CineVegas is quickly becoming one of my favorite stops on the festival circuit, and it’s not just because I have a probably unhealthy predilection towards the strange blend of optimism and despair that marks Vegas itself. The lineup for the year’s festival was released today, and once again there’s a lot to be excited about, including closing night film World’s Greatest Dad, lots of recent festival favorites (including Harmony & Me, Winnebago Man and Moon), a special screening of Attack of the 50ft Woman, and more. The full lineup is after the jump.

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I’ve been tagged by Indiepix’s Danielle DiGiacomo to participate in this Sundance favorites blog meme. I’ve, in turn, tagged eight over bloggers. Find out if you’re one of the lucky octuplet after the jump.

Rules:
1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with listing their Sundance favorites, separated into 8 categories.
3. People who are tagged write their own blog post about their 8 favorites and include these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose 8 people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and that they should read your blog.

Here goes:
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In the director’s statement slipped into the press notes for his Robin Williams-starring Sundance entry World’s Greatest Dad, Bobcat Goldthwait says it took him 25 years in show business to figure out that what he really wants to do is direct movies, and doing so makes him feel like he’s “getting away with murdr.” That’s a fair description of what he pulls off in Dad, in which a frustrated novelist/high school teacher (Williams) exploits the death of a loved one to plump up his own popularity. Though far more polished than Goldthwait’s 2006 Sundance competition film Sleeping Dogs Lie (also known as Stay), Dad rides the same line between obscene satire and almost mushy sincerity. I talked to Goldthwait about self-Googling, why he has no desire for his stand-up fans to see his movies, and why he’s not going on Celebrity Fit Club any time soon.

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• 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”?

Clint Eastwood’s new cranky-old-man epic, Gran Torino, sped past the competition to prove its raw masculine authority at the box office. Over the past twenty years, Eastwood has perfected his own sub-genre: the grizzled old timer who comes back for one last hurrah. This latest iteration adds a surprising dose of compassion.

Karina shares which movies she’s most excited to see at Sundance this year. The list includes, Moon, The Clone Returns Home, Hump Day, O’er the Land, The September Issue, The Informers, and World’s Greatest Dad.

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0:00 - Intro

1:31 - contests

5:58 - listener feedback

11:55 - Gran Torino

29:57 - Sundance preview

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I’ve scoured the various Sundance schedules and picked out the 13 films that I’m most looking forward to over the course of the ten days in Park City. Note that this list does not include films that I’ve already seen, either at other festivals or through other means. It didn’t seem fair to mix up films I haven’t seen with those I have kind of an inside scoop on, and anyway, you’ll hear about those films soon enough — this is purely a catalog of my own current anticipations.

1 & 2: Moon and The Clone Returns Home

It’s the Philosophical Astronaut Double Feature! First, Sam Rockwell stars in Moon (the feature debut of Duncan Jones, AKA Zowie Bowie, David’s son) as a contract in a space pod, alone save for his trusty robot, who is nudged by the monotony (or, moonotony) of life in space towards an existential crisis. Then, there’s Clone, a Japanese feature executive produced by Wim Wenders, about a cloned astronaut who “flees the lab in search of his childhood home [and] finds his own lifeless body in a space suit. Mistaking it for his brother, he continues his journey carrying the body on his back.” Seriously, go read the Sundance catalogue description — it’s maybe the most evocative festival guide copy I’ve ever read. Clone is in the World Dramatic competition, Moon is a Premiere.

3. Humpday

A bromance directed by a broad. Lynn Shelton’s follow-up to My Effortless Brilliance (and her return to Park City after taking the Grand Prize at Slamdance in 2006 for her first feature, We Go Way Back) stars Mark Duplass (The Puffy Chair) and Joshua Leonard (The Blair Witch Project) as two college buddies who reunite as thirtysomethings and end up entering an amateur porn contest. Defintiely the domestic Narrative Competition feature that’s come up most in conversation with friends and colleagues since the lineup was announced.

4. The September Issue

RJ Cutler’s portrait of editor Anna Wintour spans the nine months of work that go into the creation of fashion’s annual bible, the September issue of VOGUE. I’m bit of a sucker for fashion documentaries, but even if you’re not, one hopes Cutler (producer of The War Room, director of A Perfect Candidate) will apply lessons learned in the deep end of politics to the politics of the superficial.

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• Robin Williams and a title like World’s Greatest Dad reek of a possible broad comedy combining Father’s Day, RV and Mrs. Doubtfire. But would you believe it will be a dark comedy in which Williams’ son dies in “an apparent autoerotic accident”? What if I told you Bobcat Goldthwait is the writer-director?

• Danny DeVito, who also had the honor of directing Williams in an audience-limiting black comedy, will make up the difference here by helming the young-adult-geared period piece The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. Morgan Freeman, Pierce Brosnan and Atonement’s Saoirse Ronan star.
• Speaking of Father’s Day, once-huge screenwriting duo Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel are the latest to rework Touchstone’s Charlie Kaufman-by-way-of-Zach Helm-wannabe reflexive musical Bob: The Musical.
• Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards is on the fast track towards its eventual post-theatrical Showtime run with trade-reported rumors that Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio could costar. Let me just put it out there that Williams would be a great addition, as well.
• From E3: Sony has finally launched its movie download service for its PlayStation, though it won’t feature any Universal titles (sorry, no Patch Adams), which are exclusive to Xbox 360, which of course also now works with Netflix streams.
• The New York Film Festival will open with Lauren Cantet’s Palme D’or winner, The Class. Which will probably one day be remade with Williams starring.