Today was Obama Day, and first-time director Lee Daniels was wishing the packed audience at the Eccles Theatre, Sundance’s largest, a happy one. Daniels, better known as producer of Monsters Ball and The Woodsman, with characters and situations drawn from the disenfranchised (a racist prison guard, a guilty interracial affair, a paroled child molester) was introducing his latest, Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire, easily one of Sundance’s most talked-about dramas in competition.

Based on a book of fiction, Push tells the story of an overweight, withdrawn 16-year-old Harlem girl named Precious, pregnant with a second child by her own father and abused at home by her mother (searingly played by comedienne Mo‘Nique, who will surely win awards). Without spilling the plot, through creative writing Precious achieves a degree of selfhood, and the film ends in as much emotional uplift as possible given the circumstances. more

Yesterday I touched upon some of the reasons the air has been let out of Sundance’s balloon this year. And ballooned it has, for a decade. Today walking Main Street’s uncrowded sidewalks, devoid of the usual hypesters and scenesters, I’m thinking that this year’s soft attendance is a gift. And a sign that the Festival might want to recalibrate.

When the Sundance Institute took over the Festival 25 years ago, American independent films were 16mm, low-budget, and all but locked out of the box office. While chances of theatrical success remain as remote today as ever—admittedly there have been giant strides for documentary, Michael Moore’s body of work for example, or those penguins—digital technology with its protean reach, low entry cost and endlessly rising quality has at least leveled the playing field as far as production goes. more

Shooting I Love You Phillip Morrs for Bad Santa directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, Xavier Perez’s biggest problem was the Louisiana rain and the summer light. In fact his toughest challenge never made it to the screen—a big shoot in Shreveport in the tank that conjured the storm in The Guardian. “It was pretty impressive,” says Perez of the tank and the logistics, “maybe it will be on the DVD.”

Two stocks: Kodak 5218 and 5229—one for the gentle colors at the beginning of the story and then a much more contrasty look as the true story of a love-crazed con (Jim Carrey) grows increasingly improbably in behalf of the beloved Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor).

As the light gets more contrasty, the camera movement gets increatingly dynamic, “frantic” is the word Perez uses for the feeling. But the angst was apparently all on screen. Perez credits the perfect collaboration with the directors; “we all had the same kind of mind and sense of humor.”

Premiered yesterday, continues Tues 9p.m. in Salt Lake at the Tower and at the Sundance Resort 6p.m. Saturday.

Many of the reviews of Thriller in Manila (which premiered in World Documentary Competition last Friday) mention the fact that it transcends expectations for a sports documentary (it revolves around the third Ali-Frazier right in Manila in 1975).

The credit for this of course goes to director John Dower, editor Nicholas Packer, DP Stephen Sanden and the team. But it also goes to Andrew MacKenzie, the producer at UK’s Channel 4 who provided the money. At least that’s how Dower explains it with a kind of wonder in his voice, as if still can’t believe he got to make a documentary with enough money. Money that bought a precious thing: pre-production.

Actually calling it pre-production doesn’t really describe it. Dower talks about going to the north Broad Street neighborhood in Philly, with no set plan, hanging out at Frazier’s boxing gym with the fragile, ferocious and mistrustful fighter. Dower walked the streets, met the now-gray-haired friends and witnesses, interviewed the fight participants including Ali’s acerbic doctor. He moved into the story. This is of course not unheard of in documentaries—but it is rarely budgeted for. more

Somehow the tiny budget for Paper Heart paid for trips to Toronto, Paris, and about 12 states including—to the best of DP Jay Hunter’s recollection—California, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee and New York, where the man shot 300 hours of Varicam footage in ten weeks. Not surprisingly he thinks Paper Heart’s lone editor Ryan Brown is a hero.

The film is in Dramatic Competition and premiered last night at the Racquet Club. Directed by Nicholas Jasenovec it tells a fictional story of Charlene Yi (the actress’/co-producer’s real name) through both a narrative thread and a documentary one. (The picture at right shows Jasenovec, Yi, and Brown). While Charlene’s story of skeptical love is fictional, her co-stars are not. Hunter says he shot the many interviews with non-actors—friends and acquaintances talking about love–in a narrative style using primes and very deliberate compositions, but that he also tried to shoot the narrative segments with the frankness of a documentary, “obeying the laws of reality.” more

John Hindman didn’t have to go the normal route of getting funding for his independent film before the acquiring the cast. Actor Jeff Daniels signed on to play the title charatcer, Arlen Faber, after reading Hindman’s script and before the money was even there. “If it weren’t for Jeff taking a chance on me–a nobody–I would just be a guy who wrote a screenplay,” he says.

Arlen Faber is the story of a reclusive writer who surfaces on the 20th anniversary his best-selling religious self-help book, and is competing in the dramatic competetion at Sundance this year. It also co-stars Lauren Graham, Olivia Thirlby, and Kat Dennings. more

Director Ryan Shiraki and I are patrolling the very gracious lobby of the Park City hotel looking for exactly what we found: two high backed Chesterfield-esque chairs in a quiet corner next to a high window near a tasteful fern. We settle in.

Shiraki is here (again) with Spring Breakdown, a “Girls Gone Wild” story with heart staring Amy Poehler, Parker Posey, and Rachel Dratch, who co-wrote with Shiraki.

Shiraki’s DP Frank DeMarco shot Hedwig and the Angry Inch a film Shiraki loved for its extravagant and pointed use of color—something he wanted for his own film. “I love the way that in certain scenes these isolated bright colors would pop out of the sea of gray and blue,” he says of DeMarco’s work on Hedwig. He explains that his movie deliberately kicks off with his three heroines singing a campy version of Cindy Lauper’s “True Colors” and that each has an hero color (Amy: yellow; Parker: red: Rachel: blue) that travels with them from morose to magnificent as they bust out with the college kids on Los Padres Island at Spring Break. more

When I sit down with Adam Elliot and Melanie Coombs, director and producer of Sundance’s ingenious opening film Mary and Max, I want to talk about their cinematographer Gerald Thompson. Which is handy, because they do too. (Note the vignetting in the photo at right).

Much has been deservedly made of the film’s detailed claymation animation and of its dark, taboo-pushing story of two unlikely and lonely pen pals. Elliot had previously won an Academy Award (Harvie Krumpet) and found acclaim as a storyteller and animator, but for him something was missing cinematically. That something arrived in the unlikely form of motion control expert Thompson. Like Prometheus brought fire, Thompson brought camera moves. more

Peter and Vandy was adapted from a 2002 play written by and starring the film’s director, Jay DiPietro. For the movie, DiPietro cast Jason Ritter and Jess Weixler as the title couple and had to expand way beyond the production limitations of a two-character play that took place in one living room.

Cinematograpger Frank DeMarco (Short Bus, Hedwig and the Angry Inch) shot the movie on Super16 film using 35mm lenses for a gritty feel. more

DP Patrick Murguia is touristing around Main Street recovering from the long journey from Mexico City; he’s enroute to the Eccles to be very early for the premiere of the independent film he shot for Antoine Fuqua. We grab a corner of the cramped lobby at the Marriott Summit Watch and as he talks the many distractions fade away.

Murguia recalls standing in the streets of New York, while Fuqua laid out a shot plan. From his gestures I’m seeing a dynamic, nearly 360-degree lighting extravaganza, the kind of muscular, operatic command of space and action that Fuqua does so distinctively. “He actually wanted to make something very simple,” Murguia says of Brooklyn’s Finest, which stars Ethan Hawke, Richard Gere, and Don Cheadle. “Most of the time he got that, but sometimes it’s in his nature to go a little over the top,” the DP says with a little grin. I think it’s an understatement. Why else would Trevor Goth, writing in the program notes, talk about the “roving cinematography,” the “intensity and complexity,” the “complete command of the cinematic language,” and the “visceral and emotional punch” of a master at work. Simple I suppose for Fuqua.

Murguia is a sought-after commercials director and has shot features for his friend Rodrigo Prieto; he started working with Fuqua when Oliver Stone suggested him for Escobar. That project stalled in pre-production so when Fuqua went to work on Brooklyn’s Finest the relationship continued on that film. more