"For the first time, New Frontier curator Shari Frilot has a venue in which she can put together a coherent show, and she has come through with smarts and élan." As Amy Taubin explains at Artforum, the section had been buried in a mall basement for four years before it was moved this year to the old Miner's Hospital. As to what she saw there, "By far the most beautiful and moving work in New Frontier is also the most direct and simple. Jonathan Caouette's All Flowers in Time is a fourteen-minute movie that resurrects childhood fears and perhaps lays them to rest. Technically more sophisticated than Caouette's autobiographical debut feature, Tarnation (2003), All Flowers in Time circulates around a girl's memory of seeing herself in a photograph with red eyeballs and thinking that she had demons inside her. There is a limpid performance by Chloë Sevigny sitting on a bed talking to a young boy whose name I couldn't figure out from the credits. There are remarkably lyrical images, many of them digitally constructed, and there is a subtle sound design, filled with small surprises, that takes you deeper inside Caouette's magical world than any 3D technology could."
"The marquee attraction was James Franco's Three's Company: The Drama, a video-installation deconstruction of the 70s sex-com narrated by the actor/Oscar host/pansexual tease," writes Karina Longworth in the Voice. "Franco may contain multitudes, but as is the case with most of his prolific creative output, TC:TD is most interesting for merely existing on the same résumé as both Howl and General Hospital. But hopefully Franco's project compelled the curious to see After Ghostcatching — a collaboration between dancer Bill T Jones and the digital art collective OpenEnded Group, featuring 3D imagery so detailed and immersive that it reveals the extent to which we've been shafted by Hollywood's sloppy embrace of the technology — or Mark Boulos's ur-visceral nonfiction installation All That Is Solid Melts Into Air. Boulos's work plays out on two screens on opposite sides of the room: One documents the activities of a Nigerian rebel group fighting against the European oil companies that exploit their country's resources; the other features vérité footage shot on a Chicago futures-trading floor at the dawn of the credit crisis. Each film builds to a crescendo of men yelling and waving their arms in the air—cell phones in hand on one side, automatic weapons on the other; one representing what Boulos calls 'metaphysical economics,' the other its real-world consequences."
"The Woods are neither dark nor deep, but colorless and shallow in this listless comedy about a group of young people who take to the woods to escape the hopelessness and crudity of the modern world," writes Duane Byrge in the Hollywood Reporter. "[T]his film is pretty old stuff, wandering into territory that has been done much better before." Spout's Christopher Campbell: "I also don't see a whole lot of people loving The Woods as much as I do. But I also wouldn't think I'd love a movie about idiotic idealistic hipsters living rebelliously and ironically in the woods — somehow, fantastically, with electricity and Internet (until the end of the world, which also seems to be a running theme at the fest this year) — staged like an arty alternative theater production of Swiss Family Robinson mashed up with Lord of the Flies starring 20-somethings whose drama school degrees are still fresh with wet ink." Interviews with director Matthew Lessner: Kevin Jagernauth (Playlist) and Deenah Vollmer (Interview).
Clay Jeter's Jess + Moss "represents a bracing jolt from the usual film experience while at the same time lacking the pretension that accompanies so many experimental films," finds THR's Kirk Honeycutt.
"Using Greek myth and epic poetry as an organizing principle, John Akomfrah's The Nine Muses pays homage to the generation of immigrants who moved to the UK from former British colonies after WWII," writes the AV Club's Noel Murray. "Akomfrah combines archival footage of aliens finding places to work in a very foreign land with poetry readings (some from English, Scottish and Irish poets, some from Homer), dreamy music (some pop, some classical), and new photos and film of heavy-jacketed Everymen wandering through the icy north. The closest cinematic analogue to The Nine Muses would be Terence Davies's Liverpool memoir-doc Of Time and the City, though Akomfrah's film is less freeform and more ambitious." More from Stephen Farber (THR).
NEXT
"Co-written, directed by and starring Joshua Leonard, The Lie features Leonard and Jess Weixler as Lonnie and Clover, a couple of recovering hippies who've grown up, gotten married, had a kid, and have begun to adapt to life after children." Cinematical's Erik Davis: "Lonnie has put his musical aspirations on hold in order to work a job he hates so that his family can stay afloat. Meanwhile, his wife Clover is about to graduate from school and has been offered a comfy job at a large drug company that instantly conflicts with the couple's pure, all-organic lifestyle, but, heck, there's great benefits and life insurance... and, well, they kinda need that stuff now. Problem is, Lonnie's slowly having a breakdown — a third-life crisis — and after ditching work a couple days in a row, Lonnie melts down and spits out an awful lie to his boss to explain his absence, which ultimately changes his and his family's life forever."
Way back in November 2009, Mark Olsen visited the set for the Los Angeles Times. "Writing on The Lie, adapted from a TC Boyle short story published in the New Yorker in 2008, is being credited to Jeff Feuerzeig, Leonard, Weixler and Mark Webber (who also acts in the film)… Though the scenes for The Lie have a preconceived shape and direction, there are only spare snippets of specific dialogue written, in the hope that the tightrope walk of the creative moment will help capture some real-life spark."
IndieWIRE's Eric Kohn finds that "it plays like two movies at odds with each other. A basic domestic drama with flashes of light comedy, the movie feels both cautionary and sincere about the prospects of running away from debilitating mistakes. While intermittently engaging and well-acted, Leonard's direction fails to inject much life into this watered-down scenario."
For Alicia Van Couvering, writing for Filmmaker, The Lie was one of a few films at Sundance this year asking the same question: "To grow up or not to grow up?" Interviews with Leonard: indieWIRE, David Poland (video, 47'39") and Movieline's ST VanAirsdale.
"Unemployed, overweight and a steadfast loafer, Byron (Paul Batiste) waddles through his day, propelled by weed and his scattered thoughts of becoming a monk." Duane Byrge in the Hollywood Reporter on Lord Byron: "Filmmaker Zack Godshall's strongest suit seems to be his quirky visual eye for down-home detail. Serving also as cinematographer, his compositions are often hilarious and poignant, especially when framing the hefty Byron as he lumbers through his days in the boondocks Louisiana town." At Hammer to Nail, Godshall has published "Revolution and Apocalypse: The Lord Byron Manifesto." IndieWIRE has a word with him as well.
"Good things come to those who wait, as writer-director Megan Griffiths will attest." Nick Dawson introduces his interview for Filmmaker: "The debut feature from the Seattle-based filmmaker, The Off-Hours, was seven years in the making before it finally went into production last spring. Inspired by Griffiths's own experiences working the night shift, this moody, atmospheric indie captures the lives of the people who frequent a diner in a nowhere truckstop town, including pretty young waitress Francine (Amy Seimetz), her foster brother Corey (Scoot McNairy), soft-spoken truck driver Oliver (Ross Partridge), and alcoholic diner owner Stu (Tony Doupe). There are also cameos from fellow directors Lynn Shelton (whose Humpday stormed Sundance in 2009, and who is a consulting producer on this film) and Calvin Reeder, who also has his first feature, The Oregonian, playing in Park City this January." IndieWIRE interviews Griffiths as well.
"Constantly teetering on the brink of absurdity, Prairie Love is saved by a quirky sensibility, perceptive scripting and a painterly style," finds the Hollywood Reporter's Justin Lowe. "As a high plains drifter travels across the wintry North Dakota prairie, it's clear that first-time feature filmmaker Dusty Bias intends to leverage a checklist of genre tropes in this depiction of a contemporary anti-hero." IndieWIRE interviews Bias.
Byrge again: "A stunning slant on the Horatio Alger myth, Restless City focuses on Djibril, an immigrant from Senegal who's lived in Harlem for roughly four years. He dreams of being a musician but ekes out a living selling CDs on the street, mainly to fellow West African immigrants. In this intense twist on the American Dream, director Andrew Dosunmu vividly captures the pulsating dynamic of New York city's pan-African community, a robust aggregation that subsists amid an often hostile foreign environment." And of course, indieWIRE again, too.
In Zal Batmanglij's directorial debut Sound of My Voice, documentary "filmmaker Peter (Christopher Denham) and his partner Lorna (Nicole Vicius, best known for Half Nelson) join a series of clandestine basement gatherings held in an unremarkable Southern Californian home, where the enigmatic Maggie (rising star Brit Marling) preaches proto-philosophical conceits and announces that she hails from the future." IndieWIRE's Eric Kohn: "Nothing is what it seems, including the assumption that Maggie must be full of it… When Maggie asks Peter to commit a crime on her behalf, the movie builds to a deft climax."
Marling was at Sundance with two films, and Cinematical's Erik Davis sees her two roles as opposites: "In Another Earth she's weak, lonely, isolated and searching for answers. Here, in Sound of My Voice, she's powerful, manipulative, quietly seductive and in possession of all the answers. While Another Earth seems to be about exposing the fraud within ourselves, Sound of My Voice is about exposing the fraud in others, and, whether Marling planned this or not, they're fantastic companion pieces."
More from Kirk Honeycutt (THR); indieWIRE interviews Batmanglij. Producers Christine Vachon and Ted Hope interview Batmanglij and Marling (video, 11'45").
SPOTLIGHT
"José Padilha's 2007 hit Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite) turned heads by winning the Golden Bear at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival — a rare feat for an action film." Ryland Aldrich for Twitch: "Coming from a documentary background (Bus 174), Padilha infused his high intensity action with a ripped-from-the-headlines story of police corruption and conspiracy. Padilha stays very true to the original in his follow-up Elite Squad 2 (subtitled in Brazil as The Enemy Within). Delving even deeper into the politics of corruption, this excellently written and executed actioner pulls the covers back on the militias that control elections in Rio's favelas, the whole time keeping all guns blazing."
The Hollywood Reporter's Stephen Farber reminds us that Elite Squad 2 is "the most successful Brazilian movie in history." For the AV Club's Nathan Rabin, "it's equal parts electric cop thriller and indignant social commentary, a slick, satisfying combination of style and substance." Filmmaker has a question for Padilha.
"Kim Jee-Woon's bloody thriller I Saw The Devil stars Lee Byung-hun as a secret agent whose girlfriend is butchered by serial killer Choi Min-sik," writes Noel Murray at the AV Club. "Lee tracks down Choi, tortures him, and then lets him go, so that Lee can do it all again, day after day, until Choi understands what it's like to live a nightmare. Along the way though, Lee turns into more and more of a monster himself, while Choi's panicked road trip keeps leading him to other serial killers who put his own crimes into a wider context. I Saw The Devil is frightening, disgusting and masterfully made, but while it may seem petty to criticize a movie for being too exciting, the succession of gory, bravura set-pieces does lose its novelty after a while." More from Christopher Bell (Playlist) and Christopher Campbell (Spout). Earlier: Reviews from Toronto.
"In a Better World just won the Golden Globe for best foreign language film and it has a very good shot at this year's foreign language Oscar, too," writes the Boston Globe's Ty Burr. "It's a high-minded, high-stakes melodrama from a director, Denmark's Susanne Bier, who has proven her skill with the original 2004 version of Brothers […and…] 2002's Open Hearts… Occasionally glib, often fully felt, always well-filmed and acted, In a Better World is classy issues drama of a sort Paul Haggis can only dream of making." For Nick Schager, writing at the House Next Door, the film "concerns itself with a thicket of mature moral questions, only to resolve them in the most glib and banal means possible."
"One of my fondest memories from this year was trying to decide if Christopher Munch — who was there with his pleasurably eccentric feature Letters from the Big Man and, after one screening, read a letter from the Sasquatch 'people' in perfect deadpan — was pulling our collective leg. The polite audience didn't blink, and neither did he." Manohla Dargis in the New York Times: "It's possible that Mr Munch's film — with its lapidary landscape photography, off-kilter environmental theme and up-and-coming starlet, Lily Rabe, who plays an outdoorswoman collecting samples for a field study and attracts a benevolent hirsute stalker — will find distribution. I hope so. Letters From the Big Man drifts a bit after its absorbing first hour, but it's the kind of off-Hollywood production that still makes Sundance surprising."
For the Boston Globe's Ty Burr, "it's a willfully naive poetic reverie about lost souls trying to get close to nature in the Pacific Northwest and about the giant man-beasts who watch over them — and, by extension, us — like hairy angels… Munch's film touches on many things, including the logging/preservation debate (the director finds room for the people on both sides), idealism, young lust, CIA advanced-weaponry programs, and Native American animism. It's woolly-headed, weirdly moving, and occasionally laughable, and the scenes in which a startlingly realistic Bigfoot moves gracefully into the heroine's field of view count for all three. Think a genetic recombination of Harry and the Hendersons and Wings of Desire, and, whether you like the film or not, admire Munch for going so far out on his chosen sequoia limb."
More from Mike Goodridge (Screen) and James Greenberg (THR).
Back in mid-January the Guardian's Alexis Petridis met Richard Ayoade to talk with him about Submarine, "which he wrote and directed, adapting the story of a teenage misfit and his pyromaniac first girlfriend from a 2008 novel by Joe Dunthorne." Petridis found Ayoade "enthusiastic about talking about films generally — the influence on the finished product of Taxi Driver and Badlands and Eric Rohmer's Love in the Afternoon, the time the NFT hosted an Ingmar Bergman season and he saw everything in it, 'which was one of the best two months ever' — without ever doing anything to suggest that any aspect of Submarine that's to do with him might be any good. When I tell him I enjoyed the film — which is extremely funny, touching, beautifully shot, possessed of a fantastic soundtrack by Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner and brilliant performances by its young leads Craig Roberts and Yasmin Paige — he mumbles his thanks, but bows his head as he does so, as if he's literally trying to duck the compliment. He found the film shoot gruelling — 'It's like trying to tell a joke by recording one word a day into a Dictaphone out of order and reassembling it and hoping the cadence of it works' — but, he concedes, he'd rather be a director than an actor." Which, of course, he is as well, having "created the role of Maurice Moss, the beloved über-geek in the IT Crowd."
Submarine scored mostly favorable reviews when it premiered last fall in Toronto, and is now set to screen in the Berlinale's Forum program. For the AV Club's Nathan Rabin, it "travels a fairly standard coming-of-age arc from naivete and longing to world-weary wisdom but it does so with grace, charm, humor, gorgeous cinematography and fantastic performances from a universally brilliant cast that includes Sally Hawkins as Roberts's mom and Paddy Considine as a New Age narcissist with a crazy rooster mullet who moves in next door and has a secret history with Hawkins… In a perfect world," this "astonishingly assured directorial debut, which owes a debt to both Wes Anderson and JD Salinger, will be this year's An Education, an under-the-radar sleeper with boundless potential."
More from Todd Brown (Twitch), John DeFore (THR), Cory Everett (Playlist), keelsetter (TCM), Noel Murray (AV Club, B+) and Andy Motz (Alternative Chronicle).
PARK CITY AT MIDNIGHT
"Could the incredibly fun, bat-shit-insanely sadistic B-movie Hobo With a Shotgun possibly stand a chance of breaking through to the mainstream?" asks Jada Yuan at Vulture. "The outlook is pretty good. The film arrived at Sundance with a distribution deal with Magnet, the genre arm of Magnolia Pictures, and the premiere screening last night was packed with that surprisingly large subset of the population who were sold on the movie from the title alone (count us among them). Much of the anticipation was due to Hobo being the feature debut of Jason Eisener, who had made a big splash at the festival two years ago with his short film Treevenge, an unflinchingly gruesome look at what might happen if Christmas trees struck back at their murderers."
"Hobo With a Shotgun's kick-ass title helped it win infamy a few years back when a homemade trailer for the then-non-existent film won a contest and ran alongside other fake trailers in selected screenings of Grindhouse," notes Nathan Rabin at the AV Club. Now Hobo With a Shotgun has gone all Machete and turned into a real B movie after being expanded to feature length with the additional star power of Rutger Hauer, who plays a half-mad hobo who rolls into a bleak urban hellscape that apparently holds the world record for most blood-splattered public felonies committed per square foot… So why isn't Hobo With A Shotgun anywhere near as much fun as it should be? Complaining about violence in a movie called Hobo With A Shotgun is like complaining that blues standards are insufficiently chipper, but the gleefully, brutally, and deliberately excessive violence — especially when directed towards women and children and overtly sexual in nature — becomes exhausting and dispiriting instead of goofy and fun."
More from Ryland Aldrich (Twitch), Duane Byrge (THR), Christopher Campbell (Spout), David D'Arcy (Screen), Devin Faraci (Badass Digest), Drew McWeeney (HitFix) and Noel Murray (AV Club, B). Interviews with Hauer: Bilge Ebiri (Vulture), Jason Guerrasio (Cinematical), Drew McWeeney (HitFix, video, 6'02") and James Rocchi. You may remember, too, that Adrian Curry admires Tom Hodge's design for the poster.
"In 2007, no film delightfully shocked and confused me (and other programmers) more than Calvin Lee Reeder's Little Farm," writes Mark Elijah Rosenberg of Rooftop Films. "Calvin's feature The Oregonian takes a flying bloody leap where Little Farm left off, and it never comes down. Lindsay Pulsipher once again plays the pretty prey, caught within the gory, woodsy mayhem in this masterpiece of madness… The ideas cooked up are disturbing and unique, while also borrowing from and subverting the conventions of 70's b-movie horror, sci-fi and porn. As such, The Oregonian is a cinematic treat."
But for the Hollywood Reporter's John DeFore, "The Oregonian starts off as an exercise in lead-footed David Lynch mimicry and heads downhill quickly." More from David D'Arcy (Screen), Daniel Fienberg (HitFix) and Eric Kohn (iW).
Nick Dawson introduces an interview for Filmmaker: "Michael Tully began his career with a flurry, getting selected for Filmmaker's 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2006 on the back of his debut feature Cocaine Angel, and then following it up the next year with Silver Jew, a documentary about Silver Jews frontman David Berman. In the years since, Tully has stayed active, shooting Mary Bronstein's Yeast, acting in a handful of movies by fellow Generation DIY peers, including Aaron Katz's Quiet City and Ry Russo-Young's You Wont Miss Me, and editing the indie film website Hammer to Nail. But, in terms of new films, he has kept his head below the parapet. Now, however, he's back with his second narrative feature, Septien [site], a fantastically idiosyncratic tale in which he plays the lead role of Cornelius Rawlings, an athletically-gifted prodigal son who after an unexplained 18 year absence returns to the family farm where his two brothers, Ezra (Robert Longstreet) and Amos (Onur Tukel), both live. A film that audaciously blurs genre boundaries, it [was] released by IFC on VOD (with limited theatrical) as one of five films put out under the Sundance Selects banner during the festival itself."
"Weakly spoofing, or at least deliberately tweaking, Southern Gothic conventions, writer-director Tully can't fully get his arms around this messy genre mashup," finds Justin Lowe in the Hollywood Reporter. "Attempts at humor often come off as simply strange, dramatic elements churn but don't coalesce and mild stabs at horror fall flat." But in Screen, David D'Arcy finds that "Tully is comfortable enough with his own material that he doesn't overplay gags. His parodies are odd enough to have a comic freshness, even in the well-traveled field of gothic mockery." For Simon Abrams, blogging for the New York Press, the humor "wavers between obvious, Napoleon Dynamite-level broad humor and a pokier, far less easier to read sensibility."
"For me, getting the South right on film is one of those things that only happens on rare occasion," writes Drew McWeeney at HitFix. "The South has been a major part of my life, and there are tactile memories that are difficult to capture on film. The first thing that struck me about Septien is that Mike Tully understands the South, and his film captures it in a very real and casual way, getting it right without hammering the point. There are long quiet stretches in the film that are just environmental, and the sound of the cicadas or the feel of sitting on a porch during a quiet summer rain… he gets it just right."
More from Christopher Campbell (Spout), Elise Nakhnikian (House Next Door) and James van Maanen. Listening (20'25"). Aaron Hillis talks with Tully at GreenCine Daily. Next stop: SXSW.
"Chris Kentis and Laura Lau spent more than two years filming Open Water," reports John Horn in the Los Angeles Times. "But the lengthy production schedule for their ultra-low-budget 2004 scuba-diving thriller was nothing compared with the seven years it took the couple to make another movie following their Sundance Film Festival breakout." Much of that time was spent in development hell on a project that's still down there, evidently; but suddenly, the filmmakers wrote, shot and edited Silent House within a year. "Loosely adapted from a Uruguayan film that premiered at last May's Cannes Film Festival [Gustavo Hernandez's La Casa Muda], Silent House is a fast-moving (1 hour, 26 minutes) look at the very bad experiences that 20-year-old Sarah (played by Elizabeth Olsen, sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley) suffers in a boarded-up New York house her father is preparing to sell… As with the Spanish-language original, Silent House is shot to look as if the entire movie were done in a single take — there are no cutaways, no obvious edits. Even the most astute film-school students would be hard-pressed to spot precisely where Kentis (an editor by training) and Lau made their cuts. The directors say that some of the takes in the film run more than 10 minutes."
Reviews, for the most part, are less than enthusiastic: Christopher Campbell (Spout), Sean Glass (ioncinema), Drew McWeeney (HitFix), Jenni Miller (Cinematical) and Kim Voynar (Movie City News). Viewing. Cinematical's Erik Davis gets five minutes with Kentis and Lau.
"I recognize why indie filmmakers would be drawn to using the Blair Witch/Cloverfield-style 'hey we just found these tapes' style for a horror movie," grants Noel Murray at the AV Club. "The format itself covers a lot of sins: mediocre production values, weak exposition, cheap special effects, et cetera. Plus, when it works, the caught-on-the-fly style makes the fantastical look more real, and thus more shocking. André Ovredal's Norwegian creature feature The Troll Hunter works about half the time."
For Variety's Peter Debruge, the film "embellishes the candid, caught-on-video format to thrilling effect with ample footage of its mythological monsters. Presented as the rough-cut edit of material retrieved from a missing student camera crew, this high-concept mock-doc shadows three likable young people as they stumble upon Norway's biggest conspiracy: a government-run effort to keep the country's troll population under wraps." Overall, "The Troll Hunter emphasizes excitement and humor over horror."
More from Christopher Campbell (Spout), Eric Kohn (iW), Andy Motz (Alternative Chronicle) and David Rooney (THR).
"Lucky McKee is, without question, a radical feminist horror filmmaker," argues Drew McWeeney at HitFix. "All you need to do is go back to his first feature May and then work your way forward. His sensitivity towards his actresses, and the perspective each of his films takes, is practically political. He returns to themes of power inequality and gender struggle, and he externalizes his subtext. He has been consistent in his interests, and as a result, he hasn't been making $50 million studio films. He doesn't seem terribly interested in remaking something or doing the easy jump-scare thing, and that can lead to some very difficult years for any horror filmmaker. The Woman, written by Jack Ketchum and McKee, is a fable about the smiling psychopath that our society is built to support, and the women he keeps under his thumb in his home. The entire film's tone is somewhat heightened, the color palette jacked up, and the entire thing playing out more like a remembered dream than a literal story. It is harrowing in a way that few horror films are for me these days, emotionally demanding. It is extreme, but more in terms of the psychology and the toll on the personalities of the characters than in terms of overt onscreen violence."
If it sounds like McWeeney is working his way up to a passionate defense, that would be because he found himself confronting a fellow who erupted in a fit of screaming protest during the screening. He's got the story and video of the man he calls "Captain Indignant" both towards the end of the actual incident and afterwards. He's also got video of "Lucky and his lead actress, the lovely and unusual Pollyanna McIntosh," defending their film. Mike S Ryan has a briefer version of the overall story at Hammer to Nail, adding, "Yes, it still does contain a lot of anger and violence, much of it heaped onto the female characters, but the point becomes clear and is driven home in the end when the female survivors walk back into the woods. As the programmer said in his introduction of the film, 'This film makes you embarrassed to be a man.'"
"The Woman casts Sean Bridgers as a country lawyer whose easygoing, affable demeanor hides a monstrous interior," writes Nathan Rabin at the AV Club. "While out hunting one night, Bridgers stumbles upon a half-naked, filthy, sub-verbal, feral animal-woman (Pollyanna McIntosh). He embraces the white man's burden and domesticates her… Bridgers treats McIntosh like a combination pet, child, and sex toy; McIntosh may be feral and bloodthirsty, but Bridgers emerges as this brutally funny, imaginatively gory midnight movie's true villain, a man who wants to violate and destroy everything he touches. McIntosh most assuredly does not have a heart of gold, but she acts purely out of instinct and survival, whereas Bridgers has been corrupted by what passes for civilization. The Woman plays at time like a feminist answer to Craig Brewer's fundamentally conservative Black Snake Moan, only this time, the ostensible savior's cure for a wicked woman's wildness might just be worse than the disease." Grade: B.
But for John DeFore, writing in the Hollywood Reporter, The Woman is like "an especially perverse Lars Von Trier outing stripped of intellect, humor and artistry."
So that's going to do it for Sundance 2011. See the index for entries on individual films, which were then followed by a series of roundups like this one: Awards, Dramatic and Documentary Competitions and Premieres.
For news and tips throughout the day every day, follow The Daily Notebook on Twitter and/or the RSS feed.