Sundance Film Festival reveals competition lineup for 2010
Sundance 2010 is dawning.
The art-house movie festival has revealed its lineup of films competing for jury prizes during the snowbound cinematic gathering Jan. 21-31 in Park City, Utah.
Last year's big winner was Precious, the story of an obese, illiterate and abused inner-city girl, which now is considered one of the season's lead Oscar contenders.
The group seeking to make a similar impact this year is another mix of challenging films, which is what makes Sundance such an important launching point. "A lot of our films are hard to describe, and that's very attractive," says John Cooper, the newly installed director of the festival. "We put marketability on the sidelines for a while and said, 'Let's just go for films that were highly original and pushed the envelope.' "
With the independent film world in crisis after the troubled economy dried up funding for many moviemakers, Cooper and programming chief Trevor Groth say they still received 9,816 submissions. From that number, 113 feature-length films were selected for the festival.
Among those in the competition:
•Welcome to the Rileys stars Kristen Stewart as a teenage stripper and James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo as a mother and father who try to help her after their own child has died. The Twilight and New Moon actress "is about to really change her image," says Cooper, and the film "gets an amazing performance out of Gandolfini as this shattered soul seeking salvation."
•His Sopranos co-star Edie Falco also is in the competition with 3 Backyards, a drama about troubled neighbors whose intertwining troubles come to a head on the same day.
•James Franco plays poet Allen Ginsburg in Howl, about the creation of and subsequent obscenity trial over the 1950s Beat poet's most famous work, which begins "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked …" Mad Men's Jon Hamm, Mary-Louise Parker and Jeff Daniels co-star. Animation is used to illustrate the poem.
"Those Beat poets are what our independent filmmakers are today. And I think this is going to reinvent Howl for a whole new audience," says Cooper.
•A stranger-than-fiction true story comes to the screen in the comedy Holy Rollers, with Jesse Eisenberg(Adventureland, Zombieland) as a young Hassidic Jew who breaks out of his traditionalist religious world to enter the worldwide ecstasy drug trade. "I remember reading about the case when it broke and was so fascinated by the concept. Such an interesting, strange juxtaposition," says Groth.
•Joseph Gordon-Levitt, a Sundance regular who brought (500) Days of Summer to the festival last year, is returning for Hesher, a dramedy about a burnout who ingratiates himself to a mourning family and causes havoc for their teenage son. Rainn Wilson plays the troubled father, and Natalie Portman is the kids' would-be crush.
•Meanwhile, Mark Ruffalo makes his directing debut and co-stars with Orlando Bloom in Sympathy for Delicious, about a recently paralyzed DJ desperately trying to restore himself by entering the world of faith healers.
•The Hurt Locker's Anthony Mackie headlines the drama Night Catches Us, the story of a young man who grew up during the black power movement returning to his race-torn neighborhood in 1978 Philadelphia.
•In another coming-of-age saga from a long-ago decade, Skateland focuses on a 19-year-old skating-rink manager in the early 1980s who is dealing with his family and friends after he loses his job and has to figure out some kind of future.
•In the documentary category, An Inconvenient Truth filmmaker Davis Guggenheim returns to the festival withWaiting for Superman, a stark look at troubles in the nation's public schools. "It's an analysis of how bad neighborhoods don't necessarily create bad schools, but bad schools create bad neighborhoods by not keeping education high, and keeping the area underwater in a lot of ways," Cooper says.
•Casino Jack & The United States of Money explores the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal and the role lobbyists play in manipulating the government.
•Smash His Camera focuses on notorious paparazzo Ron Galella, whose claim to fame is being sued byJacqueline Kennedy Onassis and punched by Marlon Brando.
•The Perfect Storm author Sebastian Junger co-directs Restrepo, a film about his experience dug in with the Second Platoon in Afghanistan, fighting the Taliban in one of the area's most hostile terrains.
•I'm Pat (expletive) Tillman will explore the heroism, death and controversial coverup involving the NFL star, who left football to join the Army Rangers after 9/11 and was killed by friendly fire.
•Lucky explores what life is like for ordinary people who suddenly win massive amounts of money in lotteries.
•My Perestroika looks at the lives of five people from Moscow who grew up amid the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Communism.
•In a lighter film, the life of the acid-tongued comedian is explored in Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, which promises a warts-and-all glimpse into the caustic funnywoman's life.
The complete list of competition films, including the world drama and documentary categories, is available at sundance.org/festival.
A separate group of non-competition premiere films will be announced Thursday.
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Carrie
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