Sundance Film Festival

Weather Underground’s current forecast for Park City, Utah calls for snow on five out of the first six days of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, including a possible (gulp) five to eight inches on Monday. ScreenCrush’s current forecast for Park City, Utah, snow be damned, calls for as many movies as we can cram into those six days while we’re on the ground covering Sundance 2017. Editor-in-Chief Matt Singer and Senior Editor Erin Whitney will be there, doing their best to honor the mailman’s creed: Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat (okay maybe we won’t have to worry about that one), nor gloom of night will keep them from their appointed rounds. (It’s possible a party or two might; it’s probably too early to tell right now.)

Every movie lover in the world has heard of the Sundance Film Festival. But did you know the festival was originally called the Utah/US Film Festival? When it was founded in 1978, it was located in Salt Lake City. The first year’s lineup included classics like Mean Streets, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Sweet Smell of Success. The festival moved to nearby Park City in 1981, and a decade later officially switched its name to the Sundance Film Festival. That’s just one of the Sundance facts featured in the newest episode of You Think You Know Movies!

When that weird trailer premiered last week that looked like either a really cool futuristic sci-fi movie or a strange, oblique advertisement for touchscreens, we all wondered what exactly A24 was announcing. The long-awaited return of a director? The debut of someone new? A collaboration? An intern’s mistake? Now, after some sly detective work, we know what it is: the trailer was for a short film called Toru that’ll be premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Despite being around for more than a century, one of the major failings of cinema as an art-form is that it hasn’t found a way to make an entire film where Cate Blanchett plays every single role. Thankfully, 2017 will bring that horrifying streak to a close with Manifesto, a film adaptation of the Julian Rosefeldt art installation that will feature Blanchett in a total of 13 different roles. The only downside is that we’re going to have a tough time adjusting back to the non-Cate Blanchett characters out there. It all seems like such a waste of time now.

Horror anthology films are all the rage these days, from the lo-fi V/H/S series to the the pair of eclectic ABCs of Death films to the recent seasonally-themed Holidays. And yet all of these films have been united by the greater theme of being almost entirely directed by men; the scary-movie genre has always been a bit of a boy’s club, with women fighting tooth and nail for success as exceptions to an archaic rule imposed by Hollywood. The upcoming film XX seeks to change that, however, offering some of of horror’s most promising young female filmmakers the chance to get behind the camera and have some twisted fun.

We still don’t exactly know when in 2017 the new Twin Peaks will premiere, let alone when to expect a possible trailer or photos, but attendees of this year’s Sundance Film Festival may get a little of that fine coffee. Conversations are apparently taking place for Twin Peaks to have a presence at the event later on in January.

Sundance isn’t always about the new stuff. Every year, the Sundance Institute picks a few films to screen as special events, and this year, among the choices are Amir Bar-Lev’s Grateful Dead documentary Long Strange Trip and Quentin Tarantino’s classic Reservoir Dogs.

With the upcoming dramedy The Last Word, gem of screen and stage Shirley MacLaine takes on the sort of role that actresses over eighty (hell, actresses over fifty) don’t get nearly enough of. She portrays one Harriet Lauler, a retired businesswoman and an objectively insufferable bee-yotch. She’s rude and condescending when not outright abusive to those around her, insistent on controlling everything and commanding everyone. (The most clutch line from the trailer above: when her OB/GYN recalls being told, “If I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you.”) She’s a difficult, contemptible character, and for mature actresses, those are always in short supply.

Al Gore is one of those people who gets me thinking about legacy. When Gore’s time on the earth comes to a close, how will he be remembered? As a solid vice president who lost one of the most hotly disputed elections of all time? Or as a champion of environmental conservationism? From the outside, it certainly appears that Gore is angling for the latter. Just this past weekend, it was announced by Paramount Pictures (via Variety) that Al Gore has been working on a sequel to his 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth and that the film was set to be the opening night film at next year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Did you think the 2017 Sundance Film Festival announcements were over? Silly you! We still have the short film category ahead of us, and today’s announcement from the festival gives us a look at what we can expect to see.