Tag: Sundance Film Festival (21-30 of 335)

Jan 25 2013 08:32 PM ET

Sundance 2013: Juror Tom Rothman on the legacy of indie film and the future of robot revolution

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Image Credit: Christopher Beyer for EW

During his 18 years as an executive at 20th Century Fox, Tom Rothman oversaw two of the biggest movies in history — Titanic and Avatar. But as a juror at the Sundance Film Festival this past week, he has been focusing on some of the smaller, scrappier movies being made on the indie circuit for roughly the catering budget (for a day, maybe) of those kinds of films.

After departing as co-chairman of the Fox studio last year, Rothman has been working as a producer, helping Steven Spielberg bring the man vs. machines epic Robopocalypse to the screen. EW caught up with him at the festival, which bestows its juror prizes Saturday night, to pick his brain about independent film, finding new talent, and just what the state of that robot uprising is right now.

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Jan 25 2013 06:17 PM ET

Sundance 2013: IFC scoops up rights to Rooney Mara-, Casey Affleck-starrer 'Ain't Them Bodies Saints'

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Image Credit: David Lowery

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, one of 16 films in this year’s U.S. dramatic competition at the Sundance Film Festival, has scored a deal for U.S. distribution rights with IFC Films.

Written and directed by Texas-based Filmmaker David Lowery, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints stars Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck, and Ben Foster. Set in 1970s rural Texas, the film tells the tale of outlaw couple Bob Muldoon (Affleck) and Ruth Guthrie (Mara). During a shootout in the Texas hills, Ruth wounds a local officer (Foster), but Bob takes the blame, and when he escapes from prison four years later, he sets out to find Ruth and their daughter, born during his incarceration. READ FULL STORY »

Jan 25 2013 04:54 PM ET

'jOBS' filmmakers respond to Steve Wozniak's complaints that first clip was inaccurate -- EXCLUSIVE

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Image Credit: Glen Wilson

Well, that didn’t take long: Just a few hours after EW posted the first clip from jOBS — a Steve Jobs biopic starring Ashton Kutcher as the tech visionary and Josh Gad as his partner Steve Wozniak — Wozniak himself took to Gizmodo’s comment boards to deride the film as inaccurate. “Not close,” he wrote. “We never had such interaction and roles…I’m not even sure what it’s getting at…personalities are very wrong although mine is closer.”

Later, Wozniak would expand on his comment in two emails to Gizmodo, calling the scene “totally wrong.” He objected to the film’s styling — “I never looked like a professional” — as well as the way the clip seemed to credit Jobs with ideas Wozniak claims as his own: “The ideas of computers affecting society did not come from Jobs. They inspired me.” He concluded by poking fun at the Apple guru’s mercenary nature — “By the way, the Apple I was the 5th time I designed something just for fun that Steve found a way to turn into money.”

When asked for comment, jOBS publicist Amanda Lundberg responded with the following statement:

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Jan 25 2013 02:39 PM ET

Sundance 2013: Sony Pictures Classics falls for 'Before Midnight'

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Before-Midnight

Image Credit: Despina Spyrou

Before Midnight, the third film from Richard Linklater about the alluring romance between Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), was acquired by Sony Pictures Classics after debuting at the Sundance Film Festival last weekend. The characters initially met on a train bound for Vienna in the 1995 film Before Sunrise, and the reunited nine years later in Paris in the 2004 film Before Sunset. In Before Midnight, the pair is in Greece, wrestling with life and love in their early 40s. READ FULL STORY »

Jan 25 2013 11:29 AM ET

Sundance: 'The Spectacular Now' is a lovely and original teen movie. 'A.C.O.D.' is the comedy that Adam Scott fans have been waiting for

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Image Credit: Wilford Harewood

Remember how Elvis Presley looked when he was young? The perfect pompadour, the eyes a-twinkle, the smile so brightly and absurdly cocksure it seemed lit from within? Imagine Elvis reincarnated as a very tall and brainy American high school dude, with a quip for every occasion, and you’ll have an idea of the fresh yet slightly skewed charisma of Miles Teller, the gifted star of The Spectacular Now. He plays a high school senior about to graduate named Sutter, who would, at a glance, seem to have it all. Sutter already knows how to talk to the ladies — he looms over them — and the way he drops little aggressive jabs into his conversation could easily make him seem like a shark. Except that for all that snappy gift of gab, he exudes a sweetness that can’t be faked. He’s smart and clever and a little blissed-out, with a soft-edged understanding of other people. He coasts along in school, enjoys his part-time job (as a clerk at a men’s clothing store), and seems to get off on every moment of every day. So where’s the rub? During almost every one of those moments, he’s drinking (from a flask, or from a soda cup that he’s secretly spiked with whiskey). He’s precocious as hell, yet he lives in the moment, in the happy buzzed now, because he’s not interested in imagining a future. READ FULL STORY »

Jan 25 2013 09:59 AM ET

Sundance 2013: 'Computer Chess' wins the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize (as well it should)

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Computer-Chess

Image Credit: Computer Chess LLC

I’m no psychic. But the minute I saw Andrew Bujalski’s sweet/geeky/playful/pointyheaded drama Computer Chess, I knew it would win the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, a cool-brainiac award from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation that comes with a $20,000 huzzah for an independent film project that, in the words of the foundation press release, explores “science and technology themes or that depict scientists, engineers, and mathematicians in engaging and innovative ways.” I knew Computer Chess would win, first because most other films at Sundance this year explore relationships and sexytime themes rather than stories featuring scientists. And second because, in the guise of messing around with the limitations of PortaPak video aesthetics and technology circa 1980, Bujalski (the mumblecore pioneer who made Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation, and Beeswax) gets at something deep and true about the nature of scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and the young nerds of every generation who go on to invent the stuff that changes the lives of all the rest of us.

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Jan 25 2013 09:00 AM ET

Sundance: How are the big films of 2012's drama competition faring at the box office?

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Image Credit: Jess Pinkham

As this year’s Sundance Film Festival winds down, there’s a collection of stand-outs, films that have already sparked bidding wars among distributors and are gaining buzz that filmmakers hope turns into success beyond the festival.

But where are the films that were in the midst of this festival frenzy a year ago? Now that 13 of the 16 films in the U.S. dramatic competition have opened in theaters nationwide, they yield a list that’s mainly box office duds, but there was one movie that had plenty of life in it post-Sundance — the acclaimed Beasts of the Southern Wild. READ FULL STORY »

Jan 24 2013 03:30 PM ET

Sundance 2013: Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen are 'Very Good Girls' -- VIDEO

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Image Credit: Jessica Miglio

At a Sundance Film Festival remarkable for its strong female perspective, Very Good Girls might be the most earnest and accessible of those films. It’s the coming-of-age story of two Brooklyn teenagers (Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen) who are determined to lose their virginity before the summer after their senior year of high school ends. They both fall for the same boy, but there are no hijinks; this is no distaff version of American Pie. “What I wanted more than anything was it to be a fly on the wall experience,” says writer-director Naomi Foner, who makes her directorial debut after a long career as a successful screenwriter (Running on Empty). “We’re there with these girls as these things happen. I wanted nothing more than for women of all ages to walk into it and to feel ‘Oh, yeah I remember that,’ or ‘I see that,’ or ‘I can do that.’ And have a model for themselves of some sort. And I didn’t want to do it in way that’s silly.”

If it had been sillier or crass, Foner might have had an easier time getting it made. She initially wrote the script 20 years ago, and nearly had a go-picture a few years back, but the financier flinched because the two actresses Foner had recruited weren’t big enough: Kristen Stewart and Jennifer Lawrence. READ FULL STORY »

Jan 24 2013 11:14 AM ET

Sundance 2013: 'A.C.O.D.' stars Amy Poehler and Adam Scott are over the moon

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Image Credit: Larry Busacca/Getty Images

For fans of Parks and Recreation, Amy Poehler and Adam Scott are television’s most adorable couple. But in A.C.O.D., the Sundance movie about an Adult Child of Divorce (Scott) who’s never really recovered from the trauma of his parents’ split, their relationship could not be chillier. Poehler plays Scott’s pushy step-mother — and the landlord of his restaurant — and she’s not afraid to throw her influence around. (Imagine if Leslie Knope had grown up in Eagleton and you get the idea.)

The film, which premiered last night, reunites Scott with his Step Brothers father, Richard Jenkins, and his Party Down pal, Jane Lynch, and also features Catherine O’Hara, The Office‘s Clark Duke, and 30 Rock‘s Ken Howard, among others.

In person, Poehler and Scott are much more like their Parks and Recreation characters, funny and friendly, offering a glass of red wine to a reporter (that may have been left behind by another journalist.) Before a Princess Bride style Battle of Wits could be staged over the dubious drink in question, the two actors were kind enough to discuss their new movie and Parks and Rec.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Adam, you’re an executive producer on A.C.O.D. I’ve met a lot of producers, but for the life of me, I never really know exactly what they do because when I ask them, I get 100 different answers. So what did the executive producer do on this movie?

ADAM SCOTT: He got Amy Poehler to do the movie. READ FULL STORY »

Jan 24 2013 11:09 AM ET

Sundance: What makes 'The Way, Way Back' a crowd-pleaser? Plus 'Pandora's Promise,' a radically sane and important documentary about how nuclear power could save us

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Image Credit: Claire Folger

The term “crowd-pleaser” should probably be retired from the movie universe. When a serviceable January horror flick like Mama can make $20 million its opening weekend (and that’s demonstrably in the off season), you can bet that virtually every film that opens week in and week out at number one is, in ticket sales and essence, a crowd-pleaser. So it seems unnecessary, or maybe just redundant, to single out any one film for fulfilling that definition. It would sort of be like referring to Twizzlers or popcorn as “popular movie junk food.” READ FULL STORY »

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