With nothing close to a breakout favorite like last year's unconventional hit, "Precious," this year’s Sundance Film Festival laid bare an independent film landscape more fragmented and confused than ever.
Plenty of films sold, but none for premium prices. An experiment using YouTube went nowhere. The themes were familiar and so was the execution, from audience favorites like "happythankyoumoreplease" to the thriller-in-a-coffin, "Buried."
If those films were satisfying in their own right, there was nothing to choose from that seemed likely to match the national hunger for humor and diversion, a la "Napoleon Dynamite."
Instead, there w
ere titles like the brutal "Killer Inside Me," which sold to IFC, and grand jury prize winner, "Winter's Bone," about a grieving teen’s frantic search for her missing father, which sold to Roadside Attractions.
An attempt to take the festival into a digital future faltered. The five films that the festival made available for rental garenered no more than 1500 viewings over the course of two days. If that's the best that Sundance can do for movies in the era of new media, than perhaps it should simply return to the old world distribution it knows best.
Audiences perked up for "The Kids Are All Right," a major Sundance buy for Focus Features about two lesbian mothers, their confused teenagers and the sperm donor that brought the family into existence. The movie features impressive performances for Julian Moore and Annette Bening as a believable middle-aged couple, but it works on a fairly basic sitcom level that makes it feel relatively similar to countless other Sundance breakout stories.
“I thought Sundance 2010 was a good year for the quality of films presented, but I doubt it will be remembered as a particularly strong acquisitions market,” said Tom Ortenberg, former president of theatrical films at Lionsgate and founder of the consulting firm One Way Out Media. “Given the films that were snapped up ... I'm sure there will be a brisk after-market in terms of film sales."
There was lingering optimism within the ranks of the sellers, too.
"The filmmakers definitely brought a great batch of films and I was happy to see that the buyers seem to be stirring again," said filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev, whose "My Kid Could Paint" sold to Sony Pictures Classics out of the festival in 2007. His latest film, "The Tillman Story," is nearing a deal with The Weinstein Company.
The first big buy of the festival, "Buried," found a home early in the festival with Lionsgate, which shelled out a reported $3.2 million for the horror movie it hopes to release as soon as possible. Lionsgate, which attempted to abandon its association with the genre after "Hostel 2" flopped in 2007, decided to return to a familiar arena after nabbing "Precious" out of the 2009 festival.
While that decision paid off, no single film in this year's program seemed to suggest the same sort of massive breakout potential destined for Lee Daniels's portrait of Harlem strife from the moment it premiered at the festival.
