Sundance Fest: Gilmore Explains Lineup

Sundance has announced its line-up--and Todd McCarthy went over the whole list of pics with fest director Geoff Gilmore. Looks like we're in for some more grim naval-gazing psychological stuff. Oy:

Films that explore individual ways of coping with a distressed world mark the lineup of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, which unspools Jan. 17-27 in Park City, Utah.

Eighty-one world premieres are among the 121 feature films set for the nation's premier indie fest, which received 2,051 narrative features and 1,573 documentaries submitted from around the world this year, an all-time high.

Fest director Geoffrey Gilmore noted that, surprisingly, the films on view this year "are not as political or social issue-oriented as last year. There's more personal expression about the daily aspects of lives, about people's state of mind. The fact is that the world around us is a very troubled place, but the response of the filmmakers isn't always dark, but is about people finding a way though it and about persevering, not succumbing. You sense the need for an escape from the exhausting pressures of reality."

Rawson Thurber's screen adaptation of Michael Chabon's first novel Mysteries of Pittsburgh (above), starring Peter Saarsgard, is one of the pics to look forward to.

Comments

[franQ]

Re: "Rawson Thurber's screen adaptation of Michael Chabon's first novel Mysteries of Pittsburgh...is one of the pics to look forward to."

NOT if you're a fan of the novel!

I've read the screenplay, and in RMT's adaptation he's gone so far as to completley CUT the gay character of Arthur Lecomte, who serves as the sole catalyst (not to mention namesake) for Art Bechstein meeting ANYONE he encounters in the novel!

If you are a fan of this book, do NOT see the movie. Unless you want to see glamor-girl Phlox Lombardi reduced to Art's "boss and sometimes girlfriend" or see Art get It on with Cleveland (Saarsgard)--something neither would NEVER do!

And don't get me started on Jane! (Sienna Miller) What was RMT thinking turning this throw-away character (I love her but she's only in about 30% of the book!) into "leading lady?"

Shame on Michael Chabon for giving RMT the "thumbs up" to go ahead with these changes. I can no longer call him my Favorite Author.

Join the official MOP Film Boycott: www.myspace.com/mysteriesofpittsburgh

Don't trust my opinion? Email me for a copy of the script and see for yourself: bechstein[at]yahoo[dot]com

--Frank Anthony Polito, author of BAND FAGS! (Kensington Books, June 2008)
www.bandfags.com