but I doubt that will be for long. Coincidentally, no film in it's history has one a best picture nomination that won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance-- this might change this year however with Precious.
DRAMATIC AUDIENCE AWARD
happythankyoumoreplease- directed by Josh Radnor (star of How I Met Your Mother) and star Malin Ackerman.
GRAND JURY PRIZE (Documentary)
Restrepo- directed by Sebastian Junger, writer of the The Perfect Storm, this film details the war in Afghanistan.
AUDIENCE AWARD (Documentary)
Waiting for Superman- from director Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth, It Might Get Loud), this documentary about education in the US will be released by Paramount Vantage.
WORLD CINEMA JURY PRIZE
Animal Kingdom- Aussie film starring Guy Pearce-- the musical Once won this prize at the 2007 film festival.
WORLD CINEMA AUDIENCE AWARD
Undertow- this one seems to be a supernatural story with gay undertones...
DIRECTING AWARD
3 Backyards- Eric Mendelsohn- Mendelsohn directed the cool 1999 film Judy Berlin, his latest stars Embath Davidtz (Junebug) and Edie Falco.
WALDO SALT SCREENWRITING AWARD
Winter's Bone- Debra Granik-- I gather they really liked this movie!
CINEMATOGRAPHY AWARD
Obselidia- Zak Mulligan
SPECIAL JURY PRIZE- DRAMATIC
Sympathy for Delicious- the directing debut of Mark Ruffalo starring Orlando Bloom, Juliette Lewis and Laura Linney.
correction: Winter's Bone was acquired by Roadside Attraction Pictures, and Granik, the film's writer\director previously made the film Down to the Bone, a Sundance hit in 2004 which starred Vera Farmiga (or Alex in Up in the Air, or Madeline in The Departed) as a drug addict, her claim to fame, and an excellent movie for anyone looking for a great, tragically depressing film.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Directors Guild Association of America
The winner for Best Director of the Year from the DGA is:
Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
Becoming the first woman ever to be bestowed this honor will Oscar follow suit?
Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
Becoming the first woman ever to be bestowed this honor will Oscar follow suit?
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Sundance Film Festival 2010
I typically don't follow film acquisitions from festivals, but since last fall, only one major film got distribution (A Single Man by The Weinstein Company) from screening at film festivals, I think it's interesting how it seems to be the face of American independent filmmaking has changed. I post this on the very day that Miramax Films (the subsidiary of Disney), once prominently and infamously owned by the Weinsteins, officially closes up shop. It would be a mistake to say that without Miramax the last twenty-five years or so would have been a lot bleaker for independent film in the United States, as well as prominence in foreign films.
They exloded on the scene with sex, lies and videotape in 1989 as the brashed, hippest studio around. Of course this studio was owned by the Walt Disney Company which made its controversies even more warped. But the debut of Steven Soderbergh's raw and risky teeny-tiny film somehow catipulted in the zeitgeist of the pop culture and announced the bold new world of American independent film. Thanks to shrewd marketing the Weinsteins, the film was a relative success, and scored Soderbergh an Oscar nomination for original screenplay-- but it was the fact that the film had made an impact on the film industry, for bustling filmmakers and for the Weinsteins that makes the film a starting point of the buyers market that has been around various film festivals like Sundance, Cannes, Venice and Toronto for the past two decades.
Things have changed a lot since then. What Miramax started, was what every major studio did over the next two decades...form a small version of their bigger studios. 20th Century Fox has Fox Searchlight; Universal Pictures has Focus Features; Paramount Pictures has Paramount Vantage; Warner Bros. has Warner Independent Pictures; Sony Pictures has Sony Pictures Classics. The problem is that with the exception of Fox Searchlight, Sony Classics and Focus, most of others aren't very good at maintaining them the way Miramax was. Add to that an economy that sucks, and suddenly everyone's becoming more conservative about spending money on films that aren't guarnateed a big profit. This isn't to say all is gloom, but it's not as joyous and exhuberant as years before.
Last year for example, Lion Gate Films purchased Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire which is now on it's way to becoming an Oscar nominee (the first best picture nominee ever that won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, an aside), but it wasn't the selling frenzy as it might have been year ago, when for instance Little Miss Sunshine was sold to Fox Searchlight after an intense bidding war for over $10 million. Or when Focus Features paid even more for Hamlet 2. Or when Miramax back in 1999 went ape shit and spent $10 million on Happy, Texas, a movie that didn't come close to earning that green back.
This year the offerings at Sundance look very interesting, at least on paper, and it seems the buyers are there too, but not as prolifically as years past. So far, Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Alright is the biggest sale-- almost $5 million to Focus Features. The film stars Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as a lesbian couple with children, and when their children start to wonder who their father is, Mark Ruffalo shows up. Reviews so far have been very positive and the A-list actors insure that Focus will likely earn it's coin back. Other sales are the Iraq-stuck in a coffin film Buried, with Ryan Reynolds, which sold to Lions Gate for $3 million, the Hassidic Jew film Hesher with Joseph Gordon Levitt and Natalie Portman to Newmarket for $1 million, as well as the Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvienent Truth; It Might Get Loud) education documentary Waiting for Superman to Paramount Vantage.
They exloded on the scene with sex, lies and videotape in 1989 as the brashed, hippest studio around. Of course this studio was owned by the Walt Disney Company which made its controversies even more warped. But the debut of Steven Soderbergh's raw and risky teeny-tiny film somehow catipulted in the zeitgeist of the pop culture and announced the bold new world of American independent film. Thanks to shrewd marketing the Weinsteins, the film was a relative success, and scored Soderbergh an Oscar nomination for original screenplay-- but it was the fact that the film had made an impact on the film industry, for bustling filmmakers and for the Weinsteins that makes the film a starting point of the buyers market that has been around various film festivals like Sundance, Cannes, Venice and Toronto for the past two decades.
Things have changed a lot since then. What Miramax started, was what every major studio did over the next two decades...form a small version of their bigger studios. 20th Century Fox has Fox Searchlight; Universal Pictures has Focus Features; Paramount Pictures has Paramount Vantage; Warner Bros. has Warner Independent Pictures; Sony Pictures has Sony Pictures Classics. The problem is that with the exception of Fox Searchlight, Sony Classics and Focus, most of others aren't very good at maintaining them the way Miramax was. Add to that an economy that sucks, and suddenly everyone's becoming more conservative about spending money on films that aren't guarnateed a big profit. This isn't to say all is gloom, but it's not as joyous and exhuberant as years before.
Last year for example, Lion Gate Films purchased Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire which is now on it's way to becoming an Oscar nominee (the first best picture nominee ever that won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, an aside), but it wasn't the selling frenzy as it might have been year ago, when for instance Little Miss Sunshine was sold to Fox Searchlight after an intense bidding war for over $10 million. Or when Focus Features paid even more for Hamlet 2. Or when Miramax back in 1999 went ape shit and spent $10 million on Happy, Texas, a movie that didn't come close to earning that green back.
This year the offerings at Sundance look very interesting, at least on paper, and it seems the buyers are there too, but not as prolifically as years past. So far, Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Alright is the biggest sale-- almost $5 million to Focus Features. The film stars Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as a lesbian couple with children, and when their children start to wonder who their father is, Mark Ruffalo shows up. Reviews so far have been very positive and the A-list actors insure that Focus will likely earn it's coin back. Other sales are the Iraq-stuck in a coffin film Buried, with Ryan Reynolds, which sold to Lions Gate for $3 million, the Hassidic Jew film Hesher with Joseph Gordon Levitt and Natalie Portman to Newmarket for $1 million, as well as the Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvienent Truth; It Might Get Loud) education documentary Waiting for Superman to Paramount Vantage.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Costume Designer Guild Nominations
FANTASY FILM
- Avatar- Mayes C. Rubeo & Deborah Lynn Scott
- The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus- Monique Prudhomme
- Star Trek- Michael Kaplan
- (500) Days of Summer- Hope Hanafin
- Bruno- Jason Alper
- Crazy Heart- Doug Hall
- Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire- Marina Draghici
- Up in the Air- Danny Glicker
- Coco Before Chanel- Catherine Leterrier
- Julie & Julia- Ann Roth
- Nine- Colleen Atwood
- Sherlock Holmes- Jenny Beavan
- The Young Victoria- Sandy Powell
Sunday, January 24, 2010
PGA
The Producers have spoken in a singular and beautiful way-- re-igniting a facade of a race for the Oscar season.
FEATURE FILM
The Hurt Locker
ANIMATED FEATURE
Up
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
The Cove
STANLEY KRAMER AWARD
Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire
In what constitutes a shock, the Producers Guild of America are with the critics, decreeing The Hurt Locker as 2009's ultimate triumph. What does this mean? It means Avatar is not the here-by, end-all film of the year, as it's Golden Globe triumph and $550 million box office might suggest. This weekend Cameron's film became the second highest grossing film of all time in domestic receipts (only in terms of dollars and cents, not adjusted for inflation, or by attendance), but The Hurt Locker captures the PGA award, and Inglourious Basterds snarled the SAG award. It's not a lone race, and I am happy for that!
The PGA at a glance:
2008: Slumdog Millionaire (won Oscar)
2007: No Country For Old Men (won Oscar)
2006: Little Miss Sunshine (lost to The Departed)
2005: Brokeback Mountain (lost to Crash)
2004: The Aviator (lost to Million Dollar Baby)
2003: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (won Oscar)
2002: Chicago (won Oscar)
2001: Moulin Rouge! (lost to A Beautiful Mind)
2000: Gladiator (won Oscar)
1999: American Beauty (won Oscar)
1998: Saving Private Ryan (lost to Shakespeare in Love)
1997: Titanic (won Oscar)
1996: The English Patient (won Oscar)
1995: Apollo 13 (lost to Braveheart)
1994: Forrest Gump (won Oscar)
1993: Schindler's List (won Oscar)
1992: The Crying Game (lost to Unforgiven)
1991: The Silence of the Lambs (won Oscar)
FEATURE FILM
The Hurt Locker
ANIMATED FEATURE
Up
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
The Cove
STANLEY KRAMER AWARD
Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire
In what constitutes a shock, the Producers Guild of America are with the critics, decreeing The Hurt Locker as 2009's ultimate triumph. What does this mean? It means Avatar is not the here-by, end-all film of the year, as it's Golden Globe triumph and $550 million box office might suggest. This weekend Cameron's film became the second highest grossing film of all time in domestic receipts (only in terms of dollars and cents, not adjusted for inflation, or by attendance), but The Hurt Locker captures the PGA award, and Inglourious Basterds snarled the SAG award. It's not a lone race, and I am happy for that!
The PGA at a glance:
2008: Slumdog Millionaire (won Oscar)
2007: No Country For Old Men (won Oscar)
2006: Little Miss Sunshine (lost to The Departed)
2005: Brokeback Mountain (lost to Crash)
2004: The Aviator (lost to Million Dollar Baby)
2003: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (won Oscar)
2002: Chicago (won Oscar)
2001: Moulin Rouge! (lost to A Beautiful Mind)
2000: Gladiator (won Oscar)
1999: American Beauty (won Oscar)
1998: Saving Private Ryan (lost to Shakespeare in Love)
1997: Titanic (won Oscar)
1996: The English Patient (won Oscar)
1995: Apollo 13 (lost to Braveheart)
1994: Forrest Gump (won Oscar)
1993: Schindler's List (won Oscar)
1992: The Crying Game (lost to Unforgiven)
1991: The Silence of the Lambs (won Oscar)
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