Late last month, Nike unleashed the latest movie-themed sneaker, a yellow shoe with brown fur coming out of the top inspired by Teen Wolf (never mind that in the film the title character wears Adidas). Between this and the recent Back to the Future Part II tie-ins, Michael J. Fox seems to be a big influence on the world of sneaker collecting, and so it may only be a matter of time before we see Nike unveil a Doc Hollywood design.

Actually, it may only be a matter of time before we see a lot of film-inspired shoes we wouldn’t expect. Already, Nike has sneakers tied to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Goodfellas, The Empire Strikes Back and Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. Add to these Adidas’ Tron shoes, Puma’s The Goonies and Japanese Monster shoes and Slip-Off’s custom-designed Vans inspired by Fight Club, Star Wars, Napoleon Dynamite, Anchorman, E.T. and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou .

So, in order to beat the shoe companies to the punch, SpoutBlog has picked ten movies that deserve their own sneaker design. Most of these are quite literal and obvious, but it’s just a starting point. What other movies would you like to see make their way to your feet?
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Getting ready for the Sundance Film Festival can be very exciting. As we await the event’s Thursday opening, we can’t stop wondering what will be the next big thing. Will this year’s hit be the highly-anticipated Michael Cera project Paper Hearts, or will it be something that we as of yet know nothing about?

It’s easy to forget, however, that oftentimes the next big thing is also the next lamest thing. Sundance sensations, those films that are much-buzzed-about, that sell for a lot of money, that go on to be marketed like crazy and ultimately receive Oscar recognition, tend to lend themselves most easily to backlashes. Usually such derision is deserved, as in the case of the following ten films, each of which made a big splash at Sundance despite being bad.
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Way back in November, a Hollywood Reporter Sundance prognostication story alerted the world to Paper Heart, a “part-documentary, part-scripted comedy” starring Michael Cera and his real-life girlfriend Charlyne Yi. The trade said the film’s sales agents were hoping “to limit advance word, presumably in the hopes of making a splash a la Sundance phenom Napoleon Dynamite.”

Said sales agents must have been really upset that the Reuters-syndicated trade wrote a big story about the movie weeks before the festival lineup was even announced, thus ensuring that this project previously known to virtually no one would not only suddenly become the hottest ticket of the festival, but that its extreme hotness would be telegraphed in publications potentially read by the suburban teenagers who will make up its target post-Sundance ticket-buying audience. Let’s all shake our fists in frustrated solidarity: darn you, Hollywood Reporter!

Anyhow, now that the cat’s out of the bag and Paper Heart is en route to its big Saturday night premiere at the Racquet Club, the question on everyone’s minds is this: Who is this young lady who has landed Hollywood’s Most Eligible Bachelor Best Known For His Role in A Comedic Teenage Incest Subplot?

Her YouTube channel has some answers.

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• Yes. Sci-Fi Footloose meets You Got Served! Exclamation point. Actually, Chris Stokes’ Boogie Town probably won’t be as good as it sounds, but it is set in a ludicrous near-future New York City where dancing is illegal. So, kids start an underground “battle dancing” scene. Obviously, it’s also being labeled a “modern West Side Story for the hip-hop generation,” and it’s set in 2015, so hopefully there will be hoverboards. Then it would actually be better than it sounds. Anyway, Vivendi will release the film next summer.
• Another music-genre sci-fi/fantasy: Stephen Edmond’s Emo Boy comic book is being turned into a movie, which he’ll script. The property is described as “being in the tone of Napoleon Dynamite, Harold and Maude and Zoolander,” which is funny, because none of those movies are similar in tone at all.
• Hot off The House Bunny (and let’s pretend also Smiley Face), Anna Faris is set to star in two new comedy projects, one of which she co-pitched with Bunny writers Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith. The untitled movie involves the Golden Age Hollywood plot of husband-seeking sisters. The other project, called 20 Times a Lady, is also about finding Mr. Right, though also concerns the non-Golden Age idea of “a person’s sexual quota.”
• Another hot romantic comedienne, Amy Adams, will produce and star in an adaptation of The Ten Best Days of My Life, which treads in the same kind of afterlife territory as It’s a Wonderful Life and Defending Your Life.
• The Dark Knight re-release has been slated for January 23rd, one day after the anniversary of Heath Ledger’s death, which is unfortunate for the celebrity death cult. It’s also one day after the Oscar nominations are announced, so it could be advertised as a “Best Picture Nominee.”

With Halloween less than a month away, it’s time to start thinking about what to go as. That is, if you haven’t already. A good costume-loving cinephile typically knows well in advance what he or she will dress up as for Halloween (and Comic-Con, too). But if you’re one to wait until the last minute, and also one who likes to be a lot more contemporary than, say, dressing up as a Ghostbuster or Edward Scissorhands, I’ve got some suggestions for you for costumes based on recent films.

Check them out after the jump.

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Everybody’s talking about how the WGA strike may affect this year’s Sundance marketplace (Variety and Scott Foundas among them), but studios looking to make up for a lack of in-house product with appealing-looking indies may want to think twice before opening the checkbook. It’s easy for buyers to forget that Hollywood still knows nothing about what moviegoers really want, and it’s very easy to waste a whole lot of money bidding on a film that isn’t going to be worth it’s purchase price. This week, the Onion’s A.V. Club features a list of Sundance flops — those movies that were a big deal at the festival yet failed at the box office. It’s probably meant to just be a fun look back at the errs of the marketplace, but really it functions as a warning to this year’s buyers. What they think is the next Napoleon Dynamite could really be the next Tao of Steve (which happens to have sparked a hilarious discussion in the comments section — possibly featuring Donal Logue himself). The Hollywood Reporter and David Carr in the New York Times add to the list by pointing out some of last year’s deals gone bad, specifically those for Joshua and Grace is Gone.

It’s not a matter of whether or not these films were good (I think Tadpole is great, actually) or whether not they could be enjoyed by regular folk (most of them were audience favorites at Sundance, and those audiences included regular folks). I don’t even think it’s a matter of whether or not the distributors knew how to market those films, though in some cases it didn’t even seem like they were trying. Instead it’s a matter of how different the context is at Sundance than it is in the real theatrical market. If you’ve ever been to a public screening at Sundance, you know how excited those regular folk audiences are for anything. You can tell by their praise-filled “questions” during the Q&As. You can tell by the fact that many of them aren’t seeing a lot of films — at least relatively, considering the number of films playing at the fest — and so don’t have good frames of reference.

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I went to see Little Miss Sunshine over the weekend. For some reason I went in expecting to chuckle and smile, but not to belly laugh. I expected the film to be a bit over the top, a tad too gimmicky, and generally another Napoleon Dynamite wannabe (as I suggested in a recent post about formulaic films).

Going into a film with realistic-sized expectations always helps, but I think even if my expectations had been on steroids I would have been thoroughly pleased with Sunshine. Each character, while conceptually over the top (with the exception of the mom), was played perfectly. Similarly, even though many of the plot’s premises are over the top, they work. You don’t sit there thinking “That wouldn’t happen.” You sit there laughing like a fool.

So back to formulas. Obviously, some things really make a good story, a good film, and those things should be paid attention to and learned from. (It’s not like Sunshine is the first road trip film ever created, or the first with an overly angst-ridden teenager.) And even though legitimate formulas can be traced between successes like Sunshine and Napoleon, I still think the “anti-formula” has to be at the heart of a film like this if it’s going to make it. It has to be fresh. I think Sunshine perfectly balanced what works with what’s fresh.

As IndieWire blogger Eugene Hernandez just said in a post yesterday, Little Miss Sunshine seems to have hit on a formula that was first proven wildly successful by Napoleon Dynamite. That formula, as Hernandez’s industry friend put it, is this:

Quirky comedy + funny dance number at end + premiere at Sundance + Cinetic = big sell to Fox Searchlight.

I completely resist the idea that formulas work in the film industry (or in any creative field, for that matter), but Hernandez’s friend seems to be right about Napoleon and Sunshine. Sigh.

At least this formula is a bit more involved than the one several Slamdance films apparently tried last year: goofy protagonist + outcast friends = hilarious + endearing hit. (See Paul’s post for more on this.)

So what’s with the formulas? When Napoleon first came out, it was the freshness of the film’s approach that made it work. It embodied the Anti-Formula. Obviously, trying to repeat freshness defeats the purpose. (How many times can you successfully repurpose a baby greens salad?) Anyway, I’m planning to see Sunshine tomorrow–I’m curious to see if it hits some version of a true “Napoleon Formula”–the anti-formula that isn’t stale.