How I Met Your Mother star Josh Radnor makes his directorial feature debut with happythankyoumoreplease, one of 16 films selected from 1,058 submissions for the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Written by Radnor, the dramedy tells the story of six New Yorkers who “negotiate love, friendship, and gratitude at a time when they’re too old to be precocious and not ready to be adults.”
Radnor worked on the script for several years, writing during down time from the CBS sitcom and shot in New York City during series hiatus. Radnor also co-stars in the film, alongside Malin Akerman (Watchmen), Kate Mara, Zoe Kazan, Tony Hale, Pablo Schreiber, and Michael Algieri. Akerman, pictured above, plaus Annie, a woman with a condition called Alopecia Universalis, which doesn’t allow her to grow hair. I’ve included a few images after the jump, along with he official sundance synopsis.
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Eli Craig, director of the acclaimed short film The Tao of Pong, makes his feature directorial debut with the Canadian horror comedy Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, one of the films selected for the Park City at Midnight category of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Co-written by Morgan Jurgenson, the story follows two West Virginian hillbillies who go on vacation to their dilapidated mountain cabin, but their peaceful trip goes horribly awry when a bunch of college kids show up.
Basically, it’s the story of the typical hillbilly horror film told from the other side. And as it turns out, the hillbillys aren’t evil, and are only mistaken as psycho killers through a series of misconstrued circumstances. The film stars Tyler Labine, who most people will recognize from the television series Reaper, alongside Alan Tudyk, who most people will recognize from the television series Firefly. The film co-stars Katrina Bowden, Jesse Moss, Brandon Jay McLaren, Christie Laing and Chelan Simmons.
After the jump I’ve included the official sundance synopsis, the film festival poster, rough cut movie trailer, and a batch of production photos.
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Space Tourists is one of 12 films selected from 782 international documentary submissions for this year’s World Cinema Documentary Competition at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. An age-old dream of man is to leave our planet as a normal person and travel into outer space. For 20 million dollars, the American Anousheh Ansari was able to fulfill this childhood dream. This documentary follows her journey into space and shows everyday life as it is on the International Space Station.
This terrific beauty is set in contrast to the crazy trips taken by Kazakh rocket debris collectors in their hunt for the coveted carrot-shaped rocket stages, which literally fall out of the sky and are collected by men with trucks the size of dinosaurs. With breathtaking images, SPACE TOURISTS takes its audience into a fascinating world full of of wonder and surprise. Encounters with the least likely people imaginable. Places even stranger and more unknown than outer space itself.
From Christian Frei, the Oscar nominated director of War Photographer, comes a “humorous and laconic view of the way billionaires depart our planet earth to travel into outer space for fun.” As you might imagine, Frei went though a lot of trouble to win permission to shoot this film. Anousheh Ansari documented her stay in the ISS with the assistance of the cosmonauts Mikhail Tyurin and Pavel Vinogradov, and she provided the material for the film. After the jump we’ve included 26 photos, a trailer and poster for the feature.
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Director/screenwriter Diane Bell’s Obselidia is one of 16 films selected from 1,058 submissions for the Dramatic Competition for the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Described as a “save-the-world love story”, the film tells the story of a lonely librarian believes love is obsolete until a road trip to Death Valley with a beguiling cinema projectionist teaches him otherwise. Shot on the Red Camera, featuring a score by UK musician Liam Howe (Spin Spin Sugar, 6 Underground) and starring a mostly unknown cast Gaynor Howe (Home and Away), Michael Piccirilli, and Frank Hoyt Taylor. Sundance calls the film “soft spoken, profound, and disarmingly charming” offering a “rare and humane lens through which we can view a world increasingly preoccupied with and inhabited by extinction.” A few more photos, trailer and poster, after the jump.
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Derek Cianfrance’s directorial debut Blue Valentine will premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival as one of 16 films selected from 1,058 submissions for the dramatic competition. Written by Derek Cianfrance, Cami Delavigne and Joey Curtis, the screenplay won the 2006 Chrysler Film Project contest, which came with $1 million of funding. The story is about “love lost and love found told in two parallel moments in time.” Described as “an intimate, shattering portrait of a disintegrating marriage”, Blue Valentine is about a couple who use one night to try and save their failing marriage.
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John Stalberg’s feature directorial debut HIGH school will premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival in the Park City at Midnight category. Many people are comparing the film to The Wackness, another pot dramedy that played Sundance a couple years back. Michael Chiklis plays a smarmy high school principal who suddenly institutes a zero-tolerance crusade, introducing mandatory drug tests for all students. Failure of which will result in immediate expulsion. Matt Bush plays a straight-arrow valedictorian named Henry Burke who normally would have nothing to worry about, except he just tried marijuana for the very first time. I’ll let the Sundance description take over:
With his college scholarship hanging in the balance, Burke begrudgingly teams up with charismatic pothead Travis Breaux to do the only thing they can think of to neutralize this threat—get the entire student body stoned. In his debut feature, director/cowriter John Stalberg Jr. percolates his deliriously manic narrative with sparkling energy and deviant characters, joyously ramming his protagonists deeper and deeper into frenzied chaos. HIGH school paints its slacker wit with lush broad strokes, firmly accomplishing the conclusive stoner fantasia run hilariously amuck.
The film also stars Sean Marquette, Adrien Brody, Colin Hanks, Mykelti Williamson, Andrew Wilson, Yeardley Smith, Michael Vartan, Curtis Armstrong, Erica Phillips and Adhir Kaylan. Check out 33 photos after the jump.
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Taiki Waititi’s indie comedy Eagle vs. Shark (which featured a pre-Conchords Jemaine Clement) was one of my favorite films from the 2007 Sundance Film Festival (I was even quoted on the international DVD cover). Waititi returns to Sundance in 2010 with Boy, which will screen in competition as one of this year’s 14 films were selected from 1,022 international narrative feature submissions.
The Te-Whanau-a-Apanu filmmaker’s new film tells the story of an 11-year-old Boy and his little brother Rocky who must reconcile reality with the fantasy dad they created in their imagination after their father returns home after many years away. Originally titled Volcano, the film stars Taika Waititi, James Rolleston, and Te Aho Eketone. Check out photos from the film, and the trailer, embedded after the jump.
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Hatchet writer/director Adam Green’s Frozen is a single-room thriller set on a ski-resort chairlift. The story follows three college students (Emma Bell, Shawn Ashmore, Kevin Zegers) who are mistakenly stranded on a chairlift, and are “forced to make life-or-death choices that prove more perilous than staying put and freezing to death.” Last week we posted a few photos and poster from the film. Today we bring you the movie trailer, embedded after the jump. Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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John Wells‘ The Company Men will screen at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival as part of the Premieres category. The film tells the story of three men trying to survive a round of corporate downsizing at a major company, and how that affects them, their families and communities over the course of one year. The film stars Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Costner, Chris Cooper, Maria Bello, Craig T Nelson, and Rosemarie DeWitt.
This is the feature directorial debut of Wells, who is best known for writing and producing hundreds of episodes of both ER and The West Wing. A lot of people are interested to see what he will be able to do with a feature film. It’s also worth mentioning that eight-time Academy Award nominated cinematographer Roger Deakins shot the film.
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The Sundance Institute announced today the addition of three world premieres which will screen out of competition at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival:
- It’s a Wonderful Afterlife: Bend it Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha and co-screenwriter Paul Mayeda Berges return to Sundance with a comedy centered on an Indian mother who discovers that finding the perfect son-in-law can be murder. Staring Shabana Azmi, Goldy Notay, Sendhil Ramamurthy, and Sally Hawkins.
- The Kids are Alright: Laurel Canyon director Lisa Cholodenko returns to Sundance with a soty of two children conceived by artificial insemination who bring their birth father into their family life. Written by Stuart Blumberg and Lisa Cholodenko, and starring Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, Josh Hutcherson, Mark Ruffalo, and Annette Bening. Cholodenko received the 1998 Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance for High Art.
- The Romantics: Director and screenwriter Galt Niederhoffer returns to Sundance with an adaptation of her novel, The Romantics, a zeitgeist love story and generational comedy, takes place over the course of one night at a deluxe seaside wedding. The cast includes Katie Holmes, Josh Duhamel, Anna Paquin, Adam Brody, Malin Ackerman, Elijah Wood, Candice Bergen, Jeremy Strong, and Dianna Agron. Niederhoffer received the 2007 Sundance Audience Award for producing Grace is Gone. She also produced the Sundance Film Festival films Lonesome Jim, Dedication, Diminished Capacity, Birds of America, and Hurricane.
