Tastemaker

Congratulations to everyone who worked on "Year of the Fish" for inclusion in the Sundance Spectrum series!

Congratulations Gregg Araki, whose "stoner-epic, screwball-comedy "Smiley Face"" will be in the Midnite Series. Last year, festival-goers got to see his disturbing, poingant feature "Mysterious Skin." -HCS

The Sundance Film Festival Picks are in!!! Congratulations to Teeth (and producer Joyce Pierpoline and writer/director Mitchell Lictenstein) for their great work, we'll see Teeth in competition at the festival. Check out their pic and the article in NY Times You rock, you rock so hard.

For a full list of the 64 films accepted, go to Variety

So an anti-spam company called Unspam has created a mathmatical system to weed out bad movies as if they were junkmail. They then predict the big festival hits using more of their amazing science. The good news is that Flannel PJ's and The Hawk is Dying come out as WINNERS. Now these results are based on... well, i don't really know what they're based on but i like the results... it has something to do with 200 data points per movie, 10 years of collected data, and training a supercomputer to analyze the material... Check out www.deconstructingsundance.com

People, people. YOU are my eyes and ears. Jonathan has one of those new-fangled Treos, so will SOMEBODY please show him how to send me pictures for posting?! And i know he's not the only one with photo-capability. Hey, i'm not BLAMING anybody for NEGLECTING to DISH DIRT, i just miss you guys, is all... give a girl a hand and send in some proof that you are, indeed, alive and well and pissing off the locals. Below, my son the BoozeHound, for inspiration. h.

Found this delightful tidbit on gossip-rag Defamer.com:

Defamer At Sundance: Movie Monday
In an effort to correct our egregious movie to party ratio, we’re trying to see four movies today. Whether or not this is a good idea on three hours sleep is up for debate (early answer: bad idea). We feel like we should make up some kind of motivational fight song to help keep our spirits up, but fear we’d throw up the part of our brain that helps produce such things.

Movie number one, Flannel Pajamas, is starting. It begins.
(they've posted a pic of, that's right, some flannel pajamas.)

- scroll down deeper into Defamer, and there's a pic of Nick Nolte and a positive review of Off The Black!

Tickets to Sundance films are up for bidding on EBay. Search under "Sundance tickets", "Sundance film festival" etc. Bids are ranging from the $10 face-value to a shocking $500. Someone has bid $100 for one ticket to The Darwin Awards, there's 4 tickets to the Neil Young, Heart of Gold movie today that are going for $80, and everybody seems to be price-gouging for Alpha Dog, one ticket going for $375. I did notice one reasonably-priced ticket available for the 1/27 Wristcutters at noon.

Who saw Will Keenan get hit by a car on Main St. 2pm sat?! Supposedly crazy John Sullivan was behind the wheel. Does anybody have a picture of Will's death-defying roll over the car?

If you're at Sundance right now, post a comment and tell us what you're doing/seeing/drinking etc! if you send me photos, i will post them as well. i'm hoping to see all your beautiful, exhausted, inspired faces...

OK everyone, you better get your sleep NOW, because Sundance starts at the end of the week! We'll be posting about the premieres, the parties, the after-parties, the disdainful looks from townies as everyone pulls out their cell phones... and anything else we find interesting. Jonathan will be out there the whole time. He'll be reporting back to Hil, who will be making sure NYC doesn't fall into the ocean while he's gone. And Hil will be dishing to YOU!