Sundance Festival Awards Wrap

Mostly I've been just motoring along, not too sad about having missed Sundance this year until it occurred to me what a jump start it gave me on this current Oscar race -- not too mention my own rooting interests at the film bitch awards. Whoa unto us who cannot afford a week in the snowy Utah mountains. I'm dying to see Vera Farmiga's directorial debut but otherwise I have poured over precious few Sundance articles. There was too much Oscar noise this week to give it much thought. But here's what Sundance went for with a passion.

Vera Farmiga, Dr. Nner and America Ferrara (photo from Zimbio)

The Sundance 2011 Awards broke down like so...

Juried
Grand Prize Dramatic Like Crazy
Grand Prize Documentary How To Die in Oregon
World Cinema Dramatic Happy, Happy
World Cinema Documentary Hell and Back Again

Like CrazyThe big breakout of the festival was Like Crazy, a cross-Atlantic romantic drama starring Actress winner Felicity Jones (the new Carey Mulligan they're saying... but isn't that just because Carey was a breakout at the same festival in a romantic drama?). It sold to Paramount for $4 million. If the past couple of festival years are any indication this does mean that Felicity Jones will be in the Oscar discussion a year from now. To be uncharitable and frank, I'm completely weirded out by this because a) she didn't register at all in Chéri despite a key role and b) I thought she was less than say "good" in The Tempest (2010) and all she had to do there was affectively portray falling in love as well as conveying being the sheltered child of a bossy mother. If Felicity Jones is a revelation here after that than Julie Taymor is an even worse director than I previously thought! Also weirding me out is the prospect of lil' Anton Yelchin as a romantic lead. Anton Yelchin. Isn't he that brainy little kid from Huff? Didn't he just look like a 12 year old playing at Chekov in Star Trek (2009)? My god they grow up so fast. ♪ sunrise sunset sunrise sunset ♫

Directing, Dramatic Sean Durkin for Martha Marcy May Marlene
Directing, Documentary Jon Foy for Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of Toynbee Tiles
Directing, World Cinema Paddy Considine for Tyrannosaur
Directing, Documentary World Cinema James Marsh for Project Nim
Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award Another Happy Day
World Cinema Screenwriting Restoration
Special Jury Prize (Acting) Felicity Jones for Like Crazy
Special Jury Prize (Dramatic) Another Earth
Special Jury Prize (Documentary) Being Elmo
World Cinema Special Jury Prize (Documentary) Position Among the Stars
World Cinema Special Jury Prize (Dramatic) The Acting in Tyrannosaur

Martha Marcy May MarleneOther than Vera Farmiga's film -- which I'm interested in mostly because I'm crazy for crazy-eyed Farmiga -- the one I'm most personally curious about is Martha Marcy May Marlene which won for Best Director. Fox Searchlight bought it and they do get behind their films. The film is about a young girl (Elizabeth Olsen. Yes, younger sister to the Olsen Twins) trying to adjust to life after fleeing a religious cult. She moves in with her sister (Sarah Paulson -yay) and her sister's fiance (Hugh Dancy - double yay!). John Hawke is the cult leader (triple yay... for Hawkes's involvement not dangerous cult leaders). Olsen won strong reviews and the film sounds like intriguing.

Paddy Considine and Olivia Colman on the set of "Tyrannosaur"Also looking forward to seeing Tyrannosaur. It's about the relationship between a rage filled man (Peter Mullan) and an abused woman (Olivia Colman) but one of our favorite character actors Paddy Considine is directing and if the world cinema jury felt the need to honor both its acting and its directing, maybe it's special and not just gritty miserabilism.

Documentary Editing If a Tree Falls
World Cinema Documentary Editing The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
Excellence in Cinematography, Dramatic Pariah
Excellence in Cinematography, Documentary The Redemption of General Butt Naked
World Cinema Cinematography All Your Dead Ones
World Cinema Cinematography, Documentary  Hell and Back Again
Alfred P Sloane Prize Another Earth directed by Mike Cahill
Sundance NHK International Filmmakers Award Cherien Davis
Jury Prize Short Filmmaking Brick novax Pt 1 & 2
Shorts Jury Honorable Mention: Choke by Michelle Latimer; Diarchy by Ferdinando Cito Filmomarioes; The External World by David O'Reilly; The Legend of Beaver Dam by Jerome Sable; Out of Reach by Jakub Stozek; Protoparticles by Chema García Ibarra

PariahFocus Features, who won The Kids Are All Right bidding war last year, also bought a lesbian film this year. Pariah, which won for cinematography, is about an African American teenager (played by Adepero Oduye) who is coming out of the closet in Brooklyn.

Audience Award
Dramatic Circumstance
Documentary Buck
World Cinema Kinyarwanda
World Documentary Senna
The Best of "NEXT" Audience Award to.get.her

CircumstanceLast year at Sundance the Dramatic Audience Award, Dramatic went to HappyThankYouMorePlease which was the writer/director debut of sitcom star Josh Radnor and surprise: it felt not unlike a sitcom. But the year before they chose Precious so you never know. This year's winner Circumstance is about an Iranian family struggling with rebellious teenagers.

Anything from Sundance 2011 interesting you from what you've read here or elsewhere?

Birthday Bale

Here's to Christian Bale, future Oscar winner (unless this King's Speech thing *really* gets out of hand), on his 37th birthday! He might even win the SAG Award tonight on his birthday.

It's hard to remember that he's not even 40 yet. He's been in the movies for so long!

Christian Bale, the 12 year old star of "Empire of the Sun"

Since that auspicious debut in Steven Spielberg's Empire (1987) which was nominated for 6 Oscars (but strangely didn't catch fire in any of the top categories, despite being a World War II epic) it's been quite a trip: He assisted a royal Oscar powerhouse (Henry V); ended his teenage years dancing (Swing Kids) and singing (Newsies); got curiously soft and swoony (Pocahontas, Little Women); was overcome by hormonal confusion in his mid 20s (Velvet Goldmine, Metroland, A Midsummer Night's Dream); played God and then the Devil back to back in his late 20s (Mary, Mother of Jesus & American Pyscho) as if to warn us, spiritually, of his physical yo-yoing to come; and then the films came fast and furious with the actor jumping genres and personas and body types left and right (Laurel Canyon, Reign of Fire, Equilibrium, The Machinist, Batman Begins, The New World, Rescue Dawn, The Prestige, I'm Not There, etcetera).

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It's been hard to keep up with him. He's dancing as fast as he can through the cinema.

What's your favorite Bale performance?

Amy Westcott on Her "Black Swan" Costume Snub

Wescott's Nina sketchesGiven my fascination with Costume Design, you'll recall I already named my nominees (which included Amy Westcott and Rodarte for Black Swan) and said a few words about Westcott's own work on Black Swan, I drank up this interview in Clothes on Film with the designer post-Oscar snubbing. And I'm alarmed that I missed it two days ago.

A week or so ago film sites were discussing whether or not it was fair that Rodarte could not be nominated alongside her (everyone assuming that Black Swan would be nominated). Perhaps I was just naive but I didn't realize that ill feelings were brewing behind the scenes. Is life imitating art given the rivalry in the Black Swan plot.

Here's what the talented designer tells Clothes on Film about Rodarte's lack of credit and the interviews and press that followed once the film caught fire.

Clothes on Film, Chris: Are you aware of the controversy surrounding yourself and fashion house Rodarte (the Mulleavy sisters) in the press; that they should be credited alongside you as costume designers?

Amy Westcott: Controversy is too complimentary a word for two people using their considerable self-publicising resources to loudly complain about their credit once they realised how good the film is.

CoF: Do you feel as though you are being vilified for something out of your hands?

Westcott: I was happy for Rodarte’s persistent publicity efforts at first; I’m so proud of the film and anything that brings it to an even wider audience is genuinely welcome. I tried to put aside my ego while being airbrushed from history in all of their interviews, as I’m just not that kind of person anyway. But when articles were planted that attacked me personally as if I had conspired against them I felt nothing but despair and betrayal. I don’t have a publicist working for me, needless to say, and I was asked to stay quiet –“not to engage”, to avoid any bad press towards the film. Unfortunately this seems to have proven detrimental to the perception of my work on Black Swan. I didn’t make the rules that the Guild and the Academy set and I am proud of my professionalism and commitment to my work, so to have my name dragged into such ill-informed gossip is galling and hurtful to say the least.

Sad that things went in that direction. Westcott also talks about how she feels about the snub, working with Aronofksy, whether she'll work with fashion design labels again on a film, and what was hardest to achieve on the visually stunning film. Well worth a read.

Hooper Wins DGA. In Other News, The Fat Lady Sings

Who'da thunk it? I realize some people predicted that Tom Hopper would win the Directors Guild of America prize for The King's Speech but these predictions were surely made in panic, given the obvious Oscar love for the film on nomination morning. But I mean a week ago who would have suspected that his able direction of British actors  in a light royalty drama would be heading into the Oscars looking like a sweeper, even for direction, even with an overdue genuine giant of the industry leading  like David Fincher (The Social Network) leading up until now. Not me. I'll be the first to admit it.

I'll also come right out and say that I don't understand it. Fincher captured lightning in a bottle; Russell resuscitated a tired genre with humor, humanity and noisy originality; Nolan displayed skyscraper sized ambitions and vaulted technical obstacles; Aronofsky went for broke, chasing his ballerina's madness in his own inimitable way. What did the Director's Guild see in Hooper's work that surpassed these achievements? I'm genuinely curious.

The King's Speech is well directed so this isn't the travesty of a situation like Ron Howard beating four auteur legends for his own muddled work on A Beautiful Mind. But it's still... well... "people just love this film," one must admit, shrugging one's shoulders and calling it a year for a cute British triumph-over-personal-adversity film.

Next up: Winning SAG tonight (live blogging right here starting at 7 PM EST), BAFTA soon and then on to 8 or 9 Oscars apparently (sigh). The night we wait for all year just got super monotonous 28 whole days in advance.

Open Thread

You are all too suspiciously quiet. What's on your mind? Cinematically or otherwise.
Pssst. The DGA awards are tonight but they're not televised so we'll know later. I'd be surprised if it wasn't David Fincher (despite everyone getting nervous for The Social Network in light of that scary 12 nom tally for the other one.)