Happy 75th Robert Redford

Just wanted to get this out there before the day is up. It's the 75th birthday of Robert Redford, actor/director/producer/film festival icon. Though his work as an actor and movie star isn't as obsessed over these days as his contemporaries from 60s and 70s cinema like past costars Paul Newman, Barbra Streisand, Faye Dunaway, Natalie Wood or Dustin Hoffman, that doesn't mean his star has faded. Movie stars of yore fall in and out of fashion. Who knows which 60s and 70s giants will be beloved in 2036 for example when Redford turns 100!?

Fact: The movies wouldn't be the same without him.

 Without Robert Redford there's no Sundance Festival, no Sundance Institute and without those, so many young unproven talents would not have been boosted or introduced to us in the way they were... and some probably not at all. And without Robert Redford what would have become of The Way We Were, The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,  All The President's Men, Out of Africa, A River Runs Through It, Quiz Show, or Ordinary People?  The list goes on. Some of his best films wouldn't even exist without him given how difficult it is to get any film made; pull one string out and things unravel.

So this week in his honor, watch your favorite Redford film, or the one you've always been meaning to get to. At the very least, brush your hand across your significant other's forehead and hair and do your best wistful Barbra Streisand.

Your girl is lovely, Hubbell."

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?

5 Things We Learned on Oscar Nom Morning...

Some of which we already knew but that's splitting hairs.

With 24 official Academy Awards categories and somewhere over 108 nominations announced each year (a few less publicized categories vary in number of nominees from year to year), there is always a lot to parse out on Oscar nomination day. Tuesday, January 25, 2011 was no exception as Mo’Nique, last year’s supporting actress winner for Precious, read out the nominees bright and early in that inimitable voice of hers. You can see the full list of nominees here (more info to come over the next few weeks). With so much to discuss, it’s necessary to break it down into manageable talking points.

5. Genre Bias Remains

Black Swan opened to sensational reviews, huge precursor favor and robust box office in December. The film even had to ramp up its expansion plans to capitalize on demand. In the end, it was still a horror films (of sorts) in which a ballerina sprouts wings and loses her mind. On Oscar nomination morning, it missed in key categories in which most people expected it to show. Inception opened to fanatical reviews and gargantuan box office, ending the year as the only member of the year’s top ten box office hits to be aimed at adults. In the end, it was still a sci-film (of sorts)...

READ THE REST AT TRIBECA FILM
for the other 4 talking points including a peculiar Sundance Festival  trick.

...that is if you're not completely burnt out on Oscar articles.

And if yah are... uh oh Blanche!

This Link Goes To 11

Boston Globe Wesley Morris looks back at Todd Haynes's defiant Poison, now 20 years old but still strong.
Antagony & Ecstasy chooses the 100 Best Films of All Time
Scanners "Moments out of Time" for 2010
Critical Condition Mark shares his dream Oscar ten.
Playbill Another award for Annette Bening. I'd never heard of this one though "The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association's Dorian Awards"

Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Rose Byrne, James McAvoy (and others) in X-MEN FIRST CLASS

Hero Complex first photos from the star-studded X-Men: First Class
Movie|Line, prepping for Sundance, reminds us of 13 films that broke out in a big way at the snowy festival.
Boy Culture prompted by Jane Fonda's return has an On Golden Pond flashback. 
Everything I Know names the best stage musicals of 2010 ...and the worst. 
Natasha VC The inimitable Natasha has some words for Robert DeNiro in regards to his Globe speech. 
The Wrap f/x epic John Carter of Mars is coming three months earlier than expected: March 2012.