Those of us who saw Lone Scherfig and Nick Hornby's An Education at Sundance witnessed a remarkable debut: Carey Mulligan was an instant star. With Audrey Hepburn-style class, charisma and smarts, she's well-cast as a brainy and sexy high school kid in 60s Britain aching to break out into the bigger world. Peter Sarsgaard (with a plummy British accent) is the older sophisticate who takes away her innocence and shows her what she's missing. With Sony Pictures Classics at the helm, this movie should go all the way to some major awards:

It's the dawn of a new era at the Sundance Institute. After 14 years, Ken Brecher is resigning his post as executive director. Robert Redford brought him in, and now will head the search for a new leader for the Institute. Brecher had not always agreed with departed Fest director Geoff Gilmore about where the festival should be headed. They did not see eye-to-eye, for example, on how much the fest should be involved in helping filmmakers to find distribution, perhaps through digital means. So Gilmore took that initiative with him to Robert DeNiro's Tribeca Enterprises. With Brecher gone, Sundance and the Fest have the chance to start fresh, with Gilmore's long-time lieutenant John Cooper at the festival helm.

As this year's Tribeca Film Fest ramps up for its April 22 launch, Gilmore himself blogs about where indie film stands now.

The Sundance press release is on the jump.

As expected, long-time Sundance vet John Cooper is picking up the reins of the Sundance Film festival as director in the wake of Geoff Gilmore's defection to Tribeca Enterprises. In the past two years, Cooper had taken on more responsibilities at the fest. He is more than ready to take over and Robert Redford and Sundance would have been remiss if they had gone any other way. Cooper joined the fest in 1989.

It's no shock that after six seasons of programming the Tribeca Film Fest, Peter Scarlet is moving on. Rumors of his exit had started to circulate at the Indie Spirit Awards. And word is Scarlet was getting antsy with Robert DeNiro and partner Jane Rosenthal's push for a smaller, event-oriented festival with less room for esoterica even before he learned that Geoff Gilmore, after 19 years running the higher-profile Sundance Film Festival, was coming in to supervise him. (When he announced the job switch, Gilmore told me that he was planning to let Scarlet run this year's Tribeca festival.) But while Scarlet could have opted to stay on board through this April's fest, which had his fingerprints on it, leaving now is an act of protest indeed.

Now we play a game of musical chairs. With Scarlet leaving, Gilmore will look to install another programmer in his stead. Meanwhile, Gilmore's post at Sundance will need to be filled. The fest has a deep bench of talent. Long-time Gilmore lieutenant John Cooper, who had taken over much of the programming over the past two years, is the presumed heir, but the festival is grabbing an opportunity to take stock of itself and figure out its strategic goals going forward. But it's unlikely that if Cooper doesn't get the job that he would stay.

And at the Los Angeles Film Festival, the Rich Raddon vacancy is still open. Film Independent's Dawn Hudson has appointed a search committee, including UTA's Rich Klubeck, WMA's Rena Ronson and attorney Craig Emanuel, to vet potential candidates--and in this crazy economy, there are many. Rachel Rosen is still programming the fest, which has been on an upswing since it centralized itself in Westwood, but the LAFF needs a strong fund-raiser/administrator/director with strong showman skills who can help crystallize the summer fest's identity both inside--and outside--Hollywood.

One of the most unlikely people walking the red carpet to the Oscar show Sunday was Kimberly Rivers Roberts, the 9th Ward New Orleans ex-drug dealing heroine of the Oscar-nominated doc Trouble the Water. There she was, resplendent in a silver gown, accompanied by her husband Scott Roberts and executive producer Danny Glover, who agreed to back Tia Lessen and Carl Deal's New Orleans doc featuring Roberts' homevideo footage of her struggle to help her neighbors survive Hurricane Katrina. The pic was a sleeper hit at Sundance 2008, where Roberts gave birth to her first child.

Since Hurricane Katrina, Roberts and her husband have turned their lives around; Kimberly's first hip-hop CD will come out in April at the same time the movie debuts on HBO. Before flying into L.A., she participated in the New Orleans Mardi Gras in the Muse Parade as the muse of tragedy, Melpomene. A celebratory week indeed.

Here's some red carpet Flipcam footage of Glover and Roberts (with some Dominic Cooper wedged in):
Find more videos like this on AnneCam

There's a discernible motive behind the suits filed Thursday by The Weinstein Co. and Lionsgate over rights to the Sundance triple-prize-winning Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire. While Lionsgate is protecting its flank, having announced buying North American rights, the question really is: what does Harvey Weinstein want? He came out of Sundance empty-handed and he was reportedly chasing worldwide rights to the fest crowd-pleaser, which stars Mo'Nique and Mariah Carey, among others. John Sloss's Cinetic Media was negotiating with both players.

What does Weinstein get out of this legal fracas? Bragging rights to a few territories, maybe. But it's unlikely that the Lee Daniels movie will have much overseas value. (Also adding some frisson to the situation: 12-year Lionsgate vet Tom Ortenberg just defected to Weinstein.) But Harvey likes to be on the train with hot material, even when he can't have primary territories--it's his M.O. on such films as Persepolis and Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.

Today's NYT story did not mention the suit. Spoutblog rounds up all the usual suspects.

At the close of Sundance, Arthouse Films grabbed worldwide rights to Surfwise director Doug Pray's ad world doc Art & Copy, which debuted in the fest's doc competition. The Bagger did a story about why this was an unlikely sale. And EW's Owen Gleiberman covers the film in a mid-fest round-up.

Arthouse plans a theatrical and DVD release this year.

Arthouse's David Koh worked with Pray on his DJ doc Scratch. Submarine repped the filmmakers in the sale.

Indiewire posted updates on the Sundance Awards show in progress.UPDATE: Here's Variety's report.

With most Sundance buyers back home, deals are continuing to close. Sony Pictures Classics acquired North American theatrical rights to sci-fi drama Moon in tandem with Sony Worldwide Acquisitions, which pre-bought the film and has been on a tear this fest, buying Black Dynamite (which will be shown to Screen Gems for possible theatrical release) and Brooklyn's Finest (which will be handled theatrically by Senator Entertainment).

Anchor Bay bought North American and Australian rights to producer-star Ashton Kutcher's Spread, a racy film about a gigolo.

What does this mean? Ancillaries rule and theatrical distribution is in trouble. More on this subject later--off to prep for annual Santa Barbara Film Fest screenwriters panel, which is usually quite cool. Will report on that later too.

In its second buy of the Sundance Fest, IFC is acquiring U.S. rights to Armando Iannucci's comedy In the Loop. The distrib also bought the Nazi horror pic Dead Snow.

William Morris was expected to close the deal today.

I had heard that In the Loop was really smart, and that James Gandolfini rocks it. I'm seeing it tonight. In a few minutes.

UPDATE: In the Loop is Iannuci's raucously funny indictment of what went on behind-the-scenes in Washington and London to lead to the war in Iraq. U.K. TV star Peter Capaldi dominates a gifted improvisational ensemble as a foul-mouthed Scottish communications officer; James Gandolfini plays a peace-loving U.S. General. Most of the characters are dimwits who behave badly; thus the fast-talking smart asshole becomes the hero of the piece. Steve Coogan delivers a memorable cameo. IFC is the proper home for this small-scale Altmanesque romp. The timing, like W., is slightly off.

IFC Films acquired U.S. distribution rights to the tongue-in-cheek Nazi zombie comedy Dead Snow at the Sundance Film Festival Wednesday. The Norwegian horror pic about medical student co-eds on a ski holiday who meet up with evil Nazi zombies premiered in the international narrative feature section.

Produced by Tomas Evjen, Ankjetil Omberg and Terje Stromstad, the film is a follow up to writer-director Tommy Wirkola's 2007 feature film debut Kill Buljo: The Movie. IFC Films plans to release Dead Snow in 2009. IFC acquisition chief Arianna Bocco negotiated the deal with Adeline Fontan Tessaur and Eva Diederix at Elle Driver, who has sold several foreign territories, including Germany (Splendid), Benelux (Splendid), tke U,K, (Entertainment One) and Canada (Seville).

Here's the trailer:

Opinions fly at the Sundance Film Fest but so did fists Wednesday morning when critic John Anderson, who was covering the 8:30 screening of the agit-prop environmental doc Dirt! The Movie for Variety at the Holiday Cinemas, told producer's rep Jeff "The Dude" Dowd that the movie "was poor, too simplistic, too redundant," says Dowd, who accompanied him over to the nearby Yarrow. When they arrived, Anderson told him their conversation on the movie was "over." The debate that followed got so heated that Anderson punched Dowd twice, once on the lip. I've spoken to both guys, and to Variety chief critic Todd McCarthy, who immediately relieved Anderson of the assignment to review the film. The Yarrow management called the police, who took information from witnesses--Anderson had gone to another screening--but Dowd did not press assault charges.

Dowd is a big guy who is passionate about his opinions. Anderson is a film critic who wanted to be left to eat his breakfast in peace and lost his temper. Hitting is not OK. But Anderson says he was harassed. And Dowd doesn't disagree.

Anderson says he let Dowd "make his pitch" on the way over to the Yarrow. After his spiel, Anderson said, "So what?"

Dowd told him to listen to how the audience responded. "They're sheep," Anderson said. "You've got so much power," said Dowd. "Before you write this we should have more discussion."

"He was accusing me of not caring about the state of the world because I didn't like his film," Anderson says. When they arrived at the restaurant he said, "OK, this conversation is over." But Dowd wasn't letting up, says Anderson, who sat down with a friend at a table. Then Dowd pulled up a chair and "continues to make his sales pitch. He wouldn't go away, take no for an answer."

"I told you to get away from me," Anderson said. Dowd says he added, "'Throw this riff-raff out of here!'"

Anderson told Dowd to "fuck off and get out" and Dowd did leave, but returned ten minutes later with Jackie "The Joke Man" Martling (The Howard Stern Show) to speak on behalf of the film. Anderson had moved to a table for four and didn't recognize Martling, but wasn't having any of it anyway. Dowd "starts berating me," Anderson says. "He's a big intimidating guy hovering over the table. I got really pissed off."

Anderson said, "I told you to get away."

Martling said, "I just wanted to tell you..."

Anderson said, "Are you a friend of Jeff's? Can't you see I'm eating breakfast?" Dowd says Anderson got up and said, "I told you I would punch you." Anderson denies he threatened any punching.

Dowd kept talking and Anderson got up and walked four steps, says Dowd, clenched up and hit him in the shoulder, chest and chin, and then his lip. Anderson remembers pushing Dowd away and says he "popped his nose." What did his friends do, he asks, "to deserve him?"

Anderson seems not to have hit Dowd very hard. "I didn't want to hurt him," says Anderson. "This was nothing close to a fistfight." Dowd did not resist and there was no blood. Dowd is a big guy and he's fine. He wants to convene a panel with Anderson, journalists and the Dirt! filmmakers to talk about these issues. Dowd and Anderson have known each other for some 25 years, and Anderson interviewed him for his book, I Wake Up Screening.

Anyone who knows these two guys could see it coming. Dowd is a big genial fellow who feels strongly about the movies he's repping, who never gives up and gets into everyone's personal space. And Anderson is a tough critic who doesn't hesitate to speak his mind. He's a critic! Of course he should never hit anybody.

Anderson says he was "harassed" and the Yarrow should have thrown Dowd out of the restaurant. Dowd says "John is a great guy. He works out! Critics at Sundance are overwhelmed, they don't get much sleep. I wasn't yelling, I was trying to engage him. That's what democracy is about. It's not just old-school criticism when it's an issue-oriented film."

Finally, this blow-up could be just the thing to put Dowd's film on the map. "I'm not sure how good it is for publicity to harrass a film critic into liking his movie," says Anderson. "He's trying to make it a moral issue. It's business."

Here's Spoutblog, MCN and UPDATE: Mike Jones' commentary.

Steven Soderbergh has always been a supporter of innovation, experimentation and new media. Che goes out on VOD Wednesday while its special roadshow engagement continues, and Soderbergh's 2005 Bubble was the first day-and-date experiment for Marc Cuban and Todd Wagner's 2929 Entertainment and Magnolia Pictures. (Magnolia will release Sundance pickup Humpday on VOD BEFORE it hits theaters.) While Soderbergh knows how to keep costs down on his low-budget experiments (he shot this one in 16 days for $1.7 million), he also knows that if people don't know about a movie, they won't come.

So he adopted the old-fashioned build-buzz-at-Sundance approach and unveiled on Tuesday night, as a Special Sneak, The Girlfriend Experience, a 4K digital "work-in-progress" shot with his favorite Red camera. The reaction at the Eccles seemed reasonably warm (here's Karina Longworth at Spoutblog) and polite. The movie boasts a fragmented narrative (by Oceans 13 writers Brian Koppelman and David Levien) which Soderbergh used to try and pump up the flatness that often comes with limited camera set-ups, natural light (all but two shots) and non-pro actors. Porn star Sasha Grey is the only "pro" in the film. She seems comfortable with her lithe body as she plays a hooker who falls for a client. But she's pretty flat too. Soderbergh's manager Michael Sugar is in the film, and ex-Premiere critic Glenn Kenny (who tells all at his Somecamerunning blog) is one of the liveliest performers in the picture, playing a sex critic, basically. But the movie is sleekly shot and I look forward to seeing its final form.

[Photo of Steven Soderbergh by Jeffrey Wells]

While the Sundance media reports on the beleaguered independent theatrical market, which may never return to its former robust self--even with diminished production over the next few years--various Internet moguls are in Sundance networking and hawking their movie-centric wares.

While NetFlix's Reed Hastings insisted he was just watching movies, Col Needham, the Bristol-based film buff founder of Amazon-owned IMDb, the biggest movie website, is in Park City for the second time, hosting meetings at his suite at the spanking new Hotel Park City. With Without a Box, FilmFinders and Amazon Unbox, IMDb is moving steadily into building a bigger movie community and adding content. Here's its Road to Sundance Page.

Chris DeWolfe, one of the co-founders of MySpace, is in Sundance for the fourth year, holding court at the MySpace Cafe (which has free computers) and looking to push harder on the movie side into some of the same initiatives that worked so well for music. It's about giving people pages and marketing and fan opportunities. The studios are still taking advantage of MySpace for promoting their movies via official movie sites, and any sequel can take off from an established fanbase with a little updating.

Even though Facebook has made inroads with 46 million viewers (I now ignore my ugly MySpace page), according to comScore Media Metrix, MySpace is still huge, with 76 million unique users. Both are growing. "MySpace mirrors the census of the U.S.," says DeWolfe. "You can talk about early adopters when you're 2 million, but when you're 76 million, it's everyone. 40% of all moms are on MySpace. Kirk Douglas is blogging. People are getting more social online. Their engagement, the number of minutes they spend online, is up 40% this year over last year."

MySpace, like every other movie-oriented site, saw traffic surges related to The Dark Knight: it was the number one destination on the internet to find information about that movie, says DeWolfe, who is partnering with other film sites like Flixter, too.

E-commerce is DeWolfe's new focus: "We're working on selling ringtones, downloads, merchandise, tickets," he says. What about DVDs? "I'm not sure DVD sales are the future of our business. It's not a large profit center, although bands do sell merchandise, tickets, CDs, and DVDs. MySpace is the hub of their entire career. We're looking into the future of download sales. We're selling MP3 downloads. But they aren't large margins, as Steve Jobs will tell you."

Here's my flipcam interview with DeWolfe:

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired North American and Latin American rights for $3 million to Lone Scherfig's An Education after a heated bidding war. The deal closed Monday night.

Fox Searchlight tried to grab the film with an early preemptive bid, but the offer in the $1 million-$2 million range was deemed too low by sellers CAA and Endgame Entertainment, which financed the $12-million 60s romance with BBC Films. Written by Nick Hornby from Lynn Barber's memoir, An Education stars Sundance "It Girl" Carey Mulligan as a 16-year-old schoolgirl who falls hard for a charming older man played by Peter Sarsgaard.

Fox Searchlight came back into the negotiation on a second round but was unable to close. Instead, on Monday night the company acquired Adam, starring Rose Byrne and Hugh Dancy. Also bidding on An Education were The Weinstein Co., Focus Features, Lionsgate and Overture. SPC, which closed recent deals out of Toronto with Endgame CEO Jim Stern on Easy Virtue and his documentary Every Little Step, will launch the film in the fall with an eye on an awards campaign.

Sundance buyers are also circling Shana Feste’s drama The Greatest, starring Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon, Bobcat Goldthwait’s World’s Greatest Dad, starring Robin Williams, and producer-star Ashton Kutcher’s Spread. CAA had hoped to close a deal before fest’s end on September Issue, the popular documentary about Vogue’s Anna Wintour, which several distribs are interested in, including Senator Entertainment, which started off the fest with its acquisition of Antoine Fuqua’s Brooklyn’s Finest.

Late Monday night, word hit the Cinetic party at Zoom that soon after Adam's Sundance debut, Fox Searchlight had acquired worldwide rights to rookie writer-director Max Mayer's New York romance, starring Rose Byrne (Damages) and Hugh Dancy (Savage Grace) as a man with Asperger Syndrome in love with his neighbor. A release soon confirmed that the specialty unit will open the film later this year. "Adam has deeply satisfying and romantic storytelling," stated Searchlight prexy Peter Rice, "Pitch-perfect performances and the discovery of a new American filmmaker." 

There's so much going on that the Sundance Variety team splits things up. Yesterday I covered the jampacked 10 Directors to Watch panel and party at The Shop, which was shut down by fire marshalls when a nearby transformer blew. Mike Jones went to I Love You Phillip Morris, which is yet another man-on-man movie like Humpday. (By all reports it goes even farther.) Here's John Anderson's review. That and parents grieving the loss of a kid (three movies by my count) are recurring themes here.

Mike and I both enjoyed Sony Pictures Classics' elegant and yummy Tyson dinner (crab bisque soup de poisson, faux filets of beef cooked 26 hours with cherry sauce, potato gnocchis, chocolate tarte with a molten center) at the Bon Appetit Supper Club, where ex-heavyweight champion Mike Tyson admitted that the success of the doc Tyson is making him worry that he'll pursue bad living again, because he's "very weak." "I'm afraid of how much pussy and money I'm going to get," he said. "It's very detrimental to me."

"You're also healthy and strong," director James Toback told him. "So don't forget that."

Variety changed the format and venue for its annual 10 Directors to Watch party, moving to a panel, moderated this year by Sundance vet Mark Waters, followed by a party at The Shop.

Directors Adam Elliot (Max and Mary), Emily Abt (Toe to Toe), Cherien Dabis (Amreeka), Shana Feste (The Greatest), Bohdan Slama (The Country Teacher), Antonio Campos (Afterschool) and Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer) shared the lows and highs of launching their careers. Feste wrote scripts for other directors before realizing she could direct too. Abt put her crew in lacrosse uniforms and even put herself on the field to get one shot when her players were sent home. Dabis used her own experiences of discrimination as an Arab to inform Amreeka. Sundance "It Girl" Carey Mulligan and 500 Days of Summer star Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the young cast of Mystery Team, and Josh Harris and Ondi Timoner of We Live in Public joined industry players and execs such as IMDb's Col Needham for the lively party--until everyone got thrown out. Here's some video of Feste and Webb:

Mike, Dade Hayes and I all covered the Monday morning IFC breakfast announcing day-and-date VOD and SXSW fest launch for five films appearing at the fest this spring. Steven Soderbergh (whose The Girlfriend Experience is a fest Sneak Peak tomorrow) also discussed IFC's innovative release of Che, which hits VOD Wednesday. Here's the story.

Magnolia Pictures won a heated bidding war for worldwide rights to Lynn Shelton's bromantic comedy, Humpday, featuring Mark Duplass and Josh Leonard as two straight pals who dare each other to have sex together in a porn film. Six companies vied for the fest hit, which had audiences rolling with laughter. The film is in the Sundance competition. In yet another case of a filmmaker banking on a new distribution model, Magnolia is launching the film on VOD in advance of its release in 15 cities, as it did with the Demi Moore-starrer Flawless. Here's the story.

Submarine negotiated the six-figure deal.

Along with an enthusiastic Saturday night crowd at the Eccles, I enjoyed Fox Searchlight's anti-rom-com 500 Days of Summer, directed by music video veteran Marc Webb, who lucked out by casting two rising stars with great chemistry, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. It's in the same genre as Juno or Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist, and falls right inside Searchlight's marketing sweet spot: young adults of both sexes. It opens this July.

Bids are flying on films for sale, following Senator's surprise multi-million buy of Antoine Fuqua's cop movie Brooklyn's Finest. The weekend's hot pick-up titles: Lone Scherfig's An Education, written by Nick Hornby, starring this fest's breakout star Carey Mulligan (The Greatest) and Peter Sarsgaard, and the much smaller New York-set Mexican-American competition entry Don't Let Me Drown, from director Cruz Angeles, which some folks compare favorably to such popular Mexican flicks as La Misma Luna (bought here in 2007 by Fox Searchlight) and this year's Rudo y Cursi (Sony Pictures Classics) and Sin Nombre (Focus Features).

Fox Searchlight already made a modest bid on An Education, but so far the two sides haven't come to terms on money. Other movies in play include Lynn Shelton's sex comedy Humpday, Shana Feste's controlled tearjerker The Greatest, producer-star Ashton Kutcher's commercial gigolo movie Spread, and the unique Push: Based on a Novel by Sapphire, which elicited this John Anderson rave:

An urban nightmare with a surfeit of soul, "Push: Based on a Novel by Sapphire" is like a diamond -- clear, bright, but oh so hard. To simply call it harrowing or unsparing doesn't quite cut it; "Push" is also courageous and uncompromising, a shaken cocktail of debasement and elation, despair and hope. Everyone involved deserves major credit for creating a movie so dangerous, problematic and ultimately elevating. Marketing will be a problem, because the shorthand description is so unpalatable. But this is, for all its scorched-earth emotion, a film to be loved.

Rookie writer-director Shana Feste's The Greatest played great and will sell, not to Fox Searchlight, but to another distrib willing to nurture it. Going in, Feste had to wrangle actors such as Susan Sarandon and Pierce Brosnan and decided not to pretend to be anything but a neophyte. She was intimidated and admitted it, she told me, instead of hiding her sensitivity and playing it tough. The actors helped her out. The movie displays unusual control and finesse for one so young, and the audience at the Eccles was in tears. Besides Mulligan, who handled an American accent well but admitted it was "tricky," the other discovery is Brit Aaron Johnson, who's playing John Lennon in Nowhere Boy. (Another movie about the loss of a child, Boy Interrupted, while well-received here, has been described as so intense--it's shot by the filmmaker parents of a bi-polar kid who killed himself--that I can't bring myself to see it.)

Debates are flying on the theatrical possibilities for two popular music docs: Spike Lee's film version of the Broadway musical Passing Strange and Tom DeCillo's doc on The Doors, When You're Strange. Also playing well is Sony Pictures Classics' Toronto pick-up, Davis Guggenheim's It Might Get Loud, featuring guitar greats Jack White, Edge and Jimmy Page.

The Anna Wintour doc The September Issue is also generating theatrical interest. The thriller The Cove, about trying to shoot video of illegal dolphin fishing, got a standing ovation today. The use of digital video to reveal wrongdoing is also the subject of Burma VJ, which was acquired by HBO but is an unlikely theatrical candidate. Its images of protest in the streets of Rangoon against the military dictatorship that has the country completely locked down are bone-chilling and inspiring. Unfortunately, the brief uprising that video guerillas recorded and leaked out of the country to air all over the world via CNN and BBC was short-lived. Yet again, the government shut down its people by killing and brutalizing them--and shot one Japanese cameraman in cold blood.

Mark Duplass is revealed in Sundance hit Humpday (which should land one of four possible buyers at any minuteUPDATE was acquired by Magnolia) as more than the digital writer-director with his brother Jay of Puffy Chair and Baghead but a gifted improvisational actor. He and Humpday co-star Josh Leonard (who starred in The Blair Witch Project) collaborated closely Mike-Leigh-style with writer-director Lynn Shelton. The results are hilarious--but also cut close to the bone. It took skill to pull this off. Here's my review.

Here's Duplass's debate with vet indie filmmaker Jeff Lipsky about digital vs. film. This encapsulates the generational divide pretty well.

Here's my short flipcam interview with Duplass:

[Photo courtesy EW.com]

It is not a surprise that new distrib on the block Senator bought Brooklyn's Finest. Mike Jones is reporting "under $5 million" upfront plus a substantial 8-figure prints and ads commitment. For ex-ThinkFilm exec Mark Urman to buy this film, right at the start of the fest, tells the indie community loud and clear: we're in the market.

All day the negotiations were about cuts and trims and losing the disastrous ending. So Antoine Fuqua realized, after the screening elicited hisses and not so great reviews, that he'd better let everyone know this is a work in progress, and he's ready to tweak.

He wasn't before. He is now.

There's a good movie in there. And it's marketable. Urman is planning a November awards campaign. Ethan Hawke could score. He's excellent in this.

Next to sell will likely be my current fest fave so far, Humpday. Marketing the sexually transgressive subject matter is a delicate issue in the post-Zack and Miri universe. Negotiations were ongoing on Saturday night.

Three good screenings today. The Burma VJ doc is great. HBO has it. The Greatest played great and will sell, not to Fox Searchlight, but to someone willing to nurture it. And Searchlight debuted Marc Webb's charming anti-rom-com 500 Days of Summer, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zoey Deschanel, which scored with auds here and will open commercially in July. If anyone can make this work, it's Searchlight. More tomorrow.

Humpday was the best of the three movies I screened today at the Eccles. The third feature from Seattle photographer/filmmaker Lynn Shelton is deceptively entertaining.

Filmed on the Mike Leigh model of gifted actors improvising off a well-rehearsed and prepared series of scenes, the relationship comedy played well with a crowd of squirming, giggling adults. Happily married Ben (Mark Duplass) feels compelled to break out of the confines of his life when his old college chum Andrew (Joshua Leonard) turns up out of nowhere and lures him to a free-wheeling party where they dare each other to make a porn film starring themselves. How is Ben's straight-laced wife Anna (Alycia Delmore) going to react? No matter how implausible, every move that these characters make is understandable. They want to be so much more interesting and transgressive and not trapped by convention than they are.

Clearly, these collaborators--much like the team behind The Blair Witch Project, which also starred Leonard--knew what they were doing. But the breakout performance is Mark Duplass, of the writer-director Duplass brothers behind Puffy Chair and Baghead. "We shot the whole film," said Shelton at the Q & A, "in order to get excited about the idea that we wouldn't know what happens next. For it to look right we had to show up and shoot. We didn't know what happened until we got there. There was no written dialogue, a clear outline, a strong narrative drive."

The actors developed detailed back stories for their characters over a few months, so that they had a clear scaffolding to work with. "I can't write dialogue as awesome as what these actors say out of their mouths," Shelton said. She had worked as a still photographer on the Seattle set of True Adolescents, starring Duplass. "I fell in love with him as an actor," she said. "Luckily he said yes when I asked him to play the part of one of two guys trying to have sex together." She shortly introduced him to Joshua Leonard. Delmore was a local Seattle actress. And Shelton cast herself as a bisexual who invites Andrew into her bed with her girlfriend.

Inspired by a straight friend's reaction to seeing gay porn at Seattle's Hump Day, Shelton started thinking about straight men and gay sex and the rigidity and fluidity of their identities.

Onstage, Duplass insisted he didn't mind kissing Leonard, who responded, "it was way worse than I thought it would be."

Added Shelton: "It's the most awkward kiss ever recorded on film."

Buyers are circling. The danger with a movie like this is for a distrib to get too excited about its potential, as the Weinsteins did with Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno (a title that should have been ditched). They behaved like the movie was more commercial than it was and failed to build support on a smaller scale. This movie needs that kind of nurturing. Here's the trailer.

Emily Abt's Toe to Toe is an earnest, schematic, and sincere attempt to show the dynamics of an interracial friendship between two teenage girl lacrosse players near Washington D.C.. One is rich, lonely, promiscuous and white, the other poor, hard-working, and black; both are trying to overcome obstacles. Abt brings authenticity and compassion to this straight-forward story. It's very Sundance, in the well-intentioned sense.

Arriving at Sundance weighted with expectations, Brooklyn's Finest is a creative noble failure, one of those damn-the-torpedoes passion projects that flounders on its own ambition. Ex-Warners exec Basil Iwanyk developed the script by Michael C. Martin and brought in director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), but when Warner Bros. passed, the filmmakers raised financing through Avi Lerner's Millenium Films. Fuqua made the movie on location in Brooklyn for something under $20 million with a strong cast: Don Cheadle, Richard Gere, Wesley Snipes, Ellen Barkin and Ethan Hawke, who is stellar.

The movie, shot by Patrick Murghuia, is stunning to look at. Fuqua takes full advantage of Brooklyn and his actors, weaving three stories of three very different cops all heading for disaster. It's an unrelievedly grim portrait of the world, without a ray of hope. The movie played to a mixed response, with both hisses and applause after the finale. (There is some discussion of serious trimming of the 125-minute movie, including the ending, which was not the one originally intended by the writer.) Every buyer was there, from Fox Searchlight (which won't deal with its SAG waiver issue until it has a film it wants to buy), Overture and Summit to Roadside, Senator and Miramax.

Spike Lee, feeling chipper about his first screening of his film version of the Broadway show Passing Strange (IFC is circling), turned up at the Brooklyn's Finest screening in a white fur hat to "represent Brooklyn," he said, and support "my man Wesley Snipes." His Jungle Fever star, who has suffered career turmoil, is fine in Brooklyn's Finest, and was pleased that Lee turned up. It's Snipes' second Sundance, he said; he came back in 1997 to support Mike Figgis's One Night Stand. At the after-party when a flack pressed Snipes to pose for a picture holding Robert Redford's new Sundance brand pink drink, Snipes asked if he could taste it first. That's Sundance in a nutshell.

At the Q & A, Fuqua said, "It's Greek Tragedy, opera. More police die from killing themselves than die in the line of duty. I thought I would explore that." Meanwhile the director is prepping two possible next projects: a biopic of New York mobster and FBI informant Gregory Scarpa, and Escobar, about the Columbian cocaine trafficker.

CAA and WMA are selling Brooklyn's Finest; I suspect buyers will check out more films before circling back. Sales will probably heat up at the end of the weekend.

My flight from LAX to Salt Lake City was delayed. Every seat was taken, many of them by industry folks heading to Park City for the Fest which launched Thursday night. I enjoyed a pleasant sunset drive up the mountain with Robin Schorr, who recently left River Road to put together a new development company with funding from a private investor. She told me to see Big Fan, from writer-turned-director Robert Siegel (The Wrestler). The voice behind Ratatouille, Patton Oswalt, breaks out in this one, I hear.

I missed the opening press conference and the opening night movie, Mary and Max, an Australian claymation feature that Variety's Justin Chang did not like:

Maudlin sentiment, miserablist humor and scatological sight gags are affectionately but awkwardly molded together in the Australian claymation feature "Mary and Max." A glum tale of friendship between two very unlikely pen pals, writer-director-designer Adam Elliot's follow-up to his Oscar-winning 2003 short "Harvie Krumpet" has its share of deadpan amusements, but its combo of mordant whimsy and tearjerker moments winds up curdling in an unappetizing fashion. A strong voice cast headed by Toni Collette and Philip Seymour Hoffman could buoy the toon's otherwise uncertain prospects beyond Oz.

At a civilized dinner at Black Dog with a bunch of film critics, we talked, naturally, about newspapers and mags slashing salaries and/or jobs. The New Times chain is down to two critics: Scott Foundas in LA and Jim Hoberman in New York will service the entire chain, with freelancers, now including ex-LA Weekly film critic Ella Taylor. Andy Klein was let go from L.A. CityBeat. Time Out New York lost its lead film critic, Melissa Anderson. The gloomy drumroll drones on.

And we talked hot fest titles:

I had been tipped on Burma VJ, which HBO scooped up before the fest. John Anderson has seen it and raved.

He also liked We Live in Public, the doc about New York dotcom millionaire Josh Harris in the early 90s that bears some resemblance to The Truman Show. A bunch of CAA agents raved about this. And Jeff Wells also liked it.

UPDATE: Word is, The Greatest is a four-hankie breakout for writer-director Shana Feste and Brit actress Carey Mulligan, who stars in another hot fest title, Lone Scherfig's An Education. Producer Lynette Howell (Half Nelson) has high hopes.

Here's the Variety special Sundance section with list of Hot Titles. Ken Turan runs down all the films he's seen in advance of the fest. The NYT is running a Sundance page. And check out the revamped IndieWire, which is running a constant feed of Sundance stories along with its own reporting.

Here's the We Live in Public trailer:

Here's SAG's official response to the "issue" about studio distribs being able to pick up indie films shot under a SAG waiver:

Heading into the worst seller's market in years at the Sundance Film Fest, at least one AMPTP studio specialty arm, Fox Searchlight, may not be allowed by its parent company to acquire films shot under a SAG waiver while the Guild lacked a contract for the past seven months. (Who's the boss? Peter Chernin.) The other company that may have an issue is Disney/Miramax. (Boss: Robert Iger.) Both are deeply involved in union issues.

Sundance hot title I Love You Phillip Morris, starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor as prison lovers, was completed under the old SAG agreement, but hot sale title Brooklyn’s Finest was not. This issue has never been raised before. Usually a new contract will supersede the waiver, but there’s no contract in sight, and certain studios are in no mood to be helpful to SAG. (Universal and Sony are not concerned about this issue.) If Fox Searchlight refuses to buy SAG waiver films, that could take the biggest potential deals off the table—and cede the field to the likes of Summit and Overture, which are hungry to buy.

UPDATE: But something tells me this isn't going to happen. At the airport, one Fox Searchlight exec sounded fairly unsure of what they were going to do. My sense is that they threw this into the air to see how the other studios would respond. If they want to buy something, I think they'll figure out a way to buy it. "SAG Contract a non issue- there is not one person who is going to not buy a film because of it- it is NONSENSE," writes one indie producer.

Here's Patrick Goldstein taking on Nikki Finke and defending his brethren, including the NYT's Michael Cieply.

Shortlisted for the documentary Oscar, Trouble the Water was one of last year's Sundance breakouts. It was a good year all around for its scrappy real-life heroine, Kim Rivers, who surprised herself and many people around her as she videotaped Hurricane Katrina and helped to save lives. At the fest, she gave birth to her first child, and then watched the film go on to many kudos, including Time Magazine’s Top Ten Performances of 2008.

Rivers debuted her music in Trouble the Water, and is releasing an album in April to coincide with its HBO release.

Here's the movie's trailer:

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired two movies in advance of the Sundance fest--James Toback's well-received Cannes doc Tyson, and the Mexican director troica Cha Cha Cha's first outing,Rudo y Cursi,a soccer flick reuniting Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, directed by Carlos Cuaron. This practice of selling movies before film fests is something SPC co-prexys Tom Bernard and Michael Barker wish more filmmakers would emulate, but suspect they won't. "We prefer to set up a film with press there," says Barker. "It's an advantage to have a company attached, to be able to answer questions, knowing what you're going to do with it."

SPC and Toback started talking about the Tyson acquisition at Cannes, but rights issues blocked the sale of North American rights until recently. They told Toback they would be happy to wait and make the deal when rights were cleared, and so they did. NBA star Carmelo Anthony, who recently founded Krossover Prods, is also joining the movie as exec producer.

I saw Tyson at Cannes; it is a strong, moving document of a riveting character, former world heavyweight Mike Tyson, as he reexamines his life and choices with moving honesty. Here's my Cannes interview with Toback and Todd McCarthy's review.

SPC was already planning a Sundance press launch for the guitar doc It Might Get Loud, directed by Davis Guggenheim, which debuted at Toronto. Guggenheim's last entry at Sundance went pretty well: An Inconvenient Truth.

It's Sundance time.

My mailbox is clogged with pitches for movies to screen, interviews to do. I'm planning on a radical new approach this year, since so many of the movies that buyers slather over in advance turn out to be disappointments, and the ones that go home with distribs are the ones critics and audiences actually admire. (See: Frozen River, Ballast, Trouble the Water.) So I'm going to go see the movies that look good, and then decide who to interview based on what I like! (I'm taking my flipcam.)

Radical. It's how I did it for years.

Meanwhile, I'll check out The Greatest based on this preview clip. It's from Sundance producer perennial Lynette Howell (Phoebe in Wonderland, Half Nelson), who says the script from a first-time writer-director (Shana Feste) sailed through the process of funding and casting. Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon quickly signed on to this story of parental love and loss. It's about two parents (Brosnan and Sarandon)rocked to their foundations when they suddenly lose their teenage son (Aaron Johnson). Then his old girlfriend (Carey Mulligan) turns up. Revolutionary Road's Michael Shannon also stars.

Here's a clip:

Mike Jones and I went to check out one agency's Sundance line-up and all they could talk about was a doc they didn't think they could sell. They weren't as excited about their own projects. We Live in Public tells the story of dot.com millionaire Josh Harris, a man who was slightly ahead of his time:

We Live In Public TRAILER from We Live in Public on Vimeo.

One of my fave Sundance movies never got seen by many people--for whatever reason. It's Dan Klores' wildly improbable true romance documentary Crazy Love, which The Sundance Channel will debut on the internet at 1 PM on January 5 via YouTube Sneak Peak, five days before it airs on January 10 as part of the Channel's Sundance Film Fest special programming.

As Sundance explores new distribution models, the network will make the film available on YouTube’s long-form video player beginning January 5, said Laura Michalchyshyn, Sundance Channel's exec vp and general manager. Crazy Love will stay up on YouTube through the end of the month.

Winner of last year's Indie Spirit best doc award, Crazy Love tells the story of the disturbed, obsessive relationship of Burt Pugach and Linda Riss Pugach. They earned headlines in 1959 when the married 32-year-old Burt was charged with arranging an attack on his mistress that left Linda blind. While serving 14 years in prison, he stayed in touch with Linda; they got married after his release and remain together to this day.

Todd McCarthy talks to Sundance Film fest director Geoff Gilmore about the Sundance 2009 competition feature, documentary and world cinema line-ups. One can only hope that given the current economic climate, last year reps the attendance peak of a fest that desperately needs to scale back anyway; if a lot of companies and folks can't make it this year, I'm going to be greedy and selfish and say, "all the more for us!"

Even during the frantic party swag-hog years, it was always possible to tune out Main Street in favor of the movie theaters, where what we could see was always choice. I suspect that as newspapers scale back on critics, there will also be fewer press in attendance, which is too bad. However, Gilmore told me there's been "no drop whatsoever" in the avalanche of submissions. "It boggles the imagination," he said. The economy "hasn't effected that part of the universe. I can't imagine that it won't. Maybe it will take place down the line."

This leads me to suspect that micro-budget emerging filmmaking will continue unabated. (There may be fall-off at the higher-budget level, with stars etc.)

What about fest attendance itself? "We haven't had a real drop in the level of passes sold," he said. "We're at last year or the year before. We'll see if there's an effect on the end of the festival." Sponsorship has been affected, he admitted. As for the impact of a possible anti-Mormon post-Prop 8 Utah boycott hitting Sundance, Gilmore said "a lot of people in the film community have articulated what Sundance has done for the gay community and film culture. A lot of people don't view Sundance as a target."

The full Sundance competition line-up is on the jump:

[Posted by Tatiana Siegel]
Although the Sundance Film Festival won't unveil its full lineup until tomorrow, rumors are circulating that John Krasinski's helming debut, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, will be making the trek to Park City. The film, a passion project for The Office star, is significant because it marks the only bigscreen project ever derived from the sizable literary library of the late David Foster Wallace. Krasinski also wrote and starred in Hideous Men, which is based on a short story by Wallace, who committed suicide in September. Krasinski was editing the film, which he shot two years ago in New York, when he learned of the author's death.

Though the film, which also stars Bobby Cannavale, Max Minghella and Christopher Meloni, is the first Wallace project to hit the screen, it won't likely be the last. Producer Jason Kliot (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and recent Toronto fest hit American Swing) is developing Wallace's Infinite Jest, the author's most famous work, with Keith Bunin penning the screenplay.

Here's my original story.

Before the American Cinematheque starts off its tribute evening to Samuel L. Jackson Monday night, board chair Rick Nicita will present the inaugural Sydney Pollack Award to Sundance Film Fest director Geoff Gilmore, who is currently prepping his 19th fest.

Cinematheque director Barbara Smith wanted to create a lasting memorial to the late producer-director, who as a long-term board member and one-time board chair had kept the wolf from the door many times over the years. The award will be presented each year to someone "who has been of critical importance and continuing influence in non-profit film exhibition, film preservation and/or independent film promotion and distribution – people whose work Sydney supported and found to be so valuable, who are not often recognized for their efforts," the Cinematheque said. It takes one to know one.

"What we don't have for Propositon 8 is a leader; there's no Harvey Milk today," said producer Dan Jinks last week at the L.A. premiere of Milk, which played well for the Academy crowd. At the after-party there was much talk about California's surprise passing of Prop 8, the gay marriage ban, as well as the angry reaction from the gay community, which while understandable, is generating some mixed response as well. Here's the Variety story posted Monday night.

That's because some gay activists--and they aren't all the same, they come in many shapes and sizes--are targeting various institutions they blame for passing Prop 8. Most prominent is the Mormon Church, which gave millions to the Yes on Prop 8 campaign. The Circuit blog has been tracking the boycott Utah and Sundance Film fest story. So have Movie City News' David Poland and Kim Voynar. And Indiewire's Eugene Hernandez.

One website posted a list of Prop 8 donors, presumably to bring them shame and embarrassment. Film Independent found itself in the middle of a ruckus over the discovery that its LA Film Fest Director Rich Raddon, a Mormon, sent $1500 to support Prop 8, and listed his employer.

"I was furious that he was idiotic enough to give to this in a public way when he works with so many gay people," wrote one board member in an email. FIND eventually released a statement, amid rumors that Raddon had tendered his resignation, saying that the organization does not police its employees' religious beliefs. Raddon's current employment status has not been revealed.

Time.com posted an article entitled "What Happens If You're On the Gay Enemies List."

The LAT reports on how Prop 8 blowback affected Sacramento's non-profit stage company, the California Musical Theatre:

following the revelation via the Web that its artistic director gave $1,000 to back the state constitutional amendment.

Among those weighing in with dismay over Scott Eckern's donation are Tony winners Jeff Whitty, who wrote the book for "Avenue Q," and Marc Shaiman, composer and co-lyricist of "Hairspray." Shaiman said Tuesday that he phoned Eckern on Friday to protest, then e-mailed more than 1,000 contacts to alert them about the donation.

I understand the need to raise awareness, via protest, for the same-sex marriage cause. But I fail to see how protesting outside churches, whose worshipers have the right to hold their beliefs, or conducting witch hunts is the best way for the gay rights movement to raise positive support for the next phase of their battle to legalize gay marriage. More productive is the kind of consciousness-raising PR provided by Oprah Winfrey, who on Friday interviewed via Skype Prop 8 opposers Melissa Etheridge and her partner, at home, holding their two children.

In the wake of California voters passing the gay marriage ban known as Proposition 8, gay activists are targeting Mormons and the State of Utah. A.P. reported the news of a movement toward a Utah boycott this weekend. This could include Hollywood folks not attending the Sundance Film Festival. (It is far too late to move the fest to another location like Lake Tahoe.)

David Poland weighs in, and Indiewire grabs a Sundance reaction. And Dana Harris wraps up the story at Wilshire and Washington.

The Sundance Fest gave a statement Monday:

"Sundance Institute was founded on the idea of championing diversity and freedom of expression. It would be a grave disappointment to us if our Festival were to be singled out for a boycott, especially as we celebrate 25 years of showcasing independent voices."

I knew when I booked Ballast at Sneak Previews that some of the folks wouldn't go for it. The movie, a critical and audience hit at Sundance, where it won prizes for director and cinematography, was one of the few films there to land a distributor, IFC Films. But writer-director Lance Hammer decided to release the film himself.

Hammer is a tall, lanky, healthy guy with clear, intelligent eyes. He started out as an architecture student at USC who needed such expensive equipment to render his designs that he did VFX for hire at Warner Bros., building a virtual CG Gotham for a Batman sequel. He was pursuing a career as a studio art director--making pots of money--but the excesses of the studio system, the sheer inanity of the content, depressed him. Between shows he'd go on the road, exploring rural areas in the South. Ten years ago, he fell in love with the Mississippi Delta. He wanted to capture the feel and mood of the place, but didn't know how to shape a narrative to accomplish that. He kept working on a script.

When a project he was developing with producer Mark Johnson fell through, Hammer took the funds that he had raised and applied them to Ballast instead. (The title refers to the balanced weight in the hull of a ship that keeps it from sinking.) He hired Brit cinematographer Lol Crowley sight unseen on the basis of his reel; luckily they hit it off immediately when he showed up for work. They scoured the Delta, scouting locations, talking everything through.

Hammer spent long months in the area casting locally for non-pros who fit his idea of the characters they would be inhabiting. One actor who had done local theater and film work proved to be the most difficult, in terms of bringing him back down to some level of authenticity, but he eventually figured out what Hammer wanted.

Finally, the "acting" in the film--by Tarra Riggs, as a single African-American mother struggling to support her herself and her 12-year-old son, played by JimMyron Ross, who is attracted to the local drug culture, and Michael J. Smith, Sr., playing a bereaved twin whose brother committed suicide--is authentic, but inexpressive and flat.

But the story is powerful, the images beautiful, the tone, mood and sense of place are all strong. Hammer, inspired by John Cassavetes, Mike Leigh and the Dogme movement, rehearsed his actors, gave them things to react to in search of emotions, and only as they were filming, supplied more concrete direction about where the story was going. He insists that only by roaming the area with a hand-held camera--35 mm, to take full advantage of available light--could he capture flights of geese and other improvisational moments.

Finally my fave film in Sundance is opening. I know you've seen a lot of Hurricane Katrina docs. Trouble the Water, which won the documentary grand jury prize, is rough around the edges. It's not a question of how well it was executed technically, or the quality of the writing and direction. What distinguishes this is the unexpected, lightning in a bottle aspect of this seemingly unremarkable 9th Ward marginal woman, Kimberly Roberts, who had no idea she was capable of being a hero until Katrina revealed to her and the folks around her who she really was. I get choked up thinking about it.

Here's the story I did in Sundance, and a video interview with filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin:

Here's the NYT review and Richard Corliss in Time.

And the trailer:

Finally, 2929 Entertainment has made the call to release its scathing Tinseltown satire What Just Happened? through its own Magnolia Pictures on October 3. Here's my interview with director Barry Levinson and producer-writer Art Linson in Cannes, where What Just Happened? closed the fest out of competition.

2929 owners Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner had hoped to land a domestic distributor for the $20-million Hollywood comedy starring Robert DeNiro at the Sundance Film Festival in January. What Just Happened? scored favorable reviews but the financeers were not able to close a distrib deal that they could live with.

So 2929 will just do it for themselves.

Magnolia has hired marketing-exec-turned-consultant Russell Schwartz, the former marketing prexy of New Line Cinema, to supervise the film’s release campaign. (He also works with National Geographic on such films as U23D.) At Cannes, Schwartz supplied marketing materials for What Just Happened? featuring the tag line, “In Hollywood, everyone can hear you scream.”

What Just Happened? was adapted by Linson from his own vitriolic Hollywood memoir. Studding the movie’s cast are Catherine Keener, Stanley Tucci, Robin Wright Penn, John Turturro, Michael Wincott, Bruce Willis, Sean Penn and Kristen Stewart. 2929 Productions and Linson produced with De Niro and Jane Rosenthal’s Tribeca Productions.

Doc filmmaker Marina Zenovich was struck when she read a 2002 article in the LA Times about whether director Roman Polanski would be able to return to the US if he were nominated for an Oscar for The Pianist. Of course he won--and watched the show from his bedroom in Paris. After Zenovich learned more about why Polanski was forced to flee the country rather than turn up for his trial for seducing a minor, she embarked on the long journey to get Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired made.

Patrick Goldstein writes about Zenovich's doc, which has earned rave reviews since its January debut in Sundance, where HBO acquired the film; it also fared well at Cannes. The movie aired on HBO Monday night after a brief run in NY and LA for Oscar consideration. Financially beleaguered distrib ThinkFilm is scheduled to release the film theatrically in July.

A sidebar explores why Zenovich was forced to amend the ending of her movie, an issue also addressed by Slate's Kim Masters. (See UPDATE below.)

Last year at Cannes, Shootout's Peter Bart and Peter Guber conducted a rare Polanski video interview-- Zenovich did not do fresh on-camera interviews with him for the doc, and he did not participate in its promotion. (He turned up in Cannes this May just for the closing night ceremony.) When Bart and Guber asked him last year how he felt about returning to L.A., he responded, "I have black memories of that time. People forget that when I was in my 30s I suffered a tremendous loss and tragedy."

More recently, Bart and Guber interviewed director Marina Zenovich on Shootout: "What mattered to me was what happened to him after he committed the crime," she told them. "So many people think they know what happened that night, why he fled the country. I was interested in getting the facts straight."

UPDATE: Here's a response to Monday's L.A. Superior Court statement and the L.A. Times story from former deputy district attorney Roger Gunson and Polanski's attorney Douglas Dalton, who are interviewed in Wanted and Desired:

June 11, 2008 In 1997, Douglas Dalton, attorney for Roman Polanski, and Roger Gunson, prosecutor on the Polanski case, met with Judge Larry Paul Fidler in his chambers to discuss the Polanski case. Mr. Gunson and Mr. Dalton advised Judge Fidler of Judge Rittenband's conduct in handling the case that is accurately captured in the documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. At the meeting, Judge Fidler advised Mr. Dalton that if Mr. Polanski returned to Los Angeles, that he, Judge Fidler, would allow Mr. Polanski to be booked and immediately released on bail, require Mr. Polanski to meet with the probation department, order a probation report, conduct a hearing, and terminate probation without Mr. Polanski having to serve any additional time in custody. That there was a deal worked out between Judge Fidler and Mr. Dalton was reported in the New York Daily News as early as October 1, 1997. One of the issues raised by Mr. Dalton during the meeting was the question of media coverage. All understood that any proceedings would be open to the public as required by law. During the meeting, Mr. Dalton pressed Judge Fidler for a resolution of the case that would allow for minimal news media. Mr. Dalton recalled that Judge Fidler would require television coverage at the proposed hearing due to the controversy. Mr. Gunson recalls television coverage discussed at the meeting. Mr. Dalton told documentary director Marina Zenovich of this requirement. It is our shared view that Monday's false and reprehensible statement by the Los Angeles Superior Court continues their inappropriate handling of the Polanski case. Roger Gunson Douglas Dalton

The Oscar-nominated Canadian short Madame Tutli-Putli and 42 other short films from the 2008 Sundance Film Festival are available for download on the iTunes Store, Netflix and Xbox 360. Check sundanceshorts for more info on how to see the shorts, which cost $1.99 on iTunes and Xbox and can be streamed for free on Netflix.

The Sundance Institute is trying to build audiences for shorts by partnering first with iTunes in 2007 and this year, Netflix and Xbox. Short films at Sundance have helped break out such directors as Jason Reitman, Todd Haynes, Spike Jonze, Paul Thomas Anderson, Trey Park and Matt Stone, Wes Anderson, David O. Russell, Tamara Jenkins, Nicole Holofcener and Alexander Payne.

Overture finally nabbed its second Sundance pic, Christine Jeff's Sunshine Cleaning, starring Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, a good month after the fest's conclusion. (The new distrib acquired Henry Poole is Here during the fest.) The plan is to release the relationship dramedy at year's end.

Sunshine Cleaning entered the fest as one of several highly anticipated movies with stars attached that were expected to make a big sale. It didn't happen, though, partly because the filmmakers behind the film, Big Beach, which had financed Little Miss Sunshine, were hoping to make back their $7-million investment in a quick sale. Other distribs were worried that Sunshine Cleaning was too similar to that film. (Both star Alan Arkin in a cranky grandfather role.) But Overture, which is beefing up its 2008 and 2009 release slates, was keen on the relationship pic, which should appeal to women, and may change the title.

I quite liked this film, which nabbed mixed fest reviews. Jeffs is a fine director who managed to tease both comedy and tragedy out of this story.

Here's EW's Q & A with Blunt, who is terrific in the film as Adam's sister and business partner.

Producer Mark Johnson's Ballast was one of the critical faves at Sundance and broke out Lance Hammer as a hot director. Here's Sharon Swart's story.

Here are some more Sundance wrap-ups:

Critic B. Ruby Rich in The Guardian.

John Clark on docs at Premiere.com.

Kim Voynar on Sundance women at the Alliance of Women Film Journalists.

Sundance juror Quentin Tarantino, looking a bit the worse for wear, was none too pleased when a paparazzi video camera started shooting him without asking. Tarantino got a bit rough with the guy, then realized the thing would inevitably wind up on YouTube. My sympathies are with Tarantino, who had probably been up late the night before, and was putting in a grueling schedule watching not only the competition films but other stuff he wanted to see, like George Romero's Diary of the Dead. And he was just getting his first sip of morning coffee.

On the other hand: Men!

[Hat tip:Hollywood Elsewhere]

Jonathan Dana, who has run indie companies (Atlantic Releasing and Triton) and produced movies as well as repping and selling and consulting, emailed me a smart theory about the surfeit of Sundance acquisition titles this year, many of which remain unsold at fest's end. Here it is:

The so-called "dumb-money" has started to hit the screens.

The indie market now is split into three basic sections. At the top are the studio specialty divisions and their functional equivalents. They have done pretty well for the most part, it turns out, driven in most cases by experienced hands, sophisticated in co-production, and with enough checks and balances to keep themselves on track, yet with enough independence to take some chances (with distribution assured) and deep enough pockets to shrug off the misses.

At the "bottom" are the "out-of-left-field" indies, always ready to surprise with new talent and enough passion to deliver 1000 newbies a year into the festival vortex. These are always longshots, and I think the batting average for these films has remained steady...occasionally one breaks through, like grass through concrete. No one expects more, and everyone relishes the surprise success of a "Once" or similar classic Sundance miracle. Kind of like the old days. And in the middle are the bigger indies made on spec, without distribution in advance.

There are several subcategories of these middle-ground pictures, and many are made by careful professionals looking to make their films with a minimum of interference and yet with a careful eye on the various sectors of the market that can lead to success, both critically and commercially. But into this arena has recently poured the oft-mentioned deluge of new money, generated from a variety of sources in amounts sufficient to slosh around loosely, connecting itself often to legitimately hungry agencies or producers, often well-meaning, but with a bias towards "getting the deal done" with fewer check and balances than the traditional route, and with standards different, perhaps lesser, than for the others playing in this pricier end of the pool.

Sony Pictures Classics closed a deal Saturday to buy North American rights to Jonathan Levine's The Wackness for less than $2 million. The coming-of-age story about a teenage drug dealer (Josh Peck) who sells dope to his shrink (Ben Kingsley) in exchange for psychological advice was in the Sundance dramatic competition. CAA sold the film, which as expected won the dramatic audience award at Sundance Saturday night. SPE has already acquired fest pics Frozen River and the Duplass brothers' Baghead. SPC won over the filmmakers and nabbed the pic for less than others, including Weinstein Co, Netflix and Samuel Goldwyn Co., had offered.

Some folks seem to have an issue with SPC distributing Wackness:
Film School Rejects
Slashfilm
First Showing

Todd McCarthy reports on the Sundance Awards. Here's the LAT's Ken Turan. Mike Jones lists the Winners on the jump:

Variety's Todd McCarthy saw a lot of films at Sundance about people using drugs.