Five Sundance Films to Get Excited About

by Murtada Elfadl

Sundance announced its 2020 slew of films for the festival that kicks off in Park City on January 23rd. This writer is excited to start caring about a whole slew of new movies as the festival comes in at the thick of awards season when there’s almost nothing left to say about 2019 movies.

Julianne Moore as Gloria Steinem in The Glorias

Sundance provided some statistics on their selection this year...

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Podcast: Oscar's Self Destruction, Guild Prizes, and Sundance Winners

with Nathaniel R and Murtada Elfadl 

 In this episode Murtada and Nathaniel sound off on Sundance buzz, and the current madness of the awards race and Oscar's late-life identity crisis and one shockingly ill-thought-out decision after the next, ad infinitum.

Index (58 minutes)
00:01 Sundance buzz: The Farewell, Clemency, One Child Nation, Them That Follow , and The Report
17:25 Recent guild prizes: Bryan Singer & Rami Malek's Bohemian Rhapsody and how everything keeps going wrong this awards season.
22:34 Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade's surprise DGA win
26:00 Oscar's identity crisis and its increasingly terrible decisions. Murtada tries to talk Nathaniel off the ledge.
36:00 Spike Lee and Bradley Cooper at the DGAs and guilds confusion about Best Picture
45:40 Trying to survive Oscar's dwindling sense of self and we're back to Sundance to talk about next year's Oscar possibilities, especially in regards to Clemency
56:00 Annie Awards and wrap-up

Referenced in the Podcast
• Nathaniel's "Awards Season is Killing Me" Rant
• DGA winners
• Murtada's Sundance Coverage

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Sundance Glory / Oscar Doom

Murtada's Sundance Awards

Murtada Elfadl closing out his Sundance coverage. Thanks, Murtada!

My first ever Sundance was a blast. So much so I’m already making tentative plans to return next year. Please indulge my 'jury of one' as I hand out awards in traditional categories and ones made up just for your reading pleasure. Please note that I only had time to see 23 movies. Some of the more popular ones I missed included the documentary One Child Nation , Shia LaBeouf's vehicle Honey Boy and the popular comedy Brittany Runs A Marathon. So take all this with a grain of salt...

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Abe's Sundance 2019 Wrap

Abe Fried-Tanzer closing out his Sundance coverage for TFE. Thanks, Abe!

Holliday Grainger and Alia Shawkat in ANIMALS (2019)

The Sundance Film Festival is officially over, closing out a busy week and a half of nonstop movies. I managed to catch 46 titles this year, most of which I enjoyed. Among them were the Grand Jury Prize winners from the U.S. Dramatic Competition, Clemency, and the World Cinema Dramatic Competition, The Souvenir, both of which were written up by Murtada. While I appreciated both of those films, here are my choices for BEST of the fest in various categories... 

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Sundance Closing Night: "Troop Zero"

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

It’s almost always appealing to see two recent Oscar winners work together shortly after they take home their trophies. The notion of the last two Supporting Actress victors, Viola Davis and Allison Janney, teaming up is certainly enticing. Their Oscars were for playing very different types of mothers, and in Sundance’s closing night selection, they face off as competing scout leaders in a hilarious 1970s-set comedy about being who you are...

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