“As the 2010 Sundance Film Festival comes closer, it would be very easy to run through the catalog of films and pick-and-choose the highlights, all the while knowing that no listing of a few films can capture all of the possibilities the festival presents in its 31st year. If you like a little Hollywood glamour with your Sundance experience, there’s “The Runaways,” the story of L.A.’s infamous girl group, featuring Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett. If you’re a documentary maven, there’s “Cane Toads: The Conquest,” a sequel to 1988’s “Cane Toads: An Unnatural History,” about the long-term ecological consequences of Australia’s best-known least-loved foreign guest — this time in 3-D. If you’re hoping for lightning to strike twice, or eager to mock what some call “the Braff Effect,” where a popular sitcom actor tries to show a different side at Sundance, there’s “happythankyoumoreplease,” where “How I Met Your Mother“’s Josh Radnor writes, directs and stars in a tale of, yes, modern love.
And the list goes on: If you want a little politics in your Sundance experience, there’s “12th & Delaware,” where the directors of “Jesus Camp,” Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, boil the American debate about abortion down to one corner in Florida, where an anti-abortion group and an abortion clinic literally sit on opposite sides of the street. The Sundance mix of crime and off-kilter storytelling is represented by several films this year, like “Holy Rollers,” featuring Jesse Eisenberg in the true-life tale of a Hasidic Jew who became an ecstasy smuggler; the creepy vanguard of horror is still alive and well in the Midnight selection, with films like “Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil,” which stars Alan Tudyk in a parody of the “cabin in the woods” horror flicks Sundance has seen before.
And while Sundance seems to be offering more of the same, that “same” is always different — and there are several big changes in the air this year, like a new section called “Next” that’s designed to offer new filmmakers a showcase (and, perhaps, reduce the “Stars in Snowgear” effect that some claim has made Sundance too beholden to A-list actors “slumming” in independent films). Director and actor Mark Duplass will be at Sundance this year with “Cyrus,” the third feature he’s created alongside his co-director, co-writer and brother Jay, and while his film has a budget and stars (including Jonah Hill, John C. Reilly and Marisa Tomei) and distribution through Fox Searchlight, he’s aware of, and grateful for, how “Next” focuses on, as the Festival puts it, “innovative, original work in low- and no-budget filmmaking.”
Duplass has a more direct take on why “Next” matters: “Their desire to really support the micro- or no-budget filmmaking movement … it’s almost like they’re starting to curate talent. They’ve shown all five of our movies so far. And we were these little kids who didn’t know what we were doing when we made our first short in 2003 ["This is John"], and we’ve kind of grown up with Sundance over the years.”"
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