Sundance 2008 News
by Andre Soares
Liam Lacey on Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges at the Toronto Globe and Mail:
"Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleason appear to draw on the model of the comedy team of Laurel and Hardy, with Farrell as the anxious, not-so-bright apprentice and Gleeson as his composed, epicurean partner, as they await orders from their irascible overseer (Ralph Fiennes). McDonagh’s dialogue is consistently clever, though his pacing is a problem, as is his weakness for corny surrealism: Peter Dinklage appears as a snide dwarf American movie actor; doing a knock-off version of Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Back [sic] in a set designed to look like a Hieronymus Bosch painting."
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At indieWIRE, actor and theater director Terry Kinney, whose feature-film debut, the dramatic comedy Diminished Capacity, will premiere at Sundance, takes part in a lengthy q&a.
Diminished Capacity follows a Chicago newspaper editor (Matthew Broderick), who goes home to Missouri to visit his ailing, neuron-impaired uncle (Alan Alda). A rare baseball card leads the uncle, the nephew, and his high-school sweetheart (Virginia Madsen) on a trip back to Chicago so they can try to sell it.
A brief quote:
"I was sent a script that I didn’t find very interesting or funny, but the agent who sent it encouraged me to read the novel it was based on, which I did — and I found it very charming and hilarious, and loved the characters. I called the writer (who had written the script as well) and asked him why the script wasn’t more like the book. He was relieved, because he’d been misled into that draft. I told him that we had no money, but lots of time and energy, that we wouldn’t give up on it, or him. That was six years, several drafts ago. We went a long way, sometimes out of our way, to come back a short distance correctly — as Edward Albee said. But Sherwood [Kiraly] nailed it."
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Ryan Pearson’s "Filmmakers Look to Sundance Buying Spree" at the Associated Press/Washington Post:
"The same writers strike that transformed the Golden Globes into a news conference might bring smiles to the faces of agents and filmmakers gathered in this snow-covered ski town.
"They’re hoping that studios will spend more freely than usual at the Sundance Film Festival, buying up independent movies to fill release schedules that have begun to thin as the Writers Guild of America work stoppage continues."
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Ben Hoyle’s "British talent feeds a frenzy at Sundance" in The [London] Times:
"The Sundance Film Festival has grown into the world’s largest market-place for independent movie-makers, and this year British films are second in number only to American ones.
"Eleven British films and documentaries are among the 125 features selected from 3,624 films seen by the festival programming team. A further 12 short films from the UK are also showing. "
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Among the British films at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival are the aforementioned In Bruges; the thriller The Escapist, with Brian Cox and Joseph Fiennes; and Chris Waitt’s documentary A Complete History of My Sexual Failures (above).
Rotterdam Film Festival 2008 Film Line-Up
33rd Metro Manila Film Festival
Nashville Film Festival 2008 - Dates
Julie Christie in the LA WEEKLY
Erik Childress’ Top Ten Criticwatch Whores of 2007
Film Threat’s Top 50 Lost Films
Golden Globes 2008 Ceremony Cancelled
Actors to Boycott Golden Globes
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