Sundance Primer: The 2018 Dramatic Competition Lineup

It's a wonderful week for diversity! In the festival world, at least. The American and International Dramatic Competition lineup for the 2018 Sundance Film Festival was announced and it includes narratives representing people of all kinds from all over the world. This year's lineup also features exciting film directorial debuts from familiar (Idris Elba! Paul Dano!) and new visionaries.

In the past, major films like Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire and this year's awards darling Call Me By Your Name premiered under this category. Check out this year's contenders to gauge who critics and audiences will still be talking about months after the festival's run.

Click to read more ...

Trailer for ''God's Own Country''

by Murtada

Do we have a new gay classic coming our way this year? Judging by the reactions from a few film festivals, we just might. The film in question is Francis Lee’s debut God’s Own Country. The story is about a farmer from Northern England and his journey of sexual discovery after falling for a Romanian migrant worker...

Click to read more ...

There Will Be Link

Storify okay, this woman Nancy Wake needs a biopic. Amazing WW II story
Coming Soon production has started on Can You Ever Forgive Me, which sounds like an interesting vehicle for Melissa McCarthy to show her range. She'll play a celebrity biographer who made her name in the 70s and 80s but resorts to deception when her career tanks. It's directed by Marielle Heller who was behind Diary of a Teenage Girl
Vulture Which Sundance debuts will be Oscar contenders this time next year? 
Comics Alliance Aubrey Joseph and Olivia Holt have been cast in the TV adaptation of the superhero comic Cloak & Dagger

 

Cigarettes & Red Vines photos from the set of Paul Thomas Anderson's new movie which stars Daniel Day Lewis but has no title as of yet
Variety Remember when Viola Davis played best friend to Julia Roberts in a thankless part in Eat Pray Love? They'll co-star again in Small Great Things, a racially charged drama about a nurse who is sued by a white supremacist couple.
/Film James Cameron gets the rights to Terminator back soon and the franchise will be revived. AGAIN.
EW The Schuyler Sisters from Hamilton will perform at the Superbowl! 
Slate A tribute to Mary Tyler Moore's feminist influence
Vice So as it turns out the Kevin Costner character in Hidden Figures was made into more of a 'white savior' in the narrative then he was in the real life story. 
Playbill Clive Owen will return to Broadway in a revival of M. Butterfly - no word yet on who'll play the Chinese opera singer he doesn't realize is a man despite a long affair. B.D. Wong who works frequently on television these days instead of the stage won the Tony as the opera singer in the original production with John Lithgow originating the lead role that Clive Owen will now play
Jezebel on Ryan Gosling's cooking in La La Land
Interview has a gallery of the rising stars from Sundance 2017 
Towleroad new clip from Call Me By Your Name in which Armie Hammer tries to massage the tension out of Timothee Chalamet  

Details about the Sundance winners

For those of you who were way to caught up in the Oscar nomination race to have been paying attention to Sundance (*raises hand in solidarity*) we thought rather than just share the winners list from Sundance we'd include a couple of details about the films in question. Some of these films will vanish as some festival films always do and others might be on top ten lists and in the awards race next year, you never know. Sundance has a number of different juries so they're broken up into types of films that those juries oversee.

U.S. DRAMATIC
Grand Jury Prize: I don’t feel at home in this world anymore.
This thriller about a depressed nurse (Melanie Lynskey) and her neighbor (Elijah Wood) tracking down burglars who broke into her house comes from actor turned debuting writer/director Macon Blair. It's skipping theaters and premiering on Netflix on February 24th...

Click to read more ...

"Where is Kyra" wins raves for La Pfeiff

True story: I started our new "Pfandom" series specifically for two reasons. The second was to cheer myself up in these awful democracy-losing times. The first though was to welcome our pfavorite, Michelle Pfeiffer, back. The twitter debate rages on what we shall call this year ("The Pfeiffersance? Michellaisance?" any other suggestions?). The first of her pfour roles this year is the title character in Where is Kyra?, which just premiered at Sundance. I will not be reading any reviews as I'd like to experience it pfresh but my understanding is that it's Oscar nominated cinematographer Bradford Young (Arrival) and Michelle herself winning the raves while people are less jazzed about the movie itself? Regardless, TFE's official stance is that it's very unfortunate that Pfeiffer did not show to support her movie. Director Andrew Dosunmu (Mother of George) had to go it alone. If she doesn't leave home to promote her movies this year,  the comeback may be rather less than glamorous and successful. But what can you do? She's an elusive creature. 

If you don't have my aversion to reading reviews before you see a film, reviews are now available at Village Voice, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Screen Daily, Ion Cinema, Playlist, and Yahoo! Movies.