Slamdance Film Festival

Sundance News 01/21/09: 50 Cent Films

By Christopher Campbell posted 10 months ago

50 Cent announced a new production company, Cheetah Vision, which currently has eight scripts in development, including the company’s inaugural movie, The Dance, starring Nicolas Cage. 50 Cent will also see his directorial debut, Before I Self Destruct, released this year for free as a supplement to his latest album.
Despite the fact that the presidential inauguration typically occurs during Sundance, this year the festival took a more noticeable pause to watch Barack Obama sworn in yesterday. Sundance Institute’s Michelle Satterberg on the event: “I think we just didn’t care about it [before]. But this is different.”
Steven Soderbergh hosted a “secret screening” of his latest, The Girlfriend Experience. Check out Karina’s review here.
As Sony Classics and Lionsgate make their first festival buys, Summit is reportedly interested in I Love You Phillip Morris. Meanwhile, at Slamdance, North American rights to The Ante have gone to Panorama Entertainment. Other Sundance titles likely to sell soon, according to Anne Thompson: Shana Feste’sThe Greatest; Bobcat Goldthwait’s World’s Greatest Dad; the Ashton Kutcher-produced Spread; and the Anna Wintour doc The September Issue.
Thompson also looks at the movie-related internet companies at this year’s fest. And on a similar subject, LouisGray.com asks,”Could Sundance do for Qik what SXSW did for Twitter?”
According to E!, the whole “subdued” thing hasn’t actually affected the swag.
Regarding the minor trend in Sci-Fi films this year, Moon star Sam Rockwell says, “I think in-camera effects are coming back full-throttle. I think people are getting a little sick of the glossiness of CGI and want to see old-school effects like they used to.” Hallelujah to that.
Another trend this year: romantic comedy. Or, is it more like romantic “dramedy”?

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Festivals, Indies, Sundance 2009

Slamdance 2009 Lineup Announced

By Karina Longworth posted 11 months ago

indieWIRE has the full lineup for the 2009 Slamdance Film Festival, held in Park City concurrently with Sundance. Highlights include opening night film I Sell the Dead, directed by Glenn McQuaid; the much-anticipated (by virtue of title alone) Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are Undead; and Zombie Girl: The Movie, which Kevin reviewed at Fantastic Fest.

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Festivals, Indies

Slamdance Co-Founder Masterminds Fake McCain Source, Hoaxes MSNBC

By Karina Longworth posted 1 year ago

It finally happened: my obsession with MSNBC has dovetailed with legitimate movie news! Sort of!

Tonight the New York Times broke the news that over a year ago, Dan Mirvish (filmmaker and co-founder of the Slamdance Film Festival) and Eitan Gorlin (whose directorial debut, The Holy Land, won the Grand Jury Prize at that festival and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award) made up a fake adviser to John McCain named Martin Eisenstadt. On Monday, MSNBC’s David Schuster reported on air that Martin Eisenstadt had taken credit for the “Palin thinks Africa is a country” leak. Eisenstadt had indeed published a post on his blog (tagline: “Because freedom isn’t free”) claiming to be the leaker, which no one at MSNBC bothered to look into deeply before Schuster’s report, otherwise they might have discovered that Eisenstadt a) is a made up person, and b) didn’t actually talk to Carl Cameron, the Fox news reporter who broke the “anonymous sources say Palin doesn’t know Africa is a continent” story.

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Indies