The hottest topic of conversation leading up to this year’s Sundance Film Festival? That virtually no one is actually going to this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Over the past couple of weeks, what started as a whisper has steadily grown into a ear-splitting groan, and with the Festival beginning tomorrow, it’s become a meme that’s too pervasive to ignore.  I had heard either directly or via reliable second-hand testimony that a number of familiar faces (including a celebrity photographer, the film critic for a very high-profile weekly magazine, and a publicist representing a major distributor) were all skipping the festival this year; on the indie/freelance journalist end, reporter Anthony Kaufman took to his blog to detail the five reasons he’s decided not to head out to Utah.

Once the “Sundance: it’s gonna be a ghost town!” chatter had certifiably reached fever pitch, I went looking for Sundance regulars who would go on the record about why they’re skipping the festival this year, and what they plan to do instead. Always the skeptic, I had initially wondered if the Sundance Ghost Town Meme was a fiction invented by publicists and sold to the media in order to cover for what many expect to be a down year for sales. But when it came down to it, 5 out 6 of the people who were willing to talk to me at length and on the record about their planned Sundance absence were at least part-time journalists. Now, I wonder: is there even going to be any media left for publicists to sell fictions to?

In my conversations with five journalists about their Sundance dealbreakers, a number of common threads emerged. I break them down after the jump. If you’ve got your own not going to Sundance story, do let us know in the comments.

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I’ve spent the morning combing the various Sundance line-up overviews, wherein reporters for a variety of publications digest the four competition line-ups announced yesterday in an attempt to find an overarching theme/predictive slant which they can then hand-deliver to their mainly mainstream audiences. One thing I’ve learned: such stories should never be read back-to-back.

“Sundance’s writers and directors are turning toward more uplifting narratives,” writes John Horn in the LA Times. Oh good! Oh, but wait — according to USA Today, “The comedies are dark, and the dramas are even darker at the annual showcase of low-budget moviemaking.” What am I supposed to believe?

But seriously, folks. One observation from Horn’s story is worth a ponder:

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I’ve had a bit of bad luck with the screenings over the past few days, so when it comes to movies I have very little new to report. But the film festival karaoke train rolls along, as evidenced by these pics. This time around, it went down in a private room in a place in a strip mall on Sawtelle. That same strip mall also housed an establishment called Mousse Fantasy; I assume this place either serves dessert or has something to do with hair, but I couldn’t figure it out one way or another. If you’re familiar with the place and have the answer, do leave a comment. Above, that’s Your Blogger, Michael Lerman and Medicine for Melancholy producer Cherie Saulter. More after the jump.

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• Chris Holland of B-Side weighs in on that whole Jonathan Marlowe-sparked State of Distribution to-do. There are a lot of fine takeaways here, but here’s an especially good one: “Gear up the marketing machine and pack those [festival] screenings, because the more people who see your film now, the more people who will buy it on DVD later…This sounds obvious and simple, but some filmmakers behave as if exactly the opposite were true. They fret about piracy (you should be so lucky!)…”
• “One of the things that has always nerdily bothered me about Star Wars is all the bespoke weaponry,” John Carney writes. “You know, all those weapons narrowly tailored to the specific environment in which the action is taking place.” Apparently, the latest Clone Wars vid doesn’t seem to make the situation any better.
• Anne Thompson visited the charred wreckage of the Universal Studios backlot and took a few surreptitious pictures.
• Filmmaker/Hollywood Babylon author Kenneth Anger has allegedly “put Satanic death curses” on the authors of the recently-released Hollywood Babylon: It’s Back!, who used the title without permission.

The Woodstock Film Festival announced late last week that two of their Maverick Awards will be renamed to honor two late local residents. James Lyon, who died in 2007 after having cut The Virgin Suicides and three Todd Haynes films and starring in Poison and I Shot Andy Warhol, will lend his name to the Festival’s editing prize. Meanwhile, the Best Narrative Feature prize will be renamed to honor actor Lee Marvin.

A total aside: I did a YouTube search for “Lee Marvin” this morning and the first result under “Most Relevant” was the above clip of Marvin singing “I Was Born Under A Wandering Star,” from the much-maligned musical Paint Your Wagon, which I’ve never seen. It’s, you know, horrible, but charmingly so, with tough guy Marvin tunelessly grumbling out lines like, “Do I know where Hell is? Hell is in ‘hello’”. I love musical misanthropy!

• We’re giving away a Wii at the main site.
• Oh, Iron Man. You were beloved. You were remixed. Your best moment came after the credits. Your fans were more realistic about the nature of fantasy than women who are really into Sex and the City.
• 10 Avengers who should be in the Avengers movie.
• The Tribeca Film Festival recapped.
• Michel Gondry might have won a Webby for it, but we still don’t care about Sweding.
• Heath Ledger will haunt the Cannes market. Maybe while he’s there, he can pick up European distribution rights on Donnie Darko 2. Also, lots of people are buying Joker toys.
• Anna Nicole Smith comes back from the dead in what has to be the meta-est biopic of a former stripper ever made. Probably.
• How Brawndo lept through the screen.
• Lloyd Kaufman fights Tribeca. In a chicken suit.
• Oliver Stone hasn’t cast DIck Cheney yet, but his Bush movie nonetheless comes out in 5 months.
• So far, nobody likes Indiana Jones and the Kid From Transformers Props Up A Walking Corpse. Except for those who are using it as a vacation guide.
  
• Warner Brothers closed its 2 remaining stand-alone indie arms.
• The Simpsons go to Sundance.
• The best trailers of the year.
• On the podcast: a Warholian read of Speed Racer.
• The Tracey Fragments and Ellen Page as double-edged sword.
• The feminist read of Jessica Alba.
• Groundhog Day in politics, in 5 Seconds.
• Glenn Kenny lost his job, got a new blog.
• Festival lineups: Los Angeles, CineVegas
• Harold and Kumar advertorial on Keith Olbermann.
• The Met restores nerdiness to superhero culture.
• John Cusack to Diablo Cody: “Liz Phair lied to my face, why can’t you?”
• Mister Lonely is making money.
• Praising Battle For Haditha.
• Trailers: Tokyo!, Iron Sky

I haven’t watched The Simpsons regularly in years, but I got a couple of text messages alerting me that last night’s episode, which follows Lisa (whose talent President Skinner assesses equates to “as if Ingmar Bergman and Penny Marshall had a baby), as she makes a documentary called Capturing the Simpsons, and then takes the film to Sundance.

Matt Dentler points out that the entire episode is already up on my beloved Hulu, via which it’s now embedded above. It’s full of some pretty great festival-centric jokes. My favorite: Lisa’s film is chosen during a scene in which a character who looks a little something like Geoff Gilmore throws a can of film into what looks suspiciously like the fireplace in the lobby at The Yarrow, AKA Sundance press and industry homebase. Also good: Marge walks into a theater playing a film called Candyland under the assumption that “a great family game is now a great family movie”, only to find junkies on screen getting ready to shoot up. “Oh, I get it,” Marge says. “Every title means the opposite of what it means!”

• With the Tribeca Film Festival beginning on Wednesday, Winter Miller analyises the festival’s “7 year itch” for Variety. “Logistics and that intangible thing known as the “festival experience” might well improve, but seven years after its founding as a call to bring the city together post 9/11, the fest is still seeking a clear identity,” hew writes. Perhaps the first step would be to do something about the fest’s institutional indifference to quality in its obsession with quantity, which Miller alludes to: “Unlike fests with mandates to screen what they perceive as the absolute cream of the crop, Tribeca wears its number of international and first-timer participants as a badge of honor.”
• Martial arts epic Forbidden Kingdom grossed almost $21 million over the weekend, enough to take the top box office slot ahead of Forgetting Sarah Marshall; the latest widget from the Apatow factory earned a not-great, not-terrible $17 million. Also: the tactic of opening Expelled wide in rural and suburban communities paid off, as the doc made $3.1 million (and almost double per screen what Morgan Spurlock’s docu-farce Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? managed in a smaller run), in spite of almost universally negative reviews.
• A former TV exec and a producer of Bend it Like Beckham have teamed up to launch Filmaka, a “a digital entertainment studio that sponsors worldwide contests for aspiring filmmakers.” According to The Hollywood Reporter, the first contest will be judged by a panel of filmmakers including Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and Neil LaBute.

Eugene Hernandez at indieWIRE is asking “filmmakers, critics, publicists and other festival organizers” to weigh in on a new rule instituted by the Tribeca Film Festival press office. Here’s the text, as it appears on the Festival’s credential application:

“Embargo” regulation for world premieres
Reviews of films that celebrate their world premiere at the Festival may only be published after the official premiere. All journalists seeking accreditation to the Festival declare their acceptance of this “embargo.”

When I applied for credentials, I saw this text and rolled my eyes, but I wasn’t really surprised. In my experience with the Tribeca Film Festival press office, it’s always seemed like they prioritize coverage of red carpets and parties far above reviews or any sort of serious consideration of the films themselves; every year, much of the program seems to be about courting the attention of Access Hollywood, rather than cementing Tribeca’s reputation as a venue for quality films. But sniping aside: really, Tribeca demanding that journalists refrain from writing about World Premieres before they screen for the public will not end in a materially different result than what happens at Sundance, where all press screenings take place either during or after World Premieres, and as press the only way to see a film before ticket buyers is to obtain a screener from a sales agent, publicist or distributor.

So I’m not exactly outraged by the embargo, but it certainly will change the type and quantity of coverage that I’ll be able to do of the festival. …Read more

From Here to Awesome, the “discovery and distribution” online film festival initiative spearheaded by Arin Crumley, M Dot Strange and Lance Weiler, has released a video explaining their basic raison d’être. Subtitled “Festivals Don’t Work”, the video gives a brief refresher course on Crumley, Weiler and Strange’s efforts to deliver Four Eyed Monsters, Head Trauma and We Are the Strange directly to their audiences. And yes, Spout (who sponsored Four Eyed Monsters’ YouTube premiere and ended up paying the filmmakers almost $50,000) gets a little shout-out.

Via FILMMAKER Blog.

• The Circuit has pictures from The Weinstein Company’s party, which was held in “a strange concrete bunker” outfitted with a bumper car dance floor. Also, Patti Smith is apparently going around telling people she is “beyond gender,” which cleverly preempts any joke we could have made.
• Also at Mike Jones’ festival blog, a diary entry from Vicci Ho, member of the Berlinale Teddy jury. Apparently, assigned seats don’t mean much at this festival.
• Shane Meadows is showing a new feature in Berlin, featuring his This is England star Thomas Turgoose. Variety explains why you haven’t heard about it.
• “Not a gore fest by any means - it would likely get a PG-13 rating in the US - the film is a tightly plotted, exceptionally well shot thrill ride that sets the rules of its world very early on, lets the audience know what to expect and then executes flawlessly.” Todd Brown reviews Dark Floors, “the Finnish horror film conceived and created as a starring vehicle for Finnish metal act Lordi,” at Twitch.
• The FILMMAKER Blog points to the launch of The Auteurs, a new site that will offer full-length classic and art house features for download. The site will also have an editorial and social networking component. I’ve requested a beta invite, and I’ll post more on the site once I’ve had a chance to explore.

Two of my film blogging colleagues, Jette Kernion and Michael Tully, have posted requests for filmmakers showing work at SXSW to contact them about possible coverage. I’ll jump on that bandwagon: filmmakers can contact Karina directly at karina [at] spout [dot] com; you can also leave links to official websites, YouTube/MySpace pages, etc, in the comments to this post.

Right now I’m especially excited about video that I can post on the blog before the fest (trailers, clips, whatever––anything that’s embeddable), and of course, sending a screener before the fest is like buying insurance that your film won’t be overlooked during the festival crush. But even if you’ve got none of the above, if you’re reading this and have a film at SXSW, don’t hesitate to be in touch.

I did not expect to wake up this morning to a feed reader and email inbox full of stories about the full lineup for the 2008 SXSW Film Festival––the press release was not supposed to arrive until sometime this afternoon. But The Hollywood Reporter apparently broke the embargo on the information yesterday evening, so now it’s here. And it’s a LOT to process before coffee.

In a nutshell: we’re looking at new films from Michael Almereyda, Ashley Sabin and David Redmon, Joe Swanberg, Mary Bronstein, Lynn Shelton, and Frank V. Ross; Sundance hits American Teen, Gonzo, The Order of Myths, Baghead, and Goliath; and a number of buzzy films culled from recent international fests, including Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Stones doc Shine a Light, Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely, Christophe Honore’s Love Songs, and Heavy Metal in Baghdad. All of that should be enough to make anyone happy, but of course, there’s also much, much more.

The full lineup is after the jump. We’ll have sickeningly exhaustive coverage of SXSW starting soon. The Festival itself begins March 7.

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• Will the strike motivate buyers to stock up on content, or will the rough recent art house climate discourage them from picking up all but the safest work? When it comes to the marketplace at the Sundance Film Festival (which begins today), all that seems certain is that star heavy, light-leaning comedies like What Just Happened? and Sunshine Cleaning are expected to have an easier time leaving Park City with a deal. So, in other words, no news to report yet.
• AMPAS is planning two separate Oscar shows: one in case the WGA makes nice with the studios or grants them a waiver to use writers, and an “alternative” strike-proof telecast. Oscar telecast producer Gil Cates is keeping quiet on what form the “alternative” show could take, but Variety speculates that it would probably “rely on industry heavyweights penning their own speeches and presenting the awards.”
• “Anticipation of a DGA deal is amping up the pressure from all sides on the leadership of the Writers Guild,” says Dave McNary. The AMPTP is expected to hand down an offer this week, and writers are apparently threatening that they’ll resign from the WGA and go “financial core,” allowing them to go back to work without union protections, if the DGA rejects it out of hand.