Tag: Sundance Film Festival (1-10 of 88)

Jan 13 2013 10:00 AM ET

PopWatch Planner: Globes glitter, 'Fringe' fades, and A$AP Rocky jams

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Robert-Redford-Sundance-split

Image Credit: (top) Juan Naharro Gimenez/FilmMagic; (bottom) Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

If it feels like everything’s happening earlier than usual this year, you’re not wrong. With Oscar nominations already in the bag and the Golden Globes set for tonight, we’re chugging through awards season and it’s still only mid-January! There will be plenty of red carpet looks to keep you going this week, with the Globes followed by the Sundance Film Festival kicking off in chilly Park City, Utah. In between, stay tuned for an exciting week on Top Chef and the end of a beloved series in Fringe, topped off with Rob Lowe playing the sexiest lawyer around in Prosecuting Casey Anthony. Have a great week!

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Jan 22 2012 07:31 PM ET

PopWatch Planner: Oscar noms, more 'Idol' auditions, and Kiefer's new show

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Jennifer-Lawrence

Image Credit: Marcel Thomas/FilmMagic.com

American Idol and Sundance are taking over the PopWatch planner this week, not to mention Oscar nominations! So soak up the football today and enjoy your last couple days of ‘who will get nominated’ speculation before the real guessing game of awards season gets underway. There’s also some great TV on tap, including a new Kiefer Sutherland show and the SAG awards.  Have a great week!

SUNDAY
American Idol special episode, Fox, 10p.m. READ FULL STORY »

Jan 15 2012 11:45 AM ET

PopWatch Planner: The Golden Globes, 'Justified,' and 'American Idol'

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american-idol

Image Credit: Michael Becker/Fox

In less than 10 hours, Ricky Gervais will take the stage at the Beverly Hilton Hotel and begin his opening monologue at the Golden Globes. Last year, of course, he scorched the biggest celebrities in the room, and the industry punished him… by inviting him back. Don’t expect anything different tonight: He’s already said he has “specific targets” in mind, so you know you’ll be glued to the tube to either laugh at his welcome cheekiness or tsk-tsk his brash impudence. But the build-up for the Globes may have distracted you from the upcoming week of must-see events, so let PopWatch Planner be your guide as we look ahead to the next seven days in entertainment.

SUNDAY
Golden Globe Awards, NBC, 8 p.m. ET

In addition to Gervais, the Globes will set the table for the next month of pre-Oscar hoopla — nominations for the main event come out Jan. 24. So pay close attention to the voting in the Best Actor race — Clooney or Pitt? — and see what films emerge with a Golden Globes bounce. (Or don’t. The Globes are notorious for misfiring on predicting the ultimate Best Picture Oscar. See: The Social Network, Avatar, Atonement, Babel, Brokeback Mountain, The Aviator…) Make sure to check back to EW.com’s Golden Globes special report for real-time coverage and to share your thoughts on all the fashion, winners, losers, and parties. READ FULL STORY »

Jan 28 2011 05:20 PM ET

Where have you gone, Robert Redford? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you -- and Warren Beatty and Gene Hackman.

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Redford-Beatty-HackmanImage Credit: Andrew Wilson/PR Photos; David Gabber/PR Photos; Evan Agostini/Getty ImagesRobert Redford, Duke of Sundance, tells ABC that many people erroneously think he doesn’t want to act in movies anymore. “Something is happening over the years that makes a lot of people think that I don’t do this anymore, when the truth is, it’s what I enjoy most,” he said to Peter Travers.

Redford, 74, directed and co-starred in Lions for Lambs (2007), but it’s true that the 1970s heart-throb has been less active in front of the camera in the last 10 years, making only three films. As someone who grew up watching — and re-watching — The Natural, who reveres All the President’s Men, and who considers Spy Game one of the most underrated films of the young century, I hope the film projects he discussed with Travers come to fruition. READ FULL STORY »

Jan 27 2011 05:50 PM ET

Elmo adorably poses with pregnant fan at Sundance

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Being Elmo, a documentary about puppeteer Kevin Clash, premiered at Sundance this week. This video of Clash, Elmo, and a pregnant fan sums up the enduring wonder of Muppets in general, and the specific joyous charms of Elmo in particular: Even though you can see Clash putting the Elmo puppet on, it still really feels like Elmo is a sentient — and deeply loving — being. Is it dusty in here? There’s… something in my eye… READ FULL STORY »

Jan 24 2011 05:56 PM ET

Excess Hollywood: Bada Bing! James Gandolfini reunites with David Chase. Plus, four Sundance films find homes.

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  • It’s a Sopranos reunion! James Gandolfini will star in David Chase’s feature film debut, Twylight Zones, set in 1960s New Jersey. Gandolfini is set to play a father who is concerned about his son’s (John Magaro) new role as the lead singer of a band called The Twylight Zones, and, strangely, not about his spelling skills. [Deadline]
  • Sherri Shepherd has been tapped to star alongside Christine Taylor (Zoolander) in Terri Minsky’s untitled office comedy pilot set in a beverage manufacturing company called Rip City Cola. Taylor plays the office’s new CEO, while Shepherd is on board to play an office troublemaker. Sexual maniac D’fwan still waiting on his role. [Deadline]
  • Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Grey’s Anatomy) is in talks for Magic City, Starz’s drama set in mid-20th century Miami. Morgan would play a hotel-owner who “makes some strange bedfellows and many powerful enemies.” So… he’s the Ronnie? [Deadline]
  • National Geographic has acquired the Kevin MacDonald-directed and Ridley Scott-executive produced Life in a Day. For the film, MacDonald and Scott asked YouTube users to submit video of their day on July 24, 2010. MacDonald chose over 1,000 clips from 80,000 submissions for the film, which is 90 minutes long, and I hope entirely consisted of this video.
  • Sundance: IFC Films has picked up The Ledge, starring Charlie Hunnam, Liv Tyler, Patrick Wilson, Terrence Howard, and Christopher Gorham. The thriller centers on a “believer” (Wilson) who forces a “non-believer” (Hunnam) to the top of a tall building, where he’s given the choice to to save his own life or someone else’s. I just say they all get along and work it out over the season 3 DVD of Sons of Anarchy like you all should.  READ FULL STORY »
Oct 15 2010 10:56 AM ET

Guns, drugs, and... folk music!: British director Ben Wheatley talks about his new gangster movie, 'Down Terrace'

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Down-Terrace-posterWhy did British TV comedy director Ben Wheatley decide to make a feature length film? Because he couldn’t be “bothered” to make a short one. “I said to my agent, ‘I want to do some drama,’” Wheatley recalls. “And he just went, ‘You can’t, they’re not going to let you. You have to go and make a short.’ I thought, ‘I can’t be bothered.’ Because it’s such a lot of effort and money. I thought, if I’ve got to make something off my own back, I’ll make a feature.”

The ultimate result of that reasoning is the darkly hilarious, self-financed gangster movie Down Terrace, which opens in New York and Los Angeles today. Wheatley’s creation stars the director’s longtime collaborator—and Down Terrace co-writer—Robin Hill, Hill’s real-life father Robert, and Spaced actress Julia Deakin as a family of folk music-loving drug dealers who live in the British city of Brighton.

Wait a second: they love folk music? That’s not very gangster-ish! “I find folk really scary,” laughs Wheatley.  “Folk songs are always about the crops failing, and people killing someone, and burying their body somewhere. And also there’s the idea that this family has been around for ever—they’d have been in the middle ages, chopping people’s heads off and being appalling.” READ FULL STORY »

Jul 23 2010 05:55 PM ET

'Life In a Day': Be a part of cinematic history (or at least a really cool project)

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For most of us, starring in a feature film is merely a pipe dream. I’ve been on TV before, but headlining a major motion picture is not in my future any time soon. (And, sadly, I’m guessing it’s not in most of yours’ either.) But all that could change with an experimental YouTube project taking place tomorrow. (Yeah, sorry for the late notice, PopWatchers!)

Ridley Scott (Gladiator, Black Hawk Down) and Kevin Macdonald (State of Play) have joined forces to create the film Life In a Day. Basically, they want you (yes you) to film part of your day tomorrow, July 24. After all the submissions are in, the guys will go through the videos and select the most compelling material. Those videos will then be combined to create the documentary film that will premiere at the January 2011 Sundance Film Festival. And that’s not even the coolest part. If any of your footage gets selected, you’ll be credited as a co-director, and might even have a chance to go to Sundance to celebrate. READ FULL STORY »

Jul 7 2010 10:57 AM ET

Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald want you to be in their new documentary. Auditions are July 24, on YouTube.

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SchnauzerImage Credit: Design Pics/Getty ImagesLife in a Day seems like a filmmaking dare made in the wee hours after a determined effort to kill brain cells. The concept behind the “historic cinematic experiment” is that on July 24, anyone with a video camera can film and then upload footage to YouTube, with the hope that it will then be incorporated and edited into a cohesive feature documentary about mankind. “One World. 24 Hours. 6 Billion Perspectives,” is how it’s being sold. (Watch a promo below.)

Intriguing. But my soul weeps for filmmakers Kevin Macdonald and Ridley Scott, the brave chaps who’ve volunteered to cull the exhausting clips of footballs to the groin, dancing babies, and endless navel-gazing talking heads to concoct something meaningful. A reasonably sober Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland) doesn’t seem to have any second thoughts about the imposing assignment, saying, “It’ll be kind of like a time capsule, which people in the future…could look at and say, ‘Oh my god. That’s what it was like.’

But what are you supposed to shoot? Does executive producer Ridley Scott, the man who filmed Gladiator, really care to see my four-minute short about my Schnauzer’s ability to reliably pick the winner of college football games? READ FULL STORY »

Feb 2 2010 05:00 PM ET

'Birdemic: Shock and Terror': Our new, crazy movie obsession

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Some movie trailers make you go, “Wow!” Some make you go, “Urgh!” And some make you go, “Wait, what’s going on? This is just a lot of generic silent footage of the countryside. And more generic silent footage of a beach. And yet more generic footage of a town. But, wait! Now the whole screen is full of unexplained explosions and screeching, cheaply animated, birds! I don’t understand. I… DON’T… UNDERSTAND!”

Okay, so only one trailer makes you do that. And that is the trailer for Birdemic: Shock and Terror, the film which answers the question of what Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds would have looked like if it had been made not by Hollywood’s legendary Master of Suspense, but by a mid-level Silicon Valley software salesman.

The salesman in question is James Nguyen, who not only financed BSAT (as subsequent generations will doubtless refer to it) but also wrote, directed, and produced the four-years-in-the-making movie about a couple who are besieged by homicidal birds in a small North California town. That’s right, Nguyen spent four years on Birdemic. Which is pretty much the same amount of time James Cameron took to make Avatar! But was Birdemic shown the love upon its completion? It was not. In fact, last year those morons at Sundance rejected the movie — a decision they may have regretted when Nguyen spent eight days driving around Park City in a fake bird-covered van blasting the sound of eagle attacks and human screams from loudspeakers. READ FULL STORY »

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