In the classic 1969 Western “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” Robert Redford’s Sundance teases Paul Newman’s Cassidy about his big schemes. Butch replies, “Boy, I got vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals.”
Both the character of the Sundance Kid and, most importantly, the actor who played him, took that line to heart. In 1978, Sterling Van Wagman
Much like Jane, the never-named hero of her film “The Assistant,” writer-director Kitty Green began her career in media at a production company. She wanted to be in the film business, where starting off at the bottom was the typical first step to where she now finds herself after years of hard work.
Green, who is Australian, screened “The Assistant” at Sundance, and sat down with me in
It’s great when enterprising filmmakers put their best foot forward; it’s a hard job, and any and all recognition helps their work to achieve at least some notoriety. Here are some films from Sundance—and a bonus pick from Slamdance—that need to be seen as soon as possible. Keep your eyes peeled for these great films. “The Mountains Are a Dream That Call to Me” Cedric Cheung-Lau has made a film that is hypnosis in motion. Perhaps that’s because
Park City, Ut. - So many movies, so many stars—and so many red carpets. At Sundance, this week, I was able to get some facetime with the makers and stars of a select few films on the press lines (while being shut out of a few others, naturally).
Andy Samberg was in town for the premiere of “Palm Springs,” for which he both starred in and acted as producer. The film stars Cristin Milioti (“The Wolf of
Park City, Ut. - To even describe it seems ludicrous: recruit two young women, who think they will be part of a hidden-camera prank show, to inadvertently assassinate Kim Jong-nam, the dissident half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
In an airport. In broad daylight. With hundreds of witnesses and cameras recording it all.
This isn’t the plot for a spy thriller, but rather the
PARK CITY, Ut. - Documentaries need not be lengthy to explore a fascinating subject, as I learned at the “Documentary Shorts Program 2” at Sundance. In “All That Perishes at the Edge of Land,” filmmaker Hira Nabi’s camera magnificently captures the “ship breaking” industry of Pakistan, which employs the poorest of the poor to disassemble obsolete carrier vessels for scrap. The ships grounded ashore in the region
Park City, Ut. | Filmmaker Bao Nguyen didn’t mince words when we sat down in a house not far from where his documentary about Bruce Lee, called “Be Water,” premiered at Sundance this week.
Nguyen idolized Lee as a young man because there were rather few Asian and Asian-American actors on U.S. television and in movies in those days. When Lee was trying to get his start in Hollywood, World War II was only a few