Last we heard from Dakota Fanning, she was playing an Elvis-impersonating rape victim in the Sundance debacle Hounddog. That performance managed to simultaneously warm the hearts of festival goers, while rendering anti-kiddie porn crusaders appalled, and leaving most critics simply bored. Now, apparently having had a taste of life as a hot topic on MSNBC, Dakota wants more. She's signed on to star alongside little sister Elle Fanning in Hurricane Mary, which, according to Variety, "tells the true story of an Irish-American mother, played by Patricia Clarkson, who fought a long battle for the rights of her handicapped yet gifted daughters to have a public school education."

Elle and Dakota will play "handicapped yet gifted" under the director of Arvin Brown, a television director who has directed just one feature film, a 1980 horror flick called Diary of the Dead. I'm sure Dakota's parents and handlers have a master plan, and I'm absolutely positive they need no advice from internet movie critics when it comes to the handling of the preteen phenom's career. However, I do think now is the time to recall the sad story of Macaulay Culkin. If you remember, the Uncle Buck star was just about Dakota's age when he stuck his own little toe into dangerous waters, first as sidekick to a window-smashing, crotch-grabbing Michael Jackson in the "Black or White" video, and then as the villain in the 1993 thriller bomb, The Good Son.

Like Hurricane Mary, The Good Son was a family affair, co-starring Culkin siblings Quinn and Rory. Within a year after The Good Son's release, little Macaulay all but suffered a nervous breakdown and basically disappeared for almost a decade, only to resurface briefly to play a drug-addicted murderer and get engaged to a cast member from That 70s Show. This could very well all fit into the Fanning' family's plan: maybe the goal is to screw everything up now, wait until 2017, and then get Dakota cast in a remake of Monster and married off to Wilmer Valderrama. If so, well done, Mr. and Mrs. Fanning! Let all your haters stand corrected when this delicious plan comes to fruition.

It happens every year: films go to Sundance, play to packed crowds, win Jury prizes and/or score big deals ... and then essentially disappear. It happened in 2005, when Ira Sachs' Forty Shades of Blue took home the Dramatic Grand Jury prize, only to open nine months later on just three screens and eventually gross barely $75,000 in its 84 day release. It happened again last year, when The Darwin Awards and Right at Your Door landed multi-million dollar deals with major distributors, only to be shelved indefinitely. I guess if you're an acquisitions exec, it's easy to get carried away up there on the mountain, but sometimes the same picture that thrilled a packed crowd at the Racquet Club looks downright unmarketable back at the office in L.A. So, with the caveat that I have neither a crystal ball nor any sort of reliable inside information, here are my picks for five Sundance '07 films that will actually see a meaningful release sometime before Sundance '08.


1) The Ten (Cinematical review)


Stu Van Airsdale thinks Manohla Dargis was talking about this film in the NY Times, when she described a distributor who sat through a "bad comedy that features a clutch of low-level film and television actors" whilst fantasizing about "all those recognizable [actor] names once they are printed on a DVD box." I'm actually convinced Ms. Dargis was referencing Gregg Araki's Smiley Face, a stoner comedy starring Anna Faris and half the cast of That 70's Show, which was apparently so awful that even die-hard Araki fans couldn't sit through it. I think if Dargis had attended a public screening of The Ten -- or if she had even caught a glimpse of the hundreds of high school and college kids lining up for the wait list as long as eight hours in advance of the picture's second-to-last show -- she would have a hard time condemning a distributor for trying to cash in on it.

The movie, which was written and directed by David Wain of Wet Hot American Summer fame, consists of ten short segments, one representing each of the ten commandments, strung together by some filler involving Paul Rudd not being able to decide if he'd rather screw Jessica Alba, Famke Janssen or (this is not a typo) Dianne Wiest. It may be less engaging than a 90-minute stint watching old clips of The State on YouTube, but it's got huge college-campus potential, where boys and girls have been known to consume comedy without bothering to consult the second film critic for the New York Times to see if she approves. With savvy marketing, and maybe a few structural tweaks, this could be the sleeper comedy hit of the summer.

If you've turned on the television at all this week, you're probably aware that there's a film at Sundance called Hounddog, in which there's a rape scene featuring 12-year-old Dakota Fanning. There's been a lot of talk about the rape scene in theory, but most of it has come from people who haven't, and may never, see the film. After being shut out of the film's sole Sundance press screening, I swung by a public screening of the film, to find out what ticket buyers had to say after seeing it for themselves.

Remember when I said I was swearing off Main Street? That vow has been broken already. Saturday night, I headed down to the Delta/WireImage Lounge (no, I wasn't making that up in yesterday's post -- it actually exists) for FILMMAKER Magazine's 15th Anniversary bash. 15 minutes after the party's official start time, the slow-moving line to get in was already trailing some ways down the block. Inside, revellers (including various members of the Four Eyed Monsters camp, filmmaker Caveh Zahedi, and SXSW Film's Matt Dentler and Jarod Neece) enjoyed free Absolut and Stella Artois (served up by bartenders dressed as porntastic stewardesses), as they attempted to chat over the blare of Coldplay and The Shins. Here are some of the hot topics of conversation:

A.J. Schnack, director of They Might Be Giants doc Gigantic and About a Son, the forthcoming doc about Kurt Cobain, discussed the difference between opening a film at Toronto (as About a Son did), and opening at Sundance. "At Toronto," Shnack says, "It's like everyone is there to find out, 'Are these Oscar buzz films good enough?' I mean, we got enough press, but Toronto is a festival where it's still possible to play under the radar. Unlike Sundance, where everyone's like, 'What's the great discovery? Where's the new talent?'"

You haven't *really* experienced Sundance until you've trudged through eight blocks of human gridlock on Main Street, stuck behind three heavily Ugg-ed out 19-year-old girls intent on topping one another with tales of encounters with actors 4-6 times their age. (Examples: "I can't BELIEVE I saw Anthony Hopkins!"; "Remember that time I took a picture with Colin Firth? Ohmigodialmostdied!!!") Wait, scratch that: you haven't *really* experienced Sundance until you're distracted from all of the above by the sight of a respectable journalist exiting the Lean Pockets Hospitality Lodge* weighed down with three or four canvas bags full of swag. This is what Main Street is all about, and I'm pretty sure its why Robert Redford and Geoff Gilmore need to remind us to "Focus on Film" at the biggest film festival in the States. I've never been to Park City during the off-season, but it seems a lot like any other slightly-sleepy resort town, where mom-and-pop pizza shops share blocks with ridiculous tchochke emporiums. But the during second two weeks of January, nearly every other storefront is commandeered by a corporation.

ESPN takes over a sports bar; T-Mobile and MySpace team up to conquer an Asian-Fusion restaurant; Delta clears out a local pub and pays for WireImage to use it as a portrait studio. Some companies make their omnipresence felt via random advertising slogans, plastered on buildings but pointing to no visible product (see above). The Festival itself arranges for their official sponsors to take turns taking over the same Main Street club, where mobs line up to collect swag from Motorola, Turning Leaf and Krups. Some brands put up a discrete sign in a second-story window and hire a goon to keep the rabble out; this afternoon, I was denied access to both the PREMIERE Magazine Lounge, and the Luxury Lounge Hosted by PEOPLE. Meanwhile, the folks at the New York Lounge (hosted by the Bloomberg-established agency to lure film and TV productions to the state) welcomed me with open arms, offering me bagels with apple butter and tons of tax incentive literature.

Karina Longworth, the Editor Emeritus of Cinematical, is taking advantage of her mostly-meaningless title to post a diary of her experiences at Sundance. Your new editor wants her to do this every day, but in case she, uh, doesn't, it's because her real job got in the way.

Reading Eugene Hernandez' blog whilst waiting the for the cab to arrive to take me to La Gaurdia this morning, I learned that David Poland and Jeffrey Wells have declared that Sundance 2007, which officially begins tonight, is, in fact, already over. You see, they arrived in Park City a good 48 hours ahead of me, took turns inserting their thermometers in the rectum of the festival, and rushed to their computers to report the reading: cold. In fact, according to Wells, EVERYONE is saying that this year's line-up looks "flat, so-so, nothing to write home about material...a couple of almost-but-not-quite- as-good-as-Half Nelson flicks, and apparently nothing even close to a Little Miss Sunshine-type breakout waiting to happen."

Though tempted to reach for my phone to cancel the car -- a Sundance without a Sunshine is no Sundance for me! -- my more rational self prevailed. Instead, actually invigorated by the prospect of attending a film festival in which an over-hyped (and over-priced) Vacation retread steals headlines (and potential aquisition dollars) from ten or twelve films more deserving of market share, I zipped up my laptop and went downstairs. I went to the airport, got on the plane, and landed a little while ago. I even had my first Chik-fil-a in the Cincinatti airport during my layover. It was good. I ate too many waffle fries, though.

Note: Portions of the review appeared on Cinematical during the Sundance Film Festival, as part of this article.

Friends with Money stars Jennifer Aniston as an unhappy, 30-something, pot smoking maid who can't stop stalking her married ex. Like writer/director Nicole Holofcener's previous films, Walking and Talking and Lovely and Amazing, Friends with Money is an astutely observed relationship dramedy, painfully funny even as it burns. As Holofcener's unhappily unmarried heroine, Olivia, Aniston – a one-note actress, but virtuoso-good at that note – acquits herself more than admirably,  considering the film began shooting the day after news of her seperation from Brad Pitt leaked to the press, The timing could maybe not have been more cruely ironic: the role requires Aniston to convince us that she's a loser. Watch for a key moment, about three quarters in, where a romantic rival tells Olivia to "go get [her] own husband." It's not hard to imagine the real-life motivations Aniston used to fuel Olivia's profanity-laden response.

 

Due to technical problems on our end, we're just getting around to posting the last round of video interviews from this year's Sundance Film Festival (you can check out the backlogue here), and this is one I've been looking forward to for a while. Goran Dukic's Wristcutters: A Love Story was, to my mind, one of the few real gems to come out of this year's Sundance. Which makes C.K. Sample's interview, with Dukic and the film's co-star, Shannyn Sossamon all the more ... uh ... interesting. I'm not sure if Dukic and Sossamon didn't realize they were on camera, or if they were just wiped out from the Sundance grind, but by the time Sossamon started rifling through her bag for lipgloss, a publicist definitely should have stepped in and wisked the talent away. Lucky for you, they didn't.

You can watch this video here, or, if you love us enough (and why wouldn't you?), subscribe to our podcast feed, either through iTunes or RSS.

Talk about getting mileage out of a metaphor. On our Sundance video podcast, James Rocchi cracked that last year's Sundance hit Saw reminded him of David Fincher's Seven ... as performed by the Max Fischer Players, the grade school company spearheaded by the protagonist of Rushmore. I tried to come up with my own analogy to bring to the table, in discussing Art School Confidential, Terry Zwigoffs latest collaboration with Ghost World creator Daniel Clowes, but James' framework just seemed so very apt. So, in 25 words or less: Art School Confidential is exactly what would happen if the Max Fischer Players tackled Heathers. In other words, it's a stilted satire of teenage passion and apathy, sex and death and crime. And like a classic Max Fischer production (if such a thing exists), it's so concerned with aping style that it never bothers to consider its characters as people.

French movie site Cinempire has posted the first high-res pics from Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep. I reviewed the film at Sundance, and loved it; a lot of other Sundancers thought it was a silly, structureless mess. Click through and decide for yourself - if you haven't read much about the film, the above still is a pretty solid encapsulation of what it's all about.

[via JoBlo]

Some time last Friday, I spent about an hour working in raw HTML on an Excel-ish guide to the films sold at Sundance up to that point. When Firefox crashed just as I was about to hit save, I consoled myself over the loss: "Not like there was much to report."

With the exception of two high-dollar, high-profile deals (days after Fox Searchlight spent a lamentable $10 million on Little Miss Sunshine, Warner Independent invested $6 million on Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep), the market in Park City was almost non-existant. Sure, a few films sold – Lionsgate surprised no one by picking up genre flick Right at Your Door; The Night Listener's topicality probably helped coax the new Miramax into a non-committal $3 million buy – but a lot didn't, and for once, the critical establishment and the money men seemed to be on the same side: though Sundance 2006 offered quite a few films worth seeing, it was hard to find much to get excited about. That strange silence flooding the Yarrow lobby every afternoon? That was the sound of a conspicuous lack-of buzz.

We recorded an astounding amount of video whilst in Park City this year – so much, in fact, that we'll still be parcelling some of it out over the next two weeks. So stay tuned, for interviews with Shannyn Sossamon (Wristcutters: A Love Story), Alan Berliner (Wide Awake), and others. In the meantime, here's a guide to the video coverage that we've already posted:

• Is Sundance all about the swag? James sat down with Jono, a professional gift bag artist, to get to the bottom of that very burning question. Jono kindly inspected the one gift bag we managed to collect up to that point, and we thus learned that we weren't going to the right parties.
• We shot a total of four roundatable sessions whilst in Park City, in which we discussed the films, the scene, and the festival at large. In the opening Roundtable, we fittingly discussed the opening film, Friends with Money, starring Jennifer Aniston. Roundtable Two was all about sex: specifically, the missing Katie Holmes sex scene, and the too-twisted-for-buyers sexual subtext of Bob Goldthwait's Stay. Little Miss Sunshine was at the center of biggest sale of the festival, and in Video Roundtable Three, Jason, James and I discuss whether or not Fox Searchlight overpaid for the Steve Carell film. Then, in Video Roundtable Four Managing Editor Kim Voynar joined us for a discussion of the Closing Night Awards, which included honors for Stephanie Daley and Quinceanera. We also discussed the last few films we screened, including Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep, and Alpha Dog, starring Justin Timberlake.
• I had the honor of speaking with Geoff Gilmore, Sundance Festival Director, about his programming process and some of his favorite films at Sundance 2006. Here's a hint: we have one in common.
• Jason moderated a panel on Vlogging, Podcasting and the Right to Free Expression, featuring speakers Susan Buice (Four Eyed Monsters), Mika Salmi (founder of Atom Films), Ken Rutkowski (KenRadio), and SoccerGirl, creator of the wildly popular video podcast. Part 1 and Part 2.
• James interviews Lauren Greenfield, director of the harrowing documentary Thin. Amongst other things, Greenfield discusses the challenge of making a documentary about very sick women with a healthy crew.
• Red Doors didn't play at Sundance this year, but it did play – and win awards – just about everywhere else. Writer-director Georgia Lee served on the Sundance 2006 shorts jury, and she sat down with us to talk about festivals, filmmaking, and the threads dangling in between.
• When director Philip Groening decided he wanted to make a documentary about the Carthusian monks living in the French Alps, the monastary asked him to wait until they were better prepared for an outside visitor. After 15 years, they called Groening up and said, "We're ready." The resulting film, Into Great Silence, won a major award at this year's festival. C.K. Sample talks to Groening about the film, which broke box office records in his native Germany.

On Day 2 of Sundance 2006, our own Jason Calacanis wrote a review of Everybody Stares, a documentary by Police drummer Stewart Copeland about the band that was his life. The film was cobbled together from Copeland's home movie footage, and Jason was less than impressed. He wrote: "Documentaries rise and fall with their credibility, and this film feels as credible as a father cutting a son's football highlights in slow motion to the Chariots of Fire soundtrack. Someone should take this footage, add some objective 3rd parties commenting on The Police, and redo the voiceover to tell the real story."

That line rubbed Copeland the wrong way, and he commented on the post to let Jason know exactly how he felt.

"Yes," Copeland wrote. "That is just what it felt like to make this movie and you shouldn't be expecting anything more.  I just don't have the shots you are looking for (sex and drugs) and maybe I forgot to pick up my camera during the shouting matches...Who would care about an "objective 3rd party commentary" on The Police?  The band itself has been defunct for twenty years." Well, by that rationale, should anyone care about a non-objective Police documentary?

Check out Copeland's full comment after the jump.

The Science of Sleep
The Night Listener
Forgiving the Franklins
Alpha Dog
The Darwin Awards
Little Miss Sunshine
Wristcutters, a Love Story
Right at Your Door
Factotum
A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
Stephanie Daley
Quinceanera
The Descent
Stay
Thank You For Smoking
Kinky Boots
Sherrybaby
Cinnamon
Lucky Number Slevin
Friends with Money - Karina's take
Friends with Money - James' take

Foreign
13 (Tzameti)
Little Red Flowers
Adam's Apples
Eve and the Firehorse
Man Push Cart
Princesas

Documentary
An Inconvenient Truth
This Film is Not Yet Rated
Clear Cut
TV Junkie
Wordplay
Wide Awake
Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!
The World According to Sesame Street
Thin
Angry Monk - Reflections on Tibet
Crossing Arizona
Everyone Stares, Police Documentary

Shorts
Flesh

Ahh, Sundance. After 12 days in Park City, where the average temp was something like 12 degrees and anyone who made it to less than 3 screenings a day was kicked off the island, I gave the kids a day off to recuperate. Now we're back (baby), and we have enough backed-up content to choke a horse. Stay tuned, because over the next two weeks, we'll have more reviews, video interviews, deal news and, coming today and tomorrow, a few extra-special festival roundups. Have any lingering questions about the fest? Comment here and we'll try to get it all sorted.