Sundance Kids
2012 has definitely started off with a frenzy of activity as the seconds ticking away to this year's Festival seem to be getting exponentially louder with each passing day. Happy belated new year, by the way, hope you're all still sticking to your resolutions (here at the office we've all vowed to better fortify our respective tornado shelters this year, and so far so good) as the excitement of another Academy Awards race begins to wash over us.
Speaking of awards, our contingent is just back from a week-long pilgrimmage to Park City, Utah for this year's Sundance Film Festival, where 2011 RiverRun juror and visiting filmmaker Ava DuVernay (pictured right) just took home the Best Director honors for her new film Middle Of Nowhere! Congratulations Ava! We were lucky enough to include her previous effort I Will Follow in our festival lineup last spring, so we're thrilled to death (but not a bit surprised) that her talents are garnering her some hardware to take home, it's much deserved. Collectively our team was able to take in at least three dozen new features while we were posted up in the Beehive State, and saw so many interesting new works that it's hard to even recall them all. A few of our consensus favorites were Josh Radnor's Liberal Arts, Rory Kennedy's touchingly personal doc portrait of her mother Ethel (wife of the late Bobby Kennedy), Benh Zeitlin's majesticly surreal Grand Jury Prize-winner Beasts of the Southern Wild and Lauren Greenfield's fascinating doc Queen of Versailles, just to name a few. Rubbing elbows with hip-hop luminary Common at the BET party was not a bad place to be either! If any of you were out there in Park City taking part in the madness as well we'd love to hear your takes on the festival, what films you enjoyed (or didn't enjoy), etc., feel free to post away on our Facebook wall!
While we're on the subject of Sundance, we're also excited to reveal that our February Cineclub title is going to be the moving indie anti-romance Like Crazy, which won the Grand Jury Prize at last year's Sundance Film Festival and stars Felicity Jones, Anton Yelchin and Academy Award nominee Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone and star of The Hunger Games film due out in March by the way!). The screening is over at a/perture cinema on Monday, February 13th at 8:00pm, and it's absolutely the perfect film to complement your Valentine's Day experience, whether it's of the traditionally romantic, hand-holding variety or a classic down-with-greeting-cards cynical protest affair. It's really that complex and poignant. Tickets are $10, or $6 for a/v society members. The trailer is posted below as well.
Lastly, don't forget that this year's Festival dates are April 13-22, 2012, so just around the corner. Our ticket sampler cards are already on sale at the Stevens Center box office and they make outstanding gifts, Easter basket stuffers, raffle giveaway prizes, and the like. $100 gets you $110 worth of film screenings or parties, so it's without a doubt the best value for experiencing the Festival. The full lineup will be announced at our launch party the evening of March 12, but we'll be dropping a few hints and early announcements between now and then so definitely keep checking back to the site and our Facebook and Twitter pages for updates. See you all soon!
