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Our First Report From Sundance

By Brian Miller in Film
Saturday, Jan. 17 2009 @ 7:12AM

mary_and_max.jpg

SW contributor and critic Scott Foundas is in Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival. He begins by reporting the following:

"Will everyone be wearing black?" a friend asked over dinner the other night when the subject arose of my imminent departure for the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. "I'm so glad I'm not going to Sundance," confided one longtime film publicist at this week's Los Angeles Film Critics awards dinner, as if she had escaped sentencing to a leper colony. Indeed, this year, it feels like a funereal pall has descended on Park City, Utah before the curtain has even risen on January's annual powwow of independent filmmakers, distributors and deep-pocketed passholders hoping to catch a glimpse of Jennifer Aniston as she tries not to slip on the ice. When the festival does kick off tomorrow evening, with the world premiere of Oscar-winning animator Adam Elliot's debut feature, Mary and Max (featuring a clay-mated Philip Seymour Hoffman as an obese Jewish man with Asperger's syndrome), it will do so at the center of a perfect storm of indie-film bad voodoo.

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    Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Pazzo's(1).jpg
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Top stories

Cover Story: Critical Mass

A Carl Sagan protégé who bikes to work on the Burke is changing the way weather is forecasted in America.
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    microsoft-bing_logo_resize.JPG
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    "The past day has been a shit-storm for a shirt that wasn't even supposed to reach mainstream society. This shirt wasn't a silly publicity stunt and frankly we're supprised at the ammount of attention it's recieved. We've never wanted or expected mainstream success or attention. This shirt was meant to sell to a select few fans, not to be peddled off onto Seattle's teenagers at Hot-Topic.

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    davejosh.jpg
    ​
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    8 p.m.: Mini Mansions take the stage in support.

    9:15 to 10:45 p.m.: Them Crooked Vultures (Zeppelin's John Paul Jones, Nirvana's Dave Grohl, and Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age) take the stage.

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    Topics: News

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    Posted November, 20 at 3:42 pm by Chris Kornelis, Reverb
    noschool.jpg
    Justin Dylan Renney
    Schoolyard Heroes at Vera Project.
    ​
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    "It was strange to play shows as Schoolyard Heroes with different people," she says.

    In the announcement on their web site, Schoolyard hinted at the future:

    "Don't freak out! If Schoolyard Heroes has taught you anything over the years, it is that death is always around you... and that from death shall emerge new channels of destruction. Loud, distorted, maybe even operatic channels."

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    Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Pazzo's(1).jpg
    Definitely under new management
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    campesino.jpg
    ​
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    houseforsale.jpg
    To buy or not to buy? That is the question.
    ​
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    Continue Reading >>
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    Posted November, 20 at 1:30 pm by Brian Miller, The Daily Weekly
    Jonas_bros_resize2.jpg
    The Jonas Brothers want...more brains!
    ​
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    The NYT and others are reporting that a new MSFT ad campaign will prominently feature the tween rockers. The spots are built around the catchphrase "It's more fun time." (Not something you could ever imagine Steve Ballmer saying.) Given that gamers are overwhelmingly male (not the brothers' fan base), it's unclear how the clean-shaven, Disney-created trio will connect with those who prefer Grand Theft Auto and first-person shooter games to bubblegum pop.

    Unless, of course, a game can be developed that features the Jonas Brothers as evil, brain-eating zombies who, with the power of their their stupefying music, turn millions of preadolescent girls into their army of slaves. Oh, wait...

    Topics: Business

RSS

Monthly View >>This week's best events
Sponsored by :