Bradley Cooper and Omar Sy pair up for 'Chef'

Omar Sy starred in the French hit The Intouchables. Bradley Cooper segued from The Hangover to Silver Linings Playbook and The Place Beyond the Pines. And thanks to a fortuitous set of connections, the two will star in Chef. The Weinstein Co., which released both The Intouchables and Silver Linings Playbook, has international distribution rights to the comedy, which centers on Cooper as the disgraced chef of a Michelin-starred restaurant in France. He absconds to London, where he
opens up a new restaurant with the help of Sy. Cooper has not only played a chef before, in the sitcom "Kitchen Confidential," he speaks fluent French. That may come into play if there is a smattering of French dialogue (and I bet Cooper dubs himself), but it also may help him and Sy strike up conversations on the set.

Yet another connection ties the project together. Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine), who directed Cooper in The Place Beyond the Pines, will helm. Cianfrance has mainly focused on dramas, so the move to comedy is a surprising one. My bet is that this is the kind of movie where plot comes before comedy, my favorite kind. Right now, Cooper's the one with the busiest schedule, though Cianfrance and Sy also have projects on the table. Steven Knight (Eastern Promises) a screenwriter whose works are often set in London or involve immigration, will pen the tale--considerably lighter than his usual fare. With no set production start date, it might be a while before Chef takes off, but it has all the ingredients needed to cook up another specialty hit from the Weinsteins.

'Spider-Man' franchise eyes more fresh-faced actresses to play romantic leads

The Spider-Man franchise appears to have a type for Peter Parker's leading lady. From Kirsten Dunst to Emma Stone and Shailene Woodley, the role opposite Spider-Man has been a sign that an actress is on the verge of making it. These actresses are also the kind who tend to favor dramas, comedies--anything but action fare. In the early-aughts franchise, Kirsten Dunst played Mary Jane. Before that role, her work spanned fare ranging from Interview with a Vampire to teen comedies like Bring It On to indie flicks like The Virgin Suicides. But she had never had an action role before--or since. Bryce Dallas Howard joined the franchise in its third installment, with a similar smattering of credits. She did one more action movie, Terminator Salavation, but is more known for roles in The Village and The Help. The relaunch of The Amazing Spider-Man in 2012
introduced  as Gwen Stacy actress Emma Stone, who had a similar background to Dunst. Stone had done teen comedies, like Easy A and The House Bunny, critical favorite The Help, and Zombieland. She was just a little light on the indies.

Now casting is underway for The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and it appears the spot of Mary Jane is going to yet another young actress with plenty of momentum: Shailene Woodley, who has charmed teens and their parents in "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" (because TV is the new film anyway) and snapped up some indie roles in The Descendants and recent Sundance selection The Spectacular Now. It's safe to say Woodley is on her way to being a big star.

Apparently The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is breaking with form, however, because not only will Woodley and Stone (probably on her way out) appear in the sequel, there's a third role for a female. The latest news is that Felicity Jones (indie actress of Like Crazy) will join the cast, with Paul Giamatti also in talks to join as a villain, Rhino. Jones, Stone, and Woodley make quite the trifecta of actresses. However, the fact that the deals haven't been finalized yet may be cause for doubt.

Variety also reports today that people have the right to be suspicious of preliminary casting announcements. In this day and age, studio execs pay attention to the reaction in social media to potential casting announcements. A chorus of "yay" or "nay" may be enough to clinch one casting, while making another one fall through. Looking through tweets reporting the announcement, I didn't see any polarized reactions. I expect something like the trailer--long after casting has finished--is more likely to elicit a tweet from a fan proclaiming that a person is completely right or wrong for a role. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is set to release next May, and hopefully Jones' role won't remain a secret until then.

 

'Hansel & Gretel' on top while 'Parker,' 'Movie 43' struggle

This week, all it took to be at the top of the box office was $19 million. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters grabbed the top spot, but the box office as a whole was slightly dampened because of snow on the East Coast Friday night. Hansel & Gretel would have earned even less if there hadn't
been 3D surcharges. Fellow new releases Parker and Movie 43 also bombed with audiences, but returning features fared much better.

Parker finished fifth with $7 million. The adult-leaning actioner had plenty of R-rated competition, which made it hard for the Jason Statham-led actioner to break from the pack. It's likely many moviegoers opted for a must-see awards contender instead. In fact, it was an especially good weekend for R-rated Oscar nominees Silver Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty, and Django Unchained. Silver Linings Playbook was off just 7% from the previous week, an impressive hold, especially given that last weekend included the MLK holiday. That gave the romantic comedy another $10 million for a $69 million cumulative total to date, not bad for a picture reported to have cost just $21 million. Zero Dark Thirty was off 38% to $9.8 million. Django Unchained also posted a dip of just 35% for a finish at $5 million--bringing it
just shy of a $150 million domestic total.

Jessica Chastain's other release, Mama, placed two spots higher than ZDT with $12.8 million. It was just one of two PG-13 picture in the top ten (PG-13 Les Miserables placed tenth with $3.9 million). Mama is getting a boost not only because star Chastain is an Oscar nominee, but because of the dearth of PG-13 options. Maybe Parker would have fared better if it had a more inclusive rating.

The decidedly juvenile but R-rated Movie 43 bombed with just $5 million. The collection
of comedy skits featured huge names, but I'm sure all those stars' daily rates added together would cost most than the $5 million it totaled for the weekend. This may be the kind of raunchy comedy that gets more traction in the aftermarket, where kids have an easier time seeing R-rated movies--because this clearly isn't the kind of movie an adult finds funny.

This Friday, Sylvester Stallone stars in Bullet to the Head, Warm Bodies will make a grab for the Twilight audience, and Al Pacino and Christopher Walken are Stand Up Guys.

'Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters' to lead late-January releases

It's pretty unusual to have two wide releases open over the weekend with minimal advance reviews. If you want a sign that January is Hollywood's dumping ground, this is it.

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (3,372 theatres), which may have the best title since Snakes on a Plane, will likely come up first this weekend, with a projected weekend gross around $20 million. Originally scheduled to release last March, the pic will benefit slightly from increased
awareness of star Jeremy Renner. Since his breakout role in The Hurt Locker, he's appeared in The Avengers and The Bourne Legacy, making him more of a draw. Gemma Arterton plays Gretel in this tale, which posits that Hansel & Gretel grew up to seek vengeance (and collect bounty) on witches. If it sounds ridiculous, that's because Will Ferrell and Adam McKay are two of the producers, after which the idea starts to make more sense. "Lots of anachronisms and tongue-in-cheek
dialogue establish the spoofy nature of this violent venture. All
that’s missing is a genuine sense of wit," THR's Stephen Farber reports.

Movie 43 (2,023 theatres) also moved around release dates a number of times before settling for the January doldrums. The cast includes dozens of big names ranging from Seth MacFarlane to
Kate Winslet, with many pitching in on writing and directing. The spoof comedy should get close to $10 million, but could be hurt by the scattered impressions of what this comedy actually is.

Parker (2,224 theatres) is the sole new wide release that screened more than a day in advance for most critics. There may be a reason for that: our critic Daniel Eagan raves that the role of Parker, a character in Donald Westlake novels, "fits action star Jason Statham like a glove." The pacing is also top-notch. "The first hour has a propulsive energy that has
been sadly missing from recent thrillers," Eagan declares, and a lag afterwards is redeemed by a "climactic heist and showdown."
However good Statham is in his action movies, they've been opening below $10 million lately, and a similar debut is expected for Parker.

With so many good movies from December now expanding their release, allowing viewers from all over the country to finally catch them in their hometown, there isn't much new product. However, Music Box Films will release the documentary Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, which Werner Herzog re-edited and narrated from a Russian film, and then taking a co-directing credit for his work. I recommend the movie as "a welcome antidote for coddled city dwellers who need a reminder that humanity survived before Internet connections," although I don't care if you eventually see it on Netflix instead of in a movie theatre.

 On Monday, we'll see if any of the three new wide releases exceeded their modest projections, and if any Oscar contenders picked up steam from the box office.

David Fincher may direct lit hit 'Gone Girl'

Wait, you haven't read Gone Girl yet? The thriller by Gillian Flynn, former TV critic for Entertainment Weekly, was this summer's huge hit, a popular choice both for beach reads and book clubs. It's a genre page-turner, but a good one. It's kind of like a Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which brought in many people who don't normally pick up thrillers or mysteries. Reese Witherspoon's production company picked up rights to the book shortly after its publication, when it was at the top of the New York Times' bestseller list. Perhaps it's no surprise that the director that brought Girl with the Dragon
Tattoo to the big screen, David Fincher, is also eyeing the book as his next directing project. He's long been entangled doing an adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for Disney, but it appears this complicated, big-budget project may be temporarily grinding to a halt, giving him an opportunity to jump off that ship and board a new one.

Gone Girl relies on literary sleight-of-hand in order to keep its readers guessing. It starts off being told by one narrator, the husband of a woman who has disappeared under suspicious circumstances, and then switches to her point-of-view. Movies don't have the luxury of showing a point-of-view that's completely filtered through one character's actions, which will be the biggest challenge of the adaptation. Flynn has signed on to adapt her own work. With three novels under her belt and a long history as a media critic, she certainly sounds qualified for the job.

Fincher is still attached to the sequel to Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, but that movie isn't being fast-tracked into theatres. The Swedish-language trilogy was such a success that those films appear to have cannibalized the market for the English-language version. I knew a number of fans of the book who raced to see the Swedish-language versions but were burned out on the story by the time Fincher's (great, let it be known) adaptation hit screens over Christmas last year.

There's some speculation that Witherspoon will play the lead. She hasn't taken on a role like the one in Gone Girl since the 1996 movie Fear, a teen flick about a scary relationship. I'm curious if she can manage to make her sweet persona darken when necessary. One thing's for sure--if this adaptation is shepherded by the same director who did Dragon Tattoo, Seven, and Zodiac, the movie will be just as deliciously terrifying as the book.

Sundance 2013: Acquisition deals soar despite the emptying Park City

The 2013 Sundance Film Festival, which is now on its 7th day, might be quieting down as the industry crowd starts heading back to the real world that exists outside the streets of Park City, yet from a sales standpoint, the noise remains steady as this year’s festival plays host to some of the most high-profile distribution deals in its recent history. As I was making my way to The Marc on Monday morning to attend the 8:30am screening of Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight (which is officially one of this year’s hottest titles, and surprisingly STILL without a distribution home) I was catching up with the latest tweets from prominent press, most of which were talking about Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale, a tearjerker of a US Dramatic Competition title that has had three screenings in the previous two days and sold to The Weinstein Company for over $2M. My latest opportunity to catch this unforeseen hit (which instantly became the only film that mattered to press on Twitter) was later that afternoon at a Press & Industry screening, which unfortunately clashed with my plans to see Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color (his first feature since Primer in 2004), which I was enthusiastically told to definitely not miss by a friend from the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Having scored that hot ticket, I didn’t reshuffle my schedule to fit in Fruitvale, but also learned quite quickly that in Sundance, the wind might change direction at any given moment and one should be prepared for last minute change of plans.

Fruitvale was one of the first major deals that continued breaking in the news later on. I am including the distribution deals I am so far aware of at the bottom of this post, but noteworthy ones are The Way, Way Back from writer/directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash which was sold to Fox Searchlight for almost $10M –a rather large sum for Sundance- according to a Deadline report; Jerusha Hess’ Austenland and John Krokidas’ Kill Your Darlings, both of which Sony Pictures Classics has bought; Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ Toy’s House that CBS Films closed the deal on; James Ponsoldt’s The Spectacular Now (one of my favorites of this year among the 21 movies I saw through Tuesday) which went to A24 and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut Don Jon’s Addiction that Relativity Media grabbed.
As important as it is to keep one’s finger on the pulse and to take every Harvey Weinstein spotting seriously (side note: I saw him leaving the Holiday Village Cinemas around 7pm on Monday), one should also trust his/her own instincts around which films to give priority to. I have already talked about the majority of what I saw during the initial days of the festival (check out both the day 1 recap and the weekend recap), so here is an account of everything I was able to catch on Monday and Tuesday, before my inevitable return trip hit earlier today.

Linklater’s Before Midnight somehow and miraculously not only lived up to my unrealistically high expectations, but also exceeded them. Eight years after the trilogy’s second installment Before Sunset, the creative collaboration of Linklater, Delpy and Hawke once again results in an extraordinary, dialogue-driven film which zooms into a couple’s intimate, frank conversations while reminding the viewers about the big world which they embrace and need to exist in. The magic of this trilogy –with its latest installment being the best of the three- is in its ability to make the viewer a fly on the wall. This kind of honesty in film, conveyed through long takes, tightly written dialogues with just enough breathing room and all-around grounded performances, is a rarity and a direct product of a visibly evolved partnership and strong trust between Linklater, Delpy and Hawke (which Linklater talked about in length during the post-screening Q&A), and I for one would like to see at least a Best Original Screenplay nomination awarded to Before Midnight in the next year’s awards season. After this festival highlight, I continued to conquer my screening schedule with Carruth’s Upstream Color, a deeply experimental and abstract work of art –or rather, artifact- on human paranoia of control, captivity and animalism (well, this is one of the million ways one can look at it) that certainly got a lot of respect from me without inspiring much desire to wrestle with its many layers. Lynn Shelton’s Touchy-Feely and Jill Soloway’s Afternoon Delight, both of which are Dramatic competition titles I saw in the second half of Monday, marked one of the highs and lows in this year’s festival for me, respectively. With Rosemarie DeWitt’s character as a massage therapist at its center, Touchy-Feely, an honest account of a family whose members dwell on the verge of potentially life-changing transitions, is a deceptively small film that finds its balance through its increasingly empowered characters, bringing Shelton’s subtle genius to life. On the other hand, Soloway’s Afternoon Delight failed to shine (at least for me) with its confusing tonal clashes, forced humor and dark twists, as well as its overtly self-important attitude toward its minor ambitions.

On my final day at Sundance, I started with two of the crowd-pleasing titles of the Dramatic Competition. Adapted from a novel by Tim Tharp, James Ponsoldt’s The Spectacular Now is a refreshing, beautifully-written film about a pair of high-school seniors, that is completely free of the disingenuous millennial snark and quirkiness that I started growing tired of in movies depicting this particular demographic. Both Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley are likely to go far in these roles (their characters are so honest that they instantly get under your skin), and the same can be said about the film’s director Ponsoldt as well as its writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ Toy’s House on the other hand, a hilarious comedy about a group of teens whose lives are turned into practical nightmares by the adults who surround them, provides a very different angle on a similar demographic. I personally would have preferred the comedic silliness to be tempered slightly, yet I still enjoyed this unique entry with all of its oddball characters.

The second half of the day, I fit in Sean Ellis’ World Cinema Dramatic Competition title Metro Manila, a poignant, slightly heavy-handed yet competently shot film about a family struggling to rise above the poverty line in a Philippine metropolis. And I concluded Tuesday's screenings with Greg Barker’s documentary (in US Competition) Manhunt: The Search For Osama Bin Laden (to premiere on HBO in May 2013), which made for a great way to bring Sundance to a personal end and transition back to the current film conversation which is still pre-occupied with the torture controversy around Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. Through archival footage and interviews conducted with long-time CIA analysts, director Greg Barker pulls off a responsible documentary that not only shines a light on the process of a two-decade-long manhunt (which started long before 9/11), but also challenges the approach to “war on terror”, which in his and his subjects’ opinions is currently trapped in a vicious cycle with no end in sight due to the inability and unwillingness of the public to understand the underlying reasons behind terror. In attendance during the post-screening Q&A –in addition to director Barker- were three of the film’s subjects: ex-CIA Operatives Cynthia Storer, Nada Bakos and Marty Martin, who received an enthusiastic standing ovation from the crowd. In response to my question about what each of them think regarding the controversy around the other Bin Laden movie currently in theaters, the CIA trio emphasized the complexity of the process in which a lot of techniques have helped with putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Then Marty Martin jumped in with an additional comment: “I can tell you that the film’s portrayal of Jennifer Matthews was completely inaccurate. She was a very serious woman in real life”, referring to the character played by Jennifer Ehle in Bigelow’s movie.

Following a very fun karaoke party hosted by Cavu Pictures (another Sundance lesson learned: karaoke is a popular form of late-night entertainment) where several of the filmmakers, Slamdance staff and a few prominent film critics were in attendance, it was time to call it a night, and call it a Sundance for now...at least until the news of the next distribution deal broke.

2013 SUNDANCE ACQUISITIONS TO-DATE

Relativity Media

Don Jon’s Addiction (Joseph Gordon-Levitt)

Fox Searchlight

The Way, Way Back (Nat Faxon, Jim Rash)

Sony Pictures
Classics

Austenland (Jerusha Hess)

Kill Your Darlings (John Krokidas)

CBS Films

Toy’s House (Jordan Vogt-Roberts)

Weinstein Company

Fruitvale (Ryan Coogler)

Radius-TWC

Concussion (Stacie Passon)

Twenty Feet From Stardom (Morgan Neville)

Lovelace (Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman)

Inequality For All (Jacob Kornbluth)

A24

The Spectacular Now (James Ponsoldt)

IFC Films

The Look Of Love (Michael Winterbottom)

The Summit (Nick Ryan)

Sundance Selects

Dirty Wars (Richard Rowley)

HBO Films

Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer (Mike Lerner, Maxim Pozdorovkin)

Magnolia Pictures

Blackfish (Gabriela Cowperthwaite)

Prince Avalanche (David Gordon Green)

Showtime Networks

History of the Eagles (Alison Ellwood)

eOne Distribution

We Are What We Are (Jim Mickle)

Sundance 2013 weekend recap: Looking for the next breakthrough film

The first weekend of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, which
usually makes up the busiest days of its entire run, has come to an end
with most of the highly anticipated titles having been screened at least once
for film lovers and industry hopefuls who are searching for the next
breakthrough film no one has seen coming. Indeed here in Sundance, it is rarely
a movie with star attachments that takes the industry by storm in the
competition categories. On the contrary, it’s usually a small film from a
newbie. If you look at the ticketing page of the festival for advice on how to
navigate your way through sold out shows, you’ll notice these words of wisdom:
“Be adventurous with last-minute film
choices! Last year’s Grand Jury Prize winner Beasts of the Southern Wild had
200 empty seats at its first screening.” While there hasn’t necessarily been a showstopper such as Beasts of the Southern Wild yet (not
including the big premieres, here), a few titles managed to stir up some debate
and get the attention of the crowd temporarily stationed in Park City. Among
these, none of them received as consistently great reactions as Randy Moore’s Escape From Tomorrow, a title I was able
to see late yesterday night as part of the festival’s NEXT section dedicated to
finding bold and innovative works. The film follows a family of four on the
last day of their trip to Disneyland, which starts with the father Jim (Roy
Abramsohn) losing his job over a phone call he receives from his boss. Hiding
the news from his wife and young children, Jim’s final day at the theme park
takes a surreal detour, turning the “happiest place on earth” into a David
Lynch-esque nightmare for the family. Shot in black and white with a crisp,
classic look that hints a taste of the French New Wave, Escape From Tomorrow is an effective and disturbing look at our
contemporary tastes and willingness to embrace the mass-produced, coating our
individualism to make each of us one of the same. Director Moore is a newcomer,
and thus, it’s a mystery to everyone -including myself- how he managed to shoot
a feature length narrative film in Disneyland completely on the sly. Yes, he
had no permits; just a dedicated cast and crew who agreed to walk around with
cameras, posing to be tourists. “We almost get caught once”, said Moore during
the post screening Q&A, also noting that their shot list was much longer
than their script, with every single move and location intricately planned and
learned on paper.  Cinetic is
representing the film for potential distribution deals; and since it’s safe to
say that Disney is soon going to file a lawsuit against the filmmaker (and he
is aware of that), it is hard to predict if a theatrical future is in the cards
for Escape From Tomorrow. One can
only hope.

Other titles I was able to fit in from the NEXT section were
Shaka King’s Newlyweeds, whose mild
humor, buried within a script as cloudy and directionless as its subjects,
failed to impress; and Chad Hartigan’s This
Is Martin Bonner, a film that effectively depicts the loneliness of its
characters with the kind of sensitivity and humanity one would expect from Mike
Leigh. It was refreshing to see this film which speaks to mature audiences.

Over at the US Dramatic Competition, many buzz-worthy titles
had their initial shots at becoming the next big prizewinner as the entire crop
has been screened at least once. I have so far seen (apart from Cherien Dabis’ May In The Summer which I already talked
about in my Day 1 recap), John Krokidas’ Kill Your Darlings,
David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies
Saints, and Francesca Gregorini’s Emanuel and The Truth About Fishes (with
a few more coming up tomorrow and Tuesday); and among these, David Lowery’s
title easily stands out with its slowburning, lyrical Texan tale of love torn apart by
crime. Blending a western look with Malick-esque storytelling, Lowery’s
handle on the joyless lives of his characters (with pitch-perfect performances
by Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara and Ben Foster) impresses and bruises. It’s the
kind of movie that will attract a lot of admiration, yet perhaps not
enthusiasm. Krokidas’ Kill Your Darlings,
which tells a story of murder in the early college years of American poet Allen
Ginsberg, is stylish in bringing back a period to life, and once again features
phenomenal performances by the entire cast (including Ben Foster, once again);
yet the film goes slightly off the rails in its 3^rd act, which can
simply be salvageable through re-editing. Lastly, Francesca Gregorini’s Emanuel And The Truth About Fishes tells
a surreal, quiet story of coping, longing, letting in and letting go. Emanuel,
a sharp yet mysterious teen living with her dad and stepmother (in an initially
stagnant, yet increasingly keen performance by Kaya Scodelario) forms a bond
with the cool next door neighbor Linda (Jessica Biel) and the turn of events
brings her closer to understanding loss. Despite the gorgeous cinematography
and the interesting nuances in the film which constructs Linda’s story as the
antithesis of Emanuel’s, this title is unlikely to resonate in this category. I
am still planning on seeing Shane Carruth’s Upstream
Color, Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ Toy’s
House and Lynn Shelton’s Touchy Feely;
however based on the early reviews and instant Twitter reactions of critics
attending the festival, it is safe to say that Toy’s House has a real shot at being the winner of this category.

In the US Documentary Competition, I wouldn’t be
exaggerating if I said almost all titles here are creating the kind of buzz
that makes them look like potential winners. Documentaries have been enjoying a
fruitful theatrical run in 2012 continuing the trend of the previous few years,
and this year’s Sundance titles suggest that we can continue to expect
greatness from non-fiction storytellers. I have managed to fit in Martha Shane
and Lana Wilson’s After Tiller, and
Morgan Neville’s Twenty Feet From Stardom
(see my Day 1 recap) into my schedule so far –and it’s worth
mentioning not all titles have been screened in this category yet- but based on
what I’m so far hearing, the competition might be between these two. I am
personally a big fan of both titles, but would be especially pleased if After Tiller, a vital, inevitable
documentary for which “brave” doesn’t come close to being a sufficient
definition, wins this category. Following 4 doctors who perform late term/3^rd
trimester abortions in the US, After
Tiller gives voice to those who stand in the extreme end of an already
controversial topic. Given the political dimension of the story, and the
expected hate it will attract, all screenings of this doc (which the doctors
themselves attended as well), were tightly monitored by a security staff. I am
still looking forward to seeing Greg Barker's Manhunt: The Search For Osama Bin
Laden and Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and
The Boxer. 

Lastly, the Premieres –which are usually the most star-studded
entries of the festival- made for a colorful few days here in Park City. Park
Chan-Wook’s Stoker, which favored
style over substance in what happened to be the festival’s biggest
disappointment for me, widely divided audience reactions. In The East, Zal Batmanglij’s second
collaboration with the beautiful Brit Marling and his follow up to the
masterful Sound Of My Voice, tension
and mystery were tightly managed to the advantage of this highly entertaining film’s
pace. Among the titles I haven’t yet seen,
sex –as Robert Redford mentioned during the opening press conference- seems to
be a recurring theme in films such as Don
Jon’s Addiction (Joseph Gordon Levitt’s directorial debut), Anne Fontaine’s
Two Mothers, and Drake Doremus’ Breathe In. I look forward to catching
more of these titles before I depart on Wednesday. When one looks at the last weekend, it is easy to see that
none of the titles have been generating as much buzz as Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight, his third and final
(perhaps?) installment of the trilogy, which started out with Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. It had its first screening earlier tonight and many
critics on Twitter have already declared it a masterpiece. I am seeing it
tomorrow morning at 8:30 am and it won’t be easy, especially after tonight’s
Fox Searchlight party that was still in full swing as I was heading back to my
condo at well after midnight.