Sundance Skepticism

A little trepidation to kick things off:

In “Bass Ackwards”, one of the entries in Sundance Film Festival’s recently launched low budget NEXT section, an unkempt loner (Linas Phillips, also the writer-director)—having lost both his job and his girlfriend—drives through a series of lush American landscapes in a cramped Volkswagen bus, hoping to find a better life. Considering that vehicle’s now-famous association with “Little Miss Sunshine,” a major Sundance breakout in 2006, the metaphor here writes itself: “Bass Ackwards,” a comparatively small film not destined for the kind of massive bidding war among distributors caused by “Little Miss Sunshine,” looks like a Sundance movie in search of a home.

But, like its solemn protagonist, the movie has in fact already found several homes. After its Sundance premiere, the producers plan to release “Bass Ackwards” on multiple platforms, ranging from iTunes to video-on-demand. The approach is adventurous but also quite practical, because “Bass Ackwards” makes for a difficult sell. It unfolds as the sort of meandering adventure that some audiences may consider a chore while others herald it as quietly meditational. Although the “Bass Ackwards” team have likely made the right choice in evading the search for a conventional distributor, the movie faces plenty of uncertainty in the road ahead—as does much of Sundance’s new NEXT section, and any number of other Sundance hopefuls entering Park City unsold.

Read more at indieWIRE.

erichkohn posted on January 21, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)

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