So now we know the titles, and a little bit about the casts and plots, of the 122 feature films that will screen at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Will any of them be any good? Impossible to tell this early.
Sundance's track record suggests the answer is "yes" - especially among the documentaries, where the batting average has been outstanding over the years. What looks good? Here are a few impressions, based on quick glimpses: * "Black Snake Moan" (Premieres), by "Hustle Flow" director Craig Brewer, has been buzzed about for months, because of the explicit sexuality of Christina Ricci's character and the charged racial overtones of that character's connection to Samuel L.
Jackson's character. * "Waitress" (Spectrum) was picked for the festival even before writer-director Adrienne Shelly was murdered in her New York office last month, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Shelly was a darling of the indie-film world, for her acting in early Hal Hartley films - and her final film's appearance at Sundance will be a fitting farewell.
* "Delirious" (Spectrum) is the latest by Tom DiCillo, who won my undying loyalty when he wrote and directed the greatest movie ever made about independent filmmaking, the comedy "Living in Oblivion." Just thinking about Peter Dinklage (in his first movie) deconstructing cinematic dream sequences ("It must be weird - it's got a
* "Red Road" (Spectrum) is directed by British filmmaker Andrea Arnold, whose short "Wasp" won top honors at Sundance on its way to an Oscar. This debut feature, about a Glasgow woman dealing with a man from her past, won the jury prize at Cannes. * "Zoo" (U.
S. documentary competition) starts with a "News of the Weird"-level story about a Seattle man who died from having sex with a horse. I'm curious to see how that premise can spin out into a full-length film - though I pray there are no re-enactments.
* "Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait"(New Frontier) - I'm no soccer fan, and I only heard of Zinedine Zidane after he head-butted his way out of the World Cup final, but this project - which follows Zidane through an entire soccer match, with 17 cameras on him the whole time from every angle - sounds intriguing. * "Everything's Cool" (U.S.
documentary competition) is about crusaders against global warming, which doesn't sound like an energizing movie topic - except that filmmakers Judith Helfand and Daniel B. Gold made a funny and entertaining doc on a similar topic a few years ago with "Blue Vinyl," about how Helfand warned her parents about the environmental dangers of vinyl siding. (I still have a piece of that siding, which Helfand and Gold handed out on Mardi Gras beads.
) Another fun thing you can do with the Sundance film slate is devise your own movie programs, based on whatever criteria you choose. Here are a few I like: The numerology-driven double-feature: The documentary "Girl 27," about a scandal at a 1937 MGM stag party; and "Chapter 27," with Jared Leto playing John Lennon's killer. The Iraq trilogy: The drama "Grace Is Gone," and the documentaries "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" and "No End in Sight.
" The rocking-to-the-movie program: "The Future Is Unwritten" (about The Clash's Joe Strummer), "X: The Unheard Music," "Once" (featuring the Irish band The Frames). * SEAN P. MEANS writes the daily blog, "The Movie Cricket," at http://blogs.
sltrib.com/movies. Send questions or comments to Sean P.
Means, movie critic, The Salt Lake Tribune, 90 S. 400 West, Suite 700, Salt Lake City, UT 84101, or e-mail at movies@sltrib.com.
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