Sundance 2009

So this year's Sundance Film Festival, held in the cold mountains of Park City, Utah, just came and went, and we have to start off by congratulating our friend, local filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton, whose thesis film for SDSU's Master's program in Television, Film, and New Media, "Short Term 12," was not only accepted for competition but won the Jury Prize for Best Short Film. You can read Destin's Sundance blog here. Check out the film's website, featuring the trailer for the film, here.

First, a list of the award winners:

Variety.com

And some nifty links for reviews of the films playing out in the snowy hills:

Chud.com

Film.com

I'll post some more about some of the individual films of interest in a bit...

--co

The Year of Refn

One of the most promising young filmmakers around, Nicolas Winding Refn, made a name for himself with the great Pusher trilogy. Three parallel, violent odysseys through the drug underworld of Denmark, Refn's take on the crime genre paired Euro style with Neorealism, with the ghosts of Scorcese (Goodfellas) and Friedkin (The French Connection) hovering over. He made his American debut with Fear X, an adaptation of a novel by cult novelist Hubert Selby, Jr. (Requiem for a Dream). Unfortunately, that film went into production without a finished script, and the final product definitely shows. This year, however, will see the release of two films by Refn. One of these is Valhalla Rising, what will possibly be the best Viking movie ever.



Today sees the arrival of the trailer for his other new film, Bronson, about the supposedly most violent prisoner in Britain, Charles Bronson (no, that's not his real name).



Rent the Pusher trilogy and Fear X here---www.citizen-video.com