The Playlist

Podcast: The Playlist Talks 2013 Sundance Film Festival

By Erik McClanahan
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January 29, 2013 12:05 PM
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5 Comments

Features

The podcast returns for a Sundance Film Festival wrap-up, discussing the highs and lows of this year's festival, which came to an end on Sunday. Podcast host and editor Erik McClanahan is joined by Cory Everett and Rodrigo Perez, our two staff correspondents on the ground at this year's festival. Make sure to check out our complete Sundance '13 coverage, including interviews and reviews (several which we didn't even mention on the podcast).

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Sundance Wrap: The 5 Best Films Of The Festival, Plus Our Complete Coverage

By Oliver Lyttelton
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January 28, 2013 2:09 PM
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15 Comments

Features

First festival of the year? Done and dusted. Every year, the movie industry heads en masse to Utah for the Sundance Film Festival, Robert Redford's celebration of independent cinema, which has become increasingly important over the years, in the hope of uncovering the next big thing. Last year's festival brought "Beasts of the Southern Wild," which went on to be one of the best-reviewed films of the year, and a Best Picture nominee at the Academy Awards, and while there wasn't a singular breakout in the same way, the festival was certainly in good form.

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Sundance Review: 'Emanuel And The Truth About Fishes' Is A Frustrating Sea Of Clichés

By Cory Everett
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January 27, 2013 12:11 PM
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4 Comments

Reviews

There is a widely held stereotype that the Sundance Film Festival is just dour, depressing films – dramas about addiction and family dysfunction and infidelity and incest and on and on – and outside of the occasional “Little Miss Sunshine”-type breakout, the festival wouldn’t really hold much interest for a large portion of the viewing public. Of course festivalgoers know this is not the case at all and if you dig deep enough into any category you’ll find a wide array of films from comedies to dramas to science fiction to any combination thereof.

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Sundance Review: David Sedaris Adaptation 'C.O.G.' Features Fine Performances But Might Work Better As An HBO Series

By Cory Everett
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January 27, 2013 11:15 AM
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0 Comments

Reviews

Based on an essay in “Naked,” David Sedaris' hugely popular collection of autobiographical short stories, “C.O.G.” is notable for being the very first film adaptation of the author's work. Though he’d previously turned down all other offers to adapt his stories, the essayist was impressed by writer/director Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s pitch as well as his previous film “Easier With Practice” and decided to let him have a shot. Whether this adaptation is successful or not may depend on your familiarity with the author’s work.

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'Fruitvale' Takes Grand Jury & Audience Award Prizes At Sundance Film Festival

By Kevin Jagernauth
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January 26, 2013 11:22 PM
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1 Comment

News

...and just like that, the Sundance Film Festival has closed for another year, and tonight at Park City, the awards were handed out with one hotly buzzed film taking two major titles.

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15 Breakout Artists To Watch From The 2013 Sundance Film Festival

By Oliver Lyttelton
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January 25, 2013 1:06 PM
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10 Comments

Features

There's still a couple days left of this year's Sundance Film Festival, but for all intents and purposes it's winding down. Most of the press have departed, pretty much every major movie has screened at least once, and many of them have been bought, or will be over the next few days.

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Sundance: Sony Pictures Classics Acquires Richard Linklater's 'Before Midnight'

By Kevin Jagernauth
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January 25, 2013 11:24 AM
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1 Comment

News

With the big question around "Before Midnight" – will it stand alongside the beloved "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset"? – finally answered (it definitely does, read our review), the next question was where the movie was going to end up. It's a tricky one. The first two movies weren't exactly big box office smashes, each earning under $6 million domestically, and moreover, for anyone grabbing the movie, they wouldn't get any home video bump from the past movies as they are owned by Columbia ("Before Sunrise") and Warner Bros. ("Before Sunset"). But, those issues aside, the movie has landed at a big home.

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Sundance Review: 'In A World...' A Low-Key Charmer & Promising Directorial Debut For Lake Bell

By Cory Everett
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January 25, 2013 9:43 AM
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1 Comment

Reviews

One of the worst things you could say about a comedy is usually that it has a wide appeal. The most interesting comedies are the ones that tend to be hyper-specific, focused on an insular world of some kind (think '70s newsrooms in “Anchorman” or '80s summer camp in “Wet Hot American Summer”), while the ones pitched to the widest audience end up having storylines like “Hardworking ad executive can’t seem to get her love life together!” Just ask Judd Apatow, who learned on “Freaks & Geeks” that the more specific something is, the more it tends to resonate.

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Sundance Review: Stripper Comedy 'Afternoon Delight' Plays Rough But Will Leave You With A Smile On Your Face

By Cory Everett
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January 24, 2013 5:43 PM
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4 Comments

Reviews

The premise of “Afternoon Delight,” admittedly, does not sound terribly appealing: to spice up their sex life, a Silverlake couple goes for a night out at a gentleman’s club and subsequently take in a stripper in need of help. From that logline alone you can glean that their relatively buttoned-up sex lives will get a jolt of temporary excitement, the threat of infidelity will loom larger in their house and this will undoubtedly turn out to be a very big mistake for all of them. Unfortunately for those who may have skipped out on the film because of its broad premise, “Afternoon Delight” is one of the unexpected highlights of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

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David Gordon Green Says He's Going To Remake His Remake Of 'Prince Avalanche' 3 More Times; 'Suspiria' Stuck In Legal Woes

By Rodrigo Perez
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January 24, 2013 2:17 PM
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2 Comments

News

Filmmaker David Gordon Green's latest effort, "Prince Avalanche," is getting some of the best reviews of his career. A hit at Sundance, that just got picked up by Magnolia Pictures, the unusual, poetically observational pas de deux comedy is funny, but also unexpectedly moving and human (you can read our review here). Starring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch as estranged Beckett-ian odd-couple road crew workers in Texas, the film charts their fractious personal dynamics, their existential uncertainties, and perhaps most impressively, the way they come to ultimately empathize and bond with one another.

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