The P3 Update Magazine Blog

by James Thompson

Sundance 2009 is providing some excellent experiences for filmmakers and some not-so-great experiences for others. On the positive side, the weather has been wonderful, the parties have been a lot of fun and a lot of good films are premiering.

I particularly enjoyed meeting many filmmakers at the Utah Brunch held at the Sundance House, FUJIFILMS’ Indie Moguls party at the Snow Park Lodge, NBC Universal’s reception at the Coda Gallery and Film the West reception at the Phoenix Gallery on Main Street. The host at each of these events provided an exceptional opportunity for Sundance attendees to enjoy a few festive hours while learning about their products, services and locations.

Several of the films I viewed hit the mark while presenting intense subject matter. The Greatest, starring Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon, portrayed parents coping with the death of their teenage son. Taking Chance follows the body of a 19-year-old marine from the battlefields of Iraq to his hometown in Wyoming. Kevin Bacon’s outstanding performance as a military officer, who voluntarily escorts the young marine’s body back to his family, made the film genuine.

On the negative side, Sundance was just too crowded; the buses were jam-packed. And, if you didn’t have a ticket for a screening, your chances of getting in were slim. In fact, I ran into one couple who had a very frustrating experience. They were told that anyone interested in attending the screening of The September Issue needed to line up at the theater two hours before the screening just to get wait-list numbers. To play it safe, they decided to go to the theater three and a half hours before the screening, and ended up being numbers 41 and 42 on the wait list. They left the theater after receiving their numbers and returned 30 minutes before the screening ─ as required ─ only to find that just the first 10 people on the wait list got in. That’s three and a half hours of waiting and, finally, rejection. Utah residents have first pick at the screening tickets. So if you’re visiting from out of town, you’re pretty much out of luck ─ unless you know someone.

Nevertheless, I still think it was worthwhile for the many independent filmmakers who trekked to the wonderful state of Utah for this yearly event.

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by Dyana Carmella

Sundance is still going strong as filmmakers spend their time in the tranquil setting of Park City, Utah displaying their work. Besides hitting many terrific parties and watching wonderful films, I really enjoyed meeting the filmmakers and hearing about their journeys. There are two films I really felt hit the mark. The first was part of the U.S. documentary competition and premiered in Salt Lake City to a packed house, including the Governor of Utah, Jon Huntsman. The September Issue was directed by R.J. Cutler who took the audience into the world of Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, who held that position for the past 20 years. Wintour attended the festival, and when asked what she thought of the film she replied, “It’s quite hard to look at yourself in such an intense way.” Nevertheless, she liked the fact that now the world could see all the heartbreak, hard work and joy that goes into publishing a magazine.

The second film that really moved me was called Taking Chance. First time Director Ross Katz pulled this very emotional film together and signed on Kevin Bacon to play the lead role. I thought Cinematographer Alar Kivilo’s work was captivating, as the majority of the film was shot in beautiful Montana. The story followed a Marine Lieutenant Colonel who volunteers to escort the remains of a 19-year-old killed in Iraq to his family in a small Wyoming town. Look for the full Sundance story in the upcoming March issue of P3 Update.

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By Iain Blair

My old mate Andy Summers is finally back in town after nearly 2 years on the road with the Police for their hugely successful world reunion tour and as always he’s busy with a bunch of film and photo projects and road trips. He was just in Brazil for the 50th Anniversary bash of Bossa Nova and is now hard at work on the film of his acclaimed music memoir, One Train Later (a great read for anyone into the British music scene of the 60s and 70s). “It’s directed by Lauren Lazin, the woman who did the Tupac Shakur film, and they’re currently editing it in New York,” he tells me. Andy’s busy composing the score and also lining up another film project, “Which I may direct,” he adds. In between all that, he, like me, will be running around the world. As inveterate travelers, we’ve been hiking and camping in the Sierra Nevadas together and a couple of years ago we planned to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro – the highest peak in Africa – together – but we both got too busy with work. Now, he’s heading back to South America for a couple of weeks “on a photo sojourn” of Peru and Bolivia.

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By Iain Blair

Oscar talk and buzz is definitely building now. Following last Sunday’s widely watched Golden Globes, Oscar watchers and Hollywood insiders are turning their attention to the Academy Awards, to be presented on February 22. Many are wondering if this could be the year that the Academy’s traditionally highbrow taste coincides with box office success and popular sentiment in the shape of wins for The Dark Knight and its late star, Heath Ledger, who won big at the Globes.  I was talking to Tom O’Neil – the very knowledgeable columnist for award-watching website TheEnvelope.com – who thinks it’s possible, reporting Best Picture odds of 4 to 1 for The Dark Knight, 2 to 3 for Slumdog Millionaire and 5 to 2 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. He sees both Frost/Nixon and Milk as 20 to 1 long shots. For Best Actor, O’Neil places Sean Penn (Milk) at 2 to 1, Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon) at 5 to 2, Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino) at 3 to 1, Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler) at 7 to 2 and Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) at 40 to 1. “There’s some suspense here as Penn has won all the lead-up awards, but voters might go, ‘Clint says Gran Torino’s’ his last acting job, he’s never won for acting,’ so there could be a soft spot for him there,” says O’Neil. In the Best Supporting Actor category, O’Neil places Ledger at “very strong” 3 to 5 odds, noting “He has no serious competition. We haven’t seen any of his main rivals – Josh Brolin (Milk), Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire), Robert Downey Jr., (Tropic Thunder) – get traction in the early awards yet.” He added, “Heath looked like a slam dunk shoo-in all along, not just because it was the biggest box office hit of the year but because it was one of the biggest showbiz stories of recent years, and it had so many layers.” Will Heath get the Oscar nom on Jan 22? Stay tuned…

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By Iain Blair

There is a lot of Oscar buzz building around director Gus Van Sant’s Milk, his heartfelt homage to assassinated gay San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, starring Sean Penn. I chatted with Van Sant about the film and asked him if there were any surprises working with Sean Penn – who, famously, now directs more than acts. “No, not really,” he told me. “It was pretty businesslike and we had a pretty mutual idea of what we wanted to get done – or enough that we were able to forge ahead fairly easily. And he’s great to collaborate with. It also helped that as he lives in the Bay Area, he didn’t want to shoot leave town and shoot anywhere else, so that forced us to use a lot of the real locations.” Gus told me that Milk was filmed entirely on location in San Francisco – where DP Harris Savides had worked extensively a couple of years prior as the cinematographer of Zodiac – with a home base at Treasure Island. So how does he rate his Oscar chances? After all, Van Sant – whose credits include Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues – is no stranger to Oscar attention. His acclaimed feature Good Will Hunting brought him a Best Director Academy Award nomination. The film was nominated for eight other Oscars including Best Picture, and won for Best Supporting Actor (Robin Williams) and Best Original Screenplay (Ben Affleck and Matt Damon). “I feel good about my chances – but we’ll see,” he says.

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By Iain Blair

If you haven’t seen the new Italian film “Gomorrah” yet, you’re in for a real treat. This amazing movie — released by IFC Films — plays like a documentary about the notorious Italian mafia operation known as the Camorra, but it’s actually a series of stories based on real-life events in the crime-ridden areas around Naples, where the mafia maintains a strong grip. Based on the book Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano, the film is directed by Matteo Garrone who says, “The raw material I had to work with when shooting it was so visually powerful that I merely filmed it in as straightforward a way as possible.” The result has a strong documentary feel about it, and interestingly the DP, Marco Onorato, has shot several documentaries in the past. The result is a dark mirror image of “The Godfather’s” lush, operatic take on Italian crime families — riveting and haunting.

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By Iain Blair

Over the years Sundance has become bigger and bigger and glitzier and glitzier and not everyone has liked the change. Going by the word on the street, this year will definitely not be business as usual. For a start, Motorola is not a sponsor this year. The result? Sundance 09 will have a new leaner profile in every sense. As one friend put it, “It’s not going to be Harvey Weinstein strolling down Main Street in a fur coat, puffing a cigar – instead, he’ll be holding a cardboard sign that says ‘WILL WORK FOR DISTRIBUTION.’ ” There seems no doubt that the festival will be heading back to its earlier low-key roots, however busy it stays – “back to the good old days, before Paris Hilton and all the other non-actresses showed up for the paparazzi,” as another friend put it. Whatever happens, it seems that Sundance 2009 will be closer to Redford’s original vision.

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By Iain Blair

Top make up artist Cinzia Zanetti, a friend 30 years, has also returned east – down the road in Connecticut – for the holidays, and we caught up on her latest projects. She’s worked on such hit films as “Ironman”, “Mr. And Mrs Smith”, “Along Came Polly” and “Beowulf”, as well as on TV shows like “Alias”, “Raines”, and “Babylon 5”, and is heading back home to LA to start shooting the new ABC-TV comedy “Better off Ted,” starring Portia de Rossi. “We shot the pilot at LA Center Stages last year, got picked up, and now we’re shooting the first season at the same studios, through March,” she told me. Like a lot of seasoned pros in the business, she recognizes the possibility of a SAG strike, but says that “it’d be pretty ridiculous, considering the state of the economy and the world right now. Hopefully common sense will prevail.” Let’s hope so.

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By Iain Blair

It’s always interesting to hang out with teenagers and talk to them about movies and videogames. Talking to my nephews always gives me real insight into what’s hot and what’s not – and they’re the audience that will go back to a film again and again if they loved it, like they did with “The Dark Knight.” They all spend a lot of time texting or playing games. “Guitar Hero” is a very hot game and a kids are anxiously looking forward to “Guitar Hero Metallica” which hits stores this spring. Even musicians are keenly aware of the “cool factor” of having your own videogame. As Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich (age 45) puts it, “My son’s at an age where Dad is dorky”Doing “Guitar Hero” was a no-brainer for the band, Ulrich admits. “It’s very cool on all fronts and a great introduction for both my kids (ages 10 and 7) to music.”

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By Iain Blair

Happy New Year! I’m still back east and it is still freezing cold here, but we have great skiing weather, as we got another storm that blew in from the west coast.  I forgot to mention in my last blog of 2008 that while talking with Ted Danson, he told me he’s going to be doing a new show for HBO. “It’s called “Bored to Death”  — created and written by Jonathan Ames –  a very whimsical comedy about a writer turned self-appointed detective played by Jonathan Schwartzman, set in New York,” he explains. “He tries to find missing people and I play his best friend, a kind of George Plimpton-like character, the editor of a magazine. We did the pilot and [it] just got picked up. So we’ll be shooting the series in March, April and May in New York, which is exciting.”

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